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support the cause?"
The trembling man remained mute.
"What must I do to impress upon you people the seriousness of your
obligation to the lives of others? Your contribution to those in need is a
solemn moral dutysharing in a greater good."
Nicci's vision suddenly went white. With a pain like scorching hot
needles driven into her ears, Jagang's voice filled her mind.
Why must you play this game? Make examples of people! Teach them a
lesson that 1 am not to be ignored!
Nicci swayed on her feet. She was completely blinded by the pain
bursting inside her head. She let it wash through her, as if watching it
happen to a stranger. Her abdominal muscles twitched and convulsed. A rusty,
barbed lance driven up through her, ripping her insides, could not have hurt
more. Her arms hung limp at her sides while she waited for Jagang's
displeasure to end, or for death.
She was unable to tell how long the torture lasted. When he was doing
it, she was never able to sense time-the pain was too all-consuming. She
knew, from what others told her when they saw it done to her, and from
seeing it done to others, that it sometimes lasted only an instant.
Sometimes it lasted hours.
Making it last hours was a waste of Jagang's effort-she couldn't tell
the difference. She had told him as much.
Suddenly, she was unable to draw a breath. It felt like a fist squeezed
her heart to a stop. She thought her lungs might burst. Her knees were about
to buckle.
Do not disobey me again!
With a gasp, air filled her lungs. Jagang's discipline ended, as it
always did, with an impossibly tart, sour taste on her tongue, like an
unexpected mouthful of fresh raw lemon juice, and pain searing the nerves at
the back of her jaw under her earlobes. It left her head ringing and her
teeth throbbing. As she opened her eyes, she was surprised, as she always
was, not to see herself standing in a pool of blood. She touched the corner
of her mouth, and then brushed her fingers to an ear. She found no blood.
She wondered in passing why Jagang had been able to come into her mind
now. Sometimes, he couldn't. It didn't happen that way for any of the other
Sisters-he always had access to their minds.
As her vision cleared, she saw people staring at her. They didn't know
why she had paused. The young men-and a few of the older ones, too-were
sneaking peeks at her body. They were used to seeing women in drab,
shapeless dresses, women whose bodies exhibited the toll taken by endless
hard work and almost constant pregnancy from the time they were old enough
for the seed to catch. They had never before seen a woman like Nicci,
standing straight and tall, looking them in the eye, wearing a fine black
dress that hugged a nearly flawless shape marred by neither hard work or the
labor of birth. The stark black material contrasted the pale curve of
cleavage revealed by the cut of the laced bodice. Nicci was numb to such
stares. Occasionally, they suited her purposes, but most of the time they
didn't, and so she disregarded them.
She began walking down the line of people again, ignoring Emperor
Jagang's orders. She rarely complied with his orders. She was, for the most
part, indifferent to his punishment. If anything, she welcomed it.
Nicci, forgive me. You know I don't mean to hurt you.
She ignored his voice, too, as she studied the eyes peering up at her.
Not everyone did. She liked to look into the eyes of those courageous enough
to risk a glimpse of her. Most were filled with simple terror.
There would soon be abundant justification for such apprehension.
Nicci, you must do as I tell you, or you are only going to end up
forcing me to do something terrible to you. Neither of us wants that.
Someday, I am going to end up doing something from which you will be unable
to recover.
If that is what you wish to do, then do it, she thought, in answer.
It was not a challenge; she simply didn't care.
You know 1 don't want to do that, Nicci.
Without the pain, his voice was little more than a fly annoying her.
She paid it no heed. She addressed the crowd.
"Do you people have any concept of the effort being put into the fight
for your future? Or is it that you expect to benefit without contributing?
Many of our brave men have given their lives fighting the oppressors of the
people, fighting for our new beginning. We struggle so that all people will
be able to share equally in the coming prosperity. You must help us in our
effort on your behalf. Just as helping those in need is the moral obligation
of every person, so, too, is this."
Commander Kardeef, displaying a look of sour displeasure, planted
himself in front of her. The sunlight slanting across his lined face cast
his hooded eyes in deep shadows. She was not moved by his disfavor. He was
never satisfied with anything. Well, she corrected herself, almost never.
"People can only achieve virtue through obedience and sacrifice. Your
contribution to the Order is to implement their compliance. We are not here
to hold civic lessons!"
Commander Kardeef was confident in his privileged mastery over her. He,
too, had given her pain. She endured what Kadar Kardeef did to her with the
same detachment with which she endured what Jagang did to her.
Only in the furthest depths of pain could she begin to feel anything.
Even pain was preferable to the nothingness she usually felt.
Kadar Kardeef was probably unaware of the punishment Jagang had just
completed, or his orders; His Excellency didn't use Commander Kardeef's
mind. It was an arduous undertaking for Jagang to control those who didn't
possess the gift-lu could do it, but it was rarely worth his effort; he had
the gifted to control people for him. A dream walker somehow used the gift
in those who possessed it in order to m help complete the connection to
their minds. In a way, the gifted made it possible
for Jagang to so easily control them.
Kadar Kardeef glowered down at her as she gazed up at his darkly tanned
creased face. He was an imposing figure, with the studded leather straps
that crossed his massive chest, his armored leather shoulder and breast
plates, his chain mail, array of well-used weapons. Nicci had seen him crush
men's throats in one of big, powerful hands. As silent witness to his
bravery in battle, he bore a number scars. She had seen them all.
Few officers ranked higher or were more trusted than Kadar Kardeef. He
been with the Order since his youth, rising through the ranks to fight
alongside ' Jagang as they expanded the empire of the Imperial Order out of
their homeland Altur'Rang to eventually subjugate the rest of the Old World.
Kadar Kardeef was the hero of the Little Gap campaign, the man who almost
single-handedly
the course of the battle, breaking through enemy lines and personally
slaying the three great kings who had joined forces to trap and crush the
Imperial Order before it could seize the imaginations of the millions of
people living in a patchwork of kingdoms, fiefdoms, clans, city-states, and
vast regions controlled by alliances of warlords.
The Old World had been a tinderbox, waiting for the spark of
revolution. The preachings of the Order were that spark. If the high priests
were the Order's soul, Jagang was its bone and muscle. Few people understood
Jagang's genius-they saw only a dream walker, or a ferocious warrior. He was
far more.
It had taken Jagang decades to finally bring the rest of the Old World
to heel-to put the Order on its final path to greater glory. During those
years of struggle for the Order, while engaged in nearly constant war,
Jagang toiled building the road system that allowed him to move men and
supplies great distances with lightning speed. The more lands and peoples he
annexed, the more laborers he put to the construction of yet more roads by
which he could conquer yet more territory. He was thus able to maintain
communications and to react to situations faster than anyone would have
believed possible. Formerly isolated lands were suddenly connected to the
rest of the Old World. Jagang had knitted them together with a net of roads.
Along those roads, the people of the Old World had risen up to follow him as
he forged the way for the Order.
Kadar Kardeef had been part of it all. More than once he had taken
wounds to save Jagang's life. Jagang had once taken a bolt from a crossbow
to save Kardeef. If Jagang could be said to have a friend, Kadar Kardeef was
as close as any came to it.
Nicci first met Kardeef when he had come to the Palace of the Prophets
in Tanimura to pray. Old King Gregory, who had ruled the land including
Tanimura, had disappeared without a trace. Kadar Kardeef was a solemnly
devout man; before battle he prayed to the Creator for the blood of the
enemy, and after, for the souls of the men he had killed. That day he was
said to have prayed for the soul of King Gregory. The Imperial Order was
suddenly the new rule in Tanimura. The people celebrated in the streets for
days.
Over the course of three thousand years, the Sisters, from their home
at the Palace of the Prophets in Tanimura, had seen governments come and go.
For the most part, the Sisters, led by their prelate, considered matters of
rule a petty foolishness best ignored. They believed in a higher calling.
The Sisters believed they would remain at the Palace of the Prophets,
undisturbed in their work, long after the Order had vanished into the dust
of history. Revolutions had many times come and gone. This one, though,
caught them up.
Kadar Kardeef had been nearly twenty years younger, then-a handsome
conqueror riding into the city. Many of the Sisters were fascinated by the
man. Nicci never was. But he was fascinated by her.
Emperor Jagang, of course, did not send such invaluable men as
Commander Kardeef out to pacify conquered lands. He had entrusted Kardeef
with a much more important task: guarding his valuable property-Nicci.
Nicci turned her attention away from Kadar Kardeef and back to the
people.
She settled her gaze on the man who had spoken before. "We cannot allow
anyone to shirk their responsibility to others and to our new beginning."
"Please, Mistress . . . We have nothing-"
"Disregard of our cause is treasonous."
He thought better of disagreeing with that pronouncement.
"You don't seem to understand that this man behind me wants you to see
that the Imperial Order is resolute in their devotion to their cause-if you
don't do your duty. I know you have heard the stories, but this man wants
you to experience the grim reality. Imagining it is never quite the same.
Never quite as gruesome."
She stared at the man, waiting for his answer. He licked his
weather-cracked lips,
"We just need some more time .... Our crops are doing well. When the
harvest comes in . . . we could contribute our fair share toward the
struggle for . . . for. . ."
"The new beginning."
"Yes, Mistress," he said, bobbing his head, "the new beginning." When
his gaze returned to the dirt at his feet, she moved on down the line.
