Jebra’s panicked eyes turned to Nicci. She reached up and snatched the collar of Nicci’s dress.
“Don’t leave him alone!”
There was no need for Nicci to ask who Jebra was talking about. “Why? What did you see?”
“Don’t leave him alone! Don’t let him out of your sight—not for an instant!”
“Why?” Nicci asked again. “What will happen if he is left alone?”
“If you leave him alone, he will be lost to us.”
“How? What did you see?”
Jebra reached up and with both fists pulled Nicci’s face closer. “Go. Don’t let him be alone. What I saw does not matter. If he’s not alone, then it can’t happen. Do you understand? If you let him get separated from you and Cara it will not matter what I saw—it won’t matter for any of us. I can’t tell you the means of separation, only that no matter what you must not let it happen. That’s all that’s important. Go! Stay with him!”
Nicci swallowed as she nodded.
“You’d better do as she says,” Zedd told Nicci. “There’s nothing I can do in this. It’s up to you.”
He reached out and grasped her hand, not as First Wizard, but as Richard’s grandfather. “Stay with him, Nicci. Protect him. In so many ways he’s the Seeker, the Lord Rahl, the leader of the D’Haran Empire, but in other ways he’s still a woods guide at heart. He’s our Richard. Protect him, please. We’re all depending on you.”
Nicci stared at him, at an appeal that seemed unexpectedly personal, an appeal that seemed to rise above all the wider needs of protecting the freedom of the New World and reduced it all to a simple love for Richard the man. She understood in that instant that without the sincere and simple concern for Richard as an individual, none of the rest of it mattered.
As she started to rise, Jebra pulled Nicci back down. “This is not a ‘maybe’ kind of vision, a possibility. This is certain. Don’t let him be alone or he will be at their mercy.”
“Whose mercy?”
Jebra bit her lower lip as her blue eyes welled up with tears. “The dark witch.”
Nicci felt a shudder of icy dread ripple up her shoulders.
“Go,” Jebra whispered. “Please, go. Hurry. Don’t let him leave without you.”
Nicci sprang up and rushed across the room. At the doorway she paused and turned back. Her heart was pounding so hard that it made her sway on her feet.
“I swear, Zedd. He will have my protection as long as I draw breath.”
She watched as Zedd nodded, a tear running down his weathered cheek. “Hurry.”
Nicci turned and ran down the iron steps, taking them two at a time, her footfalls echoing around the enormous tower. She wondered what else
Jebra saw in her vision that awaited Richard if he became separated from them, if he was left alone, but in the end Nicci decided that it didn’t really matter what that visionary fate was, it only mattered that, no matter what, Nicci not allow it to happen.
Bats fluttered in undulating clouds up through the tower, funneling out through the open windows at the top, intent on their nightly hunt, as Nicci raced down the steps. The rushing sound of thousands of webbed wings made it seem the tower was exhaling in a long, low moan. She passed iron doors on landings without pause. She sometimes had to snatch the rail to keep her footing. At the bottom she raced around the walkway that surrounded the fetid water standing at the bottom of the tower. The black water rippled as small creatures slipped into the inky sanctuary.
Nicci ran in through the doorway that had been blasted open when Richard had destroyed the great barrier that had once separated the Old World from the new. The towers that powered that barrier had stood since the great war, three thousand years before. In more recent times, Jagang and his army of the Imperial Order had been kept at bay, unable to cross that barrier. But Richard had destroyed those towers in order to be able to return to the New World after having been held at the Palace of the Prophets, and as a result the Imperial Order had been loosed on the New World. The war was not Richard’s fault, but it could not have been rekindled without that act.
Richard and Cara were standing, waiting, on the wall of the great well of the sliph, the creature that had been walled away along with the Old World for all the time that the great barrier had stood.
Behind Richard and Cara the quicksilver face of the sliph watched Nicci as she hurried into the room. “Do you wish to travel?” the sliph asked in that eerie voice that echoed around the room.
“Yes, I wish to travel,” Nicci said breathlessly as she scooped up her pack. Cara must have put it there for her. “Thanks,” she said to the Mord-Sith.
