Nicci burst out with a laugh. "Her own Sisters of the Light? How ironic! She risks her life, while the chimes have interrupted magic, to come and save your worthless hides, and instead of escaping with her, you turn her in. How fitting."
Nicci surveyed their tense faces, these women sworn to the Creator's light, these Sisters of the Light who had worked hundreds of years in His name. "Yes, you do."
Nicci felt the numb indifference smothering her. "Fine, so you betrayed the Prelate." Only a spark of curiosity remained. "But what made her think she could escape with you for good? Surely, she must have had some plan for the chimes.
What was she expecting to happen when Jagang once again had access to your minds?-and hers?"
"Rest of it? What was the rest of her plan?"
Nicci blinked. She concentrated on keeping her breathing even. "Bond? What nonsense are you talking about, now?"
"How?"
To still her fingers, Nicci pressed her hands to her thighs. "I don't understand. How would such a thing work?"
Nicci was staggered. Of course . . .
But then, Jagang was often unable to enter Nicci's mind.
Sister Georgia fussed with the collar of her scruffy dress. "She and Ann both vanished."
Georgia glanced at her companions. "Well . . . maybe. But Sister Alessandra was one of yours . . . a Sister of the Dark. She was caring for Ann-"
Sister Georgia cleared her throat. "She threw such a fit about us that His Excellency assigned Sister Alessandra to look after her."
"As we marched into the city, the wagon with Ann's cage never showed up," Sister Georgia went on. "One of the drivers finally came around with a bloody head and reported that the last thing he saw before the world went dark was Sister Alessandra. Now the two of them are gone."
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"Besides," Sister Aubrey added, "we don't see you leaving. Seems you've been free of His Excellency from time to time, and you don't go."
"Well, I, I mean. . ." Sister Aubrey stammered.
Sister Aubrey's face reddened as Nicci added the force of her gift to the grip. The tendons in her wrist stood out with the strain. The woman's eyes showed white all around as Nicci's power began squeezing the life from her. Unlike Nicci, Jagang possessed their minds, and they were prohibited from using their power except at his direction.
Nicci released the woman but turned her glare on Sister Georgia. "Questioned you? What do you mean? What did he say?"
"He hurt us," Sister Rochelle said. "He hurt us with his questions, because we had no answer. We don't understand it."
Sister Aubrey comforted her throat. "What is it with you, Sister Nicci? Why is it His Excellency is so curious about you? Why is it you can resist him?"
"If you can be free of him, why do you not leave?" Sister Georgia called out.
They were unmoved by her insolence-they were accustomed to it.
"What? Oh, that. Nothing of importance. I just had the men tie Commander Kardeef to a pole and roast him over a fire."
Sister Georgia fixed Nicci with a grim glare, a rare blaze of authority born of seniority.
Nicci smiled and said, "Yes, I do," before ducking through the tent opening.
Here and there, a few toothless old people sat, legs splayed, leaning against a wall, watching with empty eyes the masses of armed men moving up and down their streets. Orphaned children wandered in a daze, or peered out from dark passageways. Nicci found it remarkable how quickly civilization could be stripped from a place.
The streets, populated as they were by grim-faced soldiers, gaunt beggars, the skeletal old and sick, wailing children, all amongst the rubble and filth, looked much like some of the streets Nicci remembered from when she was little. Her mother often sent her out to streets like this to minister to the destitute.
Nicci had stood, wearing a freshly washed, frilly blue dress, her hair brushed and pinned back, her hands hanging at her sides, listening as her mother lectured on good and evil, on the ways of sin and redemption. Nicci hadn't understood a lot d it, but in later years it would be repeated until she would come to know every word, every concept, every desolate truth by heart.
"You must learn, Nicci, that a person's moral course in this life is to help others not yourself," Mother said. "Money can't buy the Creator's blessing."
"Mankind is a wretched lot, unworthy, morbid, and foul. We must fight depraved nature. Helping others is the only way to prove your soul's value. It's only true good a person can do."
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Nicci felt great guilt for Father's wicked ways, for his ill-gotten wealth. Mother said she was doing her best to try to save his straying soul. Nicci never worried for her mother's soul, because people were always saying how caring, how kindhearted, how charitable Mother was, but Nicci would sometimes lie awake at night, unable to sleep with worry for Father, worry that the Creator might exact punishment before Father could be redeemed.
Nicci's father had a great many people working for him. Wagons brought foursquare bars and other supplies from distant places. Heavy cast-metal sows came in on barges. Other wagons, with guards, took goods to far-off customers. There were men who forged metal, men who hammered it into shape, and yet other men who shaped glowing metal into weapons. Some of the blades were made from costly "poison steel," said to inflict mortal wounds, even in a small cut. There were other men who sharpened blades, men who polished armor, and men who did beautiful engraving and artwork on shields, armor, and blades. There were even women who worked for Nicci's father, helping to make chain mail. Nicci watched them, sitting on benches at long wooden tables, gossiping a bit among themselves, tittering at stories, as they worked with their pincers burring over tiny rivets in the flattened ends of all those thousands of little steel rings that together went into the making of a suit of chain-mail armor. Nicci thought it remarkable that man's inventiveness could turn something as hard as metal into a suit of clothes.
