drawn spell.
     He insisted this was nothing like that. As a guide, he said he'd passed
many an

     evening  at camp, by  himself, carving. Not wanting to carry  the added
weight, he would toss the finished piece  into the fire. He said he  enjoyed
the act  of carving,  and could always carve another. Kahlan  considered the
carvings inspired and found it distressing to see them destroyed.
     "What do you intend to do, Lord Rahl? If I may ask."
     Richard took a smooth, steady slice that demarcated the line of an ear,
bringing it to life  along with the line of  the jaw he had  already cut. He
looked up and stared off into the night.
     "We're going to a place back in the mountains, where other people don't
go, so we can be alone, and safe. The Mother Confessor  will be able  to get
well there and gain back  her strength.  While  we're there, I may even make
Cara start wearing a dress."
     Cara  shot to  her  feet.  "What!" When she saw  Richard's  smile, Cara
realized he was only joking. She fumed, nonetheless.
     "I'd not  report that part of  it to the general, were I you, Captain,"
Richard said.
     Cara sank back down to the ground. "Not if Brass  Buttons, here, values
his ribs," she muttered.
     Kahlan struggled not to chuckle, lest she twist the ever present knives
in  her ribs.  Sometimes, she felt  as if  she knew  how the chunk  of  wood
Richard was carving felt. It was good to see Richard, for once, get the best
of Cara. It was usually she who had him flustered.
     "I can't help you, for now," Richard said, his serious tone  returning.
He went back to his work with his knife. "I hope you can all accept that."
     "Of course, Lord Rahl. We  know that you will lead us  into battle when
the time is right."
     "I hope that day  comes, Captain. I  really do. Not  because  I want to
fight,  but  because I  hope there to be something  to fight  for."  Richard
stared into the fire, his  countenance a chilling vision of despair.  "Right
now, there isn't."
     "Yes,   Lord  Rahl,"  Captain  Meiffert  said,  finally   breaking  the
uncomfortable  silence.  "We will  do  as we think  best  until  the  Mother
Confessor is better and you are then able to join us."
     Richard  didn't  argue the time  schedule, as the captain had described
it. It was one Kahlan hoped for, too, but Richard had never said it would be
that soon. He had, in  fact, made  it clear  to them that the time might not
ever come. He cradled the wood in his lap, studying what he had done.
     He ran his thumb along the fresh-cut line of the nose as he asked, "Did
the returning  scouts say . . . how it faired for the people in Anderith . .
. with the Imperial Order there?"
     Kahlan knew  he was only torturing himself by asking that question. She
wished he hadn't asked; it could do him no good to hear the answer.
     Captain Meiffert cleared his throat. "Well, yes, they did report on the
condiions.
     "And . . .?"
     The young officer launched into a cold report  of  the facts they knew.
"Jagang  set  up his troop  headquarters in the capital, Fairfield. He  took
over the  Minister of  Culture's estate for  himself. Their army is so  huge
that it swallowed the city  and overflows far out onto the hills all around.
The Anderith army put  up  little resistance. They were  collected  and  all
summarily put to death. The government of Anderith