Her purpose was not really to collect, but to cow.
The time had come.
A girl gazing up at her snagged Nicci to a stop, distracting her from
what she had intended. The girl's big, dark eyes sparkled with innocent
wonder. Everything was new to her, and she was eager to see it all. In her
dark eyes shone that rare, fragile, and most perishable of qualities: a
guileless view of life that had yet to be touched by pain or loss or evil.
Nicci cupped the girl's chin, staring into the depths of those
thirsting eyes.
One of Nicci's earliest memories was of her mother standing over her
like this, holding her chin, looking down at her. Nicci's mother was gifted,
too. She said that', the gift was a curse, and a test. It was a curse
because it gave her abilities others didn't have, and it was a test to see
if she would wrongly exert that superiority. Nicci's mother almost never
used her gift. Servants handled the work; she spent most of her time nested
among her clutch of friends, devoting herself to higher pursuits.
"Dear Creator, but Nicci's father is a monster," she would complain as
she wrung her hands. Some of her friends would murmur their sympathy. "Why
must he burden me so! I fear his eternal soul is beyond hope or prayer." The
other women would ask in grim agreement.
Her mother's eyes were the same dull brown as a cockroach's back. To
Nicci's mind, they were set too close together. Her mouth, too, was narrow,
as if fixed is -. place by her perpetual disapproval. While Nicci never
really thought of her mother as homely, neither did she consider her
beautiful, although her friends regularly reassured her that she most surely
was.
Nicci's mother said beauty was a curse to a caring woman and a blessing
only to whores.
Puzzled by her mother's displeasure of her father, Nicci had finally
asked why had done.
"Nicci," her mother had said, cupping Nicci's small chin that day.
Nicci eagerly awaited her mother's words. "You have beautiful eyes, but you
do not yet see with .them. All people are miserable wretches, that is the
lot of man. Do you have any idea how it hurts those without all your
advantages to see your beautiful face? That , is all you bring to others:
insufferable pain. The Creator brought you into the world 1 for no reason
but to ease the misery of others, and here you bring only hurt." Ha mother's
friends, sipping tea, nodded, whispering to one another their sorrowful b `
firm agreement.
That was when Nicci had first learned that she bore the indelible stain
of so shadowy, nameless, unconfessed evil.
Nicci gazed into the rare face looking up at her. Today this girl's
dark eyes would see things they could not yet imagine. Those big eyes
eagerly watched without seeing. She could not possibly understand what was
to come, or why.
What kind of life could she have?
It would be for the best, this way.
The time had come.
Before she could begin, Nicci saw something that ignited her
indignation. She whirled to a nearby woman.
"Where is there a washtub?"
Surprised by the question, the woman pointed a trembling finger toward
a two story building not far off. "There, Mistress. In the yard behind the
pottery shop are laundry tubs where we were washing clothes."
Nicci seized the woman by her throat. "Get me a pair of scissors. Bring
them to me there." The woman stared in wide-eyed fright. Nicci shoved her.
"Now! Or would you prefer to die on the spot?"
Nicci yanked free a well-worn, reserve studded strap bunched with
several others and secured over Commander Kardeef's shoulder. He made no
effort to stop her, but as she gathered up the strap, he seized her upper
arm in his powerful grip.
"You had better be planning on drowning this little brat-or maybe
cutting off hunks of her hide and then stabbing out her eyes." His breath
smelled of onion and ale. He smirked. "In fact, you start in on her, and
while she's screaming and begging for her life, I'll begin separating out
some young men, or perhaps I'll select some women to be an example. Which
would you prefer, this time?"
Nicci turned her glare down at his fingers on her arm. He removed them
as he growled a warning. She turned to the girl and whipped the strap twice
around her neck to serve as a collar, twisting it into a handle in the back
so she could control the girl with it. The girl squeaked in choked surprise.
She had probably never been handled so roughly in her entire life. Nicci
forced her ahead, toward the building the woman had pointed out.
Seeing how angry Nicci had suddenly become, no one followed. A woman
not far off, undoubtedly the girl's mother, began to cry out in protest, but
then fell silent as Kardeef's men turned their attention on her. By then
Nicci already had the perplexed girl around the corner.
Out back, drab laundry, deformed and crumpled from its ordeal on the
washboard, and now stretched and pinned to lines, twisted in the wind as if
struggling to escape. Smoke from the fire pit peeked over the top of the
building. The nervous woman waited with a large pair of shears.
Nicci marched the girl up to a tub of water, drove her down on her
knees, and shoved her head under the water. While the girl struggled, Nicci
snatched the scissors from the woman. Her chore completed, the woman held
her apron up over her mouth to muffle her wails as she ran off in tears, not
wanting to watch a child being murdered.
Nicci pulled the girl's head up out of the water, and while she
sputtered and gasped for air, began clipping her dark, soaking wet hair
close to the scalp. When
Nicci had finished cutting it off in sodden clumps, she dunked the girl
again while leaning over and scooping up a cake of pale yellow soap from the
washboard on the ground beside the tub. Nicci hauled the girl's head up and
then began scrubbing. The girl screeched, flailing her spindly arms and
clawing at the strap around her neck by which Nicci controlled her. Nicci
realized she was probably hurting her, but from within the grip of rage, it
was only a dim realization.
"What's the matter with you!" Nicci shook the gasping girl. "Don't you
know you're crawling with lice?"
"But, but-"
The soap was harsh and as rough as a rasp. The girl squealed as Nicci
bent her over and put more muscle into the scouring.
"Do you like having a head full of lice?"
"No--"
"Well, you must! Why else would you have them?"
"Please! I'll try to do better. I'll wash. I promise!"
Nicci remembered how much she hated catching lice from the places her
mother sent her. She remembered scrubbing herself, using the harshest soap
she could find, only to again be sent off to another place, where she would
get infested with the hated things all over again.
When Nicci had scrubbed and dunked a dozen times, she finally dragged
the girl to a tub of clean water and swished her head about in it to rinse
her off. The girl blinked furiously, trying to clear her eyes of the
stinging, soapy water as it streamed down off her face.
Gripping the girl's chin, Nicci peered into her red eyes. "No doubt
your clothes are lousy with nits. You're to scrub your clothes every
day-underthings, especially-or the lice will just be right back." Nicci
squeezed the girl's cheeks until her eyes watered. "You are better than to
be filthy with lice! Don't you know that?"
The girl nodded, as best as she could with Nicci's strong fingers
holding her face. The big, dark, intelligent eyes, although red from the
water and wide with shock, were still filled with that rare sense of wonder.
As painful and frightening as the experience was, this had not dispelled it.
"Burn your bedding. Get new." Given the way these people lived and
worked, it seemed a hopeless challenge. "Your whole family must burn their
bedding. Wash all their clothes."
The girl nodded her oath.
Task completed, Nicci marched the girl back toward the gathered crowd.
Forcing her along by the studded strap used as a collar, Nicci was
unexpectedly struck by a memory.
It was a memory of the first time she had seen Richard.
Nearly every Sister at the Palace of the Prophets had been gathered in
the great hall to see the new boy Sister Verna had brought in. Nicci
lingered at the mahogany rail, twining around her finger a lace dangling
from her bodice, only to pull the lace straight and then to twine it again,
when the pair of thick walnut doors opened. The rumbling drone of
conversation, sprinkled with bright laughter, trailed to an expectant hush
as the group, led by Sister Phoebe, marched into the chamber, past the white
columns topped by gold capitals, and in under the huge vaulted dome.
The birth of gifted boys was rare, and a cause of expectant delight
when they were discovered and finally brought to live at the palace. A grand
banquet was planned for that evening. Most of the Sisters, dressed in their
finery, stood on the
floor below, eager to meet the new boy. Nicci remained near the center
of the lower balcony. She didn't care whether she met him or not.
It came as something of a shock to see how Sister Verna had aged on her
journey. Such journeys typically lasted at most a year; this one, beyond the
great barrier to the New World, had taken nearly twenty. Events beyond the
barrier being uncertain, Verna had apparently been sent off on her mission
too far in advance.
Life at the Palace of the Prophets was as long as it was serene. No one
at the Palace of the Prophets appeared to have aged at all in so trifling a
span of time as two decades, but away from the spell that enveloped the
palace, Verna had. Verna, probably close to one hundred and sixty years old,
had to be at least twenty years younger than Nicci; yet she now looked twice
Nicci's age. People outside the palace aged at the normal rate, of course,
but to see it happen so rapidly to a Sister . . .
As the roaring applause thundered on in the huge room, many of the
Sisters wept over the momentous occasion. Nicci yawned. Sister Phoebe held
up her hand until the room fell silent.
"Sisters." Phoebe's voice trembled. "Please welcome Sister Verna home."
She finally had to raise a hand to again bring the clamor of applause to a
halt.
When the room had quieted, she said, "And may I present our newest
student, our newest child of the Creator, our newest charge." She turned and
held an arm out in introduction, wiggling her fingers, urging the apparently
timid boy forward as she went on. "Please welcome Richard Cypher to the
Palace of the Prophets."
Several of the women stepped back out of the way as he strode forward.
Nicci's eyes widened; her back straightened. It was not a young boy. He was
grown into a man.
