s  trying to stand on end.
He didn't  like the way the  bell had rung;  there was something  about  the
character of the sound that told him it wasn't an animal. The sound had been
too firm, too abrupt, too quick to stop.
     He  realized  fully,  now, that a bell  had  in  fact rung.  He  wasn't
imagining it. He tried to re-create the sound in his  mind so that  he might
be able to put shape to the form that had tripped the cord.
     Zedd silently set the bowl down  on the side of the  granite hearth. He
rose up, listening with an  ear turned toward the passage from where he  had
heard the bell. His mind raced through a map of all the bells he'd placed.
     He needed to be sure.
     He slipped  through the door and  into the passageway,  the back of his
shoulder  brushing  the plastered  wall  as  he  moved  down  to  the  first
intersection  on  his  right,  watching not just ahead but behind  as  well.
Nothing moved in the hallway ahead. He paused, leaning ahead to take a quick
glance down the hall to the right. When he found it clear, he took the turn.
     Zedd moved quickly past closed doors, past a tapestry of vineyards that
he had always thought was rather poorly executed, past an empty doorway to a
room with a  window  that looked out  over a  deep shaft between towers on a
high rampart, and past three more  intersections until he  reached the first
stairway. He swept around the corner to the right, up the stairs that curved
around  to the left as they climbed up  and crossed over the hall  he'd just
been in. In this way he could head back toward a network of halls where he'd
placed a web of bells without using those same halls.
     Zedd followed  a mental map  of a  complex tangle  of  passages, halls,
rooms, and dead ends that, over a lifetime, he had come to  know intimately.
Being First Wizard,  he had  access to every place  in the Keep except those
places  that  required Subtractive Magic. There were  a few  places where he
could get confused, but this was not one of them.
     He knew that  unless someone was following in his footsteps, they would
have to either go back or pass a place  where he had set traps of  elaborate
magic  as well as  simple  string.  Then, if they didn't see the cord,  they
would ring another bell. Then he would be sure.
     Maybe it was Adie. Maybe she simply hadn't seen the inky cord stretched
across  a  doorway.  Maybe she had been annoyed that  he'd  strung bells and
maybe she'd rung one just to vex him.
     No, Adie  wasn't like that.  She  might shake  her finger  at  him  and
deliver a  scathing lecture on why  she didn't agree with him that stringing
bells was  an  effective thing to  do, but  she  wouldn't pull a trick about
something she would recognize  as intended to warn of danger. No, Adie might
possibly  have  accidentally rung the bell, but  she  wouldn't have rung  it
deliberately.
     Another bell rang. Zedd spun to the sound and then froze.
     The bell had come from the wrong direction--from  where he'd set a bell
on  the other  side of  a conservatory. It  was  too far from the  first for
anyone to  have made it this  soon.  They would have  had to  go  up a tower
stairway, across a bridge to a rampart, along a  narrow walkway in the dark,
past several  intersections to the correct turn  that would descend a spiral
ramp and make  it down through a snarl  of passageways in order to break the
cord.
     Unless there was more than one person.
     The  bell  had chimed  with  a  quick  jerk  and then clattered  as  it
skittered across stone. It  had to  be a person tripping  over the  cord and
sending the bell skipping across the stone floor.
     Zedd changed his plan.  He turned and raced down a narrow passageway to
the left, climbing the first stairwell, running up the oak treads three at a
time. He took  the right fork at the landing,  raced to the second  circular
stairwell of cut stone and climbed as fast as his  legs would carry him. His
foot slipped on the narrow wedges of spiraling steps and he banged his shin.
He paused to wince only for a second. He used the time to consult his mental
map of the Keep, and then he was moving again.
     At the top, he dashed down a short paneled  hall, sliding to  a stop on
the polished maple floor. He shouldered open a small, round-topped oak door.
A starry sky greeted him. He  sucked deep draughts of cool  night  air as he
raced along the  narrow rampart. He paused twice along the way  to peer down
through the slots in the crenellated battlements. He didn't see anyone. That
was a  good sign--he knew where they had to be  if they weren't moving by an
outer route.
     He ran on  across the swaying span between towers, robes flying behind,
crossing over the entire section of the Keep  where  both bells had rung far
below,  going over the top of the  area  in order to  get behind whoever had
tripped  the  cords.  While  they had tripped bells on opposite sides of the
conservatory,  they  had to have come in through the same wing--he knew that
much. He wanted to get behind them, bottle them in before they  could get to
an unprotected section where they  would  encounter a bewildering variety of
passageways. If they were to make it there and hide in that area,  he  could
have a time of rooting them out.
