“Something be going on out there,” Adie whispered. “It must be them.” She fixed her white eyes on Kahlan. “You be sure you wish to do this? I be willing, but…”
“We have to,” Kahlan said as she glanced at the fire to make sure it was still going strong. “We must escape. If we can’t escape, and we’re killed, well then, Richard won’t be lured to come here to fall into their trap, and he can stay where he is and, with Zedd’s help, protect the people of the Midlands.”
Adie nodded. “We try, then.” She sighed. “I know I be right that she be doing it, but I do not know the reason.”
Adie had told her that Lunetta did something very peculiar: she was shrouded in her power all the time. Such a task was so extraordinary, Adie had said, that it required the use of a talisman invested with magic. With Lunetta, that talisman could only be one thing.
“Like you said, Adie, even if you don’t know the reason, she wouldn’t do something like that it if weren’t important.”
Kahlan crossed her lips with a finger when she heard the squeak of the floor in the hall. Adie’s gray and black jaw-length hair swayed as she quickly blew out the lamp and moved back behind the door. The fire still provided light, but the flickering flames made the shadows dance, and would only add to the confusion.
The door opened. Kahlan, standing to the opposite side of the door from Adie, took a deep breath, mustering her courage. She hoped they had removed the shield, or they were going to be in a lot of trouble for nothing.
The two figures stepped into the room. It was them.
“What are you doing in here, you greasy little nick!” Kahlan yelled.
Brogan, with Lunetta behind him, rounded on Kahlan. She spat in his eyes.
His face gone red, he grabbed for her. Kahlan brought her boot up between his legs. When he cried out, Lunetta reached for him. From behind, Adie cracked a log across the squat sorceress’s head.
Brogan threw himself on Kahlan, grappling with her, punching her in the ribs. Adie snatched Lunetta’s outfit of colored patches as she fell. The whole thing ripped as Adie, her mighty effort powered by desperation, rolled the nearly senseless woman out of her patchwork clothes.
Lunetta, dazed and slow, cried out as Adie spun around with her prize and heaved it into the roaring fire.
Kahlan saw the patches of colored cloth flame up in the hearth as she and Brogan toppled to the floor. She heaved him over the top of her as she crashed to the ground and then rolled to her feet. As Brogan turned to get his footing, she kicked him in the face.
Lunetta squealed in distress. Kahlan kept her eyes on Brogan as he sprang up with blood running from his nose. Before he could charge at her again, he saw his sister behind Kahlan and froze.
Kahlan darted a quick glance behind. A woman was pawing frantically at the fire, futilely trying to recover the flaming patches of colored cloth.
The woman was not Lunetta.
It was an attractive, older woman, in a white shift.
Kahlan’s eyes went wide at the sight. What happened to Lunetta?
Brogan screamed out in fury. “Lunetta! How dare you do a glamour in front of others! How dare you use magic to make them think you be pretty! Stop it at once! Your taint be ugly!”
“Lord General,” she cried, “my pretties. My pretties be burning. Please, my brother, help me.”
“You filthy streganicha! Stop it, I say!”
“I can’t,” she wept, “I can’t without my pretties.”
With a growl of rage, Brogan slammed Kahlan aside and dashed to the fire. He lifted Lunetta by her hair and struck her with his fist. She fell back, knocking Adie to the floor with her.
He kicked his sister as she tried to stand. “I’ve had enough of your disobedience and your profane taint!”
Kahlan snatched up a log and swung at him, but he ducked and it caught only his shoulders. His fist in her gut drove her back.
Kahlan gasped to get her breath. “You ugly pig! Leave your beautiful sister alone!”
“She be loony! Loony Lunetta!”
“Don’t listen to him, Lunetta! Your name means ‘little moon!’ Don’t listen to him!”
Brogan screamed in fury and threw his hands out toward Kahlan. With a loud crack, lightning lit the room. It missed her only because he was raging out of control and striking wildly. Plaster and other debris blasted through the air.
