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He threw his hands up in the air. "According to you, it would seem, knowledge is of no use, only youth."
"Now you are being foolish, old man. You know what I mean."
Zedd stepped back to the table and gave a shrug of his bony shoulders. "If you just sit here in this house instead of helping with what you know, then you might as well be the thing you fear most: an agent of the Keeper."
He put his knuckles to the table and glowered as he leaned over her. "If you don't fight him, then you help him. That is what his plan has been all along. Not to turn you to him, but to make you fear stopping him."
She looked into his eyes, uneasiness stealing into her expression. "What do you mean?"
"He has already done all he needed, Adie. He made you afraid of yourself. The Keeper has an eternity of patience. He doesn't need you to work for him. It takes effort to turn one with the gift. You weren't worth the trouble. He needed only for you not to work against him. He did all that was necessary. He didn't waste an effort to do more.
"In some ways he is as blind to this world as we are to his. He has only so much influence here; he must choose his tasks carefully. He doesn't spend what power he has here frivolously."
Realization took the place of unease. "Perhaps you not be such an old fool."
Zedd smiled as he pulled the chair forward and sat. "That has always been my opinion."
Hands nestled in her lap, Adie studied the table top as if hoping it would come to her aid. The house was silent, except for the slow crackle of the fire in the hearth. "All these years, the truth be hiding right under my nose." She lifted her head, giving him a puzzled frown. "How did you come to be so wise?"
Zedd shrugged. "But one of the advantages of having lived so long. You view yourself as just an old woman. I see a striking, dear lady, who has learned much in her time in this world, and has gained wisdom from what she has seen."
He pulled the yellow rose from her hair and held it before her. "Your loveliness is not a mask, layered over a rotten core. It blossoms from the beauty inside."
She lifted the flower from his fingers and laid it on the table. "Your clever tongue cannot cover the fact that I have wasted my life..."
Zedd shook his head, cutting her off. "No. You have wasted nothing. You simply have not seen the other side of things yet. In magic, in all things, there is a balance if we look for it. The Keeper did as he did, sending a Baneling to you, to keep you from interfering in his work, and to plant a seed of doubt in you that would perhaps turn you to him one day.
"But in that too, there was something to balance what he did. You came here to learn about the world of the dead in order to contact your Pell. Don't you see, Adie? You were manipulated to prevent you from interfering with the Keeper's plans, but in so doing, the balance is that you have learned things that might be of aid in stopping him. You must not surrender to what he had done to you; you must strike back with what he has inadvertently given you."
Her eyes glistened as she cast her gaze about her house, looking to the bone pile, the walls covered with talismans of the dead she had collected over the years, and to the shelves holding more yet. "But my oath... my Pell. I must reach him, tell him. He died thinking I betrayed him. If I cannot redeem myself in his eyes, then I be lost, my heart be lost. If I be lost, then the Keeper will find me."
"Pell is dead, Adie. Gone. The boundary, the pass, is gone. You would know better than I if it would have ever been any use in what you wanted, but in all these years, you have not found a way to make it so. If you wish to continue the pursuit of your oath, you will find no help here. Perhaps in Aydindril, you will.
"Helping to stop the Keeper does not mean you must break your oath to yourself. If my knowledge and help can be of any aid in what you seek, I offer it gladly. Just as you know things I do not, I know things you don't. I am, after all, the First Wizard. Perhaps what I know will help you. Pell would not want you to bring him your message that you did not betray him, if it meant you must betray everyone else."
Adie picked up the yellow flower, twirling it between her finger and thumb a moment before setting it down again. Gripping the edge of the table, she pushed herself to her feet. She stood a moment, and then lifted her head to gaze with her white eyes around the room once more.
Smoothing her robes at her hips, as if to make herself presentable, she limped around the table to stand behind his chair. Zedd felt her hands rest on his shoulders. Unexpectedly, she leaned over and kissed the top of his head and smoothed his unruly hair with gentle fingers. Zedd was relieved the fingers hadn't gone around his throat. He thought they might, after some of the things he had said.
"Thank you, my friend, for hearing my tale, and for helping me to find the meaning in it. My Pell would have liked you. You both be men of honor. I accept your word that you will help me tell my Pell."
Zedd twisted around in his chair and raised his face to her soft smile and kind eyes. "I will do whatever I can to help you keep your oath. You have my oath on that."
