“It can’t be,” Sister Cecilia whispered as she wrung her hands. She leaned toward Sister Ulicia, her eyes darting about. “It’s impossible.” Her familiar, incessant but meaningless smile was nowhere in evidence.
“Something’s gone wrong….” Sister Armina’s voice trailed off when her sky blue eyes glanced Sister Ulicia’s way.
“It’s nothing more than an anomaly,” Sister Ulicia growled under her breath as she leveled a dangerous look at the two of them. Never ones to be servile, the two nonetheless showed no evidence of wanting to argue with their stormy leader.
In three strong strides Sister Ulicia closed the distance to Orlan. She seized the collar of his nightshirt in her fist. With her other hand she swished her oak rod in the direction of Kahlan, standing in the shadows back near the door.
“What does she look like?”
“Like a drowned cat,” Orlan said in ill humor, obviously not liking her hand on his collar.
Kahlan knew without doubt that using such a tone of voice with Sister Ulicia was the wrong thing to do, but the Sister, instead of exploding in a rage, seemed to be just as astonished as Kahlan.
“I know that, but what does she look like? Tell me what you see.”
Orlan straightened, pulling his collar away from her grip. His features drew tight as he appraised the stranger only he and the Sisters saw standing in the weak light of the lanterns.
“Thick hair. Green eyes. A very attractive woman. She’d look a lot better if she were dried out, although those wet things on her do tend to show off what she’s made of.” He began to smile in a way that Kahlan didn’t like one bit, even if she was overjoyed that he really saw her. “Mighty fine figure on her,” he added, more to himself than the Sister.
His slow and deliberate evaluation made Kahlan feel naked. As his gaze roamed over her, he wiped the corner of his mouth with a thumb. She
could hear it rasp against his stubble. One of the sticks of wood in the hearth caught flame, brightening the room in its flickering glow, letting him see even more. His gaze wandered upward, and then caught on something.
“Her hair is as long as…”
Orlan’s bawdy smile evaporated.
He blinked in surprise. His eyes widened. “Dear spirits,” he whispered as his face went ashen. He dropped to a knee. “Forgive me,” he said, addressing Kahlan. “I didn’t recognize—”
The room rang with a crack as Sister Ulicia whacked him across the top of the head with her oak rod, dropping him to both knees.
“Silence!”
“What’s the matter with you!” the man’s wife cried out as she rushed to her husband’s side. She squatted, putting an arm around his shoulders to steady him as he groaned and put a big hand over the bloody wound on the top of his bowed head. His sandy-colored hair turned dark and wet under his fingers.
“Are all of you crazy!” She cradled her husband’s head to her breast, where a red stain grew against her nightdress. He appeared stunned senseless. “Unless you travel in the company of a spirit, there are only three of you! How dare you—”
“Silence,” Sister Ulicia growled in a way that gave Kahlan an icy shiver and made the woman’s mouth snap closed.
Rain pattered against the window while in the distance a slow rumble of thunder rolled through the forested hills. Kahlan could hear the sign squeaking as it swung to and fro each time the wind gusted. Inside the house it had gone dead silent. Sister Ulicia looked over at the girl, now at the bottom of the steps, where she stood gripping the simple, square, wooden newel post.
Sister Ulicia fixed the girl in a glare that only a sorceress in a vile mood could marshal. “How many visitors do you see?”
The girl stood wide-eyed, too frightened to speak.
“How many?” Sister Ulicia asked again, this time through gritted teeth in a voice so threatening that it made the girl’s grip on the newel post tighten until her fingers stood out white and bloodless against the dark wood.
The girl finally answered in a meek voice. “Three.”
Sister Armina, looking like bottled thunder, leaned close. “Ulicia, what’s going on? This isn’t supposed to be possible. Not possible at all. We cast the verification webs.”
“Exterior,” Sister Cecilia corrected.
Sister Armina blinked at the older woman. “What?”
“We only cast exterior verification webs. We didn’t do an interior review.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Sister Armina snapped. “In the first place it isn’t necessary and in the second place who would be fool enough to be the one to do an aspect analysis of a verification web from an interior perspective! No one ever does such a thing! It isn’t necessary!”