Blacksmiths, bellowsmen, hammermen, millmen, platers, armorers, polishers, leatherworkers, riveters, patternmakers, silversmiths, guilders, engraving artists, even seamstresses for the making of the quilted and padded linen, and, of course, apprentices, came from great distances, hoping to work for her father. Many of those with skills lugged along samples of their best work to show him. Father turned away far more than he hired.
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Nicci liked to watch the intricate dance of people working. The workers would pause to smile at her, answer her questions, and sometimes let her hit the metal with a hammer. From the looks of it, Father enjoyed talking to all those people, too. At home, Mother talked, and Father said little, as his face took on the look of hammered steel.
He adored Nicci, but seemed to think raising her was a task too sacred for his coarse hands, so he left it to Mother. Even when he disagreed with something, he would bow to Mother's wishes, saying she would know best about such a domestic duty.
Nicci remembered occasions when Mother would stand at the window, looking out over the dark city, worrying, no doubt, about all the things that plagued her peace. On those quiet nights, Father sometimes glided up behind Mother, putting a hand tenderly to her back, as if she were something of great value. He seemed to be mellow and contented at those moments. He squeezed her bottom just a little as he whispered something in her ear.
Once, when he asked her how much she wished him to contribute, she shrugged and said, "I don't know. What does your conscience tell you, Howard? But, a man of true compassion would do better than you usually do, considering that you have more than your fair share of wealth, and the need is so great."
"It is not me and my friends who need it, Howard, but the masses of humanity crying out for help. Our fellowship simply struggles to meet the need."
She said, "Five hundred gold crowns," as if the number were a club she had been hiding behind her back, and, seeing the opening she had been waiting for, she suddenly brandished it to bully him.
"You do no work, Howard-your slaves do it for you."
"They should be. You steal the best workers from all over the land."
"They are the poor victims of your tricks. You exploit them. You charge more than anyone else. You have connections and make deals to cut out other armorers. You steal the food from the mouths of working people, just to line your own pockets."
"No one charges as much as you and that's the simple fact. You always want more. Gold is your only goal."
"Your workers do. You simply rake in the money."
"Business, business, business! When I ask you to give a little something back to the community, to those in need, you act as if I wanted you to gouge out your eyes. Would you really rather see people die than to give a pittance to save them? Does money really mean more to you, Howard, than people's lives? Are you that cruel and unfeeling a man?"
"You've put me off, Howard, with your arguing. You couldn't just give charitably of yourself; it always has to be dragged out of you-when it's the right thing to do in the first place. You only agree now because of your lecherous needs. Honestly, do you think I have no principles?"
He swept his blond hair back from his forehead, then turned and picked up his coat. In a level voice he said to Mother that he was going to go see to some things at work.
"Your father goes to whores, you know. I'm sure that's where he's off to now: a whore. You may be too young to understand, but I want you to know, so that you don't ever put any faith in him. He's an evil man. I'll not be his whore.
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At her friend's house, there were a few men and several women sitting and talking in serious tones. When they politely inquired after Father, Nicci's mother reported that he was off, "working or whoring, I don't know which, and can control neither." Some of the women laid a hand on her her arm and comforted her. It was a terrible burden she bore, they said.
Mother quickly forgot about Father as she became engrossed in the discussion her friends were having about the terrible conditions of people in the city. People were suffering from hunger, injuries, sickness, disease, lack of skill, no work, too many children to feed, elderly to care for, no clothes, no roof over their heads, and every other kind of strife imaginable. It was all so frightening.
Nicci listened as Mother's fellowship friends talked about all the intolerant people who harbored hate. Nicci feared ending up as one of those terrible people. She didn't want the Creator to punish her for having a cold heart.
"The prices of things are just terrible," a man with droopy eyelids said. He was all crumpled down in his chair, like a pile of dirty clothes. "It isn't fair. People shouldn't be allowed to just raise their prices whenever they want. The duke should do something. He has the king's ear."
One of the women said she would encourage her husband to back the duke. Another spoke up that they would write a letter of support for such an idea.
One of the other women puffed herself up like a chicken ready to lay an egg. "It's just terrible the way no one will give them a job, when there's plenty of work if it was just spread around."
The others sympathized with her burden.
"Man has no right to exist for his own sake," Mother was quick to put in as she nibbled on a piece of dense cake while glancing again at the grimly silent man. "I
tell Howard all the time that self-sacrifice in the service of others is man's highest moral duty and his only reason for being placed in this life.
The other people gasped their delight, and congratulated Mother for her charitable nature. They agreed, as they sneaked peeks across the room, that the Creator would reward her in the next life, and talked about all they would be able to do to help those less fortunate souls.
