The gaze of Jagang’s completely black eyes was fixed on Richard as the emperor marched down the path between the trees, past beds of long-dead flowers and past the short vine-covered walls. His royal guards were spread out behind, pouring through the shrubs as they established a defensive perimeter.
Jagang wore a condescending smile as he passed the sorcerer’s sand and crossed the sweep of lawn.
His hate defined him.
The Sisters set the three inky black boxes on the broad granite slab that was supported by two short, fluted pedestals. Sister Ulicia ignored the people in the garden. Focused on the job at hand, she only glanced briefly at Richard before setting the book on the granite altar in front of the boxes. Without delay, she cast a hand out, igniting a fire in the pit, adding to the light given off by the torches.
Night was falling. The new moon was rising. Darkness was coming, darkness beyond what anyone living had ever experienced. Richard knew that darkness. He had been there.
Jagang strode right up to stand close in front of Richard, as if challenging him to a fight. Richard stood his ground.
“Glad you came to your senses.” His gaze slid to Kahlan. He regarded her with a lecherous look. “And I’m glad you brought me your woman. I’ll deal with her later.” He looked back into Richard’s eyes. “I’m sure you aren’t going to like what I have in mind.”
Richard returned a glare but said nothing. There was nothing to say, really.
Jagang, for all his intimidating presence, his completely black eyes, his shaved head, the way he displayed his muscles as well as his plundered jewels, looked more than tired. He looked frazzled. Richard knew that the emperor was having nightmares and even more than that, haunting dreams about Nicci. Richard knew because they were nightmares and dreams that Richard had given him, through Jillian, the priestess of the bones, the dreamcaster who was descended from the same people as Jagang.
The emperor stormed over to where Sister Ulicia stood waiting before the sorcerer’s sand. “What are you waiting for? Get started. The sooner this is finished the sooner we can get on with finishing all resistance to the rule of the Order.”
“Now I understand,” Kahlan, standing close beside him, whispered to herself as if she, too, had had her own revelation. “Now I see who he wants to hurt through me, and why it would be so terrible.”
She looked up into Richard’s eyes with a countenance of sudden comprehension.
Richard couldn’t afford to be distracted right then. He returned his attention to the Sisters. He still had a few things he needed to reason out. He needed to make sure it all made sense, or else they would all die—by his hand.
Several Sisters knelt before the sorcerer’s sand, smoothing it out in preparation. By the way they were working as
a team, Richard figured that they had already studied the original of
The Book of Counted Shadows
in preparation and had all the procedures and enchantments memorized.
He was surprised to see them all starting to draw the required elements. He recognized them from
The Book of Counted Shadows
that he’d memorized as a young man. He had expected Sister Ulicia, the one who had put the boxes in play, to be the one to draw those elements, but as they worked, Sister Ulicia instead went from one symbol to the next, finishing the final part that completed it. Richard realized that it made sense; it was only necessary that the elements be done, and this saved a great deal of time. Since Sister Ulicia was the one finishing each element, Richard guessed that the book had some requirement that the player be involved, probably requiring that they be the one to complete the spell-forms.
She was the one invoking Orden. She was the player. Jagang, though, possessed her mind and thus ultimately would control Orden.
Richard remembered well how long it had taken Darken Rahl to run through all the procedures. The way they were doing it the Sisters were not going to take anywhere near that long. By working together they were able to divide the work into simpler components.
Jagang paced back to Richard. “Where’s Nicci?” he growled as his black eyes glared.
Richard had been wondering how long it would be before he asked that question. It was even sooner than Richard expected.
“She is being held for you, as promised.”
Jagang’s heated expression turned to a grin. “Too bad you don’t really know how to play Ja’La dh Jin.”
“I beat you.”
Jagang’s grin only widened. “Not in the end.”
As the emperor went back to his impatient pacing, Sister
Ulicia directed the elements from the book, reading pertinent parts when necessary. Richard understood the things they were drawing. Parts were the dance with death. When Darken Rahl had first drawn them they had seemed so mysterious, but now the language of them all made sense.
Jagang was looking more and more edgy by the moment.