     His  mind  raced as fast  as his feet as he tried  to  think, tried  to
recall all  the shields, tried to figure how someone could  have gotten past
the defenses to get to that specific wing where the bells that had rung were
placed. There were shields  that should  have made it impossible. He had  to
consider thousands of corridors  and passageways in the Keep, trying to come
up with all the potential routes.  It  was like a complex multilevel puzzle,
and despite how thorough he'd been, it was  possible he'd  missed something.
He had to have missed something.
     There were rooms or even  entire  sections that were shielded and could
not be entered,  but often they could  be circumvented. Even if  a  hall was
shielded at both ends, so  as to prevent anyone from getting to the rooms in
that hall, you  could still usually get around to the other end of  the hall
and make  your way to whatever  lay beyond. That was deliberate;  while  the
rooms might  have  held  dangerous  items of  magic  that  had  to  be  kept
contained, there needed to be ways to  get to them, and get beyond  to other
rooms that might, from time to time, also have to be restricted. Most of the
Keep was  like that--a three-dimensional maze with  almost endless  possible
routes.
     For the unwary,  it could  also be a killing field of traps. There were
places layered with warning barriers and other  devices  that would keep any
innocent  person  away. Beyond those protective layers, the shields  gave no
warning before they  killed. Trespassers  would  not know there were shields
embedded beyond,  and that they were stepping into a trap. Such shields were
designed  that way  in order to  kill invaders who penetrated that deep; the
lack of warning was deliberate.
     Zedd supposed it was possible for someone to bypass all the shields and
work  their way  into  the  depths  of  the  place  in order  to  ring those
particular bells, but for the life of him, he  couldn't trace all the  steps
necessary. But  whoever it was,  no  matter how lucky they were, they  would
soon get  themselves stuck in the labyrinth and then, if they weren't killed
by a shield, he could deal with them.
     Zedd gazed out past towers, ramparts, bridges, and open stairs to rooms
projecting from soaring walls, out  on the city of Aydindril far  below, now
all dark and dead-looking. How  had  someone gotten past the stone bridge up
to the Keep?
     A Sister of the Dark,  maybe. Maybe one of them had  figured out how to
use  Subtract!ve  Magic to take his shield down.  But  even if  one had, the
shields in  the  Keep were different. Most  of them had  been placed  by the
wizards in ancient times, wizards  with both sides of the gift. A  Sister of
the  Dark would not be able to  breach such shields-- they had been designed
to withstand enemy wizards of that time. They  were far more  powerful  than
any mere Sister of the Dark.
     And where was Adie? She should have been back.  He wished now  that  he
had gone and  found her. She needed to know that there  was  someone in  the
Keep. Unless she already knew. Unless they had her.
     Zedd turned and raced down the  rampart. At the  projecting bastion, he
seized the railing to the side  to halt  his  forward rush  and spin himself
around the corner. He raced down the dark steps as if he were running down a
hill.
     With his  gift, he could sense that  there was no one in  the vicinity.
Since  there was no one  near, that meant  that he had managed to get behind
them. He had them trapped.
     At the  bottom of the steps he threw open the  door  and flew  into the
hallway beyond.
     He crashed into a man standing there, waiting.
     Zedd's  momentum  knocked the big man  from his feet.  They  fell  in a
tangle,  sliding together along the polished green and yellow marble  floor,
both grappling for control.
     Zedd could not have been more surprised. His gifted  sense told him the
man was not there. His  gifted sense was obviously wrong. The disorientation
of encountering a  man when  he had sensed that the hall was  empty was more
jarring than the headlong tumble.
     Even as he was rolling, Zedd was  casting webs to tangle  the  man in a
snare of magic. The man, in turn, lunged to tangle Zedd in meaty arms.
     In desperation, despite  the close range, Zedd pulled enough  heat from
the surrounding air to unleash a  thunderous blast of lightning and cast  it
directly into the man. The  blinding flash burned a lacing line  through the
stone block wall beyond him.
     Only too late  did Zedd realize that the  discharge of deadly power had
lanced through the  man without effect. The hall filled with shards of stone
whistling about,  ricocheting  from walls and  ceiling,  skipping along  the
floor.
     The man landed on Zedd, driving the wind from him. Desperately  yelling
for help, the man wrestled Zedd on the slippery floor. Zedd concocted a weak
and fumbling defense, to give  the man a false sense of confidence, until he
was able  to  suddenly land a knee sharply  at  the point of his  attacker's
sternum.  The man cried out in  surprise as much  as in pain  as he  flipped
backward off Zedd, gasping to get his wind back.