Nicci sat forward on the edge of her chair, thrilled at the idea of at last putting her hand to what Mother and her friends said was noble work. It was as if the Creator Himself had offered her a path to salvation. "I would so like to do good, Mother."
The deep creases of his face pleated to each side as the thin line of his mouth stretched in a smile. There was no joy in it, or in his dark eyes hooded beneath a brow of tangled white and black hairs. He wore a creased cap and heavy robes as dark as dried blood. Wisps of his wiry hair above his ears curled up around the edge of the cap that came halfway down on his forehead.
"Well . . . no, sir." Nicci didn't know what soldiering had to do with doing good. Mother always said that father pandered to men in an evil occupation-soldiers. She said soldiers only cared about killing. "I wish to help those in need."
Everyone seemed too timid to look directly at him. They glanced for a moment, looked away, then glanced back again, as if his face was not something to be taken in all at once, but sipped at, like a scalding-hot, foul-tasting remedy.
Her mother's hands pushed her at the man, as if she were an offering for the Creator. Unlike everyone else, Nicci couldn't take her gaze from his hooded eyes. She had never seen their like.
He held out a hand. "Pleased to meet you, Nicci."
Nicci went to one knee. She kissed the knuckles so as not to have to put her lips on the spongy web of thick blue veins covering the back of his hairy hand floating before her face. The whitish knobs were cold, but not icy, as she had expected.
Nicci thought that the Creator Himself must be very much like this man.
From all the things her mother told her, Nicci feared the Creator's wrath. She was old enough to know that she had to start doing the good work her mother always talked about, if she was to have any chance at salvation. Everyone said Mother was a caring, moral person. Nicci wanted to be a good person, too.
"Thank you, Brother Narev," Nicci said. "I will do my best to do good in the world."
"Is the fellowship a secret, then?" Nicci asked in a whisper.
"Self-sacrifice for the good of all is the only route to salvation. Our fellowship is open to all those willing to give of themselves and live ethical lives. Most people don't take us seriously. Someday they will."
"A day will come when the hot flames of change will sweep across the land, burning away the old, the decaying, and the foul, to allow a new order to grow from the blackened remains of evil. After we burn clean the world, there will be no kings, yet the world will have order, championed by the hand of the common man, for the common man. Only then, will there be no hunger, no shivering in the cold, no suffering without help. The good of the people will be put above the selfish desires of the individual."
All the eyes in the room watched her, to see if she was good, like her mother, "That sounds wonderful, Brother Narev."
Nicci swallowed. "I will pray for it, Brother Narev."
As Nicci walked down the street, handing out the bread, a man snatched her arm and pulled her into the stench of a narrow dark alley. She offered him a loaf of bread. He swiped the basket out of her hands. He said he wanted silver or gold. Nicci told him she had no money. She gasped in panic as he yanked her close. His filthy probing fingers groped everywhere on her body, even violating her most private places, looking for a purse, but found none hidden on her. He pulled off her shoes and threw them away when he found they had no coins hidden in them.
Holding herself up on trembling arms, Nicci vomited into the oily water running from under the mounds of offal. People passing the alley looked in and saw her retching there on the ground, but turned their eyes back to the street and hurried on their way. A few quickly darted into the alley, bent, and scooped up bread from the overturned basket before rushing off. Nicci panted, tears stinging her eyes, trying to get her wind back. Her knees were bleeding. Her dress was splattered with scum.
Nicci shook her head, her golden locks swinging side to side, and told Mother that a man had grabbed her and hit her, demanding money. Nicci reached for her mother as she wailed in misery that he was a wicked, wicked man.
Stopped cold, Nicci was bewildered by the slap, more startling than painful. The
rebuke stung more. "But, Mother, he was cruel to me-he touched me everywhere and then he hit me."
"You don't know what burdens life has handed the man. Don't you dare to judge people for their actions just because you are too callous and insensitive to take the time to understand them."
Mother smacked her across the mouth a third time, hard enough to stagger her. "You think? Thinking is a vile acid that corrodes faith! It is your duty to believe, not think. The mind of man is inferior to that of the Creator. Your thoughts-the thoughts of anyone-are worthless, as all mankind is worthless. You must have faith that the Creator has invested His goodness in those wretched souls.
Nicci swallowed back her tears. "Then what should I do?"
That night, when her father came home and tiptoed into her room to see if she was tucked in snugly, Nicci clutched two of his big fingers together and held them tight to her cheek. Even though her mother said he was a wicked man, it felt better than anything else in the world when he knelt beside the bed and silently stroked her brow.
One night at dinner, after being in the fellowship several years, she said, "Father, there is a man I've been trying to help. He has ten children and no job. Will you hire him, please?"
"I told you. He has ten children."
"Because he needs a job."
"If he had a skill, Father, he could get work. Is it fair that his children should starve because people won't give him a chance?"
"A chance? At what? He has no skill."
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"He can't load wagons. He has a bad back. He hasn't been able to work for years because of his back troubling him so."
