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their sudden freedom, it was not an emphatic statement. It seemed to be an
objection more out of obligation than anything else. "You have begun a cycle
of violence. Such a thing is wrong."
"We will speak with you before we go, so that you might come to
understand, as we have, why we must do this to be truly free of violence and
brutality. Lord Rahl has shown us that a cycle of violence is not the result
of fighting back for your own life, but is the result of a shrinking back
from doing what is necessary to crush those who would kill you. If you do as
you must in duty to yourself and your loved ones, then you will eradicate
the enemy so completely that they can no longer do you any harm. Then, there
is no cycle of violence, but an end to violence. Then, and only then, will
true peace and freedom take root."
"Such actions can never accomplish anything but to start violence," an
old man objected.
"Look around," Anson said. "The violence has not begun tonight, but
ended. Violence has been crushed, as it should be, by crushing evil men who
bring it upon us."
People nodded to one another, the heady relief of being suddenly freed
from the grip of the terror brought by the soldiers of the Imperial Order
plainly overcoming their objections. Joy had taken over from fear. The
reality of having their lives returned had opened their eyes.
"But you must understand, as we have come to understand," Owen said,
"that nothing can ever again be the way it once was. Those ways are in the
past."
Richard noticed that the men weren't slouching anymore. They stood with
their heads held high.
"We have chosen to live," Owen told his people. "In so doing, we have
found true freedom."
"I think we all have," the old man in the crowd said.
Zedd frowned with the effort of concentrating on what it was Sister
Tahirah had placed on the table before him. He looked up at her, at the way
her scowl pinched in around her humped nose.
"Well?" she demanded.
Zedd looked down, squinting at the thing before him. It looked like a
leather-covered ball painted with faded blue and pink zigzagged lines all
around it.
What was it about it that seemed so familiar, yet so distant?
He blinked, trying to better focus his eyes. His neck ached something
fierce. A father, hearing his young son in the next tent screaming in
appalling agony, had grabbed Zedd by the hair and yanked him away from other
parents who, pulling and pawing at him, made desperate demands of their own.
Because of the torn muscles in his neck, it was painful to hold up his head.
Compared to the torture he'd heard, though, it was nothing.
The dim interior of the tent, lit by several lamps hanging from poles,
felt as if it were detached from the ground and swirling around him. The
foul place stank. The heat and humidity only made the smell, and the
spinning, worse. Zedd felt as if he might pass out.
It had been so long since he'd slept that he couldn't even remember the
last time he had actually lain down. The only sleep he got was when he fell
asleep in the chair while Sister Tahirah was seeing to another object being
unloaded from the wagons, or when she went to bed and the next Sister hadn't
yet arrived to take the next stint in their laborious cataloging of the
items brought from the Keep. The catnaps he got were rarely longer than a
few precious minutes at a time. The guards had orders not to allow him or
Adie to lie down.
At least the screams of the children had ended. At least, as long as he
cooperated, those cries of pain had stopped. At least, as long as he went
along, the parents had hope.
A violent crack of pain suddenly hammered the side of his head,
knocking him back. The chair toppled over, spilling him to the ground. With
his arms bound behind his back, he couldn't do anything to break the fall
and he hit hard. Zedd's ears rang, not only from the fall, but with the
aftermath of the blow of the Sister's power delivered through the collar
around his neck.
He hated that wicked instrument of control. The Sisters were not shy
about exercising that control. Because the collar locked him away from the
use of his own gift, he could not use his ability to defend himself.
Instead, they used his power against him.
It took little or no provocation to send one of the Sisters into a fit
of violence. Many of these women had once been kindly people devoting their
lives to helping others. Jagang had enslaved them to a different cause. Now
they did his bidding. Though they might have once been gentle, they were
now, he knew, trying to keep one step ahead of the discipline Jagang meted
out to them. That discipline could be excruciating beyond endurance. The
Sisters were expected to get results; Jagang would not be interested in the
excuse that Zedd was being difficult.
Zedd saw that Adie, too, had been knocked to the ground. Any punishment
he received, she, too, endured. He felt more agony for her than for himself.
Soldiers standing to the side moved in to right the chair and lift Zedd
into it. With his arms bound behind his back, he couldn't get up by himself.
They sat him down hard enough to drive a grunt from his lungs.
"Well?" Sister Tahirah demanded. "What is it?"
Zedd once again leaned in, staring down at the round object sitting by
itself in the center of the table. The faint blue and pink lines zigzagging
all around it stirred deep feelings. He thought he should know this thing.
"It's . . . it's . . ."
"It's what!" Sister Tahirah slammed the book against the edge of the
table, causing the round object to bounce up and roll a few inches before it
came to a stop closer to Zedd. She tucked the book under one arm as she
leaned with the other on the table. She bent down toward him.
"What is it? What does it do?"
"I... I can't remember."
"Would you like me to bring in some children," the Sister said in the
soft, sweet tone of a very bitter threat, "and show you their little faces
before they are taken to the tent next to us to be tortured?"
"I'm so tired," he said. "I'm trying to remember, but I'm so tired."
"Maybe while the children are screaming you would like to explain to
their parents that you are tired and just can't quite seem to remember."
Children. Parents.
Zedd suddenly remembered what the object was. Painful memories welled
up. He felt a tear run down his cheek.
"Dear spirits," he whispered. "Where did you find this?"
"What is it?"
"Where did you find it?" Zedd repeated.
Huffing impatiently, the Sister straightened. She opened the book and
made a noisy show of turning heatedly through the pages. Finally, she
stopped and tapped a finger in the open book.
"It says here that it was found hidden in an open recess in the back of
a black six-drawer chest in a corridor. There was a tapestry of three
prancing white horses hanging above the chest."
She lowered the book. "Now, what is it?"
Zedd swallowed. "A ball."
The Sister glared. "I know it's a ball, you old fool. What is it for?
What does it do? What is its purpose?"
Staring at the ball no bigger than his fist, Zedd remembered. "It's a
ball for children to play with. Its purpose is to bring them pleasure."
He remembered this ball, brightly colored back then, frequently
bouncing down the halls of the Wizard's Keep, his daughter giggling and
chasing after it. He had given it to her for doing well in her studies.
Sometimes she would roll it down the halls, urging it along with a switch,
as if she were walking a pet. Her favorite thing to do was to bounce it on
the floor so that it would come up against a wall, after which it would
bounce to another wall at an intersection of stone hallways. In that way she
made it bounce around a corner. She would watch which hall it went down,
left or right, then chase after it.
One day she came to him in tears. He asked her to tell him her
troubles. She crawled up in his lap and told him that her ball had gone
somewhere and gotten itself lost. She wanted him to get it unlost. Zedd told
her that if she looked, she would likely find it. She spent days
despondently wandering the halls of the Keep, searching for it. She couldn't
find it.
Finally, starting out one morning at sunrise, Zedd made the long walk
down to the city of Aydindril, to the market on Stentor Street. That was
where he had first come across a stand where they sold such toys and found
the ball with the zigzagged lines. There he bought her another one--not just
like it, but instead one with pink and green stars. He deliberately chose a
ball unlike the one she'd lost because he didn't want her to think that
wishes could be miraculously fulfilled, but he did want her to know that
there were solutions that could solve problems.
He remembered his daughter hugging his legs, thanking him for the new
ball, telling him that he was the best father in all the world and that she
would be ever so much more careful with the new ball and never lose it. He
had smiled as he watched her put a little hand to her heart and recite a
little-girl oath she had invented on the spot.
She treasured the ball with the pink and green stars. Since it was
small, it was one of the few things she had been able to take with her,
after she was grown, when she and Zedd ran away to Westland, after Darken
Rahl had raped her.
When Richard had been young, he had played with that ball. Zedd
remembered the smile on his daughter's face as she watched her own child
play with that precious ball. Zedd could see in her beautiful eyes the
memories of her own childhood as she watched Richard play. She had kept that
ball her whole life, kept it until she died.
This ball before him was the very same one his daughter had lost. It
must have bounced up behind the chest and fallen into a recess in the back,
where it had been for all those long years.
Zedd leaned forward, resting his forehead on the dusty ball surrounded
with faded blue and pink zigzagged lines, the ball which her little fingers
had once held, and wept.
Sister Tahirah seized a fistful of his hair and pulled him upright. "I
don't believe you're telling me the truth. It's an object of magic. I want
to know what it is and what it does." Holding his head back, she glared into
his eyes. "You know that I will not hesitate to do what is necessary to make
you cooperate. His Excellency accepts no excuses for failure."
Zedd stared up at her, blinking away his tears. "It's a ball, a toy.
That's all it is."
With a sneer, she released him. "The great and powerful Wizard
Zorander." She shook her head. "To think that we once feared you. You are a
pathetic old man, your courage crushed by nothing more than the cry of a
child." She sighed. "I must say, your reputation far exceeds the reality of
your mettle."
The Sister scooped up the ball, turning it in her fingers as she
inspected it. She huffed with disgust and tossed it aside, as if it were
worthless. Zedd watched the ball bounce and roll across the ground, coming
to rest at the side of the tent, against the bench where Adie sat. He looked
up into her completely white eyes to see her watching him. Zedd turned away,
waiting while the Sister made notes in her book.
