Stone of Tears

Chapter 3

Zedd surveyed the dead and dying as he approached. It was impossible to avoid walking through the blood. His heart ached at seeing the hurt. Only one screeling. What if more came?

“Commander, send for some healers. There are more here than I can tend to.”

“Already done, Wizard Zorander.”

Zedd nodded and began checking the living. Soldiers of the First File were spread out among the bodies, pulling the dead, many of whom were their own, out of the way, and comforting the hurt. Zedd put his fingers to the sides of foreheads to feel the injuries, to feel what a healer could care for and what required more.

He touched a young soldier laboring to breathe through a gurgle of blood. Zedd grunted at what he felt. He glanced down and saw rib bones pulled through a fist-sized hole in his breastplate. Zedd’s stomach wanted to erupt. Trimack knelt on the other side of the young man. The wizard’s eyes flicked up at the commander, and the other nodded his understanding. The young man’s remaining breaths of life numbered in the few dozen.

“Go on,” the commander said in a quiet voice, “I’ll stay with the lad.”

Zedd moved on as Trimack gripped the young man’s hand in his own and began telling a reassuring lie. Three women in long brown skirts sewn with rows of pockets came up in a rush. Their mature faces took in the scene without flinching.

With bandages and poultices pulled from their big pockets, the three women descended on the wounded and began stitching and administering potions. Most wounds were within the skill of the women to heal, or else beyond the skill of the wizard. Zedd asked one of the three, the one who looked least likely to pay heed to protests, to go see to Chase.

Zedd could see him sitting on the bench across the hall, his chin against his chest, Rachel sitting on the floor with her arms wrapped around his leg.

Zedd and the other two healers moved among the people on the floor, helping where they could, passing on where they couldn’t. One of the healers called to him. She was hunched over a middle-aged woman who was trying to wave her away.

“Please,” she was saying in a weak voice, “help the others. I am fine. I need only to rest. Please. Help the others.”

Zedd felt the wetness of his blood-soaked robes against his knees as he knelt beside her. She pushed his hands away with one of hers. The other held her guts from spilling out of a ripping wound in her abdomen.

“Please. There are others who should be helped.”

Zedd lifted an eyebrow to her ashen face. A fine gold chain through her hair held a blue stone against her forehead. The blue stone matched her eyes so, that it almost made her look to have three eyes. The wizard thought he recognized the stone, and wondered if it could be true, or only a bauble bought on a whim. He had not seen one wearing the Stone as a calling in a very long time. Surely one this young couldn’t know what it proclaimed.

“I am wizard Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander. And who are you, child, to give me orders?”

Her face paled even more. “Forgive me, wizard . . .”

She calmed as Zedd touched his fingers to her forehead. The pain caught his breath so sharply that he jerked his fingers away. He had to struggle to keep the tears of hurt from showing.

He knew without a doubt now: she wore the Stone in calling. The Stone, to match the color of her eyes, and worn over the forehead, as if the mind’s eye, was a talisman to proclaim her inner vision.

A hand snatched at the back of his robes, tugging.

“Wizard!” came a sour voice from behind. “You will tend to me first!” Zedd turned to a face that matched the voice, and maybe outdid it a little. “I am Lady Ordith Condatith de Dackidvich, House of Burgalass. This wench is nothing but my body servant. Had she been as quick as she should have been, I wouldn’t be suffering so! I could have been killed, as slow as she was! You will tend to me first! I could expire at any moment!”

Zedd could tell without touching her that her injuries were minor. “Forgive me, my lady.” He made a show of putting his fingers to her head. As he thought: a hard bruise to her ribs, a few lesser to her legs, and a small gash on her arm, requiring at most a stitch or two.

“Well?” She clutched at the silver ruffles at her neck. “Wizards,” she muttered. “Next to worthless if you want to know the truth of it. And these guards! I think they were asleep at their posts! Lord Rahl shall hear of this! Well? What of my injuries?”

“My lady, I’m not sure there is anything I can do for you.”

“What!” She snatched the neck of his robe and gave it a snug yank. “You had better see that there is, or I will see that Lord Rahl has your head on a pike! See what good your lazy magic does you then!”

