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Najari yawned on his way to the door. "See you tomorrow, then,
Nicholas."
Nicholas opened his mouth wide, mimicking the yawn, even though he
didn't yawn. It felt good to stretch his jaws wide. Sometimes he felt
trapped inside himself and he wanted out.
Nicholas closed the door behind Najari and bolted it. It was a
perfunctory act, done more to add to the aura of peril than out of
necessity. Even with their hands tied behind their backs, these people
could, together, probably overpower him--knock him down and kick in his
head, if nothing else. But for that, they would have to think, to decide
what they ought to do and why, to commit to act. Easier not to think. Easier
not to act. Easier to do as you are told.
Easier to die than to live.
Living took effort. Struggle. Pain.
Nicholas hated it.
"Hate to live, live to hate," he said to the silent, ghostly white
faces watching him.
Out the window the streaks of clouds had gone dark gray as the touch of
the sun passed beyond them and night crept in to embrace them. Soon, he
would be among them.
He turned back from the window, taking in the faces watching him. Soon,
they would all be out there, among them.
Nicholas seized one of the nameless men. Powered by muscles crafted of
the Sisters' dark art, he hoisted the man into the air. The man cried out in
surprise at being lifted so easily. He struggled hesitantly against muscle
he would not be able to resist were he even to put daring into it. These
people were immune to magic, or Nicholas would have used his power to easily
lift them aloft. Absent the necessary spark of the gift, they had to be
manhandled.
It made little difference to Nicholas. How they got to the stakes was
unimportant. What happened to them once there was all that mattered.
As the man in his arms cried out in terror, Nicholas carried him across
the room. The other people withdrew into a far corner. They always went to
the far corner, like chickens about to be dinner.
Nicholas, his arms around the man's chest, lifted him high in the air,
judging the distance and angle as he raced ahead.
The man's eyes went wide, his mouth did likewise. He gasped with the
shock, then grunted as Nicholas, hugging the man tight in his arms, drove
him down onto the stake.
The man's breath came in short sharp gasps as the sharpened stake
penetrated up through his insides. He went still in Nicholas's powerful
arms, fearing to move, fearing to believe what was happening to him, fearing
to know it was true ... trying to deny to himself that it could be true.
Nicholas straightened to his full height before the man. The man's back
was as straight and stiff as a board as he sat impaled on the sharpened
stake. His eyebrows pushed his sweat-beaded brow up in furrows as he writhed
in slow agony, his legs trying to touch the ground that was too far away.
Into that confusion of sensation, Nicholas reached out with his mind,
at the same time clawing his hands before the man with the effort as he slid
his own being, his own spirit, into the core of this living creature, slid
into this man's open mind, into the cavernous cracks between his abrupt and
disconnected thoughts, there to feel his agony and fright. There to take
control. Once he had slipped his own mind in there with this man, seeped
through his consciousness, Nicholas drew his essence out and into himself.
With a staggering fusion of destructive and creative power dealt by
those women that day, Nicholas had been born into a new being, part him, and
yet more. He had become what no man had ever been before--what others wished
to make of him, what others wished him to be.
What had been unleashed in him by those Sisters all linked in their
ability to harness powers they could never have touched alone and should
never have invoked together, they instilled in him. They engendered in him
powers few could ever have imagined: the power to slide into another living
person's thoughts, and withdraw their spirit.
He drew his closed fists back toward his own abdomen with the effort of
drawing with him the spirit of this man on the cusp of life and death, drew
onward the marrow of this man's soul. Nicholas felt the slick heat of this
other spirit slide into his, the hot rush of sensation at feeling himself
filled with another spirit.
Nicholas left the body there, impaled on the first stake, as he rushed
to the windows, his head spinning with the first intoxicating wave of
excitement at the journey only now just begun, at what was to come, at what
power he would control.
He opened his mouth wide again in a yawn that was not a yawn, but a
call carrying more than just his silent voice.
His eyes swam with wavering images. He gasped in the first scent of the
forests out beyond, where his intent had been cast.
He rushed back and seized a woman. She begged as she wept, begged to be
spared as he bore her to her stake.
"But this is nothing," he told her. "Nothing compared to what I have
endured. Oh, you cannot imagine what I have endured."
He had been staked naked to the ground, in the center of a circle of
those smug women. He had been nothing to them. He had not been a man, a
wizard. He had been nothing but the raw material, the flesh and blood
innervated by the gift, that they needed for what they wanted, that they
used in yet another of their trials, all to be twisted by their tinkering at
creation.
He had the ability, so duty required he sacrifice it.
Nicholas had been the first to live through their tests, not because
they took care--not because they cared--but because they had learned what
didn't work, and so avoided their past errors.
"Scream, my dear. Scream all you want. It will help you no more than it
helped me."
"Why!" she screamed. "Why!"
"Oh, but I must, if I am to have your spirit to soar on the wings of my
distant friends. You will go on a glorious journey, you and I."
"Please!" she wailed. "Dear Creator, no!"
"Oh, yes, dear Creator," he mocked. "Come and save her--like you came
and saved me."
Her wailing did her no good. His hadn't either. She had no idea how
immeasurably worse his agony had been than hers would be. Unlike her, he had
been condemned to live.
"Hate to live, live to hate," he murmured in a comforting whisper. "You
will have the glory and the reward that is death."
He drove her down onto the stake. He reckoned her not far enough onto
the stake, and shoved her down another six inches, until he judged it deep
enough within her, deep enough to produce the necessary pain and terror, but
not deep enough to lance anything inside that would kill her right off. She
thrashed, trying desperately, hands helpless behind her back, to somehow
remove herself.
He was only dimly aware of her cries, her worthless words. She thought
they might somehow make a difference.
Pain was his goal. Their complaints of it only confirmed that he was
achieving his goal.
Nicholas stood before the woman, hands clawed, as he slid his own
spirit through her sundered thoughts and into the core of her being. With
mental strength far superior to his physical strength, he pulled her back.
He gasped as he felt her spirit slide into his.
For now, he slipped those spirits out of tortured, dying bodies while
those spirits existed in the netherworld between the worldly form they knew
was lost to them, but still alive, and the world of the dead already calling
them in from beyond. Life could no longer hold them, but death could not yet
have them. In that time of spiritual transition, they were his, and he could
use those spirits for things only he could imagine.
And he had not yet really even begun to imagine.
Such ability as he possessed was not something that could be taught by
another--there was no other but he. He was still learning the extent of his
powers, the things he could do with the spirit of another. He had only
scratched the surface.
Emperor Jagang had sought to create something akin to himself, a dream
walker, a brother, of sorts. One who could enter another's mind. He had
gotten far more than he could have ever have imagined. Nicholas didn't
simply slide into another's thoughts, as Jagang did; he could slide into
their very soul, and draw their spirit back into himself.
The Sisters hadn't counted on that aberration of their tinkering with
his ability.
Rushing to the window, his mouth pulled open as wide as it would go in
a yawn that wasn't a yawn. The room swam behind him. It was only partly
there, now. Now, he was beginning to see other places. Glorious places. See
them with new vision, with spirits no longer bound to their paltry bodies.
He rushed to the third person, no longer aware even if they were man or
woman. Their soul was all that mattered--their spirit.
He drove them onto a stake with urgent effort, slid into them and drew
their spirit into his, shuddering with the power of it entering him.
He rushed to the window again, opening wide his mouth again, twisting
his head side to side again with the thrill of it, the slick, silken,
sliding ecstasy of it... the loss of physical orientation, the exaltation of
being above his corporeal existence, the former bounds of his mere worldly
form--carried aloft not simply with his own efforts, but by the spirits of
others that he had freed from their bodies.
What a glorious thing it was.
It was almost like the joy he imagined death would be.
He seized the fourth weeping person and with delirious expectation ran
with them across the room, to the stakes, to the fourth stake, and drove
them screaming onto it.
As he lurched back from them, he thrust himself into their wildly
racing, confused, swirling thoughts, and took what was there for the taking.
He took their spirit into himself.
When he controlled a person's spirit, he controlled their very
existence. He became life and death for them. He was their savior, their
destroyer.
He was in many ways like those spirits he took, trapped in a worldly
form, hating to live, to endure the pain and agony that was life, yet
fearing to die even while longing for the promise of its sweet embrace.
With four spirits swirling through him, Nicholas staggered to the fifth
person, cowering in the corner.
"Please!" the man wailed, trying to ward what he would not commit to
warding. "Please, don't!"
The thought occurred to Nicholas that the stakes were really a
hindrance; using them required him to carry people around like woolly sheep
to have their souls sheared. Yes, he was still learning what he could do and
how to control what he did, but to have to use the stakes was limiting. When
he thought about it, it was actually insulting that a wizard of his ability
would have to use so crude a device.
What he really wanted to do was to slide into another's spirit and take
it without any warning--without needing to bring people to the stakes.
When he was fully able to do that--to simply walk up to another, say
"Good day," and slide like the thrust of a dagger into the heart of their
spirit, there to draw it into his--then he would be invincible. When he was
able to do that, then no one could challenge him. No one would be able to
deny him anything.
