It isn't so bad, when the babe is newborn. They're not such a… such a person, yet.»

Oba. Surrender.

"You mean, it would be easier."

"That's right," she said, eagerly latching on to his words. "It would be easier.»

His own voice slowed and took on an edge that he didn't know had been in him. "You mean it would be easier… before they got big enough to fight back."

The range of his latent talents amazed him. It was a night of new wonders.

"No, no, that's not at all what I mean." But he thought it was. Her voice, reflecting a fresh respect for him, quickened, became almost urgent. "I only mean that it's easier before a woman comes to love her child. You know, before the child comes to be a person. A real person, with a mind. It's easier, then, and sometimes it's best for the mother."

Oba was learning something new, but he hadn't put it all together, yet. He sensed that all his new learning was profoundly important, that he was on the cusp of true understanding.

"How could it be best?"

Lathea stopped pouring the liquid and set the bottle down. "Well, sometimes it's a hardship to have a new baby. A hardship on both. It's best for both, really, sometimes……

She walked briskly to the cabinet. When she returned with a new bottle, she stepped around to the other side of the table so her back was no longer to him. Most of the ingredients for his cures were powders or liquids and he didn't know what they were. The bottle she brought back contained one of the few things he recognized, the dried base of mountain fever roses. They looked like brown, shriveled little circles with stars in the centers. She often added one to his cure. This time, she poured a pile in her cupped hand, made a fist to crush them, and dumped the fine brown crumbles in the cure she was mixing.

"Best, for both?" Oba asked.

Her fingers seemed to be looking for something to do. "Yes, sometimes." She seemed like she didn't want to talk about it anymore, but couldn't find a way to make it end. "Sometimes it's more of a hardship than a woman can endure, that's all-a hardship that only endangers her and the rest of her children."

"But Mama had no other children."

Lathea went silent for a moment.

Oba. Surrender.

He listened to the voice, the voice that had become somehow different. Somehow vastly more important.

"No, but all the same you was a hardship on her. It's difficult for a woman to raise a child by herself. Especially a child-" She caught herself, then started over. "I only meant that it would be hard."

"But she did it. I guess you were wrong. Isn't that so, Lathea? You were wrong. Not Mama-you. Mama wanted me."

"And she never married," Lathea snapped. Her flash of anger had put the flame of haughty authority back in her eyes. "Maybe if she… maybe if she'd married she would have had a chance to have a whole family, instead of only. ."

"A bastard boy?"

Lathea didn't answer this time. She seemed to regret having taken a stand. The spark of anger left her eyes. With slightly trembling fingers, she dumped another pile of the dried flower buds in her palm, hurriedly crushed them in her fist, and dumped them in the cure. She turned and busied herself studying the flames in the hearth through a liquid in a blue glass bottle.

Oba took a step toward the table. Her head came up, her eyes turning to his.

"Dear Creator she whispered as she looked into his eyes. He realized she was not speaking to him, but to herself. "Sometimes, when I look into those blue eyes, I can see him.

Oba's brow drew down above his glare.

The bottle slipped from her hand, thumped on the table, and rolled to the floor, where it shattered.

Oba. Surrender. Surrender your will.

This was new. The voice had never before said that.

"You wanted Mama to kill me, didn't you, Lathea?"

He took another step toward the table.

Lathea stiffened. "Stay where you are, Oba."

There was fear in her eyes. Little rat eyes. This was definitely new. He was learning new things almost faster than he could note them all.

He saw her hands, the weapons of a sorceress, lifting. Oba paused. He stood cautiously, at attention.

Surrender, Oba, and you will be invincible.

This was not merely new, it was startling.

"I think you want to kill me with your 'cures, don't you, Lathea? You want me dead."

"No. No, Oba. That isn't true. I swear it isn't."

He took another step, testing what the voice promised.

Her hands rose, a glow of light coming to life around her clawed fingers. The sorceress was conjuring magic.

"Oba"-her voice was more forceful, more sure-"stay where you are, now."

Surrender, Oba, and you will be invincible.

Oba felt his thighs bump the table as he advanced. The jars rattled and clanked together. One of them wobbled. Lathea watched it teeter and almost right itself, only to topple and spill its thick red liquid.

Lathea's face abruptly twisted with hatred, with rage, with effort. She cast her clawed hands forward, toward him, cast the full force of her power at him.

With a thunderous clap, light ignited, the flash making everything in the room go white for an instant.