     for the  most part ceased to exist within the first few hours. There is
no rule or law. The Order spent the first week in unchecked celebration.
     "Most  people  in  Fairfield  were  displaced and  lost everything they
owned.  Many fled. The roads all around  were packed solid with those trying
to escape  what was happening in the city. The people fleeing the city  only
ended up  being  the  spoils for the soldiers in  the  hills all around  who
couldn't  fit  into  the  city.  Only  a trickle  mostly  the  very old  and
sickly-made it past that gauntlet."
     His impersonal tone abandoned him. He had spent time with those people,
too. "I'm afraid that, in all, it went badly for them,  Lord Rahl. There was
a horrendous amount of killing, of the men, anyway-in the tens of thousands.
Likely more."
     "They  got what  they asked for." Cara's  voice was  as cold as  winter
night.  "They picked their own fate." Kahlan agreed,  but didn't say so. She
knew Richard agreed, too. None of them were pleased about it, though.
     "And  the  countryside?"  Richard asked.  "Anything known  about places
outside Fairfield? Is it going better for them?"
     "No better, Lord Rahl.  The Imperial Order has been methodically  going
about a process of `pacifying' the land, as they call it. Their soldiers are
accompanied by the gifted.
     "By far, the  worst  of the accounts  were  about one  called  `Death's
Mistress.' "
     "Who?" Cara asked.
     " `Death's Mistress,' they call her."
     "Her. Must be the Sisters," Richard said.
     "Which ones do you think it would be?" Cara asked.
     Richard, cutting the mouth into  the  firewood  face, shrugged. "Jagang
has  both Sisters of the  Light and Sisters of the Dark held captive. He's a
dream  walker; he forces  both to do his bidding. It  could  be either;  the
woman is simply his tool."
     "I  don't  know,"  Captain Meiffert  said. "We've had plenty of reports
about the Sisters, and how dangerous they  are. But they're being  used like
you said, as tools of  the army-weapons, basically-not as his agents. Jagang
doesn't let them think for themselves or direct anything.
     "This one, from the reports, anyway, behaves very differently from  the
others. She  acts as Jagang's  agent, but  still,  the  word  is she decides
things for herself, and does as she pleases. The men  who came back reported
that she is more feared than Jagang himself.
     "The people of one town,  when they heard she was coming their way, all
gathered together in the town  square.  They made the  children drink poison
first, then  the adults took their dose. Every  last person in the  town was
dead when the woman arrived-close to five hundred people."
     Richard had stopped carving  as he listened. Kahlan knew that unfounded
rumors could also be  so lurid  as  to  turn alarm into deadly panic, to the
point where people would  rather  die than face the object  of their  dread.
Fear was a powerful tool of war.
     Richard went back to the carving in his lap. He held the knife near the
tip of  the  point,  like  a pen, and carefully cut character into the eyes.
"They didn't get a name for her, did they? This Death's Mistress?"
     "I'm sorry, no, Lord Rahl. They said she is simply  called  by everyone
`Death's Mistress.' "
     "Sounds like an ugly witch," Cara said.
     "Quite the contrary. She has blue eyes and long blond hair. She is said
to be one

     of the most beautiful  women you could ever lay eyes upon. They say she
looks like a vision of a good spirit."
     Kahlan couldn't help notice  the  captain's furtive glance at Cara, who
had blue  eyes and long blond hair, and was also one  of the  most beautiful
women you could ever lay eyes upon. She, too, was deadly.
     Richard was frowning. "Blond. . . blue eyes  . . . there are several it
could be .... Too bad they didn't catch her name."
     "Sorry, but  they gave no other name, Lord Rahl, only  that description
.... Oh yes, and that she always wears black."
     "Dear spirits,"  Richard  whispered  as  he rose  to his  full  height,
gripping his carving by its throat.
     "From what I've been told, Lord Rahl, though she looks like a vision of
one, the good spins themselves would fear her."
     "With good reason." Richard said, as he stared into the distance, as if
looking beyond the black wall of mist to a place only he could see.
     "You know her, then, Lord Rahl?"
     Kahlan listened  to the fire  pop and crackle as she  waited along with
the other  two for  his answer. It almost seemed Richard was trying  to find
his voice as his gaze  sank back down to meet the eyes of the carving in his
hand.
     "I know her," he said, at last.  "I  know her all too well. She was one
of my teachers at the Palace of the Prophets."
     Richard tossed his carving into the flames.
     "Pray you never have to look into Nicci's eyes, Captain."


        Chapter 7

     Look into my eyes, child," Nicci said in her soft, silken voice as  she
cupped the girl's chin.
     Nicci  lifted the bony face. The eyes, dark and wide-set, blinked  with
dull  bewilderment.  There  was nothing to be seen  in  them:  the  girl was
simple.
     Nicci  straightened, feeling a  hollow disappointment. She always  did.
She sometimes found herself looking into people's eyes, like this,  and then
wondering why. If she was searching  for something, she didn't know  what it
was.
     She resumed her leisurely walk down  the  line  of the townspeople, all
assembled  along one side of the  dusty  market square. People  in  outlying
farms and  smaller  communities no doubt came into the town several times  a
month, on market  days, some  staying overnight if  they  had  come from far
away. This wasn't a market day, but it would suit her purpose well enough.
     A few of the crowded buildings had a second  story, typically a room or
two for a  family over their small  shop.  Nicci  saw a bakery, a  cobbler's
shop,  a shop selling  pottery,  a blacksmith, an herbalist, a shop offering
leatherwork-the usual places. One of  these towns  was  much the same as the
next. Many  of  the town's people  worked the surrounding fields of wheat or
sorghum, tended animals, and had extensive vegetable plots. Dung, straw, and
clay being plentiful, they lived  in homes of daub  and wattle. A few of the
shops with a second story boasted beam construction with clapboard siding.
     Behind her, sullen soldiers bristling with  weapons filled the majority
of the square. They were tired from  the hot  ride,  and worse, bored. Nicci
knew they were  a twitch  away from a rampage. A town, even one with  meager
plunder,  was an inviting diversion. It  wasn't  so  much the taking  as the
breaking that  they liked. Sometimes, though, it was the taking. The nervous
women only rarely met the soldiers' bold stares.
     As she strolled past  the  scruffy people,  Nicci  looked into the eyes
watching her. Most were wide with terror and fixed  not on the soldiers, but
on  the object of their dread: Nicci-or as people had taken to calling  her,
"Death's Mistress."  The designation  neither pleased nor displeased her; it
was simply a fact she noted, a fact of  no  more significance to her than if
someone had told her that they had mended a pair of her stockings.
     Some, she  knew,  were staring at the gold ring  through her lower lip.
Gossip  would  have  already  informed  them  that a  woman so marked  was a
personal slave to Emperor Jagang-something lower  even than  simple peasants
such as  themselves. That they stared at the gold ring, or what they thought
of her  for it, was  of  even  less significance to  her  than  being called
"Death's Mistress."
     Jagang only possessed her body in this world; the Keeper would have her
soul

