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«Lokey, what are you doing?»
Lokey tugged insistently. The curious bird usually plucked at the beads down the sleeve or the leather thongs at the end, but now he pulled the sleeve itself.
«What?» she asked. «What do you want?»
He let go of her sleeve and cocked his head as he peered at her with one gleaming eye. Ravens were intelligent creatures, but she was never quite sure just how intelligent. Sometimes she thought that Lokey was smarter than some people she knew.
Lokey's throat feathers and ears lifted out aggressively.
He suddenly let out a piercing caw that sounded very much like angry frustration at not being able to talk so that he could tell her something. Kraaah. He fluffed out his feathers again and cawed again. Kraaah.
Jillian stroked his head and then his back, scratching gently but firmly under his raised black plumage-something he loved to have done-before smoothing down his ruffled feathers. Instead of clicking contentedly and blinking lazily, as he usually did when she gave him a such a scratch, he hopped back a step out of her reach and let out three piercing caws that made her ears hurt. Kraaah. Kraaah. Kraaah.
She covered her ears. «What's gotten into you today?»
Lokey hopped up and down, flapping his wings. Kraaah. He ran across the top of the old cobble road, flapping and croaking. At the other side he fluttered up into the air, alighted, and then lifted off the ground again. Kraaah.
Jillian stood. «You want me to come with you?»
Lokey cawed noisily as if to confirm that she had at long last guessed correctly. Jillian laughed. She was sure that the crazy bird could understand every word she said and sometimes read her thoughts besides. She loved having him around. Sometimes when she talked to him he would quietly stand nearby and listen.
Her grandfather had told her not to let Lokey sleep in her room or he would know her dreams. Jillian mostly had wonderful dreams, so she didn't mind if Lokey knew them. She suspected that maybe her friend did know her dreams and that was why she often awoke to find him perched on the nearby windowsill, sleeping contentedly.
But she was always very careful not to send him any nightmares.
«Did you find yourself a nice dead antelope? Or maybe a rabbit? Is that why you're not hungry?» She shook her finger at him. «Lokey,» she scolded, «did you steal another raven's cache?»
Lokey was always hungry. Her ravenous raven, she often called him. He would share her dinner with her if she would let him and steal it if she wouldn't. Even if he was too full to eat the lizard, she was surprised that he didn't at least take it away and hide it for later. Ravens hid whatever they couldn't manage to eat-and they could eat a lot. She couldn't understand how it was that the bird didn't get fat.
Jillian stood and brushed the dust from the seat of her dress and her knobby knees. Lokey was already airborne, circling, cawing, urging her to hurry.
«All right, all right,» she complained as she held her arms out for balance while scurrying along the top of the fat wall along an enclosure strewn with rubble.
At the crest of the small hill she stood with one hand on the sash of cloth wrapped around her hip while with her other hand she shielded her eyes as she peered up into the bright sky to watch her friend pitching and rolling in a bid to keep her attention. Lokey was a shameless show-off. If he couldn't do aerial stunts to impress other ravens, he would happily do them for her.
«Yes,» she yelled into the sky, «you're a clever bird, Lokey.»
Lokey cawed once and then swiftly beat his wings. Jillian's gaze followed him, her hand shielding her eyes from the sunlight, as he flew south out over the vast expanse before her. Random ribbons of green summer grasses, up closer to the foot of the headland and mountains behind her, cut through the barren landscape. To the sides, hazy violet fingers of distant mountains, each farther one a shade softer and lighter, extended down into the desolate plain that seemed to go south forever. She knew it didn't, though. Grandfather said that to the south was a great barrier and beyond a long forbidden place called the Old World.
In the distance, down among the green patches on the plain that lay close up against the foothills, she could see the place where her people lived in the summers. Wooden fences filled the broken gaps in ancient stone walls that held their goats, pigs, and chickens. Some of their cattle grazed out on the summer grasses. There was water in this place, and some trees, their leaves shimmering in the bright sunlight. Gardens stretched out beside the simple brick houses that had withstood the harsh winter winds and baking summer sun for untold centuries.
And then, when she glanced up again at Lokey, Jillian saw at the horizon toward the west a faint cloud of dust rising up.
It was so far away that it seemed tiny. The smudge of dust against the deep blue of the sky where it met the horizon seemed to hang in the air, motionless, but she knew that it was just a trick of the distance that made it look tiny and still. Even from this far, she was able to tell that it was spread across a broad swath. It was still so far away that it was hard to see much of its cause. Had it not been for Lokey, Jillian likely wouldn't have spotted it for some time.
Even though she couldn't yet see what was causing the dust, she knew that she had never before seen such a sight.
Her first thought was that it had to be a whirlwind or a dust storm. But as she watched it she realized that it was too broad to be a whirlwind and a dust storm didn't stream up into the sky the way this did. A dust storm, even if it did extend high up, still had at the base what looked like huge, billowing, brown clouds running along the ground that was actually where the gusty winds were churning up the dust.
This wasn't at all like that. This was dust rising up from something coming-from people coming on horses.
Strangers.
More strangers than she could fathom. Strangers in such numbers that it was like something in her grandfather's stories.
Jillian's knees began to tremble. Fear welled up through her, coming to lodge in her throat where screams were born.
This was them. The strangers her grandfather always said would come. They were coming now.
People never doubted her grandfather-to his face, anyway-but she didn't think they really worried about the things in his tellings. After all, their lives were peaceful; no one ever came to disturb them or their homeland.
Jillian, though, had always believed her grandfather and so she'd always known that the strangers would eventually come, but, like other people, she'd always thought it would be sometime in the dim future, maybe when she was old, or, maybe even, if they were lucky, generations in the future.
It was only in her infrequent nightmares that the strangers arrived in the present, rather than the far future.
Seeing those columns of dust rising, she knew without a doubt that this was them and they were coming now.
In her whole life she had never seen strangers. No one but Jillian's people ever wandered the inhospitable barrens of the vast and forbidding place known as the Deep Nothing.
She stood trembling in terror, staring at the smudge of dust at the horizon. She was about to see a great many outsiders — the ones from the stories.
But it was too soon. She hadn't had a life yet, hadn't had a chance to live and love and have children. Tears brimmed in her eyes, giving everything a watery appearance. She looked over her shoulder and up into the ruins. Was this what they had faced, like in Grandfather's tellings?
Tears began to run down through the dust on her cheeks. She knew, she knew without a hint of doubt, that her life was about to change, and that her dreams would no longer be happy.
Jillian scrambled down off the top of the rubble she had been standing on and ran down the hill, past the wall, the crumbled empty squares of brick buildings, the pits where once buildings had risen up. Her racing feet raised their own cloud of dust as she ran through the ruins of what once had been outposts of an ancient city. She ran down roads that no longer had life around them, no longer were lined with standing buildings.
She had often tried to imagine what it would have been like when people had lived in the houses, when people had walked the streets, cooked in the homes, hung the wash outside their brick houses, traded goods in the squares. No more. They were all long dead. The whole city was long dead, except for the few of Jillian's people who sometimes stayed in the most remote of the old buildings.
As she got closer to those ancient buildings of the outposts that they used when they lived in this area for the summer, Jillian saw people hurrying about, yelling to one another. She saw that they were gathering up their things and collecting the animals. It appeared they were going to move on, maybe back into the shelter of the mountains, or out onto the barrens. She had seen her people do such a thing only a few times before. The threat had always turned out to be imaginary. Jillian knew that this time it was real.
She wasn't sure, though, if they would have enough time to flee the approaching strangers and hide. But her people were strong and swift. They were used to moving around on the empty land. Grandfather said that no one else but her people could survive so well in this forsaken place. They knew the mountain passes and places of water, as well as the hidden passages through what seemed like impassable canyons. They could vanish into the inhospitable land in short order and survive.
Most of them could, anyway. Some, like her grandfather, were no longer swift.
With that renewed fear, her feet ran all the faster, padding with a steady beat over the dusty ground. As she got closer, Jillian saw men packing their travel goods on the mules. Women collected cooking utensils, filled water containers, and carried clothes and tents out from their summer homes and storage buildings. It looked to Jillian that they had been aware of the approaching strangers for some time as they were already well advanced in their preparations to depart.
«Ma!» Jillian called out when she saw her mother packing her pot atop a mule already piled high with their belongings. «Ma!»
Her mother flashed a quick smile and held out a sheltering arm. Even though she was getting past the age for such things, Jillian nuzzled under that arm like a chick burrowing under a mother hen's wing.
«Jillian, get your things.» Her mother shooed her with a hand. «Hurry.»
