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  　"By the directions, it's the house down this road, down at the end, in that stand of trees."

  　The road looked to be little used. Weak light from a distant window stole through bare branches of oak and alder. The light, rather than warm invitation, shone more like a glowing warning to stay away.

  　**Why don't you wait here," she said. "It might be better if I went alone."

  　She was providing him with an excuse. Most people didn't want anything to do with a sorceress. Jennsen, herself, wished she had some other choice.

  　"I'll go with you."

  　He had shown a distinct distrust of anything to do with magic. The way his eyes watched the dark place off through the branches and brush to the sides, he might have been trying to sound more brave than he was.

  　Jennsen admonished herself for even thinking such thoughts. He had fought D'Haran soldiers who not only had been much bigger than he, but had outnumbered him. He could have simply stayed out in the cave and not risked his life. He could have left the scene of such carnage and gone on with his life. Fearing magic only proved him of sound mind. She, of all people, could understand fearing magic.

  　Snow crunched under their boots as the two of them, after reaching the end of the road, made their way along the narrow path through the trees. Sebastian watched off to the sides while her attention was mostly fixed on the house. Behind the 【创建和谐家园】all place, the woods marched off up foothills. Jennsen imagined that only those with a strong need dared walk the path toward this door.

  　Jennsen reasoned that if the sorceress lived this near in to town, then she must be someone who helped people, someone whom people trusted. It was entirely possible that the woman was a valued and respected member of the community-a healer, devoted to helping others. Not someone to fear.

  　As the wind moaned through the trees looming around her, Jennsen rapped on the door. Sebastian's gaze studied the woods to each side. Off behind them the lights from homes and businesses would at least provide light enough for them to find their way back.

  　As she waited, Jennsen's gaze, too, was drawn to the gloom all around.

  　She imagined eyes in the darkness watching her. The hairs at the back of her neck lifted.

  　The door finally drew in, but only as wide as the face of the woman peering out at them. "Yes?"

  　Jennsen couldn't clearly make out the shadowed features of the face, but by the light coming out through the partly opened door, the woman could see Jennsen plainly enough.

  　"Are you Lathea?" she asked. "Lathea, the... sorceress?"

  　"Why?"

  　"We were told that Lathea the sorceress lives here. If that's you, may we come in?"

  　Still the door didn't open any wider. Jennsen pulled her cloak tighter against the cold night air, as well as the chilly reception. The woman's steady look took in Sebastian, then Jennsen's form hidden within a heavy cloak.

  　"I'm not a midwife. If you want to get yourself out of the trouble you two are in, I can't help with that. Go see a midwife."

  　Jennsen was mortified. "That's not why we're here!"

  　The woman peered out for a moment, considering the two strangers at her door. "What sort of medicine do you need, then?"

  　"No medicine. A... spell. I've met you before, once. I need a spell like you once cast for me-when I was little.”

  　The face in the shadows frowned. "When? Where?"

  　Jennsen cleared her throat. "Back at the People's Palace. When I lived there. You helped me when I was little."

  　"Helped you what? Speak up, girl."

  　"Helped... hide me. With some kind of spell, I believe. I was little at the time, so I don't recall exactly."

  　"Hide you?"

  　"From Lord Rahl.

  　There was an awful silence from the house.

  　"Do you remember? My name is Jennsen. I was very little at the time." Jennsen pushed her hood back so the woman could see her ringlets of red hair lit in the wedge of light coming through the door.

  　"Jennsen. Don't recall the name, but the hair I remember. It's not often one sees hair like yours."

  　Jennsen's spirits buoyed with relief. "It has been a while. I'm so glad to hear that-"

  　“Don't deal in your kind," the woman said. "Never have. I cast no spell for you."

  　Jennsen was stunned speechless. She didn't know what to say. She was sum the woman had once cast a spell to help her.

  　"Now, be gone. The both of you." The door started to close.

  　"Wait! Please-I can pay."

  　Jennsen reached into a pocket and hurriedly brought out a coin. Only after she passed it through the door did she see that it had been gold.

  　The woman inspected the gold mark for a time, perhaps considering if it was worth becoming involved again in what was sure to be a high crime, even for what amounted to a 【创建和谐家园】all fortune.

  　"Now do you remember?" Sebastian asked.

  　The woman's eyes turned to him. "And who are you?"

  　"Just a friend."

  　"Lathea, I need your help again. My mother. Jennsen couldn't bring herself to say it, and started over in a different direction. "I remember my mother telling me about you, and how you helped us, once. I was very little at the time, but I remember having the spell cast over me. It wore off years ago. I need that help again."

