Stone 35

**Chapter 35**

Zedd goes upstairs and discovers that Adie tried to start a fire with magic, only to accidentally make the logs disappear. We learn that Zedd and Adie's skrinitis is tainting their magic: since the skrin are sort of between the world of life and the underworld, they are associated with both the Additive magic and the Subtractive magic. Which explains why Adie's logs vanished, and why Zedd accidentally disappeared a few coins, but not why Zedd's curse made a guy blow bubbles or turn coins to wood.

We learn that the woman who gave Adie the skrin bone was a Nun, which makes Zedd curse viciously: *“Bags and double bags!”* Adie apparently traveled to Europe (how??) to study with the Nuns. Apparently the Nuns have to stay out of America because of a truce with the wizards: *“They know the rules! They may not take a gifted one unless every wizard declines to teach him. To go against the rules just once would mean a death sentence to any [Nun] that ever again crossed that valley.”*

How many wizards are there normally (before Rahl had them all killed)? Ten? Fifty? Hundreds? Apparently a “gifted one” must be presented to every single wizard in the Midlands and rejected by every single one before it becomes acceptable for the Nuns to teach him. And the Nuns are supposed to magically know when this has happened, I guess, since Zedd is so het up about the possibility of Nuns in America. Zedd also notes that *“...I would never turn down the teaching of one with the gift...Nor would any wizard I taught.”* So I'm not sure why that clause is even left in; it would make more sense to just bar the Nuns from America, rather than leave this convoluted but-except-unless business. \~/\~/

Adie says that at one time many young wizards died because the established wizards did not want to train them, and *“did not want to train one who one day might be a threat to their power.”* But I thought all the wizards were good and kind and benevolent? Witness the fact that they worked for the Confessors, who are Better Than You. Also, this is stupid. If you're training someone, especially in something as rare and powerful as magic, you get their power *in addition to* your own – because you control them, see. Which is more dangerous: a lone wizard, or a wizard with a half-dozen apprentices?

Bleah. \~/

There's some more chatter, and Adie says *“The [Nuns] value honesty above almost anything else. But to them, lying in the service of the Creator be a virtue.”* Note that the second part directly contradicts Verna's behavior, and will continue to do so. Either Verna is atypical, or Adie is wrong.

And now we're somewhere else, and so is Rachel. She's in a *“fog of dim light,”* and soft hands are touching her and voices are comforting her. It's comforting. Rachel remembers trying to catch Richard, and some people who tried to stop them, and Chase fighting, and blood. But the Magic Mist is melting away the nasty memories, which will surely leave no psychological scars.

The Mysterious Disembodied Hands undress her o\_O so she can bathe, and now we have disembodied faces as well. Creepy. The MDH heal a bruise on her shoulder and then tell her they can't take off the stone around her neck, that she'll have to. She says she doesn't want to, and the Voices say that *“it will stay on. Now, and forever, if you wish.”* With this not-at-all-ominous comment, Rachel bathes, and it's wonderful and comforting and not even slightly creepy.

Rachel finds Chase, and she tells him the Voices say they can stay forever. Chase thinks this is just peachy, and they have an honest-to-God montage of eating, sleeping, playing with Mysterious Other Children, walking in a forest, walking in a meadow, etc, etc.

That was creepy.

And now we're back with She. I don't know if this is the same She who was with Sue Nun earlier, but I think it is. She is floating around like a genie on a cushion of air, and She has a dead boy and a statue, which I guess probably has another life-drain “quillion” gem in it.

Jedidiah comes in, and we learn that She is actually Sue Nun with the violet-flecked blue eyes. Sue Nun has just finished vampirizing the Force from the boy, who was apparently a young wizard. We learn that, after freaky monster-sex, a Bad Nun can steal a male wizard's Force whenever she pleases, which makes her awesomely powerful. Jed and Sue Nun chat for a bit, and she asks him to make her a magical device, made from *“the steel of a hundred sword points...Ones that have pierced flesh in combat.”* If it's made from a hundred sword-points, I guess this is going to be a *big* magical whatsit.

Sue Nun then starts coming on to Jed, and they chapter ends with implied freaky sex. \~/

Drinks: 4

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