Jillian knew better than to question at a time like this. She wiped away her tears and ran to the small, square, ancient building they used as their home when they summered on the plains near the headland. The men sometimes had to replace the roofs when the worst of the weather tore them off, but, other than that, the rest of the stout, squat buildings were the very same buildings constructed by their ancestors who had once built and lived in the deserted city of Caska, up on the headland.
Grandfather, looking drawn and pale as she imagined a ghost might look, waited in the shadows just inside the door. He was not hurrying. Terror swelled in Jillian's chest. She realized that he couldn't come with them. He was old and frail. Like some of the other older people, he wouldn't be swift enough to keep up with the rest of them if they were to escape. She could see in his eyes that he had no intention of trying.
She sank into her grandfather's tender embrace and started wailing even as he comforted her.
«There, there, child,» he said, his hand stroking her short-cropped hair. «No time for this.»
Grandfather grasped her arms and eased her away as she tried her best to bring her sobbing under control. She knew that she was old enough that she shouldn't be crying in such a way, but she just couldn't help it. He squatted down, his leathery face wrinkling as he smiled at her and brushed away a tear.
Jillian swiped away the rest of her tears, trying to be strong and act her age. «Grandfather, Lokey showed me the strangers who are coming.»
He was nodding. «I know. I sent him.»
«Oh» was all she could think to say. Her world was turning upside down and it was hard to think, but somewhere in the back of her mind she realized that he had never before done such a thing. She'd never known he could, but, knowing her grandfather, it didn't really surprise her.
«Jillian, listen to me. These men who are coming are the ones I always told you would come. Those who can are going away for a while to hide.»
«For how long?»
«For as long as necessary. These men who ride this way are only a small number of those who will eventually come.»
Her eyes grew wide. «You mean there are more? But there are so many. They raise more dust than I have ever seen before. There can be more strangers than these?»
His smile was brief and bitter. «These are only a survey party, I expect-the first advance scouts of many more to come. This vast and desolate land is unknown to them. I expect they are looking for routes through it, testing to see if there will be any opposition. I'm afraid that according to the tellings, the men they scout for are more in number than even I can grasp. I believe that these other men, with their uncountable numbers, are yet some time in coming, but even this advance party will be dangerous, ruthless men. Those of our people who are able must flee and hide for now.
«Jillian, you cannot go with them.»
Her jaw dropped. «What — ?»
«Listen to me. The times I have told you about are upon us.»
«But, Ma and Pa won't allow.»
«They will allow what I tell them they must, just as our people must,» he said in a stern voice. «This is about far greater matters, matters that have never before involved our people-at least not since our ancestors filled the city. Now these things concern us as well.»
Jillian nodded solemnly. «Yes, Grandfather.» She was terror stricken, but at the same time she felt an awakening sense of duty to her grandfather's call. If he intended to trust her with such things, then she could not fail him.
«What is it am I to do, then?»
«You are to be the priestess of the bones, the carrier of dreams.»
Jillian's mouth again fell open. «Me?»
«Yes, you.»
«But I'm still too young. I've not been trained in such things.»
«There is no more time, child.» He leaned toward her in admonition. «You are the one to do this, Jillian. I have already taught you much of the tellings. You may think you are unprepared, or that you are not old enough, and all that may have some truth to it, but you know more than you may realize. What's more, there is no other. It is upon you to do this.»
Jillian couldn't seem to make herself blink. She felt completely inadequate, and at the same time faintly excited and guardedly inspired. Her people were depending on her. More importantly, her grandfather was depending on her and he believed she could do it.
«Yes, Grandfather.»
«I will prepare you to be among the dead, and then you must hide among them and wait.»
Fear began to wrap its arms around her again. She had never stayed all alone among the dead.
Jillian swallowed. «Grandfather, are you sure that I'm ready for such a thing? To be there, alone, among the dead? Waiting for one of them?»
The light coming in from the open door cast his face with a forbidding look. «You are as ready as I can make you. I had hoped there would be time left to teach you many more things, but at least I have taught you some of what you must know.»
Outside, people rushed around in the sunlight, tending to the preparations. They were careful not to look into the shadows, to Grandfather, after he had pulled her away from the rest of them, telling her what she must face.
«To tell you the truth,» he said, «this has taken me unprepared as well. The tellings have been carried down from our people for thousands of years, but they never said when it would happen. I never really believed that it would come during my life. I remember my own grandfather telling me the things I have told you and not really believing it would ever happen except maybe in some far future time that didn't really mean anything to my life. But the time is now upon us and we must do our best to honor our ancestors. We must be ready-you must-as we have been taught through the tellings.»
«How long will I have to wait?»
«There is no way I can tell you that. You must hide among the spirits. As the tellers have done down through the centuries, you and I have stashed food, as Lokey does, for just such an eventuality. You will have food to keep your belly full. You can fish and hunt for game when it is safe to be out.»
«Yes, Grandfather. But couldn't you hide with me?»
«I will take you up there, help prepare you, and tell you all I can. But I must then return here to help make these strangers think we are out in the open and welcoming to them while the others of our people escape-and so that you will be able to hide. I could not be as swift as you, nor as small to slip through the narrow places so that these men cannot follow you. I will have to return here and do my part.»
«What if the strangers hurt you?»
Grandfather took a breath and let it out with weary resolve. «It may be that they do so. These men who come will be capable of such brutality —that is why this is so important. Their cruel ways are why we must be strong and why we must not give in to them. Even if I die»-he shook a finger at her."and you can be sure that I will do my best not to, I will be buying the rest of you the time you need.»
Jillian chewed on her lip. «Aren't you afraid to die?»
He nodded as he smiled. «Very. But I have lived a long life and because I love you so, I would choose that you have a chance to do the same.»
«Grandfather,» she said through choking tears, «I want you to be with me for my life.»
He took her hand. «Me too, child. I wish to see you grow into a woman and have your own children. But I don't want you to worry too much for me; I am not so helpless nor a fool. I will sit in the shade with the others and present no threat to these men. We will confess to the strangers that the younger of our people ran away in terror, but we could not. The strangers will likely have more important things to do than waste their energy harming us. We will be fine. I want you to think about what you must do, and not worry about me.»
Jillian felt a little better about his safety. «Yes, Grandfather.»
«Besides,» he told her, «Lokey will be with you, and he will carry my spirit with him, so it will be almost like I am watching over you.» When she smiled at that, he said, «Come, now. We must go and make preparations.»
Jillian's mother and father were allowed a brief farewell after Grandfather told them in a stern voice that he was taking her to be with their spirit ancestors and see to the safety of their people.
Her mother and father either understood the importance of allowing their daughter to go, or were too afraid of Grandfather to refuse. In either case they hugged her and bid her strength until they could be together again.
Without speaking more of it, Grandfather led her away as eyes followed them. He took her up the ancient roads and through gorges, past the deserted outposts and mysterious buildings, and up the great rise of the land. As they climbed, the sun lowered in the western sky behind the golden tail of dust that slowly but steadily came ever closer. She knew that before the sun set, most of her people would be gone.
The lowering sun allowed the murky shadows to begin to haunt the defiles. The smooth stone, layered with twisting bands of rock, invited them ever onward to see what might be around each curving bend. Along the bottom the gravel was littered here and there with bones of small animals. Most, she knew, were the leavings of the coyotes and the wolves. She tried very hard to banish the mental image of her own bleached bones lying scattered in the gravel.
Overhead, Lokey lazily circled in the deepening blue of the sky as he watched her making her way with Grandfather up toward the headland. When they reached the stone spires, the bird silently glided among the columns' pinnacles, as if it were a game. He had followed them up to the ancient city enough times that he must have thought nothing of it. To Jillian, even though Grandfather had taken her up through the maze of ravines, gullies, and deep canyons a great many times, this time it all seemed new to her.
This time she was going as the priestess of the bones, the carrier of dreams.
At a place where a quiet stream followed a twisting route through the graveled bottom of a very deep canyon, Grandfather led her to a small boulder in the cool shade and sat her down. All around, the smooth, undulating sides of the canyon rose nearly straight up, leaving no way to climb out if a sudden rain brought a flood. It was a dangerous place-for more than the reason of the threat of flash floods. It was a tangle of side gullies and canyons that in places took complicated routes around huge standing columns so that it was possible to go around in circles and never find your way out. Jillian, though, knew her way through this labyrinth, as well as others.
As she sat quietly, waiting, Grandfather opened a pouch he always carried tied to his belt. He pulled out a folded piece of oilcloth from among the things he carried in the pouch, and opened it in one palm. He dipped his first finger in the oily black substance inside.
Grandfather lifted her chin. «Hold still, now, while I paint your face.»
Jillian had never been painted before. She knew of the formality from Grandfather's stories, but she just never thought about it being her who would be the priestess of the bones, the one to be painted. She sat as still as she could while he worked, feeling that everything was happening too fast-before she had even had time to really think about it. Earlier that day the most she had on her mind was catching a lizard for Lokey. Now it felt as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders.
