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“No, not really. I just don’t want to be left alone with Rikka,” he said as he read the last bit again.
They will at first contest him before they plot to heal him. What could that mean?
“Maybe you could get Rikka to tell you some stories about the stars.” Rachel began looking sad as she came around the desk. “I’ll miss you something awful, Zedd.”
Zedd looked up from the book. Rachel held her arms out, wanting a hug. A smile overcame him as he scooped her into his arms. There were few things in life that felt as good as a hug from Rachel. She was a devotee of the hug, never putting less than her full enthusiasm into it.
“You have good hugs, Zedd. Richard has good hugs, too.”
“Yes he does.”
Zedd remembered being in that very room, so long ago, when his own daughter was about the same age as Rachel. She, too, would come to see him and want a hug. Now, all that he had left was Richard. Zedd missed him terribly.
“I will miss you, little one, but before you know it you will be back here with the rest of your family and then you will have brothers and sisters to play with instead of just an old man.” Zedd sat her on his knee. “It will be good to have all of you at the Wizard’s Keep with me. The Keep will be a joyful place, what with life in it again.”
“Rikka said that she will never have to cook again once my mother comes here.”
Zedd took a sip of lukewarm tea from a pewter mug on the chest beside him. “Did she now.”
Rachel nodded. “And she said that my mother would probably make you brush your hair.” She held out her hands, wanting to share a drink from his mug. He let her gulp tea.
Zedd cocked his head. “Brush my hair?”
Rachel nodded with a serious look. “It sticks all out. But I like it.”
“Rachel,” Chase said as he ducked in through the round-topped doorway, “are you bothering Zedd, again?”
Rachel shook her head. “I brought him biscuits. Rikka said he likes biscuits with his stew and I should bring him a whole bowl full.”
Chase planted his fists on his hips. “And how is he supposed to eat his biscuits with ugly children sitting on his lap? You could scare his appetite right out of him.”
Rachel giggled as she hopped down.
Zedd glanced at the book again. “Are you all packed up?”
“Yes,” the big man said. “I want to get an early start. We’ll leave first thing in the morning, if that’s still all right with you.”
Zedd dismissed the concern with a wave of his hand as he studied the prophecy. “Yes, yes. The sooner you get your family back here, the better. We’ll all feel better having them here where we know they will be safe and you will all be together.”
Chase’s heavy brow drew lower over his intent brown eyes. “Zedd, what’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
Zedd looked up with a frown. “Wrong? Nothing. Nothing is wrong.”
“He’s just busy reading,” Rachel assured Chase as she hugged his leg and put her head against his hip.
“Zedd,” Chase said in a demanding drawl that said he didn’t believe a word of it.
“What makes you think something is wrong?”
“You haven’t eaten a thing.” Chase rested one hand on the wooden handle of a long knife at his belt and with the other caressed Rachel’s head of long, golden blond hair. The man probably had a dozen knives of various sizes strapped around his waist and to his legs. When he left in the morning he would add swords and axes to the knives. “That can only mean something is wrong.”
Zedd popped a biscuit in his mouth. “There,” he mumbled around the mouthful. “Satisfied?”
While Zedd chewed the warm biscuit, Chase leaned down and lifted the girl’s chin. “Rachel, go to your room and finish getting your things packed up. And I expect your knives to be cleaned and sharp as well.”
She nodded earnestly. “They will be, Chase.”
Rachel had had a hard life for one so young. For reasons that had always made Zedd suspicious, she’d been at the center of a variety of consequential situations. When Chase had taken the orphaned girl in to raise as his own daughter, Zedd himself had admonished the man to teach her to protect herself, to teach her to be like him so that she could defend herself and stay safe. Rachel adored Chase and eagerly learned all the lessons he taught her. With one of the smaller knives she carried, she could pin a fly to a fence post at ten paces.
“And I want you in bed early so that you will be rested,” Chase told her. “I’m not carrying you if you’re tired.”
Rachel gave him a puzzled look. “You carry me when I tell you I’m not tired.”
Chase cast Zedd a pained look before giving her a clearly feigned scowl. “Well, tomorrow you’re just going to have to keep up on your own.”
