Blood of the Fold (93 page)

He released her arm. “All right, you’ve gotten me here. What is it you want?”

“
Check the vault first, to make sure there are no others.”

They each stole down one side, Ann checking between the rows of bookshelves to watch the old wizard and make sure he was doing as instructed. If he tried to run, she could bring him back by the Rada’Han, and he knew it.

She liked Richard’s grandfather, but need demanded she cultivate his hatred. For this, he had to be in a fury, and willingly take the chance she would give him.

When they reached the rear of the gloomy vaults, they had found no others. Ann kissed her naked ring finger and thanked the Creator. She blocked the emotion of having killed Sister Becky, telling herself that she would not be guarding the vaults unless she were sworn to the Keeper, and a pawn of the emperor. She tried not to think of the innocent unborn child she had also killed.

“
Now what?” Zedd snapped when they met in the rear, near one of the small, restricted rooms.

“
Nathan will do his part. I brought you here to do your part, the other half of what is needed.

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The palace is charged with a spell cast three thousand years ago. I have been able to determine that it’s a bifurcated web.”

Zedd’s eyebrows went up. His curiosity overcame his indignation. “That’s quite a claim. I’ve never heard of anyone able to spin a bifurcated web. Are you sure?”

“
No one now can spin such a web, but the wizards of old had such power.”

Zedd drew a thumb down his smooth jaw as he stared off. “Yes, they would have had the power, I imagine.” His gaze returned to her eyes. “To what purpose?”

“
The spell alters the grounds of the palace. The outer shield, where we left Nathan, is the shell encasing it all. It creates the environment in which this half can exist in this world. The spell here, on this island, is linked to other worlds. Among other things, it alters time. That’s why we age more slowly than people living outside the spell.”

The old wizard pondered. “Yes, that would explain it.”

Ann glanced away from his eyes. “Nathan and I are both almost one thousand years old. I have been Prelate of the Sisters of the Light for nearly eight centuries.”

Zedd straightened his robes at his bony hips. “I’ve known of the spell, how it extends life spans in order to give you the time to do your foul work.”

“
Zedd, when the wizards of old began jealously guarding their power and refused to train young men with the gift so as to prevent a threat to their domination, the Sisters of the Light were formed to help these young men lest they die. Not everyone likes the idea, but there it is.

“
Without a wizard to help them, the task falls to us. We don’t have the same Han as the male, and so it takes us a great deal of time to accomplish the task. The collar keeps them alive, keeps their gift from harming them, from driving them mad, until we can teach them what they need.

“
The spell around the palace gives us the time we need. It was laid down for us three thousand years ago, when a few wizards helped with our cause. They had the power to cast a bifurcated web.”

Zedd was, for the moment, becoming intrigued. “Yes. Yes, I can see what you mean. Bifurcation would invert the force, kind of like twisting a length of gut, and create an area where the center could be bent to do extraordinary things. The ancient wizards could accomplish deeds I can only dream of doing.”

Ann was keeping a constant watch, to make sure they were alone. “Bifurcating a web bends it back on itself, creating an outer and inner region. There are two nodes, like with the twisted gut you mentioned, where this bending would have to take place: one at the outer shield, and one at the inner.”

Zedd peered at her with one eye. “But the node on the inner half, where the true event takes place, would be vulnerable to breach. Though created by necessity, it would be a dangerous flaw. Do you know where the inner node is located?”

“
We stand in it.”

Zedd straightened. He glanced around. “Yes, I can see the thought that went into it—placing it in the bedrock under everything else where it would be best protected.”

“
That’s why, on the off chance it could bring havoc, we unequivocally forbid wizard’s fire anywhere on Halsband Island.”

Zedd absently waved a hand. “No, no. Wizard’s fire wouldn’t harm such a node.” He turned to her with a suspicious glare. “What are we doing here?”

“
I brought you here to give you the opportunity to do what you wish to do—to destroy the spell.”