«There,» Grandfather said. «Come see.»
Jillian knelt beside a still pool and bent forward. She gasped. What she saw was frightening. The face staring back had a painted black band across it, like a blindfold, but one she could see through. Her copper-colored eyes stared back at her from the dark midst of that smoky black mask.
«Now the evil spirits will not be able to see you,» he told her as he stood. «You can safely be among our ancestors.»
Jillian stood as well, feeling very strange indeed. She felt transformed. The face she'd seen had been the face of the priestess. She'd heard about it in Grandfather's tellings, but she'd never seen such a face in real life, much less expected it to ever be her own.
She leaned over and stole a cautious peek into the still pool. «This will truly hide me?»
«It will keep you safe,» he said as he nodded.
She wondered if Lokey would know her, if he would be afraid of her. The face staring back from the still water certainly scared her.
«Come,» Grandfather said, «we must get you up there and then I must get back so the men will find me there with those of our people who remain behind.»
When at long last they climbed out of the spires and stone canyons, they were finally up near the city, just outside the great main wall but within some of the outer rings of smaller walls.
They had emerged near the graveyard.
Grandfather gestured. «You lead the way, Jillian. This is your place now.»
Jillian nodded and started out toward the city glowing in the golden, late-day sunlight. It was a beautiful sight, as it always was, but this day it also seemed haunting to her. It seemed she was seeing it through new eyes. She felt a very real connection with her ancestors now.
The grand buildings looked as if people might still occupy them, as if she might spot some of them through the empty window openings as they went about their daily lives. Some of the structures were immense, with soaring pillars holding up projecting sections of slate roofs. Other buildings had rows of arched windows on each level. Grandfather had taken her into some of those buildings. It was amazing to see places that were stacked inside with layers of rooms so that one had to climb stairs-stairs actually built right inside the buildings-to get to rooms above. The ancient builders seemed almost magical in the things they had accomplished. From a distance, glowing in the golden light, it truly was a majestic sight.
Now, she would walk the streets alone, accompanied only by the spirits of those who had once lived here. She felt safe, though, knowing that Grandfather had painted upon her the mask of the priestess of the bones.
She would be the one who would cast the dreams at the strangers.
If she did her job well, the strangers would be so frightened that they would flee and her people would be safe.
She tried not to think about how the people who once had lived here had done the same thing and yet had failed.
«Do you think there will be too many?» she asked, suddenly frightened by the tellings of the ancient debacle.
«Too many?» he puzzled at her as they walked beside a wall that had long ago been encased by living nets of vines that now held the crumbling stones in place.
«Too many for the dreams. I'm only one person-and I'm not experienced, or older, or anything. It's just me.»
His big hand gave her an assuring pat between her shoulder blades. «Numbers do not matter. He will help give you the strength you need.» Grandfather lifted a cautionary finger. «And don't forget, Jillian, the tellings say that you must be devoted to this one. He is to be your master.»
Jillian nodded as they entered the vast graveyard. In the lower reaches there were simple stone markers. As they climbed higher, past row upon row of graves, they eventually came to larger and more ornate monuments to the dead. Some of them had grand statues of people in proud poses atop them. Some had carvings of the flame of life that represented the Creator's light. Some had ancient inscriptions of lasting love. A few had only an ancient symbol on them that her grandfather told her was called a Grace. Some of the great monuments had only a name.
Deep in the place of the dead, near the highest spot, where the weathered trees grew large and twisted, they came at last to a grand grave marked with a huge, ornately crafted stone monument. Atop it sat a speckled gray granite urn that held olives, pears, and other fruits, with grapes spilling out over one side, all carved from the same piece of stone. Grandfather, who had taken her to see this monument many times as he gave her tellings, said that the urn was meant to represent the bounty of life that man created through his creative efforts and hard work.
He watched her as she paused and then stepped closer to a huge gravestone for someone long dead, carved from one piece of stone back in the time that the ancient city had been alive. She wondered what he had been like. She wondered if he had been kind, or cruel, or young, or old.
Lokey alighted atop the carved stone grapes and ruffled his glossy black feathers before settling himself. She was glad that Lokey would keep her company in such a lonely place.
Jillian reached out and traced a finger through the letters that spelled out the name carved in the gray granite.
«Do you think the tellings are true, Grandfather? I mean, really true?»
«I was taught that they are.»
«Then he really will come back to us from the world of the dead? Really, truly come back to life from the dead?»
She looked back over her shoulder. Her grandfather, standing close behind her, reached out and reverently touched the stone monument. He nodded solemnly.
«He will.»
«Then I will wait for him,» she said. «The priestess of the bones will be here to welcome him and serve him when he returns to life.»
Jillian briefly glanced at the dust rising at the horizon and then turned back to the tomb. «Please hurry,» she implored of the dead man.
As her grandfather watched, she gently ran her small fingers through the bold letters on the tomb.
«I can't cast the dreams without you,» Jillian said softly to the name carved in the stone. «Please hurry, Richard Rahl, and return to the living.»
CHAPTER 45
Lokey tugged insistently. The curious bird usually plucked at the beads down the sleeve or the leather thongs at the end, but now he pulled the sleeve itself.
«What?» she asked. «What do you want?»
He let go of her sleeve and cocked his head as he peered at her with one gleaming eye. Ravens were intelligent creatures, but she was never quite sure just how intelligent. Sometimes she thought that Lokey was smarter than some people she knew.
Lokey's throat feathers and ears lifted out aggressively.
He suddenly let out a piercing caw that sounded very much like angry frustration at not being able to talk so that he could tell her something. Kraaah. He fluffed out his feathers again and cawed again. Kraaah.
Jillian stroked his head and then his back, scratching gently but firmly under his raised black plumage-something he loved to have done-before smoothing down his ruffled feathers. Instead of clicking contentedly and blinking lazily, as he usually did when she gave him a such a scratch, he hopped back a step out of her reach and let out three piercing caws that made her ears hurt. Kraaah. Kraaah. Kraaah.
She covered her ears. «What's gotten into you today?»
Lokey hopped up and down, flapping his wings. Kraaah. He ran across the top of the old cobble road, flapping and croaking. At the other side he fluttered up into the air, alighted, and then lifted off the ground again. Kraaah.
Jillian stood. «You want me to come with you?»
Lokey cawed noisily as if to confirm that she had at long last guessed correctly. Jillian laughed. She was sure that the crazy bird could understand every word she said and sometimes read her thoughts besides. She loved having him around. Sometimes when she talked to him he would quietly stand nearby and listen.
Her grandfather had told her not to let Lokey sleep in her room or he would know her dreams. Jillian mostly had wonderful dreams, so she didn't mind if Lokey knew them. She suspected that maybe her friend did know her dreams and that was why she often awoke to find him perched on the nearby windowsill, sleeping contentedly.
But she was always very careful not to send him any nightmares.
«Did you find yourself a nice dead antelope? Or maybe a rabbit? Is that why you're not hungry?» She shook her finger at him. «Lokey,» she scolded, «did you steal another raven's cache?»
Lokey was always hungry. Her ravenous raven, she often called him. He would share her dinner with her if she would let him and steal it if she wouldn't. Even if he was too full to eat the lizard, she was surprised that he didn't at least take it away and hide it for later. Ravens hid whatever they couldn't manage to eat-and they could eat a lot. She couldn't understand how it was that the bird didn't get fat.
Jillian stood and brushed the dust from the seat of her dress and her knobby knees. Lokey was already airborne, circling, cawing, urging her to hurry.
«All right, all right,» she complained as she held her arms out for balance while scurrying along the top of the fat wall along an enclosure strewn with rubble.
At the crest of the small hill she stood with one hand on the sash of cloth wrapped around her hip while with her other hand she shielded her eyes as she peered up into the bright sky to watch her friend pitching and rolling in a bid to keep her attention. Lokey was a shameless show-off. If he couldn't do aerial stunts to impress other ravens, he would happily do them for her.
«Yes,» she yelled into the sky, «you're a clever bird, Lokey.»
Lokey cawed once and then swiftly beat his wings. Jillian's gaze followed him, her hand shielding her eyes from the sunlight, as he flew south out over the vast expanse before her. Random ribbons of green summer grasses, up closer to the foot of the headland and mountains behind her, cut through the barren landscape. To the sides, hazy violet fingers of distant mountains, each farther one a shade softer and lighter, extended down into the desolate plain that seemed to go south forever. She knew it didn't, though. Grandfather said that to the south was a great barrier and beyond a long forbidden place called the Old World.
