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the enemy force. Are you saying Rich . . . Lord Rahl, isn't with his men?
With his army?"
"That's right. The messenger didn't know why. His only duty was to
carry troop positions and regular news of their condition to his master." He
tapped the map in her hand. "But right here is where Lord Rahl is hiding,
along with his wife."
Nicci looked up, her mouth falling open. "Wife."
Sergeant Wetzel nodded. "The man said Lord Rahl married some woman
known as the Mother Confessor. She's hurt, and they're hiding way up there,
in those mountains."
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 . . .
"Anything else, Sergeant?"
"The man said Lord Rahl and his wife have one of them women, them Mord
Sith, guarding them."
"Why are they up there? Why aren't Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor
with their army? Or back in Aydindril? Or in D'Hara, for that matter?"
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."
Nicci was puzzled by such a development.
"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."
As he grinned, Nicci released a flow of power that shot up through his
spine and instantly incinerated his brain inside his skull. He dropped with
a crash to the hard ground, the air fleeing his lungs in a grunt.
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.
Outside the tent where the Mord-Sith was held, Nicci cast a wary gaze
across the surrounding camp to see if anyone was watching. No one was paying
any attention to the business of the torture tents. She slipped in through
the opening.
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."
"Not a word from her," he growled.
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.
Nicci made herself step up to the table and look down into the blue
eyes. The woman's head trembles slightly.
"Use your power . . . to hurt me, witch."
A small smile touched Nicci's lips. "To the bitter end, you would
fight, wouldn't you?"
"Use your magic, witch."
"I think not. You see, I know a bit about you women."
Defiance blazed up from the blue eyes. "You know nothing."
"Oh, but I do. Richard told me. You would know him as your Lord Rahl,
but be was for a time my student. I know that women like you have the
ability to capture the power of the gifted, if that power is used against
you. Then, you can turn it against us. So, you see, I know better than to
use my power on you."
The woman looked away. "Then torture me if that is what you came to do.
You will learn nothing."
"I'm not here to torture you," Nicci assured her.
"Then what do you want?"
"Let me introduce myself," Nicci said. "I am Death's Mistress."
The woman's blue eyes turned back, betraying for the first time a glint
of hope, "Good. Kill me."
"I need you to tell me some things."
"I'll not . . . tell you . . . anything." It was a struggle for her to
speak. "Nor anything. Kill me."
Nicci picked up a bloody blade from the table and held it before the
blue eyes, "I think you will."
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."
"You misunderstand. I do not wish you to betray your Lord Rahl. Didn't
you hear your questioner hit the ground? If you turn your head a little
more, perhaps you can see that the man who did this to you is now dead. I
don't wish you to tell me any secrets."
The woman glanced, as best she could, toward the body on the ground.
Her brow twitched. "What do you mean?"
Nicci noticed that she didn't ask to be freed. She knew she was well
past the point of hope to live. The only thing she could hope for, now, was
for Nicci to end her agony.
"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?"
"No."
"That's what I want to know about. What is your name?"
The woman turned her face away.
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."
The woman's lips began trembling. "Please," she whispered, the hope
returning to her eyes. "Please . . . kill me?"
"What is your name?" Nicci asked.
Nicci, for the most part, was numb to sights of torture, but this she
found disturbing. She avoided looking away from the woman's face, down at
the naked body, so as not to have to consider what had been done to her.
Nicci could not imagine how this woman could keep from screaming, or even
how she was able to speak.
"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 will, Hania, I promise. Quickly and efficiently-if you tell me what
I want to know."
"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."
"I only want to know about when Richard was a captive. Did you know he
was once a captive of the Mord Sith?"
"Of course."
"I want to know about it."
"Why?"
"Because 1 want to understand him."
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."
"I don't either, but I hope to. My name is Nicci. I want you to know
that. I'm Nicci, and I'm going to deliver you from this, Hania. Tell me
about it. Please? I need to know. Do you know the woman who captured him?
Her name?"
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," Hania whispered at last.
"Derma. Richard killed her in order to escape-he already told me that
much. Did you know Denna before she died?"
"Yes."
"I'm not asking anything of secret military importance, am I?"
Hania hesitated. She finally shook her head.
"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?"
"We all knew."
"Why is that?"
"Lord Rahl-the Lord Rahl at the time-"
"Richard's father."
"Yes. He wanted Denna to be the one to train Richard, to prepare him to
answer without hesitation whatever questions Darken Rahl asked him. She was
the best at what we do."
"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."
"I promise not to ask anything about the present-about the war-anything
that would betray him to Jagang."
"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?"
"I give you my word, Hania. I wouldn't ask you to betray your Lord
Rahl-I know him and have too much respect for him to ask that of you. All I
wish is to understand him for personal reasons. I was his teacher, last
winter, instructing him in the use of his gift. I want to understand him
better. I need to understand him. I believe I can help him, if I do."
"And then you will help me?" There was a shimmer of hope along with the
tears. "You will kill me, then?"
This woman could aspire to nothing more, now. It was all that was left
to her in this life: a quick death to finally end the pain.
"Just as soon as you're finished telling me all about it, I will end
your suffering, Hania."
"Do you swear it by your hope to an eternity in the underworld in the
warmth of the Creator's light?"
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 was a fallen woman.
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."
Tears overflowing her eyes, Hania gave a little nod.
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.
The extravagance meant no more to her than the rubble of the streets,
the cold wet blankets laid on rough ground, the beds made in the slime among
greasy runnels in the muck of narrow alleys with nothing but the bitter sky
overhead. The huddled people there never offered a smile, but gaped up at
her with hollow eyes, like so many pigeons cooing for alms.
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.
Nicci reached for the silver handle on one of the ornate double doors
flanked by two husky soldiers who had probably been raised in a sty with the
hogs, and saw that her hand was covered in blood. She turned and casually
wiped the hand on the filthy, bloodstained fleece vest worn by one of the
men. The biceps of his folded arms were nearly as thick as her waist.
Although he scowled as she cleaned her hand on him, he made no move to stop
her. After all, it wasn't as if she were defiling him.
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.
When she had finished cleaning her hand on the mute guard, she flashed
an empty smile at his dark glaring visage and then went on through the doors
into a stately reception hall. A row of tall windows lining one wall of the
room was trimmed with wheat-colored drapes. Near their tasseled edges, the
curtains sparkled in the lamplight as if they might be embellished with gold
thread. Latesummer rain spattered against tightly shut glass panes that
revealed only darkness outside, but reflected the activity inside. The pale
wool carpets, graced with flowers painstakingly sculpted in relief by means
of different-length yarn, were tracked with mud.
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.
