CHAPTER 49

Zedd frowned with the effort of concentrating on what it was Sister Tahirah had placed on the table before him. He looked up at her, at the way her scowl pinched in around her humped nose.

"Well?" she demanded.

Zedd looked down, squinting at the thing before him. It looked like a leather-covered ball painted with faded blue and pink zigzagged lines all around it.

What was it about it that seemed so familiar, yet so distant?

He blinked, trying to better focus his eyes. His neck ached something fierce. A father, hearing his young son in the next tent screaming in appalling agony, had grabbed Zedd by the hair and yanked him away from other parents who, pulling and pawing at him, made desperate demands of their own.

Because of the torn muscles in his neck, it was painful to hold up his head.

Compared to the torture he'd heard, though, it was nothing.

The dim interior of the tent, lit by several lamps hanging from poles, felt as if it were detached from the ground and swirling around him. The foul place stank. The heat and humidity only made the smell, and the spinning, worse. Zedd felt as if he might pass out.

It had been so long since he'd slept that he couldn't even remember the last time he had actually lain down. The only sleep he got was when he fell asleep in the chair while Sister Tahirah was seeing to another object being unloaded from the wagons, or when she went to bed and the next Sister hadn't yet arrived to take the next stint in their laborious cataloging of the items brought from the Keep. The catnaps he got were rarely longer than a few precious minutes at a time. The guards had orders not to allow him or Adie to lie down.

At least the screams of the children had ended. At least, as long as he cooperated, those cries of pain had stopped. At least, as long as he went along, the parents had hope.

A violent crack of pain suddenly hammered the side of his head, knocking him back. The chair toppled over, spilling him to the ground. With his arms bound behind his back, he couldn't do anything to break the fall and he hit hard. Zedd's ears rang, not only from the fall, but with the aftermath of the blow of the Sister's power delivered through the collar around his neck.

He hated that wicked instrument of control. The Sisters were not shy about exercising that control. Because the collar locked him away from the use of his own gift, he could not use his ability to defend himself.

Instead, they used his power against him.

It took little or no provocation to send one of the Sisters into a fit of violence. Many of these women had once been kindly people devoting their lives to helping others. Jagang had enslaved them to a different cause. Now they did his bidding. Though they might have once been gentle, they were now, he knew, trying to keep one step ahead of the discipline Jagang meted out to them. That discipline could be excruciating beyond endurance. The Sisters were expected to get results; Jagang would not be interested in the excuse that Zedd was being difficult.

Zedd saw that Adie, too, had been knocked to the ground. Any punishment he received, she, too, endured. He felt more agony for her than for himself.

Soldiers standing to the side moved in to right the chair and lift Zedd into it. With his arms bound behind his back, he couldn't get up by himself.

They sat him down hard enough to drive a grunt from his lungs.

"Well?" Sister Tahirah demanded. "What is it?"

Zedd once again leaned in, staring down at the round object sitting by itself in the center of the table. The faint blue and pink lines zigzagging all around it stirred deep feelings. He thought he should know this thing.

"It's. . it's. ."

"It's what!" Sister Tahirah slammed the book against the edge of the table, causing the round object to bounce up and roll a few inches before it came to a stop closer to Zedd. She tucked the book under one arm as she leaned with the other on the table. She bent down toward him.

"What is it? What does it do?"

"I… I can't remember."

"Would you like me to bring in some children," the Sister said in the soft, sweet tone of a very bitter threat, "and show you their little faces before they are taken to the tent next to us to be tortured?"

"I'm so tired," he said. "I'm trying to remember, but I'm so tired."

"Maybe while the children are screaming you would like to explain to their parents that you are tired and just can't quite seem to remember."

Children. Parents.

Zedd suddenly remembered what the object was. Painful memories welled up. He felt a tear run down his cheek.

"Dear spirits," he whispered. "Where did you find this?"

"What is it?"

"Where did you find it?" Zedd repeated.

Huffing impatiently, the Sister straightened. She opened the book and made a noisy show of turning heatedly through the pages. Finally, she stopped and tapped a finger in the open book.

"It says here that it was found hidden in an open recess in the back of a black six-drawer chest in a corridor. There was a tapestry of three prancing white horses hanging above the chest."

She lowered the book. "Now, what is it?"

Zedd swallowed. "A ball."

The Sister glared. "I know it's a ball, you old fool. What is it for?

What does it do? What is its purpose?"

Staring at the ball no bigger than his fist, Zedd remembered. "It's a ball for children to play with. Its purpose is to bring them pleasure."

He remembered this ball, brightly colored back then, frequently bouncing down the halls of the Wizard's Keep, his daughter giggling and chasing after it. He had given it to her for doing well in her studies.

Sometimes she would roll it down the halls, urging it along with a switch, as if she were walking a pet. Her favorite thing to do was to bounce it on the floor so that it would come up against a wall, after which it would bounce to another wall at an intersection of stone hallways. In that way she made it bounce around a corner. She would watch which hall it went down, left or right, then chase after it.

One day she came to him in tears. He asked her to tell him her troubles. She crawled up in his lap and told him that her ball had gone somewhere and gotten itself lost. She wanted him to get it unlost. Zedd told her that if she looked, she would likely find it. She spent days despondently wandering the halls of the Keep, searching for it. She couldn't find it.

Finally, starting out one morning at sunrise, Zedd made the long walk down to the city of Aydindril, to the market on Stentor Street. That was where he had first come across a stand where they sold such toys and found the ball with the zigzagged lines. There he bought her another one-not just like it, but instead one with pink and green stars. He deliberately chose a ball unlike the one she'd lost because he didn't want her to think that wishes could be miraculously fulfilled, but he did want her to know that there were solutions that could solve problems.

He remembered his daughter hugging his legs, thanking him for the new ball, telling him that he was the best father in all the world and that she would be ever so much more careful with the new ball and never lose it. He had smiled as he watched her put a little hand to her heart and recite a little-girl oath she had invented on the spot.

She treasured the ball with the pink and green stars. Since it was small, it was one of the few things she had been able to take with her, after she was grown, when she and Zedd ran away to Westland, after Darken Rahl had raped her.

When Richard had been young, he had played with that ball. Zedd remembered the smile on his daughter's face as she watched her own child play with that precious ball. Zedd could see in her beautiful eyes the memories of her own childhood as she watched Richard play. She had kept that ball her whole life, kept it until she died.