In the distance, down among the green patches on the plain that lay close up against the foothills, she could see the place where her people lived in the summers. Wooden fences filled the broken gaps in ancient stone walls that held their goats, pigs, and chickens. Some of their cattle grazed out on the summer grasses. There was water in this place, and some trees, their leaves shimmering in the bright sunlight. Gardens stretched out beside the simple brick houses that had withstood the harsh winter winds and baking summer sun for untold centuries.
And then, when she glanced up again at Lokey, Jillian saw at the horizon toward the west a faint cloud of dust rising up.
It was so far away that it seemed tiny. The smudge of dust against the deep blue of the sky where it met the horizon seemed to hang in the air, motionless, but she knew that it was just a trick of the distance that made it look tiny and still. Even from this far, she was able to tell that it was spread across a broad swath. It was still so far away that it was hard to see much of its cause. Had it not been for Lokey, Jillian likely wouldn't have spotted it for some time.
Even though she couldn't yet see what was causing the dust, she knew that she had never before seen such a sight.
Her first thought was that it had to be a whirlwind or a dust storm. But as she watched it she realized that it was too broad to be a whirlwind and a dust storm didn't stream up into the sky the way this did. A dust storm, even if it did extend high up, still had at the base what looked like huge, billowing, brown clouds running along the ground that was actually where the gusty winds were churning up the dust.
This wasn't at all like that. This was dust rising up from something coming-from people coming on horses.
Strangers.
More strangers than she could fathom. Strangers in such numbers that it was like something in her grandfather's stories.
Jillian's knees began to tremble. Fear welled up through her, coming to lodge in her throat where screams were born.
This was them. The strangers her grandfather always said would come. They were coming now.
People never doubted her grandfather-to his face, anyway-but she didn't think they really worried about the things in his tellings. After all, their lives were peaceful; no one ever came to disturb them or their homeland.
Jillian, though, had always believed her grandfather and so she'd always known that the strangers would eventually come, but, like other people, she'd always thought it would be sometime in the dim future, maybe when she was old, or, maybe even, if they were lucky, generations in the future.
It was only in her infrequent nightmares that the strangers arrived in the present, rather than the far future.
Seeing those columns of dust rising, she knew without a doubt that this was them and they were coming now.
In her whole life she had never seen strangers. No one but Jillian's people ever wandered the inhospitable barrens of the vast and forbidding place known as the Deep Nothing.
She stood trembling in terror, staring at the smudge of dust at the horizon. She was about to see a great many outsiders — the ones from the stories.
But it was too soon. She hadn't had a life yet, hadn't had a chance to live and love and have children. Tears brimmed in her eyes, giving everything a watery appearance. She looked over her shoulder and up into the ruins. Was this what they had faced, like in Grandfather's tellings?
Tears began to run down through the dust on her cheeks. She knew, she knew without a hint of doubt, that her life was about to change, and that her dreams would no longer be happy.
Jillian scrambled down off the top of the rubble she had been standing on and ran down the hill, past the wall, the crumbled empty squares of brick buildings, the pits where once buildings had risen up. Her racing feet raised their own cloud of dust as she ran through the ruins of what once had been outposts of an ancient city. She ran down roads that no longer had life around them, no longer were lined with standing buildings.
She had often tried to imagine what it would have been like when people had lived in the houses, when people had walked the streets, cooked in the homes, hung the wash outside their brick houses, traded goods in the squares. No more. They were all long dead. The whole city was long dead, except for the few of Jillian's people who sometimes stayed in the most remote of the old buildings.
As she got closer to those ancient buildings of the outposts that they used when they lived in this area for the summer, Jillian saw people hurrying about, yelling to one another. She saw that they were gathering up their things and collecting the animals. It appeared they were going to move on, maybe back into the shelter of the mountains, or out onto the barrens. She had seen her people do such a thing only a few times before. The threat had always turned out to be imaginary. Jillian knew that this time it was real.
She wasn't sure, though, if they would have enough time to flee the approaching strangers and hide. But her people were strong and swift. They were used to moving around on the empty land. Grandfather said that no one else but her people could survive so well in this forsaken place. They knew the mountain passes and places of water, as well as the hidden passages through what seemed like impassable canyons. They could vanish into the inhospitable land in short order and survive.
Most of them could, anyway. Some, like her grandfather, were no longer swift.
With that renewed fear, her feet ran all the faster, padding with a steady beat over the dusty ground. As she got closer, Jillian saw men packing their travel goods on the mules. Women collected cooking utensils, filled water containers, and carried clothes and tents out from their summer homes and storage buildings. It looked to Jillian that they had been aware of the approaching strangers for some time as they were already well advanced in their preparations to depart.
«Ma!» Jillian called out when she saw her mother packing her pot atop a mule already piled high with their belongings. «Ma!»
Her mother flashed a quick smile and held out a sheltering arm. Even though she was getting past the age for such things, Jillian nuzzled under that arm like a chick burrowing under a mother hen's wing.
«Jillian, get your things.» Her mother shooed her with a hand. «Hurry.»
Jillian knew better than to question at a time like this. She wiped away her tears and ran to the small, square, ancient building they used as their home when they summered on the plains near the headland. The men sometimes had to replace the roofs when the worst of the weather tore them off, but, other than that, the rest of the stout, squat buildings were the very same buildings constructed by their ancestors who had once built and lived in the deserted city of Caska, up on the headland.
Grandfather, looking drawn and pale as she imagined a ghost might look, waited in the shadows just inside the door. He was not hurrying. Terror swelled in Jillian's chest. She realized that he couldn't come with them. He was old and frail. Like some of the other older people, he wouldn't be swift enough to keep up with the rest of them if they were to escape. She could see in his eyes that he had no intention of trying.
She sank into her grandfather's tender embrace and started wailing even as he comforted her.
«There, there, child,» he said, his hand stroking her short-cropped hair. «No time for this.»
Grandfather grasped her arms and eased her away as she tried her best to bring her sobbing under control. She knew that she was old enough that she shouldn't be crying in such a way, but she just couldn't help it. He squatted down, his leathery face wrinkling as he smiled at her and brushed away a tear.
Jillian swiped away the rest of her tears, trying to be strong and act her age. «Grandfather, Lokey showed me the strangers who are coming.»
He was nodding. «I know. I sent him.»
«Oh» was all she could think to say. Her world was turning upside down and it was hard to think, but somewhere in the back of her mind she realized that he had never before done such a thing. She'd never known he could, but, knowing her grandfather, it didn't really surprise her.
«Jillian, listen to me. These men who are coming are the ones I always told you would come. Those who can are going away for a while to hide.»
«For how long?»
«For as long as necessary. These men who ride this way are only a small number of those who will eventually come.»
Her eyes grew wide. «You mean there are more? But there are so many. They raise more dust than I have ever seen before. There can be more strangers than these?»
His smile was brief and bitter. «These are only a survey party, I expect-the first advance scouts of many more to come. This vast and desolate land is unknown to them. I expect they are looking for routes through it, testing to see if there will be any opposition. I'm afraid that according to the tellings, the men they scout for are more in number than even I can grasp. I believe that these other men, with their uncountable numbers, are yet some time in coming, but even this advance party will be dangerous, ruthless men. Those of our people who are able must flee and hide for now.
«Jillian, you cannot go with them.»
Her jaw dropped. «What — ?»
«Listen to me. The times I have told you about are upon us.»
«But, Ma and Pa won't allow.»
«They will allow what I tell them they must, just as our people must,» he said in a stern voice. «This is about far greater matters, matters that have never before involved our people-at least not since our ancestors filled the city. Now these things concern us as well.»
Jillian nodded solemnly. «Yes, Grandfather.» She was terror stricken, but at the same time she felt an awakening sense of duty to her grandfather's call. If he intended to trust her with such things, then she could not fail him.
«What is it am I to do, then?»
«You are to be the priestess of the bones, the carrier of dreams.»
Jillian's mouth again fell open. «Me?»
«Yes, you.»
«But I'm still too young. I've not been trained in such things.»
«There is no more time, child.» He leaned toward her in admonition. «You are the one to do this, Jillian. I have already taught you much of the tellings. You may think you are unprepared, or that you are not old enough, and all that may have some truth to it, but you know more than you may realize. What's more, there is no other. It is upon you to do this.»
Jillian couldn't seem to make herself blink. She felt completely inadequate, and at the same time faintly excited and guardedly inspired. Her people were depending on her. More importantly, her grandfather was depending on her and he believed she could do it.
«Yes, Grandfather.»
«I will prepare you to be among the dead, and then you must hide among them and wait.»
Fear began to wrap its arms around her again. She had never stayed all alone among the dead.
Jillian swallowed. «Grandfather, are you sure that I'm ready for such a thing? To be there, alone, among the dead? Waiting for one of them?»
