Debt of Bones by Terry Goodkind Page B

declare it due! You will yield to the obligation!”
    Both the sorceress and the Mother Confessor gazed off at the walls, uneasy at a woman, an ungifted woman, raising her voice to the First Wizard himself. Abby suddenly wondered if she might be struck dead for such insolence. But if he didn’t help her, it wouldn’t matter.
    The Mother Confessor diverted the possible results of Abby’s outburst with a question. “Zedd, did your reading tell you of the nature of the engendering of the debt?”
    “Indeed it did,” he said. “My father, too, told me of a debt. My test has proven to me that this is the one of which he spoke, and that the woman standing before me carries the other half of the link.”
    “So, what was the engendering?” the sorceress asked.
    He turned his palms up. “It seems to have slipped my mind. I’m sorry; I find myself to be more forgetful than usual of late.”
    Delora sniffed. “And you dare to call sorceresses taciturn?”
    Wizard Zorander silently considered her a moment and then turned a squint on the Mother Confessor. “The council wants it done, do they?” He smiled a sly smile. “Then it shall be done.”
    The Mother Confessor cocked her head. “Zedd … are you sure about this?”
    “About what?” Abby asked. “Are you going to honor the debt or not?”
    The wizard shrugged. “You have declared the debt due.” He plucked a small book from the table and slipped it into a pocket in his robe. “Who am I to argue?”
    “Dear spirits,” the Mother Confessor whispered to herself. “Zedd, just because the council—”
    “I am just a wizard,” he said, cutting her off, “serving the wants and wishes of the people.”
    “But if you travel to this place you would be exposing yourself to needless danger.”
    “I must be near the border—or it will claim parts of the Midlands, too. Coney Crossing is as good a place as any other to ignite the conflagration.”
    Beside herself with relief, Abby was hardly hearing anything else he said. “Thank you, Wizard Zorander. Thank you.”
    He strode around the table and gripped her shoulder with sticklike fingers of surprising strength.
    “We are bound, you and I, in a debt of bones. Our life paths have intersected.” His smile looked at once sad and sincere. His powerful fingers closed around her wrist, around her bracelet, and he put her mother’s skull in her hands. “Please, Abby, call me Zedd.”
    Near tears, she nodded. “Thank you, Zedd.”
    Outside, in the early light, they were accosted by the waiting crowd. Wizard Thomas, waving his papers, shoved his way through.
    “Zorander! I’ve been studying these elements you’ve provided. I have to talk to you.”
    “Talk, then,” the First Wizard said as he marched by. The crowd followed in his wake.
    “This is madness.”
    “I never said it wasn’t.”
    Wizard Thomas shook the papers as if for proof. “You can’t do this, Zorander!”
    “The council has decided that it is to be done. The war must be ended while we have the upper hand and before Panis Rahl comes up with something we won’t be able to counter.”
    “No, I mean I’ve studied this thing, and you won’t be able to do it. We don’t understand the power those wizards wielded. I’ve looked over the elements you’ve shown me. Even trying to invoke such a thing will create intense heat.”
    Zedd halted and put his face close to Thomas. He lifted his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Really, Thomas? Do you think? Igniting a light spell that will rip the fabric of the world of life might cause an instability in the elements of the web field?”
    Thomas charged after as Zedd stormed off. “Zorander! You won’t be able to control it! If you were able to invoke it—and I’m not saying I believe you can—you would breach the Grace. The invocation uses heat. The breach feeds it. You won’t be able to control the cascade. No one can do such a thing!”
    “I can do it,” the First Wizard muttered.
    Thomas shook