Kahlan was stunned near to paralysis. Tobias Brogan, the lord general of the Blood of the Fold, the man committed to exterminating magic, had the gift.
Screaming again, Brogan threw a fist of air that caught Kahlan square in the chest and slammed her against the wall. She crumpled to the floor, dazed and senseless.
Lunetta shrieked louder when she saw what Brogan had done. “No, Tobias! You must not use the taint!”
He fell on his sister, strangling her, pounding her head against the floor. “You be the one who did it! You be using the taint! You be using a glamour! You made the lightning!”
“No, Tobias, you be the one doing it. You must not use the gift. Mamma told me you must not use it.”
He lifted her by a fistful of her white shift. “What are you talking about? What did Mamma tell you, you vile streganicha?”
The comely woman panted and gulped. “That you be the one, my brother. The one for greatness. She said I must not make people to notice me—so they would look only to you. She said you be the one who be important. But she said I must not let you use your gift.”
“Liar! Mamma never said any such thing! Mamma didn’t know anything!”
“Yes, Tobias, she knew. She be touched with a little of the gift. The Sisters came to take you away. We loved you, and didn’t want them to take our little Tobias.”
“I don’t have the taint!”
“It be true, my brother. They said you had the gift, and they wanted to take you to the Palace of the Prophets. Mamma told me that if they went back without you they would bring others. We killed them. Mamma and me. That be how you got the scar by your mouth—in our fight with them. She said we had to kill them so they wouldn’t send others. She said I must never let you use the gift or they would come to take you.”
Brogan’s chest heaved with rage. “All lies! You did the lightning, and you be using a glamour for others!”
“No,” she wept. “They burned my pretties. Mamma said you be destined to be great, but it could all be ruined. She taught me how to use the pretties to hide my looks and to keep you from using the gift. We wanted you to be great.
“My pretties be gone. You made the lightning.”
Brogan stared off with wild eyes, as if seeing things none of the rest of them saw. “It not be the taint,” he whispered. “It just be me. The taint be evil. This not be evil. It just be me.”
Brogan’s eyes focused again as he saw Kahlan struggle to rise. The room flashed with blinding light as he threw another lightning bolt across the room. It raked the wall over her head as she dove for the floor. Brogan sprang to his feet to come for her.
“Tobias! Stop! You must not use your gift!”
Tobias Brogan gazed back at his sister with an eerie calm. “This be a sign. The time has come. I always knew it would.” Blue flashes flickered between his fingertips as he held a hand up before his face. “This not be the taint, Lunetta, but divine power. The taint would be ugly. This be beautiful.
“The Creator has relinquished his right to dictate to me. The Creator be a baneling. I have the power, now. The time has come to use it. I must sit in judgment of man, now.” He turned to Kahlan. “I be the Creator, now.”
Lunetta lifted an imploring arm. “Tobias, please—”
He wheeled back toward her, deadly snakes of light writhing at his hands. “What I have be glorious. I will hear no more of your filth and lies. You and Mamma be banelings.” He drew his sword, the light coiling up the blade, and waved it in the air.
She frowned with mental effort. “You must not use your power, Tobias. You must not.” The flickering light at his hands cut
off.
“I will use what be mine!” The light at his fingers ignited once more and danced up the blade. “I be the Creator, now. I have the power, and I say you must die!”
His eyes gleamed with madness as he stared, transfixed, at the light crackling at his fingertips.
“Then you,” Lunetta whispered, “be the true baneling, and I must stop you, as you have taught me.”
A glowing line of rose-colored light flared from Lunetta’s hand and pierced Tobias Brogan through the heart.
In the smoky stillness, he drew a last gasp, and collapsed.
Not knowing what Lunetta would do, Kahlan didn’t move, remaining as still as a fawn in the grass. Adie reached out with a tender hand, offering comforting words in their native tongue.
Lunetta didn’t seem to hear. She crawled woodenly to her brother’s body and cradled his head in her lap. Kahlan thought she might be sick.
Suddenly, Galtero stepped into the room.
