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Jester’s Inn looked as if it had either been an afterthought meant to use available space in the back, or else its proprietors wanted to shelter it from the scrutiny of honest people and the critical eye of authority. From the customers Zedd had already seen, he was leaning in the direction of the second guess. Most of the men looked
to be mercenaries or highwaymen.
“I don’t like it,” he muttered to himself.
“You don’t like anything,” Ann snapped. “You’re the most disagreeable man I’ve ever met.”
Zedd’s eyebrows went up in true surprise. “Why would you say that? I’ve been told that I’m a most pleasant traveling companion. Do we have any of that sausage left?”
Ann rolled her eyes. “No. What is it you don’t like this time?”
Zedd watched a man look both ways before going to the door at the back of the dark alleyway. “Why would Nathan go in there?”
Ann looked over her shoulder, across the deserted street of rutted, frozen slush. She fingered a stray wisp of graying hair into the loose knot tied at the back of her head.
“To get a hot meal and some sleep.” She scowled back at Zedd. “That is, if he’s even in there.”
“I’ve shown you how to sense the thread of magic I used to hook the tracer cloud to him. You’ve felt it, felt him.”
“True enough,” Ann admitted. “Yet now that we finally catch him, and know that he’s in there, you suddenly don’t like it.”
“That’s right,” he said distantly. “I don’t like it.”
The scowl on Ann’s face lost its heat and turned serious. “What is it that bothers you?”
“Look at the sign. After the name.”
A pair of woman’s legs pointed up in the shape of a V.
She turned back and peered at him as if he were daft. “Zedd, the man has been locked up in the Palace of the Prophets for almost a thousand years.”
“You just said it: he’s been locked up.” Zedd tapped the collar, called a Rada’Han, around his own neck, the collar she had put on him to capture him and make him do her bidding. “Nathan is not inclined to be locked up in a collar again. It probably took him hundreds of years of planning, and the right turn of events, to get out of his collar and to escape. I dread to consider how that man may have influenced or even directly altered events through prophecy to bring to pass the turn of fate that allowed him the opportunity to get off his collar.
“Now you expect me to believe he would go in there just to be with a woman? When he has to know you’re chasing after him?”
Ann stared in stunned disbelief. “Zedd, are you saying that you think Nathan may have influenced events—prophecies—just to get his collar off?”
Zedd looked across the road and shook his head. “I’m just saying I don’t like it.”
“He probably wanted what’s in there enough that it distracted him from worrying about me. He simply wanted some female companionship, and ignored the dangers of being caught.”
“You have known Nathan for over nine centuries. I’ve only known him a short time.” He leaned down closer to her and lifted an eyebrow. “But even I know better than that. Nathan is anything but stupid. He is a wizard of remarkable talent. You make a serious mistake if you underestimate him.”
She watched his eyes a moment. “You’re right; it may be a trap. Nathan wouldn’t kill me to escape, but beyond that… You may be right.”
Zedd harrumphed.
“Zedd,” Ann said, after a long, uncomfortable silence, “this business with Nathan is important. He must be caught. He’s helped me in the past when we have discovered danger in the prophecies, but he is still a prophet. Prophets are dangerous. Not because they deliberately wish to cause trouble, but because of the nature of prophecy.”
“You don’t need to convince me of that. I know well the dangers of prophecy.”
“We have always kept prophets confined at the Palace of the Prophets because of the potential for catastrophe should they roam free. A prophet who wanted mischief could have it. Even a prophet who doesn’t wish mischief is dangerous, not only to others but to himself; people usually extract vengeance on the bringer of truth, as if knowing the truth is its cause. Prophecy is not meant to be heard by untrained minds, those having no understanding of magic, much less prophecy.
“One time, as we sometimes did at his request, we let a woman visit Nathan.”
Zedd frowned at her. “You took prostitutes to him?”
Ann shrugged self-consciously. “We knew the loneliness of his confinement. It wasn’t the most desirable solution, but yes, we brought him companionship from time to time. We weren’t heartless.”
“How magnanimous of you.”
Ann glanced away from his eyes. “We did what we had to, by locking him in the palace, but we felt sorrow for him. It wasn’t his choice to be born with the gift of prophecy.
“We always warned him not to tell the women any prophecy, but one time he did. The woman ran screaming from the palace. We never knew how she escaped before we could stop her.
“She spread word of the prophecy before we could find her. It started a civil war. Thousands died. Women and children died.
