"It be hard for me to imagine you being desperate."
"Sometimes, that's all life is: one desperate act after another."
Adie nodded. "Perhaps you be right. I was desperate to hide from the Keeper. I remembered what Mathrin had said: he be hiding right under my nose. I reasoned that the safest place for me to hide from the Keeper would be where he wouldn't look: right under his nose, right at the edge of his world. So I came to the pass.
"The pass did not be this world, yet it did not be the underworld either. It be a mix of both. A place where both worlds boiled together a little bit. With the bones, I be able to hide from the Keeper. He and the beasts from his world could not see me."
"Hide?" The woman had more iron in her that the kettle hanging on the fire. If he knew Adie, there was more to it. Zedd gave her a stern stare. "You came here, simply to hide?"
She averted her eyes as she fingered the small, round bone on her necklace, and then at last tucked it back into her robes. "There be another reason. I made an oath. To myself. I swore I would find a way to contact my Pell, to tell him I did not betray him." She took a long swallow of tea. "I have spent most of my life here, in the pass, trying to find a way to reach into the world of the dead, to tell him. The pass be part of that world."
Zedd pushed at his cup with a finger. "The boundary, the pass, is gone, Adie. I need your help in this world."
She laid her arms on the table. "When you grew my foot back for me, it brought back everything that had happened, made it fresh, as if I be reliving it. It made me remember some things I had forgotten for a long time. It made me remember hurts that still be there, though time had dimmed them."
"I'm sorry, Adie," he whispered. "I should have taken your past into consideration, but I didn't suspect you had lived through that much pain. Forgive me."
"There be nothing to forgive. You gave me a gift by giving me my foot back. You did not know the things I have done. It not be your fault I did them. You did not know I be a Baneling."
He cast her a harsh glare. "You think that because you have fought back against wickedness, your have become wicked?"
"I have done worse than a man like you can understand."
Zedd nodded slightly. "Is that so. Let me tell you a little story. I had a love once, like your Pell. Her name was Erilyn. My time with her was like your time with Pell." A slow smile came to his lips, as his memory touched the mist of those pleasant times. The smile withered. "Until Panis Rahl sent a quad after her."
Adie reached out and laid a hand on his. "Zedd, you do not need to—"
Zedd brought his other fist down on the table, making the cups jump. "You can't imagine what the four of them did to her." He leaned forward, his face standing out red against his white hair. He ground his teeth together. "I hunted them down. What I did to each of them would make whatever you did to Mathrin seem a lark. I went after Panis Rahl, but couldn't reach him, so I went after his armies. For every man you killed, Adie, I killed a thousand. Even my own side feared me. I was the wind of death. I did what was needed to stop Panis Rahl. And maybe more."
He settled his weight back in the chair. "If there is such a thing as a man of virtue, you do not sit with him now."
"You did only what you had to. That does not diminish your virtue."
He arched an eyebrow. "Wise words, spoken by a wise woman. Perhaps you should listen to them." She remained silent. He put his elbows on the table and idly picked up the cup, rolling it in his palms as he went on. "In a way, I was luckier that you. I had more time with my Erilyn. And I didn't lose my daughter."
"Panis Rahl did not try to kill your daughter, too?"
"Yes. Indeed, he thought he had. I... cast a death spell. To make them think they had seen her death. It was the only way to protect her, to keep them from trying until they succeeded."
"A death spell..." Adie whispered a benediction in her native tongue. "That be a dangerous web. I would not reproach you for doing such a thing, you had cause, but such a thing does not go unnoticed by the spirits. You be lucky it worked, and it saved her. You be very fortunate the good spirits be with you on that day."
"I guess sometimes it's hard to tell which side of luck you're looking at. I raised her without a mother. She had grown into a fine young woman when it happened.
"Darken Rahl had been standing next to his father when I sent the Wizard's Fire through the boundary. He was standing next to his father when my fire found him. Some of it burned Darken Rahl. He spent his growing years learning, so he could finish what his father had started, and extract his vengeance. He learned how to cross the boundary; he was coming into the midlands, and I never knew.
"He raped my daughter.
"He didn't know who she was, everyone thought my daughter was dead, or he would have killed her sure. But he hurt her." He pressed his palms together. The cup shattered. He turned his hands up, to see if they had been cut, and was a little surprised they weren't. Adie said nothing.
"After that, I took her to Westland, to hide, to protect her. I never knew if it was more of that bad luck, or if somehow wickedness found her, but she died. Burned to death in her house. Though I always suspected the irony was more that coincidence, I never found proof it was so. Perhaps, after all, the good spirits hadn't been with me on the day I cast her death spell."
"I be sorry, Zedd," Adie said is a soft rasp.
He waved off her pity with a flourish of his hand. "I still had her boy." With the side of his finger, he pushed the shards of the cup into a little pile in the center of the wooden table top. "Darken Rahl's son. The spawn of an agent of the Keeper. But my daughter's son too, and my grandson. Innocent of the crimes that brought him to be. A fine boy."
He looked up at her from under his bushy eyebrows. "I believe you know him. His name is Richard."
Adie lurched forward in her chair. "Richard! Richard is your..." She leaned back shaking her head. "Wizards and their secrets." She scowled a little, but then softened her expression. "Perhaps you had just cause for a secret such as this. Does Richard have the gift?"
Zedd lifted his eyebrows as he nodded. "Indeed he does. That was one reason I hid him in Westland. I feared he had the gift, though I wasn't sure, and I wanted him to be safe from danger. As you said, the Keeper lusts for those with the gift more than any other. I knew that if I began tea
ching him, used magic very much myself, the gaze of danger would settle on him.
"I wanted to let him grow, become strong of character, before I tested him, and if he had the gift, taught him. I had always suspected he had the gift. Sometimes, I hoped he did not. But I now know he does. He used it to stop Darken Rahl. Used magic."
He leaned forward. "I suspect he has the gift from both his grandfather, and his father. From two different lines of wizards."
"I see," was all she said.
"But we have more important things to worry about right now. Darken Rahl used the boxes of Orden. He opened one, the wrong one, for him anyway. But maybe the wrong one for us too. There are books back at the keep that speak of it. They warn that if the boxes are used, if the magic of Orden is used, and even if the person who put them in play makes a mistake and it kills him, it can still tear the veil.
"Adie, I don't know as much about the underworld as you. You have been studying it most of your life. I need your help. I need you to come to Aydindril with me to study the books to see what can be done. I've read many of them and don't understand much of their meaning. Perhaps you will. Even if you only see one thing I miss, it could be important."
She stared at the table with a bitter expression. "I be an old woman. I be an old woman who has welcomed the Keeper into my heart."
Zedd watched her, but she didn't meet his eyes. He pushed his chair back and stood. "On old woman? No. A foolish woman, maybe." She didn't reply. Her gaze stayed pointedly on the table.
Zedd strolled across the room and inspected the bones hanging on the wall. He clasped his hands behind his back as he studied the talismans of the dead.
"Maybe I am just an old man then. Hmm? A foolish old man. Maybe I should let a young man do this work." He glanced over his shoulder. She was watching him. "But if a young man is good, then even younger would be better. In fact, why not let a child do it? That would be better yet. Maybe there is a ten year old boy somewhere who will be willing to do something to stop the dead from swallowing the living."