Richard knew why.
“Ulicia,” the emperor finally said, “I’m going to go get Nicci. There is no reason for me to stand here while you work. I can watch this through your eyes just as well.”
Sister Ulicia bowed her head. “Yes, Excellency.”
Jagang turned his glare on Richard. “Where is she?”
Richard gestured to one of the officers of the First File standing not far away, the man Richard had ready for this purpose. There were only a few of the First File present, all having waited with Richard for the Imperial Order to arrive. They were there to guard him until the bitter end.
“Take the emperor down to Nicci’s cell,” Richard told the officer.
The man saluted with a fist to his heart. Before leading Jagang away, the contented-looking emperor turned back to Richard.
“Looks like you lose at the final turn at Ja’La dh Jin this time as well.”
Richard wanted to say that the time had not run out and the game was not yet over, but instead he simply watched the man leaving as he waited for the nightmare to begin in earnest.
Kahlan stood silently at his side. The way she glanced up at him made him uneasy.
Zedd and Nathan looked lost in their own thoughts. Verna looked angry and bitter that it had come to this. Richard couldn’t blame her. Cara, standing beside Benjamin, took hold of his hand. Along with the rest of his party, Jagang had brought Jennsen into the Garden of Life. The royal
guards kept her on the other side of the room. Tom’s gaze was fixed on her. She stared back at him, unable to say all the things she obviously wanted to say.
Cara inched closer. “What ever happens now, Lord Rahl, I’m with you until my last breath.”
Richard returned a smile of appreciation.
Zedd, not far away, nodded his agreement with Cara’s sentiment. Benjamin lightly clapped his fist to his heart. Even Verna finally smiled and gave him a single nod. They were all with him.
Kahlan, close at his side, whispered, “Would it be all right if you just held my hand?”
Richard could not imagine how alone she must feel at that moment. With a heavy heart that he couldn’t say anything, he took her hand.
Nicci sat in the near darkness on the bench carved out of the same stone as the walls. The outer room, a second layer of protection guarding the room hollowed out of solid rock, was shielded. The only way in or out was through the double set of iron doors with the shielded room between them. This was where the most dangerous of prisoners were held, prisoners who could command magic.
There was no telling how many people had sat in this very room as they awaited their appointment with death, or worse.
Nicci could hear footsteps in the outer passageway beyond the two iron doors. Someone was coming.
She had known that it was only a matter of time until he came.
Nicci was in a state of utter calm. She knew why she was there. She knew why Richard had told Nathan to have her locked in this cell.
She heard the lock in the outer door clang open, the metallic sound echoing through the network of low corridors. She could hear someone grunting as they tugged in a series of muscular pulls, forcing the door bound up on rusty hinges to open enough to get through. When she saw
shadows through the small opening in the door to her inner cell, Nicci blew out the flame on the lamp beside her on the stone bench that was the room’s bed and only furnishing.
A key scraped and then the lock to her cell sprang open. After being in complete silence for so long, she found the strident sound exceptionally loud. As the door grated open the light from a lantern flooded in. Dust from the rusty door floated up in that harsh yellow light.
Emperor Jagang ducked down as he stepped over the high sill to squeeze in through the doorway. Nicci stood.
He was wearing his sleeveless vest so as to display his muscular bulk. His shaved head reflected the single flame of the lantern he’d brought. His black eyes looked entirely at home in the depths of the dark hole in the rock. Those black eyes gleamed as he took in the sight of her. She had made sure to loosen the top of her dress so that he would have something to catch his attention. It worked.
“I’ve been dreaming of you, darlin,” he said as if he thought it would impress her.
He always had believed that his lust proved something to her, as if his lack of civility or restraint only demonstrated how overwhelmingly appealing she was to him. To Nicci it only served to prove that he was an unprincipled savage.
Nicci stood tall, saying nothing, refusing to shy away as Jagang moved in close. He circled his muscular arm around her waist, pulling her tight against his powerful bulk, demonstrating his command of her, his virility, his unchallenged authority.
Nicci had no desire to drag it out.