The light coming in from the open door cast his face with a forbidding look. «You are as ready as I can make you. I had hoped there would be time left to teach you many more things, but at least I have taught you some of what you must know.»
Outside, people rushed around in the sunlight, tending to the preparations. They were careful not to look into the shadows, to Grandfather, after he had pulled her away from the rest of them, telling her what she must face.
«To tell you the truth,» he said, «this has taken me unprepared as well. The tellings have been carried down from our people for thousands of years, but they never said when it would happen. I never really believed that it would come during my life. I remember my own grandfather telling me the things I have told you and not really believing it would ever happen except maybe in some far future time that didn't really mean anything to my life. But the time is now upon us and we must do our best to honor our ancestors. We must be ready-you must-as we have been taught through the tellings.»
«How long will I have to wait?»
«There is no way I can tell you that. You must hide among the spirits. As the tellers have done down through the centuries, you and I have stashed food, as Lokey does, for just such an eventuality. You will have food to keep your belly full. You can fish and hunt for game when it is safe to be out.»
«Yes, Grandfather. But couldn't you hide with me?»
«I will take you up there, help prepare you, and tell you all I can. But I must then return here to help make these strangers think we are out in the open and welcoming to them while the others of our people escape-and so that you will be able to hide. I could not be as swift as you, nor as small to slip through the narrow places so that these men cannot follow you. I will have to return here and do my part.»
«What if the strangers hurt you?»
Grandfather took a breath and let it out with weary resolve. «It may be that they do so. These men who come will be capable of such brutality —that is why this is so important. Their cruel ways are why we must be strong and why we must not give in to them. Even if I die»-he shook a finger at her."and you can be sure that I will do my best not to, I will be buying the rest of you the time you need.»
Jillian chewed on her lip. «Aren't you afraid to die?»
He nodded as he smiled. «Very. But I have lived a long life and because I love you so, I would choose that you have a chance to do the same.»
«Grandfather,» she said through choking tears, «I want you to be with me for my life.»
He took her hand. «Me too, child. I wish to see you grow into a woman and have your own children. But I don't want you to worry too much for me; I am not so helpless nor a fool. I will sit in the shade with the others and present no threat to these men. We will confess to the strangers that the younger of our people ran away in terror, but we could not. The strangers will likely have more important things to do than waste their energy harming us. We will be fine. I want you to think about what you must do, and not worry about me.»
Jillian felt a little better about his safety. «Yes, Grandfather.»
«Besides,» he told her, «Lokey will be with you, and he will carry my spirit with him, so it will be almost like I am watching over you.» When she smiled at that, he said, «Come, now. We must go and make preparations.»
Jillian's mother and father were allowed a brief farewell after Grandfather told them in a stern voice that he was taking her to be with their spirit ancestors and see to the safety of their people.
Her mother and father either understood the importance of allowing their daughter to go, or were too afraid of Grandfather to refuse. In either case they hugged her and bid her strength until they could be together again.
Without speaking more of it, Grandfather led her away as eyes followed them. He took her up the ancient roads and through gorges, past the deserted outposts and mysterious buildings, and up the great rise of the land. As they climbed, the sun lowered in the western sky behind the golden tail of dust that slowly but steadily came ever closer. She knew that before the sun set, most of her people would be gone.
The lowering sun allowed the murky shadows to begin to haunt the defiles. The smooth stone, layered with twisting bands of rock, invited them ever onward to see what might be around each curving bend. Along the bottom the gravel was littered here and there with bones of small animals. Most, she knew, were the leavings of the coyotes and the wolves. She tried very hard to banish the mental image of her own bleached bones lying scattered in the gravel.
Overhead, Lokey lazily circled in the deepening blue of the sky as he watched her making her way with Grandfather up toward the headland. When they reached the stone spires, the bird silently glided among the columns' pinnacles, as if it were a game. He had followed them up to the ancient city enough times that he must have thought nothing of it. To Jillian, even though Grandfather had taken her up through the maze of ravines, gullies, and deep canyons a great many times, this time it all seemed new to her.
This time she was going as the priestess of the bones, the carrier of dreams.
At a place where a quiet stream followed a twisting route through the graveled bottom of a very deep canyon, Grandfather led her to a small boulder in the cool shade and sat her down. All around, the smooth, undulating sides of the canyon rose nearly straight up, leaving no way to climb out if a sudden rain brought a flood. It was a dangerous place-for more than the reason of the threat of flash floods. It was a tangle of side gullies and canyons that in places took complicated routes around huge standing columns so that it was possible to go around in circles and never find your way out. Jillian, though, knew her way through this labyrinth, as well as others.
As she sat quietly, waiting, Grandfather opened a pouch he always carried tied to his belt. He pulled out a folded piece of oilcloth from among the things he carried in the pouch, and opened it in one palm. He dipped his first finger in the oily black substance inside.
Grandfather lifted her chin. «Hold still, now, while I paint your face.»
Jillian had never been painted before. She knew of the formality from Grandfather's stories, but she just never thought about it being her who would be the priestess of the bones, the one to be painted. She sat as still as she could while he worked, feeling that everything was happening too fast-before she had even had time to really think about it. Earlier that day the most she had on her mind was catching a lizard for Lokey. Now it felt as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders.
«There,» Grandfather said. «Come see.»
Jillian knelt beside a still pool and bent forward. She gasped. What she saw was frightening. The face staring back had a painted black band across it, like a blindfold, but one she could see through. Her copper-colored eyes stared back at her from the dark midst of that smoky black mask.
«Now the evil spirits will not be able to see you,» he told her as he stood. «You can safely be among our ancestors.»
Jillian stood as well, feeling very strange indeed. She felt transformed. The face she'd seen had been the face of the priestess. She'd heard about it in Grandfather's tellings, but she'd never seen such a face in real life, much less expected it to ever be her own.
She leaned over and stole a cautious peek into the still pool. «This will truly hide me?»
«It will keep you safe,» he said as he nodded.
She wondered if Lokey would know her, if he would be afraid of her. The face staring back from the still water certainly scared her.
«Come,» Grandfather said, «we must get you up there and then I must get back so the men will find me there with those of our people who remain behind.»
When at long last they climbed out of the spires and stone canyons, they were finally up near the city, just outside the great main wall but within some of the outer rings of smaller walls.
They had emerged near the graveyard.
Grandfather gestured. «You lead the way, Jillian. This is your place now.»
Jillian nodded and started out toward the city glowing in the golden, late-day sunlight. It was a beautiful sight, as it always was, but this day it also seemed haunting to her. It seemed she was seeing it through new eyes. She felt a very real connection with her ancestors now.
The grand buildings looked as if people might still occupy them, as if she might spot some of them through the empty window openings as they went about their daily lives. Some of the structures were immense, with soaring pillars holding up projecting sections of slate roofs. Other buildings had rows of arched windows on each level. Grandfather had taken her into some of those buildings. It was amazing to see places that were stacked inside with layers of rooms so that one had to climb stairs-stairs actually built right inside the buildings-to get to rooms above. The ancient builders seemed almost magical in the things they had accomplished. From a distance, glowing in the golden light, it truly was a majestic sight.
Now, she would walk the streets alone, accompanied only by the spirits of those who had once lived here. She felt safe, though, knowing that Grandfather had painted upon her the mask of the priestess of the bones.
She would be the one who would cast the dreams at the strangers.
If she did her job well, the strangers would be so frightened that they would flee and her people would be safe.
She tried not to think about how the people who once had lived here had done the same thing and yet had failed.
«Do you think there will be too many?» she asked, suddenly frightened by the tellings of the ancient debacle.
«Too many?» he puzzled at her as they walked beside a wall that had long ago been encased by living nets of vines that now held the crumbling stones in place.
«Too many for the dreams. I'm only one person-and I'm not experienced, or older, or anything. It's just me.»
His big hand gave her an assuring pat between her shoulder blades. «Numbers do not matter. He will help give you the strength you need.» Grandfather lifted a cautionary finger. «And don't forget, Jillian, the tellings say that you must be devoted to this one. He is to be your master.»
Jillian nodded as they entered the vast graveyard. In the lower reaches there were simple stone markers. As they climbed higher, past row upon row of graves, they eventually came to larger and more ornate monuments to the dead. Some of them had grand statues of people in proud poses atop them. Some had carvings of the flame of life that represented the Creator's light. Some had ancient inscriptions of lasting love. A few had only an ancient symbol on them that her grandfather told her was called a Grace. Some of the great monuments had only a name.
Deep in the place of the dead, near the highest spot, where the weathered trees grew large and twisted, they came at last to a grand grave marked with a huge, ornately crafted stone monument. Atop it sat a speckled gray granite urn that held olives, pears, and other fruits, with grapes spilling out over one side, all carved from the same piece of stone. Grandfather, who had taken her to see this monument many times as he gave her tellings, said that the urn was meant to represent the bounty of life that man created through his creative efforts and hard work.