     for  eternity in  the next.  Her  body's existence in  this  world  was
torment;  her spirit's existence in the next would be no less. Existence and
torment were simply the two sides of the same coin-there could be no other.
     Smoke, rolling up from the fire pit over her left shoulder, sailed away
on  a fitful wind to make a dark slash across the bright blue afternoon sky.
Stacked  stones  to each side  of the  communal  cooking pit supported a rod
above the fire. Two  or three pigs or sheep, skewered  on the  rod, could be
roasted at once. Temporary sides were probably available to convert the fire
pit into a smokehouse.
     At other times, an outdoor fire pit was used, often in conjunction with
butchering, for  the making  of soap,  since making soap was  not  something
typically done  indoors. Nicci saw a wooden ash pit,  used  for making  lye,
standing to  the side of the open area, along with  a large iron kettle that
could be used for rendering fat. Lye and fat were the primary ingredients of
soap. Some women liked  to add fragrance to their soap  with herbs and such,
like lavender or rosemary.
     When  Nicci was little,  her mother made her go each  autumn, when  the
butchering was being done, to help people make soap. Her mother said helping
others built proper character.  Nicci still had a few small dots of scars on
the  backs of  her hands  and forearms  where  she  had  been  splashed  and
blistered  by  the  hot fat.  Nicci's  mother  always made her  wear  a fine
dress-not to impress the other people who  didn't  have such clothes, but to
make  Nicci conspicuous  and uncomfortable.  The  attention  her pink  dress
attracted was  not  admiration. As she stood  with  the long wooden  paddle,
stirring the bubbling kettle while the lye was being poured  in, some of the
other children, trying to splash the dress  and ruin it, burned Nicci,  too.
Nicci's mother had said the burns were the Creator's punishment.
     As  Nicci moved past, inspecting the assembled  people, the only sounds
were the horses off behind the buildings, the sporadic coughs of people, and
the flags of flame in the fire pit  snapping and flapping in the breeze. The
soldiers  had  already  helped  themselves  to the  two  pigs  that had been
roasting on the  rod, so the aroma of cooking meat  had mostly dissipated on
the  wind,  leaving  the sour  smells  of  sweat  and  the  stink  of  human
habitation. Whether  a  belligerent  army or a  peaceful town, the  filth of
people smelled the same.
     "You all know why I'm here," Nicci announced. "Why have you people made
me go to  the trouble of such  a journey?" She gazed down the line  of maybe
two  hundred people standing  four and  five  deep.  The  soldiers,  who had
ordered them out of their homes and in  from the fields, greatly outnumbered
them. She stopped in front of a man she had noticed people glancing at.
     ë Well?"
     The wind fluttered his thin gray hair across his balding, bowed head as
he  fixed his gaze on the ground  at her  feet. "We don't  have  anything to
give, Mistress. We're a poor community. We have nothing."
     "You are a liar. You had two  pigs. You  saw fit to have  a  gluttonous
feast instead of helping those in need."
     "But we have to eat." It was not an argument, so much as a plea.
     "So do others, but they are not so fortunate as you. They know only the
ache of  hunger in their  bellies every  night. What an ugly  tragedy,  that
every  day  thousands  of children  die from  the simple  want  of food, and
millions more know  the  gnawing pain of hunger-while people  like you, in a
land of plenty, offer nothing  but selfish excuses. Having what they need to
live is their right, and must be honored by those with the means to help.