"All right," she finally said, "let's go have a look at what they've
unloaded in the next tent."
The soldiers lifted him from the chair before he had a chance to try to
do it himself. His shoulders ached from his wrists being bound behind his
back and from being lifted by his arms. Adie, too, was lifted to her feet.
The book snapped closed. Sister Tahirah's wiry gray hair whipped around as
she turned and led them out of the tent.
Because the Sisters knew how dangerous items of magic from the Wizard's
Keep could be, especially if the wrong combination of magic were to
accidentally be allowed to combine or touch, they were cautious enough to
bring the items, one at a time, out of each individual, protected, shielded
crate in the wagons. Zedd knew that there were things in the Keep that, by
themselves, were not dangerous, but became so in the presence of other
things that, by themselves, were also not dangerous. Sometimes it was only
the combination of specific items that created a desired outcome.
The Sisters had vast experience in the most esoteric things of magic
and so they at least understood the principles involved. They treated the
cargo with the care due such potentially hazardous goods. Once each object
was uncrated, they placed it, by itself, in a tent to await examination.
They took Zedd and Adie from tent to tent so that Zedd could identify each
treasure, tell them what it was, explain how it worked.
They had been at it for days--how many, Zedd couldn't remember. Despite
his best efforts, the endless days and nights had all begun to melt together
in his mind.
Zedd did all he could to stall, but there was only so much he could do.
These women knew magic. They would not easily be fooled by any invented
explanation. They had made very clear the consequences of any such
deception.
And, Zedd didn't know how much they knew. At times they feigned
ignorance of something which they actually understood quite well, just to
see if he was telling the truth.
Fortunately, as of yet, they had uncovered nothing that was
extravagantly dangerous. Most of the items from the crates were
simple-looking objects, but were actually for a narrowly focused purpose--a
pole that could remotely judge the depth of water in a well, an iron
decoration shaped like a fan of leaves that prevented words from carrying
beyond an open door where it was placed, a large looking glass that revealed
when a person entered another room. While possibly useful to Emperor Jagang,
such items were not all that valuable or dangerous; they were not going to
help him to conquer and rule the world.
What dangerous things the Sisters had uncrated and shown him were not
really anything that a Sister couldn't easily produce with a spell of her
own. The most dangerous item had been a constructed spell held within an
ornate vase that, under specific conditions, such as when the vase was
filled with water, created a temperature inversion that produced a blast of
flame. Zedd was not betraying his cause or putting innocent lives at risk by
revealing how the spell worked; any Sister worth her salt could reproduce
the same effect. The purpose of the spell was protective; had it touched
other stolen items, which, because they were stolen, was a reversal of
intended ownership that such a spell recognized, it would have ignited and
destroyed those items, keeping them from covetous hands.
None of the things so far discovered would do Jagang any real good.
There were things in the Keep, though, that could cause him harm. There were
spells there, such as the constructed spell in the vase, that recognized the
nature of the person invoking their magic. Opened by the right person, such
as Zedd, those things would do nothing, but, opened by a thief, they would
create calamity.
The Keep had thousands of rooms. The looting of it had netted the
Imperial Order a caravan of cargo wagons, but even that much hardly
scratched the surface of the contents of the Keep.
So far, Zedd had not seen any plums.
He didn't know if he would live to see any. The ride in the box after
his capture had been brutal. He was still not recovered from the injuries
inflicted after meeting Jagang. Guards let the parents do what they would to
convince Zedd and Adie to give in, but they wouldn't allow the parents to
get so carried away that they killed such prize prisoners. The parents had
known that they weren't to kill them, but in the heat of such raw passion,
Zedd knew that such orders were easy to forget. Zedd yearned for them to
kill him and end it. The emperor, though, needed them alive, so the guards
stood careful watch.
After the first few horrifying hours of listening to children being
subjected to crippling torture, of being among their parents, who
understandably demanded, quite forcefully, that he cooperate and tell the
emperor what he wanted to know, Zedd had given in--not for the sake of the
parents so much as to stop those brutal men from what they were doing to the
children.
He had figured that he had nothing to lose, really, by giving in. It
stopped the torture of the children for the time being. The Keep was vast;
the things they brought were only a tiny portion of them. Zedd reasoned that
the caravan of wagons probably didn't hold anything of any real value to
Jagang. It would take quite a while to catalog everything--it could be weeks
more before they reached the last item. There was no purpose in allowing
children to endure torture when there might not be anything useful for Zedd
to betray to Jagang.
Once, when they were alone while the Sister had gone to check on the
preparations in the next tent, Adie had asked what he would do if they
presented him with something that would materially help Jagang win. Zedd
hadn't had a chance to answer; the soldiers had come in then and taken the
two of them to the Sister in the next tent.
He was hoping to drag out the process for as long as possible. He
hadn't counted on how they would keep at it day and night.
It sometimes took quite a while for the Sisters to get out the next
treasure and have it ready. They were understandably cautious and took no
chances. Those strange men without any trace of the gift who helped them
might not be harmed if any errant item of magic were to accidentally be set
in motion, but everyone else certainly was vulnerable. Careful as they were,
there were enough people working at the preparations that Zedd and Adie were
not allowed to sleep for long before they were taken off to unravel the next
puzzle for them.
As he and Adie were dragged through the dark camp to the next tent,
Zedd's legs would hardly hold him. Seeing his daughter's long-lost ball had
sapped much of his remaining strength. He had never felt so old, so feeble.
He feared that his will to go on was flagging.
He didn't know how much longer he could keep his sanity.
He wasn't at all sure that he actually still possessed it. The world
seemed to have turned into a crazy place. At times the whole thing seemed
dreamlike. What he knew and what he didn't know sometimes seemed to have all
twisted together into a knot of confusion.
As he was marched through the dark camp, through the humid heat, he
began to imagine that he saw things--mostly people--from his past. He began
to doubt that he really had seen that ball. He wondered if, like some of the
other things he was seeing, he had imagined it as well. Could it maybe have
been a simple ball, and he only thought that it was the one his daughter had
lost? Had he imagined the zigzagged colors around it? He was beginning to
question himself over every little thing.
Looking up at all the people in the crowded encampment, he thought he
saw his long-dead wife, Erilyn, in the faces of the women held nearby under
guard. They were mothers, their worst nightmares ready to come to life if
Zedd didn't cooperate. His gaze passed over children clutching their
mother's skirts, or their father's legs. They looked at him. his wavy white
hair in disarray, probably thinking he was some crazy man. Maybe he was.
The torches lit the sprawling camp with a kind of flickering light that
made everything seem imaginary. The campfires, spread as far as he could
see, looked like a star field lying across the ground, as if the world had
turned upside down.
"Wait," the Sister said to the guards.
Zedd was jerked to a halt as the Sister ducked inside the tent. Adie
cried out as the man holding her wrenched her arm in the act of stopping
her.
Zedd swayed on his feet, wondering if he might pass out. The whole
nighttime camp wavered in his vision.
As he looked at one of the girls held captive across the way, he
stared, astonished, thinking he recognized her. Zedd looked up at the
emperor's elite guard in the distance holding the child. Zedd blinked his
blurred vision. The guard, in leather and mail armor, with a belt full of
weapons, looked like a man Zedd used to know. Zedd turned away at the
memory, only to see a Sister, making her way among the tents not far away,
who also looked like someone else he knew. He looked around at soldiers
going about their business. Elite soldiers guarding the emperor's compound
looked like men he thought he remembered.
Zedd truly was terrified, then. He was sure that he was losing his
mind. He couldn't possibly be seeing the people he thought he saw.
His mind was all he had. He didn't want to be some babbling old man
sitting by the side of a road begging.
He knew that people sometimes became irrational--lost their mind-- when
they got old or were pressed past their endurance. He had known people who
had snapped, who had gone insane, and saw things that weren't really there.
That's what he was doing. He was having visions of people from his past who
weren't really there. That was a sure sign of insanity--seeing your past
come to life, thinking you were back with long-lost loved ones.
His mind was the most important thing he had.
Now he was losing that, too.
He was losing his sanity.
Nicholas heard an annoying noise back in another place.
A disturbance of some sort, back where his body waited.
He ignored it, watching the streets, watching the buildings go by. The
sun had just set. People, wary people, moved past. Color. Sound. Activity.
It was a dingy place, with buildings crowded close. Watch, watch.
Alleyways were dark and narrow. Strangers stared. The street smelled. None
of the buildings were more than two stories; he was sure of it. Most were
not even that.
Again, he heard the noise back where his body waited. It was forceful,
calling his attention.
He ignored the thump, thump, thump back somewhere else as he watched,
trying to see where they were going. What's this? Watch, watch, watch. He
thought he knew, but he wasn't positive. Look, look. He wanted to be sure.
He wanted to watch.
He so enjoyed watching.
More noise. Obnoxious, demanding, thumping noise.
Nicholas felt his body around him as he slammed back to where it
waited, sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor. He opened his eyes,
blinking, trying to see in the dim room. Slivers of dusk leaking in around
the edges of the closed shutters lent only somber light to the room.
