Before she had run three steps an arm hooked her around the middle. He yanked her back so violently that it drove the air from her in a whoosh. The soldier slammed her back against his leather armor. Jennsen gasped for breath.
Before he was able to corral her flailing arms, she drove her knife into his thigh. The tip hit bone and stuck. Cursing, he finally collected her arms, pinning them to her sides.
Tears of terror and frustration stung at her eyes. She was going to die here in the middle of a graveyard without ever seeing Tom again. At that moment, he was all that seemed important, all she wanted. He would never know what had happened to her. She would never be able to tell him one last time how much she loved him.
The soldier jerked the knife from his leg. She gasped back a sob at all that was lost to her, all that was lost to these people.
Before the men could tear her apart as she expected them to do, someone appeared with a lantern. It was a woman. She had something else in the same hand as the lantern. She came to a halt before Jennsen, scowling as she took charge of the situation.
“Be quiet,” the woman said to the man holding his bloody hand and still cursing.
“The bitch stabbed my hand!”
“And my leg!” the man holding her added.
The woman glanced to the bodies lying nearby. “Looks like you got off lucky.”
“I guess,” the man holding Jennsen finally grumbled, clearly uncomfortable under her implacable scrutiny. He handed the woman Jennsen’s knife.
“She cut my hand nearly in two!” the other interrupted, not yet content to submit to the woman’s indifference to their pain. “She must be made to pay!”
The woman turned a withering glare on him. “Your only purpose is to serve the ends of the Order. What good do you think you will be in that service if you are a cripple? Now, shut your mouth or I won’t even consider healing you.”
When he hung his head in mute agreement, the woman finally withdrew her glare and turned her attention to Jennsen. Holding the lantern up, she leaned in to get a better look at Jennsen’s face. Jennsen saw then that it was a book she was holding in the hand along with the lantern. She had probably stolen the book from the underground stash.
“Amazing,” she said, as if speaking to herself as she studied Jennsen’s eyes. “You’re right there in front of me, and yet my gift says you are not.”
Jennsen realized that the woman had to be a sorceress, probably one of Jagang’s Sisters. Jennsen could not be directly harmed by the powers of such a woman, or anyone with magic, but under the circumstances, that hardly meant that she wasn’t a threat. After all, she didn’t need magic to order the soldiers to put Jennsen to death.
The woman held out the knife, peering at what was on the handle. Her brow drew down as she grasped the significance of the ornate letter “R,” the symbol standing for the House of Rahl, engraved on the silver handle.
Her eyes turned up to Jennsen, this time filled with a kind of grim recognition. Unexpectedly, she dropped the knife. It stuck in the ground at her feet as she put the fingers of one hand to her forehead, wincing as if in pain. The silent soldiers shared troubled looks.
When she looked up again, the woman’s face had gone blank. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t Jennsen Rahl.” Her voice sounded different. It was deeper, and carried a threatening, masculine tone.
It was Jennsen’s turn to frown. “You know me?”
“Oh yes, darlin, I know you,” the woman said in a voice that had turned deep and husky. “Seems I recall you swearing to me that you would kill Richard Rahl.”
Jennsen understood, then. It was Emperor Jagang, seeing her through the eyes of this woman. Jagang was a dream walker. He could do such seemingly impossible things.
“And what of your promise?” the woman asked in a voice that wasn’t entirely her own. Her movements were puppetlike and appeared to be painful.
Jennsen didn’t know if she was talking to the woman or to Jagang. “I failed.”
The woman’s lip curled derisively. “You failed.”
“That’s right. I failed.”
“And what of Sebastian?”
Jennsen swallowed. “He died.”
“He died,” she said in a mocking tone. She took a step closer and cocked her head, peering with one angry eye. “And how did he die, darlin?”
“By his own hand.”
“And why would a man like Sebastian take his own life?”
Jennsen would have taken a step back had she not already been pressed up against the chest of a hulking soldier. “I guess it was his way of saying that he no longer wanted to be a strategist to the emperor of the Imperial Order. Maybe
he realized that his life had been wasted, that it had been for nothing.”
The woman glared but said nothing.
Jennsen saw then a soft gold glint off the book the woman was holding in the same hand as the lantern. Jennsen could just make out the title in faded, worn gold lettering.
It said
The Book of Counted Shadows.
