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Zedd's fierce, hazel eyes watched her back. "I pledge my soul to the Keeper if I'm telling you a lie. May he take me this instant. The Stone of Tears is in this world. I have seen it."
"Dear spirits, protect us," she whispered weakly. Still, she did not move. "Tell me what fool thing you have done, wizard."
"Adie, come and sit down. First, I want you to tell me what you are doing living here, in the pass, or what used to be the pass. What you have been doing living at the edge of the underworld, and why you won't leave."
She spun to face him, one hand gripping the skirt of her robe. "That be my business."
With his hand on the chair back, Zedd pushed himself to his feet. "Adie, I must know. This is important. I must know what you have been doing, so that I may know if it can be a help.
"I know very well the pain you live with. I saw it, remember? I don't know what caused it, but I know how deep it is. I would ask you to share the story with me. I ask you as a friend to confide in me. Please don't make me ask as First Wizard."
Her eyes rose to meet his at the last of what he said. The flash of anger faded and she nodded. "Very well. Perhaps I have kept it to myself too long. Perhaps it would be a relief to tell someone... a friend. Perhaps you will not want my help, after you hear. If you still do, I expect you tell me all that has happened." She thrust a finger in his direction. "All."
Zedd gave her a small smile of encouragement. "Of course."
She limped to her chair. Just as she sat down, the largest skull on the shelves suddenly thudded to the floor. Both stared at it. Zedd walked over and picked it up in both hands. His thin fingers stroked tapered, curved fangs as long as his hand. The skull was flat on the bottom; it shouldn't have been able to roll off the shelf. He replaced it solidly as Adie watched.
"It seems," she said in her rasp, "that the bones want to be on the floor lately. They keep falling down."
Zedd returned to his chair after a final frown to the skull. "Tell me about the bones, why you have them, what you do with them; everything. Start at the beginning."
"Everything." She folded her arms across her lap, briefly looking as if she wanted to run for the door. "It be a painful story to tell."
"Not a word of it will ever touch my lips, Adie."
22
Adie drew a long breath. "I be born in the town of Choora, in the Land of Nicobarese. My mother did not have the gift of sorcery. She be a skip, as it be called. My grandmother Lindel be the one before me to have it. My mother be grateful to the good spirits she be a skip, but bitter at them that I be gifted.
"In Nicobarese, those with the gift be loathed and distrusted. It be thought the gift be allied to the the flows of power not only from the Creator, but also from the Keeper. Even ones using the gift for good be suspected of being a Baneling. You know of the Banelings, yes?"
Zedd tore off a piece of bread. "Yes. Ones turned to the Keeper. Sworn to him. They hide in the light, as well as the shadows, serving his wishes, working to his ends. They can be anyone. Some work for good for years, hiding, waiting to be called. But when they are called, they do the Keeper's bidding.
"They are also called by different names, but they are all agents of the Keeper. Some books call them that: agents. Some are important people, like Darken Rahl, used for important tasks. Some are everyday people, used for dirty little deeds. Those with the gift, like Darken Rahl, are the most difficult for the Keeper to turn. Those without it are easier, but even they are rare."
Adie's eyes widened. "Darken Rahl be a baneling?"
Zedd lifted an eyebrow as he nodded. "Admitted it to me himself. He said he was an agent, but it's the same thing, whatever the word, and I've heard any number. They all serve the Keeper."
"This be dangerous news."
Zedd sopped up some stew with the piece of bread. "I bring very little of any other kind. You were saying about your grandmother Lindel?"
"In the time of grandmother Lindel's youth, sorceresses be put to death for anything that fate brought: sickness, accidents, still births. Put to death, wrongly, for being Banelings. Some of the gifted fought back at being wrongly persecuted. They fought well. It deepened the hatred, and only served to confirm the fears of many of the Nicobarese people.
"At last, there was a truce. Nicobarese leaders agreed to let the gifted women be, if they would give a soul oath, as a way of proving they not be Banelings, an oath not to use their power unless permission be granted by a governing body, the King's circle of their town, for instance. It be an oath to the people. An oath not to use the gift and bring the Keeper's notice."