“Nathan sometimes seems crazy, out of his senses. Sometimes he seems to me to be the most dangerously unbalanced person I’ve ever known. Nathan views the world not only by what he sees around him, but through the filter of prophecy that visits his mind.
“When I confronted him, he professed not to remember the prophecy, or having told the young woman anything. I only found out much later, when I was able to link several prophecies, that one of the children who died was a boy named in prophecy as one who would go on to rule through torture and murder. Untold tens of thousands would have died had that boy lived and grown into a man, but Nathan had choked off that dangerous fork in prophecy. I have no idea how much that man knows but won’t disclose.
“A prophet has the potential to just as easily cause great harm. A prophet who wished power would have a fair chance of ruling the world.”
Zedd was still watching the door. “So you lock them away.”
“Yes.”
Zedd picked at a thread on his maroon robes. He looked down at her squat form in the dim light. “Ann, I am First Wizard. If I didn’t understand, I wouldn’t be helping you.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Zedd considered their options. There weren’t many. “What you are saying, if I understand you, is that you don’t know if Nathan is sane, but even if he is, he has the potential to be dangerous.”
“I guess so. But Nathan has often helped me to spare people suffering. Hundreds of years ago, he warned me about Darken Rahl, and told me of a prophecy that a war wizard would be born—that Richard would be born. We worked together to see to it that Richard would be safe from interference as he grew, so that you would have the time to help raise your grandson into the kind of man who would use his ability to help people.”
“For that, you have my gratitude,” Zedd offered. “But you put this collar around my neck, and I don’t like that one bit.”
“I understand. It’s not something I liked doing, nor am I proud of what I did. Sometimes, desperate need calls for desperate acts. The good spirits will have the final say on my actions.
“The sooner we get Nathan, the sooner I will take the Rada’Han from your neck. I don’t enjoy holding you prisoner by that collar and making you help me, but in view of the dire consequences should I fail to get Nathan, I do as I feel I must.”
Zedd aimed a thumb over his shoulder. “I also don’t like that.”
Ann didn’t look; she knew what he was pointing at. “What does a red moon have to do with Nathan? It’s most peculiar, but what does one have to do with the other?”
“I’m not saying it has anything to do with Nathan. I just don’t like it.”
With the thick clouds of the last few days, they had been slowed at night, both by the darkness and also by the difficulty seeing the tracer cloud he had hooked to Nathan. Fortunately, they had been close enough to sense the link of magic without having to see the tracer cloud; the tracer cloud was only used to get its tracker close enough to sense the link.
Zedd knew they were very near to Nathan—within a few hundred feet. This close to the object of the trace, the link’s magic dist
orted Zedd’s senses, his ability to judge with the aid of his magic, his capacity to access his familiar ability with his gift. This close, his magic was like a bloodhound on scent, so concentrated on the object of its search that it disregarded anything else but the trail. It was an uncomfortable form of blindness, and another reason for his unease.
He could break the link, but that was risky before they actually had Nathan; once broken, it couldn’t be reestablished without physical contact.
The snow flurries of the last few days had slowed them and made the going cold and miserable. Earlier in the day the clouds had at last cleared away, even if they had left behind the bitter wind to vex them. They had been looking forward to the moonrise, and the light it would provide as they closed in on Nathan.
They had both watched in stunned silence when the moon had risen: It had risen red.
At first, they thought that it might be a lingering haze that was causing it, but with the moon well overhead, Zedd knew it was not being caused by some innocent atmospheric event. Worse, with the recent cloud cover, he didn’t know how long it had been since the moon had turned red.
“Zedd,” Ann finally asked into the brooding silence, “do you know what it means?”
Zedd looked away, pretending to scan the shadows. “Do you? You’ve lived a lot longer than I. You must know something about such a sign.”
He could hear her fussing with her wool cloak. “You are a Wizard of the First Order. I would defer to your expertise in such matters.”
“You all of a sudden think my judgment worthwhile?”
“Zedd, let’s not joust with words about this. I know that such a sign is without precedent in my experience, but I do recall a reference to a red moon in an ancient text, a text from the great war. The book didn’t say what it meant, only that it brought great alarm.”
Zedd squatted in the shadow of the corner of the building they hid behind. He leaned his back against the clapboards and held a hand out in invitation. Ann sat beside him, deeper in the shadow.
“In the Wizard’s Keep there are dozens of libraries, huge libraries, most at least as large as the vault of books at the Palace of the Prophets, many a great deal larger. There are also many books of prophecy there.”