As the man shrank down before him, Nicholas, before he fully realized
what it was he was doing, driven by an angry need, by hatred, thrust out his
hand as he thrust his own mind into this man, into the spaces between
thought.
The man stiffened, just as those on the stakes stiffened, when Nicholas
had impaled them with his ability.
He drew back his closed fist toward his middle as he drew in this man's
spirit. He gasped with the heat of it, with the silky slick feel of it
sliding into him.
They stared at each other, each in shock, each considering what this
meant for them.
The man slumped back against the wall, sliding down, in soundless,
silent, terrible empty agony.
Nicholas realized that he had just done what he had never done before.
He had just taken a soul by his will alone.
He had just freed himself to take what he wanted, when he wanted, where
he wanted.
Nicholas, his vision a blur, staggered to the window.
All five were his, now.
This time, as his mouth opened wide, a cry at last came forth, a cry of
the five spirits joining his as he drew them together into one force guided
by his will alone. Their worldly agony was a distant concern to them. Five
spirits gazed out of the windows along with him, five spirits now waiting to
soar out into the night, to where he chose to send them.
Those Sisters had not known what they unleashed that night. They could
not have known the power they fused into him, the ability they burned into
him.
They had achieved what none had achieved for thousands of years-- the
altering of a wizard into something more, honing him into a weapon of
specific intent. They had imbued him with power beyond that of anyone
living. They had given him dominion over the spirits of others.
Most had escaped, but he had killed five of them.
The five were enough. After he had slid into their souls and pulled
their spirits back into his that night, he had appropriated their Han, their
force of life, their power, for himself.
It was only fitting, as their Han was not natural to them, but was male
Han they had stolen from young wizards--a birthright they had sucked from
those to whom it belonged in order to give themselves abilities they had not
been born with, could not be born with. Yet more nameless people with
ability to be sacrificed to those who needed it, or simply wanted it.
Nicholas had taken it all back from their trembling bodies, pulled it
out of them as he had clawed their living insides open. They had been sorry
that they had done Jagang's bidding, that they had twisted him into
something Creation never intended.
Not only had they made him into a Slide, they had given up their Han to
him, and made him that much more powerful for it.
After each of those five women had died, the world had gone darker than
dark for an instant when the Keeper had come and taken them to his realm.
The Sisters had destroyed him that day, and they had created him.
He had a lifetime to explore and discover what he could do with his new
abilities.
And, to be sure, Jagang would grant him payment for that night. Jagang
would pay, but he would pay gladly, for Nicholas would give him something
none but Nicholas the Slide could give him.
Nicholas would be rewarded with things enough to repay him for what had
been done to him.... He hadn't decided, yet, what that reward would be, but
it would be worthy of him.
He would use his ability to hold sway over lives--important lives. He
no longer needed to cart people to the stakes. He knew how to take what he
wanted, now.
Now he knew how to slip into their minds at the time of his choosing
and take their souls.
He would trade those lives for what he would have in power, wealth,
splendor. It would have to be something appropriate....
He would be an emperor.
It would have to be more than this petty empire of sheep, though. He
would frolic in rule. He would have his every whim fulfilled, once he was
given dominion over... over something important. He hadn't decided just
what, yet. It was an important decision, what he would have as his reward.
No need to rush it. It would come to him.
He turned from the window, the five spirits swirling within his,
soaring through him.
It was time to use what he had pulled together.
Time to get down to business, if he was to have what he wanted.
He would get closer, this time. He was frustrated from not being
closer, from not seeing better. It was dark, now. He would get closer, this
time, under cover of the darkness.
Nicholas took the broad bowl from the table and placed it on the floor
before the five who still owned the spirits within him. They writhed in
otherworldly agony, even the man not on a stake, an agony of both body and
soul.
Nicholas sat cross-legged on the floor before the bowl. Hands on his
knees, he threw his head back, eyes closed, as he gathered the power within,
the power created by those wicked women, those wonderful wicked women.
They had considered him a pathetic wizard of little worth except as
flesh and blood and gift to toy with--a sacrifice to a greater need.
When he had time, he would go after the rest of them.
With a more immediate task at hand, Nicholas dismissed those Sisters
from his mind.
Tonight, he would not merely watch through other eyes. Tonight, he
would again go with the spirits he cast.
Tonight, he would not merely watch through other eyes. Tonight, his
spirit would travel to them.
Nicholas opened his mouth as wide as it would go, his head rocking from
side to side. The joined spirits within released a part of themselves into
the bowl, whirling in a silken, silvery swirl lit with the soft glow of
their link to the life behind him, placekeepers for their journey, a stitch
in the world holding the knot in the thread of their travels.
His spirit, too, let slip a small portion to remain with his body, to
drift in the bowl with the others.
Fragments of the five spirits revolved with the fragment of his, their
light of life glowing softly in this safe place as he prepared to journey.
He cast his own spirit away, then, leaving behind the husk of a body sitting
on the floor behind him as he fled out into the dark sky, borne on the wings
of his invested power.
No wizard before had ever been able to do as he, to leave his body and
have his spirit soar to where his mind would send him. He raced through the
night, fast as thought, to find what he hunted.
He felt the rush of air flowing over feathers. As quick as that, he had
raced away through the night and was with them, pulling the five spirits
along with him.
He summoned the dark forms into a circle with him, and, as they
gathered around, cast the five spirits into them. His mouth was still open
in a yawn that was not a yawn that back in a room somewhere distant let
forth a cry to match the five.
As they circled, he felt the rush of air beneath their wings, felt
their feathers working the wind to direct them as effortlessly as his own
thought directed not only his spirit but the other five as well.
He sent those five racing through the night, to the place where he had
sent the men. They raced over hills, turning to scan the open country, to
look out over the barren land. The cloak of darkness felt cool, encasing him
in obscure black night, obscure black feathers.
He caught the scent of carrion, sharp, cloying, tantalizing, as the
five spiraled down toward the ground. Through their eyes that saw in the
darkness Nicholas saw then the scene below, a place littered with the dead.
Others of their kind had gathered to feed in a frenzy of ripping and
gorging.
No. This was wrong. He didn't see them.
He had to find them.
He willed his charges up from the gory feast, to search. Nicholas felt
a pang of urgency. This was his future that had slipped away from him--his
treasure slipping through his grasp. He had to find them. Had to.
He spurred his charges onward.
This way, that way, over there. Look, look, look. Find them, find them.
Look. Must find them. Look.
This was not supposed to be. There had been enough men. No one could
escape that many experienced men. Not when they came by stealth and attacked
with surprise. They had been selected for their talents. They knew their
business.
Their bodies lay sprawled all about. Beak and claw ripped at them.
Screeches of excitement. Hunger.
No. Must find them.
Up, up, up. Find them. He had to find them.
He had suffered the agony of a new birth in those dark woods, those
terrible woods, with those terrible women. He would have his reward. He
would not be denied. Not now. Not after all that.
Find them. Look, look, look. Find them.
On powerful wings, he soared into the night. With eyes that saw in the
dark, he searched. With creatures that could catch the scent of prey at
great distance, he tried for a whiff of them.
Through the night they went, hunting. Hunting.
There, there he saw their wagon. He recognized their wagon. Their big
horses. He had seen it before--seen them with it before. His minions circled
in close on nearly silent wings, dropping in closer to see what Nicholas
sought.
Not there. They weren't there. A trick. It had to be a trick. A
diversion. Not there. They had sent the wagon away to trick him, to send him
off their trail.
With wings powered by anger, he soared up, up, up to search the
countryside. Hunt, hunt. Find them. He flew with his five in an ever wider
pattern to search the ground beneath the night. They flew on, searching,
searching. His hunger was their hunger. Hunt for them. Hunt.
The wings grew weary as he drove them onward. He had to find them. He
would not allow rest. Not allow failure. He hunted in expanding swaths,
searching, hunting, hunting.
There, among the trees, he saw movement.
It was only just dark. They wouldn't see their pursuers--not in the
dark--but he could see them. He forced the five down, circling, circling,
forced them in close. He would not fail this time to see them, to get close
enough. Circling, holding him there, circling, watching, circling, watching,
seeing them there.
It was her! The Mother Confessor! He saw others. The one with red hair
and her small four-legged friend. Others, too. He must be there, too. Had to
be there, too. He would be there, too, as the small group moved west.
West. They moved west. They had traveled to the west of where he had
seen them last.
Nicholas laughed. They were coming west. The captors sent for them all
lay dead, but here they came anyway. They were coming west.
Toward where he waited.
He would have them.
He would have Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor.
Jagang would have them.
It came to him, then--his reward. What he would have in return for the
prizes he would deliver.
D'Hara.
He would have the rule of D'Hara in return for these two paltry people.
Jagang would reward him with the rule of D'Hara, if he wanted those two. He
would not dare deny Nicholas the Slide what he wanted. Not when he had what
Jagang wanted most, more than any other prize. Jagang would pay any price
for these two.