He stood, wavering on his feet for a moment, not yet used to the
strange feeling of being back in his own body. He started walking across the
room, looking down, watching as he lifted each foot out ahead, shifted his
weight with every step. He had been gone so much lately, day and night, that
he was not used to having to do such things on his own. He had been so often
in another place, another body, that he had difficulty adjusting to his own.
Someone was banging on the door, yelling for him to open it. Nicholas
was furious at the uninvited caller, at such a rude intrusion.
With wobbly gait, he made his way to the door. It felt so confining
being back in his own body. It moved in such an odd manner. He rolled his
shoulders, resisting the urge to bend forward. He pulled and stretched his
neck one way, then the other.
It was bothersome to have to move himself about, to use his own
muscles, to feel himself breathe, to see, hear, smell, feel with his own
senses.
The door was barred by a heavy bolt to prevent unwelcome callers from
entering while he was off to other places. It wouldn't do to have someone
messing with his body while he wasn't there using it himself. Wouldn't do at
all.
Someone pounding on the other side of the door bellowed his name and
demanded to be let in. Nicholas lifted the heavy bolt and heaved it over. He
threw open the thick door.
A young soldier stood just outside in the hall. A common, grubby
soldier. A nobody.
Nicholas stared in stunned fury at the lowly man who would just walk up
the stairs to the room everyone knew was off-limits and pound on the
forbidden door. Where was Najari's flat, crooked nose when he needed it? Why
wasn't someone guarding the door?
A broken bone jutted from the back of the bloody fist the man had been
hammering against the door.
Nicholas craned his neck, peering past the soldier out into the dimly
lit hall, and saw the bodies of guards sprawled in pools of blood.
Nicholas ran his fingernails back through his hair, shivering with
delight at the silken smooth feel of oils gliding against his palm. He
rolled his shoulders with the pleasure of the sensation.
Opening his eyes, he fixed his gaze on the wide-eyed, common soldier
whom he was about to kill. The man was dressed like many of the Imperial
Order soldiers, at least the better-outfitted soldiers, with leather chest
armor, a sleeve of protective mail on his right arm, and a number of leather
straps and belts holding a variety of weapons from a short sword to a mace
with a spiked metal head to knives. Despite how deadly all his gear
appeared, the expression on his face was one of startled terror.
Nicholas puzzled for a moment at what such a meaningless man could
possibly have to say that would be worth his life.
"What is it, you insipid fool?"
The man lifted an arm, then the hand, then a single finger in a manner
that reminded Nicholas of nothing so much as a puppet having its strings
pulled. The finger tipped to one side, then the other, then back again, the
way someone might waggle a finger in admonition.
"Ah, ah, ah." The finger twitched side to side again. "Be polite. Be
awfully polite."
The soldier, his eyes wide, seemed surprised by his own haughty words.
The voice sounded too deep--too mature--to belong to this young man.
The voice, in fact, sounded dangerous in the extreme.
"What is this?" Nicholas frowned at the soldier. "What's this about?"
The man started into the room, his legs moving in a most peculiar,
stilted manner. In some ways it reminded Nicholas of how it must look when
he used his own legs after not being in his body for a long spell. He
stepped aside as the man walked woodenly into the center of the dim room and
turned. Blood dripped from the hand that had been pounding against the door,
but the man, his eyes still wide with fear, seemed not to notice what had to
be painful injuries.
His voice, though, came out anything but afraid. "Where are they,
Nicholas?"
Nicholas approached the man and cocked his head. "They?"
"You promised them to me, Nicholas. I don't like it when people don't
keep their word. Where are they?"
Nicholas drew his brow down even farther, leaned in even more. "Who?"
"Richard Rahl and the Mother Confessor!" the soldier bellowed in
unrestrained rage.
Nicholas backed away a few paces. He understood, now. He had heard the
stories, heard that the man could do such things. Now he was seeing it for
himself.
This was Emperor Jagang, the dream walker himself.
"Remarkable," Nicholas drawled. He approached the soldier who was not a
soldier and tapped a finger against the side of the man's head. "That you in
there, Your Excellency?" He tapped the man's temple again. "That's you,
isn't it, Excellency."
"Where are they, Nicholas?" It was as dangerous-sounding a question as
Nicholas had ever heard.
"I told you that you would have them, and you shall."
"I think you're lying to me, Nicholas," the voice growled. "I don't
think you have them, as you promised you would."
Nicholas flipped a hand dismissively as he strolled off a few paces.
"Oh, foo. I have them by a string."
"I think otherwise. I have reason to believe that they aren't down here
at all. I have reason to believe that the Mother Confessor herself is far to
the north . .. with her army."
Nicholas frowned as he approached the man, leaning in close, peering
into the eyes. "Do you completely lose your senses when you go cavorting
into another man's mind like that?"
"Are you saying it isn't so?"
Nicholas was losing patience. "I was just watching them when you barged
in here to pester me. They were both there--Lord Rahl and the Mother
Confessor."
"Are you sure?" came the deep gravelly voice out of the young soldier's
mouth.
Nicholas planted his fists on his hips. "Are you questioning me? How
dare you! I am Nicholas the Slide. I will not be questioned by anyone!"
The soldier took an aggressive step forward.
Nicholas held his ground and lifted a finger in warning. "If you want
them, then you had better be awfully careful."
The soldier watched with wide eyes, but Nicholas could see more in
those eyes: menace.
"Talk, then, before I lose my patience."
Nicholas screwed his mouth up in annoyance. "Whoever told you that they
were to the north, that the Mother Confessor is with their army, either
doesn't know what they're talking about or is lying to you. I've kept a
careful eye on them."
"But have you seen them lately?"
The room was growing dark. Nicholas cast a hand toward the table,
sending a small spark of his gift into three candles there, setting their
wicks to flame.
"I told you, I was just watching them. They are in a city not far from
here. Soon, they will be coming here, to me, and then I will have them. You
don't have long to wait."
"What makes you think they're coming to you?"
"I know everything they do." Nicholas held his arms aloft, his black
robes slipping up to his elbows, gesturing expansively as he walked around
the man, speaking of what he alone knew. "I watch them. I have seen them
lying together at night, the Mother Confessor tenderly holding her husband
in her arms, holding his head to her shoulder, comforting his terrible pain.
It's quite touching, actually."
"His pain?"
"Yes, his pain. They are in Northwick right now, a city not far to the
north of here. When they are finished there, if they live through their
visit, then they will be coming here, to me."
Jagang in the soldier looked around, taking in the freshly dead bodies
lying against the wall. His attention returned to Nicholas.
"I asked, what makes you think so?"
Nicholas looked over his shoulder and lifted an eyebrow at the emperor.
"Well, you see, these fool people here--the pillars of Creation who so
fascinate you--have poisoned the poor Lord Rahl. They did it to try to
insure his help in getting rid of us."
"Poisoned him? Are you sure?"
Nicholas smiled at the note of interest he detected in the emperor's
voice. "Oh, yes, quite sure. The poor man is in a great deal of pain. He
needs an antidote."
"Then he will do what he must to get such an antidote. Richard Rahl is
a surprisingly resourceful man."
Nicholas leaned his backside against the table and folded his arms. "He
may be resourceful, but he's now in a great deal of trouble. You see, he
needs two more doses of the antidote. One of them is in North-wick. That's
why he went there."
"You would be surprised at what that man can accomplish." It would have
been impossible to miss the bristling anger in the emperor's voice. "You
would be a fool to underestimate him, Nicholas."
"Oh, but I never underestimate anyone, Excellency." Nicholas smiled
meaningfully at the emperor watching him through another man's eyes. "You
see, I'm reasonably sure that Richard Rahl will retrieve the antidote in
Northwick. In fact, I am counting on it. We shall see. I was watching him as
you came in, watching what would happen. You spoiled it.
"But even if he obtains the antidote in Northwick, he will still need
to get the last dose. The antidote in Northwick alone will not spare his
life."
"Where's this other dose of his antidote?"
Nicholas reached in a pocket and showed the emperor the square-sided
bottle, along with a satisfied smile.
"I have it."
The man with an emperor inside him smiled. "He may come to take it from
you, Nicholas. But, more likely, he will have someone else make him more of
the antidote so that he won't even have to bother coming here."
"Oh, I don't think so. You see, Excellency, I am quite thorough in my
work. This poison that Lord Rahl took is complex, but not nearly as complex
as the antidote. I know, because I had the only man who can make it tortured
until he told me what it was, told me all about it, told me its secrets. It
contains a whole list of things I couldn't even begin to recall.
"I had the man killed, of course. Then I had the man who tortured the
confession out of him, tortured the antidote's list of ingredients out of
him, killed as well. It wouldn't do to have the resourceful Richard Rahl
find either man and somehow discover from them what was in the cure.
"So, you see, Excellency, there is no one to make Lord Rahl any more of
the antidote." He held the bottle by the neck and wagged it before the man.
"This is the last dose. Lord Rahl's last chance at life."
Through the eyes of a young soldier, Jagang watched the bottle Nicholas
dangled before him. Any trace of humor had vanished.
"Then Richard Rahl will come here and get it."
Nicholas pulled the cork. He took a whiff. The liquid inside carried
the slight aroma of cinnamon.
