To each side, it was spreading, a wall of death raging across the world of life.

Abby realized she heard the river again, the comfortable, common, sloshing, lapping, burbling sounds that she lived her life hearing but most of the time didn't notice.

Zedd hopped down from the rock. He took her hand and helped her down. Abby gripped his hand tightly to brace against the dizzying sensations swimming through her head.

Zedd snapped his fingers, and the rock upon which they had just stood leaped into the air, causing her to gasp in fright. In an instant so brief that she doubted she had seen it, Zedd caught the rock. It had become a small stone, smaller than an egg. He winked at her as he slipped it into a pocket. She thought the wink the oddest thing she could imagine, odder even than the boulder, now a stone in his pocket.

On the bank, the Mother Confessor and the sorceress waited. They took her arms, helping her out of the water.

The sorceress looked grim. 'Zedd, why isn't it moving?'

It sounded to Abby more like an accusation than a question. Either way, Zedd ignored it.

'Zedd,' Abby mumbled, 'I'm so sorry. It's my fault. I shouldn't have left her alone. I should have stayed. I'm so sorry.'

The wizard, hardly hearing her words, was looking off to the wall of death on the other side of the river. He brought his clawed fingers up past his chest, calling something forth from within himself.

With a sudden thump to the air, fire erupted between his hands. He held it out as he would hold an offering. Abby threw an arm up in front of her face at the heat.

Zedd lifted the roiling ball of liquid fire. It grew between his hands, tumbling and turning, roaring and hissing with rage.

The three women backed away. Abby had heard of such fire. She had once heard her mother name it in a hushed tone: wizard's fire. Even then, not seeing or knowing its like, those whispered words forming a picture in Abby's mind as her mother recounted it, had sent a chill through Abby. Wizard's fire was the bane of life, called forth to scourge an enemy. This could be nothing else.

'For killing my love, my Erilyn, the mother of our daughter, and all the other innocent loved ones of innocent people,' Zedd whispered,'I send you, Panis Rahl, the gift of death.'

The wizard opened his arms outward. The liquid blue and yellow fire, bidden by its master, tumbled forward, gathering speed, roaring away towards D'Hara. As it crossed the river, it grew like angry lightning blooming forth, wailing with wrathful fury, reflecting in glimmering points from the water in thousands of bright sparkles.

The wizard's fire shot across the growing wall of green, just catching the upper edge. At the contact, green flame flared forth, some of it tearing away, caught up behind the wizard's fire, trailing after like smoke behind flame. The deadly mix howled towards the horizon. Everyone stood transfixed, watching, until all trace of it had vanished in the distance.

When Zedd, pale and drawn, turned back to them, Abby clutched his robes. 'Zedd, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't -'

He put his fingers to her lips to silence her. 'There is someone waiting for you.'

He tilted his head. She turned. Back by the rushes, Philip stood holding Jana's hand. Abby gasped with a jolt of giddy joy. Philip grinned his familiar grin. At his other side, her father smiled and nodded his approval to her. Arms reaching, Abby ran to them. Jana's face wrinkled. She backed against Philip. Abby fell to her knees before her. 'It's Mama,’ Philip said to Jana. 'She just has herself some new clothes.'

Abby realized Jana was frightened by the red leather outfit she was wearing. Abby grinned through her tears. 'Mama!'Jana cried at seeing the smile.

Abby threw her arms around her daughter. She laughed and hugged Jana so hard the child squeaked in protest. Abby felt Philip's hand on her shoulder in loving greeting. Abby stood and threw an arm around him, tears choking her voice. Her father put a comforting hand to her back while she squeezed Jana's hand.

Zedd, Delora, and the Mother Confessor gathered them and herded them up the hill towards the people waiting at the top. Soldiers, mostly officers, some that Abby recognized, a few other people from Aydindril, and the wizard Thomas waited with the freed prisoners. Among the people liberated were those of Coney Crossing; people who held Abby, the daughter of a sorceress, in no favour. But they were her people, the people from her home, the people she had wanted saved.

Zedd rested a hand on Abby's shoulder. Abby was shocked to see that his wavy brown hair was now partly snow-white. She knew without a looking-glass that hers had undergone the same transformation in the place beyond the world of life, where, for a time, they had been.

'This is Abigail, born of Helsa,' the wizard called out to the people gathered. 'She is the one who went to Aydindril to seek my help. Though she does not have magic, it is because of her that you people are all free. She cared enough to beg for your lives.'

Abby, with Philip's arm around her waist and Jana's hand in hers, looked from the wizard to the sorceress, and then to the Mother Confessor. The Mother Confessor smiled. Abby thought it a cold-hearted thing to do in view of the fact that Zedd's daughter had been murdered before their eyes not long before. She whispered as much.

The Mother Confessor's smile widened. 'Don't you remember?' she asked as she leaned close. 'Don't you remember what 1 told you we call him?'

Abby, confused by everything that had happened, couldn't imagine what the Mother Confessor was talking about. When she admitted she didn't, the Mother Confessor and the sorceress shepherded her onward, past the grave where Abby had reburied her mother's skull upon her return, and into the house. With a hand, the Mother Confessor eased back the door to Abby's bedroom. There, on the bed where Abby had placed her, was Zedd's daughter, still sleeping. Abby stared in disbelief.

'The trickster,’ the Mother Confessor said. 'I told you that was our name for him.'

'And not a very flattering one,' Zedd grumbled as he stepped up behind them.

'But... how?' Abby pressed her fingers to her temples, 'I don't understand.'

Zedd gestured. Abby saw, for the first time, the body tying just beyond the door out the back. It was Mariska.

'When you showed me the room when we first came here,' Zedd told her, 'I laid a few traps for those intent on harm. That woman was killed by those traps because she came here intent on taking my daughter from where she slept.'

'You mean it was all an illusion?' Abby was dumbfounded. 'Why would you do such a cruel thing? How could you?'

'I am the object of vengeance,' the wizard explained. 'I didn't want my daughter to pay the price her mother has already paid. Since my spell killed the woman as she tried to harm my daughter, I was able to use a vision of her to accomplish the deception. The enemy knew the woman, and that she acted for Anargo. I used what they expected to see to convince them and to frighten them into running and leaving the prisoners.

'I cast the death spell so that everyone would think they saw my daughter being killed. This way, the enemy thinks my daughter dead, and will have no reason to hunt her or ever again try to harm her. I did it to protect her from the unforeseen.'

The sorceress scowled at him. 'If it were any but you, Zeddicus, and for any reason but the reason you had, I'd see you brought up on charges for casting such a web as a death spell.' She broke into a grin. 'Well done, First Wizard.'

Outside, the officers all wanted to know what was happening.

'No battle today,’ Zedd told them. 'I've just ended the war.'

They cheered with genuine joy. Had Zedd not been the First Wizard, Abby suspected they would have hoisted him on their shoulders. It seemed that there was no one more glad for peace than those whose job it was to fight for it.