She casually reached her arms up around him and snapped the Rada’Han closed around his bull neck.
He staggered back a step in confusion.
She knew that he would feel the power of the collar piercing into every fiber of his being.
“What have you done?” he asked in a tone of anger bor
dering on a kind of horror she had never heard out of him before.
She had no desire to discuss the matter, so she simply exerted her control through the collar to prevent him from talking. If she knew Jagang, and she did, then Sister Ulicia would be up in the Garden of Life working to open the right box of Orden. She didn’t want Ulicia to realize what had just happened.
Jagang would have been impatient to get at Nicci. The nightmares Richard had sent had plagued him, but the dreams Richard had given him of Nicci had turned his obsession for her into a passion, a mania, that had slowly grown to the point where it was nearly intolerable. Jagang had always desired her, but after the dreams Richard had crafted, Jagang could think of little else but possessing her.
He had even been willing to leave Sister Ulicia to her work to come down to the dungeon and personally recover her.
It was a small gift Richard had given her. When Nathan had locked her in the cell, he had explained, from behind the shields that protected his words from the ears of any spies, that Richard had devised the scheme as his last gift for Nicci. Richard knew that they would have to surrender the palace. He knew that they were all going to die. The one thing he could give Nicci was Jagang.
The Rada’Han had been in the cell. It was the collar that Ann had left there when she had been imprisoned by Nathan for a time. That was what had been so important that Ann had been trying to tell Nicci before she had been killed.
Nathan had known that the Rada’Han was in the cell, behind the shields of the room. Richard wanted Nicci to have it, and to have a way to bring final justice to Jagang the Just.
Richard had no illusions that it defeated the Imperial Order. The corrupt beliefs of the Order tainted the minds of
millions. Jagang was not its architect. That communal hatred would burn on without one man.
Nicci understood that as well. She had grown up with the teachings of the Order. She knew how they attempted to perform the alchemy turning suffering into virtue, wrongdoing into righteousness, death into salvation.
Such beliefs were born in man’s willful refusal to use his mind, in his lust for the unearned, his wish for success without effort. Such beliefs were the embodiment of hatred for all that was good, a hatred for virtue, hatred for value. It was ultimately a hatred of themselves, of life, of existence. It was that hate, that dedication to death, that was the true manifestation of evil.
Killing Jagang would not cure mankind of such irrational zealotry. The beliefs of the Order were not driven by one man. The Order would go on without Jagang.
Nor would killing Jagang stop those who had put the boxes of Orden in play, or the Chainfire spell, or the taint from the chimes, or the vast army who lay in wait, surrounding the palace, so eager for blood and plunder. This would not change any of that.
But Richard had wanted to give her the last gift of being able to see this small bit of justice done before her own life was snuffed out, along with the rest of them, by the Sisters invoking the power of Orden in service to the army devoted to the beliefs of the Fellowship of Order.
It was Richard’s only way to thank her for all she had done, to allow her this one small bit of final salvation from the man who had so terribly abused her.
Nicci stepped over the high sill. Her prisoner, unable to protest, followed. While her gift was limited within the People’s Palace, it was enough to easily use the unique nature of the Rada’Han. She could have dropped Jagang to the ground in overwhelming agony, but she used only the
power necessary to overcome his unwillingness to follow her silent directives.
Outside the second door several officers of the First File, men who had brought Jagang down to his caged prize, waited. The passageway was so low and cramped that the men had to hunch under the low ceiling and stand in a line because they wouldn’t fit side by side.
They were shocked to see Nicci now in command of the emperor.
A big man in a uniform, the captain of the prison guards, was there with them. The man had been kind to her, offering to bring her anything she wanted. She now had what she wanted.
“Captain Lerner,” she said, “if you would be so kind as to show us out of this maze?”
He gazed at the muscular man behind her in a collar and then smiled at her. “I would be only too happy to do so.”
Once up into the immense halls of the palace, Nicci made Jagang lead the way. She followed close behind him, making sure that he kept going, that he talked to no one, that he acknowledged no one. He tried mightily to overcome the power of the collar. It was ridiculously easy for Nicci to overwhelm all of his resistance, all of his might and fury. He was as helpless as a puppet.