Nicci wanted to do good, and so she met his stare with a steady look of her own. "Must you be so intolerant, Father? You have jobs, and this man needs one. He has hungry children needing to be fed and clothed. Would you deny him a living just because he has never had a fair chance in life? Are you so rich that all your gold has blinded your eyes to the needs of humble people?"
"Must you always frame everything in terms of what you need, instead of what others need? Must everything be for you?"
"And what is the purpose of a business? Isn't it to employ those who need work? Wouldn't it be better if the man had a job instead of having to humiliate himself begging? Is that what you want? For him to beg rather than work? Aren't you the one who always speaks so highly of hard work?"
"Why must you reserve your greatest cruelty for the least fortunate among us? Why can't you for once think of what you can do to help, instead of always thinking of money, money, money? Would it hurt you to hire a man who needs a job? Would it Father? Would it bring your business to an end? Would that ruin you?"
Mother beamed.
Nicci swelled with a new sense of pride-and power. She had never known it would be so easy to stagger her father. She had just bested his selfish nature with nothing more than goodness.
After he had gone, Mother said, "I'm glad to see that you have chosen the righteous path, Nicci, instead of following his evil ways. You will never regret letting your love of mankind guide your feelings. The Creator will smile upon you."
The man went to work for Father. Father never mentioned anything about it. His work kept him busy and away from home. Nicci's work took more and more of her time, as well. She missed seeing that look in his eyes. She guessed she was growing up.
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"Nicci, darling, this is Sister Alessandra. She's traveled here from the Palace of the Prophets, in Tanimura."
"Was it quite a journey, Sister Alessandra?" Nicci asked after she had curtsied. "All the way from Tanimura, I mean?"
"Are you a Sister with the fellowship?" Nicci asked, not really understanding who the woman was.
"Nicci," Mother said, "Sister Alessandra is a Sister of the Light."
Nicci was also impatient because she had duties waiting. There were donations to collect. She had older sponsors who accompanied her to some of the places. For other places, they said a young girl could get better results by herself, by shaming people who had more than they deserved. Those people, who had businesses, all knew who she was. They would always stammer and ask how her father was. As she had been instructed, Nicci told them how pleased her father would be to know they were thoughtful to the needy. In the end, most became civic-minded.
The problems just kept mounting, without any end in sight. It seemed like the more people the fellowship helped, the more people there were who needed help. Nicci had thought she was going to solve the problems of the world; she was beginning to feel hopelessly inadequate. It was her own failing, she knew. She needed to work harder.
"Not very much, Sister. Mostly just names. I've much too much to do for those
less fortunate than myself. Their needs must come before any selfish desires of my own."
"Practically a good spirit in the flesh." The Sister's eyes teared. "I've heard about your work."
Mother smiled contentedly. Sister Alessandra leaned forward, her tone serious. "Have you learned to use your gift, child?"
The Sister folded her hands in her lap. "I've been talking to your mother, while we waited for you. She's done a fine job of getting you started on the right path. We feel, however, that you would have so much more to offer were you to serve a higher calling."
Sister Alessandra smiled in a long-suffering sort of way. "You don't understand, Nicci. We would like you to continue your work with us at the Palace of the Prophets. You would be a novice at first, of course, but one day, you will be a Sister of the Light, and as such, you will carry on with what you have started."
"I have needy people here, Sister Alessandra." Nicci blinked at her tears. "My responsibility is to them. I'm sorry but I can't abandon them."
"What's this, then?"
"No! I'll not have it, do you hear? She's our daughter, and the Sisters can't have her."
"Not my business? She's my daughter! You'll not take her!"
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"Howard," Mother said through gritted teeth, "the child is my business to raise. I carry the Creator's gift. You gave your word when our union was arranged that if we had a girl and she had the gift I would have the exclusive authority to raise her as I saw fit. I believe this to be the right thing to do, what the Creator wants. With the Sisters she will have time to learn to read. She will have time to learn to use her gift to help people as only the Sisters can. You will keep your word. I will see to this. I'm sure you have work to which you must immediately return."
Sister Alessandra said it would be best if they left at once, and if Nicci didn't see him just now. She promised that if Nicci followed instructions, and after she was settled, and after she had learned to read, and after she had learned to use her gift, she would see him again.
Several years after she had been taken to the palace, Nicci again saw Brother Narev. She came across him quite by accident; he was working as a stablehand at the Palace of the Prophets. He smiled his slow smile with his eyes fixed on her. He told her that he had gotten the idea to go to the palace by her example. He said he wished to live long enough to see order come to the world.
Nicci honored his secret, not so much out of any sense of loyalty, but mostly because she was kept far too busy with her studies and work to concern herself with Brother Narev and his fellowship. She rarely had occasion to see him, mucking out horse stalls, and as his importance in her childhood had faded into her past, she never really even gave him a second thought. The palace had work they wished her to put her attention to-much the same sort of work Brother Narev would have approved of. Only many years later did she come to discover his real reasons for having been at the Palace of the Prophets.