"You think so, Excellency?"
Making a great show of it, Nicholas poured the liquid out onto the
floor.
As Emperor Jagang watched, Nicholas shook the bottle, making sure that
the very last drop fell out.
"So, you see, Excellency, I have everything well in hand. Richard Rahl
will not be a problem. He will shortly die from the poison--if my men don't
manage to get him before then. Either way, Richard Rahl is a dead man--just
as you requested."
Nicholas bowed, as if at the conclusion of a grand performance before
an appreciative audience.
The man smiled again, a smile of strained forbearance.
"And what of the Mother Confessor?" the emperor asked.
Nicholas noted the clear undertone of restrained wrath. He was
displeased not to be roundly admired for his great accomplishment. After
all. this Emperor Jagang had not managed to capture the prize he so keenly
sought. Nicholas smiled indulgently.
"Well, the way I see it, Excellency, now that I've told you Lord Rahl
is soon to join the ranks of the Keeper's flock in the underworld, I have no
assurance that you will keep your part of the bargain. I would like a
commitment, on your part, before I give you the Mother Confessor."
"What makes you think you can capture her?"
"Oh, I have that well in hand. Her own nature will deliver her into my
hands."
"Her own nature?"
"You let me worry about that, Excellency. All you need know is that I
will deliver the Mother Confessor to you, alive, as promised. You might say
that Lord Rahl was free--a gift on my part--but you will have to pay the
price if you are to have the prize you covet: the Mother Confessor."
"And what would be your price?"
Nicholas strolled around the man in the center of the room. He gestured
with the empty antidote bottle at the surroundings. "Not my idea of the
proper way to live, if one has to live."
"So, you would have riches as a reward for doing your duty to the
Creator, to the Imperial Order, and to your emperor."
The way Nicholas saw it, he had done more than his duty that night in
the woods with the Sisters. Instead of saying so, he shrugged.
"Well, I will let you have the rest of the world you have fought so
hard to gain. I only want D'Hara. An empire of worth for my own."
"You wish to rule the land of D'Hara?"
Nicholas performed an exaggerated bow. "Under you, of course,
Excellency." He straightened. "I will rule as do you, through fear and
terror, all in the name of sacrificing for the betterment of mankind."
The dream walker watched through the eyes of the frightened soldier.
The glint in those eyes was looking dangerous again.
"You play a risky game, Slide, making such demands. Your life must mean
little to you."
Nicholas showed the emperor a smile that said he was tiring of
trifling. "Hate to live, live to hate."
Finally, the emperor's smile returned to the man's lips.
"D'Hara is your wish? It is done. Lord Rahl dead, and the Mother
Confessor delivered to me, alive, and you will then have D'Hara to do with
as you wish... as long as you pay homage to the rule of the Imperial Order."
Nicholas indulged Jagang with a more polite smile as he bowed his head.
"But of course."
"Then, when Richard Rahl is dead and I have the Mother Confessor, you
shall be named Emperor Nicholas of the land of D'Hara."
"You are a wise emperor."
This was the man who had prescribed Nicholas's fate. This was the man
who had sent those Sisters to practice their vile craft, to sunder him with
the terrible agony of destroying who he had been, to mother him in an
agonizing second Creation.
They had decreed that he sacrifice himself to their cause. Nicholas had
had no say in it. Now, at least, for the small task of dealing with the
petty enemies of the Order, he would have his reward. He would have riches
and power that he could never have dared imagine before he had been reborn.
They had destroyed him, but they had created him again more powerful
than he had ever been.
Now he was but one step away from being Emperor Nicholas.
It had been a bitter road.
Driven by angry need, by hatred, Nicholas thrust out his hand as he
thrust his own mind, like a hot dagger, into the mind of this man before
him, into the spaces between his thoughts, into the marrow of his soul.
He hungered to feel the slick heat of this other spirit slide into his
own, the hot rush of taking him while Jagang was still within the man's
mind.
But there was nothing there.
In that spark of time, Jagang has already slipped away.
The man crashed to the floor, dead.
Nicholas--Emperor Nicholas--smiled at the game only just begun. He was
beginning to wonder if he had set the price too low.
As they made their way up the street, Kahlan glanced to the small
windows in the surrounding buildings. In the gathering darkness, she doubted
that the faces she saw peering out of the windows could tell much about the
people they saw out in the street, but she pulled the hood of her cloak
forward anyway.
From the stories the men had told, it was not safe to be a woman in
Bandakar, so Kahlan, Jennsen, and Cara covered their identity to draw as
little attention as possible. Kahlan knew that people in fear for their own
lives sometimes tried to shift attention away from themselves by offering
another to the wolves. Worse, she also knew that there were bitter people
devoted to the morbid ideal of the perpetual cannibalism of appeasement that
they defined as peace.
Richard slowed and checked the alley as they passed. One hand gripped
the front of his simple black cloak so that, if need be, he could lift it
open and draw his sword.
Their men were spread out so as not to appear to be a mob moving
through Northwick. Any gathering of crowds of men, except in markets, would
no doubt be reported and swiftly draw the attention of the Imperial Order
soldiers. They had timed their entry into the city to be just as night fell
so as to better obscure them, yet not so late that their presence on the
streets would be suspicious. "There," Owen said as they reached the corner,
tilting his head to the right. "Down that way."
Richard looked back over his shoulder to make sure that everyone was
still with him, then turned down the narrow street. The buildings in the
city were mostly single-story, but they were entering a district where a
number had a second story, usually hanging several feet out over the street.
Kahlan saw nothing taller than the squat two-story buildings.
The area they had turned in to reeked with the stench of sewage in a
shallow ditch to the side. The dusty streets of Northwick kept making her
cough. She imagined that when it rained the place turned into a quagmire
that stank even worse. She saw that Richard made a great effort not to
cough. It wasn't always possible. At least, when he did, he wasn't coughing
up blood.
As they kept to the shadows in under the overhangs and eaves, Kahlan
moved up closer to him. Jennsen followed right behind. Anson, out ahead,
scouted their route, looking for all the world as though he were by himself.
Richard scanned the sky again. It was empty. They hadn't seen any
black-tipped races since before they started up the pass into Bandakar.
Kahlan and Cara were glad not to see the huge black birds. Richard, though,
seemed as troubled by not seeing them as he once was when he did.
Cara hung back a bit, along with a half-dozen men. Tom and some others
were moving up a parallel street. Yet other men, who knew where they were
headed, made their way through the city by a different route. Even though
there were less than fifty in their force, such numbers together could bring
attention and trouble.
For now, they didn't need trouble. They needed the antidote.
"Where is the city center?" Kahlan asked Owen when she got close enough
to be able to speak in a low voice.
Owen swept his arm around, indicating the street they were on. "This is
the place. These shops are where the major commerce is, where people come.
In the open squares the people sometimes set up markets."
Kahlan saw a leather shop, a bakery, a place that sold cloth, but
nothing more elaborate. "This is the center of your great city? These
post-and-beam buildings with living quarters over the shops? This is your
major business center?"
"Yes," Owen said, sounding half puzzled and half proud.
Kahlan let out a sigh, but didn't comment. Richard did.
"This is the result of your advanced culture?" He gestured around at
the shabby daub-and-wattle buildings. "In close to three thousand years this
is what your great culture has accomplished? This is what you have managed
to build?"
Owen smiled. "Yes. It is magnificent, is it not?"
Instead of answering the question, Richard said, "I thought you were in
Altur'Rang."
"I was."
"Well, even that dingy place was far more advanced than this city of
Northwick."
"It was? I am sorry, Lord Rahl, but I did not see much of Altur'Rang. I
was afraid to go far into such a place, and I did not stay for long." Owen
looked back at Kahlan. "Do you mean to say that the city where you are from
is more magnificent than this one?"
Kahlan blinked at the man. How could she possibly explain Aydin-dril,
the Wizard's Keep, the Confessors' Palace, the palaces on Kings Row, the
People's Palace, the marble and granite work, the soaring columns, the noble
works of art, or any of a hundred other places and sights to a man who
thought straw-and-dung buildings were an example of advanced culture? In the
end, she decided that this was not the time to try.
"Owen, I hope that when we are all free of the oppression of the
Imperial Order, Richard and I can show you and your people some other places
in the world outside of Bandakar--show you some other centers of major
commerce and art, some of what mankind elsewhere has accomplished."
Owen smiled. "I would like that, Mother Confessor. I would like it very
much." He stopped abruptly. "Oh, here is the place. It is down here."
A head-high wooden gate weathered to a brownish gray barred the
alleyway beyond from sight. Richard checked both ways up the street, looking
to see if anyone was watching. The street was empty of everyone but their
men. As he kept an eye to the street, he pushed the gate open enough to
allow Owen to slip through.
Owen poked his head back out. "Come, it is clear."
Richard gave a hand signal to the men up at the corner. He put his arm
around Kahlan's waist, holding her close as he squeezed with her through the
gate into the alley.
The walls of the buildings on either side that came to the edge of the
narrow, dusty alleyway had no windows. Some of the tightly packed structures
that weren't set so far back had room for small backyards. As they moved
cautiously up the alley, more of their men poured in through the gate at the
objection more out of obligation than anything else. "You have begun a cycle
of violence. Such a thing is wrong."