Throughout the palace, men of the Imperial Order bowed to him as he passed. Nicci didn’t allow Jagang to acknowledge them. The men of the Order were used to his superior arrogance, his indifference to them, so they thought nothing of seeing him march past without so much as a look.
There was no easy way to get to the Garden of Life. The entire palace was laid out in the form of a power spell, designed to enhance the gift of the Lord Rahl and interfere with the gift of any other. To get anywhere, one had to
navigate hallways that were really elements of the spell-form. The major lines of the form were the vast corridors. The subordinate elements were formed by smaller halls.
The entire palace was a maze of corridors with columns and halls guarded by rows of statues. Much of the interior of the palace was done in stone beautifully crafted in extravagant designs. The whole palace, while being a spell-form, was also a city, with streets made of the spell’s corridors and halls.
But getting anywhere required maneuvering through the complex lines of that spell-form. That made getting anywhere time-consuming. The journey from the dungeons up to the Garden of Life was a long one. As they made their way past places with skylights, Nicci saw that the sky was just beginning to take on a hint of blue.
By the time they reached the garden level of the palace, the sun was just up. The first warm rays coming in through the east windows were touching the white marble on the opposite walls.
Nicci’s intention was to go into the garden with Jagang to see Richard one last time. She had found out from brief questions that Richard had somehow made it back. Jagang didn’t know how. Nicci supposed that it didn’t really matter, now. He was back, and she wanted to see him one last time before the end. She wanted to let him see Jagang so that he would know that at least the emperor would not enjoy the terrible fruit of the long war he had carried into the new world. After all he had done, Richard deserved at least to know of that small victory.
When they went through the double doors into the Garden of Life, Nicci could see between the trees that the sun was just touching the altar. Half a dozen Sisters were gathered around Sister Ulicia. She was standing before the boxes.
Even as the boxes were bathed in the sunlight, it looked
like they were black voids in the world. The sunlight did nothing to illuminate the boxes. They, instead, looked like they were pulling that sunlight in, taking it down to where it would never be seen again.
Jagang struggled mightily to move closer, to fight off the control of the collar, but he couldn’t. Nicci kept him in place, in the back, where his guards thought he was merely watching and didn’t want to be disturbed.
Nicci knew that she could end Jagang’s life in an instant. When the time came, she would. No one had any chance to rescue their emperor, even if they had known that he was in mortal trouble. He was hers now.
Nicci could see Richard in his magnificent war wizard’s outfit. The sight of him made her heart ache.
Kahlan stood quietly beside him. If Richard had preserved the sterile field in order to have a chance to counter Chainfire, she wouldn’t even know his true feelings for her. Now it looked like Richard would never get that chance, and she would die without ever knowing the truth.
Richard spotted Nicci. He saw Jagang beside her and understood that she had succeeded in using the gift he had given her. He gave her a small, private smile.
Sister Ulicia tapped the box on the right. “This one.”
The other Sisters were beaming at their success. They would now be able to deliver the power of Orden to the emperor. They didn’t know that he would never be able to celebrate their victory.
Sister Ulicia lifted the lid on the box on the right. Golden light flowed from within, almost as if it were liquid. It enveloped the Sisters standing before the stone altar.
They all smiled with exhilaration at what they had accomplished, even if it was to be put into service of the Imperial Order, and not themselves. Of course, they would put it to that service without even realizing that Jagang was no longer controlling their minds.
If Nicci made them aware of that, though, then the Sisters would use the gateway to free the Keeper of the underworld. Nicci’s choice was to allow them to give the world over to the Order, or to the Keeper.
She knew that was no real choice. At least life under the Imperial Order would be life. If Sisters of the Dark were allowed to do as they would prefer, there would be no real life.
Nicci did not want to live to see what was going to come of the new world brought into being by hate.
She supposed that she would not have to worry about it. She expected that she had mere moments to live.
But Jagang would die before she did. She would make sure of that.
Justice would finally visit Jagang the Just.
The one thing Nicci couldn’t understand was why Richard was smiling.