Ann shrugged self-consciously. "We knew the loneliness of his confinement. It wasn't the most desirable solution, but yes, we brought him companionship from lime to time. We weren't heartless."

"How magnanimous of you."

Ann glanced away from his eyes. "We did what we had to, by locking him in the palace, but we felt sorrow for him. It wasn't his choice to be born with the gift of prophecy.

"We always warned him not to tell the women any prophecy, but one time he did. The woman ran screaming from the palace. We never knew how she escaped before we could stop her.

"She spread word of the prophecy before we could find her. It started a civil war. Thousands died. Women and children died.

"Nathan sometimes seems crazy, out of his senses. Sometimes he seems to me to be the most dangerously unbalanced person I've ever known. Nathan views the world not only by what he sees around him, but through the filter of prophecy that visits his mind.

"When I confronted him, he professed not to remember the prophecy, or having told the young woman anything. I only found out much later, when I was able to link several prophecies, that one of the children who died was a boy named in prophecy as one who would go on to rule through torture and murder. Untold tens of thousands would have died had that boy lived and grown into a man, but Nathan had choked off that dangerous fork in prophecy. I have no idea how much that man knows but won't disclose.

"A prophet has the potential to just as easily cause great harm. A prophet who wished power would have a fair chance of ruling the world." Zedd was still watching the door. "So you lock them away." "Yes."

Zedd picked at a thread on his maroon robes. He looked down at her squat form in the dim light. "Ann, I am First Wizard. If I didn't understand, I wouldn't be helping you." "Thank you," she whispered.

Zedd considered their options. There weren't many. "What you are saying, if I understand you, is that you don't know if Nathan is sane, but even if he is, he has the potential to be dangerous."

"I guess so. But Nathan has often helped me to spare people suffering. Hundreds of years ago, he warned me about Darken Rahl, and told me of a prophecy that a war wizard would be born-that Richard would be born. We worked together to see to it that Richard would be safe from interference as he grew, so that you would have the time to help raise your grandson into the kind of man who would use his ability to help people."

"For that, you have my gratitude," Zedd offered. "But you put this collar around my neck, and I don't like that one bit."

"I understand. It's not something I liked doing, nor am I proud of what I did. Sometimes, desperate need calls for desperate acts. The good spirits will have the final say on my actions.

"The sooner we get Nathan, the sooner I will take the Rada'Han from your neck. I don't enjoy holding you prisoner by that collar and making you help me, but in view of the dire consequences should I fail to get Nathan. I do as I feel I must."

Zedd aimed a thumb over his shoulder. "I also don't like that." Ann didn't look; she knew what he was pointing at. "What does a red moon have to do with Nathan? It's most peculiar, but what does one have to do with the other?"

"I'm not saying it has anything to do with Nathan. I just don't like it." With the thick clouds of the last few days, they had been slowed at night, both by the darkness and also by the difficulty of seeing the tracer cloud he had hooked to Nathan. Fortunately, they had been close enough to sense the link of magic without having to see the tracer cloud; the tracer cloud was only used to get its tracker close enough to sense the link.

Zedd knew they were very near to Nathan-within a few hundred feet. This close to the object of the trace, the link's magic distorted Zedd's senses, his ability to judge with the aid of his magic, his capacity to access his familiar ability with his gift. This close, his magic was like a bloodhound on scent, so concentrated on the object of its search that it disregarded anything else but the trail. It was an uncomfortable form of blindness, and another reason for his unease.

He could break the link, but that was risky before they actually had Nathan; once broken, it couldn't be reestablished without physical contact.

The snow flurries of the last few days had slowed them and made the going cold and miserable. Earlier in the day the clouds had at last cleared away, even if they had left behind the bitter wind to vex them. They had been looking forward to the moonrise, and the light it would provide as they closed in on Nathan.

They had both watched in stunned silence when the moon had risen: It had risen red.

At first, they thought that it might be a lingering haze that was causing it, but with the moon well overhead, Zedd knew it was not being caused by some innocent atmospheric event. Worse, with the recent cloud cover, he didn't know how long it had been since the moon had turned rid.

"Zedd," Ann finally asked into the breeding silence, "do you know what it means?"

Zedd looked away, pretending to scan the shadows. "Do you? You've lived a lot longer than I. You must know something about such a sign."

He could hear her fussing with her wool cloak. "You are a Wizard of the First Order. I would defer to your expertise in such matters." "You all of a sudden think my judgment worthwhile?" "Zedd, let's not joust with words about this. I know that such a sign is without precedent in my experience, but I do recall a reference to a red moon in an ancient text, a text from the great war. The book didn't say what it meant, only that it brought great alarm.

Zedd squatted in the shadow of the comer of the building they hid behind. He leaned his back against the clapboards and held a hand out in invitation. Ann sat beside him, deeper in the shadow "In the Wizard's Keep there are dozers of libraries, huge libraries, most at least as large as the vault of books at the Palace of the Prophets, many a great deal larger. There are also many books of prophecy there."

There were books of prophecy at the Keep that were considered so dangerous that they were kept locked behind the powerful shields protecting the First Wizard's private enclave. Not even the old wizards who had lived at the Keep when Zedd was young were allowed to read those prophecies. Even though he had access to them after he became First Wizard, Zedd had not read nearly all of them; the ones he had read left him in sleepless sweats.

"Dear spirits," he went on. "there an; so many books at the Keep that I've not even read all the titles. There used to be staffs of curators for each library. Each knew the books in his section of the stacks. Long ago, well before my time, these curators were gathered when an answer was sought. Each knew his own books and could speak up if his particular books held information on the subject in question. In this way it was a relatively simple task to locate the reference volumes or prophecies that might help with the problem at hand.

"When I was very young, there were only two wizards left acting as curators. Two men could not begin to tap the knowledge held there. A plethora of information is held in those books, but finding a specific bit of it is a formidable challenge. The guidance of the gift is needed to even begin to narrow the search.

"Needing information from the libraries is like being adrift in the ocean and needing a drink of water. Information is in overabundance, yet you can die of thirst for it before you can locate it. When I was young, I was guided as to what were the more important books of history, magic, and prophecy. I mostly confined my studies to those books."

"What about the red moon?" Ann asked. "What did the books you read say of it?"

"I only recall once reading about a red moon. What I read wasn't very explicit, mentioning it only obliquely. I wish I had thought to inquire into the subject further, but I didn't. There were other matters in the books that were of greater importance at the time and demanded my attention-matters that were real, and not hypothetical." "What did this book say?"