"We will speak with you before we go, so that you might come to
understand, as we have, why we must do this to be truly free of violence and
brutality. Lord Rahl has shown us that a cycle of violence is not the result
of fighting back for your own life, but is the result of a shrinking back
from doing what is necessary to crush those who would kill you. If you do as
you must in duty to yourself and your loved ones, then you will eradicate
the enemy so completely that they can no longer do you any harm. Then, there
is no cycle of violence, but an end to violence. Then, and only then, will
true peace and freedom take root."
"Such actions can never accomplish anything but to start violence," an
old man objected.
"Look around," Anson said. "The violence has not begun tonight, but
ended. Violence has been crushed, as it should be, by crushing evil men who
bring it upon us."
People nodded to one another, the heady relief of being suddenly freed
from the grip of the terror brought by the soldiers of the Imperial Order
plainly overcoming their objections. Joy had taken over from fear. The
reality of having their lives returned had opened their eyes.
"But you must understand, as we have come to understand," Owen said,
"that nothing can ever again be the way it once was. Those ways are in the
past."
Richard noticed that the men weren't slouching anymore. They stood with
their heads held high.
"We have chosen to live," Owen told his people. "In so doing, we have
found true freedom."
"I think we all have," the old man in the crowd said.
Zedd frowned with the effort of concentrating on what it was Sister
Tahirah had placed on the table before him. He looked up at her, at the way
her scowl pinched in around her humped nose.
"Well?" she demanded.
Zedd looked down, squinting at the thing before him. It looked like a
leather-covered ball painted with faded blue and pink zigzagged lines all
around it.
What was it about it that seemed so familiar, yet so distant?
He blinked, trying to better focus his eyes. His neck ached something
fierce. A father, hearing his young son in the next tent screaming in
appalling agony, had grabbed Zedd by the hair and yanked him away from other
parents who, pulling and pawing at him, made desperate demands of their own.
Because of the torn muscles in his neck, it was painful to hold up his head.
Compared to the torture he'd heard, though, it was nothing.
The dim interior of the tent, lit by several lamps hanging from poles,
felt as if it were detached from the ground and swirling around him. The
foul place stank. The heat and humidity only made the smell, and the
spinning, worse. Zedd felt as if he might pass out.
It had been so long since he'd slept that he couldn't even remember the
last time he had actually lain down. The only sleep he got was when he fell
asleep in the chair while Sister Tahirah was seeing to another object being
unloaded from the wagons, or when she went to bed and the next Sister hadn't
yet arrived to take the next stint in their laborious cataloging of the
items brought from the Keep. The catnaps he got were rarely longer than a
few precious minutes at a time. The guards had orders not to allow him or
Adie to lie down.
At least the screams of the children had ended. At least, as long as he
cooperated, those cries of pain had stopped. At least, as long as he went
along, the parents had hope.
A violent crack of pain suddenly hammered the side of his head,
knocking him back. The chair toppled over, spilling him to the ground. With
his arms bound behind his back, he couldn't do anything to break the fall
and he hit hard. Zedd's ears rang, not only from the fall, but with the
aftermath of the blow of the Sister's power delivered through the collar
around his neck.
He hated that wicked instrument of control. The Sisters were not shy
about exercising that control. Because the collar locked him away from the
use of his own gift, he could not use his ability to defend himself.
Instead, they used his power against him.
It took little or no provocation to send one of the Sisters into a fit
of violence. Many of these women had once been kindly people devoting their
lives to helping others. Jagang had enslaved them to a different cause. Now
they did his bidding. Though they might have once been gentle, they were
now, he knew, trying to keep one step ahead of the discipline Jagang meted
out to them. That discipline could be excruciating beyond endurance. The
Sisters were expected to get results; Jagang would not be interested in the
excuse that Zedd was being difficult.
Zedd saw that Adie, too, had been knocked to the ground. Any punishment
he received, she, too, endured. He felt more agony for her than for himself.
Soldiers standing to the side moved in to right the chair and lift Zedd
into it. With his arms bound behind his back, he couldn't get up by himself.
They sat him down hard enough to drive a grunt from his lungs.
"Well?" Sister Tahirah demanded. "What is it?"
Zedd once again leaned in, staring down at the round object sitting by
itself in the center of the table. The faint blue and pink lines zigzagging
all around it stirred deep feelings. He thought he should know this thing.
"It's . . . it's . . ."
"It's what!" Sister Tahirah slammed the book against the edge of the
table, causing the round object to bounce up and roll a few inches before it
came to a stop closer to Zedd. She tucked the book under one arm as she
leaned with the other on the table. She bent down toward him.
"What is it? What does it do?"
"I... I can't remember."
"Would you like me to bring in some children," the Sister said in the
soft, sweet tone of a very bitter threat, "and show you their little faces
before they are taken to the tent next to us to be tortured?"
"I'm so tired," he said. "I'm trying to remember, but I'm so tired."
"Maybe while the children are screaming you would like to explain to
their parents that you are tired and just can't quite seem to remember."
Children. Parents.
Zedd suddenly remembered what the object was. Painful memories welled
up. He felt a tear run down his cheek.
"Dear spirits," he whispered. "Where did you find this?"
"What is it?"
"Where did you find it?" Zedd repeated.
Huffing impatiently, the Sister straightened. She opened the book and
made a noisy show of turning heatedly through the pages. Finally, she
stopped and tapped a finger in the open book.
"It says here that it was found hidden in an open recess in the back of
a black six-drawer chest in a corridor. There was a tapestry of three
prancing white horses hanging above the chest."
She lowered the book. "Now, what is it?"
Zedd swallowed. "A ball."
The Sister glared. "I know it's a ball, you old fool. What is it for?
What does it do? What is its purpose?"
Staring at the ball no bigger than his fist, Zedd remembered. "It's a
ball for children to play with. Its purpose is to bring them pleasure."
He remembered this ball, brightly colored back then, frequently
bouncing down the halls of the Wizard's Keep, his daughter giggling and
chasing after it. He had given it to her for doing well in her studies.
Sometimes she would roll it down the halls, urging it along with a switch,
as if she were walking a pet. Her favorite thing to do was to bounce it on
the floor so that it would come up against a wall, after which it would
bounce to another wall at an intersection of stone hallways. In that way she
made it bounce around a corner. She would watch which hall it went down,
left or right, then chase after it.
One day she came to him in tears. He asked her to tell him her
troubles. She crawled up in his lap and told him that her ball had gone
somewhere and gotten itself lost. She wanted him to get it unlost. Zedd told
her that if she looked, she would likely find it. She spent days
despondently wandering the halls of the Keep, searching for it. She couldn't
find it.
Finally, starting out one morning at sunrise, Zedd made the long walk
down to the city of Aydindril, to the market on Stentor Street. That was
where he had first come across a stand where they sold such toys and found
the ball with the zigzagged lines. There he bought her another one--not just
like it, but instead one with pink and green stars. He deliberately chose a
ball unlike the one she'd lost because he didn't want her to think that
wishes could be miraculously fulfilled, but he did want her to know that
there were solutions that could solve problems.
He remembered his daughter hugging his legs, thanking him for the new
ball, telling him that he was the best father in all the world and that she
would be ever so much more careful with the new ball and never lose it. He
had smiled as he watched her put a little hand to her heart and recite a
little-girl oath she had invented on the spot.
She treasured the ball with the pink and green stars. Since it was
small, it was one of the few things she had been able to take with her,
after she was grown, when she and Zedd ran away to Westland, after Darken
Rahl had raped her.
When Richard had been young, he had played with that ball. Zedd
remembered the smile on his daughter's face as she watched her own child
play with that precious ball. Zedd could see in her beautiful eyes the
memories of her own childhood as she watched Richard play. She had kept that
ball her whole life, kept it until she died.
This ball before him was the very same one his daughter had lost. It
must have bounced up behind the chest and fallen into a recess in the back,
where it had been for all those long years.
Zedd leaned forward, resting his forehead on the dusty ball surrounded
with faded blue and pink zigzagged lines, the ball which her little fingers
had once held, and wept.
Sister Tahirah seized a fistful of his hair and pulled him upright. "I
don't believe you're telling me the truth. It's an object of magic. I want
to know what it is and what it does." Holding his head back, she glared into
his eyes. "You know that I will not hesitate to do what is necessary to make
you cooperate. His Excellency accepts no excuses for failure."
Zedd stared up at her, blinking away his tears. "It's a ball, a toy.
That's all it is."
With a sneer, she released him. "The great and powerful Wizard
Zorander." She shook her head. "To think that we once feared you. You are a
pathetic old man, your courage crushed by nothing more than the cry of a
child." She sighed. "I must say, your reputation far exceeds the reality of
your mettle."
The Sister scooped up the ball, turning it in her fingers as she
inspected it. She huffed with disgust and tossed it aside, as if it were
worthless. Zedd watched the ball bounce and roll across the ground, coming
to rest at the side of the tent, against the bench where Adie sat. He looked
up into her completely white eyes to see her watching him. Zedd turned away,
waiting while the Sister made notes in her book.