“Of course, my lady. I will endeavor to do my best.” He ripped the small gash in the dark maroon satin fabric of the sleeve, making it a huge, hanging flag, then put a hand back on the shoulder of the woman with the blue stone. She moaned as he blocked some of her pain and gave her strength. Her ragged breathing evened. He kept his hand on her, trickling in a little magic of reassurance and comfort. Lady Ordith shrieked. “My dress! You’ve ruined it!”

“Sorry, my lady, but we can’t risk the wound festering. I would rather lose the dress than the arm. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Well, yes, I guess . . .”

“Ten or fifteen stitches should do it,” he said to the sturdily built healer bent over between the two women on the floor. Her hard, blue-gray eyes glanced to the small wound and then back to the wizard.

“I am sure you would know best, Wizard Zorander,” she said in an even voice, betraying only in her gaze to him that she understood his true intent.

“What! You are going to let this ox of a midwife do your work for you?”

“My lady, I’m an old man. I’ve never had any talent for sewing, and my hands shake something awful. I’m afraid I would do more damage than I would repair, but if you insist, I will try my best.

“No,” she sniffed. “Let the ox do it.”

“Very well.” He looked up to the healer. No emotion touched her features, but splotches of red colored her cheeks. “I fear there is only one hope for her other injuries, considering the pain she is in. Do you have any wattle root in those big pockets of yours?”

She gave a little frown of puzzlement. “Yes, but . . .”

“Good,” he cut her off. “I think two cubes should be sufficient.”

Her eyebrow lifted. “Two?”

“Don’t you try to be skimpy with me!” Lady Ordith screeched. “If there isn’t enough to go around, then someone of lesser importance will just have to go short! You give me the full dose!”

“Very well.” Zedd glanced up at the healer. “Administer her the full dose. Three cubes. Shredded, not whole.”

The healer’s eyes opened a little wider, and she incredulously mouthed, shredded! Zedd squinted and nodded his insistence. The corners of her mouth curled up in a tightly controlled smile.

Wattle root would take away the pain of the minor injuries, but it needed only be swallowed whole. One small cube was all that was needed. Shredded, and that much of it, would set Lady Ordith’s plumbing afire. The good lady was going to be spending the better part of the next week in her privy.

“What is your name, my dear?” he asked the healer.

“Kelley Hallick.”

Zedd let out a tired sigh. “Kelley, are there any others that are beyond your considerable talents?”

“No, sir. Middea and Annalee are finishing with the last of them.”

“Then will you please take Lady Ordith somewhere where she will not . . . where she will be more comfortable while you tend to her.”

Kelley glanced down at the woman Zedd had a comforting hand to, to the rip across her abdomen, and back up to his eyes. “Of course, Wizard Zorander. You look to be very tired. If you would come to me later, I will fix you a stenadine tea.” The small smile touched the corners of her mouth again.

Zedd couldn’t keep a grin from his own face. Besides restoring alertness, stenadine tea was also used to give lovers stamina. By the glint in her eye, he judged her to be a fine brewer of stenadine tea.

He gave Kelley a wink. “Perhaps I will.” Any other time he might have given it serious consideration—Kelley was a handsome woman—but right now that was just about the farthest thing from his mind.

“Lady Ordith, what is your body servant’s name?”

“Jebra Bevinvier. And a worthless girl she is, too. Lazy and impudent.”

“Well, you will not be burdened with her inadequate service any longer. She is going to need a long time to recover, and you are shortly going to be leaving the palace.”

“Leaving? What do you mean leaving?” She put her nose in the air. “I have no intention of leaving.”

“The palace is no longer safe for a lady of your importance. You will have to leave for your own protection. As you said yourself, the guards are asleep half the time. You will have to be on your way.”

“Well, I simply have no intention of . . .”

“Kelley”—he gave her a firm look—“please help Lady Ordith to a place where you can tend to her.”