Richard held his hand out as Nicci slipped an arm through a strap and lifted the pack onto her back. “Come on.”
Nicci took his hand, letting him hoist her up onto the wall with one mighty pull. Nicci’s heart felt as if it was coming up into her throat. She had traveled before so she knew the overwhelming ecstasy of the experience, and yet she could not help being afraid to breathe in the living
quicksilver of the sliph. Such a concept just went against the very idea of the breath of life.
“You will be pleased,” the sliph said as Nicci joined the others. Nicci didn’t argue.
“Let’s go,” Richard said. “I wish to travel.”
A shiny arm lifted out of the pool to surround Richard and Cara, but not Nicci.
“Wait!” Nicci said. “I must go with them.” The sliph stilled. “Listen to me, Richard. You have to take Cara and my hands. Don’t let go for anything.”
“Nicci, you’ve done this before. It will be—”
“Listen! Cara and I are trusting you, and you have to trust us. You can’t get separated from us. Not for anything. Not for so much as an instant. If that happens then you are lost to us. If that happens then whatever you have planned won’t happen.”
Richard studied her face silently for a moment. “Did Jebra have a vision of something happening?”
“Only if you get separated from us. Only if you are alone.”
“What did she see?”
“The witch woman, Six. Jebra called her ‘the dark witch.’”
Richard studied her face a moment. “Shota is going after Six.”
“That may be, but Six has already usurped Shota’s authority in her own territory.”
“Maybe for the moment. But I’d not want to be her when Shota catches her. Shota covered her throne with the hide of the last person who came to take her home, and he was a wizard.”
“I don’t doubt how dangerous Shota is, but we don’t know how dangerous Six is. The gift is different in different individuals. Shota could in the end turn out to be no match for Six’s ability. I do know that the Sisters of the Dark were afraid of her. Jebra had a terrible vision and says that you must not be allowed to be alone. I don’t intend to allow her vision any chance to come to pass.”
He must have read the resolve in Nicci’s face, because he nodded. “All right.” He took her hand and then took Cara’s. “Don’t let go, then, and then we won’t have to worry about it.”
Nicci squeezed his hand in agreement. She leaned past him to address
Cara. “Do you understand? We can’t let him out of our sight. Not for an instant.”
Cara’s brow drew down in a dark frown. “Since when have I ever wanted to allow him out of my sight?”
“Where do you wish to travel?” the sliph asked.
Nicci glanced to Richard and Cara and realized that the question was directed to her.
“To where they are going.”
The silver face turned sly. “I cannot reveal what my other clients do when they are in me. Tell me what you wish and I will please you.”
Nicci twitched a frown at Richard.
“She never reveals anything about anyone else; it’s a kind of professional confidence. We’re going to the People’s Palace.”
“The People’s Palace,” Nicci said. “I wish to travel to the People’s Palace.”
“She’s going with Cara and me,” Richard told the sliph. “To the same place. Do you understand? She is to stay with us as we travel there.”
“Yes, Master. We will travel.” The face, looking like a highly polished statue, smiled. “You will be pleased.”
The liquid silver arm tightened around all three of them, drawing them off the wall. Nicci’s hand tightened on Richard’s.
As they plunged into the total darkness of the sliph, Nicci held her breath. She knew she had to breathe, but the very idea of breathing the silvery liquid terrified her.
Breathe
.
At last she did, a desperate gasp drawing the sliph into her lungs. Colors, light, and shapes melted together all around her in a spectacular display. Nicci tightly held Richard’s hand as they glided into the silken distance. It was a glorious, lazy, floating sensation of a headlong rush at impossible speed.
She drew in another dizzying breath of the sliph’s essence. It was a glorious release from everything that haunted her, from the crushing weight on her soul. She was left with only that connection to Richard. There was nothing else. There was no one else.
It was rapture.
She never wanted it to end.
Kahlan watched as the three Sisters peered into the distance, watching for any movement. With the sun going down, the shadows were beginning to melt together into a gloomy haze. At the horizon to the south a sliver of fading daylight shone beneath menacing gray clouds that towered into a dark violet sky. The cloud tops were touched by a wash of red light that lent the evening an odd, dreamlike quality.
