Terry Goodkind - Debt of Bones

The room fell again to arguing. As it did, Wizard Zorander looked into Abby’s eyes. It was a clear instruction to finish her supplication.

“My people—the people in Coney Crossing—have been taken by the D’Harans. They have others, too, who they’ve captured. They have a sorceress holding the captives with a spell. Please, Wizard Zorander, you must help me.

“When I was hiding, I heard the sorceress talking to their officers. The D’Harans plan to use the captives as shields. They will use the captives to blunt the deadly magic you send against them, or to blunt the spears and arrows the Midlands army sends against them. If they decide to turn and attack, they plan to drive the captives ahead. They called it ‘dulling the enemies’ weapons on their own women and children.’ ”

No one looked at her. They were all once again engaged in their mass talking and arguing. It was as if the lives of all those people were beneath their consideration.

Tears stung at Abby’s eyes. “Either way all those innocent people will die. Please, Wizard Zorander, we must have your help, otherwise they’ll all die.”

He looked her way briefly. “There is nothing we can do for them.”

Abby panted, trying to hold back the tears. “My father was captured, along with others of my kin. My husband is among the captives. My daughter is among them. She is not yet five. If you send magic, they will be killed. If you attack, they will be killed. You must rescue them, or hold the attack.”

He looked genuinely saddened. “I’m sorry. I can’t help them. May the good spirits watch over them and take their souls to the Light.” He began turning away.

“No!” Abby screamed. Some of the people fell silent. Others only glanced her way as they went on. “My child! You can’t!” She thrust a hand into the sack. “I have a bone—”

“Doesn’t everyone,” he grumbled, cutting her off. “I can’t help you.”

“But you must!”

“We would have to abandon our cause. We must take the D’Haran force down—one way or another. Innocent though those people are, they are in the way. I can’t allow the D’Harans to succeed in such a scheme or it would encourage its widespread use, and then even more innocents would die. The enemy must be shown that it will not deter us from our course.”

“NO!” Abby wailed. “She’s only a child! You’re condemning my baby to death! There are other children! What kind of monster are you?”

No one but the wizard was even listening to her any more as they all went on with their talking.

The First Wizard’s voice cut through the din and fell on her ears as clearly as the knell of death. “I am a man who must make choices such as this one. I must deny your petition.”

Abby screamed with the agony of failure. She wasn’t even to be allowed to show him.

“But it’s a debt!” she cried. “A solemn debt!”

“And it cannot be paid now.”

Abby screamed hysterically. The sorceress began pulling her away. Abby broke from the woman and ran out of the room. She staggered down the stone steps, unable to see through the tears.

At the bottom of the steps she buckled to the floor in helpless sobbing. He wouldn’t help her. He wouldn’t help a helpless child. Her daughter was going to die. Abby, convulsing in sobs, felt a hand on her shoulder. Gentle arms pulled her closer. Tender fingers brushed back her hair as she wept into a woman’s lap. Another person’s hand touched her back and she felt the warm comfort of magic seeping into her.

“He’s killing my daughter,” she cried. “I hate him.”

“It’s all right, Abigail,” the voice above said. “It’s all right to weep for such a pain as this.”

Abby wiped at her eyes, but couldn’t stop the tears. The sorceress was there, beside her, at the bottom of the steps.

Abby looked up at the woman in whose arms she lay. It was the Mother Confessor herself. She could do her worst, for all Abby cared. What did it matter, what did any of it matter, now?

“He’s a monster,” she sobbed. “He is truly named. He is the ill wind of death. This time it’s my baby he’s killing, not the enemy.”

“I understand why you feel that way, Abigail,” the Mother Confessor said, “but it is not true.”

“How can you say that! My daughter has not yet had a chance to live, and he will kill her! My husband will die. My father, too, but he has had a chance to live a life. My baby hasn’t!”

She fell to hysterical wailing again, and the Mother Confessor once again drew her into comforting arms. Comfort was not what Abby wanted.

“You have just the one child?” the sorceress asked.

Abby nodded as she sucked a breath. “I had another, a boy, but he died at birth. The midwife said I will have no more. My little Jana is all I will ever have.” The wild agony of it ripped through her. “And he will kill her. Just as he killed that man before me. Wizard Zorander is a monster. May the good spirits strike him dead!”

With a poignant expression, the sorceress smoothed Abby’s hair back from her forehead. “You don’t understand. You see only a part of it. You don’t mean what you say.”

But she did. “If you had—”

“Delora understands,” the Mother Confessor said, gesturing towards the sorceress. “She has a daughter of ten years, and a son, too.”

Abby peered up at the sorceress. She gave Abby a sympathetic smile and a nod to confirm the truth of it.

“I, too, have a daughter,” the Mother Confessor said. “She is twelve. Delora and I both understand your pain. So does the First Wizard.”

Abby’s fists tightened. “He couldn’t! He’s hardly more than a boy himself, and he wants to kill my baby. He is the wind of death and that’s all he cares about—killing people!”

The Mother Confessor patted the stone step beside her. “Abigail, sit up here beside me. Let me tell you about the man in there.”

Still weeping, Abby pushed herself up and slid on to the step. The Mother Confessor was older by maybe twelve or fourteen years, and pleasant-looking, with those violet eyes. Her mass of long hair reached her waist. She had a warm smile. It had never occurred to Abby to think of a Confessor as a woman, but that was what she saw now. She didn’t fear this woman as she had before; nothing she did could be worse than what already had been done.

“I sometimes minded Zeddicus when he was but a toddler and I was still coming into womanhood.” The Mother Confessor gazed off with a wistful smile. “I swatted his bottom when he misbehaved, and later twisted his ear to make him sit at a lesson. He was mischief on two legs, driven not by guile but by curiosity. He grew into a fine man.

“For a long time, when the war with D’Hara started, Wizard Zorander wouldn’t help us. He didn’t want to fight, to hurt people. But in the end, when Panis Rahl, the leader of D’Hara, started using magic to slaughter our people, Zedd knew that the only hope to save more lives in the end was to fight.

“Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander may look young to you, as he did to many of us, but he is a special wizard, born of a wizard and a sorceress. Zedd was a prodigy. Even those other wizards in there, some of them his teachers, don’t always understand how he is able to unravel some of the enigmas in the books or how he uses his gift to bring so much power to bear, but we do understand that he has heart. He uses his heart, as well as his head. He was named First Wizard for all these things and more.”

“Yes,” Abby said, “he is very talented at being the wind of death.”

The Mother Confessor smiled a small smile. She tapped her chest. “Among ourselves, those of us who really know him call him the trickster. The trickster is the name he has truly earned. We named him the wind of death for others to hear, so as to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy. Some people on our side take that name to heart. Perhaps, since your mother was gifted, you can understand how people sometimes unreasonably fear those with magic?”