Kelley was dragging the Lady Ordith off like a load of wash before she had a chance to cause any more trouble. Zedd turned a warm smile to Jebra and brushed some of her short, sandy hair back off her face. She held one arm across her grievous wound. Zedd had managed to halt most of the bleeding, but that wasn’t going to save her; what was outside had to be put back in its place inside.

“Thank you, sir. I’m feeling much better now. If you could help me to my feet, I will be out of your way.”

“Lie still, child,” he said softly. “We must talk.”

With a hard glance, he moved onlookers back. Soldiers of the First File had only to see that one brief look and they were already pushing people away.

Her lip trembled as her breast rose and fell more rapidly. She managed a little nod. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

“I won’t lie to you, child. Your wound is at the limit of my talents were I well rested. You don’t have the time for me to rest. If I don’t do something, you will die. If I try, I might hasten the end.”

“How long?”

“If I do nothing, maybe hours. Maybe the night. I could ease the pain enough to at least make the last of it tolerable.”

She closed her eyes as tears seeped from the corners. “I never thought I cared to live.”

“Because of the Seer’s Stone you wear?”

Her eyes snapped open. “You know? You recognize the Stone? You know what I am?”

“I do. The time is long past when people knew a Seer by the Stone, but I am old. I have seen such before. That is why you didn’t want me to help you? You fear what the touch might do to me?”

She nodded weakly. “But I find I suddenly care to live.”

Zedd patted her shoulder. “That is what I wanted to know, child. Worry not about me. I am a wizard of the First Order, not some novice.”

“First Order?” she whispered, wide-eyed. “I did not know one was left. Please, sir, do not risk yourself on the likes of me.”

Zedd smiled. “Not much of a risk, only a little pain. And my name is Zedd.”

She thought a moment; then her free hand clutched his arm. “Zedd . . . if I am to have a choice . . . I choose to try for life.”

Zedd smiled a little and stroked her cold, sweaty forehead. “Then I promise to give you my most earnest effort.” She nodded as she gripped his arm, gripped her only chance. “Is there anything you can do, Jebra, to hold aside the pain of the visions?”

She bit her lower lip and shook her head as tears sprang anew. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, barely audible. “Perhaps you shouldn’t . . .”

“Hush, child,” he comforted.

Zedd took a deep breath and laid a hand over the arm that held her guts back. He put the palm of his other hand gently over her eyes. This was not something he could fix from the outside. It had to be repaired from within, with her own mind’s aid. It could kill her. And him.

He braced himself and released the barrier in his mind. The impact of pain took the wind from his lungs. He didn’t dare to spare the energy to draw a breath. He gritted his teeth and fought it with muscles hardened to stone with the strain. And he hadn’t even touched the pain of the wound yet. He had to deal with the pain of her visions, get past them, before he could cope with that problem.

Agony sucked his mind into a river of blackness. Specters of her visions swirled past. He could only guess at their meaning, but the pain of their reality was all too vivid. Tears flooded from his tightly closed eyes; his whole body shook as he struggled to fight through the torrent of anguish. He knew he couldn’t allow himself to be pulled along with it, or he would be lost, consumed.

The emotions of her visions buffeted him as he was swept deeper into her mind. Dark thoughts just beyond the surface of perception clawed at his will, trying to drag him into the depths of hopeless abandon. His own painful memories washed to the surface of his consciousness to join with Jebra’s lifetime of sorrow in a convergence of terrible agony and madness. Only his experience and resolve kept his sanity, his free will, from being pulled into the bottomless waters of bitterness and grief.

At last, he broke through to the calm, white light at the center of her being. Zedd reveled in the comparatively mild pain of her life-threatening wound. Reality could seldom match the imagination, and in the imagination, the pain was real.

All around the calm center, the cold darkness of eternal night encroached on the waning warmth and light of her life. Impatient to shroud forever Jebra’s spirit, Zedd pulled back that shroud, to let the light of his gift warm her spirit with life and vitality. The shadows receded before the power of his Additive Magic.

The strength of that magic, its exigency for the well-being of life, drew the exposed organs back to where the Creator intended them. Zedd didn’t yet dare to spare anything to block her suffering. Jebra’s back arched. She wailed in pain. He, too, felt her pain. His own abdomen flamed with the same agony she felt. He shook with the searing sharpness of it.

