Terry Goodkind - Debt of Bones (Sword of Truth Prequel Novel)

DEBT OF BONES

DEBT OF BONES

'What do you got in the sack, dearie?'

Abby was watching a distant flock of whistling swans, graceful white specks against thedark soaring walls of the Keep, as they made their interminable journey past ramparts,bastions, towers and bridges lit by the low sun. The sinister spectre of the Keep had seemedto be staring back the whole of the day as Abby had waited. She turned to the hunched oldwoman in front of her.

'I'm sorry, did you ask me something?'

'I asked what you got in your sack.' As the woman peered up, she licked the tip of hertongue through the slot where a tooth was missing. 'Something precious?'

Abby clutched the burlap sack to herself as she shrank a little from the grinning woman.

'Just some of my things, that's all.'

An officer, trailed by a troop of assistants, aides, and guards, marched out from under themassive portcullis that loomed nearby. Abby and the rest of the supplicants waiting at thehead of the stone bridge moved tighter to the side, even though the soldiers had ample roomto pass. The officer, his grim gaze unseeing as he swept by, didn't return the salute as thebridge guards clapped fists to the armour over their hearts.

All day soldiers from different lands, as well as the Home Guard from the vast city ofAydindril below, had been coming and going from the Keep. Some had looked travel-sore.

Some wore uniforms still filthy with dirt, soot, and blood from recent battles. Abby had evenseen two officers from her homeland of Pendisan Reach. They had looked to her to be littlemore than boys, but boys with the thin veneer of youth shedding too soon, like a snakecasting off its skin before its time, leaving the emerging maturity scarred.

Abby had also seen such an array of important people as she could scarcely believe:sorceresses, councillors, and even a Confessor come up from the Confessor's Palace down inthe city. On her way up to the Keep,

there was rarely a turn in the winding road that hadn't offered Abby a view of thesprawling splendour in white stone that was the Confessor's Palace. The alliance of theMidlands, headed by the Mother Confessor herself, held council in the palace, and there, too,lived the Confessors.

In her whole life, Abby had seen a Confessor only once before. The woman had come tosee Abby's mother and Abby, not ten years at the time, had been unable to keep from staringat the Confessor's long hair. Other than her mother, no woman in Abby's small town of ConeyCrossing was sufficiently important to have hair long enough to touch the shoulders. Abby'sown fine, dark brown hair covered her ears but no more.

Coming through the city on the way to the Keep, it had been hard for her not to gape atnoble women with hair to their shoulders and even a little beyond. But the Confessor goingup to the Keep, dressed in the simple, satiny, black dress of a Confessor, had hair thatreached halfway down her back.

She wished she could have had a better look at the rare sight of such long luxuriant hairand the woman important enough to possess it, but Abby had gone to a knee with the rest ofthe company at the bridge, and like the rest of them feared to raise her bowed head to lookup lest she meet the gaze of the other. It was said that to meet the gaze of a Confessor couldcost you your mind if you were lucky, and your soul if you weren't. Even though Abby'smother had said it was untrue, that only the deliberate touch of such a woman could effectsuch a deed, Abby feared, this day of all days, to test the stories.

The old woman in front of her, clothed in layered skirts topped with one dyed of hennaand mantled with a dark draping shawl, watched the soldiers pass and then leaned closer. 'Dobetter to bring a bone, dearie. I hear that there be those in the city who will sell a bone suchas you needfor the right price. Wizards don't take no salt pork for a need. They got saltpork.' She glanced past Abby to the others to see them occupied with their own interests.

'Better to sell your things and hope you have enough to buy a bone. Wizards don't want whatsome country girl brung 'em. Favours from wizards don't come easy. She glanced to thebacks of the soldiers as they reached the far side of the bridge, 'Not even for those doing theirbidding, it would seem.'

'I just want to talk to them. That's all.'

'Salt pork won't get you a talk, neither, as I hear tell.' She eyed Abby's hand trying to coverthe smooth round shape beneath the burlap. 'Or a jug you made. That what it is, dearie?' Herbrown eyes, set in a wrinkled leathery mask, turned up, peering with sudden, humourlessintent. 'A jug?'

'Yes, ' Abby said. 'A jug I made.'

The woman smiled her scepticism and fingered a lick of short grey hair back under herwool head-wrap. Her gnarled fingers closed around the smocking on the forearm of Abby'scrimson dress, pulling the arm up a bit to have a look.

'Maybe you could get the price of a proper bone for your bracelet.

Abby glanced down at the bracelet made of two wires twisted together in interlockingcircles. 'My mother gave me this. It has no value but to me.'

A slow smile came to the woman's weather-cracked lips. 'The spirits believe that there isno stronger power than a mother's want to protect her child.'

Abby gently pulled her arm away. The spirits know the truth of that.'

Uncomfortable under the scrutiny of the suddenly talkative woman, Abby searched for asafe place to settle her gaze. It made her dizzy to look down into the yawning chasm beneaththe bridge, and she was weary of watching the Wizard's Keep, so she pretended that herattention had been caught as an excuse to turn back towards the collection of people, mostlymen, waiting with her at the head of the bridge. She busied herself with nibbling on the lastcrust of bread from the loaf she had bought down in the market before coming up to theKeep.

Abby felt awkward talking to strangers. In her whole life she had never seen so manypeople, much less people she didn't know. She knew every person in Coney Crossing. The citymade her apprehensive, but not as apprehensive as the Keep towering on the mountainabove it, and that, not as much as her reason for being there.

She just wanted to go home. But there would be no home, at least nothing to go home to,if she didn't do this.

All eyes turned up at the rattle of hooves coming out under the portcullis. Huge horses, alldusky brown or black and bigger than any Abby had ever seen, came thundering towardsthem. Men bedecked with polished breastplates, chain-mail, and leather, and most carryinglances or poles topped with long flags of high office and rank, urged their mounts onward.

They raised dust and gravel as they gathered speed crossing the bridge, a wild rush of colourand sparkles of light from metal flashing past. Sanderian lancers, from the descriptions Abby