One of the maps lay unrolled across a narrow table. The table's silver
candelabrum had been set aside on the floor behind the table. As Nicci
passed the table, she glanced down and saw that it was missing many of the
elements so carefully marked on the map drawn by the D'Haran messenger. On
the map laid out over the narrow table, there was nothing but dark splotches
from spilled ale in the area to the northwest; in the map etched in Nicci's
mind, there were the mountains, rivers, high passes, and streams there, and
a dot, marking the place where Richard was, along with his Mother Confessor
bride, and the Mord-Sith.
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.
An older woman, Sister Lidmila, apparently trying to be unobtrusive by
cowering in the shadows beside the drapes, snapped upright when she saw
Nicci marching across the room. Sister Lidmila stepped out of the shadows,
briefly pausing to smooth her dingy skirts, an act that could not possibly
produce any noticeable improvement; Sister Lidmila once had told Nicci that
things learned in youth never left you, and were often much easier to recall
than yesterday's dinner. Rumor had it that the old Sister, skilled in arcane
spells known to only the most powerful sorceresses, had many interesting
things from her youth to recall.
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.
When she was only ten feet away, Sister Lidmila waved an arm, as if not
sure Nicci would see her. "Sister Nicci. Sister Nicci, there you are." She
seized Nicci's wrist. "Come along, dear. Come along. His Excellency is
waiting for you. This way. Come along."
Nicci clasped the Sister's tugging hand. "Lead the way, Sister Lidmila.
I'm right behind you."
The older woman smiled over her shoulder. It wasn't a pleasant or
joyous smile, but one of relief. Jagang punished anyone who displeased him,
regardless of their culpability.
"What took you so long, Sister Nicci? His Excellency is in quite a
state, he is, because of you. Where have you been?"
"I had . . . business I had to attend to."
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."
Sister Lidmila was frail and forgetful, and she sometimes failed to
realize she was no longer at the Palace of the Prophets. Jagang used her to
fetch people, or to wait for them and show them the way-usually to his
tents. Should she forget the way, he could always correct her route, if need
be. It amused him to use a venerable Sister of the Light -a sorceress
reputedly possessing knowledge of the most esoteric incantations-as nothing
more than an errand girl. Away from the palace and it's
spell that slowed aging, Sister Lidmila was in a sudden headlong rush
toward the grave. All the Sisters were.
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.
"Here it is." Sister Lidmila peered up at Nicci. "His Excellency is in
his rooms. Hurry, then. Go on. Go on, now." She swirled her hands as if she
were trying to herd livestock. "In you go."
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."
Sister Lidmila's face brightened with a sly smile. "Ah, some of the
more occult magic interests you, at long last, Sister Nicci?"
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.
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I believe I am at last ready."
"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."
"It should be passed on, while you are able."
Sister Lidmila nodded with satisfaction. "I believe you are old enough.
I could show you. When?"
"I will come see you . . . tomorrow." Nicci glanced toward the door. "I
don't believe I will be able to take a lesson tonight."
"Tomorrow, then."
"If I . . . do come around to see you, I will be most eager to learn. I
especially wish to know about the maternity spell."
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.
Sister Lidmila straightened and again touched her fingers to her lower
lip. A look of concern crossed her face.
"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."
Nicci nodded. "I will come when 1 can, then."
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.
After she had watched the old Sister vanish around the corner, Nicci
entered a quiet room lit by myriad candles and lamps. The high ceiling was
edged with a painted leaf-and-acorn design. Plush couches and chairs
upholstered in muted browns were set about on thick carpets of rich yellows,
oranges, and reds, making them look like a forest floor in the autumn. Heavy
drapes had been pulled closed across an expanse of windows. Two Sisters
sitting on a couch leaped to their feet.
"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.
The Sister leaped back when Jagang, in the inner room, roared, "Get
out! All of you! Everyone else out!"
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.
At the door to the inner room, a woman Nicci didn't recognize ran out,
following close on the heels of the others. She was young and beautiful,
with dark hair and eyes, probably a captive picked up somewhere along the
long march, and no doubt used for Jagang's amusement. Her eyes reflected a
world gone mad for her.
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.
The outer door closed and the apartment was finally empty of everyone
but Nicci and the emperor. She stood erect, head held high, arms at her
sides, relishing the quiet of the place. The splendor meant little to her,
but quiet was a luxury she had come to appreciate, even if it was selfish.
In the tents there was always the noise of the army pressed close around.
Here, it was quiet. She glanced around the spacious and elaborately
decorated outer room, contemplating the idea that Jagang would have acquired
the taste for such places. Perhaps he, too, simply wanted quiet.
She turned back to the inner room. He was just inside, waiting,
watching her, a muscled mass of fury coiled in rage.
She strode directly up to him. "You wished to see me, Excellency?"
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 was dizzy and stunned, her vision faltering. Her eyes felt as if
they might have burst, her jaw as if it had been shattered, her neck as if
the muscles had ripped.. Nicci lay sprawled on the floor, savoring the
strident waves of pain, wallowing 'n the rare sensation of feeling.
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.
Jagang's brutality was able to reach down into the abyss, not only
because of the cruelty itself, but because she knew she need not suffer it.
He, too, knew that she was here by her choice, not his. That only
intensified his anger, and thus, her sensations.
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.
The room's spinning finally slowed enough for her to once more make it
to her feet. She pulled herself up straight before the silent brawny form of
Emperor Jagang. His shaved head reflected points of light from some of the
lamps. His only facial hair was a two-inch braid of mustache growing above
each corner of his mouth, and another in the center under his lower lip. The
gold ring through his left nostril and its thin gold chain running to
another ring in his left ear glimmered in the mellow lamplight. Except for a
heavy ring on each finger, he was without the plundered assortment of royal
chains and jewels he usually wore around his neck. The rings glistened with
her blood.
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.
Nicci, half a head shy of his height, stood before him, waiting,
looking into the eyes she used to see in her nightmares. They were a murky
gray, without whites, and clouded over with sullen, dusky shapes that stole
across a surface of inky obscurity. Even though they had no evident iris and
pupil-nothing but seeming dark voids where a normal person had eyes-she
never had any doubt whatsoever as to when he was looking at her.
They were the eyes of a dream walker. A dream walker denied access to
her mind. Now, she understood why.
"Well?" He growled. He threw up his hands. "Cry! Yell! Scream! Beg!
Argue make excuses! Don't just stand there!"
Nicci swallowed back the sharp taste of blood as she gazed placidly
into his scarlet glare.
"Please be specific, Excellency, as to which one you would prefer, how
long I should carry on, and if I should end it of my own accord, or wait for
you to beat me into unconsciousness."
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.