When the hardest, that which was beyond his comprehension, was finished, he at last spared a portion of the magic to block her pain. Jebra sagged against the floor with a moan of relief. He felt the relief in his own body.

Directing the flow of magic, Zedd finished the healing. He used his power to pull her wound together, letting tissue knit to tissue, flesh to flesh, layer upon layer, up to the surface of skin, joining as if it had never been parted.

Finished at last, Zedd had only to escape her mind. That was as dangerous as entering, and his strength was nearly gone; he had given it over to her. Rather than wasting any more time worrying about it, he released himself into the flow of agony.

Nearly an hour after he had begun, he found himself on his knees, hunched over, weeping uncontrollably. Jebra was sitting up, with her arms around him, holding his head to her shoulder. As soon as he was aware that he was back, he managed to bring himself under control and straighten. He glanced around the hall. Everyone had been pushed back a goodly distance, beyond earshot. None had any interest in being near a wizard when he was wielding magic that left people screaming as Jebra had done.

“There,” he said, at last, with a modicum of restored dignity, “that wasn’t so bad. I believe all is well now.”

Jebra laughed a quiet, shaky laugh and hugged him tight. “I was taught a wizard couldn’t heal a Seer.”

Zedd managed to get a bony finger in the air. “No ordinary wizard can, my dear. But I am Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander, wizard of the First Order.”

Jebra wiped a tear from her cheek. “I have nothing of value to repay you with, except this.” She unhooked the gold chain that ran through her hair and brought it down, putting it in his hand. “Please, accept this humble offering.”

Zedd looked down at the chain with the blue stone. “That is very kind of you, Jebra Bevinvier. I’m touched.” Zedd felt a pang of guilt for having planted the impulse in her mind. “It’s a fine chain, and I will accept it in humble gratitude.” He used a thread-thin stream of power to separate the stone from its mounting. He handed the Stone back; he only needed the chain. “But the chain is payment enough. Keep your Stone; it’s yours by right.”

She closed her fingers around the Stone with a nod and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He accepted the peck with a smile.

“And now, my dear, you will need to rest. I have used a good deal of your strength to put things right. Maybe a few days of bed rest, and you will be as good as new.”

“I fear that you have not only left me healed, but also without employment. I must find work to feed myself.” She looked down at the bloody, shredded rip in her green dress. “And to clothe myself.”

“Why were you wearing the Stone, if you were the servant of the Lady Ordith?”

“Not many know what the Stone signifies. Lady Ordith didn’t. Her husband, the duke, did. He wanted my services, but his wife would never have allowed a woman in his employ, so he had me placed as her servant.

“I know it is not the most honorable thing, for a Seer to place herself covertly, but there is much starvation in Burgalass. My family knew of my ability and closed their doors to me, afraid of the visions I might have of them. Before my grandmother passed on, she put her Stone in my hand, saying if I wore hers she would be honored.”

Jebra pressed the fist with the Stone to her cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered, “for not accepting it. For understanding.”

Zedd felt a renewed pang of guilt. “And so this duke had you taken in and used you for his own purposes?”

“Yes. Maybe a dozen years ago. Because I was Lady Ordith’s body servant, I was almost always present at any meeting or function. The duke would come to me later and I would tell him what I saw of his adversaries. With my help, he made more of his power and wealth.

“Virtually no one anymore knows of the Stone of a Seer. He disdained people who ignored the old knowledge. He mocked his opponents’ ignorance by having me wear the Stone openly.

“He also had me keep an eye to the Lady Ordith. It prevented her from succeeding at making herself a widow. So she now contents herself with being absent from the duke’s house whenever she can. She will not be displeased to be rid of me; the duke used his strings of power to keep me employed when the Lady Ordith would have wished it otherwise.”

“Why would she be displeased with your service?” He grinned. “Are you lazy and rude, as she claims?”

Jebra smiled back, the fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deepening. “No. It’s the visions. Sometimes when I have them, well, you felt some of the hurt when you healed me, though it is not as bad as that for me, I think. But sometimes the hurt keeps me from her service for a time.”