  　"Well, you have the wrong person."

  　Jennsen's fists tightened on her wool cloak. She had no other ideas. This was the only thing she could think of.

  　"Lathea, please, I'm at my wits' end. I need help."

  　"She's given you a goodly sum," Sebastian put in. "If you say that we have the wrong person, and you don't want to help, then I guess we should save the gold for the right person."

  　Lathea gave him a sly 【创建和谐家园】ile. "Oh, I said she had the wrong person, but I didn't say I couldn't earn the payment tendered."

  　"I don't understand," Jennsen said, holding her cloak closed at her throat as she shivered with cold.

  　Lathea gazed out at her for a moment, as if waiting to be sure they were paying close attention. "You are looking for my sister, Althea. I am Lathea. She is Althea. She is the one who helped you, not I. Your mother probably got our names mixed up, or you recalled it wrong. It used to be a common mistake, back when we were together. Althea and I have different talents with the gift. It was she who helped you and your mother, not I. "

  　Jennsen was dumbfounded and disappointed, but at least not defeated.

  　There was still a thread of hope. "Please, Lathea, could you help me this time? In your sister's place?"

  　"No. I can do nothing for you. I am blind to your kind. Only Althea can see the holes in the world. I cannot."

  　Jennsen didn't know what that meant-holes in the world. "Blind... to my kind?"

  　"Yes. I have told you what I can. Now, go away."

  　The woman started pulling back from the door.

  　"Wait! Please! Can you at least tell me where your sister lives, then?"

  　She looked back at Jennsen's expectant face. "This is dangerous business-"

  　"It's business," Sebastian said, his voice as cold as the night, "A gold mark's worth. For that price we should at the least have the place where we can find your sister."

  　Lathea considered his words, then in a voice as cold as his had been said to Jennsen, "I don't want nothing to do with your kind. Understand? Nothing. If Althea does, that's her business. Inquire at the People's Palace. "

  　Jennsen seemed to remember traveling to a woman not terribly far from the palace. She had thought it was Lathea, but it must have been her sister, Althea. "But can't you tell me more than that? Where she lives, how I can find her?"

  　"Last time I saw her she lived near there with her hu【创建和谐家园】and. You can inquire there for the sorceress Althea. People will know her-if she still lives."

  　Sebastian put his hand against the door before the woman could shut it. "That's a pretty thin bit of information. We should have more than that for the price offered."

  　"For what I have told you the price is paltry. I gave you the information you need. If my sister wants to tempt her doom, that's up to her. What I don't need, for any price, is trouble."

  　"We mean no trouble," Jennsen said. "We only need the help of a spell, If you can't help with that, then we thank you for your sister's name. We will seek her out. But there are some important things I need to know. If you could tell me-"

  　"If you had any decency, you'd leave Althea alone. Your kind will only bring us harm. Now go from my door before I set a nightmare upon you."

  　Jennsen stared at the face in the shadows.

  　"Someone already has," she said as she turned away.

  　CHAPTER 9

  　Oba, feeling fashionable in his cap and brown wool jacket, walked down the sides of the narrow streets, humming a tune he had heard played on a pipe at an inn he'd passed. He had to wait for a rider to go by before he turned down Lathea's road. The horse's ears swiveled toward him as it passed. Oba had had a horse, once, and liked to ride, but his mother had decided that they couldn't afford to keep a horse. Oxen were more useful and did more work, but they weren't as companionable.

  　As he walked down the dark road, his boots crunching on the crust of snow, a couple came past from the opposite direction, from the direction of Lathea's place. He wondered if they had gone to the sorceress for a cure. The woman cast a wary look his way. On a dark road, such a reaction was not undue, and, too, Oba knew that his size frightened some women. She sidestepped clear of him. The man with her met Oba's gaze-many men didn't.

  　The way they stared reminded Oba of the rat. He grinned at that memory, at learning new things. Both the man and the woman thought he was grinning at them. Oba tipped his cap to the lady. She returned a weak 【创建和谐家园】ile. It was the kind of empty 【创建和谐家园】ile Oba had often seen from women. It made him feel a buffoon. The couple melted into the dark streets.

  　Oba stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets and turned back toward Lathea's place. He hated going there in the dark. The sorceress was fearsome enough without the walk down her dark path. He let out a troubled sigh into the brisk winter air.

  　He wasn't afraid to confront the strength of men, but he knew he was helpless against the mysteries of magic. He knew how much misery her potions inflicted upon him. They burned him going in and coming out. They not only hurt, they made him lose control of himself, making him seem like he was just an animal. It was humiliating.