Everyone turned at the sound of a commotion. Yet more men were dragging other captives closer. When they reached the light Jennsen’s heart sank. The big soldiers had Anson, Owen, and Owen’s wife, Marilee. All three were disheveled and bloody.
The woman bent and retrieved Jennsen’s knife at her feet.
“His Excellency has decided that he may have a use for these people,” the woman said as she straightened. She gestured with Jennsen’s knife. “Bring them along.”
Nicci paused and turned at the sound of her name called out from behind. It was Nathan. Ann followed close on his heels. For every one of Nathan’s long strides Ann had to take three just to keep up.
Their footsteps echoed off the golden-yellow and brown marble floor of the empty hallway. The rather simple hall was part of the private complex within the palace, used by the Lord Rahl, staff and officials, and, of course, Mord-Sith. It was a passageway of unadorned utility, making no pretense of grandeur.
In her modest gray dress buttoned to her throat, Ann looked about the same to Nicci as she had when Nicci had been a child. Short and compact, like a dense thundercloud scudding across the landscape, she always seemed about to throw off lightning. The woman had loomed as an imposing figure in Nicci’s mind from the time she’d first been sent to the Palace of the Prophets to become a young novice.
Annalina Aldurren had always been the kind of woman who could elicit a babbling confession with nothing more than a stony stare. She struck terror into novices, fear into young wizards, and trepidation into most of the Sisters. As
a novice, Nicci had suspected that the Creator Himself would walk on eggshells in the presence of the forbidding prelate, and mind his manners as well.
“We got the message that you’ve just arrived from the Keep,” the tall prophet said in a deep, powerful voice as he and Ann caught up with Nicci and Cara.
Considering that he was nearly a thousand years old, Nathan was still ruggedly handsome. He had Rahl features in common with Richard, including a hawklike brow. His eyes, though, were a beautiful azure color, while Richard’s were gray. Despite his age, the prophet had a vigorous, purposeful stride.
His age, like Nicci’s, was relevant only to those who at the time had lived outside the spell of the Palace of the Prophets. Those in the palace aged just like anyone else, but at a slower rate only when compared to those who lived outside the spell. Time had moved differently within the palace. Now that the palace, the home of the Sisters of the Light for thousands of years, had been destroyed, Nathan, Ann, Nicci, and all the others who had once called the place home would age at the same rate as everyone else.
Nicci remembered the prophet as always wearing robes when he’d lived as a captive in his apartments at the Palace of the Prophets. As a Sister of the Light, it had sometimes been required that she visit him in those apartments to write down anything he claimed to be prophecy. Nicci never really thought one way or the other about the task; it was just one of many required of her. There were Sisters, though, who would not go down into Nathan’s apartments alone.
Now he was in brown trousers and a ruffled white shirt under a dark green vest. The hem of his maroon cape hovered just above the floor, swirling around his black boots after he came to a halt. Dressed as he now was, he cut an imposing figure.
Nicci couldn’t imagine why, but at his hip he wore a
sword sheathed in an elegant scabbard. Wizards hardly needed swords. Being the only prophet those at the palace had known of in recent centuries, he had always been an unfathomable character.
Many of the Sisters at the palace used to believe that Nathan was crazy. Many feared him. It wasn’t so much that Nathan gave them cause for their fear as it was that their imagination provided colorful terrors that the mere sight of him somehow seemed to confirm. Nicci didn’t know if very many of the Sisters now thought any differently, but she did know that a number of them were greatly worried because he was no longer locked up behind powerful shields. While a few thought he was rather harmless, if a little odd, most of the Sisters considered him to be the most dangerous man alive. Nicci had come to see him differently.
Moreover, he was now the Lord Rahl, standing in for Richard.
“Where is Verna?” Nicci asked. “I need to talk with her as well.”
Coming to a halt beside Nathan, Ann tipped her head back toward the empty hallway. “She and Adie are off meeting with General Trimack about security issues. Since it’s getting late I told Berdine to let them both know that you and Cara just arrived from the Keep and that we will all shortly meet them in the private dining room.”
Nicci nodded. “That sounds like a good idea.”
“In the meantime,” Nathan pressed, “what news is there?”