Zedd rubbed his chin. “Well, since you are out of employment, you will be a guest here at the People’s Palace until you are recovered. I have some little influence around here.” He marveled at the sudden truth of that, and pulled a purse from a pocket in his robes. He gave it a jingle. “For your expenses, and wage, if I could convince you to take up a new employer.”

She hefted the purse in her palm, testing its weight. “If this be copper, it is insufficient for any but you.” She smiled and leaned a little closer, her eyes merry and scolding at the same time. “And if it be silver, it is too much.”

Zedd gave her a grave expression. “It’s gold.” Startled, she blinked. “But it is not me, mainly, you will be working for.”

She stared at the purse of gold in her hand, then looked back at him. “Who then?”

“Richard. The new Lord Rahl.”

Jebra paled and shook her head vigorously, her shoulders hunching up. She shoved the purse back in Zedd’s hands. “No.” Even paler, she shook her head again. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t want to work for him. No.”

Zedd frowned. “He is not an evil person. He’s quite kind-hearted, in fact.”

“I know that.”

“You know who he is?”

She looked down at her lap and nodded. “I know. I saw him yesterday. The first day of winter.”

“And you had a vision when you saw him?”

Her voice was weak and filled with fear. “Yes.”

“Jebra, tell me what you saw. Every bit of it. Please? It’s important.”

She looked up at him from under her eyebrows for a long moment, then back down at her lap as she chewed her lower lip.

“It was at the morning devotion, yesterday. When the bell rang, I went to a square, and he was standing there, looking into the pool. I noticed him because he was wearing the sword of the Seeker. And because he was tall and handsome. And he wasn’t kneeling as the others were. He stood there, watching the people gathering, and as I approached, his eyes passed across my sight. Just for an instant. The power coming from him took my breath away.

“A Seer can sense certain kinds of power, like the gift, emanating from a person.” She looked up at Zedd. “I have seen those with the gift before. I have seen their auras. They have all been like yours; there is a warmth to them, a gentleness. Your aura is beautiful. His was different. It had that, but more, too.”

“Violence,” Zedd said in a soft voice. “He is the Seeker.”

She nodded. “It could be. I don’t know; I’ve never seen the like of it before. But I can tell you what it felt like. It felt like having my face pushed into a basin of icy water before I had a chance to get a breath.

“Sometimes I never get a vision from a person. Sometimes I do. I can never tell when it’s going to come. Sometimes when a person is in distress, they throw off auras and visions more strongly. He was throwing off auras like lightning in a thunderstorm. He was in great emotional pain. Like an animal in a trap trying to chew its own leg off. He felt the horror of having to betray his friends to save them. I didn’t understand that. It didn’t make any sense.

“There was an image of a woman, a beautiful woman with long hair. Maybe a Confessor, although I don’t know how that could be. The aura flamed so strongly with anguish for her that I felt my face, fearing I would find the skin burned. If I hadn’t been at devotion, I would have fallen to my knees anyway from the agony of the auras.

“I almost rushed to him, to comfort him, when two Mord-Sith approached, and noticed him standing, and not kneeling. He felt no fear, but he went to his knees anyway, out of resignation to the terrible betrayal he had been forced into. I was relieved when he knelt; I thought that would be the end of it. I was thankful I had seen only auras, for the most part, and not true visions. I didn’t want to see any visions from that man.” She stared off, seemingly lost in the memory of it.

“But that wasn’t the end of it?”

Her eyes came back to where she was. “No. I thought the worst of it was over, but what I had seen didn’t touch what was to come.”

Jebra dry-washed her hands for a moment. “We were saying the chant to Father Rahl, and all of a sudden he sprang up. He had a smile on his face. He had solved the puzzle that trapped him. The last piece had snapped into place. The woman’s face and his love for her filled the aura.”

She shook her head. “I pity the person who ever puts a finger between those two. They will lose the finger, maybe the hand, and maybe the whole arm before they have the time to think to pull it back.”

“Her name is Kahlan,” Zedd said with a little smile. “And then what happened?”