He released her throat with a shove. "I want to know why you did that
to Kadar!"
She offered only a bloody smile to his anger.
He wrenched her arm behind her back and pulled her hard against him.
"Why would you do such a thing! Why?"
The deadly dance with Jagang had begun. She dimly wondered again if
this time she would lose her life.
Jagang had killed a number of the Sisters who had displeased him.
Nicci's safety hIm-such as it was-lay in her very indifference to her
safety. Her utter Ikerest in her own life fascinated Jagang because he knew
it was sincere.
"Sometimes, you're a fool," she said with true contempt, "too arrogant
to see what is in front of your nose."
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."
She mocked him through the pain. "Do you intend to bore me to death,
then? If you want to kill me, seize me by the throat and strangle me, or
slash me to a bloody mess so that I will bleed to death at your feet-don't
think you can suffocate me with the sheer weight of your monotonous threats.
If you wish to kill me, then be a man and do so! Or else shut your mouth."
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.
"Why did you kill him, Nicci?" he asked again, his voice losing some of
its fire.
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.
"It amused me to hear the great Kadar Kardeef cry for mercy, and then
to deny it."
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.
She thought he might beat her to death now. Instead, he studied her
eyes from inches away. He sat up, straddling her hips. His meaty hands
pulled at the laces on the bodice of her dress. With a quick yank of the
material, he exposed her breasts. His fingers squeezed her bared flesh until
her eyes watered.
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.
Arms lying at her sides, her fingers open and slack, eyes unblinking,
Nicci stared at the folds of the silk in the canopy of the bed, her mind
unaffected in the distant
quiet place. The pain seemed remote. Her struggle to breathe seemed
trivial.
As he went about his coarse business, she focused her thoughts instead
on what she was going to do. She had never believed possible what she now
contemplated; now she knew it was. She had only to decide to do it.
Jagang slapped her, causing her to focus her mind back on him. "You're
too stupid to even weep!"
She realized he had finished; he was not happy that she hadn't noticed.
She had to make an effort not to comfort her jaw, stinging from what to him
was a smack, but to the person receiving it was a blow nearly strong enough
to cripple. Sweat
dripped from his chin onto her face. His powerful body glistened from
the exertion she had not perceived.
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.
"Is that what you wish me to do, then, Excellency? Weep?"
His voice turned bitter as he flopped onto his side beside her. "No. I
wish you to react."
"But I am," she said as she stared up at the canopy. "It is simply not
the reaction you wish."
He sat up. "What's the matter with you, woman?"
She gazed up at him a moment, and then turned her eyes away.
"I have no idea," she answered honestly. "But I think I must find out."
Jagang gestured. "Take off your clothes. You're spending the night.
It's been too long." This time, it was he who stared off at the walls. "I've
missed you in my bed, Nicci."
She didn't answer. She did not believe that in his bed he missed
anything. She didn't believe she could conceive of him understanding what it
was to miss a person. What he missed, she thought, was being able to miss
someone.
Nicci sat up and threw her legs over the side of the bed as she
untangled herself from the black dress. She pulled it off over her head and
then laid it out across the back of a padded leather chair. She reclaimed
her underthings from the tangles of the bed covering and tossed them on the
chair before drawing off her stockings and placing them, too, on the seat of
the chair. He watched her body the whole time, watched her as she tended to
her dress, smoothing it to straighten what he had done to it, watched the
mysterious allure of a woman acting a woman.
When she had finished she turned back to him. She stood proudly, to let
him see that which he could have only by force, and never as a willing gift.
She could detect the sense of privation in his expression. This, was the
only victory she could have: the more he took her by force, the more he
understood that that was the only way he could ever have her, and the more
it maddened him. She would just as soon die as willingly give him the
satisfaction of that gift, and he knew the brutal truth of that.
He finally forced himself away from his private, bitter longing and
looked up into her eyes. "Why'd you kill Kadar?"
She sat on the edge of the bed opposite him, just out of his easy
reach, but within range of his lunge, and shrugged her bare shoulders.
"You are not the Order. The Order is no single man, but an ideal of
equity. As such, it will survive any one person. You serve that ideal and
the Order, for now, in the capacity of but a brute. The Order could use any
brute to serve its purpose. You, Kadar, or another. I simply eliminated
someone who might one day have been a threat to you before you can rise
above your present role."
He grinned. "You expect me to believe that you were doing me a
kindness? Now you mock me."
"If it pleases you to think so, then do."
Her smooth white limbs were a vivid contrast to the heavy, dark,
variegated verdant bedcover and sheets. He lay back atop them against
several rumpled pillows. immodestly displayed before her. His eyes looked
even darker than usual.
"What's all this talk I keep hearing about 'Jagang the Just'?"
"Your new title. It is the thing that will save you, the thing that
will win for you, the thing that will bring you more glory than anything
else. Yet, in return for elimi-
nating a future threat to your standing, and for making you a hero to
the people, you draw my blood."
He put an arm behind his head. "Sometimes you make me believe the
stories fat people tell, that you really are crazy."
"And if you kill everyone?"
"Then they will be dead."
"I have recently been through towns visited by your soldiers. It seems
they didn't harm the people-at least, they didn't slaughter everyone in
sight, as they did when fey began their march into the New World."
He lunged and seized a fistful of her hair. With a snarl, he yanked her
onto her back beside him. She caught her breath as he rose up on an elbow
and directed his disturbing gaze down into her eyes.
"It is your job to make examples of people, to show them that they must
contribute to our cause; to make them fear the Imperial Order's righteous
wrath. That is the task I assigned you."
"Is that so? Then why did the soldiers not make examples, too? Why did
they let those towns be? Why did they not contribute to striking fear into
the hearts of the people? Why didn't they lay waste to every city and town
in their path?"
"And then who would I rule but my soldiers? Who would do the work? Who
would make things? Who would grow the food? Who would pay tribute? To whom
will I bring the hope of the Order? Who will there be to glorify the great
Emperor Jagang, if I kill them all?"
He flopped onto his back. "You may be called Death's Mistress, but we
can't have it your way and kill everyone. In this world you are bound to the
Order's purpose. If people feel the Order's arrival can mean nothing but
their death, they will resist to the end. They must know that it is only
their resistance which will bring a swift and sure death. If they realize
our arrival offers them a moral life, a life which puts man under the
Creator and the welfare of man above all else, they will embrace us."
"You dealt death to this city," she taunted, forcing him to unwittingly
prove the validity of what she had done. "Even though they chose the Order."