The crowd, despite their shock, clapped and cheered with the warmth of
their welcome. Nicci didn't hear it. Her attention was riveted by those gray
eyes of his. He was introduced to some of the nearby Sisters. The novice
assigned to him, Pasha, was brought before him and tried to speak to him.
Richard brushed Pasha aside, a stag dismissing a vole, and stepped out
alone into the center of the room. His whole bearing conveyed the same
quality Nicci beheld in his eyes.
"I have something to say."
The vast chamber fell to an astonished hush.
His gaze swept the room. Nicci's breath caught when, for an instant,
their eyes met, as he probably met countless others.
Her trembling fingers clutched the rail for support.
Nicci swore at that moment to do whatever was necessary to be named as
one of his teachers.
His fingers tapped the Rada'Han around his neck.
"As long as you keep this collar on me, you are my captors, and I am
your prisoner."
Murmurs hummed in the air. A Rada'Han was put around a boy's neck not
joust to govern him, but to protect him as well. The boys were never thought
of as prisoners, but wards who needed security, care, and training. Richard,
though, did not set ' it that way.
"Since I have committed no aggression against you, that makes us
enemies. We are at war."
Several older Sisters teetered on their heels, nearly fainting. The
faces of half the women in the room went red. The rest went white. Nicci
could not have imagined
such an attitude. His demeanor kept her from blinking, lest she
overlook something. She drew slow breaths, lest she miss a word. Her
pounding heart, though, was beyond her ability to control.
"Sister Verna has made a pledge to me that I will be taught to control
the gift, and when I have learned what is required, I will be set free. For
now, as long as you keep that pledge, we have a truce. But there are
conditions."
Richard lifted a red leather rod hanging on a fine gold chain around
his neck. At the time, Nicci hadn't known it to be the weapon of a
Mord-Sith.
"I have been collared before. The person who put that collar on me
brought me pain, to punish me, to teach me, to subdue me."
Nicci knew that such could be the only fate of one like him.
"That is the sole purpose of a collar. You collar a beast. You collar
your enemies.
"I made her much the same offer I am making you. I begged her to
release me. She would not. I was forced to kill her.
"Not one of you could ever hope to be good enough to lick her boots.
She did as she did because she was tortured and broken, made mad enough to
use a collar to hurt people. She did it against her nature.
"You . . ." His gaze swept all the eyes watching him. "You do it
because you think it is your right. You enslave in the name of your Creator.
I don't know your Creator. The only one beyond this world who I know would
do as you do is the Keeper." The crowd gasped. "As far as I'm concerned, you
may as well be the Keeper's disciples."
Little did he know that some of them were.
"If you do as she, and use this collar to bring me pain, the truce will
be ended. You may think you hold the leash to this collar, but I promise
you, if the truce ends, you will find that what you hold is a bolt of
lightning."
The room was as silent as a tomb.
He was alone, defiant, in the midst of hundreds of sorceresses who knew
how to harness every nuance of the power with which they were born; he knew
next to nothing of his ability, and was collared by a Rada'Han besides. In
this, he may have been a stag, but a stag challenging a congregation of
lions. Hungry lions.
Richard rolled up his left sleeve. He drew his sword-a sword!-in
defiance of the prodigious power arrayed before him. The distinctive ring of
steel filled the silence as the blade was brought free.
Nicci stood spellbound as he listed his conditions.
He finally pointed back with the sword. "Sister Verna captured me. I
have fought her every step of this journey. She has done everything short of
killing me and draping my body over a horse to get me here. Though she, too,
is my captor and enemy, I owe her certain debts. If anyone lays a finger to
her because of me, I will kill that person, and the truce will be ended."
Nicci couldn't fathom such a strange sense of honor, but somehow she
knew it fit what she saw in his eyes.
The crowd gasped as Richard drew his sword across the inside of his
arm. He turned it, wiping both sides in the blood, until it dripped from the
tip. Nicci could plainly see, even if the others could not much as she saw
in his eyes a quality others did not see-that the sword united with, and
completed, magic within him.
His knuckles white around the hilt, he thrust the glistening crimson
blade into the air.
"I give you a blood oath!" he cried out. "Harm the Baka Ban Mana, harm
Sister
Verna, or harm me, and the truce will be ended, and I promise you we
will have t, war! If we have war, I will lay waste to the Palace of the
Prophets!"
From the upper balcony, where Richard couldn't see him, Jedidiah's
mocking voice drifted out over the crowd. "All by yourself?"
"Doubt me at your peril. I am a prisoner; I have nothing to live for. I
am the t flesh of prophecy. I am the bringer of death."
No answer came in the stupefied silence. Probably every woman in the
room knew of the prophecy of the bringer of death, though none was certain
of its intended meaning. The text of that prophecy, along with all the
others, was kept in the vaults deep under the Palace of the Prophets. That
Richard knew it, that he dared declare it aloud in such company, augured the
worst possible interpretation. Every lioness in the room retracted her claws
in caution. Richard drove his sword home into its scabbard as if to
punctuate his threat.
Nicci knew that the profound importance of what she had seen in his
eyes and in his presence would forever haunt her.
She knew, too, that she must destroy him.
Nicci had to surrender favors and commit to obligations she never
imagined she would have willingly done, but in return, she became one of
Richard's six teachers. The burdens she had taken on in return for that
privilege were all worth it when she sat alone with him, across a small
table in his room, lightly holding his hands-if one could be said to lightly
grasp lightning-endeavoring to teach him to touch his Han, the essence of
life and spirit within the gifted. Try as he might, he felt nothing. That,
in itself, was peculiar. The inkling of what she felt within him, though,
was often enough to leave her unable to bring forth more than a few sparse
words. She had casually questioned the others, and knew they were blind to
it.
Although Nicci could not comprehend what it was about his intellect
that his eyes and his conduct revealed, she did know that it disturbed the
numb safety of her indifference. She ached to grasp it before she had to
destroy him, and at the same time ached to destroy him before she did.
Whenever she became confident that she was beginning to unravel the
mystery of his singular character, and thought she could predict what he
would do in a given , situation, he would confound her by doing something
completely unexpected, if not impossible. Time and again he reduced to ashes
what she had thought was the foundation of her understanding of him. She
spent hours sitting alone, in abysmal misery, because it seemed to be in
plain sight, yet she couldn't define it. She knew only that it was some
principle important beyond measure, and it remained beyond her .: grasp.
Richard, never happy about his situation, became increasingly distant
as time passed. Forlorn of hope, Nicci decided that the time had come.
When she went to his room for what she meant to be his final lesson and
his end, he surprised her by offering her a rare white rose. Worse, he
offered it with a smile and no explanation. As he held it out, she was so
petrified that she could only manage to say, "Why, thank you, Richard." The
white roses were from only one kind of place: dangerous restricted areas no
student should ever have been able to enter. That he apparently could, and
that he would so boldly offer her the proof of his trespass, startled her.
She held the white rose carefully between a finger and thumb, not knowing if
he was warning her-by giving her a forbidden thing-that ; he was the
bringer of death, and she was being marked, or if it was a gesture of
simple, if strange, kindness. She erred on the side of caution. Once
again, his nature had stayed her hand.
The other Sisters of the Dark had plans of their own. Richard's gift,
as far as Nicci was concerned, was probably the least remarkable and by far
the least important thing about him, yet Liliana, one of his other teachers,
a woman of boundless greed and limited insight, thought to steal the innate
ability of his Han for herself. It sparked a lethal confrontation which
Liliana lost. The six of them, their leader, Ulicia, and Richard's five
remaining teachers-having been discovered, escaped with their lives and
little else, only to end up in Jagang's clutches.
In the end, Nicci understood that quality in his eyes no better than
the first moment she had seen it.
It had all slipped through her fingers.
--]----
The girl ran for her mother when Nicci released her grip on the studded
strap around her neck.
"Well?" Commander Kardeef shrieked. He planted his fists on his hips.
"Are you through with your games? It's time these people learned the true
meaning of ruthless!"
Nicci stared into the depths of his dark eyes. They were defiant,
angry, and determined-yet they were nothing at all like Richard's eyes.
Nicci turned to the soldiers.
She gestured. "You two. Seize the commander."
The men blinked dumbly. Commander Kardeef's face went red with rage.
"That's it! You've finally gone too far!" He wheeled to his men, a whole
field of them-two thousand of them. He pointed a thumb back over his
shoulder at Nicci. "Grab this lunatic witch!"
Half a dozen men nearest to her drew weapons as they rushed her. Like
all Order field troops, they were big, strong, and quick. They were also
experienced.
Nicci thrust a fist out in the direction of the closest as he lifted
his whip to lash out and entangle her. With the speed of thought, both
Additive Magic and Subtractive twined together in a lethal mix as she
unleashed a focused bolt of power. It produced a burst of light so hot and
so white that for an instant it made the sunlight seem dim and cold by
comparison.
The blast blew a mellon-sized hole through the center of the soldier's
chest. For an instant, before the internal pressure forced his organs to
fill the sudden void, she could see men behind through the gaping hole in
his chest.
The afterimage of the flare lingered in her mind's eye like lightning's
arc. The acrid smell of scorched air stung her eyes. The clap of her power's
thunder rumbled out across the surrounding green fields of wheat.
