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“And he wanted that?”
William buttoned his trousers, plopped back into the chair, and started pulling on his boots. “He said I wouldn’t be able to lose you, that sooner or later you’d catch up with me, but he didn’t want that to happen until at least after I arrived here. Fast as I was moving, I must admit that I didn’t think you’d be so close on my heels, so I thought to enjoy some of my profits.”
William stood and stuffed an arm into his brown wool shirt. “He told me that I was to give you a message.”
“Message? What message?”
William tucked in his shirt and then reached into a trouser pocket and pulled out a leather purse. It looked to be heavy with coins.
William fingered open the purse. “It’s in here, with what he gave me.”
Zedd snatched the purse from the man. “I’ll take a look.”
The purse held mostly gold coins, with a few silver. Zedd felt one of the gold coins between a finger and thumb. He could feel the slight after-tingle of magic. The coins had probably started out as coppers, and Nathan had changed them to gold with magic.
Zedd had been hoping that Nathan didn’t know how to do that. Changing things to gold was dangerous magic. Zedd only did it himself if there was no other choice.
Inside the purse, besides the coins, was a folded piece of paper. He pulled it out and turned it over in his fingers, giving it a good look in the dim light, wary of any form of magic snare that might be attached to it.
William pointed. “That’s what he gave me. He told me to give it to you when you caught me.”
“Anything else? Did he tell you anything else, besides to give me this message?”
“Well, as we was parting, he paused and looked up at me. He said, ‘Tell Zedd it’s not what he thinks.’”
Zedd mulled this over for a moment. “Which way did he go?”
“I don’t know. I was atop my horse, and he was still afoot. He told me to ride, then he slapped my horse’s rump and I rode.”
Zedd tossed the purse to William. While keeping a wary eye on the man, he unfolded the paper. He squinted in the dim light of the single candle as he scanned the message.
Sorry, Ann, but I have important business. One of our Sisters is going to do something very stupid. I must stop her, if I can. In case I die, I want you to know I love you, but I guess you knew that. I could never say it as long as I was your prisoner. Zedd, if the moon rises red, as I expect it to, then we are all in mortal danger. If the moon rises red for three nights, it means Jagang has invoked a bound fork prophecy. You must go to the Jocopo treasure. If you instead waste precious time coming after me, we will all die, and the emperor will have the spoils. The bound fork prophecy enforces a double bind on its victim. Zedd, I am sorry, but the victim named is Richard. May the spirits have mercy on his soul. If I knew the meaning of the prophecy, I would tell you, but I don’t—the spirits have denied me access to it. Ann, go with Zedd. He will need your help. May the good spirits be with you both.
As Zedd blinked, trying to clear his watery vision, he noticed a smudge. He turned the message over and realized that the smudge was wax residue. The message had been sealed, but in the poor light he hadn’t noticed before.
Zedd looked up to see William’s club. He flinched back, but felt the stunning pain of a blow. The floor crashed against his shoulder.
William pounced atop him, holding a knife to his throat.
“Where’s this Jocopo treasure, old man! Talk, or I’ll slit your throat!”
Zedd tried to hold on to his vision as he felt the room spinning and tilting. Nausea gagged him. He was in an instant sweat.
William’s eyes were wild above him. “Talk!”
The man stabbed him in the upper arm. “Talk! Where’s the treasure?”
A hand reached down and snatched William by the hair. It was a middle-aged woman in a dark cloak. Zedd couldn’t seem to make sense of who she was, or what she was doing there. With surprising strength, the woman threw William back. He crashed against the wall beside the open door and slumped to the floor.
She sneered down at Zedd. “You have made a big mistake, old man, letting Nathan get away. I suspected that following that old crone would net me the prophet, so I’ve followed you two until I could sense your link with him. Yet what do I find at the end of your magic hook but this fool here, instead of Nathan? So, now I have to make things unpleasant for you. I want the prophet.”
She turned and cast a hand out toward the naked woman frozen in place. The room erupted with thunder as a midnight-black discharge of lightning arced from her hand. The deathlike bolt of lightning sliced the woman and the sheet she held cleanly in half. Blood splattered the wall. The top half of her toppled to the floor like a statue cleaved in two. Her insides spilled across the floor as her torso hit the ground, but her limbs remained frozen in the same pose.
The woman hovering above him turned back. Her eyes were molten rage.
“If you would like a taste of Subtractive Magic, one limb at a time, then just give me a reason. Now, let me see the message.”
Zedd opened his hand to her. She reached out. He focused his mind through the dizziness. Before she could snatch the paper, he ignited it. It went up in a bright yellow flash.
With a cry of fury, she spun to William. “What did it say, you little worm!”
William, until that instant rigid in panic, flung himself through the door and bolted down the hall.
Her stringy hair whipped around her face as she spun back to Zedd. “I’ll be back to get answers from you. You will confess everything before I kill you.”
As she lunged for the door, Zedd felt an unfamiliar composition of magic ram through his hasty shield. Pain erupted in his head.
Trying to gather his senses, he fought through the grip of blinding agony. He wasn’t paralyzed, but he was unable to think of how to make himself get up. His arms and legs battled the air as ineffectively as a turtle on its back.
The searing pain made it difficult to do much more than maintain consciousness. He pressed his hands against the sides of his head, feeling as if it was going to come apart and he had to hold it together. He could hear himself gasping for breath.
The sudden thud of a concussion jolted the air and briefly lifted him clear of the floor.
A blinding flash lit the room as the roof tore open, the ripping roar of splintering wood and snapping beams was nearly lost in a deafening boom of thunder. The pain extinguished.
The light web had ignited.
Dust billowed through the air as smoking debris rained down around him. Zedd drew into a ball and covered his head as boards and bits of rubble peppered him. It sounded like being under a kettle in a hailstorm.
When silence settled over the scene, Zedd finally took his hands from his head and looked up. To his surprise, the building was still standing—after a fashion. The roof was mostly gone, letting the wind pull the dust away into the dark night above. The walls were holed like moth-eaten rags. Nearby lay the gory remains of the woman.
Zedd took assessment of himself, and was surprised to find he was in remarkably good condition, considering. Blood was running down the side of his head from where William had clubbed him, and his arm was throbbing where he had been stabbed, but other than that, he seemed uninjured. Not a bad bargain, in view of what could have been, he decided.
Moans drifted in from outside. A woman screamed hysterically. Zedd could hear men throwing wreckage aside, calling out names as they searched for the injured or dead.
The door, hanging crookedly from one hinge, suddenly exploded open as someone kicked it in.
Zedd sighed in relief as he saw a familiar, squat form rush in, her red face etched with concern.
“Zedd! Zedd, are you alive?”
“Bags, woman, don’t you think I look alive?”
Ann knelt beside him. “I think you look a mess. Your head is bleeding.”
Zedd grunted in pain as she helped him sit up. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to s
ee you alive. I feared you might have been too close to the light spell when it ignited.”
She pawed through his blood-matted hair, inspecting the wound. “Zedd, that wasn’t Nathan. I almost snapped the collar around that man’s neck when he ran into the spell. Then Sister Roslyn came flying out the door. She threw herself on him, screaming something at him about a message.
“Roslyn is a Sister of the Dark. She didn’t see me. My legs aren’t what they used to be, but I ran like a girl of twelve when I saw her trying to use Subtractive Magic to undo the spell.”
“I guess it didn’t work,” Zedd muttered. “I guess she never encountered a spell cast by a First Wizard. But I certainly didn’t make it that big. Using Subtractive Magic on the light spell expanded its power. It cost innocent people their lives.”