Nicci was still disoriented from traveling in the sliph. It was a distracting experience in which time seemed to lose all meaning. On top of that, being in the People’s Palace only added to her discomfort. The entire palace existed within a spell that amplified the power of the Lord Rahl. At the same time, the spell diminished the power of every other gifted person. Nicci wasn’t used to the feeling. It made her restless and uneasy.
Being in the sliph also reminded her of Richard. She supposed that everything made her think of Richard. It seemed that her nerves were always on edge with worry for him.
It took a moment for Nicci to focus her mind on the question as she struggled to put thoughts of Richard aside. As improbable as it seemed, this man, not Richard, was now the Lord Rahl. Ann, the former prelate, his former jailer, stood beside him waiting to hear the answer to his question.
“I’m afraid that the news is not very good,” Nicci admitted.
“You mean about Richard?” Ann asked.
Nicci shook her head. “We’ve had no news about him, yet.”
Nathan’s brow took on an even more suspicious slant. “Then what news are you talking about?”
Nicci took a deep breath. It still felt strange breathing air after being in the sliph. Despite having traveled in the strange creature before, she didn’t think she would ever get used to breathing into her lungs the liquid silver essence that was the sliph.
Mentally gathering her thoughts, she gazed out over the short section of balcony railing. The particular portion of the hallway that they were in bridged a complex of expansive halls below. Overhead, out through the opening with the balcony, late-day light flooded into the palace through skylights above. The short balcony, between rather dark runs of the hallway beyond in either direction, was almost like a window looking out into the People’s Palace. Nicci imagined that, being a rather small opening, it was probably meant to allow a covert place to watch the halls below.
Now, far below, people filling the various passageways hurried in every direction. Their movements looked purposeful. Nearly all of the benches were empty. Nicci didn’t see people gathered in casual conversation the way they
had in the past. This was a time of war; the People’s Palace was under siege. Worry was everyone’s constant companion. Guards patrolled, watching not just every person, but every shadow.
Trying to decide how to sum up the troubling news, Nicci ran her fingers through her hair, sweeping it back away from her face. “Remember Richard telling us about how the taint left by the chimes having been in the world of life was causing magic to fail?”
Ann flicked her hand in a dismissive gesture as she heaved a sigh, apparently annoyed to revisit an old topic. “We remember. But I hardly think that it’s our most pressing problem.”
“Maybe not,” Nicci said, “but it has begun to cause some very real trouble.”
Nathan lifted a hand, the backs of his fingers touching Ann’s shoulder, as if to implore her to let him handle the matter. “How so?”
“We’ve been forced to abandon the Wizard’s Keep,” Nicci told him. “For the time being, at least.”
Nathan’s eyebrows lifted. As he tilted his head toward her some of his long white hair fell forward over his broad shoulders. “Why? What happened?”
Nicci smoothed the black dress at her hips. “The magic of the Keep is beginning to fail.”
“How do you know?” Ann demanded.
“The witch woman, Six, got into the Keep,” Nicci said. “The alarms failed to warn us. A number of the shields are down. She was able to go where she pleased within the Keep without the shields stopping her.”
Ann poked a loose strand of gray hair back into the knot of hair at the back of her head as she considered Nicci’s words.
“That isn’t necessarily convincing evidence that the magic of the Keep is failing,” she finally said, “or even that
magic is tainted by the chimes and failing. It’s difficult telling just how talented a woman like Six is liable to be. Just because there is some sort of problem with the Keep there is no way to know its cause, much less know that the chimes are the cause. With a place as complicated as the Keep it’s difficult to really know if it really is all that serious. It could simply be a temporary—”
“Blood is coming out of the stone walls of the Keep,” Nicci said in a tone that made it clear she didn’t want to debate it. She didn’t appreciate being treated like a novice frightened by shadows on her first night away from home. She needed to get on to other matters. “It’s worse down in the lower areas, in the foundation.”
Ann and Nathan both straightened.
Ann opened her mouth to say something, but Cara spoke first, apparently as disinterested in having to argue the point as Nicci. “The blood oozing out of the stone in various places all over the Keep is all human blood.”
Again, both the prophet and the former prelate went mute with surprise.
“Well now,” Nathan finally said as he scratched under his jaw with one finger, “that certainly is serious.” He gestured up the hall. “Where are you headed?”