     Having  sucked so much heat from  the  air had left it as frigid  as  a
winter night. Clouds of their breath  filled the cold air as both men panted
with the effort of the struggle. The man again cried out for help, hoping to
bring comrades to his aid.
     Zedd would assume that  anyone would fear to  attack a wizard by muscle
alone. This man, though, had no need to fear magic. Even if he hadn't  known
that before, certainly the evidence was now all too clear. Yet,  despite the
man  being at least twice the size of his opponent, less  than  a  third his
age,  and  having  immunity  from the  conjuring being  thrown at him,  Zedd
thought that he fought rather... squeamishly.
     However  timid the  man was, he was determined. He  scrambled to attack
again. If he broke Zedd's neck, it wouldn't matter that he did so timidly.
     As  the man  regained  his feet  and lunged,  Zedd drew back  his arms,
elbows cocked, fingers spread, and cast more of the lightning, but this time
he knew better than to waste his effort trying to cut down a man not touched
by magic. Instead, Zedd sought to rake the floor with the conjured  bolts of
power.  It  slammed  into the  stone with unrestrained violence, ripping and
splintering whole  sections, throwing  sharp jagged shards streaking through
the air.
     A fist-sized block of  stone hurtling  at tremendous speed crashed into
the man's shoulder.  Above the boom  of  thunderous power, Zedd heard  bones
snap. The  impact spun the man around and knocked him back against the wall.
Since  Zedd  now  knew that this intruder could not  directly be  harmed  by
magic,  he instead filled the hall  with a deafening storm of magic designed
not to assail the  man directly but to tear  the place apart into a cloud of
deadly flying fragments.
     The man, as he recoiled from striking the wall, again threw  himself at
Zedd.  He was  met by a shower  of deadly  shards whistling through  the air
toward him. Blood splattered across the wall beyond as the man was ripped to
shreds. In a blink, he was killed and dropped heavily to the floor.
     From beyond the smoke and  dust filling the hall, two more men suddenly
flew at Zedd. His gifted sense  told him that, like the first man, these men
were not there, either.
     Zedd  threw yet more lightning to rip up  the floor and  unleash flying
stone at the men, but they were already through the flares of  power, diving
onto him. He crashed to his back, the men atop him. They seized his arms.
     Zedd  struggled  frantically to let loose  a  blast  to bring down  the
ceiling. He began to whirl the air above the men to tear the hall to pieces,
and them with it.
     A  beefy hand with a filthy white rag clamped down over Zedd's face. He
gasped, only to inhale a powerful  smell that made his throat want to clench
shut, but too late.
     With  the cloth and the big hand covering his whole face, Zedd couldn't
see. The world spun sickeningly.
     Soft, silent blackness pressed in around him as he fought to resist it,
until he lost consciousness.






        CHAPTER 18




     Zedd woke, his  head spinning, his  stomach heaving with rippling waves
of nausea. He didn't think that in his entire life he had ever felt so sick.
He hadn't known it was possible to feel so intense an urge to vomit, without
actually throwing up. He couldn't lift his head. If he  could just die right
then, it would be a welcome release from such dizzying agony.
     He started to put  his hands over the light hurting his eyes, but found
his wrists were tied behind his back.
     "I think he's waking," a man said in a subservient voice.
     Despite his nausea, Zedd instinctively  tried to  use his gift to sense
how many people were  around him. For some reason,  his gift that ordinarily
flowed as easily as thought, as simply as using his eyes to see, his ears to
hear, felt  thick and slow, as if mired in molasses. He reasoned that it was
probably the result of whatever vile substance it  was they had  soaked  the
rag in to cause him to  pass  out when held over his face. Still, he managed
to sense that there was only one person around him.
     Powerful hands seized his  robes and yanked him  to his feet. Zedd gave
himself permission to vomit. Against all  expectation, it didn't happen. The
dark night swam before his blurred vision. He could make  out  trees against
the sky, stars, and the looming black shape of the Keep.
     Suddenly,  a  tongue of flame ignited in midair. Zedd  blinked  at  the
unexpected brightness. The small flame, wavering with a lazy motion, floated
above  the upturned palm of  a woman with  wiry  gray  hair. Zedd saw  other
people in the shadows;  his gifted  sense  was wrong. Like the  man who  had
attacked him, these, too, had to be people not affected by magic.
     The woman  standing before him peered at  him intently. Her  expression
twisted with satisfied loathing.
     "Well,  well,  well," she  said  with  patronizing  delight. "The great
wizard himself awakes."
     Zedd  said nothing.  It seemed  to amuse  her.  Her fearsome scowl  and
humped nose, lit from the side by the flame she held above her palm, floated
closer.