"All right," she finally said, "let's go have a look at what they've
unloaded in the next tent."
The soldiers lifted him from the chair before he had a chance to try to
do it himself. His shoulders ached from his wrists being bound behind his
back and from being lifted by his arms. Adie, too, was lifted to her feet.
The book snapped closed. Sister Tahirah's wiry gray hair whipped around as
she turned and led them out of the tent.
Because the Sisters knew how dangerous items of magic from the Wizard's
Keep could be, especially if the wrong combination of magic were to
accidentally be allowed to combine or touch, they were cautious enough to
bring the items, one at a time, out of each individual, protected, shielded
crate in the wagons. Zedd knew that there were things in the Keep that, by
themselves, were not dangerous, but became so in the presence of other
things that, by themselves, were also not dangerous. Sometimes it was only
the combination of specific items that created a desired outcome.
The Sisters had vast experience in the most esoteric things of magic
and so they at least understood the principles involved. They treated the
cargo with the care due such potentially hazardous goods. Once each object
was uncrated, they placed it, by itself, in a tent to await examination.
They took Zedd and Adie from tent to tent so that Zedd could identify each
treasure, tell them what it was, explain how it worked.
They had been at it for days--how many, Zedd couldn't remember. Despite
his best efforts, the endless days and nights had all begun to melt together
in his mind.
Zedd did all he could to stall, but there was only so much he could do.
These women knew magic. They would not easily be fooled by any invented
explanation. They had made very clear the consequences of any such
deception.
And, Zedd didn't know how much they knew. At times they feigned
ignorance of something which they actually understood quite well, just to
see if he was telling the truth.
Fortunately, as of yet, they had uncovered nothing that was
extravagantly dangerous. Most of the items from the crates were
simple-looking objects, but were actually for a narrowly focused purpose--a
pole that could remotely judge the depth of water in a well, an iron
decoration shaped like a fan of leaves that prevented words from carrying
beyond an open door where it was placed, a large looking glass that revealed
when a person entered another room. While possibly useful to Emperor Jagang,
such items were not all that valuable or dangerous; they were not going to
help him to conquer and rule the world.
What dangerous things the Sisters had uncrated and shown him were not
really anything that a Sister couldn't easily produce with a spell of her
own. The most dangerous item had been a constructed spell held within an
ornate vase that, under specific conditions, such as when the vase was
filled with water, created a temperature inversion that produced a blast of
flame. Zedd was not betraying his cause or putting innocent lives at risk by
revealing how the spell worked; any Sister worth her salt could reproduce
the same effect. The purpose of the spell was protective; had it touched
other stolen items, which, because they were stolen, was a reversal of
intended ownership that such a spell recognized, it would have ignited and
destroyed those items, keeping them from covetous hands.
None of the things so far discovered would do Jagang any real good.
There were things in the Keep, though, that could cause him harm. There were
spells there, such as the constructed spell in the vase, that recognized the
nature of the person invoking their magic. Opened by the right person, such
as Zedd, those things would do nothing, but, opened by a thief, they would
create calamity.
The Keep had thousands of rooms. The looting of it had netted the
Imperial Order a caravan of cargo wagons, but even that much hardly
scratched the surface of the contents of the Keep.
So far, Zedd had not seen any plums.
He didn't know if he would live to see any. The ride in the box after
his capture had been brutal. He was still not recovered from the injuries
inflicted after meeting Jagang. Guards let the parents do what they would to
convince Zedd and Adie to give in, but they wouldn't allow the parents to
get so carried away that they killed such prize prisoners. The parents had
known that they weren't to kill them, but in the heat of such raw passion,
Zedd knew that such orders were easy to forget. Zedd yearned for them to
kill him and end it. The emperor, though, needed them alive, so the guards
stood careful watch.
After the first few horrifying hours of listening to children being
subjected to crippling torture, of being among their parents, who
understandably demanded, quite forcefully, that he cooperate and tell the
emperor what he wanted to know, Zedd had given in--not for the sake of the
parents so much as to stop those brutal men from what they were doing to the
children.
He had figured that he had nothing to lose, really, by giving in. It
stopped the torture of the children for the time being. The Keep was vast;
the things they brought were only a tiny portion of them. Zedd reasoned that
the caravan of wagons probably didn't hold anything of any real value to
Jagang. It would take quite a while to catalog everything--it could be weeks
more before they reached the last item. There was no purpose in allowing
children to endure torture when there might not be anything useful for Zedd
to betray to Jagang.
Once, when they were alone while the Sister had gone to check on the
preparations in the next tent, Adie had asked what he would do if they
presented him with something that would materially help Jagang win. Zedd
hadn't had a chance to answer; the soldiers had come in then and taken the
two of them to the Sister in the next tent.
He was hoping to drag out the process for as long as possible. He
hadn't counted on how they would keep at it day and night.
It sometimes took quite a while for the Sisters to get out the next
treasure and have it ready. They were understandably cautious and took no
chances. Those strange men without any trace of the gift who helped them
might not be harmed if any errant item of magic were to accidentally be set
in motion, but everyone else certainly was vulnerable. Careful as they were,
there were enough people working at the preparations that Zedd and Adie were
not allowed to sleep for long before they were taken off to unravel the next
puzzle for them.
As he and Adie were dragged through the dark camp to the next tent,
Zedd's legs would hardly hold him. Seeing his daughter's long-lost ball had
sapped much of his remaining strength. He had never felt so old, so feeble.
He feared that his will to go on was flagging.
He didn't know how much longer he could keep his sanity.
He wasn't at all sure that he actually still possessed it. The world
seemed to have turned into a crazy place. At times the whole thing seemed
dreamlike. What he knew and what he didn't know sometimes seemed to have all
twisted together into a knot of confusion.
As he was marched through the dark camp, through the humid heat, he
began to imagine that he saw things--mostly people--from his past. He began
to doubt that he really had seen that ball. He wondered if, like some of the
other things he was seeing, he had imagined it as well. Could it maybe have
been a simple ball, and he only thought that it was the one his daughter had
lost? Had he imagined the zigzagged colors around it? He was beginning to
question himself over every little thing.
Looking up at all the people in the crowded encampment, he thought he
saw his long-dead wife, Erilyn, in the faces of the women held nearby under
guard. They were mothers, their worst nightmares ready to come to life if
Zedd didn't cooperate. His gaze passed over children clutching their
mother's skirts, or their father's legs. They looked at him. his wavy white
hair in disarray, probably thinking he was some crazy man. Maybe he was.
The torches lit the sprawling camp with a kind of flickering light that
made everything seem imaginary. The campfires, spread as far as he could
see, looked like a star field lying across the ground, as if the world had
turned upside down.
"Wait," the Sister said to the guards.
Zedd was jerked to a halt as the Sister ducked inside the tent. Adie
cried out as the man holding her wrenched her arm in the act of stopping
her.
Zedd swayed on his feet, wondering if he might pass out. The whole
nighttime camp wavered in his vision.
As he looked at one of the girls held captive across the way, he
stared, astonished, thinking he recognized her. Zedd looked up at the
emperor's elite guard in the distance holding the child. Zedd blinked his
blurred vision. The guard, in leather and mail armor, with a belt full of
weapons, looked like a man Zedd used to know. Zedd turned away at the
memory, only to see a Sister, making her way among the tents not far away,
who also looked like someone else he knew. He looked around at soldiers
going about their business. Elite soldiers guarding the emperor's compound
looked like men he thought he remembered.
Zedd truly was terrified, then. He was sure that he was losing his
mind. He couldn't possibly be seeing the people he thought he saw.
His mind was all he had. He didn't want to be some babbling old man
sitting by the side of a road begging.
He knew that people sometimes became irrational--lost their mind-- when
they got old or were pressed past their endurance. He had known people who
had snapped, who had gone insane, and saw things that weren't really there.
That's what he was doing. He was having visions of people from his past who
weren't really there. That was a sure sign of insanity--seeing your past
come to life, thinking you were back with long-lost loved ones.
His mind was the most important thing he had.
Now he was losing that, too.
He was losing his sanity.
Nicholas heard an annoying noise back in another place.
A disturbance of some sort, back where his body waited.
He ignored it, watching the streets, watching the buildings go by. The
sun had just set. People, wary people, moved past. Color. Sound. Activity.
It was a dingy place, with buildings crowded close. Watch, watch.
Alleyways were dark and narrow. Strangers stared. The street smelled. None
of the buildings were more than two stories; he was sure of it. Most were
not even that.
Again, he heard the noise back where his body waited. It was forceful,
calling his attention.
He ignored the thump, thump, thump back somewhere else as he watched,
trying to see where they were going. What's this? Watch, watch, watch. He
thought he knew, but he wasn't positive. Look, look. He wanted to be sure.
He wanted to watch.
He so enjoyed watching.
More noise. Obnoxious, demanding, thumping noise.
Nicholas felt his body around him as he slammed back to where it
waited, sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor. He opened his eyes,
blinking, trying to see in the dim room. Slivers of dusk leaking in around
the edges of the closed shutters lent only somber light to the room.
