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“At least it cost that evil women hers, too.”
“Ann, heal me, and then we have to help these people.”
“Zedd, who was that man? Why did he set off the spell? Where is Nathan?”
Zedd held out his hand and opened his tightly closed fist. He let the warmth of magic flow into the ashes in his hand. The powdery black residue began clumping together as the inky ashes lightened to gray. When the charred ruins reconstituted itself into the paper it had been, it finally returned to pale brown.
“I’ve never seen anyone able to do such a thing,” Ann whispered in astonishment.
“Be thankful that Sister Roslyn hadn’t, either, or we would be in even more trouble than we are. Being First Wizard has its advantages.”
Ann lifted the crumpled paper from his palm. Her lower lids brimmed with tears as she read the message from Nathan. By the time she had finished, silent tears were running down her round cheeks.
“Dear Creator,” she breathed at last.
His own eyes stung with tears. “Indeed,” he whispered in response.
“Zedd, what is the Jocopo treasure?”
He blinked at her. “I was hoping you would know. Why would Nathan tell us to go protect something, and not tell us what it is?”
People outside were crying in pain and calling for help. In the distance, a wall, or perhaps a piece of roof, crashed to the ground. Men were yelling directions as they dug through the rubble.
“Nathan forgets that he is different from other people. Just as you recall things from a few decades ago, he also recalls what was, except what he recalls is sometimes not a couple of decades ago, but a couple of centuries.”
“I wish he would have told us more.”
“We have to find it. We will find it. I have a few ideas.” She shook her finger at him. “And you are coming with me! We still haven’t got Nathan. That collar stays on for now. You’re going with me, do you understand? I’ll hear none of your arguing!”
Zedd reached up and unsnapped the collar around his neck.
Ann’s eyes went wide and her jaw dropped.
Zedd tossed the Rada’Han into her lap. “We have to find this Jocopo treasure that Nathan spoke of. Nathan is not playing games about this. This is deadly serious. I believe what he wrote in that message. We are in a lot of trouble. I’m going with you, but this time we must be more careful. This time we must cover our trail with magic.”
“Zedd,” she finally whispered, “how did you get that collar off? It’s impossible.”
Zedd scowled at her to keep himself from weeping at the thought of the prophecy trapping Richard. “Like I said, being First Wizard has its advantages.”
Her face flushed crimson. “Did you just… How long have you been able to take off the Rada’Han?”
Zedd shrugged a bony shoulder. “It took me a couple of days to figure it out. Since then. Since after the first two or three days.”
“Yet you went with me? You still went with me? Why?”
“I guess I like women who do things out of desperation. Shows character.” He balled his trembling hands into fists. “Do you believe everything Nathan said in that message?”
“I wish I could say no. I’m sorry, Zedd.” Ann swallowed. “He said, ‘May the spirits have mercy on his soul,’ meaning Richard. Nathan didn’t say ‘good spirits,’ he just said ‘spirits.’”
Zedd wiped his sticklike fingers across his face. “Not all spirits are good. There are evil spirits, too. What do you know about double fork prophecies? About prophecy that enforced a double bind?”
“Unlike your collar, there is no escape from one. The cataclysm named has to be brought about to invoke the prophecy. Whatever it is, the event has already happened. Once invoked, the nature of the cataclysm is self-defining, meaning that the victim has only the choice of one of the two forks in the prophecy. The victim can choose only which way he would rather… Surely you must know this? As First Wizard, you would have to know.”
“I had been hoping you would tell me I was wrong,” Zedd whispered. “I wish Nathan would have at least written the prophecy for us to see.”
“Be thankful he didn’t.”
21
Clarissa gripped the weathered sill of the window in the stone tower of the abbey in an effort to control her quaking. She clutched her other hand over her thundering heart. Even with the acrid smoke burning her eyes, she had to force herself to blink as she stood transfixed, watching the tumult in the city, and the square below.
