Red ducked back into her cottage, where she rummaged around before returning with a leather-bound tome that bore no title on the cover or spine. “I happen to have an empty life book among my possessions. You are fortunate, Nathan Rahl.”
“Indeed, I am.”
Red squatted next to the cook fire and used two long bones to gingerly remove the skull bowl. The blood ink inside the inverted cranium was even darker than the soot charred on the outer surface.
Nathan watched with great interest as she set the smoking bowl on the stone bench. She opened the life book to the first page, which was blank, the ivory color of freshly boiled bone. “And now to write your story, Nathan Rahl.”
She called the crow down from the tree, and the big black bird landed on her shoulder again. It used its sharp black beak to stroke her red braids in a sign of affection. The witch woman absently caressed the bird, then seized its neck. Before the bird could squawk or flail, she snapped its neck and caught its body as it fell. The dying crow’s wings extended, as if to take flight one last time. Its head lolled to one side.
Red rested the dead bird on the bench next to the skull bowl. With nimble fingers, she combed through its tail and wing feathers, finally selecting a long one, which she plucked loose. She held it up for inspection. “Yes, a fine quill. Shall we begin?”
After Nathan nodded, the witch woman trimmed the end with her dagger, dipped the pointed shaft into the black ink, and touched it to the blank paper of the waiting first page.
CHAPTER 3
The life book wrote itself.
Red sat on the stone bench, hands on her knees, not noticing that she left a smear of dark soot on her gray dress. As she worked her spell, a guiding magic suspended the crow-feather quill upright, and then it moved of its own accord, inscribing the story of Nathan Rahl.
Bending closer, the wizard looked on with boyish delight, resting an elbow on his knee. Nicci stepped up to watch the words spill out across the first page, line after line, and then move on to the next page. Each time the ink ran dry, the feather paused above the book, and Red plucked it out of the air, dipped it into the bowl of burned blood, and placed it back on the page. The flow of words resumed.
“I recall how many times I wrote and rewrote The Adventures of Bonnie Day until I was satisfied with the prose,” Nathan said, shaking his head as he marveled. “This is far easier.”
The story flowed, page after page, chronicling Nathan’s long life as a dangerous prophet, how he’d been imprisoned by the Sisters of the Light, first to train, then to control him … how for years they monitored his every utterance of prophecy, terrified of the turmoil that could arise from false interpretations. And prophecies were nearly always misinterpreted, warnings often misconstrued. Merely trying to avoid a dire fate usually precipitated that exact fate.
“People never seem to learn the lesson,” Nathan muttered as he read. “Richard was right to disregard prophecy for so long.”
Nicci agreed. “I am not sorry that prophecy is gone from the world.”
The words flew past faster than anyone could read them, and the life book’s pages turned of their own accord. Nicci scanned back and forth, catching some snippets of Nathan’s life, stories she already knew. On the road, he had spent much time telling her about himself, whether or not she asked.
He leaned closer as a new section began. “Oh, this is a good part.”
In his loneliness in the palace, the Sisters had occasionally taken pity on Nathan, hiring women from the finer brothels in Tanimura to comfort him. According to the tale as written in the life book, Nathan enjoyed the conversation of an ordinary woman with ordinary dreams and desires. Nathan had once whispered a terrible prophecy in the ear of a gullible whore—and the horrified young woman had run screaming from the Palace of the Prophets. Once out in the city, she repeated the prophecy to others, and the repercussions spread and spread, eventually triggering a bloody civil war … all due to Nathan’s reckless pillow talk to a woman he would never see again.
The Sisters had punished Nathan for that, curtailing his limited freedoms, even after he revealed that the supposed “mistake” had accomplished his intent of killing a young boy child destined to become a ruthless tyrant, a tyrant who would have slaughtered countless innocents.
“A relatively minor civil war was a small enough price to prevent that outcome,” Nathan remarked as he skimmed the black-blood words scrolling out.
When the quill ran dry again, Red dipped it into the skull bowl, stirred the burned blood, and set the feather tip on the page, where it continued to scratch and scrawl.
Nathan’s story went on and on—rambling, in Nicci’s opinion—and the feather pen wrote word after word. Of course, most of his adventures had occurred only after he managed to escape from the palace: his brief romance with Clarissa and its tragic end, his work with Richard Rahl to overthrow the Imperial Order and Emperor Jagang, his battles to stop the evil Hannis Arc and the undead Emperor Sulachan.
Faster than Nicci expected, the entire volume filled up. When the black blood finally reached the last page in the book, the tale ended with the all-too-recent account of Nicci and Nathan trudging through moss-covered skulls to find the witch woman in the Dark Lands. All of the charred-blood ink in the skull bowl was used up, and the lifeless feather dropped and drifted to the ground.
Nathan was obviously impressed with his own story. “Thank you, Red.” When he closed the cover, he was delighted to see that his name had appeared on the leather front and on the spine. “I shall carry the life book with me and read it off and on. I’m certain others would like to read it as well. Scholarly libraries will want copies.”
The witch woman shook her head. “That will not be possible, Nathan Rahl.” She took the tome from him. “I agreed to create a life book for you, but I never said you could keep it. The volume stays with me. That is my price.”
Nathan sputtered. “But that wasn’t what I thought … that isn’t the purpose—”
“You did not ask the price beforehand, Wizard,” Nicci said. “After living a thousand years, you should be wiser than that.”
Red ducked back into her cottage, leaving the volume on the bench, as if daring Nathan to take it and escape. He did not. She emerged with a smaller, thinner leather-bound book, which was also blank. “I will take your life story, but I give you something that’s worth far more. A new life book filled with potential, rather than stale old words.” She offered it to Nathan. “I have your past, your old story, but with this book, I give you the rest of your life. Live it the way you would want it to be written.”
Nathan ran a fingertip over the smooth leather cover, disappointed. “Thank you, I suppose.” He held the book in his hands.
“I happen to know that you, and the sorceress, are both vital to the future.” The witch woman stepped uncomfortably close to Nicci and dropped her voice. “Are you certain you don’t want a life book of your own? There may be things you need to learn.”
“I am certain, witch woman. My past is my story to keep, and my future will be written by me, in my own way, not through the control or influence of you or anyone else.”
“I just wanted to make the offer.” She turned away with a hint of secret amusement in her eyes, followed by a shadow of unexpected concern. “You may still be required to do things, Sorceress, whether or not you want to hear about them.”
Nathan opened his new life book and was surprised to find it wasn’t entirely blank. “There are words written on the first page. ‘Kol Adair.’” Perplexed, he looked up at Red. “I don’t recognize the term. Is it a name? A place?”