  　He had heard tell of others, though, who had angered the sorceress and suffered worse fates-fevers, blindness, a slow lingering death. One man had gone mad and run off naked into a swamp. People said he must have crossed the sorceress, somehow. They found him snake-bit and dead, all puffed up and purple, floating among the slimy weed. Oba couldn't imagine what the man had done to earn such a fate from the sorceress. He should have known better and been more cautious with the old shrew.

  　Sometimes, Oba had nightmares about what she might do to him with her magic. He imagined Lathea's powers could lance him with a thousand cuts, or even strip the flesh from his bones. Boil his eyes in his head. Or make his tongue swell until he gagged and choked in a slow, agonizing death.

  　He hurried along the path. The sooner started, the sooner finished. Oba had learned that.

  　When he reached the house he knocked. "It's Oba Schalk. My mother sent me for her medicine."

  　He watched his breath cloud in the air while he waited. The door finally opened a sliver so she could peer out at him. He thought that, being a sorceress, she should be able to see him without having to open the door for a look, first. Sometimes when he was there waiting for Lathea to mix up medicine, someone would come and she would simply open the door. Whenever Oba came, though, she always peered out first to see it was him.

  　"Oba." Her voice was as sour with recognition as her expression.

  　The door opened to admit him. Cautiously, respectfully, Oba stepped inside. He peered about, even though he knew the place well. He was careful not to act too forward with her. Harboring no fear of him, she swatted his shoulder to spur him to move deeper into the room to give her the leeway to shut the door.

  　"Your mother's knees, again?" the sorceress asked, pushing the door closed against the frigid air.

  　Oba nodded as he stared at the floor. "She says they're aching her, and she'd like some of your medicine." He knew he had to tell her the rest of it. "She asked for you to... to send along something for me, as well."

  　Lathea 【创建和谐家园】iled in that sly way she had. "Something for you, Oba?"

  　Oba knew that she knew very well what he meant. There were only two cures he ever went to her for--one for his mother and the one for him. She liked to make him say it, though. Lathea was as mean as a toothache.

  "A remedy for me, too, Mama said."

  　Her face floated closer. She peered up at him, the snaky 【创建和谐家园】ile still playing across her features. "A remedy for wickedness?" Her voice came in a hiss. "That it, Oba? Is that what Mother Schalk wanted you to fetch?"

  　He cleared his throat and nodded. He felt puny before her thin 【创建和谐家园】ile, so he looked back down at the floor.

  　Lathea's gaze lingered on him. He wondered what was in that clever mind of hers, what devious thoughts, what grim schemes. She finally moved off to fetch the ingredients she kept in the tall cabinet. The rough pine door squeaked as she pulled it open. She set bottles in the crook of her other arm and carried them to the table in the middle of the room.

  　"She keeps trying, doesn't she, Oba?" Her voice had gone flat, like she was talking to herself. "Keeps trying even though it never changes what is."

  　Oba.

  　An oil lamp on the trestle table lit the collection of bottles as she set them there, one at a time, her eyes lingering on each. She was thinking about something. Maybe what vile brew she might mix up for him this time, what sort of sickly condition she would inflict upon him in an attempt to purge him of his ever present, unspecified, evil.

  　The oak logs in the hearth had checkered in the wavering yellow-orange glow of the fire, throwing good heat as well as light into the room. In the middle of their room, Oba and his mother had a pit for a fire. He liked the way the 【创建和谐家园】oke in Lathea's fireplace went right up the chimney and out of the house, rather than hanging in the room before eventually making its way out a 【创建和谐家园】all hole in the roof. Oba liked a proper fireplace, and thought that he should make one for him and his mother. Every time he went to Lathea's place, he studied the way her fireplace was built. It was important to learn things.

  　He also kept an eye on Lathea's back as she poured liquid from bottles into a wide-mouthed jar. She mixed the concoction with a glass rod as each new ingredient was slowly added. When she was satisfied, she poured the medicine in a 【创建和谐家园】all bottle and stoppered it with a cork.

  　She handed him the little bottle. "For your mother."

  　Oba passed her the coin his mother had given him. She watched his eyes as her knobby fingers slipped the coin into a pocket in her dress. Oba finally let his breath go after she turned back to her table, to her work. She lifted a few bottles, studying them in the light of the fire, before she began mixing his cure. His cursed cure.

  　Oba didn't like speaking with Lathea, but her silence often made him even more uncomfortable, made him itch. He couldn't really think of anything worthy of saying, but he finally decided that he had to say something.

  　"Mama will be glad for the medicine. She's hoping it will help her knees."

  　"And she's hoping for something to cure her son?"