Pain. A scream. Shock, terror, confusion raged through him. He felt the
wind, the wind that carried him so effortlessly, now ripping at him like
fists snatching at feathers as he tumbled in helpless pain.
One of the five falling at blinding speed smacked the ground.
Nicholas screamed. One of the five spirits had been lost with its host.
Back somewhere distant, in some far-off room with wooden walls and shutters
and bloody stakes, back, back, back in another place he had almost forgotten
existed, back, back, back far away, a spirit was ripped from his control.
One of the five back there had died at the same instant the race had
crashed to the ground.
Scream of hot pain. Another tumbled out of control. Another spirit
escaped his grasp into the waiting arms of death.
Nicholas struggled to see in the confusion, forcing the remaining three
to hold his vision in place so he could see. Hunt, hunt, hunt. Where was he?
Where was he? Where? He saw the others. Where was Lord Rahl?
A third scream.
Where was he? Nicholas fought to hold his vision despite the hot agony,
the bewildering plummet.
Pain ripped through a fourth.
Before he could gather his senses, hold them together, force them with
the power of his will to do his bidding, two more spirits were yanked away
into the void of the underworld.
Where was he?
Talons at the ready, Nicholas searched.
There! There!
With violent effort, he forced the race over into a dive. There he was!
There he was! Up high. Higher than the rest. Somehow up high. Up on a ledge
of rock above the rest. He wasn't down there with them. He was up high.
Dive for him. Dive down for him.
There he was, bow drawn.
Ripping pain tore through the last race. The ground rushed up at him.
Nicholas cried out. He tried frantically to stop the spinning. He felt the
race slam into the rock at frightening speed. But only for an instant.
With a gasp, Nicholas drew a desperate breath. His head spun with the
burning torture of the abrupt return, an uncontrolled return not of his
doing.
He blinked, his mouth open wide in an attempt to let out a cry, but no
sound came. His eyes bulged with the effort, but no cry came. He was back.
Whether or not he wanted to be, he was back.
He looked around at the room. He was back, that was the reason no cry
came. No screech of a race joined his own. They were dead. All five.
Nicholas turned to the four impaled on stakes behind him. All four were
slumped. The fifth man lay slouched in the far corner. All five limp and
still. All five dead. Their spirits gone.
The room was as silent as a crypt. The bowl before him glowed only with
the fragment of his own spirit. He drew it back in.
He sat in the stillness for a long time, waiting for his head to stop
spinning. It had been a shock to be in a creature as it was killed--to have
a spirit of a person in him as they died. As five of them died. It had been
a surprise.
Lord Rahl was a surprising man. Nicholas hadn't thought, back that
first time, that he would be able to get all five. He had thought it was
luck. A second time was not luck. Lord Rahl was a surprising man.
Nicholas could cast his spirit out again if he wanted, seek out new
eyes, but his head hurt and he didn't feel up to it; besides, it didn't
matter. Lord Rahl was coming west. He was coming to the great empire of
Bandakar.
Nicholas owned Bandakar.
The people here revered him.
Nicholas smiled. Lord Rahl was coming. He would be surprised at the
kind of man he found when he arrived. Lord Rahl probably thought he knew all
manner of men.
He did not know Nicholas the Slide.
Nicholas the Slide, who would be emperor of D'Hara when he gave Jagang
the prizes he sought most: the dead body of Lord Rahl, and the living body
of the Mother Confessor.
Jagang would have them both for himself.
And in return, Nicholas would have their empire.
Ann heard the distant echo of footsteps coming down the long, empty,
dark corridor outside the far door to her forgotten vault under the People's
Palace, the seat of power in D'Hara. She was no longer sure if it was day or
night. She'd lost track of time as she sat in the silent darkness. She saved
the lamp for times when they brought food, or the times she wrote to Verna
in the journey book. Or the times she felt so alone that she needed the
company of a small flame, if nothing else.
In this place, within this spell of a palace for those born Rahl, her
power was so diminished that it was all she could do to light that lamp.
She feared to use the little lamp too often and run out of oil; she
didn't know if they would give her more. She didn't want to run out and only
then find they would give her no more. She didn't want not to have at least
the possibility of that small flame, that small gift of light.
In the dark she could do nothing but consider her life and all she had
worked so hard to accomplish. For centuries she had led the Sisters of the
Light in their effort to see the Creator's light triumph in the world, and
see the Keeper of the underworld kept where he belonged, in his own realm,
the world of the dead. For centuries she had waited in dread of the time
that prophecy said was now upon them.
For five hundred years she had waited for the birth of the one who had
the chance to succeed in leading them in the struggle to see the Creator's
gift, magic, survive against those who would cast that light out of the
world. For five hundred years she had worked to insure that he would have a
chance to do what he must if he was to have a chance to stop the forces that
would extinguish magic.
Prophecy said that only Richard had the chance to preserve their cause,
to keep the enemy from succeeding in casting a gray pall over mankind, the
only one with a chance to prevent the gift from dying out. Prophecy did not
say that he would prevail; prophecy said only that Richard was the only one
to have a chance to bring them victory. Without Richard, all hope was
lost--that much was sure. For this reason, Ann had been devoted to him long
before he was born, before he rose up to become their leader.
Kahlan saw all of Ann's efforts as meddling, as tinkering with the
lives of others. Kahlan believed that Ann's efforts were in fact the cause
of the very thing she feared most. Ann hated that she sometimes thought that
maybe Kahlan was right. Maybe it was meant to be that Richard would be born
and by his free will alone would choose to do those things that would lead
them to victory in their battle to keep the gift among men. Zedd certainly
believed that it was only by Richard's mind, by his free will, but his
conscious intent, that he could lead them.
Maybe it was true, and Ann, in trying to direct those things that could
not be and should not be directed, had brought them all to the brink of
ruin.
The footsteps were coming closer. Maybe it was time to eat and they
were bringing dinner. She wasn't hungry.
When they brought her food, they put it on the end of a long pole and
then threaded that pole through the little opening in the outer door, all
the way across the outer shielded room, through the opening in the second,
inner door, and finally in to Ann. Nathan would risk no chance for escape by
having her guards have to open her cell door merely to give her food.
They passed in a variety of breads, meats, and vegetables along with
waterskins. Although the food was good, she found no satisfaction in it.
Even the finest fare could never be satisfying eaten in a dungeon.
At times, as Prelate, she had felt as if she were a prisoner of her
post. She had rarely gone to the dining hall where the Sisters of the Light
had eaten--especially in the later years. It put everyone on edge having the
Prelate among them at dinner. Besides, done too often it took the edge off
their anxiety, their discomposure, around authority.
Ann believed that a certain distance, a certain worried respect, was
necessary in order to maintain discipline. In a place that had been spelled
so that time slowed for those living there, it was important to maintain
discipline. Ann appeared to be in her seventies, but with her aging process
slowed dramatically while living under the spell that had covered the Palace
of the Prophets, she had lived close to a thousand years.
Of course, a lot of good her discipline had done her. Under her watch
as Prelate the Sisters of the Dark had infested her flock. There were
hundreds of Sisters, and there was no telling just how many of them had
taken dark oaths to the Keeper. The lure of his promises were obviously
effective. Such promises were an illusion, but try to tell that to one so
pledged. Immortality was seductive to women who watched everyone they knew
outside the palace grow old and die while they remained young.
Sisters who had children saw those children sent out of the palace to
be raised where they could have a normal life, saw those children grow old
and die, saw their grandchildren grow old and die. To a woman who saw such
things, saw the constant withering and death of those she knew while she
herself all the time seemed to remain young, attractive, and desirable, the
offer of immortality grew increasingly tempting when her own petals began to
wilt.
Growing old was a final stage, the end of a life. Growing old in the
Palace of the Prophets was a very long ordeal. Ann had been old for
centuries. Being young for a very long time was a wonderful experience, but
being old for a very long time was not--at least it was not for some. For
Ann, it was life itself that was wonderful, not so much her age, and all she
had learned. But not everyone felt that way.
Now that the palace had been destroyed, they would all age at the same
rate as everyone else. What had only a short time ago been a future of maybe
another hundred years of life for Ann was suddenly perhaps no more than a
blink of a decade--certainly not much more.
But she doubted she would live all that long in such a dank hole, away
from light and life.
Somehow, it didn't seem as if she and Nathan were close to a thousand
years old. She didn't know what it felt like to age at the normal rate
outside the spell, but she believed she felt little different than those
outside the palace felt as they aged. She believed that the spell that
slowed their aging also altered their perception of time--to a degree,
anyway.
The footsteps were getting closer. Ann wasn't looking forward to
another meal in this place. She was beginning to wish they would let her
starve and get it over with. Let her die.
What good had her life been? When she really thought about it, what
good had she really accomplished? The Creator knew how she tried to guide
Richard in what needed to be done, but in the end it seemed that it was
Richard's choice to act as he did, in most cases against what she thought
needed to be done, that turned out to be correct. Had she not tried to guide
events, bring him to the Palace of the Prophets in the Old World, maybe
nothing would have changed and that would have been the way he was to save
them all--by not having to act and letting Jagang and the Imperial Order
eventually wither and die in the Old World, unable to spread their virulent
beliefs beyond. Maybe she'd brought it all to ruin with her efforts alone.