"I've given orders that any people of the city still alive be allowed
to go back to their homes. The rampage is ended. The people here betrayed
their promises and thus invited brutality; they saw it, but now that is
finished and a new day of order has come. The old ideas of separate lands
are over, as it was ended in the Old World. All people will be governed
together, and will enter a new age of prosperity together-under the Imperial
Order. Only those who resist will be crushed-not because they resist, but
because, ultimately, they are traitors to the well-being of their fellow man
and must be eliminated.
"Here, in Anderith, was the turning point in our struggle. Richard Rahl
was at last cast out by the people themselves, who came to see the virtue of
what we offer. No longer can he claim to represent them."
"Yet you came in and slaughtered-"
"The leaders here betrayed certain promises to me-who knows how much of
the general population may have collaborated in that-and so the people had
to pay a puce, but collectively they have also earned a place in the Order
for their courage In emphatically rejecting Lord Rahl and the outdated,
selfish, uninspired morals he offered them.
"The tide has turned. People no longer have faith in Lord Rahl, nor can
he now have any faith in them. Richard Rahl is a fallen leader."
Nicci smiled inwardly, a sad smile. She was a fallen woman, and Richard
was a fallen man. Their fate was sealed.
"Perhaps here, in this one small place," she said, "but he is far from
defeated. He is still dangerous. After all, you failed to gain everything
you sought here in Anderith because of Richard Rahl. He not only denied you
a clear victory by destroying vast stores of supplies and leaving the
systems and services of production in total disarray, but he also slipped
right through your fingers when you should have captured him."
"I will have him!"
"Really? I wonder." She watched his fist, and waited until it relaxed
before she continued. "When will you move our forces north, into the
Midlands?"
Jagang stroked his hand down his woolly chest. "Soon. I want to give
them time to become careless, first. When they grow complacent, I will
strike north.
"A great leader must read the nature of the battle, to be able to
adjust his tactics. We will be liberators, now, as we move north into the
Midlands, bringing the Creator's glory to the people. We must win the hearts
and minds of the unconverted."
"You have decided this change? On your own? You do not consider the
will of the Creator in your campaign?"
He glared at her insolence, as if to tell her she knew better than to
even ask such a question.
"I am the emperor; I need not consult our spiritual guides, but since
their. counsel is always welcome, I've already talked to the priests.
They've spoken favorably about my plans. Brother Narev thinks it wise and
has given his blessing. You had better keep to your job of extinguishing any
ideas of opposition. If you don't follow my orders, well, no one will miss
one Sister. I have others."
She was not moved by his threats, real as they were. By his suspicious
look, he was beginning to understand her vision, too.
"What you are doing is fitting," she said, "but it must be cut up into
little pieces the people can chew. They do not have the Order's wisdom in
seeing what is best for them-the public rarely does. Even one as bullheaded
as you must be able to see that I have anticipated your plans by helping
those you can't afford to kill to understand that you are sparing them out
of your sense of justice. Word of such deeds will win hearts."
He cast her a sidelong glance. "I am the Order's cleansing fire. The
fire is a necessary conflagration, but not the important end-it is merely
the means to the end. From the ashes I, Jagang, create, new order can sprout
and grow. It is this end, this glorious new age of man, that warrants the
means. In this, it is my responsibility not yours-to decide justice, when
and how I will dispense it, and who will receive it."
She grew impatient with his vanity. Scorn seeped into her voice. "I
have simply put a name to it-Jagang the Just-and begun to spread your new
title for you when the opportunity arose. I sacrificed Kadar to that end,
for all the same reasons you've listed. It had to be done now in order for
it to have the necessary time to spread and flourish, or the New World would
soon harden irreversibly against the Order. I chose the time and place, and
by using Kadar Kardeef's life-a war hero's life-proved your devotion to the
cause of the Order above all else. You benefit.
"Any brute could ignite the conflagration; this new title shows your
moral
vision-another manifestation of worth over other men. I have planted
the vital seed that will make you a hero to the common people and, even more
important, to the priests. Are you going to pretend you think the title
inadequate? Or that it will not serve you well?
"What I alone have done will help win what your powerful army cannot:
willing allegiance without a battle, at a cost of nothing. With Kadar's
life, I, Nicci, have made you more than you could make of yourself. I,
Nicci, have given you the reputation of honor. I, Nicci, have made you into
a leader people will trust because they believe you to be just."
He brooded for a time, turning his gaze from her hot glare. His arm
finally fell own and his fingers tenderly trailed down her thigh. The touch
was an admission for him-an admission that she was right, even if he would
not say the words.
After a few moments he yawned, and then his eyes closed. His breathing
evened, and he started to drift off into a nap, as was his way with her. He
expected her to remain right where she was, so that when he awoke she would
be available to him. She supposed she could leave. But it was not time. Not
yet.
He finally awoke an hour later. Nicci was still staring up at the
canopy, thinking about Richard. There seemed to be one piece missing in her
plan, one more thing that she felt needed to fall into place.
In his sleep Jagang had rolled over on his side facing away from her.
Now, he turned back. His dark eyes took her in with a look of lust
rekindled. He drew her close. His body was as warm as a rock in the sun and
only slightly softer.
"Pleasure me," he commanded in a husky growl that would have frightened
any other woman into doing as ordered.
"Or what? You will kill me? If I feared that, I would not be here. This
is by force, not consent. I will not willingly take part in it, nor will I
allow you to deceive yourself into believing that I want you."
He backhanded her, knocking her across the bed. "You take part
willingly!" He seized her by the wrist and dragged her back toward him. "Why
else would you be here?"
"You ordered me here."
He smirked. "And you came when you could have fled."
She opened her mouth, but she had no answer she could put into words,
no answer he would understand.
With a grin of victory, he fell on her and pressed his lips to hers. As
much as it hurt her, for Jagang this was gentle behavior. He had told her
several times that she was the only woman he ever cared to kiss. He seemed
to believe that by expressing those emotions for her, she could have no
alternative but to surrender feelings in kind, as if spoken feelings were
currency with which he could purchase affection on demand.
It was only the beginning of a long night-along ordeal-she knew. She
would have to endure his forceful violation several more times before
morning. His question haunted the distant place in her mind.
Morning came, accompanied by the dull throbbing of a headache from her
succeeding beating, and the sharper aches from the places where he'd struck
her when he came to find that what he thought was her willing submission was
but a delusion that left him more angered than before. The pillows were
stained with her blood. It had
g been a long night of rare sensations experienced. -HIre knew she was
evil, and deserved to be violated in such a brutal fashion. She
could offer no moral objection to it; even in the terrible things he
did to her, Jagang was nowhere near as corrupt as she. Jagang erred in
simple matters of the flesh, and that could only be expected all people were
corrupt in the flesh-but because of her indifference to the suffering around
her, she failed in matters of the spirit. That, she knew, was pure evil.