“I’m only saying—”
With a withering look, Sister Ulicia silenced them both. Sister Cecilia, her wet curls plastered to her scalp, looked like she was about to finish her complaint, but then decided instead to remain mute.
Orlan seemed to recover his senses as he pulled away from his wife’s embrace and began to stagger to his feet. Blood ran down his forehead and to either side of his broad nose.
“Were I you, innkeeper,” Sister Ulicia said, turning her attention back to him, “I’d remain on my knees.”
The menace in her voice gave him pause for only a moment. He was clearly angry as he rose up to his full height, letting his bloody hand drop away from his head. His back straightened, his chest expanded, and his fists tightened. Kahlan could clearly tell that his temper was outpacing his sense of caution.
Sister Ulicia indicated with her rod that she wanted Kahlan to back away. Kahlan, ignoring the direction, instead stepped closer to Sister Ulicia, hoping to change the rush of events before it ended up being too late.
“Please, Sister Ulicia, he will answer your questions—I know he will. Let him be.”
The three Sisters turned unpleasantly surprised looks on Kahlan. She had not been spoken to, or asked to speak. Such insolence would cost her dearly, she knew, but she also knew what was liable to happen to the man if something didn’t change, and right then it seemed to her that she was the only one who could effect a change.
Besides, Kahlan knew that this was her only chance to find out something about herself—to perhaps find out who she really was and maybe even why she could remember only the most recent parts of her life. This
man had clearly recognized her. He very well might be the key that could unlock her lost past. She dared not let the chance slip away—even if she had to risk the Sisters’ wrath.
Before the Sisters had a chance to say anything, Kahlan addressed the man. “Please, Master Orlan, listen for a moment. We’re looking for an older woman named Tovi. She was to meet these women here. We were delayed, so she should already be here, waiting for us. Please, answer their questions about their friend. This could all be quickly resolved if you would hurry upstairs and get Tovi for them. Then, like this passing storm, we will all soon be out of your lives.”
The man reverently dipped his head, as if a queen had asked his help. Kahlan was not only surprised, but completely bewildered by such an act of deference.
“But we have no guest named Tovi here, Mot—”
The room lit with a blinding flash—lightning that was the match of anything out in the raging storm. The twisting rope of liquid heat and light that ignited from between Sister Ulicia’s hands blasted across Orlan’s chest before he could finish the appellation he had been about to use. The jarring concussion from being so close to the explosive detonation of such thunderous power hammered deep into the core of Kahlan’s chest. The impact threw Orlan back, sending him crashing through a table and both benches, slamming him against the wall. The deadly contact with such power had nearly cut the man in half. Smoke curled up from what was left of his shirt. A glistening red splatter of gore marked the wall where he’d hit before slumping to the ground.
In the aftermath of the deafening blast, Kahlan’s ears rang in what seemed the sudden silence.
Emmy, her eyes wide with the shock of an event that had in an instant forever altered the course of her life, wailed the single word “No!”
Kahlan pressed a hand over her mouth and nose, not just in revulsion, but to mask the smell of blood and the stench of burned flesh. The lantern that had been on the table had been thrown to the floor and extinguished, leaving the room mostly to the wavering shadows cast by the fire in the hearth and the sporadic flashes of lightning coming in the slender windows.
Had it not been a night already filled with thunder and lightning, such a blast would surely have awakened the entire town.
The wooden bowls Emmy had been holding clattered down onto the
floor and rolled drunkenly away. She screamed in horror and ran toward her husband.
Sister Ulicia came unhinged. In a fury she intercepted Emmy before she could reach her dead husband.
Sister Ulicia slammed the woman against the wall. “Where’s Tovi! I want answers and I want them right now!”
Kahlan saw that the Sister had brought her dacra to hand. The simple weapon looked like nothing more than a knife handle with a sharpened metal rod in place of a blade. All three Sisters carried a dacra. Kahlan had seen them use the weapons when they had encountered Imperial Order scouts. She knew that once the dacra had pierced a victim, no matter how minor the penetration, it took only a thought on the Sister’s part to kill. With the dacra it was not the wound itself that killed, but rather the Sister who, through the dacra, extinguished the spark of life. If the Sister didn’t withdraw the weapon, along with her intent to kill, there was no defense, and no chance of salvation.