Mother had sent word for Nicci to return home to see Father because he was is
failing health. Nicci immediately rushed home, accompanied by Sister Alessandra. By the time Nicci arrived, Father was already dead.
By that time, Nicci was forty. Mother, though, still thinking of Nicci as a young woman because under the spell at the palace she had aged only enough to look to be maybe fifteen or sixteen, told her to wear a pretty, brightly colored dress, because it wasn't really a sad occasion, after all.
As Nicci stood looking at her father's sunken face, Sister Alessandra told Nicci that she was sorry she had to take her away, but that in her whole life, she had not encountered a woman with the gift as powerful as it was in Nicci, and that such a thing as the Creator had given her was not to be wasted.
At the Palace of the Prophets, Nicci was said to be the most selfless, caring novice they had under their roof. Everyone pointed to her, and told the younger novices to look to Nicci's example. Even the Prelate had commended her.
She knew that could mean only one thing: she was evil.
"I can't," Nicci said. "I never knew him when he was alive."
Mother had to raise her prices in order to pay the wages of all the people she'd given work. A lot of the older workers left. Mother said she was glad they were gone because they had uncooperative attitudes.
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Within six months of Father dying, the business failed. The vast fortune he had built over a lifetime was gone.
The armory had been the largest employer in the area, and drew many other people employed in other occupations. Other businesses, like traders, smaller suppliers, and cargo earners, who had depended on the armory, failed for lack of work, Businesses in the city, everything from bakers to butchers, lost customers and were reluctantly forced to let men go.
Like her father's armory, other buildings were abandoned as people left to find work in thriving cities elsewhere. Squatters, at the fellowship's urging, took over many of the abandoned buildings. The empty places became the sites of robberies and even murders. Many a woman who went near those places regretted it. Mother couldn't sell the weapons from her closed armory, so she gave them to the needy so they might protect themselves. Despite her efforts, crime only increased.
Eighteen years later, when Mother died, Nicci still looked like a young woman of perhaps seventeen. She wanted a fine black dress to wear to the funeral-the finest available. The palace said that it was unseemly for a novice to make such a selfish request, and it was out of the question. They said they would supply only simple humble clothes.
The tailor, a man with three chins, waxy down growing from his ears, abnormally long yellowish fingernails, and an unfailing lecherous smirk, said there were things he needed, too. He leaned close, lightly holding her smooth arm in his knobby fingers, and intimated that if she would take care of his needs, he would take care of hers.
92 Mother had been a woman who had devoted her entire life to the needs of others. Nicci could never again look forward to seeing her mother's cockroach-brown eyes. Unlike at her father's funeral, Nicci felt no pain reach down to touch that abysmal place inside her. Nicci knew she was a terrible person.
From that day on, Nicci never wore any dress but black.
She knew only that it was the difference between life and death, and that she had to destroy him.
If only, when she had been little, someone had shown her father such mercy.
Up ahead, the elegant buildings of the estate rose above the dark grime at its feet. Jagang was there. Because he had access to Sisters Georgia, Rochelle, and Aubrey's minds, he would know Nicci was back. He would be waiting for her.
Nicci saw what she was looking for, off in the distance. She could just make them out, standing above the smaller tents. She left the road and headed through the crowded snarl of troops. Even from the distance, she could distinguish the distinctive sounds coming from the group of special tents-hear it over the laughing and singing, the crackle of fires, the sizzle of meat in skillets, the scraping rasp of whetstones on metal, the ring of hammers on steel, and the rhythm of saws.
She finally made her way through the gauntlet. Soldiers played dice, ate beans, or snored in their bedrolls beside the tents where captives screamed under the agony
of torture. Two men lugged a corpse, dragging some of its innards, out of a big tent. They threw the flaccid form in a wagon with a tangle of others.
He scowled at her a moment, but when he glanced down at her black dress, a look of recognition came over his face. He passed her the grubby, rumpled book. It had a deep crease across the middle, as if someone had accidentally sat on it. The pages that had fallen out had been pushed back in, but they never fit right and their edges stuck out here and there to become frayed and filthy.
Nicci opened the book and began scanning the list of recent names and what was known about them.
"Why, the Mord-Sith, of course."
He pointed at a tent a ways off through the disarray. "I know His Excellency said he didn't expect a witch of her dark talents to give us any information about Lord Rahl, but I was hoping to surprise him with good news." He hooked his thumbs behind his belt as he let out a sigh of frustration. "No such luck."
She went back to reading the entries in the register. There was nothing of much interest to her. Most of the people were from around here. They were merely a sampling collected to check what they might know. They would not have the information she wanted.
"Where is this one?"
It had been all day since he had checked. All day could be an eternity under torture. Like all the rest of the tents used for questioning prisoners, the one with the messenger stood above the surrounding field tents, which were only large enough for soldiers to lie in. Nicci pushed the book at the officer's thick gut.