The sky in this place, so often filled with monumental, billowing clouds, seemed overpoweringly immense, leaving Kahlan feeling tiny and insignificant. The flat plains to the south stretched endlessly to the lonely horizon. Little vegetation grew in such a desolate place, and what did grow was found mostly in the low-lying places.
The clouds sweeping across the landscape dragged columns of rain but, as vast as the place was, the rains never seemed any more than a distant, isolated phenomenon. Kahlan suspected that if one were to stand in the same spot for a year waiting for one of those random showers to pass overhead, it would likely not happen. The barren landscape made life seem fragile and forlorn. Only the mountains to the north and east seemed able to comb rain from the parade of clouds. As a result, the trees didn’t venture down from their mountain refuge.
When the horses snorted and stamped their hooves, Kahlan pulled the reins tighter and absently rubbed one of the animals under its jaw to reassure it that all was well. The horse gently nudged her, wanting more. As she waited, Kahlan turned away from the haunting desolation and gave the horse a more attentive scratch.
In the distance she could see where the wall of mountains dwindled into a massive headland. That headland, like the tail of some sleeping beast, looked to be the southern tip of the mountains they had been following south. Kahlan wished she were back in those mountains. The mountains gave her a sense of sanctuary, probably because, unlike the open plains, she didn’t feel like anyone for miles around could see her. Out on the plain
she felt naked and exposed. She realized that she didn’t really know why she should feel that way, since she could hardly be in a worse circumstance than being a forgotten slave to the Sisters.
Kahlan thought that she could see what looked like buildings up on the distant headland. If her eyes weren’t tricking her, the buildings looked like they were probably no more than ruins. If they really were buildings, then few of the structures appeared to have roofs. What at first made no sense finally began to when she considered if what might have been walls had actually crumbled long ago; that would explain the odd shapes. She didn’t see any sign of people. They, too, were probably long forgotten.
Even if they really were abandoned buildings, long deserted places made the Sisters no less wary than everything else did. Their wariness seemed to be born of a sense of complete and total dominion nearly within their grasp. In this place, though, Kahlan shared their edginess.
The three Sisters had been silent for most of the day, speaking only when necessary. The back of Kahlan’s shoulder still throbbed in pain where Sister Ulicia had unexpectedly struck her. It had not been punishment for any transgression—real or imagined—but rather had been delivered with a stern warning not to cause any trouble. The Sisters sometimes sought to express their superiority over others, even if it was by showing that they could hurt Kahlan just because they wanted to. She had to school her thoughts lest one of the Sisters pick up on what Kahlan thought of her treatment. She’d swallowed her dignity along with her thoughts and simply said, “Yes, Sister.”
Kahlan didn’t think that it was a good idea to go stumbling around in the dark, especially when they were beginning to come upon a landscape deeply rutted and eroded in places by runoff from the high ground. The horses could easily break a leg in such conditions. But, in their ambition to get to Caska, the Sisters hadn’t wanted to stop when evening had begun to engulf them. What the Sisters wanted, the Sisters got. Kahlan wasn’t looking forward to eventually setting up camp in the dark.
“I think there’s someone out there,” Sister Armina said in a quiet voice as she stared out into the darkness.
“I sense something, too,” Sister Cecilia murmured.
Sister Armina glanced over, expectantly. “Maybe it’s Tovi.”
“Could be nothing more than a wild mule.” Sister Ulicia didn’t appear to be in a mood to stand around speculating. “Come on.” She glanced back at Kahlan. “Stay close.”
“Yes, Sister,” Kahlan said. She handed the Sisters the reins to their horses.
Sister Cecilia, older than the rest of them, grunted with the effort of swinging her tired muscles up into her saddle. “My memories of the rare maps down in the vaults at the Palace of the Prophets tell me that we should be getting close to the place.”
“I recall seeing that ancient map,” Sister Ulicia said, once seated atop her horse. “It called this place the Deep Nothing. That would mean that it has to be Caska up on that distant headland.”
