Debt of Bones by Terry Goodkind Read Free Book Online

keen intellect. Abby looked away and picked at a stray thread on her sack. “But I don’t see what this has to do with denying me help to save my daughter. He has a daughter. Wouldn’t he do anything to get her back? Wouldn’t he do whatever he must to have his daughter back and safe?”
    The Mother Confessor’s head lowered and she stroked her fingers over her brow, as if trying to rub at a grievous ache. “The man who came before you was a messenger. His message had been passed through many hands so that it could not be traced back to its source.”
    Abby felt cold goose bumps running up her arms. “What was the message?”
    “The lock of hair he brought was from Zedd’s daughter. Panis Rahl offered the life of Zedd’s daughter if Zedd would surrender himself to Panis Rahl to be executed.”
    Abby clutched a her sack. “But wouldn’t a father who loved his daughter do even this to save her life?”
    “At what cost?” the Mother Confessor whispered. “At the cost of the lives of all those who will die without his help?
    “He couldn’t do such a selfish thing, even to save the life of one he loves more than any other. Before he denied your daughter help, he had just refused the offer, thus sentencing his own innocent daughter to death.”
    Abby felt her hopes again tumbling into blackness. The thought of Jana’s terror, of her being hurt, made Abby dizzy and sick. Tears began running down her cheeks again.
    “But I’m not asking him to sacrifice everyone else to save her.”
    The sorceress gently touched Abby’s shoulder. “He believes that sparing those people harm would mean letting the D’Harans escape to kill more people in the end.”
    Abby snatched desperately for a solution. “But I have a bone.”
    The sorceress sighed. “Abigail, half the people who come to see a wizard bring a bone. Hucksters convince supplicants that they are true bones. Desperate people, just like you, buy them.”
    “Most of them come seeking a wizard to somehow give them a life free of magic,” the Mother Confessor said. “Most people fear magic, but I’m afraid that with the way it’s been used by D’Hara, they now want nothing so much as to never again see magic. An ironic reason to buy a bone, and doubly ironic that they buy sham bones, thinking they have magic, in order to petition to be free of magic.”
    Abby blinked. “But I bought no bone. This is a debt true. On my mother’s deathbed she told me of it. She said it was Wizard Zorander himself bound in it.”
    The sorceress squinted her skepticism. “Abigail, true debts of this nature are exceedingly rare. Perhaps it was a bone she had and you only thought …”
    Abby held her sack open for the sorceress to see. The sorceress glanced in and fell silent. The Mother Confessor looked in the sack for herself.
    “I know what my mother told me,” Abby insisted. “She also told me that if there was any doubt, he had but to test it; then he would know it true, for the debt was passed down to him from his father.”
    The sorceress stroked the beads at her throat. “He could test it. If it is true, he would know. Still, solemn debt though it may be, that doesn’t mean that the debt must be paid now.”
    Abby leaned boldly toward the sorceress. “My mother said it is a debt true, and that it had to be paid. Please, Delora, you know the nature of such things. I was so confused when I met with him, with all those people shouting. I foolishly failed to press my case by asking that he test it.” She turned and clutched the Mother Confessor’s arm. “Please, help me? Tell him what I have and ask that he test it?”
    The Mother Confessor considered behind a blank expression. At last she spoke. “This involves a debt bound in magic. Such a thing must be considered seriously. I will speak to Wizard Zorander on your behalf and request that you be given a private audience.”
    Abby squeezed her eyes shut as tears sprang anew. “Thank you.” She put her face in