Her smile widened as she smoothed down a stray lick of his white hair. "Now. Tell me of the Stone of Tears. We must decide what is to be done with it."
23
"The Stone of Tears? Well, it is hidden."
She gave a single, firm nod. "Good. It not be something to be loose in this world." Her brow wrinkled in a little frown. "It be hidden well? It be safe?"
Zedd winced a little. He didn't want to tell her, he knew what she would say, but he had promised. "I put it on a chain. Put it on a chain and hung it around the neck of a little girl. I don't know... exactly... where she is right now."
"You touched it!" Adie's eyes widened. "The Stone of Tears? You touched it, and hung it around the neck of a little girl!"
She gripped his chin firmly in her suddenly powerful fingers and leaned close to his face. "You have hung the Stone of Tears, the stone that it be told was hung by the Creator Himself around the Keeper's neck to lock him in the underworld... You hung that around a little girl's neck? And let her wander off!"
Zedd scowled defensively. "Well I had to do something with it. I couldn't just leave it lying about."
Adie smacked the palm of her hand to her forehead. "Just as he makes me think him wise, he shows me he be a fool indeed. Dear spirits, save me from the hands you have placed me in."
Zedd shot to his feet. "And just what would you have done with it!"
"Well I would have certainly given it more thought that you seem to have done. And I wouldn't have touched it! It be a thing from another world!" She turned her back to him, shaking her head and whispered things in her foreign tongue.
Zedd shifted his robes, straightening them with a firm tug. "I didn't have the luxury of time to give it any thought. We were attacked by a screeling. If I had left it there..."
Adie spun around. "A screeling! You be full of good news, old man." She jabbed a finger against his chest. "That still be no good excuse. You still should not have..."
"Not have what? Not have picked it up? I should have let the screeling pick it up, instead?"
"Screelings be assassins. They not be there to take the stone."
Zedd jabbed a finger right back at her. "You know that? Are you so sure? Would you have been willing to have risked everything on it? And if you were wrong, let the Keeper have the Stone to do with as he would? Are you so sure, Adie?"
Her hand dropped to her side as she stared at his frown. "No. I guess not. It could be as you say. There be a chance the screeling may have taken it. Perhaps you did the only thing you could do." She shook the finger at him. "But to hang it around the neck of a little girl... !"
"And where would you have had me keep it? In my pocket? In the pocket of a wizard? In the pocket of one with the gift, where the Keeper is sure to want to look first? Or perhaps you would have had me hide it, in a place only I knew, where, if a Baneling gets his hands on me and somehow makes me talk, I could tell him it would be, so he could go and collect it?"
Adie fold
ed her arms with a muttered curse. At last her expression relaxed. "Well... perhaps..."
"Perhaps nothing. I had no choice. It was an act of desperation. I did the only thing I could do, given the circumstances."
She gave a tired sigh, then a nod. "You be right, wizard. You did the best you could have done." She patted the top of his shoulder. "Foolish as it be," she added under her breath. Her hand gave a gentle push. "Sit. Let me show you something."
Zedd sat as he watched her limp across the room toward the shelves. "I would rather have done anything else, Adie," he said sorrowfully, "than what I had to do."
She nodded as she walked. "I know..." She stopped and turned. "A screeling, you say?" Zedd gave her a nod. "You be sure it be a screeling?" He arched an eyebrow. "Yes, of course you be sure." Her brow creased in thought. "Screelings be the Keeper's assassins. They be singleminded, and extremely dangerous, but they not be very smart. They must have something to show them the one they be after, a way to find them. They not be good at searching in this world. How could the Keeper know where you be? How could the screeling know to find you? Know it be you he be after?"
Zedd shrugged. "I don't know. I was where the boxes had been opened. But it had been some time since it had happened. There would be no way to know I was still there."
"And did you destroy the screeling?"
"Yes."
"That be good. The Keeper will not waste the effort to send another, not after you have proven you be able to defeat it.
Zedd threw his hands up. "Oh yes, just wonderful. Screelings are sent to eliminate a threat to the Keeper. It was probably sent to rid the Keeper of my meddling, just as the Keeper sent a baneling to rid himself of your interference. You are right: he will not send another screeling, now that I have proven that I can defeat one. He will send something worse."
"If indeed it be sent for you." She touched a finger to her lower lip as she mumbled to herself. "Where be the Stone when you found it?"
"Next to the box that had been opened."