Jebra crossed her arms across her abdomen. “Then the visions started. I saw him killing a man, but I couldn’t tell how. Not with blood, but killing him just the same. And then I saw the man he was going to kill: Darken Rahl. And then I saw that it was his father, but he didn’t know it. That was when I knew who he was: the son of Darken Rahl, the soon to be new Master Rahl. The aura was flashing in terrible conflicts. Commoner to king.”

Zedd put a comforting hand to her shoulder. “Darken Rahl wanted to rule the world with a frightful magic. By stopping him, Richard saved a great many from torture or death. Even though killing is terrible, by doing so he has saved the lives of many more. Surely you would not be frightened of Richard because of that.”

She shook her head. “No. It was by what came next. The two Mord-Sith stood, because he was going to leave a devotion. One raised her Agiel, threatening him. I was surprised to see he wore one at his neck, red, just like theirs. He held it out in his fist. He told them that if they didn’t let him pass, he would kill them. The aura of violence around him took my breath away. He wanted them to try. They sensed it and let him pass.

“As he turned to leave . . . that was when I saw the other visions.” She put a hand to her heart as tears ran down her cheeks. “Zedd . . . my visions are not always clear. Sometimes, I don’t know what they mean. Once I saw a farmer’s vision. Birds were pecking at the stomachs of him and his family. I didn’t know what it meant. It turned out that a flock of blackbirds came and ate the seed he had just planted. He was able to replant, and guard the field. But he and his family could have starved if he hadn’t.”

She wiped her fingers at the tears on her cheeks. “Sometimes I can’t tell what the visions mean, or if they will turn out to be true; not all of that kind do.” She fussed with her hair. “But sometimes they come to pass exactly as I see them. I can tell when they are true, and will happen without a doubt.”

Zedd patted her shoulder. “I understand, Jebra. Visions are a form of prophecy, and I know how confusing prophecy can be. What kind of vision did you see from Richard? The confusing kind, or the ones that are clear?”

She shared a deep gaze with his eyes. “I saw every kind. I saw every kind of vision I have ever had, from the confusing to clear; from the possible to the certain. They came in a rush. They have never done that before. Mostly I only have a single vision, and I either know what it means and that it is true, or I don’t understand it and can’t tell if it will come to pass. The visions from this man came in a torrent. They rushed past like wind-driven rain. But every one was pain and hurt and danger.

“The ones that stood out the hardest, and I knew to be true, were the worst. One was of something around his neck. I couldn’t tell what, but it was something that will cause him great pain, and take him from the woman . . . Kahlan, you said her name was . . . take him from everyone he loves. Lock him away.”

“Richard was captured by a Mord-Sith, and tortured by her. Perhaps that is what you saw,” Zedd offered.

Jebra shook her head vehemently. “It wasn’t what was: it was what will be. And not the pain of a Mord-Sith. Different. I am sure of it.”

Zedd nodded in thought. “What else?”

“I saw him in an hourglass. He was on his knees in the bottom half, crying in anguish, the sand falling all around him, but not a grain touching him. The gravestones of all those he loved were in the top half, where he couldn’t reach them against the fall of the sand.

“I saw a knife at his heart, a killing knife, held in his own shaking hands. Before I could see what would happen, another vision came—they are not always in order of events. He was in his fine red coat, the one with gold buttons and brocade trim. He was facedown . . . a knife in his back. He was dead, but at the same time, he wasn’t. His own hands reached down to roll him over, but before I saw his dead face, another vision came.

“It was the worst. The strongest.” The tears welled up again, and she began to sob softly. Zedd squeezed her shoulder to encourage her to go on. “I saw his flesh burning.” She wiped at the tears and rocked back and forth a little as she cried. “He was screaming. I could even smell the burning skin. Then, whatever was burning him—I couldn’t tell what it was—when it pulled back, he was unconscious, and there was a mark upon him. A mark burned into him.”

Zedd worked his tongue in his mouth, trying to wet it. “Could you see what the mark was?”

“No, not what it looked like. But I knew what it was as surely as I know the sun when I see it. It was the mark of the dead, a mark of the Keeper of the underworld. The Keeper had marked him to be his own.”