     "You are ours, now," she hissed.
     Zedd, having waited patiently to gather his resolve, abruptly initiated
the  required mental twist to the gift all the way down to his soul in order
to simultaneously call down lightning, focus air to slice this woman in two,
and gather every stone  and  pebble from all  around to  crush  her under an
avalanche  of rock. He expected  the night to  light with such  power as  he
unlocked and sent forth.
     Nothing happened.
     Not waiting to waste the time to analyze what  could be the difficulty,
he was forced to abandon attempts at  satisfying his  emotional preferences,
and to ignite wizard's fire itself to consume her.
     Nothing happened.
     Not only did nothing happen, but it  felt as if the attempt itself were
but  a pebble falling  endlessly  into  a vast, dark  well.  The expectation
withered in  the face of  what he found within himself:  a  kind of dreadful
emptiness.
     Zedd felt  as  if he couldn't light a tongue of  flame to match hers if
his life  depended  on it. He was somehow  cut off from  forming his ability
into  much of  anything useful  other  than  to use  it for  a  bit  of  dim
awareness. Probably a lingering result  of the  foul-smelling substance they
had pressed over his face to make him lose consciousness.
     Since Zedd couldn't  muster any power, he did the  only thing he could:
he spit in her face.
     With lightning speed, she backhanded him, knocking him from the arms of
the men holding him. Unable to use his  hands to break his fall, he  hit the
ground unexpectedly hard. He lay in the dirt for a time, his ears ringing in
the aftereffect of the hit he'd taken, waiting for someone  to lean over and
kill him.
     Instead,  they hauled him to his feet again. One of the men seized  his
hair and pulled  his head up, forcing him to look into the woman's face. The
scowl he saw there looked like it spent a great deal of time on her face.
     She spit in his face.
     Zedd smiled.  "So, here we have a spoiled child playing the game of tit
for tat."
     Zedd grunted with the sudden  shock of a wallop of  pain  that  twisted
inside of his abdomen. Had  the  men not been holding him under his  arms he
would have doubled over and fallen to the ground. He wasn't quite  sure  how
she had done it--probably with a fist of air delivered with all the power of
her gift  behind it.  She  had left the  gathered air loosely formed, rather
than focusing it to a sharp  edge, or it  would have torn him  in two. As it
was, he knew it would leave his middle black and blue.
     It was  a long and desperate wait before he was able to at last draw  a
breath.
     The men who his gift said weren't there pulled him straight.
     "I'm disappointed to discover I'm in  the  hands of a sorceress who can
be no more inventive than that," Zedd mocked.
     That brought a smile to her  scowl. "Don't you worry, Wizard Zo-rander,
His Excellency  very much wants your scrawny hide. He will be playing a game
of tit for tat that I believe you will  find quite inventive. I have learned
that  when it comes to inventive cruelty,  His Excellency  is peerless.  I'm
sure he will not disappoint you."
     "Then what are we standing around for? I can't wait to have a word with
His Excellency."
     As the men  held his head back  for  her, she ran a fingernail down the
side of his face and across  his throat, not hard enough to draw blood,  but
enough to  hint  at her own  restrained  cruelty. She leaned  in again.  One
eyebrow lifted in a way that ran a chill up Zedd's spine.
     "I imagine you have grand ideas  about  such a  visit,  about  what you
think  you will  do  or  say." She reached  out  and hooked a finger  around
something at his neck. When she gave it a firm tug, he realized that he  was
wearing a collar of some  sort. By the way it dug into the flesh at the back
of his neck, it had to be metal.
     "Guess what this is," she said. "Just guess."
     Zedd  sighed.  "You really are  a  tedious woman. But I imagine  you've
heard that ofttimes before."
     She ignored his  gibe,  eager to  be  the  messenger  of bad  news. Her
scowling smile widened. "It's a Rada'Han."
     Zedd's sense of alarm rose, but he kept any trace of it from his face.
     "Really." He paused for an extended, bored yawn. "Well,  I'd not expect
a woman of your limited intellect to think up something clever."
     She slammed a knee into his groin. Zedd doubled over in pain, unable to
contain his groan. He hadn't been expecting something so crude.
     The men  pulled him up straight,  not  allowing him pause  to  recover.
Being pulled up  straight brought a gasp of agony. His teeth  were clenched,
his eyes were watering, and his knees wanted to buckle, but the men held him
upright.
     Her smile was getting annoying. "You see, Wizard Zorander? Being clever
isn't necessary at all."
     Zedd saw her point but didn't say so.
     He  was already  preparing to unlock the  cursed  collar from his neck.