He stared, he blinked, and he stared some more. At last, he spoke. “No. It wouldn’t be right.”

“
Wizard Zorander, this is a highly inconvenient time for you to be overcome with morals.”

He folded his skinny arms. “This spell was placed by wizards greater than I will ever be, greater than I can even imagine. This is a wonder, a thing of profound mastery. I won’t destroy such a piece of work.”

“
I broke the truce!”

Zedd lifted his chin. “Breaking the truce condemns any Sister who comes to the New World to death. We are not in the New World. Breaking the truce says nothing about me going to the Old World and doing harm. By the terms of the truce, I have no right to do such a thing.”

She leaned closer with a dark look. “You promised me that if I took you away by that collar, endangering your friends, you would come to my homeland and lay waste to the Palace of the Prophets. I am giving you your chance.”

“
It was a temporary, passionate outburst. Reason has returned to my head.” He fixed her with a scolding scowl. “You’ve been using devious tricks and sly deception to try to convince me you’re a vile, contemptible, immoral malefactor, but you have failed to fool me. You are not the evil sort.”

“
I’ve shackled you! I abducted you!”

“
I won’t destroy your home and your life. Doing so, destroying the spell, would alter the pattern of the lives of the Sisters of the Light and, in essence, be ending their lives prematurely. The Sisters and their charges live by standards of time that to me seem strange, but to them are normal.

“
Life is perception. If a mouse with a life span of only a few years were to have the magic to make my life as short as its life, that, to my perception, would be killing me, though to the mouse it would seem he were granting no less than a normal life span. That’s what Nathan meant when he said you were killing him.

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I would be shortening their lives to the same as the rest of us, but by their expectations and the oath they have taken, that would be the same as killing them before they have a chance to live. I won’t do it.”

“
If I have to, Wizard Zorander, I’ll use the collar to give you pain until you agree.”

He smirked. “You have no conception of the tests of pain I have passed to become a wizard of the First Order. Go ahead, do your best.”

Ann pressed her lips together in exasperation. “But you have to! I’ve put a collar around your neck! I’ve done terrible things to you to make you angry enough to do this! The prophecy says the anger of a wizard is necessary to destroy our home!”

“
You’ve been playing me for a dancing frog.” His hazel eyes hovered closer. “I don’t dance unless I know the tune.”

Ann sagged in frustration. “The truth is that Emperor Jagang is going to take the Palace of the Prophets for his own use. He’s a dream walker, and controls the minds of the Sisters of the Dark. He intends to use the prophecies to find the forks he needs to win the war, and then he’s going to live under the spell for hundreds of years, ruling the world and everyone in it as his own.”

Zedd considered her with a scowl. “Now, that gets my blood to boiling. That’s a worthy reason to level the palace. Bags, woman, why didn’t you just tell me the truth in the beginning?”

“
Nathan and I have been working on this fork in the prophecies for hundreds of years. The prophecy says a wizard will level the palace in fury. Failure is too dark a vision for the world to take any risk, so I did the thing I thought would work. I’ve been trying to make you furious enough to want to destroy the Palace of the Prophets.” Ann rubbed her tired eyes. “It was a desperate act, because of a desperate need.”

Zedd grinned. “Desperate act. I like that. I like a woman who can appreciate the occasional need for acts of desperation. Shows spirit.”

Ann clutched his sleeve. “Will you do it, then? We don’t have any time to spare; the drums have stopped. Jagang could be here at any moment.”

“
I’ll do it. We’d better get back near the entrance, though.”

When they were back near the huge round door to the vaults, Zedd reached into a pocket and pulled out what appeared to be a stone. He tossed it on the floor.

“
What’s that?”

Zedd glanced back over his shoulder. “Well, I conjecture you told Nathan to cast a light web.”

