Verna turned back, staring for a moment, then lifted her skirts and knelt on the pad. Perhaps Annalina wanted her to pray for guidance. A Prelate was expected to be a pious person, although it was absurd to think one needed a special place to pray to the Creator. The Creator had created everything, everywhere was His special place, so why would one need a special place to seek guidance? A special place could never approach the meaningfulness of one's own heart. No place could compare to joining with her Han.

With an irritated sigh, Vema folded her hands. She waited, but wasn't in the mood to pray to the Creator in a place in which she was under obligation to do so. It vexed her to think that Annalina was dead yet still manipulated her. Verna's eyes roved the bare walls as her toe tapped against the floor. That woman was reaching out from the world beyond to enjoy a final morsel of control. Hadn't she had enough of that in all the years she was Prelate? One would think that would be enough, but no, she had to have it all planned out so that even after she was dead, she could still. .

Verna's eyes settled on the bowl. There was something in the bottom, and it wasn't ashes.

She reached in and lifted out a small package wrapped in paper and tied with a bit of string. She turned it over in her fingers, inspecting it. This had to be it. This had to be what she was sent here for. But why leave it in here? The shield — no one but the Prelate could enter. This was the only place to put something if you didn't want anyone but the Prelate to have it.

Verna pulled the ends of the bow and dropped the string back in the bow. Laying it in a palm, she lifted back the paper and stared at what was inside.

It was a journey book.

Finally, movement returned to her fingers and she extracted the book from the paper to thumb through the pages. Blank.

Journey books were objects of magic, like the dacra, that had been created by the same wizards who had invested the Palace of the Prophets with both Additive and Subtractive Magic. None since, for three thousand years, except Richard, had been born with Subtractive. Some had learned it through the calling, but none but Richard had been born with it.

Journey books had the ability to transmit messages; what was written in one with the stylus stored in the spine would appear by magic in its twin. As near as they could determine, the message written in one appeared in the twin simultaneously. Since the stylus could also be used to wipe old messages away, the books were never used up, and could be used over and over.

They had been carried by Sisters who went on journeys to recover boys born with the gift. More often than not, the Sisters had had to travel through the barrier, through the Valley of the Lost, going into the New World to recover the boy and put a Rada'Han around his neck so that the gift would not harm him while he learned to control his magic. Once beyond the barrier there was no turning back for instructions or guidance; one journey through and back was all that was possible for each Sister. Until now — Richard had destroyed the towers and their storms of spells.

A young boy with no understanding of the gift could not control it, and his magic sent out telltale signs that could be detected by Sisters at the palace who were sensitive to such disturbances in the flows of power. Not enough Sisters had this talent to risk sending them on journeys, so others were sent, and they carried a journey book to be able to communicate with the palace. If Sisters were to go after the boy, and something happened — he moved, for example — they would need guidance to find him in his new location.

Of course, a wizard could teach the boy to control the gift in order to avoid its many dangers, and in fact that was the preferred method, but wizards were not always available, or willing. The Sisters had long ago established an accord with the wizards in the New World. In the absence of a wizard, the Sisters of the Light were allowed to save a boy's life by taking him to the Palace of the Prophets for training in the use of his gift. For their part, the Sisters had vowed never to take a boy who had a wizard willing to teach him.

It was a truce backed by a death sentence to any Sister who ever again entered the New World if the agreement were ever violated. Prelate Annalina had violated that agreement in order to bring Richard to the palace. Verna had been the unwitting instrument of the violation.

At any one time there could be several Sisters gone on a journey to recover a boy. Verna had found a whole box of journey books back in her office, tied together in matching pairs. The journey books were twinned, each working only with its correct twin. Precautions were always taken before a journey was undertaken; the two books were taken to separate locations and tested, just to be sure a Sister wasn't sent off with the wrong book. Journeys were dangerous, that was why the Sisters also carried a dacra up their sleeve.

Usually, a journey lasted a few months, and on rare occasions they had lasted as long as a year. Verna's journey had lasted over twenty years. Nothing like that had ever happened before, but then, it had been three thousand years since one like Richard had been born. Verna had lost twenty years she could never recover. She had aged in the outside world. The twenty-odd years of aging her body had undergone would have taken near to three hundred years at the Place of the Prophets, She had not simply given up twenty years to go on Prelate Annalina's mission; she had in reality given up close to three hundred years.

Worse, Annalina had known all along where Richard was. Even though she had done as she had in order to allow the proper prophecies to come to pass so they could stop the Keeper, it hurt that she had never told Verna that she was being sent out to throw away that much of her life as a decoy.

Verna reprimanded herself. She had not thrown anything away. She had been doing the Creator's work. Just because she hadn't known all the facts at the time made it no less important. Many people toiled their whole lives at meaningless things. Verna had toiled at something that had saved the world of the living.

Besides that, those twenty years were perhaps the best years of her life. She had been out in the world on her own, with two other Sisters of the Light, learning about strange places and strange peoples. She had slept under the stars, seen distant mountains, plains, rivers, rolling hills, villages, towns, and cities that few others had seen. She had made her own decisions and accepted the consequences. She had never had to read reports; she had lived the stuff of reports. No, she had not lost anything. She had gained more than any of the Sisters sitting back here for three hundred years would ever gain.

Verna felt a tear drop onto her hand. She reached up and wiped her cheek. She missed her journey. All that time she had thought she hated it, and only now did she realize how much it meant to her. She turned the journey book over in her trembling fingers, feeling the familiar size and weight — the familiar grain of the leather, the familiar three little bumps at the top of the front cover.

She jerked the book up to her eyes, looking in the candlelight. The three bumps, the deep scratch at the bottom of the spine — it was the same book. She couldn't mistake her journey book, not after carrying it for twenty years. It was the very same book. She had looked at all the books in the box in her office, absently searching for this one, and she had not found it. It had been here.

But why? She held up the paper it had been wrapped in and saw there was writing on the paper. She held it near the candle in order to read it.

Guard this with your life.

She turned the paper over, but that was all it said. Guard this with your life.