Rachel nodded seriously, unruffled by the man towering over her. “I will.” She looked at Zedd. “Will you come and kiss me good night?”
“Of course,” Zedd said with a smile of his own. “I’ll be in after a bit to tuck you in.”
He wondered if Rikka would stop by her room to tell her a story. It was heartwarming to think of the Mord-Sith telling a child stories about pictures made by the stars in the sky. Rachel seemed to have that effect on everyone.
Chase watched through the doorway as his daughter raced off down the broad rampart. Zedd had been gratified at the way she had taken to the Wizard’s Keep. In short order she had made it hers and was happily skipping through halls that were thousands of years old. She minded well and never strayed from the areas Zedd had warned her about. She was a child who understood danger. Out on the rampart, she looked completely at ease as she paused momentarily to gaze through a crenellation down at the city below before racing off again. It seemed to Zedd a wonder that such spindly legs could carry the child so swiftly.
After Chase was sure that she was safely on her way, he closed the heavy oak door and stepped closer to the desk. His size made the cozy room, a room that Zedd had always thought quite comfortable, seem rather cramped.
“Now, what’s the problem?”
The man wasn’t going to be satisfied until he knew more. Zedd sighed and used a finger to spin the book around for the boundary warden to read.
“Take a look. You tell me.”
Chase glanced at the ancient book. He lifted a page to each side and briefly took a look before setting each page back down.
“Like I said, what’s the problem? It doesn’t look like there is much here to worry about.”
Zedd arched an eyebrow. “That’s the problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a book of prophecy. It’s supposed to have writing in it—prophecy. You can’t have a book with no writing and have it still be a proper book, now can you? The writing is gone.”
“Gone?” Chase scratched a graying temple. “That doesn’t make any sense. How can writing be gone? It’s not like someone could steal the words right off the page.”
That was an interesting way to look at it—that someone had stolen the words right off the page. Having been a boundary warden most of his life—until the boundary came down a few years back—Chase was the kind of man who would suspect theft before anything else. Zedd hadn’t considered that possibility. His mind was already rushing down the unexplored dark alley of deliberation.
“I don’t know how the words could be gone,” he confided as he took a s
ip of tea.
“What is the prophecy about?” Chase asked.
“This happens to be a book of prophecy mostly about Richard.”
Chase looked completely calm, which of course meant that he was anything but. “Are you certain it used to have writing in it?” he asked. “If it’s old, maybe you just forgot that it had blank pages. After all, when you read a book you tend to recall the writing, not the blank pages.”
“True enough.” He set the pewter mug aside. “I can’t swear for certain that I remember it having writing in it, but I just don’t believe it was ever mostly blank. Now it is.”
Chase’s expression didn’t betray his feelings as he considered the mystery. “Well, I admit that it does sound strange…but is it really a problem? Richard never was one for prophecy; he wouldn’t have heeded them anyway.”
Zedd rose up and stabbed a finger at the book, tapping insistently. “Chase, this book has been here in the Keep for thousands of years. For thousands of years it’s had writing—prophecy—in it. I’m sure of it. Now it’s suddenly blank. Does that sound trivial to you?”
Chase shrugged as he hooked his thumbs in his back pockets. “I don’t know, Zedd. I’m no expert in such things. I think the day that you have to come to me for answers about books of prophecy is the day you’re in big trouble. You’re the wizard, you tell me.”
Zedd put his weight on his hands as he leaned toward the man.
“I can’t recall anything that used to be in this book. I can’t recall anything about the blank places in all the other books of prophecy that have missing text.”
Chase’s expression turned grim. “There are others with blank places?”
Zedd nodded as he smoothed back his hair. He gazed in the darkening window, trying to see himself reflected, but he couldn’t, yet—it was still too light outside.
“Does my hair need to be brushed?” He looked back at Chase. “Does it stick out too much?”
Chase cocked his head. “What?”
“Never mind,” Zedd muttered with a dismissive wave of his hand. “The point is, I’ve discovered blank places in a number of books of prophecy and I’m baffled by it.”