She heard the door at the end of the passageway to her cell scrape
open. She decided that she wouldn't eat. She wouldn't eat again until Nathan
came to speak with her, as she had requested.
Sometimes, with the food, they sent in wine. Nathan sent it in to vex
her, she was sure of that. From his confinement in the Palace of the
Prophets, Nathan had sometimes requested wine. Ann always saw the report
when such a request was made; she declined every such request.
Wizards were dangerous enough, prophets--who were wizards with the
talent of prophecy--were potentially vastly more dangerous, and drunken
prophets were the most dangerous of all. Prophecy given out willy-nilly was
an invitation to calamity. Even simple prophecy escaping the confines of the
stone walls of the Palace of the Prophets had started wars.
Nathan had sometimes requested the company of women. Ann hated those
requests the most, because she sometimes granted them. She felt she had to.
Nathan had little of life, confined as he was to his apartments, his only
real crime being the nature of his birth, his abilities. The palace could
easily afford the price of a woman to sometimes visit him.
He made a mockery of that, often enough--giving out prophecy that sent
the woman fleeing before they could speak with her, before they could
silence her.
Those without the proper training were not meant to see prophecy.
Prophecy was easily misinterpreted by those without an understanding of its
intricacies. To divulge prophecy to the uninitiated was like casting fire
into dry grass.
Prophecy is not meant for the unenlightened.
At the thought of the prophet being loose, Ann's stomach tightened into
a knot. Even so, she had sometimes secretly taken Nathan out herself, to go
on important journeys with her--mostly journeys having to do with guiding
some aspect of Richard's life, or, more accurately, trying to insure that
Richard would be born and have a life. Besides being trouble on two feet,
Nathan was also a remarkable prophet who did have a sincere interest in
seeing their side triumph. After all, he saw in prophecy the alternative,
and when Nathan saw prophecy, he saw it in all its terrible truth.
Nathan always wore a Rada'Han--a collar--that enabled her, or any
Sister, to control him, so taking him on those journeys wasn't actually
putting the world at risk of the man. He had to do as she said, go where she
said. Whenever she had taken him out on a mission with her, he was not
really free, since he wore a Rada'Han and she could thus control him.
Now he was without a Rada'Han. He was truly free.
Ann didn't want any supper. She resolved to turn it away when they
passed the pole in to her. Let Nathan fret that she might refuse food
altogether and die while under his fickle control. Ann folded her arms.
Let him have that on his conscience. That would bring the man down to
see her.
Ann heard the footsteps come to a halt outside the far door. Muffled
voices drifted in to her. Had she ready access to her Han, she would have
been able to concentrate her hearing toward those voices and easily hear
their words. She sighed. Even that ability was useless to her here, in this
place, under the power invoked by the spell form of the layout of the
palace. It would hardly make sense to create such elaborate plans to curtail
another's magic and allow them to hear secrets whispered inside the walls.
The outer door squealed in protest as it was pulled open. This was new.
No one had opened the outer door since the day they shut her in the place.
Ann rushed to the door to her small room, to the faint square of light
that was the opening in the iron door. She grabbed hold of the bars and
pulled her face up close, trying to see who was out there, what they were
doing.
Light blinded her. She staggered back a few steps, rubbing her eyes.
She was so used to the dark that the harsh lantern light felt as if it had
burned her vision with blazing light.
Ann backed away from the door when she heard a key clattering in the
lock. The bolt threw back with a reverberating clang. The door grated open.
Cool air, fresher than the stale air she was used to breathing, poured in.
Yellow light flooded around the room as the lantern was thrust into the room
at the end of an arm encased in red leather. Mord-Sith.
Ann squinted in the harsh glare as the Mord-Sith stepped over the sill
and ducked in through the doorway into the room. Unaccustomed to the lantern
light, Ann at first could only discern the red leather outfit and the blond
braid. She didn't like to contemplate why one of the Lord Rahl's elite corps
of torturers would be coming down to the dungeon to see her. She knew
Richard. She could not imagine that he would allow such a practice to
continue. But Richard wasn't here. Nathan seemed to be in charge.
Squinting, Ann at last realized that it was the woman she had seen
before: Nyda.
Nyda, appraising Ann with a cool gaze, said nothing as she stepped to
the side. Another person was following her in. A long leg wearing brown
trousers stepped over the sill, followed by a bent torso folding through the
opening. Rising up to full height, Ann saw with sudden surprise who it was.
"Ann!" Nathan held his arms open wide, as if expecting a hug. "How are
you? Nyda gave me your message. They are treating you well, I trust?"
Ann stood her ground and scowled at the grinning face. "I'm still
alive, no thanks to you, Nathan."
She of course remembered how tall Nathan was, how broad were his
shoulders. Now, standing before her, the top of his full head of long gray
hair nearly touching the stone chisel marks in the ceiling, he looked even
taller than she remembered. His shoulders, filling up so much of the small
room, looked even broader. He wore high boots over his trousers and a
ruffled white shirt beneath an open vest. An elegant green velvet cape was
attached at his right shoulder. At his left hip a sword in an elegant
scabbard glimmered in the lamplight.
His face, his handsome face, so expressive, so unlike any other, made
Ann's heart feel buoyant.
Nathan grinned as no one but a Rahl could grin, a grin like joy and
hunger and power all balled together. He looked like he needed to sweep a
damsel into his powerful arms and kiss her without her permission.
He waved a hand casually around at her accommodations. "But you are
safe in here, my dear. No one can harm you while under our care. No one can
bother you. You have fine food--even wine now and again. What more could you
want?"
Fists at her side, Ann stormed forward at a pace that brought the
Mord-Sith's Agiel up into her fist, even though she stayed where she was.
Nathan held his ground, held his smile, as he watched her come.
"What more could I want!" Ann screamed. "What more could I want? I want
to be let out! That's what more I could want!"
Nathan's small, knowing smile cut her to her core. "Indeed," he said, a
single word of quiet indictment.
Standing in the stony silence of the dungeon, she could only stare up
at him, unable to bring forth an argument that he would not throw back at
her.
Ann turned a glare on the Mord-Sith. "What message did you give him?"
"Nyda said that you wanted to see me," Nathan answered in her place. He
spread his arms. "Here I am, as requested. What is it you wanted to see me
about, my dear?"
"Don't patronize me, Nathan. You know very well what I wanted to see
you about. You know why I'm here, in D'Hara--why I've come to the People's
Palace."
Nathan clasped his hands behind his back. His smile had finally lost
its usefulness.
"Nyda," he said, turning to the woman, "would you leave us alone for
now. There's a good girl."
Nyda appraised Ann with a brief glance. No more was needed; Ann was no
threat to Nathan. He was a wizard--no doubt he had told her that he was the
greatest wizard of all time--and was within the ancestral home of the House
of Rahl. He had no need to fear this one old sorceress--not anymore, anyway.
Nyda gave Nathan a if-you-need-me-I'll-be-right-outside kind of look
before contorting her perfect limbs through the doorway with fluid grace,
the way a cat went effortlessly through a hedge.
Nathan stood in the center of the cell, hands still clasped behind his
upright back, waiting for Ann to say something.
Ann went to her pack, sitting on the far end of the stone bench that
had been her bed, her table, her chair. She flipped back the flap and
reached inside, feeling around. Her fingers found the cold metal of the
object she sought. Ann drew it out and stood over it, her shadow hiding it.
Finally, she turned. "Nathan, I have something for you."
She lifted out a Rada'Han she had intended to put around his neck.
Right then, she didn't quite know how she had thought she could accomplish
such a feat. She would have, though, had she put her mind to it; she was
Annalina Aldurren, Prelate of the Sisters of the Light. Or, at least, she
once had been. She had given that job to Verna before feigning her and
Nathan's death.
"You want me to put that collar around my neck?" Nathan asked in a calm
voice. "That's what you expect?"
Ann shook her head. "No, Nathan. I want to give this to you. I've been
doing a lot of thinking while I've been down here. Thinking about how I'd
probably never leave my place of confinement."
"What a coincidence," Nathan said. "I used to spend a great deal of
time thinking that very same thought."
"Yes," Ann said, nodding. "I expect you did." She handed him the
Rada'Han. "Here. Take this. I never want to see one of these again.
While I did what I thought best, I hated every minute of it, Nathan. I
hated to do it to you, especially. I've come to think that my life has been
a misguided mess. I'm sorry I ever put you behind those shields and kept you
a prisoner. If I could live my life over again, I'd not do it the same way.
"I expect no leniency; I showed you none."
"No," Nathan said. "You didn't."
His azure eyes seemed to be looking right into her. He had a way of
doing that. Richard had inherited that same penetrating Rahl gaze.
"So, you are sorry you kept me a prisoner all my life. Do you know why
it was wrong, Ann? Are you even aware of the irony?"