He'd been "captured" before--by the Prelate herself--and  had had a Rada'Han
put around his  neck, like  some boy born with the gift who needed training.
The  Sisters of the  Light put such  a collar around those boys so that  the
gift  wouldn't  harm  them  before  they could learn to control their  gift.
Richard  had been  captured and put in such  a Rada'Han right after his gift
came to life in him.
     The collar was also used to control the  young  wizard wearing  it,  to
give  pain, when  the  Sisters  thought it necessary.  Zedd  understood  the
Prelate's  reasons for wanting Richard's help, since  they  knew he had been
born  with  both  sides of the gift, and,  too, they worried  about the dark
forces that pursued him, but  he could never forgive her for putting Richard
in a collar.  A wizard needed to be trained by  a wizard, not some misguided
gaggle like the Sisters of the Light.
     The  Prelate,  though, had  harbored  no  delusion of actually training
Richard to be a  wizard.  She had collared  him in  order  to smoke out  the
traitors among her flock: the Sisters of the Dark.
     Unlike Richard,  though,  Zedd  knew  how  to  get  such  a  disgusting
contrivance off his neck. In  fact, he had done it before,  when the Prelate
had thought to collar him and thus force his cooperation.
     Zedd used  a thread of power to probe  at the lock, not overtly, so  as
this  woman might notice  it, but just enough to find the twist in the spell
where he would be able to focus his ability to snap the conjured lock.
     When  the time was right, when he had his feet solidly under him,  when
his head stopped spinning long enough, he would break  the collar's hold. In
that same  instant, before  she knew  what had  happened, he  would  release
wizard's fire and incinerate this woman.
     She hooked a finger under the collar again and gave it another tug.
     "The  thing  is,  my dear wizard,  I  would expect that a  man  of your
renowned talent might know how to get such a device off."
     "Really?  I'm  renowned?"  Zedd  flashed  her  a  grin.  "That's   very
gratifying."
     Her utter contempt brought her a smile of pure disdain. With her finger
through  the  collar she  pulled him  close to  her twisted  expression. She
ignored his words and went on.
     "Since His Excellency would be extremely displeased should you  get the
collar off,  I've  taken  measures to insure  that such  a  thing  would not
happen. I used Subtractive Magic to weld it on."
     Now, that was a problem.
     She nodded to  the men.  Zedd glanced to them at  each side and noticed
for the first time that their eyes were wet. It shocked  him to realize they
were weeping.
     Weeping or not,  they  followed her orders, unceremoniously lifting him
and heaving him in the back of a wagon as if he were firewood.
     Zedd landed beside someone else.
     "Glad to see you be alive, old man," a  soft voice  rasped.It was Adie.
The side of her face was swollen and bleeding. It looked like they'd clubbed
her nearly  to death. Her wrists were tied behind her back as well.  He saw,
too, tears on her cheeks.
     It broke his heart to see her hurt. "Adie, what did they do to you?"
     She smiled. "Not as much as they intend to, I fear."
     In the  dim light of a lantern, Zedd could see that she, too,  wore one
of the awful collars.
     "Your stew was excellent," he said.
     Adie groaned. "Please, old man, do not mention food to me right now."
     Zedd  cautiously  turned his  head and  saw  more  men  waiting  in the
darkness  off to the side. They had been  behind  him, so  he hadn't noticed
them before. His gift had not told him they were there.
     "I think we're  in a great deal of trouble," he  whispered to no one in
particular.
     "Really?" Adie rasped. "What be your first clue?"
     Zedd knew she was only trying to  make him smile, but he could not even
manage a small one.
     "I be sorry, Zedd."
     He nodded, as  best he  could lying  on his side with his wrists  bound
behind his back. "I thought I  was so clever, laying every  kind  of  trap I
could think of. Unfortunately, such traps didn't work for those who  are not
affected by magic."
     "You could not know of such a thing," Adie said in a comforting tone.
     His mood  sank into bitter regret. "I should have taken it into account
after we encountered that one down at the Confessors' Palace, in the spring.
I  should have realized the danger." He  stared  off  into  the darkness. "I
served our cause no better than a fool."
     "But where  did all  of them come from?"  She looked  on  the  verge of
losing  herself to panic. "I have  never encountered a single such person in
my entire life, and now there be a whole gang of them standing there."
     Zedd  hated to see Adie  so distraught.  Adie  only  knew  there were a
number of them by the  telltale sounds they made. At  least he could see the
men with his eyes, if not his gift.
     The men stood around, heads hanging, waiting to be commanded.
     They didn't look pleased  by what was happening. They all looked young,
in their  twenties. Some were crying. It seemed strange  to see such big men
weeping. Zedd almost regretted killing one of them. Almost.
