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Verna and Warren, having both grown up at the Palace of the Prophets, had known each other nearly their whole lives. Her gift as a sorceress was destined to be used to help train young wizards, while his gift as a wizard destined him toward prophecy.
Their paths didn’t cross in a serious way until after Verna returned to the palace with Richard. Because of Richard and his huge impact on life at the palace, events brought Verna and Warren together, and their friendship grew. After Verna was named Prelate, during their struggle against the Sisters of the Dark she and Warren had depended on each other for their very lives. It was during that struggle that they had become more than friends. After all those years in the palace, only now had they really found each other, and found love.
At the thought of what she had to tell him, her smile faded.
“Warren,” she whispered, “are you awake?”
“Yes,” came a quiet reply.
Before he could have a chance to rise and take her into his arms and she lost her nerve, she stepped into his tent and blurted it out.
“Warren, I’ve made my decision. I’ll have no argument from you. Do you understand? This is too important.” He was silent, so she went on. “Amelia and Janet are my friends. Besides being Sisters of the Light in enemy hands, I love them. They would do the same for me, I know they would. I’m going after them, and any others I can rescue.”
“I know,” he whispered.
He knew. What did that mean? Silence dragged on in the darkness. Verna frowned. It wasn’t like Warren not to argue about such a thing. She had been ready for his argument, but not his calm acceptance.
Using her Han, the force of life and spirit through which the magic of the gift worked, Verna lit a flame in her palm and passed it to a candle. He was huddled on his blanket, his knees pulled up and his head resting in his hands.
She knelt down before him. “Warren? What’s wrong?”
His face came up. His blue eyes were rimmed with red. His face was sickly pale.
Verna clutched his arm. “Warren, you don’t look well. What’s wrong?”
“Verna,” he whispered, “I have come to realize that being a prophet is not the wonder I had imagined.”
Warren was the same age as Verna, but looked younger because he had remained at the Palace of the Prophets, under its spell that retarded aging, while she went on her twenty-odd-year journey to find Richard. Warren didn’t look so young at the moment.
Warren had only recently had his first vision as a prophet. He had told her that the prophecy came as a vision of events, accompanied by words of the prophecy. The words were what were written down, but it was the vision that was the true prophecy. That was why it took a prophet to truly understand the meaning of the words; they invoked the vision that was being passed on from another prophet.
Hardly anyone knew this; everyone tried to understand prophecy by the words. Verna now knew, from what Warren had told her, that this method was inadequate at best and dangerous at worst. Prophecy was meant to be read by other prophets.
She frowned. “Have you had a vision? Another prophecy?”
Warren ignored the question, and asked one of his own.
“Verna, do we have any Rada’Han with us?”
“The collars around the young men who escaped with us are the only ones. We didn’t have time to bring any extras. Why?”
He put his head back in his hands.
Verna shook a finger at him. “Warren, if this is some trick to try to get me to stay here with you, it won’t work. Do you hear me? It won’t work. I’m going, and I’m going alone. That’s final.”
“Verna,” he whispered, “I have to go with you.”
“No. It’s too dangerous. I love you too much. I won’t risk anyone else. If I have to, I will order you, as Prelate, to stay here. I will, Warren.”
His head rose again. “Verna, I’m dying.”
Icy goose bumps tingled across her arms and thighs.
“What? Warren—”
“I’m having the headaches. The headaches from the gift.”
Verna was choked silent with the realization of the deadly nature of what he had just said.
The whole reason the Sisters of the Light took boys born with the gift was to save their lives. Unless schooled, the gift could kill him. The headaches were a manifestation of the fatal nature of the gift going awry. Besides providing the Sisters with control over the young wizards, the most important function of the collar was its magic, which protected the life of the boy until he could learn to control his gift.
Because of all that had happened, Verna had taken Warren’s collar off long before it was customary.
“But, Warren, you’ve studied a long time. You know how to control your gift. You shouldn’t need the Rada’Han for protection any longer.”
“If I was an ordinary wizard, that may be true, but my gift is for prophecy. Nathan was the only prophet at the palace in centuries. We don’t know how the magic works in a prophet. I only recently had my first prophecy. It signifies a new level of my ability. Now, I’m having the headaches.”
Verna was suddenly in a panic. Her eyes were tearing. She threw her arms around him.
“Warren, I’ll stay. I won’t go. I’ll help you. We’ll do something. Maybe we could take a collar off one of the boys and you could share it. That might work. We’ll try that first.”
His arms pulled her tight. “That won’t work, Verna.”
A sudden thought flashed into her mind, making her gasp with relief. It was so simple.
“Warren, it’s all right. It is. I just realized what we can do. Listen to me.”
“Verna, I know what—”
She shushed him. She held him by the shoulders and looked into his blue eyes. She brushed back his wavy blond hair. “Warren, listen. It’s simple. The reason the Sisters were founded was to help boys born with the gift. We were given Rada’Han to protect them while we teach them to control their gift.”
“Verna, I know all that, but—”
“Listen. We have the collars to help them because we don’t have wizards who can do what is needed. In the past, greedy wizards refused to help those born with the gift. An experienced wizard can join with your mind and pass on the protection—show you how to put the gift right. It’s simple for a wizard to do, but not a sorceress. We need only to visit a wizard.”
Verna pried the journey book from her belt and held it before his eyes. “We have a wizard. Zedd. All we have to do is talk to Ann, and have her and Zedd meet us. Zedd can help you, and then you’ll be all right.”
Warren stared into her eyes. “Verna, it won’t work.”
“Don’t say that. You don’t know. You don’t know, Warren.”
“Yes I do. I have had another prophecy.”
Verna sat back on her heels. “You have? What was it?”
Warren pressed his fingertips to his temples. She could see that he was in pain. She knew that the pain of the headaches from the gift were excruciating. In the end, if not corrected, they were fatal.
“Verna, now you listen to me for a change. I have had a prophecy. The words aren’t important. The meaning is.” He took his hands away from his head and looked her in the eye. In that moment, he looked very old to her. “You must do what you plan, and go after the Sisters. The prophecy didn’t say whether you will succeed, but I must go with you. If I do anything else, I will die. It’s a forked prophecy—an ‘either-or’ prophecy.”
She cleared her throat. “But… surely, there must be something…”