Almost against her better judgment, she heard herself ask, "What
Nicholas."
Nicholas opened his mouth wide, mimicking the yawn, even though he
didn't yawn. It felt good to stretch his jaws wide. Sometimes he felt
trapped inside himself and he wanted out.
Nicholas closed the door behind Najari and bolted it. It was a
perfunctory act, done more to add to the aura of peril than out of
necessity. Even with their hands tied behind their backs, these people
could, together, probably overpower him--knock him down and kick in his
head, if nothing else. But for that, they would have to think, to decide
what they ought to do and why, to commit to act. Easier not to think. Easier
not to act. Easier to do as you are told.
Easier to die than to live.
Living took effort. Struggle. Pain.
Nicholas hated it.
"Hate to live, live to hate," he said to the silent, ghostly white
faces watching him.
Out the window the streaks of clouds had gone dark gray as the touch of
the sun passed beyond them and night crept in to embrace them. Soon, he
would be among them.
He turned back from the window, taking in the faces watching him. Soon,
they would all be out there, among them.
Nicholas seized one of the nameless men. Powered by muscles crafted of
the Sisters' dark art, he hoisted the man into the air. The man cried out in
surprise at being lifted so easily. He struggled hesitantly against muscle
he would not be able to resist were he even to put daring into it. These
people were immune to magic, or Nicholas would have used his power to easily
lift them aloft. Absent the necessary spark of the gift, they had to be
manhandled.
It made little difference to Nicholas. How they got to the stakes was
unimportant. What happened to them once there was all that mattered.
As the man in his arms cried out in terror, Nicholas carried him across
the room. The other people withdrew into a far corner. They always went to
the far corner, like chickens about to be dinner.
Nicholas, his arms around the man's chest, lifted him high in the air,
judging the distance and angle as he raced ahead.
The man's eyes went wide, his mouth did likewise. He gasped with the
shock, then grunted as Nicholas, hugging the man tight in his arms, drove
him down onto the stake.
The man's breath came in short sharp gasps as the sharpened stake
penetrated up through his insides. He went still in Nicholas's powerful
arms, fearing to move, fearing to believe what was happening to him, fearing
to know it was true ... trying to deny to himself that it could be true.
Nicholas straightened to his full height before the man. The man's back
was as straight and stiff as a board as he sat impaled on the sharpened
stake. His eyebrows pushed his sweat-beaded brow up in furrows as he writhed
in slow agony, his legs trying to touch the ground that was too far away.
Into that confusion of sensation, Nicholas reached out with his mind,
at the same time clawing his hands before the man with the effort as he slid
his own being, his own spirit, into the core of this living creature, slid
into this man's open mind, into the cavernous cracks between his abrupt and
disconnected thoughts, there to feel his agony and fright. There to take
control. Once he had slipped his own mind in there with this man, seeped
through his consciousness, Nicholas drew his essence out and into himself.
With a staggering fusion of destructive and creative power dealt by
those women that day, Nicholas had been born into a new being, part him, and
yet more. He had become what no man had ever been before--what others wished
to make of him, what others wished him to be.
What had been unleashed in him by those Sisters all linked in their
ability to harness powers they could never have touched alone and should
never have invoked together, they instilled in him. They engendered in him
powers few could ever have imagined: the power to slide into another living
person's thoughts, and withdraw their spirit.
He drew his closed fists back toward his own abdomen with the effort of
drawing with him the spirit of this man on the cusp of life and death, drew
onward the marrow of this man's soul. Nicholas felt the slick heat of this
other spirit slide into his, the hot rush of sensation at feeling himself
filled with another spirit.
Nicholas left the body there, impaled on the first stake, as he rushed
to the windows, his head spinning with the first intoxicating wave of
excitement at the journey only now just begun, at what was to come, at what
power he would control.
He opened his mouth wide again in a yawn that was not a yawn, but a
call carrying more than just his silent voice.
His eyes swam with wavering images. He gasped in the first scent of the
forests out beyond, where his intent had been cast.
He rushed back and seized a woman. She begged as she wept, begged to be
spared as he bore her to her stake.
"But this is nothing," he told her. "Nothing compared to what I have
endured. Oh, you cannot imagine what I have endured."
He had been staked naked to the ground, in the center of a circle of
those smug women. He had been nothing to them. He had not been a man, a
wizard. He had been nothing but the raw material, the flesh and blood
innervated by the gift, that they needed for what they wanted, that they
used in yet another of their trials, all to be twisted by their tinkering at
creation.
He had the ability, so duty required he sacrifice it.
Nicholas had been the first to live through their tests, not because
they took care--not because they cared--but because they had learned what
didn't work, and so avoided their past errors.
"Scream, my dear. Scream all you want. It will help you no more than it
helped me."
"Why!" she screamed. "Why!"
"Oh, but I must, if I am to have your spirit to soar on the wings of my
distant friends. You will go on a glorious journey, you and I."
"Please!" she wailed. "Dear Creator, no!"
"Oh, yes, dear Creator," he mocked. "Come and save her--like you came
and saved me."
Her wailing did her no good. His hadn't either. She had no idea how
immeasurably worse his agony had been than hers would be. Unlike her, he had
been condemned to live.
"Hate to live, live to hate," he murmured in a comforting whisper. "You
will have the glory and the reward that is death."
He drove her down onto the stake. He reckoned her not far enough onto
the stake, and shoved her down another six inches, until he judged it deep
enough within her, deep enough to produce the necessary pain and terror, but
not deep enough to lance anything inside that would kill her right off. She
thrashed, trying desperately, hands helpless behind her back, to somehow
remove herself.
He was only dimly aware of her cries, her worthless words. She thought
they might somehow make a difference.
Pain was his goal. Their complaints of it only confirmed that he was
achieving his goal.
Nicholas stood before the woman, hands clawed, as he slid his own
spirit through her sundered thoughts and into the core of her being. With
mental strength far superior to his physical strength, he pulled her back.
He gasped as he felt her spirit slide into his.
For now, he slipped those spirits out of tortured, dying bodies while
those spirits existed in the netherworld between the worldly form they knew
was lost to them, but still alive, and the world of the dead already calling
them in from beyond. Life could no longer hold them, but death could not yet
have them. In that time of spiritual transition, they were his, and he could
use those spirits for things only he could imagine.
And he had not yet really even begun to imagine.
Such ability as he possessed was not something that could be taught by
another--there was no other but he. He was still learning the extent of his
powers, the things he could do with the spirit of another. He had only
scratched the surface.
Emperor Jagang had sought to create something akin to himself, a dream
walker, a brother, of sorts. One who could enter another's mind. He had
gotten far more than he could have ever have imagined. Nicholas didn't
simply slide into another's thoughts, as Jagang did; he could slide into
their very soul, and draw their spirit back into himself.
The Sisters hadn't counted on that aberration of their tinkering with
his ability.
Rushing to the window, his mouth pulled open as wide as it would go in
a yawn that wasn't a yawn. The room swam behind him. It was only partly
there, now. Now, he was beginning to see other places. Glorious places. See
them with new vision, with spirits no longer bound to their paltry bodies.
He rushed to the third person, no longer aware even if they were man or
woman. Their soul was all that mattered--their spirit.
He drove them onto a stake with urgent effort, slid into them and drew
their spirit into his, shuddering with the power of it entering him.
He rushed to the window again, opening wide his mouth again, twisting
his head side to side again with the thrill of it, the slick, silken,
sliding ecstasy of it... the loss of physical orientation, the exaltation of
being above his corporeal existence, the former bounds of his mere worldly
form--carried aloft not simply with his own efforts, but by the spirits of
others that he had freed from their bodies.
What a glorious thing it was.
It was almost like the joy he imagined death would be.
He seized the fourth weeping person and with delirious expectation ran
with them across the room, to the stakes, to the fourth stake, and drove
them screaming onto it.
As he lurched back from them, he thrust himself into their wildly
racing, confused, swirling thoughts, and took what was there for the taking.
He took their spirit into himself.
When he controlled a person's spirit, he controlled their very
existence. He became life and death for them. He was their savior, their
destroyer.
He was in many ways like those spirits he took, trapped in a worldly
form, hating to live, to endure the pain and agony that was life, yet
fearing to die even while longing for the promise of its sweet embrace.
With four spirits swirling through him, Nicholas staggered to the fifth
person, cowering in the corner.
"Please!" the man wailed, trying to ward what he would not commit to
warding. "Please, don't!"
The thought occurred to Nicholas that the stakes were really a
hindrance; using them required him to carry people around like woolly sheep
to have their souls sheared. Yes, he was still learning what he could do and
how to control what he did, but to have to use the stakes was limiting. When
he thought about it, it was actually insulting that a wizard of his ability
would have to use so crude a device.
What he really wanted to do was to slide into another's spirit and take
it without any warning--without needing to bring people to the stakes.
When he was fully able to do that--to simply walk up to another, say
"Good day," and slide like the thrust of a dagger into the heart of their
spirit, there to draw it into his--then he would be invincible. When he was
able to do that, then no one could challenge him. No one would be able to
deny him anything.