"You'll be giving His Excellency a report, then?" Nicci nodded absently at his question. Her mind was already elsewhere. "You'll tell him that there is little to be learned from this lot?"
As soon as she threw back the flap and entered, she saw that she was too late. The messy remains of the messenger lay on a narrow wooden table affixed with
glistening tools of the trade. The messenger's arm hung down off the sides, dripping warm blood.
"A map of what?"
"Really," Nicci said. The man's grin was what had her attention. A man like this only grinned when he had something he'd been seeking, something to bring him favor in the eyes of his superiors. "And where has the man been?"
He waved the paper like a treasure map. Tired of the game, Nicci snatched the booty from his hand. She unfolded the wrinkled yellow paper and saw that it was indeed a map, with rivers, the coastline, and mountains all meticulously drawn out. Even mountain passes were noted.
The soldier pointed a thick finger at a single bloody fingerprint on the map. "That there is where Lord Rahl himself is hiding-on that dot, in those mountains."
"What did this man confess before he died?" She looked up. "His Excellency is waiting for my report. I was just on my way to see him." She snapped her fingers impatiently. "Let's have it all."
"Of course," Nicci assured him. "You will receive full credit. I have no need of such recognition." She tapped the gold ring through her lower lip. "The Emperor is always-every moment of every day-in my mind. He no doubt this very moment sees through my eyes that you, not I, are the one who succeeded in getting the information. Now, what did this man confess?"
Nicci stared into his red-rimmed eyes. He smelled of liquor. "If you don't report everything to me, Sergeant Wetzel, and I mean right now, I will have you up on the
table next, and I will have your report between your screams, and when I'm done with you, they will throw you in the wagon with the rest of the corpses."
Nicci waggled a finger at the paper. "But this, down here, looks like the enemy force. Are you saying Rich . . . Lord Rahl, isn't with his men? With his army?"
Nicci looked up, her mouth falling open. "Wife."
Nicci remembered Richard's feelings for her, and her name: Kahlan. Richard being married put everything in a new light. It had the potential to disrupt Nicci's plans. Or . . .
"The man said Lord Rahl and his wife have one of them women, them Mord Sith, guarding them."
He shook his head. "This messenger was just a low-ranking soldier who knew how to ride fast and read the lay of the land. That's all he knew: they're up there, and they're all alone."
"Anything else? Anything at all?" He shook his head. She laid her hand on the man's back, between his shoulder blades. "Thank you, Sergeant Wetzel. You have been more help than you will ever know."
Nicci held up the map she had committed to memory and with her gift set it aflame. The paper crackled and blackened as the fire advanced across the rivers and cities and mountains all carefully drawn out on it, until the hot glow surrounded the bloody fingerprint over a dot in the mountains. She let the paper rise from her fingers as it was consumed in a final puff of smoke. Ash, like black snow, drifted down onto the body at her feet.
Nicci winced at the sight of the woman laid out on the wooden table. She finally made herself draw a breath.
A soldier, his hands red from his work, scowled at Nicci. She didn't wait for him to object, but simply commanded, "Report."
Nicci nodded and placed her hand on the soldier's broad back. Wary of her hand, he began to step away from it, but he was too late. The man fell dead before he knew he was in trouble. Had she the time, she would have made him suffer first.
"Use your power . . . to hurt me, witch."
"Use your magic, witch."
Defiance blazed up from the blue eyes. "You know nothing."
The woman looked away. "Then torture me if that is what you came to do. You will learn nothing."
"Then what do you want?"
The woman's blue eyes turned back, betraying for the first time a glint of hope, "Good. Kill me."
"I'll not . . . tell you . . . anything." It was a struggle for her to speak. "Nor anything. Kill me."
The woman smiled. "Go ahead. It will only hasten my death. I know how much a person can take. 1 am not far from the spirit world. But no matter what you do, I'll not talk before I die."
The woman glanced, as best she could, toward the body on the ground. Her brow twitched. "What do you mean?"
"Richard was my student. He told me that he was once a captive of the Mord~ Sith. Now, that's not a secret, is it?"
"That's what I want to know about. What is your name?"
Nicci put a finger to the woman's chin and turned her head back. "I have an offer to make you. I won't ask you anything secret that you aren't supposed to tell. fly
not ask you to betray your Lord Rahl-I wouldn't want you to. Those are not the things that are of interest to me. If you cooperate" -Nicci held up the blade again for the woman to see-"I will end it quickly for you. I promise. No more torture. No more pain. Just the final embrace of death."
"What is your name?" Nicci asked.
"Hania." The woman's hands and ankles were shackled to the table, so she was unable to move much other than her head. She stared up into Nicci's eyes. "Will you kill me? . . . Please?"
"I can't tell you anything." In despair, Hania seemed to sag against the table, knowing her ordeal was to go on. "I won't."
"Of course."
"Why?"
Hania's head rocked side to side. She actually smiled. "None of us understands Lord Rahl. He was tortured, but he never . . . took revenge. We don't understand him."