He saw a flare of a yellow-white light knife through the air toward him-deadly lightning sent to kill.

Oba felt nothing.

Behind him, the light blasted a man-sized hole through the wooden wall, scattering flaming splinters out into the night. All the fire fizzled out in the snow.

Oba touched his chest where the full force of her power had been directed. No blood. No torn flesh. He was unharmed.

He thought that Lathea was even more surprised about it than he. Her mouth hung open in astonishment. Her wide eyes stared.

All his life he had feared this scarecrow.

Lathea quickly recovered, and again her face twisted with effort as she drew her hands up. This time an eerie blue hiss of light formed. The air smelled like burning hair. Lathea turned her palms up, sending forth her deadly magic, sending him death. Power no person could withstand shrieked toward him.

The blue light scorched the walls behind, but again he felt nothing. Oba grinned.

Again, Lathea wheeled her arms, but this time she also whispered a chant of clipped words he could not understand-rattling off a menace of magic. A column of light bloomed, undulating in the air before him, a viper of extraordinary might. Beyond doubt, it was meant to kill, Oba lifted his hands to feel the snaking rope of crackling death she had spawned. He ran his fingers through it, but could feel nothing. It was like looking at something in a different world. There, but not.

It was as if he were… invincible.

With a howl of outrage, her hands came up again.

Quick as thought, Oba seized her by the throat.

"Oba!" she screeched. "Oba, no! Please!"

This was new. He had never before heard Lathea say please.

With her neck in his meaty grip, he dragged her across the table toward him. Bottles scattered, tumbling to the floor. Some thudded and rolled, some broke like eggs.

Oba closed a fist on Lathea's stringy hair. She clawed at him, desperately calling upon her talents. She spoke words that had to be a mystical entreaty to magic, to her gift, to her sorceress power. While he didn't recognize the words, he understood their lethal intent.

Oba had surrendered, thouah, and he had become invincible.

He had watched her unleash her rage; now he unleashed his.

He slammed her up against her cabinet. Her mouth grew wide with a silent scream.

"Why did you want Mama to get rid of me?"

Her eyes, big and round, were fixed on the object of her terror: Oba. All his life, she had delighted in terrifying others. Now all that terror had returned to haunt her.

"Why did you want Mama to get rid of me?"

A series of small panting cries were her only answer.

"Why! Why!"

Oba ripped her dress from her body. Coins spilled from the pocket, raining across the floor.

"Why!

He clutched the white shift she wore underneath the dress.

"Why!

She tried to hold the shift to herself, but he stripped it away, sending her tumbling across the floor, bony arms and legs sprawling. Her wasted breasts hung like shriveled udders. This powerful sorceress was now naked before him, and she was nothing.

Her cries, full and round, came to life at last. Teeth gritted, he snatched her by the hair and hauled her to her feet. Oba rammed her against the cabinet. Wood splintered. Bottles cascaded out. He seized a bottle as it rolled out and broke it against the cabinet.

"Why, Lathea?" He brought the neck of a broken bottle up against her body. "Why!" She shrieked all the louder. He twisted it against her soft middle. "Why?"

"Please… A dear Creator… please, no."

"Why, Lathea?"

"Because," she wailed, "you are the bastard son of that monster, Darken RAU'

Oba hesitated. This was stunning news-if it was true.

"Mama was forced. She told me so. She said it was some man she didn't know who fathered me."

"Oh, she knew him she did. She worked at the palace when she was younger. Your mother had big breasts and bigger ideas, back then. Poorly conceived ideas. She wasn't smart enough to realize that she was no more than a night's diversion for a man with a limitless supply of womenthose eager, like her, and those not."

This was definitely something new. Darken Rahl had been the most powerful man in the world. Could that noble Rahl blood flow in his veins? The heady implications made his head swim.

If the sorceress was telling the truth.

"My mother would have stayed there at the People's Palace if she carried Darken Rahl's son."

"You aren't his gifted heir."

"But still, if I was his son-"

Despite her pain, she managed to give him that smile that said he was but dirt to her. "You are not gifted. Your kind were vermin to him. He ruthlessly exterminated all he discovered. He would have tortured you and your mother to death if he knew of you. Once she learned this, your mother fled."

Oba was overwhelmed with new things. They were beginning to become a jumble in his mind.

He pulled the sorceress close. "Darken Rahl was a powerful wizard. If what you say is true, he would have hunted us." He slammed her against the cabinet again. "He would have hunted me!" He shook her to elicit an answer. "He would have!"