     "You  three,"  the  woman growled  to more  of  the men waiting in  the
shadows as she  lifted another lantern from  one of  them and sent the flame
she held into it, "get in there and start the search."
     Adie's completely  white eyes turned  to  Zedd,  her expression  grave.
"Sister of the Dark," she whispered.
     And now they had the Keep.






        CHAPTER 19


     And just how can you be sure that it was a Sister of the Dark you saw?"
Verna asked, absently, as she dipped her pen again.
     She scrawled her initials at  the bottom of the request for a Sister to
travel to  a  town down  south to see to  a  local  sorceress's  plans for a
defense of their area. Even in the field, the paperwork of the office of the
Prelate seemed to have chased  after and  found her.  Their palace  had been
destroyed,  the prophet himself was at large  and the real  Prelate was  off
alone chasing after him, some of the Sisters of the  Light had pledged their
souls to the Keeper of the underworld and in so doing had brought the Keeper
a step closer to having them all in  the dark forever  of  eternity, a  good
number  of  the  Sisters--both  Sisters  of  the  Light and Sisters  of  the
Dark--were  in the cruel hands  of  the  enemy and  doing  his  bidding, the
barrier separating the Old  and New World was down, the whole world had been
turned upside  down,  the  only  man--Richard  Rahl--whom  prophecy named as
having a chance  of defeating  the  threat  of the  Imperial Order  was  off
who-knew-where doing  who-knew-what,  and  yet,  the  paperwork  managed  to
survive it all and persist to vex her.
     Some of Verna's assistants handled the paperwork and the requests, but,
as much  as  she  disliked dealing  with such tedious matters, Verna felt  a
sense of duty to keep an eye on it all.  Besides, as much as paperwork vexed
her,  it  also  occupied her  mind,  preventing her  from  dwelling  on  the
might-have-been.
     "After all," Verna added, "it could  just as easily have been  a Sister
of  the Light. Jagang  uses both for  their ability  with  magic.  You can't
really be sure  it was a Sister of  the Dark. He's been  sending Sisters  to
accompany his scouts all winter and spring."
     The Mord-Sith placed her knuckles on the small desk and leaned in. "I'm
telling you, Prelate, it was a Sister of the Dark."
     Verna saw no point in arguing, since it mattered little, so she didn't.
"If you say so, Rikka."
     Verna turned over the paper  to the next in the  stack, a request for a
Sister to come and speak  to children on the calling of the Sisters  of  the
Light, with a lecture on why the  Creator  would be against the  ways of the
Imperial  Order and on their side. Verna  smiled to herself,  imagining  how
Zedd  would fume at the very idea  of a Sister, in the New  World, lecturing
her views on such a subject.
     Rikka withdrew her knuckles from the  desk. "I thought you might say as
much."
     "Well, there you go, then," Verna mumbled as she read the  next message
from the Sisters of the  Light to the south  reporting on the passes through
the mountains and the methods that had been used to seal them off.
     "Wait right here," Rikka growled before flying out of the tent.
     "I'm not going  anywhere," Verna said  with a  sigh as  she scanned the
written account, but the fiery, blond-headed woman was already gone.
     Verna  heard  a  commotion  outside  the tent. Rikka  was  delivering a
scathing lecture  to  someone. The  Mord-Sith  was  incorrigible.  That  was
probably why, despite everything, Verna liked her.
     Since Warren had died, Verna's heart was no longer in much of anything,
though. She did as she had to, did  her duty, but she  couldn't make herself
feel  anything but despair. The man she loved, the man she  had married, the
most wonderful man in the world... was gone.
     Nothing much mattered after that.
     Verna tried to do her part, to do as was needed, because so many people
depended on her, but, if truth be told, the reason she worked herself nearly
to death was to try to keep her mind  occupied, to  think of something else,
anything else, except Warren. It didn't really work, but she kept at it. She
knew  that people counted on her,  but she just couldn't  make herself truly
care.
     Warren was  gone. Life was empty of what mattered most to her. That was
the end of it, the end of her caring about much of anything.
     Verna idly pulled her journey book from her  belt. She didn't know what
made her do so, except perhaps that it had been some time since she had last
looked for a message from the real Prelate. Ann was having her own crisis of
caring  ever  since Kahlan had laid the  blame for so much of  what had gone
wrong, including  being  the cause of the war itself, right at the Prelate's
feet. Verna thought  that Kahlan had been wrong  about much  of it, but  she
understood all  too  well why she thought  that Ann had been responsible for
tangling up their lives; Verna had felt the same way for a time.