Before the soldier hit the ground, Nicci unleased her power on three
more of the charging men, taking off one's entire shoulder, the wallop
whirling him around like a ghastly fountain, the dangling limb flinging off
into the crowd. A third man was cut almost in two. She felt the concussion
of the following bolt deep in her chest and, amid a blinding flash, the
fourth man's head came apart in a cloud of red mist and bony debris.
Her warning gaze met the eyes of two men with knives gripped in
white-knuckled
fists. They halted. Many more took a step back as the four reports, to
her so separate yet so close atop one another that they almost merged into
one ripping blast, still echoed off the buildings.
"Now," she said in a quiet, calm, composed voice that by its very
gentleness betrayed how deadly earnest was the threat, "if you men do not
follow my orders, and seize Commander Kardeef, I will seize him myself. But,
of course, not until after I've killed every last one of you."
The only sound was the moan of wind between the buildings.
"Do as I say, or die. I will not wait."
The big men, knowing her, made their decision in the instant they knew
was all she would grant them, and leaped to seize the commander. He managed
to draw his sword. Kadar Kardeef was no stranger to pitched battle. He
screamed orders as he fought them off. More than one man fell dead in the
melee. Others cried out as they took wounds. From behind, men finally caught
the deadly sword arm. Additional men piled on the commander until they had
him disarmed, down on the ground, and finally under control.
"What do you think you're doing?" Kadar Kardeef roared at her as the
men pulled him to his feet.
Nicci closed the distance between them. The soldiers held his arms
twisted behind his back. She stared into his wild eyes.
"Why, Commander, I am merely following your orders."
"What are you talking about!"
She smiled without humor just because she knew it would further madden
him.
One of the men glanced back over his shoulder. "What do you want done
with him?"
"Don't hurt him-I want him fully conscious. Strip him and bind him to
the pole."
"Pole? What pole?"
"The pole that held the pigs you men ate."
Nicci snapped her fingers, and they began pulling off their commander's
clothes, She watched without emotion as he was finally stripped. His gear
and prized weapons became plunder, quickly disappearing into the hands of
men he had commanded. They grunted with effort as they fought to bind the
struggling, naked, hairy commander to the pole at his back.
Nicci turned to the stunned crowd. "Commander Kardeef wishes you to
know how ruthless we can be. I am going to carry out those orders, and
demonstrate it for you." She turned back to the soldiers. "Put him over the
fire to roast like a pig."
The soldiers bore the struggling, furious Kadar Kardeef, the hero of
the Little Gap campaign, to the fire pit. They knew that Jagang watched them
through her eyes. They had reason to be confident that the emperor would
stop her if he wished to. After all, he was the dream walker, and they had
seen him force her and the other Sisters to submit to his wishes countless
times, no matter how degrading those wishes were.
They could not know that, for some reason, Jagang did not have access
to ha mind right then.
The wooden ends of the pole clattered into the sockets in the stone
supports to each side of the fire pit. The pole sprang up and down with the
weight of its load The weight finally settled, leaving Kadar Kardeef to hang
facedown. He had little choice but to watch the glowing coals beneath him.
Even though the fire had burned down, it wasn't long before the heat of
the wavering, low flames began causing him distress. As people watched in
silent dismay, the commander twisted as he shrieked orders, demanding that
his men take him down, promising them punishment if they delayed. His
diatribe trailed off as he began gasping for control of his growing dread.
Watching the eyes of the town's people, Nicci pointed behind her.
"This is how ruthless the Imperial Order is: they will slowly,
painfully, burn to death a great commander, a war hero, a man known and
revered far and wide, a man who has served them well, just to prove to you,
the people of an insignificant little town, that they will not hesitate to
kill anyone. Our goal is the good of all, and that goal is held more
important than any mere man among us. This is the proof. Now, do you people,
for any reason, still think that we would shrink from harming any or all of
you if you don't contribute to the common good?"
Nearly everyone shook their heads as they all mumbled, "No, Mistress."
Behind her, Commander Kardeef writhed in pain. He again yelled at his
men, commanding them to bring him down, and to kill "the crazy witch." None
of the soldiers moved to comply with his orders. To look at them, they
didn't even hear him. These men had no notion of compassion. There was only
life, and death. They chose life; that choice required his death.
Nicci stood watching the eyes of the people as the minutes dragged on.
The commander was up a good distance from the low flames, but there was a
expansive bed of broiling hot coals. She knew that, from time to time, the
gusty breeze diverted the fierce heat to give him a fleeting reprieve. It
would only prolong his ordeal; the heat was inexorable. Still, it would take
some time. She didn't ask for more firewood. She was in no hurry.
People's noses wrinkled; everyone could smell his body hair burning. No
one dared speak. As the ordeal wore on, the skin across Kardeef's chest and
stomach reddened, and then darkened. It was a good fifteen minutes before it
finally began to crack and split open. He shrieked in pain nearly the entire
time. The smell turned to a surprisingly pleasant aroma of cooking meat.
In the end, he gave in to wailing for mercy. He called her name,
begging her to bring it to an end, to either free him or to finish him
quickly. As she listened to him sob her name, she stroked the gold ring
through her lower lip, his voice little more to her than the buzzing of a
fly.
The thin layer of fat that lay over his powerful muscles began melting.
He grew hoarse. Fueled by the fat, flames flared up, scorching his face.
"Nicci!" Kardeef knew his pleas for mercy were falling on indifferent
ears. He betrayed his true feelings. "You vicious bitch! You deserved
everything I did to your"
She casually confronted his wild gaze. "Yes, I did. Give my regards to
the Keeper, Kadar."
"Tell him yourself! When Jagang finds out about this, he'll tear you
limb from limb! You'll soon be in the underworld, in the Keeper's hands!"
His words were once more but a trifling drone.
Sweat beaded on people's foreheads as the spectacle dragged on. They
needed no spoken orders to know she expected them to remain and watch the
whole thing. Their own imaginations, should they consider disobeying her
unspoken orders, would dream up punishments she never could. Only the boys
were fascinated by the remarkable exhibition. Knowing looks passed among
them; torture such as this was
a treat to the minds of young immortals. Someday, they might make good
Order troops-if they didn't grow up.
Nicci met the glare of the girl. The hatred in those eyes was
breathtaking. Even though the girl had been afraid of the dunking and
scrubbing, her eyes, at the time, had shown that the world was still a
wondrous place, and she was someone special. Now, her eyes betrayed her lost
innocence.
The whole time, Nicci stood tall, with her back straight and shoulders
square, to take the full blow of the girl's bright new hatred, feeling the
rare sensation of experiencing something.
The girl had no idea that Commander Kardeef had taken her place in the
flames,
When the commander finally went silent, Nicci turned her eyes from the
girl and spoke to the town's people.
"The past is gone. You are part of the Imperial Order. If you people
don't do the moral thing by contributing toward the well-being of your
fellow citizens of the Order, I will return."
They did not doubt her. If there was one thing they obviously wanted,
it was never to see her again.
One of the soldiers, his fists trembling at his sides, tramped forward
in halting steps. His eyes were wide with bewildered pain. "I want you back,
darlin," he growled in a voice that didn't match the startled expression in
his eyes. The voice turned deadly. "And I want you back right now."
There was no mistaking Jagang's voice, or the rage in it.
It was difficult for him to control the mind of one without the gift.
He had the soldier in a tenacious grip. Jagang would not have used a
soldier, thereby betraying his impotence, had he been able to reach in and
control Nicci's mind.
She had absolutely no idea why he had suddenly lost the link to her. It
had happened before. She knew he would eventually reestablish his ability to
hurt her. She had merely to wait.
"You are angry with me, Excellency?"
"What do you think?"
She shrugged. "Since Kadar was your better in bed, I would think you
would be pleased."
"Get yourself back here right now!" the soldier roared in Jagang's
voice. "Do you understand? Right now!"
Nicci bowed. "But, of course, Excellency."
As she straightened, she yanked the soldier's long knife from the
sheath at his belt and slammed it hilt-deep into his muscled gut. She
`gritted her teeth with the effort of pivoting the handle sideways, sweeping
the blade in a lethal arc through his insides.
She doubted the man felt his messy death writhing at her feet while she
waited for her carriage to make its way around the square. He died with
Jagang's chuckle on his lips. Since a dream walker could only be in a living
mind, for the time being, the afternoon returned to quiet.
After her carriage rocked to a dusty halt, a soldier reached up and
opened the door. She leaned out from the step, turning back to the crowd,
holding the outside handrail in order to stand straight so that they all
might see her. Her blond hair fluttered in the sunny breeze.
"Do not forget this day, and how your lives were all spared by Jagang
the Just!
The commander would have murdered you; the emperor, through me, has
instead'
shown his compassion. Spread the word of the mercy and wisdom of Jagang
the Just, and I will have no need to return."
The crowd mumbled that they would.
"Do you want us to bring the commander with us," a soldier asked. The
man, Kadar Kardeef's loyal second, now wore Kardeef's sword. Like
vegetables, fidelity's fresh vitality was fleeting, its final fate stench
and rot.
"Leave him to roast as a reminder. Everyone else will return with me to
Fairfield."
"By your command," he said with a bow. He circled his arm and ordered
the men to mount up and move out.
Nicci leaned out farther and looked up at the driver. "His Excellency
wishes to see me. Although he has not said as much, I'm reasonably sure he
would like you to hurry."
Nicci took her place on the hard leather cushion inside, her back
straight against the upright seat, while the driver let out a shrill whistle
The trembling man remained mute.