He snatched Lunetta by the hair and pulled her head back. He didn’t see Kahlan in the rubble against the wall behind him.
“Streganicha,” he whispered viciously.
Lunetta made no effort to resist. She seemed in a numb daze. Brogan’s sword lay nearby. Kahlan dove for it. Frantic, she snatched up the sword. She wasn’t fast enough.
Galtero sliced his knife across Lunetta’s throat.
Before Lunetta had hit the floor, Kahlan ran him through.
As he toppled she yanked the sword free. “Adie, are you hurt?”
“Not on the outside, child.”
“I understand, but we don’t have time for sorrow right now.”
Kahlan grasped Adie’s hand, and after carefully checking to insure that Lunetta had indeed removed the shield before they had entered, the two of them stepped out into the hall.
At either end lay the remains of a Sister: their guards. Lunetta had killed them both.
Kahlan heard boots clambering up the steps. She and Adie leapt over the bloody mess at the other end of the hall and dashed down the service stairs and out the back way. They looked about in the darkness, seeing no one, but hearing a commotion in the distance—the clash of steel. Together, hand in hand, they ran for their lives.
Kahlan could feel tears coursing down her face.
With her head down, so the Sister wouldn’t recognize her, Ann crossed the distance in the dim light of the vaults. Zedd trailed in her footsteps. The woman behind the table stood with a suspicious frown and marched forward.
“Who is it?” Sister Becky’s voice was terse. “No one is allowed down here anymore. All have been warned.”
Ann felt a thrust of Han smack her shoulder to bring her to a halt as Sister Becky rushed up before her. When Ann raised her head, Becky’s eyes went wide.
Ann drove the dacra into her, and the eyes seemed to light from within before the woman went down.
Zedd leapt out to the side. “You killed her! You just killed a pregnant woman!”
“You,” Ann whispered, “condemned her to death. I pray you have ordered the execution of a Sister of the Dark, and not the Light.”
Zedd wrench her around by the arm. “Have you lost your mind, woman!”
“I ordered the Sisters of the Light to get out of the palace. I told them they had to escape. I have begged you countless times to let me use the book. I needed to confirm that they have done as ordered. Since you refused to allow me to use the journey book, I am forced to assume my instructions were carried out.”
“That’s no excuse to kill her! You could have simply incapacitated her!”
“If my orders were followed, then she is a Sister of the Dark. I have no chance in a fair fight with one of them. Neither do you. We couldn’t take the risk.”
“And what if she’s not one of the Keeper’s Sisters!”
“I can’t risk everyone else on a mere chance.”
Zedd’s eyes flashed with cold fury. “You are mad.”
Ann lifted an eyebrow. “Oh? And you would risk the lives of thousands to fret over one who you are reasonably sure was an enemy bent on stopping you? Did you get to be a Wizard of the First Order by such choices?”
He released her arm. “All right, you’ve gotten me here. What is it you want?”
“Check the vault first, to make sure there are no others.”
They each stole down one side, Ann checking between the rows of bookshelves to watch the old wizard and make sure he was doing as instructed. If he tried to run, she could bring him back by the Rada’Han, and he knew it.
She liked Richard’s grandfather, but need demanded she cultivate his hatred. For this, he had to be in a fury, and willingly take the chance she would give him.
When they reached the rear of the gloomy vaults, they had found no others. Ann kissed her naked ring finger and thanked the Creator. She blocked the emotion of having killed Sister Becky, telling herself that she would not be guarding the vaults unless she were sworn to the Keeper, and a pawn of the emperor. She tried not to think of the innocent unborn child she had also killed.
“Now what?” Zedd snapped when they met in the rear, near one of the small, restricted rooms.
“Nathan will do his part. I brought you here to do your part, the other half of what is needed.
“The palace is charged with a spell cast three thousand years ago. I have been able to determine that it’s a bifurcated web.”
Zedd’s eyebrows went up. His curiosity overcame his indignation. “That’s quite a claim. I’ve never heard of anyone able to spin a bifurcated web. Are you sure?”