Sister Armina heaved an impatient sigh as she urged her horse on after the others. “Then we will at last find Tovi here.”
“And when we finally join up with her,” Sister Cecilia said, “she is going to have some explaining to do.”
Sister Armina gestured off toward the distant headland. “You know Tovi—always ignoring what she’s supposed to do because she thinks she knows best. She’s the most obstinate woman I’ve ever met.”
As far as Kahlan was concerned, Armina had little room to talk.
“We’ll see how obstinate she is when I have my fingers around her throat,” Sister Cecilia said.
Sister Armina urged her horse up beside Sister Ulicia. “You don’t think she could be up to no good, do you, Ulicia?”
“Tovi?” Sister Ulicia glanced back over her shoulder. “No, not really. She may be exasperating at times, but she has the same goal as do the rest of us. Besides, she knows as well as we do that we need all three of the boxes. She knows what’s involved and what’s at stake.
“We will soon have the three boxes all back together again—that’s all that really matters—and we will already be in Caska, so I suppose it wouldn’t really have done us any good to catch up with Tovi before now. We still would have had to come here anyway.”
“But why would she have taken off the way she did?” Sister Cecilia pressed.
Sister Ulicia shrugged. Unlike the other two, she seemed to be somewhat at ease, now that Caska was in sight. “It could be nothing more than that she discovered Imperial Order troops nearby and she simply wanted to avoid any possibility of trouble so she left the area. She probably was using her head, that’s all. She knew we had to come here. She probably saw a chance to slip away and took it. We’re better served by such caution.
She was, in the end, going to where we planned on going all along, so I don’t really see what mischief she could be up to.”
“I suppose.” Sister Cecilia seemed somewhat disappointed not to have a villain upon whom to fixate her anger.
They rode in silence for nearly an hour more before it became apparent to the Sisters that riding over such ground in the dark might not only risk breaking a horse’s leg, but one of their necks as well. As far as Kahlan could tell, they weren’t much closer to the headland than they had been for most of the day. Out on the plain, distances were far greater than they appeared to be. What at first seemed to be a place only a couple of miles distant could turn out to take days to reach. The Sisters, despite their eagerness to get to Caska and Tovi, were tired and ready to stop for the night.
Sister Ulicia dismounted, handing the reins to Kahlan. “Get camp set up. We’re all hungry.”
Kahlan dipped her head. “Yes, Sister.”
She immediately hobbled all the horses so they couldn’t wander off, then made her way around to the side of the pack animals to start getting out their gear. She was dead tired but knew that it would probably be hours before she would have a chance to get any sleep. The camp had to be set up, food had to be prepared, and then the horses had to be fed, watered, and groomed for the night.
Sister Ulicia took hold of Sister Armina’s arm and pulled her close. “While we’re making camp, I want you to go out there and check the area. I want to know if it’s just a mule.”
Sister Armina nodded and immediately set out on foot into the darkness.
Sister Cecilia watched Sister Armina dissolve into the night. “Do you really think it’s a mule?”
Sister Ulicia cast her a dark look. “If it is a mule, it’s staying the same distance away as we travel. If it’s someone watching us, then Armina will find them.”
Kahlan pulled out the bedrolls when the Sisters asked for something softer to sit on other than the barren ground. She then pulled out one of the pots so she could get some dinner started.
“No fire tonight,” Sister Ulicia said when she saw Kahlan with the pot.
Kahlan stared at her a moment. “What would you like for dinner, then, Sister?”
“There is bannock left over. We can have that and some dried meats. We have pine nuts as well.” She gazed out into the night. “I don’t want a fire out here in the open, where anyone from horizon to horizon could see us. Just get out one of the smaller lanterns.”
Kahlan could not imagine what the Sisters had to worry about. She handed Sister Armina the lantern. The sister lit it with a flick of a finger, then set it on the ground before her and Sister Ulicia. It wasn’t much light to see by as Kahlan finished unpacking, but at least it was better than nothing.
There had been times in the past when patrols of soldiers happened on them. The Sisters had never been especially spooked by such unexpected encounters with hostile forces. The Sisters had dispatched the soldiers without any problem—or mercy.