The woman considered for a moment before she spoke, as if testing in her own mind whether or not the information was in any way secret, or could in any way harm him.
"Derma. Richard killed her in order to escape-he already told me that much. Did you know Denna before she died?"
"I'm not asking anything of secret military importance, am I?"
"So, you knew Denna. And did you know Richard at the time? When he was there, and she had him? Did you know he was her captive?"
"Why is that?"
"Richard's father."
"Good. Now, tell me everything about it. Everything you know."
Hania drew a shaky breath. It took a moment before she spoke again. "I won't betray him. I am experienced at what is being done to me. You cannot trick me. I will not betray Lord Rahl just to spare myself this. I have not endured this much to betray him now."
"If I tell you only about when Denna had him, and not about now, about the war or where he is or anything else, do you give me your word that you will end it for me-that you will kill me?"
"And then you will help me?" There was a shimmer of hope along with the tears. "You will kill me, then?"
"Just as soon as you're finished telling me all about it, I will end your suffering, Hania."
Nicci felt a sharp shiver of pain wail up from her very soul. She had started out near to one hundred and seventy years before wanting nothing but to help, and yet she could not escape the fate of her evil nature. She was Death's Mistress.
She ran the side of a finger down Hania's soft cheek. The two women shared a long and intimate look. "I promise," Nicci whispered. "Quick and efficient. It will be the end of your pain."
100
The estate was a grand place, she supposed. Nicci had seen grandeur such as this before. She had also seen much greater majesty, to be sure. She had lived among such splendor for nearly one and three-quarters centuries, among the imposing columns and arches of immaculate rooms, the intricately carved stone vines and buttery smooth wood paneling, the feather beds and silk coverlets, the exquisite carpets and rich draperies, the silver and gold ornamentation, and the bright sparkle of windows made of colored glass composed into epic scenes. The Sisters there offered Nicci brighteyed smiles and clever conversation.
Some of her life was spent among splendor, some among garbage. Some people were fated to spend their lives in one place, some in the other, she in both.
Hania had kept her part of the bargain. Nicci rarely resorted to using a weapon; she usually used her gift. But of course, in this case, that could have been a mistake. When she had held the knife over her throat, Hania had whispered her thanks for what Nicci was about to do. It was the first time anyone had ever thanked Nicci before she had killed them. Few people ever thanked Nicci for the help she provided. She was able, they were not; it was her duty to serve their needs.
Scouts came and went, along with messengers and soldiers giving their reports to some of the officers. Other officers barked orders. Soldiers carrying rolled maps
followed a few of the higher-ranking men as they meandered around the stuffy room.
Officers talked among themselves, some standing about, some half sitting on iron-legged, marbletopped tables, some lounging in padded leather chairs as they took delicacies from silver trays borne on the trembling hands of sweating servants. Others swilled ale from tall pewter mugs, and yet others drank wine from dainty glasses, all acting as if they were intimate with such splendor, and all of them looking as out of place as toads at tea.
Sister Lidmila's leathery skin was stretched so tight over the bones of her skull that she reminded Nicci of nothing so much as an exhumed corpse. As cadaverous looking as the aged Sister was, she advanced across the room in quick, sharp movements.
Nicci clasped the Sister's tugging hand. "Lead the way, Sister Lidmila. I'm right behind you."
"What took you so long, Sister Nicci? His Excellency is in quite a state, he is, because of you. Where have you been?"
The woman had to take two or three steps for every one of Nicci's. "Business indeed! Were it up to me, I'd have you down in the kitchen scrubbing pots for being off on a lark when you are wanted."
102
The round-backed Sister, her dangling arm swinging, shuffled along in front of Nicci, pulling her by her hand, leading her through grand rooms, up stairways, and down hallways. At a doorway framed in gold-leafed moldings, she finally paused, touching her fingers to her lower lip as she caught her breath. Sober soldiers prowling the hall painted Nicci with glares as dark as her dress. She recognized the men as imperial guards.
Before entering, Nicci took her hand from the lever and turned back to the old woman. "Sister Lidmila, you once told me that you thought I would be the one best suited for some of the knowledge you had to pass on."
Nicci had never before been interested in what Sister Lidmila had occasionally pestered her to learn. Magic was a selfish pursuit. Nicci learned what she had to, but never went out of her way to go beyond, to the more unusual spells.
"I always told the Prelate that you were the only one at the palace with the power for the conjuring I know." The woman leaned close. "Dangerous conjuring, it is, too."
Sister Lidmila nodded with satisfaction. "I believe you are old enough. I could show you. When?"
"Tomorrow, then."
From what Nicci knew of it, the oddly named maternity spell might be just what she needed. It had the further advantage that once invoked, it was inviolate.
"My, my. That one, is it? Well, yes, I could teach you. You have the ability-few do. I'd trust none but you to be able to bring such a thing to life; it requires tremendous power of the gift. You have that. As long as you understand and are willing to accept the cost involved, 1 can teach you."