"What must I do to impress upon you people the seriousness of your
obligation to the lives of others? Your contribution to those in need is a
solemn moral dutysharing in a greater good."
Nicci's vision suddenly went white. With a pain like scorching hot
needles driven into her ears, Jagang's voice filled her mind.
Why must you play this game? Make examples of people! Teach them a
lesson that 1 am not to be ignored!
Nicci swayed on her feet. She was completely blinded by the pain
bursting inside her head. She let it wash through her, as if watching it
happen to a stranger. Her abdominal muscles twitched and convulsed. A rusty,
barbed lance driven up through her, ripping her insides, could not have hurt
more. Her arms hung limp at her sides while she waited for Jagang's
displeasure to end, or for death.
She was unable to tell how long the torture lasted. When he was doing
it, she was never able to sense time-the pain was too all-consuming. She
knew, from what others told her when they saw it done to her, and from
seeing it done to others, that it sometimes lasted only an instant.
Sometimes it lasted hours.
Making it last hours was a waste of Jagang's effort-she couldn't tell
the difference. She had told him as much.
Suddenly, she was unable to draw a breath. It felt like a fist squeezed
her heart to a stop. She thought her lungs might burst. Her knees were about
to buckle.
Do not disobey me again!
With a gasp, air filled her lungs. Jagang's discipline ended, as it
always did, with an impossibly tart, sour taste on her tongue, like an
unexpected mouthful of fresh raw lemon juice, and pain searing the nerves at
the back of her jaw under her earlobes. It left her head ringing and her
teeth throbbing. As she opened her eyes, she was surprised, as she always
was, not to see herself standing in a pool of blood. She touched the corner
of her mouth, and then brushed her fingers to an ear. She found no blood.
She wondered in passing why Jagang had been able to come into her mind
now. Sometimes, he couldn't. It didn't happen that way for any of the other
Sisters-he always had access to their minds.
As her vision cleared, she saw people staring at her. They didn't know
why she had paused. The young men-and a few of the older ones, too-were
sneaking peeks at her body. They were used to seeing women in drab,
shapeless dresses, women whose bodies exhibited the toll taken by endless
hard work and almost constant pregnancy from the time they were old enough
for the seed to catch. They had never before seen a woman like Nicci,
standing straight and tall, looking them in the eye, wearing a fine black
dress that hugged a nearly flawless shape marred by neither hard work or the
labor of birth. The stark black material contrasted the pale curve of
cleavage revealed by the cut of the laced bodice. Nicci was numb to such
stares. Occasionally, they suited her purposes, but most of the time they
didn't, and so she disregarded them.
She began walking down the line of people again, ignoring Emperor
Jagang's orders. She rarely complied with his orders. She was, for the most
part, indifferent to his punishment. If anything, she welcomed it.
Nicci, forgive me. You know I don't mean to hurt you.
She ignored his voice, too, as she studied the eyes peering up at her.
Not everyone did. She liked to look into the eyes of those courageous enough
to risk a glimpse of her. Most were filled with simple terror.
There would soon be abundant justification for such apprehension.
Nicci, you must do as I tell you, or you are only going to end up
forcing me to do something terrible to you. Neither of us wants that.
Someday, I am going to end up doing something from which you will be unable
to recover.
If that is what you wish to do, then do it, she thought, in answer.
It was not a challenge; she simply didn't care.
You know 1 don't want to do that, Nicci.
Without the pain, his voice was little more than a fly annoying her.
She paid it no heed. She addressed the crowd.
"Do you people have any concept of the effort being put into the fight
for your future? Or is it that you expect to benefit without contributing?
Many of our brave men have given their lives fighting the oppressors of the
people, fighting for our new beginning. We struggle so that all people will
be able to share equally in the coming prosperity. You must help us in our
effort on your behalf. Just as helping those in need is the moral obligation
of every person, so, too, is this."
Commander Kardeef, displaying a look of sour displeasure, planted
himself in front of her. The sunlight slanting across his lined face cast
his hooded eyes in deep shadows. She was not moved by his disfavor. He was
never satisfied with anything. Well, she corrected herself, almost never.
"People can only achieve virtue through obedience and sacrifice. Your
contribution to the Order is to implement their compliance. We are not here
to hold civic lessons!"
Commander Kardeef was confident in his privileged mastery over her. He,
too, had given her pain. She endured what Kadar Kardeef did to her with the
same detachment with which she endured what Jagang did to her.
Only in the furthest depths of pain could she begin to feel anything.
Even pain was preferable to the nothingness she usually felt.
Kadar Kardeef was probably unaware of the punishment Jagang had just
completed, or his orders; His Excellency didn't use Commander Kardeef's
mind. It was an arduous undertaking for Jagang to control those who didn't
possess the gift-lu could do it, but it was rarely worth his effort; he had
the gifted to control people for him. A dream walker somehow used the gift
in those who possessed it in order to m help complete the connection to
their minds. In a way, the gifted made it possible
for Jagang to so easily control them.
Kadar Kardeef glowered down at her as she gazed up at his darkly tanned
creased face. He was an imposing figure, with the studded leather straps
that crossed his massive chest, his armored leather shoulder and breast
plates, his chain mail, array of well-used weapons. Nicci had seen him crush
men's throats in one of big, powerful hands. As silent witness to his
bravery in battle, he bore a number scars. She had seen them all.
Few officers ranked higher or were more trusted than Kadar Kardeef. He
been with the Order since his youth, rising through the ranks to fight
alongside ' Jagang as they expanded the empire of the Imperial Order out of
their homeland Altur'Rang to eventually subjugate the rest of the Old World.
Kadar Kardeef was the hero of the Little Gap campaign, the man who almost
single-handedly
the course of the battle, breaking through enemy lines and personally
slaying the three great kings who had joined forces to trap and crush the
Imperial Order before it could seize the imaginations of the millions of
people living in a patchwork of kingdoms, fiefdoms, clans, city-states, and
vast regions controlled by alliances of warlords.
The Old World had been a tinderbox, waiting for the spark of
revolution. The preachings of the Order were that spark. If the high priests
were the Order's soul, Jagang was its bone and muscle. Few people understood
Jagang's genius-they saw only a dream walker, or a ferocious warrior. He was
far more.
It had taken Jagang decades to finally bring the rest of the Old World
to heel-to put the Order on its final path to greater glory. During those
years of struggle for the Order, while engaged in nearly constant war,
Jagang toiled building the road system that allowed him to move men and
supplies great distances with lightning speed. The more lands and peoples he
annexed, the more laborers he put to the construction of yet more roads by
which he could conquer yet more territory. He was thus able to maintain
communications and to react to situations faster than anyone would have
believed possible. Formerly isolated lands were suddenly connected to the
rest of the Old World. Jagang had knitted them together with a net of roads.
Along those roads, the people of the Old World had risen up to follow him as
he forged the way for the Order.
Kadar Kardeef had been part of it all. More than once he had taken
wounds to save Jagang's life. Jagang had once taken a bolt from a crossbow
to save Kardeef. If Jagang could be said to have a friend, Kadar Kardeef was
as close as any came to it.
Nicci first met Kardeef when he had come to the Palace of the Prophets
in Tanimura to pray. Old King Gregory, who had ruled the land including
Tanimura, had disappeared without a trace. Kadar Kardeef was a solemnly
devout man; before battle he prayed to the Creator for the blood of the
enemy, and after, for the souls of the men he had killed. That day he was
said to have prayed for the soul of King Gregory. The Imperial Order was
suddenly the new rule in Tanimura. The people celebrated in the streets for
days.
Over the course of three thousand years, the Sisters, from their home
at the Palace of the Prophets in Tanimura, had seen governments come and go.
For the most part, the Sisters, led by their prelate, considered matters of
rule a petty foolishness best ignored. They believed in a higher calling.
The Sisters believed they would remain at the Palace of the Prophets,
undisturbed in their work, long after the Order had vanished into the dust
of history. Revolutions had many times come and gone. This one, though,
caught them up.
Kadar Kardeef had been nearly twenty years younger, then-a handsome
conqueror riding into the city. Many of the Sisters were fascinated by the
man. Nicci never was. But he was fascinated by her.
Emperor Jagang, of course, did not send such invaluable men as
Commander Kardeef out to pacify conquered lands. He had entrusted Kardeef
with a much more important task: guarding his valuable property-Nicci.
Nicci turned her attention away from Kadar Kardeef and back to the
people.
She settled her gaze on the man who had spoken before. "We cannot allow
anyone to shirk their responsibility to others and to our new beginning."
"Please, Mistress . . . We have nothing-"
"Disregard of our cause is treasonous."
He thought better of disagreeing with that pronouncement.
"You don't seem to understand that this man behind me wants you to see
that the Imperial Order is resolute in their devotion to their cause-if you
don't do your duty. I know you have heard the stories, but this man wants
you to experience the grim reality. Imagining it is never quite the same.
Never quite as gruesome."
She stared at the man, waiting for his answer. He licked his
weather-cracked lips,
"We just need some more time .... Our crops are doing well. When the
harvest comes in . . . we could contribute our fair share toward the
struggle for . . . for. . ."
"The new beginning."
"Yes, Mistress," he said, bobbing his head, "the new beginning." When
his gaze returned to the dirt at his feet, she moved on down the line.