With his army?"
"That's right. The messenger didn't know why. His only duty was to
carry troop positions and regular news of their condition to his master." He
tapped the map in her hand. "But right here is where Lord Rahl is hiding,
along with his wife."
Nicci looked up, her mouth falling open. "Wife."
Sergeant Wetzel nodded. "The man said Lord Rahl married some woman
known as the Mother Confessor. She's hurt, and they're hiding way up there,
in those mountains."
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 . . .
"Anything else, Sergeant?"
"The man said Lord Rahl and his wife have one of them women, them Mord
Sith, guarding them."
"Why are they up there? Why aren't Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor
with their army? Or back in Aydindril? Or in D'Hara, for that matter?"
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."
Nicci was puzzled by such a development.
"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."
As he grinned, Nicci released a flow of power that shot up through his
spine and instantly incinerated his brain inside his skull. He dropped with
a crash to the hard ground, the air fleeing his lungs in a grunt.
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.
Outside the tent where the Mord-Sith was held, Nicci cast a wary gaze
across the surrounding camp to see if anyone was watching. No one was paying
any attention to the business of the torture tents. She slipped in through
the opening.
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."
"Not a word from her," he growled.
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.
Nicci made herself step up to the table and look down into the blue
eyes. The woman's head trembles slightly.
"Use your power . . . to hurt me, witch."
A small smile touched Nicci's lips. "To the bitter end, you would
fight, wouldn't you?"
"Use your magic, witch."
"I think not. You see, I know a bit about you women."
Defiance blazed up from the blue eyes. "You know nothing."
"Oh, but I do. Richard told me. You would know him as your Lord Rahl,
but be was for a time my student. I know that women like you have the
ability to capture the power of the gifted, if that power is used against
you. Then, you can turn it against us. So, you see, I know better than to
use my power on you."
The woman looked away. "Then torture me if that is what you came to do.
You will learn nothing."
"I'm not here to torture you," Nicci assured her.
"Then what do you want?"
"Let me introduce myself," Nicci said. "I am Death's Mistress."
The woman's blue eyes turned back, betraying for the first time a glint
of hope, "Good. Kill me."
"I need you to tell me some things."
"I'll not . . . tell you . . . anything." It was a struggle for her to
speak. "Nor anything. Kill me."
Nicci picked up a bloody blade from the table and held it before the
blue eyes, "I think you will."
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."
"You misunderstand. I do not wish you to betray your Lord Rahl. Didn't
you hear your questioner hit the ground? If you turn your head a little
more, perhaps you can see that the man who did this to you is now dead. I
don't wish you to tell me any secrets."
The woman glanced, as best she could, toward the body on the ground.
Her brow twitched. "What do you mean?"
Nicci noticed that she didn't ask to be freed. She knew she was well
past the point of hope to live. The only thing she could hope for, now, was
for Nicci to end her agony.
"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?"
"No."
"That's what I want to know about. What is your name?"
The woman turned her face away.
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."
The woman's lips began trembling. "Please," she whispered, the hope
returning to her eyes. "Please . . . kill me?"
"What is your name?" Nicci asked.
Nicci, for the most part, was numb to sights of torture, but this she
found disturbing. She avoided looking away from the woman's face, down at
the naked body, so as not to have to consider what had been done to her.
Nicci could not imagine how this woman could keep from screaming, or even
how she was able to speak.
"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 will, Hania, I promise. Quickly and efficiently-if you tell me what
I want to know."
"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."
"I only want to know about when Richard was a captive. Did you know he
was once a captive of the Mord Sith?"
"Of course."
"I want to know about it."
"Why?"
"Because 1 want to understand him."
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."
"I don't either, but I hope to. My name is Nicci. I want you to know
that. I'm Nicci, and I'm going to deliver you from this, Hania. Tell me
about it. Please? I need to know. Do you know the woman who captured him?
Her name?"
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," Hania whispered at last.
"Derma. Richard killed her in order to escape-he already told me that
much. Did you know Denna before she died?"
"Yes."
"I'm not asking anything of secret military importance, am I?"
Hania hesitated. She finally shook her head.
"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?"
"We all knew."
"Why is that?"
"Lord Rahl-the Lord Rahl at the time-"
"Richard's father."
"Yes. He wanted Denna to be the one to train Richard, to prepare him to
answer without hesitation whatever questions Darken Rahl asked him. She was
the best at what we do."
"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."
"I promise not to ask anything about the present-about the war-anything
that would betray him to Jagang."
"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?"
"I give you my word, Hania. I wouldn't ask you to betray your Lord
Rahl-I know him and have too much respect for him to ask that of you. All I
wish is to understand him for personal reasons. I was his teacher, last
winter, instructing him in the use of his gift. I want to understand him
better. I need to understand him. I believe I can help him, if I do."
"And then you will help me?" There was a shimmer of hope along with the
tears. "You will kill me, then?"
This woman could aspire to nothing more, now. It was all that was left
to her in this life: a quick death to finally end the pain.
"Just as soon as you're finished telling me all about it, I will end
your suffering, Hania."
"Do you swear it by your hope to an eternity in the underworld in the
warmth of the Creator's light?"
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 was a fallen woman.
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."
Tears overflowing her eyes, Hania gave a little nod.
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.
The extravagance meant no more to her than the rubble of the streets,
the cold wet blankets laid on rough ground, the beds made in the slime among
greasy runnels in the muck of narrow alleys with nothing but the bitter sky
overhead. The huddled people there never offered a smile, but gaped up at
her with hollow eyes, like so many pigeons cooing for alms.
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.
Nicci reached for the silver handle on one of the ornate double doors
flanked by two husky soldiers who had probably been raised in a sty with the
hogs, and saw that her hand was covered in blood. She turned and casually
wiped the hand on the filthy, bloodstained fleece vest worn by one of the
men. The biceps of his folded arms were nearly as thick as her waist.
Although he scowled as she cleaned her hand on him, he made no move to stop
her. After all, it wasn't as if she were defiling him.
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.
When she had finished cleaning her hand on the mute guard, she flashed
an empty smile at his dark glaring visage and then went on through the doors
into a stately reception hall. A row of tall windows lining one wall of the
room was trimmed with wheat-colored drapes. Near their tasseled edges, the
curtains sparkled in the lamplight as if they might be embellished with gold
thread. Latesummer rain spattered against tightly shut glass panes that
revealed only darkness outside, but reflected the activity inside. The pale
wool carpets, graced with flowers painstakingly sculpted in relief by means
of different-length yarn, were tracked with mud.
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.