“No one now can spin such a web, but the wizards of old had such power.”
Zedd drew a thumb down his smooth jaw as he stared off. “Yes, they would have had the power, I imagine.” His gaze returned to her eyes. “To what purpose?”
“The spell alters the grounds of the palace. The outer shield, where we left Nathan, is the shell encasing it all. It creates the environment in which this half can exist in this world. The spell here, on this island, is linked to other worlds. Among other things, it alters time. That’s why we age more slowly than people living outside the spell.”
The old wizard pondered. “Yes, that would explain it.”
Ann glanced away from his eyes. “Nathan and I are both almost one thousand years old. I have been Prelate of the Sisters of the Light for nearly eight centuries.”
Zedd straightened his robes at his bony hips. “I’ve known of the spell, how it extends life spans in order to give you the time to do your foul work.”
“Zedd, when the wizards of old began jealously guarding their power and refused to train young men with the gift so as to prevent a threat to their domination, the Sisters of the Light were formed to help these young men lest they die. Not everyone likes the idea, but there it is.
“Without a wizard to help them, the task falls to us. We don’t have the same Han as the male, and so it takes us a great deal of time to accomplish the task. The collar keeps them alive, keeps their gift from harming them, from driving them mad, until we can teach them what they need.
“The spell around the palace gives us the time we need. It was laid down for us three thousand years ago, when a few wizards helped with our cause. They had the power to cast a bifurcated web.”
Zedd was, for the moment, becoming intrigued. “Yes. Yes, I can see what you mean. Bifurcation would invert the force, kind of like twisting a length of gut, and create an area where the center could be bent to do extraordinary things. The ancient wizards could accomplish deeds I can only dream of doing.”
Ann was keeping a constant watch, to make sure they were alone. “Bifurcating a web bends it back on itself, creating an outer and inner region. There are two nodes, like with the twisted gut you mentioned, where this bending would have to take place: one at the outer shield, and one at the inner.”
Zedd peered at her with one eye. “But the node on the inner half, where the true event takes place, would be vulnerable to breach. Though created
by necessity, it would be a dangerous flaw. Do you know where the inner node is located?”
“We stand in it.”
Zedd straightened. He glanced around. “Yes, I can see the thought that went into it—placing it in the bedrock under everything else where it would be best protected.”
“That’s why, on the off chance it could bring havoc, we unequivocally forbid wizard’s fire anywhere on Halsband Island.”
Zedd absently waved a hand. “No, no. Wizard’s fire wouldn’t harm such a node.” He turned to her with a suspicious glare. “What are we doing here?”
“I brought you here to give you the opportunity to do what you wish to do—to destroy the spell.”
He stared, he blinked, and he stared some more. At last, he spoke. “No. It wouldn’t be right.”
“Wizard Zorander, this is a highly inconvenient time for you to be overcome with morals.”
He folded his skinny arms. “This spell was placed by wizards greater than I will ever be, greater than I can even imagine. This is a wonder, a thing of profound mastery. I won’t destroy such a piece of work.”
“I broke the truce!”
Zedd lifted his chin. “Breaking the truce condemns any Sister who comes to the New World to death. We are not in the New World. Breaking the truce says nothing about me going to the Old World and doing harm. By the terms of the truce, I have no right to do such a thing.”
She leaned closer with a dark look. “You promised me that if I took you away by that collar, endangering your friends, you would come to my homeland and lay waste to the Palace of the Prophets. I am giving you your chance.”
“It was a temporary, passionate outburst. Reason has returned to my head.” He fixed her with a scolding scowl. “You’ve been using devious tricks and sly deception to try to convince me you’re a vile, contemptible, immoral malefactor, but you have failed to fool me. You are not the evil sort.”
“I’ve shackled you! I abducted you!”
“I won’t destroy your home and your life. Doing so, destroying the spell, would alter the pattern of the lives of the Sisters of the Light and, in essence, be ending their lives prematurely. The Sisters and their charges live by standards of time that to me seem strange, but to them are normal.
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