The old Sister ambled on down the hall, deep in thought, already thinking about the lesson. Nicci didn't know if she would live to take the lesson.
"Sister Nicci!" one virtually shouted in relief.
The other ran to the double doors at the other side of the room and opened one without knocking, apparently by instruction. She stuck her head into the room beyond to speak in a low voice Nicci couldn't hear.
Two more young Sisters, no doubt personal attendants to the emperor, burst out of the room. Nicci had to step out of the way as all four gifted women made for the doorway leading out of the apartment. A young man Nicci hadn't noticed in the corner joined the women. None even glanced in Nicci's direction as they rushed to do as they were ordered. The first lesson you learned as a slave to Jagang was that when he told you to do something, he meant you to do it right now. Little provoked him more than delay.
Such were the unavoidable costs if the world was to be brought to a state of order. Great leaders, by their very nature, came with shortcomings in character, which they themselves viewed as mere peccadilloes. The far-ranging benefits Jagang would bring to the poor suffering masses of humanity far outweighed his crass acts of personal gratification and the relatively petty havoc he wrought. Nicci was often the object of his transgressions. It was a price worth paying for the help that would eventually accrue to the helpless; that was the only matter that could be considered.
She turned back to the inner room. He was just inside, waiting, watching her, a muscled mass of fury coiled in rage.
Nicci felt a stunning pain as the back of his beefy hand whipped across her face. The blow spun her around. Her knees hit the floor. He yanked her to her feet by her hair. The second time, she clouted the wall before crashing to the floor again. Stupefying pain throbbed through her face. When she had her bearings, she got her legs under her and stood before him again. The third time, she took a freestanding candelabrum down with her. Candles tumbled and rolled across the floor. A long wisp °f sheer curtain she had snatched as she grabbed for support ripped away and drifted down over her as she and an upturned table slammed to the floor. Glass shattered. Metal clattered as small items bounded away.
She saw blood splattered across the light fringe of the carpet beneath her and across the warns glow of wooden flooring. She heard Jagang yelling something at her, but she couldn't make out the words over the ringing in her ears. With a shaky
arm pushed herself up onto her hip. Blood warmed her fingers when she touched them to her mouth. She relished the hurt. It had been so long since she had felt anything, except for that too brief moment with the Mord-Sith. This was a glorious wash of agony.
His rage seemed lethal. She merely noted the fact that she very probably wouldn't leave the room alive. She would probably not get to learn Sister Lidmila's spells. Nicci simply waited to discover what fate had already decided for her.
He was bare-chested, but unlike his head, his chest was covered in coarse hair. His muscles bulged, their tendons standing out as he flexed his fists. He had the neck of a bull, and his temperament was worse.
They were the eyes of a dream walker. A dream walker denied access to her mind. Now, she understood why.
Nicci swallowed back the sharp taste of blood as she gazed placidly into his scarlet glare.
He lunged at her with a howl of fury. He seized her throat in his massive fist to hold her as he struck her. Her knees buckled, but he held her up until she was able to steady herself.
She offered only a bloody smile to his anger.
The deadly dance with Jagang had begun. She dimly wondered again if this time she would lose her life.
105
He twisted her arm until she thought it surely would snap. His panting breath was warn on her throbbing cheek. "I've killed people for saying much less than that."
The mistake most people made with Jagang was to believe, because of his capacity for such profound brutality, that he was an ignorant, dumb brute. He was not. He was one of the most intelligent men Nicci had ever met. Brutality was but his cloak. As an outgrowth of his access to the thoughts of so many different people's minds, he was directly exposed to their knowledge, wisdom, and ideas; such exposure augmented his intellect. He also knew what people most feared. If anything about him frightened her, it was not his brutality, but his intelligence, for she knew that intelligence could be a bottomless well of truly inventive cruelty.
In her mind, like a protective stone wall, was the thought of Richard. He had to see it in her eyes. Part of Jagang's rage, she knew, was at his own impotence at penetrating her mind, of possessing her as he could so many others. Her knowing smirk taunted him with what he could not have.
Jagang roared again, a beastly sound out of place for such a mannerly bedchamber. She saw the blur of his arm swinging for her. The room whirled violently around her. She expected to hit something with a bone-breaking impact. Instead, she upended and crashed onto unexpected softness: the bed, she realized. Somehow, she had missed the marble and mahogany posts at the corners-they surely would have killed her. Fate, it seemed, was trifling with her. Jagang landed atop her.
Nicci didn't watch him, or resist, but instead went limp as he pushed her dress up around her waist. Her mind began its journey away, to where only she alone could go. He fell on her, driving the wind from her lungs in a helpless grunt.
quiet place. The pain seemed remote. Her struggle to breathe seemed trivial.
Jagang slapped her, causing her to focus her mind back on him. "You're too stupid to even weep!"
106
His chest heaved as he glared down at her. Anger, of course, powered the glare, but Nicci thought she saw a tinge of something else there, too: regret, or maybe anguish, or maybe even hurt.