One of the maps lay unrolled across a narrow table. The table's silver
candelabrum had been set aside on the floor behind the table. As Nicci
passed the table, she glanced down and saw that it was missing many of the
elements so carefully marked on the map drawn by the D'Haran messenger. On
the map laid out over the narrow table, there was nothing but dark splotches
from spilled ale in the area to the northwest; in the map etched in Nicci's
mind, there were the mountains, rivers, high passes, and streams there, and
a dot, marking the place where Richard was, along with his Mother Confessor
bride, and the Mord-Sith.
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.
An older woman, Sister Lidmila, apparently trying to be unobtrusive by
cowering in the shadows beside the drapes, snapped upright when she saw
Nicci marching across the room. Sister Lidmila stepped out of the shadows,
briefly pausing to smooth her dingy skirts, an act that could not possibly
produce any noticeable improvement; Sister Lidmila once had told Nicci that
things learned in youth never left you, and were often much easier to recall
than yesterday's dinner. Rumor had it that the old Sister, skilled in arcane
spells known to only the most powerful sorceresses, had many interesting
things from her youth to recall.
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.
When she was only ten feet away, Sister Lidmila waved an arm, as if not
sure Nicci would see her. "Sister Nicci. Sister Nicci, there you are." She
seized Nicci's wrist. "Come along, dear. Come along. His Excellency is
waiting for you. This way. Come along."
Nicci clasped the Sister's tugging hand. "Lead the way, Sister Lidmila.
I'm right behind you."
The older woman smiled over her shoulder. It wasn't a pleasant or
joyous smile, but one of relief. Jagang punished anyone who displeased him,
regardless of their culpability.
"What took you so long, Sister Nicci? His Excellency is in quite a
state, he is, because of you. Where have you been?"
"I had . . . business I had to attend to."
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."
Sister Lidmila was frail and forgetful, and she sometimes failed to
realize she was no longer at the Palace of the Prophets. Jagang used her to
fetch people, or to wait for them and show them the way-usually to his
tents. Should she forget the way, he could always correct her route, if need
be. It amused him to use a venerable Sister of the Light -a sorceress
reputedly possessing knowledge of the most esoteric incantations-as nothing
more than an errand girl. Away from the palace and it's
spell that slowed aging, Sister Lidmila was in a sudden headlong rush
toward the grave. All the Sisters were.
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.
"Here it is." Sister Lidmila peered up at Nicci. "His Excellency is in
his rooms. Hurry, then. Go on. Go on, now." She swirled her hands as if she
were trying to herd livestock. "In you go."
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."
Sister Lidmila's face brightened with a sly smile. "Ah, some of the
more occult magic interests you, at long last, Sister Nicci?"
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.
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I believe I am at last ready."
"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."
"It should be passed on, while you are able."
Sister Lidmila nodded with satisfaction. "I believe you are old enough.
I could show you. When?"
"I will come see you . . . tomorrow." Nicci glanced toward the door. "I
don't believe I will be able to take a lesson tonight."
"Tomorrow, then."
"If I . . . do come around to see you, I will be most eager to learn. I
especially wish to know about the maternity spell."
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.
Sister Lidmila straightened and again touched her fingers to her lower
lip. A look of concern crossed her face.
"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."
Nicci nodded. "I will come when 1 can, then."
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.
After she had watched the old Sister vanish around the corner, Nicci
entered a quiet room lit by myriad candles and lamps. The high ceiling was
edged with a painted leaf-and-acorn design. Plush couches and chairs
upholstered in muted browns were set about on thick carpets of rich yellows,
oranges, and reds, making them look like a forest floor in the autumn. Heavy
drapes had been pulled closed across an expanse of windows. Two Sisters
sitting on a couch leaped to their feet.
"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.
The Sister leaped back when Jagang, in the inner room, roared, "Get
out! All of you! Everyone else out!"
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.
At the door to the inner room, a woman Nicci didn't recognize ran out,
following close on the heels of the others. She was young and beautiful,
with dark hair and eyes, probably a captive picked up somewhere along the
long march, and no doubt used for Jagang's amusement. Her eyes reflected a
world gone mad for her.
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.
The outer door closed and the apartment was finally empty of everyone
but Nicci and the emperor. She stood erect, head held high, arms at her
sides, relishing the quiet of the place. The splendor meant little to her,
but quiet was a luxury she had come to appreciate, even if it was selfish.
In the tents there was always the noise of the army pressed close around.
Here, it was quiet. She glanced around the spacious and elaborately
decorated outer room, contemplating the idea that Jagang would have acquired
the taste for such places. Perhaps he, too, simply wanted quiet.
She turned back to the inner room. He was just inside, waiting,
watching her, a muscled mass of fury coiled in rage.
She strode directly up to him. "You wished to see me, Excellency?"
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 was dizzy and stunned, her vision faltering. Her eyes felt as if
they might have burst, her jaw as if it had been shattered, her neck as if
the muscles had ripped.. Nicci lay sprawled on the floor, savoring the
strident waves of pain, wallowing 'n the rare sensation of feeling.
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.
Jagang's brutality was able to reach down into the abyss, not only
because of the cruelty itself, but because she knew she need not suffer it.
He, too, knew that she was here by her choice, not his. That only
intensified his anger, and thus, her sensations.
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.
The room's spinning finally slowed enough for her to once more make it
to her feet. She pulled herself up straight before the silent brawny form of
Emperor Jagang. His shaved head reflected points of light from some of the
lamps. His only facial hair was a two-inch braid of mustache growing above
each corner of his mouth, and another in the center under his lower lip. The
gold ring through his left nostril and its thin gold chain running to
another ring in his left ear glimmered in the mellow lamplight. Except for a
heavy ring on each finger, he was without the plundered assortment of royal
chains and jewels he usually wore around his neck. The rings glistened with
her blood.
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.
Nicci, half a head shy of his height, stood before him, waiting,
looking into the eyes she used to see in her nightmares. They were a murky
gray, without whites, and clouded over with sullen, dusky shapes that stole
across a surface of inky obscurity. Even though they had no evident iris and
pupil-nothing but seeming dark voids where a normal person had eyes-she
never had any doubt whatsoever as to when he was looking at her.
They were the eyes of a dream walker. A dream walker denied access to
her mind. Now, she understood why.
"Well?" He growled. He threw up his hands. "Cry! Yell! Scream! Beg!
Argue make excuses! Don't just stand there!"
Nicci swallowed back the sharp taste of blood as she gazed placidly
into his scarlet glare.
"Please be specific, Excellency, as to which one you would prefer, how
long I should carry on, and if I should end it of my own accord, or wait for
you to beat me into unconsciousness."
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.
He released her throat with a shove. "I want to know why you did that
to Kadar!"