Her purpose was not really to collect, but to cow.
The time had come.
A girl gazing up at her snagged Nicci to a stop, distracting her from
what she had intended. The girl's big, dark eyes sparkled with innocent
wonder. Everything was new to her, and she was eager to see it all. In her
dark eyes shone that rare, fragile, and most perishable of qualities: a
guileless view of life that had yet to be touched by pain or loss or evil.
Nicci cupped the girl's chin, staring into the depths of those
thirsting eyes.
One of Nicci's earliest memories was of her mother standing over her
like this, holding her chin, looking down at her. Nicci's mother was gifted,
too. She said that', the gift was a curse, and a test. It was a curse
because it gave her abilities others didn't have, and it was a test to see
if she would wrongly exert that superiority. Nicci's mother almost never
used her gift. Servants handled the work; she spent most of her time nested
among her clutch of friends, devoting herself to higher pursuits.
"Dear Creator, but Nicci's father is a monster," she would complain as
she wrung her hands. Some of her friends would murmur their sympathy. "Why
must he burden me so! I fear his eternal soul is beyond hope or prayer." The
other women would ask in grim agreement.
Her mother's eyes were the same dull brown as a cockroach's back. To
Nicci's mind, they were set too close together. Her mouth, too, was narrow,
as if fixed is -. place by her perpetual disapproval. While Nicci never
really thought of her mother as homely, neither did she consider her
beautiful, although her friends regularly reassured her that she most surely
was.
Nicci's mother said beauty was a curse to a caring woman and a blessing
only to whores.
Puzzled by her mother's displeasure of her father, Nicci had finally
asked why had done.
"Nicci," her mother had said, cupping Nicci's small chin that day.
Nicci eagerly awaited her mother's words. "You have beautiful eyes, but you
do not yet see with .them. All people are miserable wretches, that is the
lot of man. Do you have any idea how it hurts those without all your
advantages to see your beautiful face? That , is all you bring to others:
insufferable pain. The Creator brought you into the world 1 for no reason
but to ease the misery of others, and here you bring only hurt." Ha mother's
friends, sipping tea, nodded, whispering to one another their sorrowful b `
firm agreement.
That was when Nicci had first learned that she bore the indelible stain
of so shadowy, nameless, unconfessed evil.
Nicci gazed into the rare face looking up at her. Today this girl's
dark eyes would see things they could not yet imagine. Those big eyes
eagerly watched without seeing. She could not possibly understand what was
to come, or why.
What kind of life could she have?
It would be for the best, this way.
The time had come.
Before she could begin, Nicci saw something that ignited her
indignation. She whirled to a nearby woman.
"Where is there a washtub?"
Surprised by the question, the woman pointed a trembling finger toward
a two story building not far off. "There, Mistress. In the yard behind the
pottery shop are laundry tubs where we were washing clothes."
Nicci seized the woman by her throat. "Get me a pair of scissors. Bring
them to me there." The woman stared in wide-eyed fright. Nicci shoved her.
"Now! Or would you prefer to die on the spot?"
Nicci yanked free a well-worn, reserve studded strap bunched with
several others and secured over Commander Kardeef's shoulder. He made no
effort to stop her, but as she gathered up the strap, he seized her upper
arm in his powerful grip.
"You had better be planning on drowning this little brat-or maybe
cutting off hunks of her hide and then stabbing out her eyes." His breath
smelled of onion and ale. He smirked. "In fact, you start in on her, and
while she's screaming and begging for her life, I'll begin separating out
some young men, or perhaps I'll select some women to be an example. Which
would you prefer, this time?"
Nicci turned her glare down at his fingers on her arm. He removed them
as he growled a warning. She turned to the girl and whipped the strap twice
around her neck to serve as a collar, twisting it into a handle in the back
so she could control the girl with it. The girl squeaked in choked surprise.
She had probably never been handled so roughly in her entire life. Nicci
forced her ahead, toward the building the woman had pointed out.
Seeing how angry Nicci had suddenly become, no one followed. A woman
not far off, undoubtedly the girl's mother, began to cry out in protest, but
then fell silent as Kardeef's men turned their attention on her. By then
Nicci already had the perplexed girl around the corner.
Out back, drab laundry, deformed and crumpled from its ordeal on the
washboard, and now stretched and pinned to lines, twisted in the wind as if
struggling to escape. Smoke from the fire pit peeked over the top of the
building. The nervous woman waited with a large pair of shears.
Nicci marched the girl up to a tub of water, drove her down on her
knees, and shoved her head under the water. While the girl struggled, Nicci
snatched the scissors from the woman. Her chore completed, the woman held
her apron up over her mouth to muffle her wails as she ran off in tears, not
wanting to watch a child being murdered.
Nicci pulled the girl's head up out of the water, and while she
sputtered and gasped for air, began clipping her dark, soaking wet hair
close to the scalp. When
Nicci had finished cutting it off in sodden clumps, she dunked the girl
again while leaning over and scooping up a cake of pale yellow soap from the
washboard on the ground beside the tub. Nicci hauled the girl's head up and
then began scrubbing. The girl screeched, flailing her spindly arms and
clawing at the strap around her neck by which Nicci controlled her. Nicci
realized she was probably hurting her, but from within the grip of rage, it
was only a dim realization.
"What's the matter with you!" Nicci shook the gasping girl. "Don't you
know you're crawling with lice?"
"But, but-"
The soap was harsh and as rough as a rasp. The girl squealed as Nicci
bent her over and put more muscle into the scouring.
"Do you like having a head full of lice?"
"No--"
"Well, you must! Why else would you have them?"
"Please! I'll try to do better. I'll wash. I promise!"
Nicci remembered how much she hated catching lice from the places her
mother sent her. She remembered scrubbing herself, using the harshest soap
she could find, only to again be sent off to another place, where she would
get infested with the hated things all over again.
When Nicci had scrubbed and dunked a dozen times, she finally dragged
the girl to a tub of clean water and swished her head about in it to rinse
her off. The girl blinked furiously, trying to clear her eyes of the
stinging, soapy water as it streamed down off her face.
Gripping the girl's chin, Nicci peered into her red eyes. "No doubt
your clothes are lousy with nits. You're to scrub your clothes every
day-underthings, especially-or the lice will just be right back." Nicci
squeezed the girl's cheeks until her eyes watered. "You are better than to
be filthy with lice! Don't you know that?"
The girl nodded, as best as she could with Nicci's strong fingers
holding her face. The big, dark, intelligent eyes, although red from the
water and wide with shock, were still filled with that rare sense of wonder.
As painful and frightening as the experience was, this had not dispelled it.
"Burn your bedding. Get new." Given the way these people lived and
worked, it seemed a hopeless challenge. "Your whole family must burn their
bedding. Wash all their clothes."
The girl nodded her oath.
Task completed, Nicci marched the girl back toward the gathered crowd.
Forcing her along by the studded strap used as a collar, Nicci was
unexpectedly struck by a memory.
It was a memory of the first time she had seen Richard.
Nearly every Sister at the Palace of the Prophets had been gathered in
the great hall to see the new boy Sister Verna had brought in. Nicci
lingered at the mahogany rail, twining around her finger a lace dangling
from her bodice, only to pull the lace straight and then to twine it again,
when the pair of thick walnut doors opened. The rumbling drone of
conversation, sprinkled with bright laughter, trailed to an expectant hush
as the group, led by Sister Phoebe, marched into the chamber, past the white
columns topped by gold capitals, and in under the huge vaulted dome.
The birth of gifted boys was rare, and a cause of expectant delight
when they were discovered and finally brought to live at the palace. A grand
banquet was planned for that evening. Most of the Sisters, dressed in their
finery, stood on the
floor below, eager to meet the new boy. Nicci remained near the center
of the lower balcony. She didn't care whether she met him or not.
It came as something of a shock to see how Sister Verna had aged on her
journey. Such journeys typically lasted at most a year; this one, beyond the
great barrier to the New World, had taken nearly twenty. Events beyond the
barrier being uncertain, Verna had apparently been sent off on her mission
too far in advance.
Life at the Palace of the Prophets was as long as it was serene. No one
at the Palace of the Prophets appeared to have aged at all in so trifling a
span of time as two decades, but away from the spell that enveloped the
palace, Verna had. Verna, probably close to one hundred and sixty years old,
had to be at least twenty years younger than Nicci; yet she now looked twice
Nicci's age. People outside the palace aged at the normal rate, of course,
but to see it happen so rapidly to a Sister . . .
As the roaring applause thundered on in the huge room, many of the
Sisters wept over the momentous occasion. Nicci yawned. Sister Phoebe held
up her hand until the room fell silent.
"Sisters." Phoebe's voice trembled. "Please welcome Sister Verna home."
She finally had to raise a hand to again bring the clamor of applause to a
halt.
When the room had quieted, she said, "And may I present our newest
student, our newest child of the Creator, our newest charge." She turned and
held an arm out in introduction, wiggling her fingers, urging the apparently
timid boy forward as she went on. "Please welcome Richard Cypher to the
Palace of the Prophets."
Several of the women stepped back out of the way as he strode forward.
Nicci's eyes widened; her back straightened. It was not a young boy. He was
grown into a man.