“
Yes. Other than Nathan, a few sisters, and myself, no one knows how to spin a light web. I think Nathan has enough power to breach the outer node once a cascade is begun on this inner one, but I know neither of us has the power to start the one needed in here. That’s why I needed to bring you here. I fear only a wizard of the First Order will have the power necessary.”

“
Well, I’ll do my best,” Zedd grumbled, “but I’ve got to tell you, Ann, as vulnerable as a node would be, it’s still a spell cast by wizards the vastness of whose power I can only imagine.”

He spun his finger around, and the stone on the floor before him popped and snapped as it rapidly grew to a broad, flat rock. He stepped up onto it.

“
You get out of here. Go wait outside. Make sure Holly is safe while I do this. If anything goes wrong, and I can’t control the cascade of light, you won’t have time to get out of here.”

“
Act of desperation, Zedd?”

He answered with a grunt as he turned back to the room and lifted his arms. Already, sparkling colors were rising from the rock, engulfing him with spiraling shafts of humming light.

Ann had heard of wizard’s rocks, but she had never seen one, and didn’t know how they worked. She could feel the power that began emanating from the old wizard when he had stepped up on the thing.

She hurried from the vault as he wished. She wasn’t sure if he really wanted her out of the room for her own safety, or if he didn’t want her to see how he was going to do such a thing. Wizards did tend to guard their secrets. Besides that, Zedd was proving to be even more devious than Nathan—an achievement she would have thought impossible.

Holly wrapped her thin little arms around Ann’s neck when she squatted down by the dark niche.

“
Has anyone come past?”

“
No, Ann,” Holly whispered.

“
Good. Let me squeeze in here with you, while we wait until Wizard Zorander is finished with his task.”

“
He yells a lot, and says a lot of bad words, and waves his arms around like he’s going to call a storm around us, but I think he’s nice.”

“
You aren’t still itching from snow fleas.” Ann smiled in the dark of the small hiding place among the rock. “But I think you may be right.”

“
My grandmamma would get angry, sometimes, like when people meant to hurt us, but you could tell she really meant it. Wizard Zorander doesn’t really mean it. He’s just pretending.”

“
You are more perceptive than I have been, child. You’re going make a splendid Sister of the Light.”

Ann held Holly’s head to her shoulder as she waited in the silence. She hoped the wizard would hurry. If they were caught in the vaults, there was no way out, and a fight with Sisters of the Dark, despite his power, would prove more than dangerous.

Time dragged on with agonizing stubbornness. Ann could tell by her slow, steady breathing that Holly had fallen asleep against her shoulder. The poor child hadn’t been getting enough sleep—none of them had, rushing day and most of the nights, too, to get to Tanimura in time, to beat Jagang to the palace. They were all exhausted.

Ann started when there was a tug on her dress at her shoulder. “Let’s get out of here,” Zedd whispered.

Pulling Holly with her, she squeezed back out of their hiding place. “Did you do it?”

Zedd, looking worse than merely vexed, glanced back through the huge round door to the vaults.

“
I can’t get the confounded thing to work. It’s like trying to start a fire under water.”

She clutched his robes in a fist. “Zedd, we have to do this.”

He turned his worried eyes to her. “I know. But the ones who wove this web had Subtractive Magic. I have only Additive. I’ve tried everything I know. The web around this place is stable beyond my ability to breach. It can’t be done. I’m sorry.”

“
I’ve woven a light web in the palace. It can be done.”

“
I didn’t say I didn’t weave one, I said I can’t get it to ignite. Not down here in the node, anyway.”

“
You tried to ignite it! Are you crazy?”

He shrugged. “Act of desperation, remember? I had my suspicious about it working, so I had to test it. Good thing I did, or we would have thought it would work. It won’t. It will ignite only for life. It won’t expand and consume the spell.”

Ann sagged. “At least if anyone goes in there, hopefully Jagang, it will kill them. Until they discover it, anyway, and then they will drain the shield and have the vaults to do with as they will.”