Zedd worked to steady his breathing, his trembling hands. “Were there more visions?”

“Yes, but not as strong and I didn’t understand them. They rushed by so fast I couldn’t grasp their form, only their pain. Then he was gone.

“While the Mord-Sith were turned, watching him go, I ran back to my room and locked myself in. I lay on the bed for hours, crying uncontrollably with the hurt of what I had seen. The Lady Ordith banged at my door, wanting me, but I called to her that I was sick and she finally went away in a huff. I cried until my insides were jelly. I saw virtue in that man, and I wept in fear of the evil I saw snatching for him.

“Though the visions were all different, they were the same. They all had the same feel: danger. Danger presses in around that man as tightly as water presses around a fish.” She regained some of her composure as Zedd sat silently watching her. “That is why I will not work for him. The good spirits protect me, I don’t want anything to do with the danger around that man. With the underworld.”

“Maybe you could help him, with your talent, help him to avoid the danger. That is what I was hoping anyway,” Zedd said in a quiet voice.

Jebra dabbed her cheeks dry with the back of her sleeve. “Not for all the duke’s gold and power would I want to be in Lord Rahl’s wake. I am no coward, but I am no heroine in a song, and no fool either. I did not wish my guts put back to have them ripped out again, and this time my soul with them.”

Zedd quietly watched her sniffling herself back under control, putting the frightening visions away. She took a deep breath and sighed. Her blue eyes finally looked to his.

“Richard is my grandson,” he said simply.

Her eyes winced shut. “Oh, good spirits forgive me.” Her hand covered her mouth for a long moment; then her eyes came open, her eyebrows wrinkled together in horror. “Zedd . . . I’m so sorry for telling you what I saw. Forgive me. Had I known, I never would have told you.” Her hands trembled. “Forgive me. Oh please, forgive me.”

“The truth is the truth. I am not one who would shut a door in your face for seeing it. Jebra, I am a wizard; I already know of the danger he is in. That is why I asked you to help. The veil to the underworld is torn. That thing that ripped you open escaped into the world of the living through the tear. If the veil tears enough, the Keeper will escape. Richard has done things that the prophecies say mark him as maybe the only one able to close the tear.”

He lifted the purse of gold and slowly settled it in her lap, her eyes following it down. He withdrew his empty hand. Her gaze stayed on the purse as if it were a beast that might bite.

“Would it be very dangerous?” she asked at last in a weak voice.

Zedd smiled when her eyes came up. “No more dangerous than going for an afternoon stroll in a fortress palace.”

With a reflex jerk, her hand clutched her abdomen where the wound had been. Her eyes rose to look off down the wide, resplendent halls, as if seeking escape, or maybe fearing an attack. Without looking to him she spoke.

“My grandmother was a Seer, and my only guide. She told me once that the visions would bring me a lifetime of hurt, and there was nothing I would ever be able to do to stop them. She said that if ever I was presented with the opportunity to use the visions for good, to take the chance, and it would make up for some of the burden. That was the day she put her Stone in my hand.”

Jebra lifted the purse and set it back in Zedd’s lap. “I will not do it for all the gold in D’Hara. But I will do it for you.”

Zedd smiled and patted her cheek. “Thank you, child.” He put the gold back in her lap, the coins making a muffled clink. “You will be needing this. You will have expenses. What is left is yours. That is the way I wish it.”

She nodded resignedly. “What must I do?”

“Well, first we must both get a good night’s sleep. You will need to rest for a few days to regain your strength. And then you have some traveling to do, Lady Bevinvier.” He smiled at the way one of her eyebrows lifted. “We are both very tired right now. Tomorrow after I have rested, I must be off on important business. Before I leave, I will come to you and we will talk more of this. But starting right now, I would ask you not to wear the Stone where it can be seen. No good can come of declaring your talent to eyes in the shadows.”

“So my new employer shall use me covertly too? Not the most honorable of things.”

“The ones who would recognize you now are not vying for gold. They serve the Keeper. They want much more than gold. If they discover you, you will wish I had not saved you today.”

She winced before finally nodding.