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Because he had used his loving touch of magic, she died in screaming pain as he knelt helpless beside her.”
    Wincing, Abby touched her own stomach, almost feeling the wound. “That’s terrible.”
    The Mother Confessor’s violet eyes held an iron look. “The quad also took their daughter. Their daughter, who had seen everything those men had done to her mother.”
    Abby felt tears burning her eyes again. “They did that to his daughter, too?”
    “No,” the Mother Confessor said. “They hold her captive.”
    “Then she still lives? There is still hope?”
    The Mother Confessor’s satiny white dress rustled softly as she leaned back against the white marble balustrade and nested her hands in her lap. “Zedd went after the quad. He found them, but his daughter had been given to others, and they passed her on to yet others, and so on, so they had no idea who had her, or where she might be.”
    Abby looked to the sorceress and back to the Mother Confessor. “What did Wizard Zorander do to the quad?”
    “No less than I myself would have done.” The Mother Confessor stared back through a mask of cold rage. “He made them regret ever being born. For a very long time he made them regret it.”
    Abby shrank back. “I see.”
    As the Mother Confessor drew a calming breath, the sorceress took up the story. “As we speak, Wizard Zorander uses a spell that none of us understands; it holds Panis Rahl at his palace in D’Hara. It helps blunt the magic Rahl is able to conjure against us, and enables our men to drive his troops back whence they came.
    “But Panis Rahl is consumed with wrath for the man who has thwarted his conquest of the Midlands. Hardly a week passes that an attempt is not made on Wizard Zorander’s life. Rahl sends dangerous and vile people of all sort. Even the Mord-Sith.”
    Abby’s breath caught. That was a word she had heard. “What are Mord-Sith?”
    The sorceress smoothed back her glossy black hair as she glared with a venomous expression. “Mord-Sith are women who, along with their red leather uniform, wear a single long braid as the mark of their profession. They are trained in the torture and killing of those with the gift. If a gifted person tries to use their magic against a Mord-Sith, she is able to capture their magic and use it against them. There is no escaping a Mord-Sith.”
    “But surely, a person as strong in the gift as Wizard Zorander—”
    “Even he would be lost if he tried to use magic against a Mord-Sith,” the Mother Confessor said. “A Mord-Sith can be defeated with common weapons—but not with magic. Only the magic of a Confessor works against them. I have killed two.
    “In part because of the brutal nature of the training of Mord-Sith, they have been outlawed for as long as anyone knows, but in D’Hara the ghastly tradition of taking young women to be indoctrinated as Mord-Sith continues to this day. D’Hara is a distant and secretive land. We don’t know much about it, except what we have learned through unfortunate experience.
    “Mord-Sith have captured several of our wizards and sorceresses. Once captured, they cannot kill themselves, nor can they escape. Before they die, they give over everything they know. Panis Rahl knows of our plans.
    “We, in turn, have managed to get our hands on several highranking D’Harans, and through the touch of Confessors we know the extent of how we have been compromised. Time works against us.”
    Abby wiped the palms of her hands on her thighs. “And that man who was killed just before I went in to see the First Wizard, he couldn’t have been an assassin; the two with him were allowed to leave.”
    “No, he was not an assassin.” The Mother Confessor folded her hands. “I believe Panis Rahl knows of the spell Wizard Zorander discovered, that it has the potential to obliterate all of D’Hara. Panis Rahl is desperate to rid himself of Wizard Zorander.”
    The Mother Confessor’s violet eyes seemed to glisten with a