He watched her as she paused and then stepped closer to a huge gravestone for someone long dead, carved from one piece of stone back in the time that the ancient city had been alive. She wondered what he had been like. She wondered if he had been kind, or cruel, or young, or old.
Lokey alighted atop the carved stone grapes and ruffled his glossy black feathers before settling himself. She was glad that Lokey would keep her company in such a lonely place.
Jillian reached out and traced a finger through the letters that spelled out the name carved in the gray granite.
«Do you think the tellings are true, Grandfather? I mean, really true?»
«I was taught that they are.»
«Then he really will come back to us from the world of the dead? Really, truly come back to life from the dead?»
She looked back over her shoulder. Her grandfather, standing close behind her, reached out and reverently touched the stone monument. He nodded solemnly.
«He will.»
«Then I will wait for him,» she said. «The priestess of the bones will be here to welcome him and serve him when he returns to life.»
Jillian briefly glanced at the dust rising at the horizon and then turned back to the tomb. «Please hurry,» she implored of the dead man.
As her grandfather watched, she gently ran her small fingers through the bold letters on the tomb.
«I can't cast the dreams without you,» Jillian said softly to the name carved in the stone. «Please hurry, Richard Rahl, and return to the living.»
CHAPTER 45
As Nicci's horse, Sa'din, stepped through the empty city, the clop of his hooves on the stone cobbles echoed among the canyons of deserted buildings like a forlorn call that went unanswered. Colorful shutters stood open on some of the windows, closed on others. On the second floor of many of the buildings, tiny balconies overlooking the empty streets had wrought-iron railings standing in front of doors with drapes pulled tightly closed. There was no breeze to move the legs of a pair of pants Nicci saw hanging on a line strung between the second floors on opposite sides of an empty alleyway. The owner of the pants had long ago walked off without them.
The quiet was so imposing that it bordered on ominous. It was an eerie feeling being within a city without its people, the mere shell that had once held life and vitality, now with form but no purpose. It was somewhat reminiscent of viewing a corpse, the way that it seemed so nearly alive and yet so still that there could be no doubt as to the terrible truth. If left this way, if not brought back from the cold brink with life, it would eventually crumble into forgotten ruins.
Through narrow gaps between buildings, Nicci caught glimpses of the Wizard's Keep embedded in a rocky slope high up on the monstrous mountain. The vast, dark complex perched like a menacing vulture ready to pick over the remains of the silent city. Spires, towers, and high bridges rising up from the Keep snagged clouds slowly drifting past the sheer, fractured face of the rock. The immense edifice was as sinister a sight as she had ever seen. Still, she knew that in reality it wasn't a sinister place, and she was relieved to at last have arrived.
It had been a long and difficult journey from the Old World up to Aydindril. There had been times when she had feared she would never be able to escape the snares of troops strung out along the way. There had been times when she had for a time lost herself in killing them. There were so many, though, that she knew she had no realistic hope of making any meaningful reduction in their numbers. It had enraged her that she could be little more than a pest to them. Still, her real purpose had been to reach Richard. The Order troops were merely an obstacle in her way.
Through the conjured connection she had forged with Richard, Nicci knew that she was at long last near to him. She hadn't found him yet, but she knew she soon would.
For a time, before she had even started on her way, she had come to think that she would never again have a chance to see him.
The fighting for control of Altur'Rang had been brutal. The troops who had attacked, having been surprised and bloodied in the beginning as evening had fallen, being as experienced and battle-hardened as they were, had quickly gathered their wits and their numbers and, by the light of fires they'd set, made a concentrated effort to turn the tide of battle.
Even with as much as Nicci knew about the manner in which Jagang would deal with the insurrection in Altur'Rang, even she didn't expect all that he had thrown an them. For a time, with the help of an unexpected third wizard, it had seemed that the Order troops would overpower the inexperienced defenders. It was a darkly hopeless moment when it appeared that the efforts of the people of Altur'Rang to defend themselves were to be for naught. The specter of failure, and the ensuing slaughter everyone knew such a failure would bring, came to seem not only inevitable, but all too real. For a time, Nicci and those with her believed they would not survive the night.
Despite her wounds and exhaustion, and even more than her sincere desire to help the people she knew in Altur'Rang and all the innocent and helpless souls who would be slaughtered if they lost, the thought of never seeing Richard again had galvanized Nicci and given her the extra strength of will to push on. She used her fear of never seeing Richard again to ignite a fierce rage that could only be quenched with the blood of the enemy who stood in her way.
At the crucial point in the battle, in the harsh, flickering light of the roaring blazes from buildings burning all around, as the enemy wizard stood on the platform of a public well in an open square casting death and ghastly suffering as he urged his men onward, Nicci appeared like an avenging spirit in the midst of their ranks and bounded up onto the platform. It was an event so unexpected that it caught the attention of everyone. In that brief fraction of time when they all stared in stunned surprise, in full view of the Order troops, she abruptly cleaved the chest of their astonished wizard and with her bare hands ripped out his still beating heart. With a cry of primal anger, Nicci held the bloody trophy up for his soldiers to see and promised them the same.
At that moment, Victor Cascella charged with his men into the center of the invaders. He was gripped by rage of his own, not just that the marauding thugs would murder and pillage the people of Altur'Rang, but that they would steal his hard-won liberty. Had he the gift, his fierce glare alone might have cut down the enemy. As it was, his bold attack was as unexpected as it was ferocious. That combination of events broke the courage of the attackers. None of them wanted to face the wrath of the blacksmith and fall under the fury of his mace any more than they wanted a mad sorceress who seemed like the avenging spirit of death itself to rip out their hearts.
The elite Order troops turned and tried to escape from the city, from the middle of an enraged populous. Rather than let the people of the city be satisfied with victory, Nicci had insisted that the enemy be pursued and killed to a man.
She alone fully understood how important it was that none of the soldiers escaped to tell the tale of their loss. Emperor Jagang would be awaiting word that his home city had been brought back under his command, that the insurrectionists had been tortured to death, and that the people of the city had been driven to their knees, that there was such slaughter that it would for all time serve as a warning for others.
Even though he expected success, Nicci knew that Jagang would have taken word of the defeat in stride. He had lost battles before. It did not deter him. From losses he learned the measure of the opposition. He would have simply sent more troops the next time, enough to accomplish the task, and to do so as viciously as possible not only to insure victory, but to insure an extra measure of punishment for resisting his authority.
Nicci knew the man. He did not care about the lives of his soldiers-or the lives of anyone, for that matter. If men fought for the Order and died, then glory in the afterlife would be their reward. They could expect only sacrifice in this life.
But if no word of the battle for Altur'Rang ever arrived, that was something altogether different.
Nicci knew that Jagang was nettled by lack of knowledge more than any enemy. He did not like the unknown. She knew that sending off crack troops-along with three rare and valuable wizards-and then never again hearing another word from any of them, would gall him no end. He would work the mystery over and over in his mind the way a nervous man worked a worry stone in his fingers.
In the end, not having any testimony whatsoever as to the outcome of the battle for Altur'Rang would spook him more than a simple defeat. He did not fear losing men-life meant little to him-so a defeat he could handle, but he didn't at all like the unknown. Perhaps worse, his army, composed of men prone to superstition, would take such an event as a bad omen.
As Nicci followed the twisting turns of the narrow cobblestone street, she came around a curve and looked up to see, between the buildings lining each side, a sight that nearly took her breath away. On a hill in the distance, lit by the sun, set on a sweep of beautiful grounds of emerald green, stood a magnificent palace of white stone. It was as elegant as anything she had ever seen. It was a structure that stood proud, strong, and pleasingly possessed of a distinctly feminine grace. This, she knew, could be nothing other than the Confessors' Palace.
The sight of it, exquisite, authoritative, pure, stood in stark contrast to the towering mountain behind it upon which rose the dark, soaring walls of the Keep. It seemed clear to Nicci that the Confessors' Palace was meant to be majesty backed by dark threat.
This had been, after all, the place that for millennia had ruled the Midlands. The larger lands of the Midlands had palaces in the city for their ambassadors and members of the Central Council, which had ruled the collective lands of the Midlands. The Mother Confessor reigned over not only the Confessors, but the Central Council as well. Kings and queens answered to her, as did every ruler of every land of the Midlands. From the narrow street she was on, Nicci didn't see the palaces representing the various lands, but she knew that not a one of them would be as grand as the Confessors' Palace-especially not with the imposing Keep as a backdrop.