Zedd swallowed a mouthful of stew. "Why would people think sorceresses were Banelings?"
"Because it be easier to blame a woman for their troubles than to admit the truth, and more satisfying to accuse than to curse the unknown. Those with the gift use power that can help people, but it can also be used to harm them. Because it can be used to harm, it be believed the power must be given, at least in part, by the Keeper."
"Superstitious nonsense," he growled.
"As you well know, superstition needs no grounding in truth, but once rooted, it grows a strong though twisted tree."
He grunted his assent. "So no sorceress used her power?"
Adie shook her head. "No. Unless it be for some common good, and they went before the King's circle of their town first and asked permission. Every sorceress went before the circle of their town or district and swore an oath to the people, an oath on her soul, to abide by the wishes of the people. Swore a solemn oath not to use her power on or for another unless asked to do so by the agreement of the circle."
Zedd put his spoon down in disgust. "But they had the gift. How could they not use it?"
"They used it, but only in private. Never where anyone could see, and never on another."
Zedd leaned back in his chair, shaking his head in silent wonder at the Wizard's First Rule, at how stupid people could be, while Adie went on.
"Grandmother Lindel be a stern old woman who lived by herself. She never wanted anything to do with teaching me about using the gift. She told me only to let it be. And my mother, of course, could teach me nothing. So I learned on my own as I grew, as the gift grew, but I knew very well the wickedness of using it. I be lectured on that almost every day. To use the gift in a manner not permitted was made to seem like touching the taint of the Keeper himself, and I believed it so. I feared greatly going against what I be taught. I be a fruit of the tree of that superstition.
"One day, when I be eight or nine, I be in the town square with my mother and father, on market day, and across the square, a building caught fire. There be a girl, about my age, on the second floor, trapped by the flames. She screamed for help. No one could reach her because the fire be all through the first floor. Her screams of terror burned every nerve in me. I started to cry. I wanted to help. I could not stand the screams." Adie folded her hands in her lap and looked down at the table. "I made the fire to go out. The girl be saved."
Zedd watched her placid expression as she stared at the table. "I don't suppose anyone, except the girl and her parents, were happy?"
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nbsp; Adie shook her head. "Everyone knew I had the gift. They knew it be me who had done it. My mother stood and cried. My father just stood looking the other way. He would not look at me, at an agent of the Keeper's evil.
"Someone went for grandmother Lindel; she was respected because of how she stood by the oath. When grandmother Lindel came, she took me and the girl before the men of the King's circle. Grandmother Lindel switched the girl who I saved. She bawled a good long time."
Zedd was incredulous. "She beat the girl! Why?"
"For letting the Keeper use her to bring forth the use of the gift." Adie sighed. "The girl and I had known each other, had been friends, of a sort. She never spoke to me again."
Adie hugged her arms across her stomach. "And then grandmother Lindel stripped me naked in front of those men, and switched me until I was covered with welts and blood. I screamed more than the girl had in the fire. Then she marched me, naked and bloody, through the town, to her house. The humiliation be worse than the beating.
"When we got to her house, I asked how she could be so cruel. She looked down her nose at me, looked at me with that puckered, angry face of hers, and said, 'Cruel, child? Cruel? You got not one switch more than you deserved. And not one less than what it took to keep you from being put to death by those men.'
"Then she made me give the oath. 'I swear on my hope of salvation, never to use the gift on another, for any reason, without the permission of the King or one of his circles, and upon forfeit of my soul to the Keeper, should I ever use the gift to harm another.' And then she shaved my head bald. I be kept bald until I grew to the age of a woman."
"Bald? Why?"
"Because in the Midlands, as you know, the length of a woman's hair shows her social standing. It be meant to show me, and everyone else, that there be no one lower than I. I had used the gift, publicly, without permission. It be a constant reminder of the wrong I had done.
"I lived with grandmother Lindel from then on. I only rarely saw my mother and father. At first, I missed them greatly. Grandmother Lindel taught me how to use the gift, so I would be able to know it well, to be able to know what I was not to do.