As the man shrank down before him, Nicholas, before he fully realized
what it was he was doing, driven by an angry need, by hatred, thrust out his
hand as he thrust his own mind into this man, into the spaces between
thought.
The man stiffened, just as those on the stakes stiffened, when Nicholas
had impaled them with his ability.
He drew back his closed fist toward his middle as he drew in this man's
spirit. He gasped with the heat of it, with the silky slick feel of it
sliding into him.
They stared at each other, each in shock, each considering what this
meant for them.
The man slumped back against the wall, sliding down, in soundless,
silent, terrible empty agony.
Nicholas realized that he had just done what he had never done before.
He had just taken a soul by his will alone.
He had just freed himself to take what he wanted, when he wanted, where
he wanted.
Nicholas, his vision a blur, staggered to the window.
All five were his, now.
This time, as his mouth opened wide, a cry at last came forth, a cry of
the five spirits joining his as he drew them together into one force guided
by his will alone. Their worldly agony was a distant concern to them. Five
spirits gazed out of the windows along with him, five spirits now waiting to
soar out into the night, to where he chose to send them.
Those Sisters had not known what they unleashed that night. They could
not have known the power they fused into him, the ability they burned into
him.
They had achieved what none had achieved for thousands of years-- the
altering of a wizard into something more, honing him into a weapon of
specific intent. They had imbued him with power beyond that of anyone
living. They had given him dominion over the spirits of others.
Most had escaped, but he had killed five of them.
The five were enough. After he had slid into their souls and pulled
their spirits back into his that night, he had appropriated their Han, their
force of life, their power, for himself.
It was only fitting, as their Han was not natural to them, but was male
Han they had stolen from young wizards--a birthright they had sucked from
those to whom it belonged in order to give themselves abilities they had not
been born with, could not be born with. Yet more nameless people with
ability to be sacrificed to those who needed it, or simply wanted it.
Nicholas had taken it all back from their trembling bodies, pulled it
out of them as he had clawed their living insides open. They had been sorry
that they had done Jagang's bidding, that they had twisted him into
something Creation never intended.
Not only had they made him into a Slide, they had given up their Han to
him, and made him that much more powerful for it.
After each of those five women had died, the world had gone darker than
dark for an instant when the Keeper had come and taken them to his realm.
The Sisters had destroyed him that day, and they had created him.
He had a lifetime to explore and discover what he could do with his new
abilities.
And, to be sure, Jagang would grant him payment for that night. Jagang
would pay, but he would pay gladly, for Nicholas would give him something
none but Nicholas the Slide could give him.
Nicholas would be rewarded with things enough to repay him for what had
been done to him.... He hadn't decided, yet, what that reward would be, but
it would be worthy of him.
He would use his ability to hold sway over lives--important lives. He
no longer needed to cart people to the stakes. He knew how to take what he
wanted, now.
Now he knew how to slip into their minds at the time of his choosing
and take their souls.
He would trade those lives for what he would have in power, wealth,
splendor. It would have to be something appropriate....
He would be an emperor.
It would have to be more than this petty empire of sheep, though. He
would frolic in rule. He would have his every whim fulfilled, once he was
given dominion over... over something important. He hadn't decided just
what, yet. It was an important decision, what he would have as his reward.
No need to rush it. It would come to him.
He turned from the window, the five spirits swirling within his,
soaring through him.
It was time to use what he had pulled together.
Time to get down to business, if he was to have what he wanted.
He would get closer, this time. He was frustrated from not being
closer, from not seeing better. It was dark, now. He would get closer, this
time, under cover of the darkness.
Nicholas took the broad bowl from the table and placed it on the floor
before the five who still owned the spirits within him. They writhed in
otherworldly agony, even the man not on a stake, an agony of both body and
soul.
Nicholas sat cross-legged on the floor before the bowl. Hands on his
knees, he threw his head back, eyes closed, as he gathered the power within,
the power created by those wicked women, those wonderful wicked women.
They had considered him a pathetic wizard of little worth except as
flesh and blood and gift to toy with--a sacrifice to a greater need.
When he had time, he would go after the rest of them.
With a more immediate task at hand, Nicholas dismissed those Sisters
from his mind.
Tonight, he would not merely watch through other eyes. Tonight, he
would again go with the spirits he cast.
Tonight, he would not merely watch through other eyes. Tonight, his
spirit would travel to them.
Nicholas opened his mouth as wide as it would go, his head rocking from
side to side. The joined spirits within released a part of themselves into
the bowl, whirling in a silken, silvery swirl lit with the soft glow of
their link to the life behind him, placekeepers for their journey, a stitch
in the world holding the knot in the thread of their travels.
His spirit, too, let slip a small portion to remain with his body, to
drift in the bowl with the others.
Fragments of the five spirits revolved with the fragment of his, their
light of life glowing softly in this safe place as he prepared to journey.
He cast his own spirit away, then, leaving behind the husk of a body sitting
on the floor behind him as he fled out into the dark sky, borne on the wings
of his invested power.
No wizard before had ever been able to do as he, to leave his body and
have his spirit soar to where his mind would send him. He raced through the
night, fast as thought, to find what he hunted.
He felt the rush of air flowing over feathers. As quick as that, he had
raced away through the night and was with them, pulling the five spirits
along with him.
He summoned the dark forms into a circle with him, and, as they
gathered around, cast the five spirits into them. His mouth was still open
in a yawn that was not a yawn that back in a room somewhere distant let
forth a cry to match the five.
As they circled, he felt the rush of air beneath their wings, felt
their feathers working the wind to direct them as effortlessly as his own
thought directed not only his spirit but the other five as well.
He sent those five racing through the night, to the place where he had
sent the men. They raced over hills, turning to scan the open country, to
look out over the barren land. The cloak of darkness felt cool, encasing him
in obscure black night, obscure black feathers.
He caught the scent of carrion, sharp, cloying, tantalizing, as the
five spiraled down toward the ground. Through their eyes that saw in the
darkness Nicholas saw then the scene below, a place littered with the dead.
Others of their kind had gathered to feed in a frenzy of ripping and
gorging.
No. This was wrong. He didn't see them.
He had to find them.
He willed his charges up from the gory feast, to search. Nicholas felt
a pang of urgency. This was his future that had slipped away from him--his
treasure slipping through his grasp. He had to find them. Had to.
He spurred his charges onward.
This way, that way, over there. Look, look, look. Find them, find them.
Look. Must find them. Look.
This was not supposed to be. There had been enough men. No one could
escape that many experienced men. Not when they came by stealth and attacked
with surprise. They had been selected for their talents. They knew their
business.
Their bodies lay sprawled all about. Beak and claw ripped at them.
Screeches of excitement. Hunger.
No. Must find them.
Up, up, up. Find them. He had to find them.
He had suffered the agony of a new birth in those dark woods, those
terrible woods, with those terrible women. He would have his reward. He
would not be denied. Not now. Not after all that.
Find them. Look, look, look. Find them.
On powerful wings, he soared into the night. With eyes that saw in the
dark, he searched. With creatures that could catch the scent of prey at
great distance, he tried for a whiff of them.
Through the night they went, hunting. Hunting.
There, there he saw their wagon. He recognized their wagon. Their big
horses. He had seen it before--seen them with it before. His minions circled
in close on nearly silent wings, dropping in closer to see what Nicholas
sought.
Not there. They weren't there. A trick. It had to be a trick. A
diversion. Not there. They had sent the wagon away to trick him, to send him
off their trail.
With wings powered by anger, he soared up, up, up to search the
countryside. Hunt, hunt. Find them. He flew with his five in an ever wider
pattern to search the ground beneath the night. They flew on, searching,
searching. His hunger was their hunger. Hunt for them. Hunt.
The wings grew weary as he drove them onward. He had to find them. He
would not allow rest. Not allow failure. He hunted in expanding swaths,
searching, hunting, hunting.
There, among the trees, he saw movement.
It was only just dark. They wouldn't see their pursuers--not in the
dark--but he could see them. He forced the five down, circling, circling,
forced them in close. He would not fail this time to see them, to get close
enough. Circling, holding him there, circling, watching, circling, watching,
seeing them there.
It was her! The Mother Confessor! He saw others. The one with red hair
and her small four-legged friend. Others, too. He must be there, too. Had to
be there, too. He would be there, too, as the small group moved west.
West. They moved west. They had traveled to the west of where he had
seen them last.
Nicholas laughed. They were coming west. The captors sent for them all
lay dead, but here they came anyway. They were coming west.
Toward where he waited.
He would have them.
He would have Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor.
Jagang would have them.
It came to him, then--his reward. What he would have in return for the
prizes he would deliver.
D'Hara.
He would have the rule of D'Hara in return for these two paltry people.
Jagang would reward him with the rule of D'Hara, if he wanted those two. He
would not dare deny Nicholas the Slide what he wanted. Not when he had what
Jagang wanted most, more than any other prize. Jagang would pay any price
for these two.