“Cara and I need to go out to see how Jagang’s ramp is progressing. I also want to have a look at the Order’s army and see if I can tell how they’re doing. I’m hoping that Richard’s plan will work, that the D’Haran troops sent to the Old World will be able to cut the supply lines. If they succeed, Jagang is going to have a problem. If all those men down there can’t be supplied, they can’t sit there all winter. They’ll starve. I think it may turn out to be a race between the ramp and their supplies running out.”
Nathan nodded as he stepped past Nicci and Cara. “Come on, then. We’ll go with you and you can tell us about your encounter with this witch woman.”
Nicci stood her ground, not following after the prophet. “She took the box of Orden.”
Nathan turned back and stared at her. “What?”
“She stole the box of Orden we had. The one that the witch woman’s companion, Samuel, stole from Sister Tovi and that Rachel had then managed to get ahold of and bring to us. We thought it was safe in the Keep. Turns out it wasn’t.”
“It’s gone?” Ann seized Nicci’s sleeve. “Do you have any idea where she went with it?”
“I’m afraid not,” Nicci said. “I’m hoping that you two can give us some clues about the witch woman. We need to find her. Anything you can tell me about her, no matter how insignificant it seems, might be of help. We need to get that box back.”
“At least Nicci was able to put the power of Orden in play before the box was taken,” Cara said.
Nathan and Ann could not have looked more stunned.
“She did what?” Nathan whispered, seemingly unable to stop staring at Cara, as if hoping he might have heard her wrong or, if he hadn’t, that she might think better of what she’d said and recant the claim.
“Nicci put the power of Orden in play,” Cara said.
Nicci thought that the Mord-Sith sounded a bit proud of the accomplishment, proud of Nicci.
“Are you out of your mind!” Ann roared as she rounded on Nicci, her face going scarlet. “You named yourself a player for the power of Orden!”
“No, that’s not at all what happened,” Cara said, once more drawing the attention of the prophet and the former prelate. “She named Richard the player.”
Cara smiled just the slightest bit, as if pleased to prove that Nicci was better than Nathan and Ann seemed to think. For their part, Nathan and Ann stood thunderstruck.
While it had indeed been quite an accomplishment,
Nicci didn’t feel any pride for having done such a thing—she had been driven to it out of desperation.
Standing there in the hallway in the vast complex of the People’s Palace, acutely aware of the interlocking layers of problems they faced, Nicci suddenly felt overwhelmingly weary, and it wasn’t from her power being drained by the spell around the People’s Palace. Besides the recent events, exhaustion was beginning to take its toll. There was so much to do and so little time.
Worse, only she had the necessary knowledge or ability to deal with many of the problems they faced. Who but she had a chance to teach Richard about the use of Subtractive Magic that was necessary to open the boxes of Orden? There was no one else. Nicci felt the terrible weight of that responsibility.
There were moments when the enormity of the battles facing them stood out for her in stark clarity. Sometimes when that happened Nicci’s courage wavered. She sometimes feared that she was deluding herself that they could actually solve the monumental problems they faced.
She remembered how, as a little girl, her mother had forced her to go out with bread to feed the poor and, later, how Brother Narev of the Fellowship of Order had shamed her into working tirelessly to serve the endless needs of people. No matter how much effort she put into solving the problems of all those who were needy, their problems only seemed to grow, outpacing her ability to satisfy them, binding her ever tighter in slavery to the growing ranks of those in need. She was taught that, because she had the ability, it was her duty to ignore her own wants and needs and to sacrifice her life to the wants and needs of others. Their inability, or unwillingness to try, made them her masters.
In those moments when she thought their present problems were insurmountable, she felt again the way she had as a child, like a slave to the problems. In those dark
moments of self-doubt she wondered if she could ever really shed the mantle Jagang himself had laid around her shoulders when he named her the Slave Queen. He’d had no idea how apt the title really was.
In a way, that was how she sometimes felt in this struggle. While she knew that this cause was right, it still seemed hopeless to think that they could win when they were up against so many who sought to crush them.
Sometimes, in the face of the seemingly insurmountable, Nicci wanted nothing so much as to sit down and give up. In private moments in the past, Richard had confessed to having the same self-doubts as she felt, and yet she’d seen how he still forged ahead. Whenever Nicci felt discouraged, she thought of Richard, of how relentless he was, and she once again made herself get to her feet if for no other reason than to make him proud of her.