Through a gap in the buildings to the side, movement caught Nicci's attention. When she saw that it was dust rising into the still air, she laid the reins over and swung Sa'din around, directing him down a side street. Squeezing her lower legs, she urged him into a canter. Without pause he charged off down the narrow dirt street. In flashes between buildings, she could see the dust rising in the distance. Someone was riding at speed up a road toward the mountain where the Keep stood. Through her link with him, she knew who it had to be.
Nicci had helped end the threat to Altur'Rang as swiftly as possible primarily so that she could be off after Richard. It wasn't that she didn't care about those people, or eliminating the animals sent to massacre them, it was just that she cared more about getting to Richard. At first, she had it in her mind to ride as fast as she could and catch up with him and Cara. It had quickly became apparent, however, that there was no chance of that. He was simply traveling too swiftly. When Richard was focused on a goal and determined to get to it, he was relentless.
Nicci realized that her only hope of ever catching up with him again was, instead of chasing him, to head toward where he would go next and intercept him. She knew that the witch woman couldn't help him find a woman who didn't exist, so Nicci reasoned that Richard would next head north to try to get help from the only wizard he knew, his grandfather, Zedd, at the Wizard's Keep in Aydindril. Since she'd still been a long way back to the southeast, Nicci had decided to take the shortest route to Aydindril, thereby needing to cover much less distance than he would and thus be able to intercept him there.
As she broke out of the narrow confines of the buildings of the city, Nicci's heart quickened when she saw that she was right, when she finally saw Richard.
He and Cara were charging up a road, pulling a long ribbon of dust behind them. Nicci recalled that they'd left Altur'Rang with six horses; they now had only three. By the way they were riding, Nicci strongly suspected that she knew why. When Richard had his mind set on something he was unstoppable. He had probably ridden the other horses to death.
As Nicci galloped out of the city to cut them off, Richard immediately spotted her and slowed his pace. Sa'din carried her swiftly over the small rises, past paddocks, stables, workshops, descried market stands, a black smith's shop, and fenced pastures with buildings for animals that were no longer there. Stands of pine trees flashed past and she raced under the broad crowns of white oaks crowded close to the road in places.
Nicci couldn't wait to see Richard again. Her life suddenly had purpose again. She wondered if anything had happened with the witch woman to finally convince him that there was no woman from his dreams that he remembered as real. Nicci even held out some hope that he had recovered from his delusions and was now back to his old self. Her relief at seeing him sitting tall atop his horse overcame her concern as to why he would be racing for the Keep.
Since she had been separated from him, Nicci had gone over everything that had happened, trying to pinpoint the source of his delusion, and she had come to a frightening theory. Going over it a thousand times in her mind, trying to remember every detail, Nicci had come to fear that she had actually been the cause of his problem.
She had been, working at a rapid pace as she tried to save his life. There were other people around creating a distraction. She was worried that enemy soldiers would attack at any moment and so she dared not slow what she was doing. Even worse, she was attempting things she had never done before-things she'd never even heard of before. After all, Subtractive Magic was used to rain ruin, not to heal. She was doing things she wasn't sure would work. She also knew that there was no other hope and so she had no choice.
But she feared that in that dangerous mix, she was the one who had accidentally induced the problem with Richard's memory, with his mind. If that was true, she would never forgive herself.
If she had made a mistake with Subtractive Magic, and had eliminated some element of his mind, some vital part that made him able to interact effectively with reality, there would be no way to restore such a loss. Eliminating something with Subtractive Magic was as irreversible as death. If she had damaged his mind, he would never again be the same, dwelling forever in a twilight world of his own imagination, never again able to recognize the truth of the world around him — and it would all be her fault.
That thought had taken her to the edge of despair.
Richard and Cara halted beside the road as they waited for Nicci to reach them. Fields of lull summer grass grew at the base of wooded hills beyond. Their horses took the opportunity to crop at that long grass where it came close to the side of the road.
The sight of Richard swelled Nicci's heart with joy. His hair was a little longer, and he looked dusty from the ride, but he looked as taut, as lull, as powerful, as handsome, as masterful, as incisive, as focused, as driven as he always looked, like nothing in the world around him escaped his notice. Despite his simple and dusty travel clothes, he looked every inch the Lord Rahl himself.
Still, it seemed there was something not right about him.
«Richard!» Nicci called out as she raced up to him and Cara, even though they saw her. Nicci reined in Sa'din as she reached them. Once she was stopped, the dust she had outpaced began to catch up and drift past. Richard and Cara waited. With the way Nicci had shouted they looked like they expected her to say something urgent, when it had been nothing more than her excitement at seeing him.
«I'm relieved to see that you're both well,» Nicci said.
Richard visibly relaxed and draped both hands over the pommel of his saddle. His horse shivered flies off its rump. Cara sat up straight in her saddle, her horse close and behind Richard's, tossing its head a little al how tightly she had him reined in after the gallop.
«I'm glad to see you looking well, too,» Richard said. His warm smile said that he meant it. Nicci could have bubbled over into joyous laughter at seeing that smile, but she restrained herself and simply returned it. «How did it go in Altur'Rang?» he asked. «Is the city safe?»
«They destroyed the invaders.» Nicci tightened the reins to settle down an excited Sa'din. She gave his neck a reassuring pat to help calm him down. «The city is safe for now. Victor and Ishaq said to tell you that they are free and will stay that way.»
Richard nodded with quiet satisfaction. «You're all right, then? I was worried about you.»
The quiet was so imposing that it bordered on ominous. It was an eerie feeling being within a city without its people, the mere shell that had once held life and vitality, now with form but no purpose. It was somewhat reminiscent of viewing a corpse, the way that it seemed so nearly alive and yet so still that there could be no doubt as to the terrible truth. If left this way, if not brought back from the cold brink with life, it would eventually crumble into forgotten ruins.
Through narrow gaps between buildings, Nicci caught glimpses of the Wizard's Keep embedded in a rocky slope high up on the monstrous mountain. The vast, dark complex perched like a menacing vulture ready to pick over the remains of the silent city. Spires, towers, and high bridges rising up from the Keep snagged clouds slowly drifting past the sheer, fractured face of the rock. The immense edifice was as sinister a sight as she had ever seen. Still, she knew that in reality it wasn't a sinister place, and she was relieved to at last have arrived.
It had been a long and difficult journey from the Old World up to Aydindril. There had been times when she had feared she would never be able to escape the snares of troops strung out along the way. There had been times when she had for a time lost herself in killing them. There were so many, though, that she knew she had no realistic hope of making any meaningful reduction in their numbers. It had enraged her that she could be little more than a pest to them. Still, her real purpose had been to reach Richard. The Order troops were merely an obstacle in her way.
Through the conjured connection she had forged with Richard, Nicci knew that she was at long last near to him. She hadn't found him yet, but she knew she soon would.
For a time, before she had even started on her way, she had come to think that she would never again have a chance to see him.
The fighting for control of Altur'Rang had been brutal. The troops who had attacked, having been surprised and bloodied in the beginning as evening had fallen, being as experienced and battle-hardened as they were, had quickly gathered their wits and their numbers and, by the light of fires they'd set, made a concentrated effort to turn the tide of battle.
Even with as much as Nicci knew about the manner in which Jagang would deal with the insurrection in Altur'Rang, even she didn't expect all that he had thrown an them. For a time, with the help of an unexpected third wizard, it had seemed that the Order troops would overpower the inexperienced defenders. It was a darkly hopeless moment when it appeared that the efforts of the people of Altur'Rang to defend themselves were to be for naught. The specter of failure, and the ensuing slaughter everyone knew such a failure would bring, came to seem not only inevitable, but all too real. For a time, Nicci and those with her believed they would not survive the night.
Despite her wounds and exhaustion, and even more than her sincere desire to help the people she knew in Altur'Rang and all the innocent and helpless souls who would be slaughtered if they lost, the thought of never seeing Richard again had galvanized Nicci and given her the extra strength of will to push on. She used her fear of never seeing Richard again to ignite a fierce rage that could only be quenched with the blood of the enemy who stood in her way.
At the crucial point in the battle, in the harsh, flickering light of the roaring blazes from buildings burning all around, as the enemy wizard stood on the platform of a public well in an open square casting death and ghastly suffering as he urged his men onward, Nicci appeared like an avenging spirit in the midst of their ranks and bounded up onto the platform. It was an event so unexpected that it caught the attention of everyone. In that brief fraction of time when they all stared in stunned surprise, in full view of the Order troops, she abruptly cleaved the chest of their astonished wizard and with her bare hands ripped out his still beating heart. With a cry of primal anger, Nicci held the bloody trophy up for his soldiers to see and promised them the same.