The crowd, despite their shock, clapped and cheered with the warmth of
their welcome. Nicci didn't hear it. Her attention was riveted by those gray
eyes of his. He was introduced to some of the nearby Sisters. The novice
assigned to him, Pasha, was brought before him and tried to speak to him.
Richard brushed Pasha aside, a stag dismissing a vole, and stepped out
alone into the center of the room. His whole bearing conveyed the same
quality Nicci beheld in his eyes.
"I have something to say."
The vast chamber fell to an astonished hush.
His gaze swept the room. Nicci's breath caught when, for an instant,
their eyes met, as he probably met countless others.
Her trembling fingers clutched the rail for support.
Nicci swore at that moment to do whatever was necessary to be named as
one of his teachers.
His fingers tapped the Rada'Han around his neck.
"As long as you keep this collar on me, you are my captors, and I am
your prisoner."
Murmurs hummed in the air. A Rada'Han was put around a boy's neck not
joust to govern him, but to protect him as well. The boys were never thought
of as prisoners, but wards who needed security, care, and training. Richard,
though, did not set ' it that way.
"Since I have committed no aggression against you, that makes us
enemies. We are at war."
Several older Sisters teetered on their heels, nearly fainting. The
faces of half the women in the room went red. The rest went white. Nicci
could not have imagined
such an attitude. His demeanor kept her from blinking, lest she
overlook something. She drew slow breaths, lest she miss a word. Her
pounding heart, though, was beyond her ability to control.
"Sister Verna has made a pledge to me that I will be taught to control
the gift, and when I have learned what is required, I will be set free. For
now, as long as you keep that pledge, we have a truce. But there are
conditions."
Richard lifted a red leather rod hanging on a fine gold chain around
his neck. At the time, Nicci hadn't known it to be the weapon of a
Mord-Sith.
"I have been collared before. The person who put that collar on me
brought me pain, to punish me, to teach me, to subdue me."
Nicci knew that such could be the only fate of one like him.
"That is the sole purpose of a collar. You collar a beast. You collar
your enemies.
"I made her much the same offer I am making you. I begged her to
release me. She would not. I was forced to kill her.
"Not one of you could ever hope to be good enough to lick her boots.
She did as she did because she was tortured and broken, made mad enough to
use a collar to hurt people. She did it against her nature.
"You . . ." His gaze swept all the eyes watching him. "You do it
because you think it is your right. You enslave in the name of your Creator.
I don't know your Creator. The only one beyond this world who I know would
do as you do is the Keeper." The crowd gasped. "As far as I'm concerned, you
may as well be the Keeper's disciples."
Little did he know that some of them were.
"If you do as she, and use this collar to bring me pain, the truce will
be ended. You may think you hold the leash to this collar, but I promise
you, if the truce ends, you will find that what you hold is a bolt of
lightning."
The room was as silent as a tomb.
He was alone, defiant, in the midst of hundreds of sorceresses who knew
how to harness every nuance of the power with which they were born; he knew
next to nothing of his ability, and was collared by a Rada'Han besides. In
this, he may have been a stag, but a stag challenging a congregation of
lions. Hungry lions.
Richard rolled up his left sleeve. He drew his sword-a sword!-in
defiance of the prodigious power arrayed before him. The distinctive ring of
steel filled the silence as the blade was brought free.
Nicci stood spellbound as he listed his conditions.
He finally pointed back with the sword. "Sister Verna captured me. I
have fought her every step of this journey. She has done everything short of
killing me and draping my body over a horse to get me here. Though she, too,
is my captor and enemy, I owe her certain debts. If anyone lays a finger to
her because of me, I will kill that person, and the truce will be ended."
Nicci couldn't fathom such a strange sense of honor, but somehow she
knew it fit what she saw in his eyes.
The crowd gasped as Richard drew his sword across the inside of his
arm. He turned it, wiping both sides in the blood, until it dripped from the
tip. Nicci could plainly see, even if the others could not much as she saw
in his eyes a quality others did not see-that the sword united with, and
completed, magic within him.
His knuckles white around the hilt, he thrust the glistening crimson
blade into the air.
"I give you a blood oath!" he cried out. "Harm the Baka Ban Mana, harm
Sister
Verna, or harm me, and the truce will be ended, and I promise you we
will have t, war! If we have war, I will lay waste to the Palace of the
Prophets!"
From the upper balcony, where Richard couldn't see him, Jedidiah's
mocking voice drifted out over the crowd. "All by yourself?"
"Doubt me at your peril. I am a prisoner; I have nothing to live for. I
am the t flesh of prophecy. I am the bringer of death."
No answer came in the stupefied silence. Probably every woman in the
room knew of the prophecy of the bringer of death, though none was certain
of its intended meaning. The text of that prophecy, along with all the
others, was kept in the vaults deep under the Palace of the Prophets. That
Richard knew it, that he dared declare it aloud in such company, augured the
worst possible interpretation. Every lioness in the room retracted her claws
in caution. Richard drove his sword home into its scabbard as if to
punctuate his threat.
Nicci knew that the profound importance of what she had seen in his
eyes and in his presence would forever haunt her.
She knew, too, that she must destroy him.
Nicci had to surrender favors and commit to obligations she never
imagined she would have willingly done, but in return, she became one of
Richard's six teachers. The burdens she had taken on in return for that
privilege were all worth it when she sat alone with him, across a small
table in his room, lightly holding his hands-if one could be said to lightly
grasp lightning-endeavoring to teach him to touch his Han, the essence of
life and spirit within the gifted. Try as he might, he felt nothing. That,
in itself, was peculiar. The inkling of what she felt within him, though,
was often enough to leave her unable to bring forth more than a few sparse
words. She had casually questioned the others, and knew they were blind to
it.
Although Nicci could not comprehend what it was about his intellect
that his eyes and his conduct revealed, she did know that it disturbed the
numb safety of her indifference. She ached to grasp it before she had to
destroy him, and at the same time ached to destroy him before she did.
Whenever she became confident that she was beginning to unravel the
mystery of his singular character, and thought she could predict what he
would do in a given , situation, he would confound her by doing something
completely unexpected, if not impossible. Time and again he reduced to ashes
what she had thought was the foundation of her understanding of him. She
spent hours sitting alone, in abysmal misery, because it seemed to be in
plain sight, yet she couldn't define it. She knew only that it was some
principle important beyond measure, and it remained beyond her .: grasp.
Richard, never happy about his situation, became increasingly distant
as time passed. Forlorn of hope, Nicci decided that the time had come.
When she went to his room for what she meant to be his final lesson and
his end, he surprised her by offering her a rare white rose. Worse, he
offered it with a smile and no explanation. As he held it out, she was so
petrified that she could only manage to say, "Why, thank you, Richard." The
white roses were from only one kind of place: dangerous restricted areas no
student should ever have been able to enter. That he apparently could, and
that he would so boldly offer her the proof of his trespass, startled her.
She held the white rose carefully between a finger and thumb, not knowing if
he was warning her-by giving her a forbidden thing-that ; he was the
bringer of death, and she was being marked, or if it was a gesture of
simple, if strange, kindness. She erred on the side of caution. Once
again, his nature had stayed her hand.
The other Sisters of the Dark had plans of their own. Richard's gift,
as far as Nicci was concerned, was probably the least remarkable and by far
the least important thing about him, yet Liliana, one of his other teachers,
a woman of boundless greed and limited insight, thought to steal the innate
ability of his Han for herself. It sparked a lethal confrontation which
Liliana lost. The six of them, their leader, Ulicia, and Richard's five
remaining teachers-having been discovered, escaped with their lives and
little else, only to end up in Jagang's clutches.
In the end, Nicci understood that quality in his eyes no better than
the first moment she had seen it.
It had all slipped through her fingers.
--]----
The girl ran for her mother when Nicci released her grip on the studded
strap around her neck.
"Well?" Commander Kardeef shrieked. He planted his fists on his hips.
"Are you through with your games? It's time these people learned the true
meaning of ruthless!"
Nicci stared into the depths of his dark eyes. They were defiant,
angry, and determined-yet they were nothing at all like Richard's eyes.
Nicci turned to the soldiers.
She gestured. "You two. Seize the commander."
The men blinked dumbly. Commander Kardeef's face went red with rage.
"That's it! You've finally gone too far!" He wheeled to his men, a whole
field of them-two thousand of them. He pointed a thumb back over his
shoulder at Nicci. "Grab this lunatic witch!"
Half a dozen men nearest to her drew weapons as they rushed her. Like
all Order field troops, they were big, strong, and quick. They were also
experienced.
Nicci thrust a fist out in the direction of the closest as he lifted
his whip to lash out and entangle her. With the speed of thought, both
Additive Magic and Subtractive twined together in a lethal mix as she
unleashed a focused bolt of power. It produced a burst of light so hot and
so white that for an instant it made the sunlight seem dim and cold by
comparison.
The blast blew a mellon-sized hole through the center of the soldier's
chest. For an instant, before the internal pressure forced his organs to
fill the sudden void, she could see men behind through the gaping hole in
his chest.
The afterimage of the flare lingered in her mind's eye like lightning's
arc. The acrid smell of scorched air stung her eyes. The clap of her power's
thunder rumbled out across the surrounding green fields of wheat.