She offered only a bloody smile to his anger.
He wrenched her arm behind her back and pulled her hard against him.
"Why would you do such a thing! Why?"
The deadly dance with Jagang had begun. She dimly wondered again if
this time she would lose her life.
Jagang had killed a number of the Sisters who had displeased him.
Nicci's safety hIm-such as it was-lay in her very indifference to her
safety. Her utter Ikerest in her own life fascinated Jagang because he knew
it was sincere.
"Sometimes, you're a fool," she said with true contempt, "too arrogant
to see what is in front of your nose."
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."
She mocked him through the pain. "Do you intend to bore me to death,
then? If you want to kill me, seize me by the throat and strangle me, or
slash me to a bloody mess so that I will bleed to death at your feet-don't
think you can suffocate me with the sheer weight of your monotonous threats.
If you wish to kill me, then be a man and do so! Or else shut your mouth."
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.
"Why did you kill him, Nicci?" he asked again, his voice losing some of
its fire.
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.
"It amused me to hear the great Kadar Kardeef cry for mercy, and then
to deny it."
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.
She thought he might beat her to death now. Instead, he studied her
eyes from inches away. He sat up, straddling her hips. His meaty hands
pulled at the laces on the bodice of her dress. With a quick yank of the
material, he exposed her breasts. His fingers squeezed her bared flesh until
her eyes watered.
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.
Arms lying at her sides, her fingers open and slack, eyes unblinking,
Nicci stared at the folds of the silk in the canopy of the bed, her mind
unaffected in the distant
quiet place. The pain seemed remote. Her struggle to breathe seemed
trivial.
As he went about his coarse business, she focused her thoughts instead
on what she was going to do. She had never believed possible what she now
contemplated; now she knew it was. She had only to decide to do it.
Jagang slapped her, causing her to focus her mind back on him. "You're
too stupid to even weep!"
She realized he had finished; he was not happy that she hadn't noticed.
She had to make an effort not to comfort her jaw, stinging from what to him
was a smack, but to the person receiving it was a blow nearly strong enough
to cripple. Sweat
dripped from his chin onto her face. His powerful body glistened from
the exertion she had not perceived.
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.
"Is that what you wish me to do, then, Excellency? Weep?"
His voice turned bitter as he flopped onto his side beside her. "No. I
wish you to react."
"But I am," she said as she stared up at the canopy. "It is simply not
the reaction you wish."
He sat up. "What's the matter with you, woman?"
She gazed up at him a moment, and then turned her eyes away.
"I have no idea," she answered honestly. "But I think I must find out."
Jagang gestured. "Take off your clothes. You're spending the night.
It's been too long." This time, it was he who stared off at the walls. "I've
missed you in my bed, Nicci."
She didn't answer. She did not believe that in his bed he missed
anything. She didn't believe she could conceive of him understanding what it
was to miss a person. What he missed, she thought, was being able to miss
someone.
Nicci sat up and threw her legs over the side of the bed as she
untangled herself from the black dress. She pulled it off over her head and
then laid it out across the back of a padded leather chair. She reclaimed
her underthings from the tangles of the bed covering and tossed them on the
chair before drawing off her stockings and placing them, too, on the seat of
the chair. He watched her body the whole time, watched her as she tended to
her dress, smoothing it to straighten what he had done to it, watched the
mysterious allure of a woman acting a woman.
When she had finished she turned back to him. She stood proudly, to let
him see that which he could have only by force, and never as a willing gift.
She could detect the sense of privation in his expression. This, was the
only victory she could have: the more he took her by force, the more he
understood that that was the only way he could ever have her, and the more
it maddened him. She would just as soon die as willingly give him the
satisfaction of that gift, and he knew the brutal truth of that.
He finally forced himself away from his private, bitter longing and
looked up into her eyes. "Why'd you kill Kadar?"
She sat on the edge of the bed opposite him, just out of his easy
reach, but within range of his lunge, and shrugged her bare shoulders.
"You are not the Order. The Order is no single man, but an ideal of
equity. As such, it will survive any one person. You serve that ideal and
the Order, for now, in the capacity of but a brute. The Order could use any
brute to serve its purpose. You, Kadar, or another. I simply eliminated
someone who might one day have been a threat to you before you can rise
above your present role."
He grinned. "You expect me to believe that you were doing me a
kindness? Now you mock me."
"If it pleases you to think so, then do."
Her smooth white limbs were a vivid contrast to the heavy, dark,
variegated verdant bedcover and sheets. He lay back atop them against
several rumpled pillows. immodestly displayed before her. His eyes looked
even darker than usual.
"What's all this talk I keep hearing about 'Jagang the Just'?"
"Your new title. It is the thing that will save you, the thing that
will win for you, the thing that will bring you more glory than anything
else. Yet, in return for elimi-
nating a future threat to your standing, and for making you a hero to
the people, you draw my blood."
He put an arm behind his head. "Sometimes you make me believe the
stories fat people tell, that you really are crazy."
"And if you kill everyone?"
"Then they will be dead."
"I have recently been through towns visited by your soldiers. It seems
they didn't harm the people-at least, they didn't slaughter everyone in
sight, as they did when fey began their march into the New World."
He lunged and seized a fistful of her hair. With a snarl, he yanked her
onto her back beside him. She caught her breath as he rose up on an elbow
and directed his disturbing gaze down into her eyes.
"It is your job to make examples of people, to show them that they must
contribute to our cause; to make them fear the Imperial Order's righteous
wrath. That is the task I assigned you."
"Is that so? Then why did the soldiers not make examples, too? Why did
they let those towns be? Why did they not contribute to striking fear into
the hearts of the people? Why didn't they lay waste to every city and town
in their path?"
"And then who would I rule but my soldiers? Who would do the work? Who
would make things? Who would grow the food? Who would pay tribute? To whom
will I bring the hope of the Order? Who will there be to glorify the great
Emperor Jagang, if I kill them all?"
He flopped onto his back. "You may be called Death's Mistress, but we
can't have it your way and kill everyone. In this world you are bound to the
Order's purpose. If people feel the Order's arrival can mean nothing but
their death, they will resist to the end. They must know that it is only
their resistance which will bring a swift and sure death. If they realize
our arrival offers them a moral life, a life which puts man under the
Creator and the welfare of man above all else, they will embrace us."
"You dealt death to this city," she taunted, forcing him to unwittingly
prove the validity of what she had done. "Even though they chose the Order."