Pain. A scream. Shock, terror, confusion raged through him. He felt the
wind, the wind that carried him so effortlessly, now ripping at him like
fists snatching at feathers as he tumbled in helpless pain.
One of the five falling at blinding speed smacked the ground.
Nicholas screamed. One of the five spirits had been lost with its host.
Back somewhere distant, in some far-off room with wooden walls and shutters
and bloody stakes, back, back, back in another place he had almost forgotten
existed, back, back, back far away, a spirit was ripped from his control.
One of the five back there had died at the same instant the race had
crashed to the ground.
Scream of hot pain. Another tumbled out of control. Another spirit
escaped his grasp into the waiting arms of death.
Nicholas struggled to see in the confusion, forcing the remaining three
to hold his vision in place so he could see. Hunt, hunt, hunt. Where was he?
Where was he? Where? He saw the others. Where was Lord Rahl?
A third scream.
Where was he? Nicholas fought to hold his vision despite the hot agony,
the bewildering plummet.
Pain ripped through a fourth.
Before he could gather his senses, hold them together, force them with
the power of his will to do his bidding, two more spirits were yanked away
into the void of the underworld.
Where was he?
Talons at the ready, Nicholas searched.
There! There!
With violent effort, he forced the race over into a dive. There he was!
There he was! Up high. Higher than the rest. Somehow up high. Up on a ledge
of rock above the rest. He wasn't down there with them. He was up high.
Dive for him. Dive down for him.
There he was, bow drawn.
Ripping pain tore through the last race. The ground rushed up at him.
Nicholas cried out. He tried frantically to stop the spinning. He felt the
race slam into the rock at frightening speed. But only for an instant.
With a gasp, Nicholas drew a desperate breath. His head spun with the
burning torture of the abrupt return, an uncontrolled return not of his
doing.
He blinked, his mouth open wide in an attempt to let out a cry, but no
sound came. His eyes bulged with the effort, but no cry came. He was back.
Whether or not he wanted to be, he was back.
He looked around at the room. He was back, that was the reason no cry
came. No screech of a race joined his own. They were dead. All five.
Nicholas turned to the four impaled on stakes behind him. All four were
slumped. The fifth man lay slouched in the far corner. All five limp and
still. All five dead. Their spirits gone.
The room was as silent as a crypt. The bowl before him glowed only with
the fragment of his own spirit. He drew it back in.
He sat in the stillness for a long time, waiting for his head to stop
spinning. It had been a shock to be in a creature as it was killed--to have
a spirit of a person in him as they died. As five of them died. It had been
a surprise.
Lord Rahl was a surprising man. Nicholas hadn't thought, back that
first time, that he would be able to get all five. He had thought it was
luck. A second time was not luck. Lord Rahl was a surprising man.
Nicholas could cast his spirit out again if he wanted, seek out new
eyes, but his head hurt and he didn't feel up to it; besides, it didn't
matter. Lord Rahl was coming west. He was coming to the great empire of
Bandakar.
Nicholas owned Bandakar.
The people here revered him.
Nicholas smiled. Lord Rahl was coming. He would be surprised at the
kind of man he found when he arrived. Lord Rahl probably thought he knew all
manner of men.
He did not know Nicholas the Slide.
Nicholas the Slide, who would be emperor of D'Hara when he gave Jagang
the prizes he sought most: the dead body of Lord Rahl, and the living body
of the Mother Confessor.
Jagang would have them both for himself.
And in return, Nicholas would have their empire.
Ann heard the distant echo of footsteps coming down the long, empty,
dark corridor outside the far door to her forgotten vault under the People's
Palace, the seat of power in D'Hara. She was no longer sure if it was day or
night. She'd lost track of time as she sat in the silent darkness. She saved
the lamp for times when they brought food, or the times she wrote to Verna
in the journey book. Or the times she felt so alone that she needed the
company of a small flame, if nothing else.
In this place, within this spell of a palace for those born Rahl, her
power was so diminished that it was all she could do to light that lamp.
She feared to use the little lamp too often and run out of oil; she
didn't know if they would give her more. She didn't want to run out and only
then find they would give her no more. She didn't want not to have at least
the possibility of that small flame, that small gift of light.
In the dark she could do nothing but consider her life and all she had
worked so hard to accomplish. For centuries she had led the Sisters of the
Light in their effort to see the Creator's light triumph in the world, and
see the Keeper of the underworld kept where he belonged, in his own realm,
the world of the dead. For centuries she had waited in dread of the time
that prophecy said was now upon them.
For five hundred years she had waited for the birth of the one who had
the chance to succeed in leading them in the struggle to see the Creator's
gift, magic, survive against those who would cast that light out of the
world. For five hundred years she had worked to insure that he would have a
chance to do what he must if he was to have a chance to stop the forces that
would extinguish magic.
Prophecy said that only Richard had the chance to preserve their cause,
to keep the enemy from succeeding in casting a gray pall over mankind, the
only one with a chance to prevent the gift from dying out. Prophecy did not
say that he would prevail; prophecy said only that Richard was the only one
to have a chance to bring them victory. Without Richard, all hope was
lost--that much was sure. For this reason, Ann had been devoted to him long
before he was born, before he rose up to become their leader.
Kahlan saw all of Ann's efforts as meddling, as tinkering with the
lives of others. Kahlan believed that Ann's efforts were in fact the cause
of the very thing she feared most. Ann hated that she sometimes thought that
maybe Kahlan was right. Maybe it was meant to be that Richard would be born
and by his free will alone would choose to do those things that would lead
them to victory in their battle to keep the gift among men. Zedd certainly
believed that it was only by Richard's mind, by his free will, but his
conscious intent, that he could lead them.
Maybe it was true, and Ann, in trying to direct those things that could
not be and should not be directed, had brought them all to the brink of
ruin.
The footsteps were coming closer. Maybe it was time to eat and they
were bringing dinner. She wasn't hungry.
When they brought her food, they put it on the end of a long pole and
then threaded that pole through the little opening in the outer door, all
the way across the outer shielded room, through the opening in the second,
inner door, and finally in to Ann. Nathan would risk no chance for escape by
having her guards have to open her cell door merely to give her food.
They passed in a variety of breads, meats, and vegetables along with
waterskins. Although the food was good, she found no satisfaction in it.
Even the finest fare could never be satisfying eaten in a dungeon.
At times, as Prelate, she had felt as if she were a prisoner of her
post. She had rarely gone to the dining hall where the Sisters of the Light
had eaten--especially in the later years. It put everyone on edge having the
Prelate among them at dinner. Besides, done too often it took the edge off
their anxiety, their discomposure, around authority.
Ann believed that a certain distance, a certain worried respect, was
necessary in order to maintain discipline. In a place that had been spelled
so that time slowed for those living there, it was important to maintain
discipline. Ann appeared to be in her seventies, but with her aging process
slowed dramatically while living under the spell that had covered the Palace
of the Prophets, she had lived close to a thousand years.
Of course, a lot of good her discipline had done her. Under her watch
as Prelate the Sisters of the Dark had infested her flock. There were
hundreds of Sisters, and there was no telling just how many of them had
taken dark oaths to the Keeper. The lure of his promises were obviously
effective. Such promises were an illusion, but try to tell that to one so
pledged. Immortality was seductive to women who watched everyone they knew
outside the palace grow old and die while they remained young.
Sisters who had children saw those children sent out of the palace to
be raised where they could have a normal life, saw those children grow old
and die, saw their grandchildren grow old and die. To a woman who saw such
things, saw the constant withering and death of those she knew while she
herself all the time seemed to remain young, attractive, and desirable, the
offer of immortality grew increasingly tempting when her own petals began to
wilt.
Growing old was a final stage, the end of a life. Growing old in the
Palace of the Prophets was a very long ordeal. Ann had been old for
centuries. Being young for a very long time was a wonderful experience, but
being old for a very long time was not--at least it was not for some. For
Ann, it was life itself that was wonderful, not so much her age, and all she
had learned. But not everyone felt that way.
Now that the palace had been destroyed, they would all age at the same
rate as everyone else. What had only a short time ago been a future of maybe
another hundred years of life for Ann was suddenly perhaps no more than a
blink of a decade--certainly not much more.
But she doubted she would live all that long in such a dank hole, away
from light and life.
Somehow, it didn't seem as if she and Nathan were close to a thousand
years old. She didn't know what it felt like to age at the normal rate
outside the spell, but she believed she felt little different than those
outside the palace felt as they aged. She believed that the spell that
slowed their aging also altered their perception of time--to a degree,
anyway.
The footsteps were getting closer. Ann wasn't looking forward to
another meal in this place. She was beginning to wish they would let her
starve and get it over with. Let her die.
What good had her life been? When she really thought about it, what
good had she really accomplished? The Creator knew how she tried to guide
Richard in what needed to be done, but in the end it seemed that it was
Richard's choice to act as he did, in most cases against what she thought
needed to be done, that turned out to be correct. Had she not tried to guide
events, bring him to the Palace of the Prophets in the Old World, maybe
nothing would have changed and that would have been the way he was to save
them all--by not having to act and letting Jagang and the Imperial Order
eventually wither and die in the Old World, unable to spread their virulent
beliefs beyond. Maybe she'd brought it all to ruin with her efforts alone.