A confusing, faltering flash of lightning lit the room through the narrow windows beside the door, throwing long spikes of shadows across the floor and against the walls as two Sisters together snatched the panicked woman, struggling to control her. As the fit of lighting ended and a dark pall again descended over the room, the third Sister raced up the stairwell.
Kahlan went for the girl.
As she ran toward her mother, Kahlan intercepted the girl, hooking her around her middle, holding her back. Her eyes went wide in panic, her mind unable to maintain the memory of seeing Kahlan even long enough for her to be aware of who or what had grabbed her—seemingly out of thin air. Far worse, though, she had just seen her father killed. Kahlan knew that the girl would never be able to forget such a terrible sight.
Over the steady drumbeat of rain and wind, Kahlan heard the footfalls of the Sister upstairs as she rushed down the hallway. She paused intermittently, stopping at each room to throw open a door. Any guests who had been awakened by the commotion and shouting, and dared to come out of their room into the dark hall, were about to face a Sister of the Dark on a rampage. Those still asleep behind their doors would face no less.
Emmy cried out in pain. Kahlan knew why.
“Where is she!” Sister Ulicia yelled at the woman. “Where’s Tovi!”
Emmy screamed, begging that her daughter not be harmed.
Kahlan knew that it was a grave tactical mistake to betray to an enemy what you feared most.
In this case, however, she supposed that such information was irrelevant; not only was it pretty obvious what a mother would fear, but the Sisters needed no such leverage. Seeing her mother in a state of unbridled terror was only serving to frighten the child all that much more. She struggled mightily. Despite her frantic effort, such a slender girl was no match for Kahlan.
Holding the girl tightly, Kahlan pulled her back through the doorway beside the stairs and into the darkened room beyond. In the flashes of lightning coming through a window at the rear, Kahlan saw that it was a kitchen and storage area for supplies.
The girl cried in wild panic that was the match of her mother’s.
“It’s all right,” Kahlan whispered in the girl’s ear as she held her tight, trying to calm her. “I’ll protect you. It’s all right.”
Kahlan knew that it was a lie, but her heart would not allow the truth.
The slender slip of a girl pawed at Kahlan’s arms. It must have seemed to her as if she were being held by a spirit clutching at her from the underworld. If she even saw Kahlan, Kahlan knew that the girl would forget her before her mind could transform perception into cognition. Likewise, Kahlan’s words of comfort would evaporate from the girl’s mind before they had a chance to even begin to be comprehended. Within an instant after seeing her, no one ever remembered that Kahlan existed.
Except Orlan. And now he was dead.
Kahlan hugged the terrified girl tight. She didn’t know if it wasn’t really more for her own sake than the girl’s. At that moment, keeping the girl away from the terror of what was befalling her parents was all Kahlan could do. The girl, for her part, writhed madly in Kahlan’s arms, trying to twist away, as if she were being held by a monster intent on bloody murder. Kahlan hated adding to her terror, but letting her go out into the other room would be worse.
Lightning flashed again, making Kahlan glance to the window. The window was large enough for her to get through. It was dark outside, and the dense forest lay tight up to the buildings. She had long legs. She was strong and quick. She knew that if she chose, she could, in a few heartbeats, be through the window and into the thick of the woods.
But she had tried to escape the Sisters before. She knew that neither night nor woods would conceal her from women with such dark talents. Kneeling there in the dark, her arms holding the girl in a tight embrace, Kahlan began to tremble. The mere contemplation of an attempt at escape was enough to make her brow bead in sweat for fear that such a notion would unleash within her the embedded constraints. Her head swam dizzily with the memory of past attempts, memories of the agony. She couldn’t take such suffering again—not when it was to no purpose. Escaping the Sisters was impossible.
When she glanced up, Kahlan saw the dark shadow of a Sister descending the stairs.
“Ulicia,” the woman called out. It was Sister Cecilia’s voice. “The rooms upstairs are all empty. There are no guests.”
In the front room Sister Ulicia growled a dark curse.
The shadow of Sister Cecilia turned from the stairs to fill the doorway, like death itself turning its withering gaze on the living. Beyond, Emmy wailed and wept. In her confusion, grief, pain, and terror she was unable to answer Sister Ulicia’s shouted questions.