At that moment, Victor Cascella charged with his men into the center of the invaders. He was gripped by rage of his own, not just that the marauding thugs would murder and pillage the people of Altur'Rang, but that they would steal his hard-won liberty. Had he the gift, his fierce glare alone might have cut down the enemy. As it was, his bold attack was as unexpected as it was ferocious. That combination of events broke the courage of the attackers. None of them wanted to face the wrath of the blacksmith and fall under the fury of his mace any more than they wanted a mad sorceress who seemed like the avenging spirit of death itself to rip out their hearts.
The elite Order troops turned and tried to escape from the city, from the middle of an enraged populous. Rather than let the people of the city be satisfied with victory, Nicci had insisted that the enemy be pursued and killed to a man.
She alone fully understood how important it was that none of the soldiers escaped to tell the tale of their loss. Emperor Jagang would be awaiting word that his home city had been brought back under his command, that the insurrectionists had been tortured to death, and that the people of the city had been driven to their knees, that there was such slaughter that it would for all time serve as a warning for others.
Even though he expected success, Nicci knew that Jagang would have taken word of the defeat in stride. He had lost battles before. It did not deter him. From losses he learned the measure of the opposition. He would have simply sent more troops the next time, enough to accomplish the task, and to do so as viciously as possible not only to insure victory, but to insure an extra measure of punishment for resisting his authority.
Nicci knew the man. He did not care about the lives of his soldiers-or the lives of anyone, for that matter. If men fought for the Order and died, then glory in the afterlife would be their reward. They could expect only sacrifice in this life.
But if no word of the battle for Altur'Rang ever arrived, that was something altogether different.
Nicci knew that Jagang was nettled by lack of knowledge more than any enemy. He did not like the unknown. She knew that sending off crack troops-along with three rare and valuable wizards-and then never again hearing another word from any of them, would gall him no end. He would work the mystery over and over in his mind the way a nervous man worked a worry stone in his fingers.
In the end, not having any testimony whatsoever as to the outcome of the battle for Altur'Rang would spook him more than a simple defeat. He did not fear losing men-life meant little to him-so a defeat he could handle, but he didn't at all like the unknown. Perhaps worse, his army, composed of men prone to superstition, would take such an event as a bad omen.
As Nicci followed the twisting turns of the narrow cobblestone street, she came around a curve and looked up to see, between the buildings lining each side, a sight that nearly took her breath away. On a hill in the distance, lit by the sun, set on a sweep of beautiful grounds of emerald green, stood a magnificent palace of white stone. It was as elegant as anything she had ever seen. It was a structure that stood proud, strong, and pleasingly possessed of a distinctly feminine grace. This, she knew, could be nothing other than the Confessors' Palace.
The sight of it, exquisite, authoritative, pure, stood in stark contrast to the towering mountain behind it upon which rose the dark, soaring walls of the Keep. It seemed clear to Nicci that the Confessors' Palace was meant to be majesty backed by dark threat.
This had been, after all, the place that for millennia had ruled the Midlands. The larger lands of the Midlands had palaces in the city for their ambassadors and members of the Central Council, which had ruled the collective lands of the Midlands. The Mother Confessor reigned over not only the Confessors, but the Central Council as well. Kings and queens answered to her, as did every ruler of every land of the Midlands. From the narrow street she was on, Nicci didn't see the palaces representing the various lands, but she knew that not a one of them would be as grand as the Confessors' Palace-especially not with the imposing Keep as a backdrop.
Through a gap in the buildings to the side, movement caught Nicci's attention. When she saw that it was dust rising into the still air, she laid the reins over and swung Sa'din around, directing him down a side street. Squeezing her lower legs, she urged him into a canter. Without pause he charged off down the narrow dirt street. In flashes between buildings, she could see the dust rising in the distance. Someone was riding at speed up a road toward the mountain where the Keep stood. Through her link with him, she knew who it had to be.
Nicci had helped end the threat to Altur'Rang as swiftly as possible primarily so that she could be off after Richard. It wasn't that she didn't care about those people, or eliminating the animals sent to massacre them, it was just that she cared more about getting to Richard. At first, she had it in her mind to ride as fast as she could and catch up with him and Cara. It had quickly became apparent, however, that there was no chance of that. He was simply traveling too swiftly. When Richard was focused on a goal and determined to get to it, he was relentless.
Nicci realized that her only hope of ever catching up with him again was, instead of chasing him, to head toward where he would go next and intercept him. She knew that the witch woman couldn't help him find a woman who didn't exist, so Nicci reasoned that Richard would next head north to try to get help from the only wizard he knew, his grandfather, Zedd, at the Wizard's Keep in Aydindril. Since she'd still been a long way back to the southeast, Nicci had decided to take the shortest route to Aydindril, thereby needing to cover much less distance than he would and thus be able to intercept him there.
As she broke out of the narrow confines of the buildings of the city, Nicci's heart quickened when she saw that she was right, when she finally saw Richard.
He and Cara were charging up a road, pulling a long ribbon of dust behind them. Nicci recalled that they'd left Altur'Rang with six horses; they now had only three. By the way they were riding, Nicci strongly suspected that she knew why. When Richard had his mind set on something he was unstoppable. He had probably ridden the other horses to death.
As Nicci galloped out of the city to cut them off, Richard immediately spotted her and slowed his pace. Sa'din carried her swiftly over the small rises, past paddocks, stables, workshops, descried market stands, a black smith's shop, and fenced pastures with buildings for animals that were no longer there. Stands of pine trees flashed past and she raced under the broad crowns of white oaks crowded close to the road in places.
Nicci couldn't wait to see Richard again. Her life suddenly had purpose again. She wondered if anything had happened with the witch woman to finally convince him that there was no woman from his dreams that he remembered as real. Nicci even held out some hope that he had recovered from his delusions and was now back to his old self. Her relief at seeing him sitting tall atop his horse overcame her concern as to why he would be racing for the Keep.
Since she had been separated from him, Nicci had gone over everything that had happened, trying to pinpoint the source of his delusion, and she had come to a frightening theory. Going over it a thousand times in her mind, trying to remember every detail, Nicci had come to fear that she had actually been the cause of his problem.
She had been, working at a rapid pace as she tried to save his life. There were other people around creating a distraction. She was worried that enemy soldiers would attack at any moment and so she dared not slow what she was doing. Even worse, she was attempting things she had never done before-things she'd never even heard of before. After all, Subtractive Magic was used to rain ruin, not to heal. She was doing things she wasn't sure would work. She also knew that there was no other hope and so she had no choice.
But she feared that in that dangerous mix, she was the one who had accidentally induced the problem with Richard's memory, with his mind. If that was true, she would never forgive herself.
If she had made a mistake with Subtractive Magic, and had eliminated some element of his mind, some vital part that made him able to interact effectively with reality, there would be no way to restore such a loss. Eliminating something with Subtractive Magic was as irreversible as death. If she had damaged his mind, he would never again be the same, dwelling forever in a twilight world of his own imagination, never again able to recognize the truth of the world around him — and it would all be her fault.
That thought had taken her to the edge of despair.
Richard and Cara halted beside the road as they waited for Nicci to reach them. Fields of lull summer grass grew at the base of wooded hills beyond. Their horses took the opportunity to crop at that long grass where it came close to the side of the road.
The sight of Richard swelled Nicci's heart with joy. His hair was a little longer, and he looked dusty from the ride, but he looked as taut, as lull, as powerful, as handsome, as masterful, as incisive, as focused, as driven as he always looked, like nothing in the world around him escaped his notice. Despite his simple and dusty travel clothes, he looked every inch the Lord Rahl himself.
Still, it seemed there was something not right about him.
«Richard!» Nicci called out as she raced up to him and Cara, even though they saw her. Nicci reined in Sa'din as she reached them. Once she was stopped, the dust she had outpaced began to catch up and drift past. Richard and Cara waited. With the way Nicci had shouted they looked like they expected her to say something urgent, when it had been nothing more than her excitement at seeing him.
«I'm relieved to see that you're both well,» Nicci said.
Richard visibly relaxed and draped both hands over the pommel of his saddle. His horse shivered flies off its rump. Cara sat up straight in her saddle, her horse close and behind Richard's, tossing its head a little al how tightly she had him reined in after the gallop.
«I'm glad to see you looking well, too,» Richard said. His warm smile said that he meant it. Nicci could have bubbled over into joyous laughter at seeing that smile, but she restrained herself and simply returned it. «How did it go in Altur'Rang?» he asked. «Is the city safe?»
«They destroyed the invaders.» Nicci tightened the reins to settle down an excited Sa'din. She gave his neck a reassuring pat to help calm him down. «The city is safe for now. Victor and Ishaq said to tell you that they are free and will stay that way.»
Richard nodded with quiet satisfaction. «You're all right, then? I was worried about you.»