The noise was deafening. The invaders screamed battle cries as they charged ahead, swinging swords, axes, and flails. Steel clashed and rang. The air hissed with arrows. Horses screamed in panic. Balls of light and flame wailed in from the distant countryside and exploded through the stone walls. The grisly invaders blew shrill horns and bellowed like beasts as they poured through the rents in the city walls, their impossible numbers darkening the streets in a sooty flood. Flames whooshed and roared and snapped.
Townsmen wept unashamedly as they begged for mercy, their hands outstretched, imploring, even as they were put to the sword. Clarissa saw the bloody body of one of the assembly of seven being dragged down the street on a rope behind a horse.
The shrill screams of women pierced through it all as their children, their husbands, their brothers and fathers were murdered before their eyes.
The hot wind carried the jumbled smells of a burning city, pitch and wood, oil and cloth, hide and flesh, but laced through it all, in every breath she pulled, was the gagging stench of blood.
It was all happening, just as he had said it would. Clarissa had laughed at him. She didn’t think she would ever be able to laugh again as long as she lived. At the thought of how short a time that might be, her legs nearly gave way.
No. She wouldn’t think that. She was safe here. They wouldn’t violate the abbey. She could hear the throng seeking safety in the great room below weeping and crying out in terror. This was a sacred place, devoted to the worship of the Creator and the good spirits. It would be blasphemy even for these beasts to spill blood in such a sanctuary.
Yet, he had told her they would.
Below, out in the streets, the army’s resistance had been crushed. The Renwold defenders had never before let an invader set foot inside the walls. It was said the city was as safe as if the Creator Himself defended it. Invaders had tried before, and had always departed bloodied and dispirited. No horde from the wilds had ever breached the city walls. Renwold had always stood safe.
This day, as he had said it would, Renwold had fallen.
For their audacity at refusing to surrender the city and its spoils peacefully, without a fight, the people of Renwold were being shown no mercy.
Some had urged surrender, arguing that the red moons of the previous three nights had been an ill omen. But those voices were few; the city had always been held safe before.
The good spirits, and the Creator Himself, had turned away from the people of Renwold this day. What their crime was, she couldn’t fathom, but, surely, it must be terrible indeed to warrant no mercy from the good spirits.
From her vantage point at the top of the abbey, she could see the people of Renwold being he
rded into clusters in the streets, the market district, and courtyards. She knew many of the people being forced at the point of steel into the square below. The invaders, clad in foreign outfits of studded metal, and spiked leather straps and belts, and layers of hides and fur, looked to her the way she imagined savages from the wilds.
The invaders began sorting through the men, pulling aside those with trades: smiths, bowyers, fletchers, bakers, brewers, butchers, millers, carpenters—anyone of a craft or trade who might be put to use. Those men were chained together, to be marched off as slaves. The very old, young boys, and those seemingly without useful trades, like valets, yeomen, innkeepers, city officials, and merchants, were slaughtered on the spot—a sword hacked to the side of the neck, a spear through the chest, a knife in the gut, a flail across the skull. There was no system to the slaughter.
Clarissa stared as an invader clubbed the head of a man on the ground who wouldn’t seem to die. It reminded her of a fisherman, clubbing a catfish on the bank—thunk, thunk, thunk. The man doing the clubbing didn’t seem to think any more of it than a fisherman would. Dumb Gus, the poor half-wit who ran errands for merchants, shopkeepers, and inns, his work paid for with food and a bed and watered ale, kicked one last time as his thick skull gave way with a resounding crack.
Clarissa put trembling fingers over her mouth as she felt the contents of her stomach lurch up into the back of her throat. She swallowed it back down and gasped for air.
This wasn’t happening, she told herself. She was dreaming. She repeated the lie over and over in her head. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.
But it was. Dear Creator, it was.
Clarissa watched as the women were culled from the men. The old women were summarily put to death. The women judged worth keeping were shoved, screaming and crying for their men, into a group. Invaders sorted through them, further winnowing them according to age and, apparently, looks.
Laughing invaders held the women as others of the beasts methodically went from woman to woman, seized them by their lower lip, and poked it through with a thin spike. A ring was pushed through each woman’s lip, its split opening efficiently closed with the aid of the invader’s teeth.