He stood, wavering on his feet for a moment, not yet used to the
strange feeling of being back in his own body. He started walking across the
room, looking down, watching as he lifted each foot out ahead, shifted his
weight with every step. He had been gone so much lately, day and night, that
he was not used to having to do such things on his own. He had been so often
in another place, another body, that he had difficulty adjusting to his own.
Someone was banging on the door, yelling for him to open it. Nicholas
was furious at the uninvited caller, at such a rude intrusion.
With wobbly gait, he made his way to the door. It felt so confining
being back in his own body. It moved in such an odd manner. He rolled his
shoulders, resisting the urge to bend forward. He pulled and stretched his
neck one way, then the other.
It was bothersome to have to move himself about, to use his own
muscles, to feel himself breathe, to see, hear, smell, feel with his own
senses.
The door was barred by a heavy bolt to prevent unwelcome callers from
entering while he was off to other places. It wouldn't do to have someone
messing with his body while he wasn't there using it himself. Wouldn't do at
all.
Someone pounding on the other side of the door bellowed his name and
demanded to be let in. Nicholas lifted the heavy bolt and heaved it over. He
threw open the thick door.
A young soldier stood just outside in the hall. A common, grubby
soldier. A nobody.
Nicholas stared in stunned fury at the lowly man who would just walk up
the stairs to the room everyone knew was off-limits and pound on the
forbidden door. Where was Najari's flat, crooked nose when he needed it? Why
wasn't someone guarding the door?
A broken bone jutted from the back of the bloody fist the man had been
hammering against the door.
Nicholas craned his neck, peering past the soldier out into the dimly
lit hall, and saw the bodies of guards sprawled in pools of blood.
Nicholas ran his fingernails back through his hair, shivering with
delight at the silken smooth feel of oils gliding against his palm. He
rolled his shoulders with the pleasure of the sensation.
Opening his eyes, he fixed his gaze on the wide-eyed, common soldier
whom he was about to kill. The man was dressed like many of the Imperial
Order soldiers, at least the better-outfitted soldiers, with leather chest
armor, a sleeve of protective mail on his right arm, and a number of leather
straps and belts holding a variety of weapons from a short sword to a mace
with a spiked metal head to knives. Despite how deadly all his gear
appeared, the expression on his face was one of startled terror.
Nicholas puzzled for a moment at what such a meaningless man could
possibly have to say that would be worth his life.
"What is it, you insipid fool?"
The man lifted an arm, then the hand, then a single finger in a manner
that reminded Nicholas of nothing so much as a puppet having its strings
pulled. The finger tipped to one side, then the other, then back again, the
way someone might waggle a finger in admonition.
"Ah, ah, ah." The finger twitched side to side again. "Be polite. Be
awfully polite."
The soldier, his eyes wide, seemed surprised by his own haughty words.
The voice sounded too deep--too mature--to belong to this young man.
The voice, in fact, sounded dangerous in the extreme.
"What is this?" Nicholas frowned at the soldier. "What's this about?"
The man started into the room, his legs moving in a most peculiar,
stilted manner. In some ways it reminded Nicholas of how it must look when
he used his own legs after not being in his body for a long spell. He
stepped aside as the man walked woodenly into the center of the dim room and
turned. Blood dripped from the hand that had been pounding against the door,
but the man, his eyes still wide with fear, seemed not to notice what had to
be painful injuries.
His voice, though, came out anything but afraid. "Where are they,
Nicholas?"
Nicholas approached the man and cocked his head. "They?"
"You promised them to me, Nicholas. I don't like it when people don't
keep their word. Where are they?"
Nicholas drew his brow down even farther, leaned in even more. "Who?"
"Richard Rahl and the Mother Confessor!" the soldier bellowed in
unrestrained rage.
Nicholas backed away a few paces. He understood, now. He had heard the
stories, heard that the man could do such things. Now he was seeing it for
himself.
This was Emperor Jagang, the dream walker himself.
"Remarkable," Nicholas drawled. He approached the soldier who was not a
soldier and tapped a finger against the side of the man's head. "That you in
there, Your Excellency?" He tapped the man's temple again. "That's you,
isn't it, Excellency."
"Where are they, Nicholas?" It was as dangerous-sounding a question as
Nicholas had ever heard.
"I told you that you would have them, and you shall."
"I think you're lying to me, Nicholas," the voice growled. "I don't
think you have them, as you promised you would."
Nicholas flipped a hand dismissively as he strolled off a few paces.
"Oh, foo. I have them by a string."
"I think otherwise. I have reason to believe that they aren't down here
at all. I have reason to believe that the Mother Confessor herself is far to
the north . .. with her army."
Nicholas frowned as he approached the man, leaning in close, peering
into the eyes. "Do you completely lose your senses when you go cavorting
into another man's mind like that?"
"Are you saying it isn't so?"
Nicholas was losing patience. "I was just watching them when you barged
in here to pester me. They were both there--Lord Rahl and the Mother
Confessor."
"Are you sure?" came the deep gravelly voice out of the young soldier's
mouth.
Nicholas planted his fists on his hips. "Are you questioning me? How
dare you! I am Nicholas the Slide. I will not be questioned by anyone!"
The soldier took an aggressive step forward.
Nicholas held his ground and lifted a finger in warning. "If you want
them, then you had better be awfully careful."
The soldier watched with wide eyes, but Nicholas could see more in
those eyes: menace.
"Talk, then, before I lose my patience."
Nicholas screwed his mouth up in annoyance. "Whoever told you that they
were to the north, that the Mother Confessor is with their army, either
doesn't know what they're talking about or is lying to you. I've kept a
careful eye on them."
"But have you seen them lately?"
The room was growing dark. Nicholas cast a hand toward the table,
sending a small spark of his gift into three candles there, setting their
wicks to flame.
"I told you, I was just watching them. They are in a city not far from
here. Soon, they will be coming here, to me, and then I will have them. You
don't have long to wait."
"What makes you think they're coming to you?"
"I know everything they do." Nicholas held his arms aloft, his black
robes slipping up to his elbows, gesturing expansively as he walked around
the man, speaking of what he alone knew. "I watch them. I have seen them
lying together at night, the Mother Confessor tenderly holding her husband
in her arms, holding his head to her shoulder, comforting his terrible pain.
It's quite touching, actually."
"His pain?"
"Yes, his pain. They are in Northwick right now, a city not far to the
north of here. When they are finished there, if they live through their
visit, then they will be coming here, to me."
Jagang in the soldier looked around, taking in the freshly dead bodies
lying against the wall. His attention returned to Nicholas.
"I asked, what makes you think so?"
Nicholas looked over his shoulder and lifted an eyebrow at the emperor.
"Well, you see, these fool people here--the pillars of Creation who so
fascinate you--have poisoned the poor Lord Rahl. They did it to try to
insure his help in getting rid of us."
"Poisoned him? Are you sure?"
Nicholas smiled at the note of interest he detected in the emperor's
voice. "Oh, yes, quite sure. The poor man is in a great deal of pain. He
needs an antidote."
"Then he will do what he must to get such an antidote. Richard Rahl is
a surprisingly resourceful man."
Nicholas leaned his backside against the table and folded his arms. "He
may be resourceful, but he's now in a great deal of trouble. You see, he
needs two more doses of the antidote. One of them is in North-wick. That's
why he went there."
"You would be surprised at what that man can accomplish." It would have
been impossible to miss the bristling anger in the emperor's voice. "You
would be a fool to underestimate him, Nicholas."
"Oh, but I never underestimate anyone, Excellency." Nicholas smiled
meaningfully at the emperor watching him through another man's eyes. "You
see, I'm reasonably sure that Richard Rahl will retrieve the antidote in
Northwick. In fact, I am counting on it. We shall see. I was watching him as
you came in, watching what would happen. You spoiled it.
"But even if he obtains the antidote in Northwick, he will still need
to get the last dose. The antidote in Northwick alone will not spare his
life."
"Where's this other dose of his antidote?"
Nicholas reached in a pocket and showed the emperor the square-sided
bottle, along with a satisfied smile.
"I have it."
The man with an emperor inside him smiled. "He may come to take it from
you, Nicholas. But, more likely, he will have someone else make him more of
the antidote so that he won't even have to bother coming here."
"Oh, I don't think so. You see, Excellency, I am quite thorough in my
work. This poison that Lord Rahl took is complex, but not nearly as complex
as the antidote. I know, because I had the only man who can make it tortured
until he told me what it was, told me all about it, told me its secrets. It
contains a whole list of things I couldn't even begin to recall.
"I had the man killed, of course. Then I had the man who tortured the
confession out of him, tortured the antidote's list of ingredients out of
him, killed as well. It wouldn't do to have the resourceful Richard Rahl
find either man and somehow discover from them what was in the cure.
"So, you see, Excellency, there is no one to make Lord Rahl any more of
the antidote." He held the bottle by the neck and wagged it before the man.
"This is the last dose. Lord Rahl's last chance at life."
Through the eyes of a young soldier, Jagang watched the bottle Nicholas
dangled before him. Any trace of humor had vanished.
"Then Richard Rahl will come here and get it."
Nicholas pulled the cork. He took a whiff. The liquid inside carried
the slight aroma of cinnamon.
