Zedd straightened. “Then it is decided.”
He turned and announced to the crowd the end of the war, and the division to come in which those who had petitioned for years would finally have their petition granted; for those who wished it, a land outside the Midlands, without magic, would be created.
While everyone was chattering about such a mysterious and exotic thing as a land without magic, or cheering and celebrating the end of the war, Abby whispered to Jana to wait with her father a moment. She kissed her daughter and then took the opportunity to pull Zedd aside.
“Zedd, may I speak with you? I have a question.”
Zedd smiled and took her by the elbow, urging Abby into her small home. “I’d like to check on my daughter. Come along.”
Abby cast caution to the winds and took the Mother Confessor’s hand in one of hers, Delora’s in the other, and pulled them in with her. They had a right to hear this, too.
“Zedd,” Abby asked once they were away from the crowd in her yard, “may I please know the debt your father owed my mother?”
Zedd lifted an eyebrow. “My father owed your mother no debt.”
Abby frowned. “But it was a debt of bones, passed down from your father to you, and from my mother to me.”
“Oh, it was a debt all right, but not owed to your mother, but by your mother.”
“What?” Abby asked in stunned confusion. “What do you mean?”
Zedd smiled. “When your mother was giving birth to you, she was in trouble. You both were dying in the labor. My father used magic to save her. Helsa begged him to save you, too. In order to keep you in the world of the living and out of the Keeper’s grasp, without thought to his own safety, he worked far beyond the endurance anyone would expect of a wizard.
“Your mother was a sorceress, and understood the extent of what was involved in saving your life. In appreciation of what my father had done, she swore a debt to him. When she died, the debt passed to you.”
Abby, eyes wide, tried to reconcile the whole thing in her mind. Her mother had never told her the nature of the debt.
“But … but you mean that it is I who owe the debt to you? You mean that the debt of bones is my burden?”
Zedd pushed open the door to the room where his daughter slept, smiling as he looked in. “The debt is paid, Abby. The bracelet your mother gave you had magic, linking you to the debt. Thank you for my daughter’s life.”
Abby glanced to the Mother Confessor. Trickster indeed. “But why would you help me, if it was really not a debt of bones you owed me? If it was really a debt I owed you?”
Zedd shrugged. “We reap a reward merely in the act of helping others. We never know how, or if, that reward will come back to us. Helping is the reward; none other is needed nor better.”
Abby watched the beautiful little girl sleeping in the room beyond. “I am thankful to the good spirits that I could help keep such a life in this world. I may not have the gift, but I can foresee that she will go on to be a person of import, not only for you, but for others.”
Zedd smiled idly as he watched his daughter sleeping. “I think you may have the gift of prophecy, my dear, for she is already a person who has played a part in bringing a war to an end, and in so doing, saved the lives of countless people.”
The sorceress pointed out the window. “I still want to know why that thing isn’t moving. It was supposed to pass over D’Hara and purge it of all life, to kill them all for what they have done.” Her scowl deepened. “Why is it just sitting there?”
Zedd folded his hands. “It ended the war. That is enough. The wall is a part of the underworld itself, the world of the dead. Their army will not be able to cross it and make war on us for as long as such a boundary stands.”
“And how long will that be?”
Zedd shrugged. “Nothing remains forever. For now, there will be peace. The killing is ended.”
The sorceress did not look to be satisfied. “But they were trying to kill us all!”
“Well, now they can’t. Delora, there are those in D’Hara who are innocent, too. Just because Panis Rahl wished to conquer and subjugate us, that does not mean that all the D’Haran people are evil. Many good people in D’Hara have suffered under harsh rule. How could I kill everyone there, including all the people who have caused no harm, and themselves wish only to live their lives in peace?”
Delora wiped a hand across her face. “Zeddicus, sometimes I don’t know about you. Sometimes, you make a lousy wind of death.”
The Mother Confessor stood staring out the window, toward D’Hara. Her violet eyes turned back to the wizard.
“There will be those over there who will be your foes for life because of this, Zedd. You have made bitter enemies with this. You have left them alive.”
“Enemies,” the wizard said, “are the price of honor.”
Terry Goodkind is a contemporary American writer and author of the best-selling epic fantasy series,
The Sword of Truth
, creator of the television show
The Legend of the Seeker
, and writer of the self-published epic,
The First Confessor: The Legend of Magda Searus
(a prequel and origin story of the first Mother Confessor). He has over 20 million copies in print and has been translated into more than 20 different languages, world-wide.