     Holding the journey book  off to the side with one  hand, flipping  the
pages with a thumb, Verna saw a message flash by.
     Rikka  swept  back  into the tent.  She plunked a  heavy  sack  down on
Verna's desk, right on top of the reports.
     "Here!" Rikka said, fury powering her voice.
     It was  then, when Verna looked up, that she saw for the first time the
strange  way  Rikka  was dressed. Verna's mouth  fell  open. Rikka  was  not
wearing the skintight red leather that the Mord-Sith typically wore,  except
for occasionally when they were relaxing and  then they sometimes wore brown
leather, instead.  Verna had never seen the  woman  in  anything other  than
those leather outfits.
     Now Rikka had on a dress.
     Verna could not remember being so astonished.
     Not just a dress, but a pink dress that no decent woman of Rikka's age,
probably her late twenties  or early  thirties, would be caught dead in. The
neckline plunged down to  reveal ample cleavage.  The twin mounds of exposed
flesh were shoved up and nearly spilling out the top. Verna was  amazed that
Rikka's nipples had managed to remain covered, what with the way her breasts
heaved with her heated breathing.
     "You, too?" Rikka snapped.
     Verna finally  looked  up  into Rikka's  blazing blue eyes.  "Me,  too,
what?"
     "You, too, can't get enough of looking at my chest?"
     Verna felt  her face  go scarlet.  She  gave her  red face an excuse by
shaking a finger at the woman.
     "What are you doing dressed like that in an army camp! Around all these
soldiers! You look like a whore!"
     Despite how their leather outfits went  all the way up  to their necks,
the tight leather  left little to the imagination. Seeing the woman's flesh,
though, was altogether different, and quite shocking.
     Verna realized, only  then, because she had finally  looked up  at  the
woman's  face, that Rikka's single braid was undone. Her long blond hair was
as free as a horse's mane. Verna had never seen one of the Mord-Sith out  in
public  without her hair done up  in the  single braid  that  in large  part
identified their profession of Mord-Sith.
     Even seeing the woman's cleavage exposed  was not as shocking as seeing
her hair undone.  It was that, more than anything, Verna realized, that lent
a  lewd  look  to the woman. Something  about her braid  being undone seemed
sacrilegious, even though Verna  could not condone a profession dedicated to
torture.
     Verna remembered, then,  that she had asked one of the Mord-Sith, Cara,
to  do her worst  to the young man--a boy, really--who had  murdered Warren.
Verna  had sat up  the entire night listening  to  that young man scream his
life away. His suffering had been monstrous, and yet it  had not been nearly
enough to suit her.
     At  times,  Verna wondered  if  in  the  next life  the  Keeper of  the
underworld would have something wholly unpleasant in store for her  for  all
eternity in  recompense for what Verna had done. She didn't  really care; it
had been worth whatever the price might be.
     Besides, she decided, if she was to be punished for condemning that man
to  just  retribution, then  the  very concept of justice would  have  to be
invalid, rendering  living a life  of good or  evil to have  no  meaning. In
fact, for the justice she  had meted out to that  vile amoral animal walking
the world of  life in the  form of a man who had murdered Warren, she should
be  rewarded in  the  afterlife  by being  eternally  in  the warmth of  the
Creator's light, along with the good spirit of  Warren, or else there was no
justice.
     General Meiffert swept into the tent, fists at  his sides,  coming to a
halt beside  Rikka. He raked his blond hair back when he  saw Verna  sitting
behind her little desk, and cooled visibly.
     He'd had  the carpenters  nail together the tiny desk  for  her out  of
scrap furniture left in an abandoned farm. It was  nothing like the desks at
the Palace of the  Prophets,  of course,  but it had  been  given with  more
concern and meaning  behind  it than the grandest  gold-leafed  desk she had
ever seen. General Meiffert had been proud at seeing how  useful Verna found
it.
     With a quick glance,  he took in Rikka's dress  and  her  hair. "What's
this about?"
     "Well,"  Verna said, "I'm  not sure. Something  about  one of  Jagang's
Sisters scouting a pass."
     Rikka folded  her bare arms  atop  her nearly bare  bosom.  "Not just a
Sister, but a Sister of the Dark."
     "Jagang has been sending Sisters  scouting the passes all winter,"  the
young general said.  "The Prelate has laid  traps and shields." His level of
concern rose. "Are you telling us that one of them got through?"
     "No, I'm telling you that I went hunting for them."
     Verna frowned.  "What  are you talking  about?  We lost  half  a  dozen
Mord-Sith  trying that. After you  found  the  heads of two  of your  sister
Mord-Sith mounted on pikes, the Mother Confessor herself ordered you to stop
throwing their lives away on such useless missions."