Before the soldier hit the ground, Nicci unleased her power on three
more of the charging men, taking off one's entire shoulder, the wallop
whirling him around like a ghastly fountain, the dangling limb flinging off
into the crowd. A third man was cut almost in two. She felt the concussion
of the following bolt deep in her chest and, amid a blinding flash, the
fourth man's head came apart in a cloud of red mist and bony debris.
Her warning gaze met the eyes of two men with knives gripped in
white-knuckled
fists. They halted. Many more took a step back as the four reports, to
her so separate yet so close atop one another that they almost merged into
one ripping blast, still echoed off the buildings.
"Now," she said in a quiet, calm, composed voice that by its very
gentleness betrayed how deadly earnest was the threat, "if you men do not
follow my orders, and seize Commander Kardeef, I will seize him myself. But,
of course, not until after I've killed every last one of you."
The only sound was the moan of wind between the buildings.
"Do as I say, or die. I will not wait."
The big men, knowing her, made their decision in the instant they knew
was all she would grant them, and leaped to seize the commander. He managed
to draw his sword. Kadar Kardeef was no stranger to pitched battle. He
screamed orders as he fought them off. More than one man fell dead in the
melee. Others cried out as they took wounds. From behind, men finally caught
the deadly sword arm. Additional men piled on the commander until they had
him disarmed, down on the ground, and finally under control.
"What do you think you're doing?" Kadar Kardeef roared at her as the
men pulled him to his feet.
Nicci closed the distance between them. The soldiers held his arms
twisted behind his back. She stared into his wild eyes.
"Why, Commander, I am merely following your orders."
"What are you talking about!"
She smiled without humor just because she knew it would further madden
him.
One of the men glanced back over his shoulder. "What do you want done
with him?"
"Don't hurt him-I want him fully conscious. Strip him and bind him to
the pole."
"Pole? What pole?"
"The pole that held the pigs you men ate."
Nicci snapped her fingers, and they began pulling off their commander's
clothes, She watched without emotion as he was finally stripped. His gear
and prized weapons became plunder, quickly disappearing into the hands of
men he had commanded. They grunted with effort as they fought to bind the
struggling, naked, hairy commander to the pole at his back.
Nicci turned to the stunned crowd. "Commander Kardeef wishes you to
know how ruthless we can be. I am going to carry out those orders, and
demonstrate it for you." She turned back to the soldiers. "Put him over the
fire to roast like a pig."
The soldiers bore the struggling, furious Kadar Kardeef, the hero of
the Little Gap campaign, to the fire pit. They knew that Jagang watched them
through her eyes. They had reason to be confident that the emperor would
stop her if he wished to. After all, he was the dream walker, and they had
seen him force her and the other Sisters to submit to his wishes countless
times, no matter how degrading those wishes were.
They could not know that, for some reason, Jagang did not have access
to ha mind right then.
The wooden ends of the pole clattered into the sockets in the stone
supports to each side of the fire pit. The pole sprang up and down with the
weight of its load The weight finally settled, leaving Kadar Kardeef to hang
facedown. He had little choice but to watch the glowing coals beneath him.
Even though the fire had burned down, it wasn't long before the heat of
the wavering, low flames began causing him distress. As people watched in
silent dismay, the commander twisted as he shrieked orders, demanding that
his men take him down, promising them punishment if they delayed. His
diatribe trailed off as he began gasping for control of his growing dread.
Watching the eyes of the town's people, Nicci pointed behind her.
"This is how ruthless the Imperial Order is: they will slowly,
painfully, burn to death a great commander, a war hero, a man known and
revered far and wide, a man who has served them well, just to prove to you,
the people of an insignificant little town, that they will not hesitate to
kill anyone. Our goal is the good of all, and that goal is held more
important than any mere man among us. This is the proof. Now, do you people,
for any reason, still think that we would shrink from harming any or all of
you if you don't contribute to the common good?"
Nearly everyone shook their heads as they all mumbled, "No, Mistress."
Behind her, Commander Kardeef writhed in pain. He again yelled at his
men, commanding them to bring him down, and to kill "the crazy witch." None
of the soldiers moved to comply with his orders. To look at them, they
didn't even hear him. These men had no notion of compassion. There was only
life, and death. They chose life; that choice required his death.
Nicci stood watching the eyes of the people as the minutes dragged on.
The commander was up a good distance from the low flames, but there was a
expansive bed of broiling hot coals. She knew that, from time to time, the
gusty breeze diverted the fierce heat to give him a fleeting reprieve. It
would only prolong his ordeal; the heat was inexorable. Still, it would take
some time. She didn't ask for more firewood. She was in no hurry.
People's noses wrinkled; everyone could smell his body hair burning. No
one dared speak. As the ordeal wore on, the skin across Kardeef's chest and
stomach reddened, and then darkened. It was a good fifteen minutes before it
finally began to crack and split open. He shrieked in pain nearly the entire
time. The smell turned to a surprisingly pleasant aroma of cooking meat.
In the end, he gave in to wailing for mercy. He called her name,
begging her to bring it to an end, to either free him or to finish him
quickly. As she listened to him sob her name, she stroked the gold ring
through her lower lip, his voice little more to her than the buzzing of a
fly.
The thin layer of fat that lay over his powerful muscles began melting.
He grew hoarse. Fueled by the fat, flames flared up, scorching his face.
"Nicci!" Kardeef knew his pleas for mercy were falling on indifferent
ears. He betrayed his true feelings. "You vicious bitch! You deserved
everything I did to your"
She casually confronted his wild gaze. "Yes, I did. Give my regards to
the Keeper, Kadar."
"Tell him yourself! When Jagang finds out about this, he'll tear you
limb from limb! You'll soon be in the underworld, in the Keeper's hands!"
His words were once more but a trifling drone.
Sweat beaded on people's foreheads as the spectacle dragged on. They
needed no spoken orders to know she expected them to remain and watch the
whole thing. Their own imaginations, should they consider disobeying her
unspoken orders, would dream up punishments she never could. Only the boys
were fascinated by the remarkable exhibition. Knowing looks passed among
them; torture such as this was
a treat to the minds of young immortals. Someday, they might make good
Order troops-if they didn't grow up.
Nicci met the glare of the girl. The hatred in those eyes was
breathtaking. Even though the girl had been afraid of the dunking and
scrubbing, her eyes, at the time, had shown that the world was still a
wondrous place, and she was someone special. Now, her eyes betrayed her lost
innocence.
The whole time, Nicci stood tall, with her back straight and shoulders
square, to take the full blow of the girl's bright new hatred, feeling the
rare sensation of experiencing something.
The girl had no idea that Commander Kardeef had taken her place in the
flames,
When the commander finally went silent, Nicci turned her eyes from the
girl and spoke to the town's people.
"The past is gone. You are part of the Imperial Order. If you people
don't do the moral thing by contributing toward the well-being of your
fellow citizens of the Order, I will return."
They did not doubt her. If there was one thing they obviously wanted,
it was never to see her again.
One of the soldiers, his fists trembling at his sides, tramped forward
in halting steps. His eyes were wide with bewildered pain. "I want you back,
darlin," he growled in a voice that didn't match the startled expression in
his eyes. The voice turned deadly. "And I want you back right now."
There was no mistaking Jagang's voice, or the rage in it.
It was difficult for him to control the mind of one without the gift.
He had the soldier in a tenacious grip. Jagang would not have used a
soldier, thereby betraying his impotence, had he been able to reach in and
control Nicci's mind.
She had absolutely no idea why he had suddenly lost the link to her. It
had happened before. She knew he would eventually reestablish his ability to
hurt her. She had merely to wait.
"You are angry with me, Excellency?"
"What do you think?"
She shrugged. "Since Kadar was your better in bed, I would think you
would be pleased."
"Get yourself back here right now!" the soldier roared in Jagang's
voice. "Do you understand? Right now!"
Nicci bowed. "But, of course, Excellency."
As she straightened, she yanked the soldier's long knife from the
sheath at his belt and slammed it hilt-deep into his muscled gut. She
`gritted her teeth with the effort of pivoting the handle sideways, sweeping
the blade in a lethal arc through his insides.
She doubted the man felt his messy death writhing at her feet while she
waited for her carriage to make its way around the square. He died with
Jagang's chuckle on his lips. Since a dream walker could only be in a living
mind, for the time being, the afternoon returned to quiet.
After her carriage rocked to a dusty halt, a soldier reached up and
opened the door. She leaned out from the step, turning back to the crowd,
holding the outside handrail in order to stand straight so that they all
might see her. Her blond hair fluttered in the sunny breeze.
"Do not forget this day, and how your lives were all spared by Jagang
the Just!
The commander would have murdered you; the emperor, through me, has
instead'
shown his compassion. Spread the word of the mercy and wisdom of Jagang
the Just, and I will have no need to return."
The crowd mumbled that they would.
"Do you want us to bring the commander with us," a soldier asked. The
man, Kadar Kardeef's loyal second, now wore Kardeef's sword. Like
vegetables, fidelity's fresh vitality was fleeting, its final fate stench
and rot.
"Leave him to roast as a reminder. Everyone else will return with me to
Fairfield."
"By your command," he said with a bow. He circled his arm and ordered
the men to mount up and move out.
Nicci leaned out farther and looked up at the driver. "His Excellency
wishes to see me. Although he has not said as much, I'm reasonably sure he
would like you to hurry."
Nicci took her place on the hard leather cushion inside, her back
straight against the upright seat, while the driver let out a shrill whistle