"You think so, Excellency?"
Making a great show of it, Nicholas poured the liquid out onto the
floor.
As Emperor Jagang watched, Nicholas shook the bottle, making sure that
the very last drop fell out.
"So, you see, Excellency, I have everything well in hand. Richard Rahl
will not be a problem. He will shortly die from the poison--if my men don't
manage to get him before then. Either way, Richard Rahl is a dead man--just
as you requested."
Nicholas bowed, as if at the conclusion of a grand performance before
an appreciative audience.
The man smiled again, a smile of strained forbearance.
"And what of the Mother Confessor?" the emperor asked.
Nicholas noted the clear undertone of restrained wrath. He was
displeased not to be roundly admired for his great accomplishment. After
all. this Emperor Jagang had not managed to capture the prize he so keenly
sought. Nicholas smiled indulgently.
"Well, the way I see it, Excellency, now that I've told you Lord Rahl
is soon to join the ranks of the Keeper's flock in the underworld, I have no
assurance that you will keep your part of the bargain. I would like a
commitment, on your part, before I give you the Mother Confessor."
"What makes you think you can capture her?"
"Oh, I have that well in hand. Her own nature will deliver her into my
hands."
"Her own nature?"
"You let me worry about that, Excellency. All you need know is that I
will deliver the Mother Confessor to you, alive, as promised. You might say
that Lord Rahl was free--a gift on my part--but you will have to pay the
price if you are to have the prize you covet: the Mother Confessor."
"And what would be your price?"
Nicholas strolled around the man in the center of the room. He gestured
with the empty antidote bottle at the surroundings. "Not my idea of the
proper way to live, if one has to live."
"So, you would have riches as a reward for doing your duty to the
Creator, to the Imperial Order, and to your emperor."
The way Nicholas saw it, he had done more than his duty that night in
the woods with the Sisters. Instead of saying so, he shrugged.
"Well, I will let you have the rest of the world you have fought so
hard to gain. I only want D'Hara. An empire of worth for my own."
"You wish to rule the land of D'Hara?"
Nicholas performed an exaggerated bow. "Under you, of course,
Excellency." He straightened. "I will rule as do you, through fear and
terror, all in the name of sacrificing for the betterment of mankind."
The dream walker watched through the eyes of the frightened soldier.
The glint in those eyes was looking dangerous again.
"You play a risky game, Slide, making such demands. Your life must mean
little to you."
Nicholas showed the emperor a smile that said he was tiring of
trifling. "Hate to live, live to hate."
Finally, the emperor's smile returned to the man's lips.
"D'Hara is your wish? It is done. Lord Rahl dead, and the Mother
Confessor delivered to me, alive, and you will then have D'Hara to do with
as you wish... as long as you pay homage to the rule of the Imperial Order."
Nicholas indulged Jagang with a more polite smile as he bowed his head.
"But of course."
"Then, when Richard Rahl is dead and I have the Mother Confessor, you
shall be named Emperor Nicholas of the land of D'Hara."
"You are a wise emperor."
This was the man who had prescribed Nicholas's fate. This was the man
who had sent those Sisters to practice their vile craft, to sunder him with
the terrible agony of destroying who he had been, to mother him in an
agonizing second Creation.
They had decreed that he sacrifice himself to their cause. Nicholas had
had no say in it. Now, at least, for the small task of dealing with the
petty enemies of the Order, he would have his reward. He would have riches
and power that he could never have dared imagine before he had been reborn.
They had destroyed him, but they had created him again more powerful
than he had ever been.
Now he was but one step away from being Emperor Nicholas.
It had been a bitter road.
Driven by angry need, by hatred, Nicholas thrust out his hand as he
thrust his own mind, like a hot dagger, into the mind of this man before
him, into the spaces between his thoughts, into the marrow of his soul.
He hungered to feel the slick heat of this other spirit slide into his
own, the hot rush of taking him while Jagang was still within the man's
mind.
But there was nothing there.
In that spark of time, Jagang has already slipped away.
The man crashed to the floor, dead.
Nicholas--Emperor Nicholas--smiled at the game only just begun. He was
beginning to wonder if he had set the price too low.
As they made their way up the street, Kahlan glanced to the small
windows in the surrounding buildings. In the gathering darkness, she doubted
that the faces she saw peering out of the windows could tell much about the
people they saw out in the street, but she pulled the hood of her cloak
forward anyway.
From the stories the men had told, it was not safe to be a woman in
Bandakar, so Kahlan, Jennsen, and Cara covered their identity to draw as
little attention as possible. Kahlan knew that people in fear for their own
lives sometimes tried to shift attention away from themselves by offering
another to the wolves. Worse, she also knew that there were bitter people
devoted to the morbid ideal of the perpetual cannibalism of appeasement that
they defined as peace.
Richard slowed and checked the alley as they passed. One hand gripped
the front of his simple black cloak so that, if need be, he could lift it
open and draw his sword.
Their men were spread out so as not to appear to be a mob moving
through Northwick. Any gathering of crowds of men, except in markets, would
no doubt be reported and swiftly draw the attention of the Imperial Order
soldiers. They had timed their entry into the city to be just as night fell
so as to better obscure them, yet not so late that their presence on the
streets would be suspicious. "There," Owen said as they reached the corner,
tilting his head to the right. "Down that way."
Richard looked back over his shoulder to make sure that everyone was
still with him, then turned down the narrow street. The buildings in the
city were mostly single-story, but they were entering a district where a
number had a second story, usually hanging several feet out over the street.
Kahlan saw nothing taller than the squat two-story buildings.
The area they had turned in to reeked with the stench of sewage in a
shallow ditch to the side. The dusty streets of Northwick kept making her
cough. She imagined that when it rained the place turned into a quagmire
that stank even worse. She saw that Richard made a great effort not to
cough. It wasn't always possible. At least, when he did, he wasn't coughing
up blood.
As they kept to the shadows in under the overhangs and eaves, Kahlan
moved up closer to him. Jennsen followed right behind. Anson, out ahead,
scouted their route, looking for all the world as though he were by himself.
Richard scanned the sky again. It was empty. They hadn't seen any
black-tipped races since before they started up the pass into Bandakar.
Kahlan and Cara were glad not to see the huge black birds. Richard, though,
seemed as troubled by not seeing them as he once was when he did.
Cara hung back a bit, along with a half-dozen men. Tom and some others
were moving up a parallel street. Yet other men, who knew where they were
headed, made their way through the city by a different route. Even though
there were less than fifty in their force, such numbers together could bring
attention and trouble.
For now, they didn't need trouble. They needed the antidote.
"Where is the city center?" Kahlan asked Owen when she got close enough
to be able to speak in a low voice.
Owen swept his arm around, indicating the street they were on. "This is
the place. These shops are where the major commerce is, where people come.
In the open squares the people sometimes set up markets."
Kahlan saw a leather shop, a bakery, a place that sold cloth, but
nothing more elaborate. "This is the center of your great city? These
post-and-beam buildings with living quarters over the shops? This is your
major business center?"
"Yes," Owen said, sounding half puzzled and half proud.
Kahlan let out a sigh, but didn't comment. Richard did.
"This is the result of your advanced culture?" He gestured around at
the shabby daub-and-wattle buildings. "In close to three thousand years this
is what your great culture has accomplished? This is what you have managed
to build?"
Owen smiled. "Yes. It is magnificent, is it not?"
Instead of answering the question, Richard said, "I thought you were in
Altur'Rang."
"I was."
"Well, even that dingy place was far more advanced than this city of
Northwick."
"It was? I am sorry, Lord Rahl, but I did not see much of Altur'Rang. I
was afraid to go far into such a place, and I did not stay for long." Owen
looked back at Kahlan. "Do you mean to say that the city where you are from
is more magnificent than this one?"
Kahlan blinked at the man. How could she possibly explain Aydin-dril,
the Wizard's Keep, the Confessors' Palace, the palaces on Kings Row, the
People's Palace, the marble and granite work, the soaring columns, the noble
works of art, or any of a hundred other places and sights to a man who
thought straw-and-dung buildings were an example of advanced culture? In the
end, she decided that this was not the time to try.
"Owen, I hope that when we are all free of the oppression of the
Imperial Order, Richard and I can show you and your people some other places
in the world outside of Bandakar--show you some other centers of major
commerce and art, some of what mankind elsewhere has accomplished."
Owen smiled. "I would like that, Mother Confessor. I would like it very
much." He stopped abruptly. "Oh, here is the place. It is down here."
A head-high wooden gate weathered to a brownish gray barred the
alleyway beyond from sight. Richard checked both ways up the street, looking
to see if anyone was watching. The street was empty of everyone but their
men. As he kept an eye to the street, he pushed the gate open enough to
allow Owen to slip through.
Owen poked his head back out. "Come, it is clear."
Richard gave a hand signal to the men up at the corner. He put his arm
around Kahlan's waist, holding her close as he squeezed with her through the
gate into the alley.
The walls of the buildings on either side that came to the edge of the
narrow, dusty alleyway had no windows. Some of the tightly packed structures
that weren't set so far back had room for small backyards. As they moved
cautiously up the alley, more of their men poured in through the gate at the