"I've given orders that any people of the city still alive be allowed
to go back to their homes. The rampage is ended. The people here betrayed
their promises and thus invited brutality; they saw it, but now that is
finished and a new day of order has come. The old ideas of separate lands
are over, as it was ended in the Old World. All people will be governed
together, and will enter a new age of prosperity together-under the Imperial
Order. Only those who resist will be crushed-not because they resist, but
because, ultimately, they are traitors to the well-being of their fellow man
and must be eliminated.
"Here, in Anderith, was the turning point in our struggle. Richard Rahl
was at last cast out by the people themselves, who came to see the virtue of
what we offer. No longer can he claim to represent them."
"Yet you came in and slaughtered-"
"The leaders here betrayed certain promises to me-who knows how much of
the general population may have collaborated in that-and so the people had
to pay a puce, but collectively they have also earned a place in the Order
for their courage In emphatically rejecting Lord Rahl and the outdated,
selfish, uninspired morals he offered them.
"The tide has turned. People no longer have faith in Lord Rahl, nor can
he now have any faith in them. Richard Rahl is a fallen leader."
Nicci smiled inwardly, a sad smile. She was a fallen woman, and Richard
was a fallen man. Their fate was sealed.
"Perhaps here, in this one small place," she said, "but he is far from
defeated. He is still dangerous. After all, you failed to gain everything
you sought here in Anderith because of Richard Rahl. He not only denied you
a clear victory by destroying vast stores of supplies and leaving the
systems and services of production in total disarray, but he also slipped
right through your fingers when you should have captured him."
"I will have him!"
"Really? I wonder." She watched his fist, and waited until it relaxed
before she continued. "When will you move our forces north, into the
Midlands?"
Jagang stroked his hand down his woolly chest. "Soon. I want to give
them time to become careless, first. When they grow complacent, I will
strike north.
"A great leader must read the nature of the battle, to be able to
adjust his tactics. We will be liberators, now, as we move north into the
Midlands, bringing the Creator's glory to the people. We must win the hearts
and minds of the unconverted."
"You have decided this change? On your own? You do not consider the
will of the Creator in your campaign?"
He glared at her insolence, as if to tell her she knew better than to
even ask such a question.
"I am the emperor; I need not consult our spiritual guides, but since
their. counsel is always welcome, I've already talked to the priests.
They've spoken favorably about my plans. Brother Narev thinks it wise and
has given his blessing. You had better keep to your job of extinguishing any
ideas of opposition. If you don't follow my orders, well, no one will miss
one Sister. I have others."
She was not moved by his threats, real as they were. By his suspicious
look, he was beginning to understand her vision, too.
"What you are doing is fitting," she said, "but it must be cut up into
little pieces the people can chew. They do not have the Order's wisdom in
seeing what is best for them-the public rarely does. Even one as bullheaded
as you must be able to see that I have anticipated your plans by helping
those you can't afford to kill to understand that you are sparing them out
of your sense of justice. Word of such deeds will win hearts."
He cast her a sidelong glance. "I am the Order's cleansing fire. The
fire is a necessary conflagration, but not the important end-it is merely
the means to the end. From the ashes I, Jagang, create, new order can sprout
and grow. It is this end, this glorious new age of man, that warrants the
means. In this, it is my responsibility not yours-to decide justice, when
and how I will dispense it, and who will receive it."
She grew impatient with his vanity. Scorn seeped into her voice. "I
have simply put a name to it-Jagang the Just-and begun to spread your new
title for you when the opportunity arose. I sacrificed Kadar to that end,
for all the same reasons you've listed. It had to be done now in order for
it to have the necessary time to spread and flourish, or the New World would
soon harden irreversibly against the Order. I chose the time and place, and
by using Kadar Kardeef's life-a war hero's life-proved your devotion to the
cause of the Order above all else. You benefit.
"Any brute could ignite the conflagration; this new title shows your
moral
vision-another manifestation of worth over other men. I have planted
the vital seed that will make you a hero to the common people and, even more
important, to the priests. Are you going to pretend you think the title
inadequate? Or that it will not serve you well?
"What I alone have done will help win what your powerful army cannot:
willing allegiance without a battle, at a cost of nothing. With Kadar's
life, I, Nicci, have made you more than you could make of yourself. I,
Nicci, have given you the reputation of honor. I, Nicci, have made you into
a leader people will trust because they believe you to be just."
He brooded for a time, turning his gaze from her hot glare. His arm
finally fell own and his fingers tenderly trailed down her thigh. The touch
was an admission for him-an admission that she was right, even if he would
not say the words.
After a few moments he yawned, and then his eyes closed. His breathing
evened, and he started to drift off into a nap, as was his way with her. He
expected her to remain right where she was, so that when he awoke she would
be available to him. She supposed she could leave. But it was not time. Not
yet.
He finally awoke an hour later. Nicci was still staring up at the
canopy, thinking about Richard. There seemed to be one piece missing in her
plan, one more thing that she felt needed to fall into place.
In his sleep Jagang had rolled over on his side facing away from her.
Now, he turned back. His dark eyes took her in with a look of lust
rekindled. He drew her close. His body was as warm as a rock in the sun and
only slightly softer.
"Pleasure me," he commanded in a husky growl that would have frightened
any other woman into doing as ordered.
"Or what? You will kill me? If I feared that, I would not be here. This
is by force, not consent. I will not willingly take part in it, nor will I
allow you to deceive yourself into believing that I want you."
He backhanded her, knocking her across the bed. "You take part
willingly!" He seized her by the wrist and dragged her back toward him. "Why
else would you be here?"
"You ordered me here."
He smirked. "And you came when you could have fled."
She opened her mouth, but she had no answer she could put into words,
no answer he would understand.
With a grin of victory, he fell on her and pressed his lips to hers. As
much as it hurt her, for Jagang this was gentle behavior. He had told her
several times that she was the only woman he ever cared to kiss. He seemed
to believe that by expressing those emotions for her, she could have no
alternative but to surrender feelings in kind, as if spoken feelings were
currency with which he could purchase affection on demand.
It was only the beginning of a long night-along ordeal-she knew. She
would have to endure his forceful violation several more times before
morning. His question haunted the distant place in her mind.
Morning came, accompanied by the dull throbbing of a headache from her
succeeding beating, and the sharper aches from the places where he'd struck
her when he came to find that what he thought was her willing submission was
but a delusion that left him more angered than before. The pillows were
stained with her blood. It had
g been a long night of rare sensations experienced. -HIre knew she was
evil, and deserved to be violated in such a brutal fashion. She
could offer no moral objection to it; even in the terrible things he
did to her, Jagang was nowhere near as corrupt as she. Jagang erred in
simple matters of the flesh, and that could only be expected all people were
corrupt in the flesh-but because of her indifference to the suffering around
her, she failed in matters of the spirit. That, she knew, was pure evil.