He looked up at her from under his bushy eyebrows. “I believe you know him. His name is Richard.”

Adie lurched forward in her chair. “Richard! Richard is your…” She leaned back, shaking her head. “Wizards and their secrets.” She scowled a little, but then softened her expression. “Perhaps you had just cause for a secret such as this. Does Richard have the gift?”

Zedd lifted his eyebrows as he nodded. “Indeed he does. That was one reason I hid him in Westland. I feared he had the gift, though I wasn’t sure, and I wanted him to be safe from danger. As you said, the Keeper lusts for those with the gift more than any other. I knew that if I began teaching him, used magic very much myself, the gaze of danger would settle on him.

“I wanted to let him grow, become strong of character, before I tested him, and if he had the gift, taught him. I had always suspected he had the gift. Sometimes, I hoped he did not. But I now know he does. He used it to stop Darken Rahl. Used magic.”

He leaned forward. “I suspect he has the gift from both his grandfather and his father. From two different lines of wizards.”

“I see,” was all she said.

“But we have more important things to worry about right now. Darken Rahl used the boxes of Orden. He opened one, the wrong one, for him anyway. But maybe the wrong one for us too. There are books back at the Keep that speak of it. They warn that if the boxes are used, if the Magic of Orden is used, and even if the person who put them in play makes a mistake and it kills him, it can still tear the veil.

“Adie, I don’t know as much about the underworld as you. You have been studying it most of your life. I need your help. I need you to come to Aydindril with me to study the books to see what can be done. I’ve read many of them and don’t understand much of their meaning. Perhaps you will. Even if you only see one thing I miss, it could be important.”

She stared at the table with a bitter expression. “I be an old woman. I be an old woman who has welcomed the Keeper into my heart.”

Zedd watched her, but she didn’t meet his eyes. He pushed his chair back and stood. “An old woman? No. A foolish woman, maybe.” She didn’t reply. Her gaze stayed pointedly on the table.

Zedd strolled across the room and inspected the bones hanging on the wall. He clasped his hands behind his back as he studied the talismans of the dead.

“Maybe I am just an old man then. Hmm? A foolish old man. Maybe I should let a young man do this work.” He glanced over his shoulder. She was watching him. “But if a young man is good, then even younger would be better. In fact, why not let a child do it? That would be better yet. Maybe there is a ten-year-old-boy somewhere who will be willing to do something to stop the dead from swallowing the living.”

He threw his hands up in the air. “According to you, it would seem, knowledge is of no use, only youth.”

“Now you are being foolish, old man. You know what I mean.”

Zedd stepped back to the table and gave a shrug of his bony shoulders. “If you just sit here in this house instead of helping with what you know, then you might as well be the thing you fear most: an agent of the Keeper.”

He put his knuckles to the table and glowered as he leaned over her. “If you don’t fight him, then you help him. That is what his plan has been all along. Not to turn you to him, but to make you fear stopping him.”

She looked into his eyes, uneasiness stealing into her expression. “What do you mean?”

“He has already done all he needed, Adie. He made you afraid of yourself. The Keeper has an eternity of patience. He doesn’t need you to work for him. It takes effort to turn one with the gift. You weren’t worth the trouble. He needed only for you not to work against him. He did all that was necessary. He didn’t waste an effort to do more.

“In some ways he is as blind to this world as we are to his. He has only so much influence here; he must choose his tasks carefully. He doesn’t spend what power he has here frivolously.”

Realization took the place of unease. “Perhaps you not be such an old fool.”

Zedd smiled as he pulled the chair forward and sat. That has always been my opinion.”

Hands nestled in her lap, Adie studied the tabletop as if hoping it would come to her aid. The house was silent, except for the slow crackle of the fire in the hearth. “All these years, the truth be hiding right under my nose.” She lifted her head, giving him a puzzled frown. “How did you come to be so wise?”

Zedd shrugged. “But one of the advantages of having lived so long. You view yourself as just an old woman. I see a striking, dear lady, who has learned much in her time in this world, and has gained wisdom from what she has seen.”

He pulled the yellow rose from her hair and held it before her. “Your loveliness is not a mask, layered over a rotten core. It blossoms from the beauty inside.”

She lifted the flower from his fingers and laid it on the table. “Your clever tongue cannot cover the fact that I have wasted my life…”

Zedd shook his head, cutting her off. “No. You have wasted nothing. You simply have not seen the other side of things yet. In magic, in all things, there is a balance if we look for it. The Keeper did as he did, sending a baneling to you, to keep you from interfering in his work, and to plant a seed of doubt in you that would perhaps turn you to him one day.

“But in that too, there was something to balance what he did. You came here to learn about the world of the dead in order to contact your Pell. Don’t you see, Adie? You were manipulated to prevent you from interfering with the Keeper’s plans, but in so doing, the balance is that you have learned things that might be of aid in stopping him. You must not surrender to what he had done to you; you must strike back with what he has inadvertently given you.”

Her eyes glistened as she cast her gaze about her house, looking to the bone pile, the walls covered with talismans of the dead she had collected over the years, and to the shelves holding more yet. “But my oath… my Pell. I must reach him, tell him. He died thinking I betrayed him. If I cannot redeem myself in his eyes, then I be lost, my heart be lost. If I be lost, then the Keeper will find me.”

“Pell is dead, Adie. Gone. The boundary, the pass, is gone. You would know better than I if it would have ever been any use in what you wanted, but in all these years, you have not found a way to make it so. If you wish to continue the pursuit of your oath, you will find no help here. Perhaps in Aydindril, you will.

“Helping to stop the Keeper does not mean you must break your oath to yourself. If my knowledge and help can be of any aid in what you seek, I offer it gladly. Just as you know things I do not, I know things you don’t. I am, after all, the First Wizard. Perhaps what I know will help you. Pell would not want you to bring him your message that you did not betray him, if it meant you must betray everyone else.”

Adie picked up the yellow flower, twirling it between her finger and thumb a moment before setting it down again. Gripping the edge of the table, she pushed herself to her feet. She stood a moment, and then lifted her head to gaze with her white eyes around the room once more.

Smoothing her robes at her hips, as if to make herself presentable, she limped around the table to stand behind his chair. Zedd felt her hands rest on his shoulders. Unexpectedly, she leaned over and kissed the top of his head and smoothed his unruly hair with gentle fingers. Zedd was relieved the fingers hadn’t gone around his throat. He thought they might, after some of the things he had said.

Thank you, my friend, for hearing my tale, and for helping me to find the meaning in it. My Pell would have liked you. You both be men of honor. I accept your word that you will help me tell my Pell.”