She heard the door at the end of the passageway to her cell scrape
open. She decided that she wouldn't eat. She wouldn't eat again until Nathan
came to speak with her, as she had requested.
Sometimes, with the food, they sent in wine. Nathan sent it in to vex
her, she was sure of that. From his confinement in the Palace of the
Prophets, Nathan had sometimes requested wine. Ann always saw the report
when such a request was made; she declined every such request.
Wizards were dangerous enough, prophets--who were wizards with the
talent of prophecy--were potentially vastly more dangerous, and drunken
prophets were the most dangerous of all. Prophecy given out willy-nilly was
an invitation to calamity. Even simple prophecy escaping the confines of the
stone walls of the Palace of the Prophets had started wars.
Nathan had sometimes requested the company of women. Ann hated those
requests the most, because she sometimes granted them. She felt she had to.
Nathan had little of life, confined as he was to his apartments, his only
real crime being the nature of his birth, his abilities. The palace could
easily afford the price of a woman to sometimes visit him.
He made a mockery of that, often enough--giving out prophecy that sent
the woman fleeing before they could speak with her, before they could
silence her.
Those without the proper training were not meant to see prophecy.
Prophecy was easily misinterpreted by those without an understanding of its
intricacies. To divulge prophecy to the uninitiated was like casting fire
into dry grass.
Prophecy is not meant for the unenlightened.
At the thought of the prophet being loose, Ann's stomach tightened into
a knot. Even so, she had sometimes secretly taken Nathan out herself, to go
on important journeys with her--mostly journeys having to do with guiding
some aspect of Richard's life, or, more accurately, trying to insure that
Richard would be born and have a life. Besides being trouble on two feet,
Nathan was also a remarkable prophet who did have a sincere interest in
seeing their side triumph. After all, he saw in prophecy the alternative,
and when Nathan saw prophecy, he saw it in all its terrible truth.
Nathan always wore a Rada'Han--a collar--that enabled her, or any
Sister, to control him, so taking him on those journeys wasn't actually
putting the world at risk of the man. He had to do as she said, go where she
said. Whenever she had taken him out on a mission with her, he was not
really free, since he wore a Rada'Han and she could thus control him.
Now he was without a Rada'Han. He was truly free.
Ann didn't want any supper. She resolved to turn it away when they
passed the pole in to her. Let Nathan fret that she might refuse food
altogether and die while under his fickle control. Ann folded her arms.
Let him have that on his conscience. That would bring the man down to
see her.
Ann heard the footsteps come to a halt outside the far door. Muffled
voices drifted in to her. Had she ready access to her Han, she would have
been able to concentrate her hearing toward those voices and easily hear
their words. She sighed. Even that ability was useless to her here, in this
place, under the power invoked by the spell form of the layout of the
palace. It would hardly make sense to create such elaborate plans to curtail
another's magic and allow them to hear secrets whispered inside the walls.
The outer door squealed in protest as it was pulled open. This was new.
No one had opened the outer door since the day they shut her in the place.
Ann rushed to the door to her small room, to the faint square of light
that was the opening in the iron door. She grabbed hold of the bars and
pulled her face up close, trying to see who was out there, what they were
doing.
Light blinded her. She staggered back a few steps, rubbing her eyes.
She was so used to the dark that the harsh lantern light felt as if it had
burned her vision with blazing light.
Ann backed away from the door when she heard a key clattering in the
lock. The bolt threw back with a reverberating clang. The door grated open.
Cool air, fresher than the stale air she was used to breathing, poured in.
Yellow light flooded around the room as the lantern was thrust into the room
at the end of an arm encased in red leather. Mord-Sith.
Ann squinted in the harsh glare as the Mord-Sith stepped over the sill
and ducked in through the doorway into the room. Unaccustomed to the lantern
light, Ann at first could only discern the red leather outfit and the blond
braid. She didn't like to contemplate why one of the Lord Rahl's elite corps
of torturers would be coming down to the dungeon to see her. She knew
Richard. She could not imagine that he would allow such a practice to
continue. But Richard wasn't here. Nathan seemed to be in charge.
Squinting, Ann at last realized that it was the woman she had seen
before: Nyda.
Nyda, appraising Ann with a cool gaze, said nothing as she stepped to
the side. Another person was following her in. A long leg wearing brown
trousers stepped over the sill, followed by a bent torso folding through the
opening. Rising up to full height, Ann saw with sudden surprise who it was.
"Ann!" Nathan held his arms open wide, as if expecting a hug. "How are
you? Nyda gave me your message. They are treating you well, I trust?"
Ann stood her ground and scowled at the grinning face. "I'm still
alive, no thanks to you, Nathan."
She of course remembered how tall Nathan was, how broad were his
shoulders. Now, standing before her, the top of his full head of long gray
hair nearly touching the stone chisel marks in the ceiling, he looked even
taller than she remembered. His shoulders, filling up so much of the small
room, looked even broader. He wore high boots over his trousers and a
ruffled white shirt beneath an open vest. An elegant green velvet cape was
attached at his right shoulder. At his left hip a sword in an elegant
scabbard glimmered in the lamplight.
His face, his handsome face, so expressive, so unlike any other, made
Ann's heart feel buoyant.
Nathan grinned as no one but a Rahl could grin, a grin like joy and
hunger and power all balled together. He looked like he needed to sweep a
damsel into his powerful arms and kiss her without her permission.
He waved a hand casually around at her accommodations. "But you are
safe in here, my dear. No one can harm you while under our care. No one can
bother you. You have fine food--even wine now and again. What more could you
want?"
Fists at her side, Ann stormed forward at a pace that brought the
Mord-Sith's Agiel up into her fist, even though she stayed where she was.
Nathan held his ground, held his smile, as he watched her come.
"What more could I want!" Ann screamed. "What more could I want? I want
to be let out! That's what more I could want!"
Nathan's small, knowing smile cut her to her core. "Indeed," he said, a
single word of quiet indictment.
Standing in the stony silence of the dungeon, she could only stare up
at him, unable to bring forth an argument that he would not throw back at
her.
Ann turned a glare on the Mord-Sith. "What message did you give him?"
"Nyda said that you wanted to see me," Nathan answered in her place. He
spread his arms. "Here I am, as requested. What is it you wanted to see me
about, my dear?"
"Don't patronize me, Nathan. You know very well what I wanted to see
you about. You know why I'm here, in D'Hara--why I've come to the People's
Palace."
Nathan clasped his hands behind his back. His smile had finally lost
its usefulness.
"Nyda," he said, turning to the woman, "would you leave us alone for
now. There's a good girl."
Nyda appraised Ann with a brief glance. No more was needed; Ann was no
threat to Nathan. He was a wizard--no doubt he had told her that he was the
greatest wizard of all time--and was within the ancestral home of the House
of Rahl. He had no need to fear this one old sorceress--not anymore, anyway.
Nyda gave Nathan a if-you-need-me-I'll-be-right-outside kind of look
before contorting her perfect limbs through the doorway with fluid grace,
the way a cat went effortlessly through a hedge.
Nathan stood in the center of the cell, hands still clasped behind his
upright back, waiting for Ann to say something.
Ann went to her pack, sitting on the far end of the stone bench that
had been her bed, her table, her chair. She flipped back the flap and
reached inside, feeling around. Her fingers found the cold metal of the
object she sought. Ann drew it out and stood over it, her shadow hiding it.
Finally, she turned. "Nathan, I have something for you."
She lifted out a Rada'Han she had intended to put around his neck.
Right then, she didn't quite know how she had thought she could accomplish
such a feat. She would have, though, had she put her mind to it; she was
Annalina Aldurren, Prelate of the Sisters of the Light. Or, at least, she
once had been. She had given that job to Verna before feigning her and
Nathan's death.
"You want me to put that collar around my neck?" Nathan asked in a calm
voice. "That's what you expect?"
Ann shook her head. "No, Nathan. I want to give this to you. I've been
doing a lot of thinking while I've been down here. Thinking about how I'd
probably never leave my place of confinement."
"What a coincidence," Nathan said. "I used to spend a great deal of
time thinking that very same thought."
"Yes," Ann said, nodding. "I expect you did." She handed him the
Rada'Han. "Here. Take this. I never want to see one of these again.
While I did what I thought best, I hated every minute of it, Nathan. I
hated to do it to you, especially. I've come to think that my life has been
a misguided mess. I'm sorry I ever put you behind those shields and kept you
a prisoner. If I could live my life over again, I'd not do it the same way.
"I expect no leniency; I showed you none."
"No," Nathan said. "You didn't."
His azure eyes seemed to be looking right into her. He had a way of
doing that. Richard had inherited that same penetrating Rahl gaze.
"So, you are sorry you kept me a prisoner all my life. Do you know why
it was wrong, Ann? Are you even aware of the irony?"
Almost against her better judgment, she heard herself ask, "What