     Rikka  at last smiled. It  was the kind  of satisfied smile, especially
coming from a Mord-Sith, that tended to give people nightmares.
     "Does this look useless?"
     Rikka reached into her sack and pulled  out a human head. Holding it by
the hair, she brandished it in  front of Verna's face.  She turned, shook it
at General Meiffert  as well, and then  plunked it down  on  the  desk. Gore
oozed out over the reports.
     "Like I said, a Sister of the Dark."
     Verna recognized the face,  even as twisted in  death as it  was. Rikka
was right, it  was a Sister of the  Dark. The question was, how did she know
it was a Sister of the Dark, and not one of the Light?
     Outside  Verna could  hear horses clopping past her  tent. Some of  the
soldiers called out greetings to men returning from patrols. In the distance
could be heard conversations and men  issuing orders. Hammers  on steel rang
like  bells as  men  worked  hot  metal into useful shapes  for  repairs  to
equipment.  Nearby, horses  frisked in a corral. As men made  their way past
Verna's tent, their gear jingled. Fires  crackled as wood was added for  the
cooks or roared as bellows pumped to turn it white-hot for the blacksmiths.
     "You touched her with your Agiel?" Verna asked in a quiet  voice. "Your
Agiel doesn't work effectively on those the dream walker controls."
     Rikka's smile  turned sly. She spread  her  arms. "Agiel? Do you see an
Agiel."
     Verna  knew that no Mord-Sith  would ever  let  her  Agiel  out of  her
control. With a glance to the woman's cleavage, she could only imagine where
she had it hidden.
     "All right," General Meiffert said,  his  tone  no longer indulgent. "I
want to know what's going on, and I want to know right now."
     "I was down near Dobbin Pass,  checking around,  and what do I find but
an Imperial Order patrol."
     The general nodded  as  he let  out  a  frustrated sigh.  "They've been
coming in that  way from time to time. But how did you manage to come across
such an enemy patrol? Why hadn't one of our Sisters already snared them?"
     Rikka shrugged. "Well, this patrol was still  on the other side of  the
pass. Back at that  deserted farm." She tapped Verna's  desk with  her  toe.
"Where you got the wood for this."
     Verna  twisted her mouth with displeasure. Rikka wasn't supposed  to be
beyond the pass. The Mord-Sith,  though, recognized no orders but those from
Lord Rahl  himself. Rikka had only followed Kahlan's orders because,  during
his absence, Kahlan was acting  on Richard's behalf. Verna suspected that it
was simpler than that, though; she suspected that they had only followed the
Mother Confessor's orders  because she  was  wife to Lord Rahl, and  if they
didn't it would bring Lord Rahl's wrath down on them. As long as such orders
weren't  viewed by the Mord-Sith as troublesome, they went  along. When they
decided otherwise, they did as they wished.
     "The   Sister   was   by   herself,"   Rikka  went  on,   "having   one
powerful-looking headache."
     "Jagang," Verna  said. "Jagang was issuing  his order, or punishing her
for something, or giving  her a lecture in her mind. He does that  from time
to time. It isn't pleasant."
     Rikka  stroked the hair on the woman's  head  sitting  on Verna's desk,
making  a mess of the reports. "The poor thing," she mocked. "While  she was
off among the pines staring at nothing while she pressed her fingers  to her
temples, her men were back at the farmhouse,  having their way with a couple
of young women. The two were squealing and crying and  carrying on,  but the
men weren't put off by it any."
     Verna lowered her  eyes as she let out  a heavy breath. Some people had
refused  to  believe  the  necessity  of fleeing  before the arrival of  the
Imperial Order.
     Sometimes, when people refused to recognize the existence of evil, they
found  themselves having to face precisely that  which they  had never  been
willing to admit existed.
     Rikka's satisfied smile returned. "I went in and took care of the brave
soldiers  of the Imperial  Order.  They  were  so  distracted, they paid  no
attention as I snuck up behind them. The women  were so terrorized that they
screamed even though I was saving  them. The  Sister hadn't  been paying any
attention to the screaming before, and didn't then, either.
     "One of the young women was blond and about my size, so an idea  struck
me. I put on her dress and  took out my braid, so I  might  be  mistaken for
her. I  gave the one girl  some of the men's clothes  to  wear and told them
both  to run for the hills, in the opposite direction of the Sister, and not
to look back. I didn't  have to tell them twice. Then I  sat down on a stool
outside the barn.
     "Sure enough, in  a while the Sister  came  back.  She saw  m