When they had run into patrols the Sisters were careful not to allow any witnesses to get away, apparently so that there wouldn’t be any chance of reports getting back to the army. Kahlan supposed that it was possible that such reports could result in great numbers of angry men coming after them. The Sisters didn’t appear especially concerned about that possibility; it seemed more likely that they simply had business and they didn’t want to be slowed for anything.
Getting to Tovi and the last box was of paramount importance to them and they had driven hard to get this far this quickly. Kahlan was somewhat surprised that they had not caught Tovi before now, especially since nothing seemed anywhere near as important to the Sisters as their precious boxes.
Except that they were Lord Rahl’s boxes. The Sisters had stolen them from Richard Rahl’s palace.
On one occasion, in their rush, they had come across a large detachment of the big Imperial Order brutes. The Sisters had been impatient to get past the soldiers, to get on with their business with the boxes, but the men appeared in no hurry to move on out of the way. The Sisters waited until the middle of the night and then walked through the encampment of sleeping men. Any time a man saw them, one of the Sisters cast out a silent spell that dispatched the man without any ado. The Sisters had shown no compunction about killing any man who happened to be in their way. They moved through the camp quietly, fearlessly, and deliberately. Kahlan saw a lot of men die that night. To the Sisters, it had been no more eventful than stepping on ants pestering them at camp.
But that had been a long time ago and they had not seen any troops since. The Imperial Order army was now far distant behind them and for quite some time had no longer been a consideration. That didn’t mean, however, that there couldn’t be other hazards, and so the Sisters were frequently as nervous as cats. Without warning, however, they could easily turn as dangerous as vipers.
Long after Sister Armina returned without finding anyone about, and the three Sisters had eaten, Kahlan still worked to finish her chores before she was allowed to eat. She was currying the horses when she thought that she heard the soft sound of footsteps on the hardscrabble ground. The sound brought her out of her thoughts about the soldiers. Her hand with the curry brush paused.
She looked over her shoulder and was startled to see a slender girl with short, dark hair standing timidly just at the edge of the faint lanternlight.
With the moon only occasionally peeking out from between the passing clouds, the camp was mostly left to the light of the single lantern back by the Sisters, so it was hard to see, but Kahlan could see well enough to see the young woman’s pale eyes staring at her.
In those eyes was the clear look of cognition. The girl saw Kahlan.
“Please—” the girl said. Kahlan crossed her lips with a finger, lest the Sisters hear the girl. Just like the man back at the inn, this girl saw and remembered Kahlan. Kahlan was astonished, and at the same time fearful that the same thing would happen to the girl as had happened to the man.
“Please,” the girl repeated in a low whisper, “may I have something to eat? I’m so hungry.”
Kahlan glanced at the Sisters. They were busy talking among themselves. Kahlan reached into her saddlebag in the pile near her feet and pulled out a strip of dried venison. She again crossed her lips with one finger and handed the girl the meat. The girl nodded her understanding and didn’t make a sound. Taking the meat eagerly in both hand, she immediately used her teeth to rip off a bite.
“Go, now,” Kahlan whispered, “before they see you. Hurry.”
The girl glanced up at Kahlan, then looked past her. Her eyes went wide. Her chewing halted.
“Well, well,” came a menacing voice over Kahlan’s shoulder, “if it isn’t our little mule come to steal from us.”
“Please, she was hungry,” Kahlan said, hoping to douse Sister Ulicia’s anger before it flared. “She asked for a bite to eat. She didn’t steal it. I gave her my food, not any of yours.”
Sister Ulicia was joined by the other two, so that it looked like three vultures all in a row. Sister Armina lifted the lantern to have a better look. All three looked like they intended to pick the girl’s bones clean.
“Probably waiting till we went to sleep,” Sister Ulicia said as she leaned closer, “so she could cut our throats.”
Copper-colored eyes shown in the lamplight as the frightened young woman gazed up at them. “I wasn’t lying in wait. I was hungry. I thought I might be able to get a little food, that’s all. I asked, I did not steal.”