     "Our soldiers,  too,  need to eat.  Do you think our  struggle  on  the
behalf  of the  people is easy?  These men risk their lives daily so you may
raise your  children in  a proper, civilized society. How can you look these
men in the eye? How can we even feed  our troops, if  everyone  doesn't help
support the cause?"
     The trembling man remained mute.
     "What must I  do  to  impress upon  you people the  seriousness of your
obligation  to the lives of  others? Your contribution to those in need is a
solemn moral dutysharing in a greater good."
     Nicci's vision  suddenly went white.  With a pain  like  scorching  hot
needles driven into her ears, Jagang's voice filled her mind.
     Why must you  play this  game?  Make examples of  people!  Teach them a
lesson that 1 am not to be ignored!
     Nicci  swayed  on  her feet.  She  was completely  blinded by the  pain
bursting inside her head.  She  let it wash through her, as if  watching  it
happen to a stranger. Her abdominal muscles twitched and convulsed. A rusty,
barbed lance driven up through her, ripping her insides, could not have hurt
more.  Her  arms  hung limp at  her  sides  while she  waited  for  Jagang's
displeasure to end, or for death.
     She was  unable to tell how long the torture lasted.  When he was doing
it, she  was  never able to sense  time-the pain was  too all-consuming. She
knew, from  what others  told  her when  they saw  it done to her,  and from
seeing  it done  to  others,  that  it  sometimes  lasted  only  an instant.
Sometimes it lasted hours.
     Making it last hours was a waste of Jagang's effort-she  couldn't  tell
the difference. She had told him as much.
     Suddenly, she was unable to draw a breath. It felt like a fist squeezed
her heart to a stop. She thought her lungs might burst. Her knees were about
to buckle.
     Do not disobey me again!
     With  a gasp, air filled her lungs. Jagang's  discipline  ended,  as it
always  did, with an  impossibly tart,  sour  taste  on her tongue,  like an
unexpected mouthful of fresh raw lemon juice, and pain searing the nerves at
the  back of her jaw  under  her  earlobes. It left her head ringing and her
teeth throbbing.  As  she opened her eyes, she was  surprised, as she always
was, not to see herself standing in a pool of blood. She touched  the corner
of her mouth, and then brushed her fingers to an ear. She found no blood.
     She wondered in passing why Jagang had been able to  come into her mind
now. Sometimes, he couldn't. It didn't happen that way  for any of the other
Sisters-he always had access to their minds.
     As her  vision cleared, she saw people staring at her. They didn't know
why  she had paused.  The  young men-and a few  of the  older ones, too-were
sneaking  peeks  at  her body.  They  were  used  to  seeing  women in drab,
shapeless dresses, women whose bodies  exhibited  the toll  taken by endless
hard work and almost constant  pregnancy from the time they  were old enough
for the  seed to  catch.  They had  never before  seen a  woman  like Nicci,
standing straight and tall, looking  them  in  the eye, wearing a fine black
dress that hugged a nearly flawless shape marred by neither hard work or the
labor  of  birth.  The stark  black material  contrasted  the pale curve  of
cleavage revealed  by the  cut of the laced bodice.  Nicci was  numb to such
stares.  Occasionally, they suited her  purposes, but most of the  time they
didn't, and so she disregarded them.
     She  began  walking  down  the line of  people again,  ignoring Emperor
Jagang's orders. She rarely complied with his orders. She was, for the  most
part, indifferent to his punishment. If anything, she welcomed it.

     Nicci, forgive me. You know I don't mean to hurt you.
     She ignored his voice,  too, as she studied the eyes peering up at her.
Not everyone did. She liked to look into the eyes of those courageous enough
to risk a glimpse of her. Most were filled with simple terror.
     There would soon be abundant justification for such apprehension.
     Nicci, you  must  do as  I tell you, or  you  are only going to end  up
forcing  me to  do  something  terrible to you. Neither  of us  wants  that.
Someday, I am  going to end up doing something from which you will be unable
to recover.
     If that is what you wish to do, then do it, she thought, in answer.
     It was not a challenge; she simply didn't care.
     You know 1 don't want to do that, Nicci.
     Without  the pain, his voice was  little more than  a fly annoying her.
She paid it no heed. She addressed the crowd.
     "Do you people have any concept of the  effort being put into the fight
for your future? Or is it that  you expect to benefit without  contributing?
Many of our brave men have given their  lives fighting the oppressors of the
people, fighting for our new beginning. We struggle so that all people  will
be able to share equally  in the coming prosperity. You must  help us in our
effort on your behalf. Just as helping those in need is the moral obligation
of every person, so, too, is this."
     Commander  Kardeef, displaying  a  look  of sour  displeasure,  planted
himself in front  of her. The sunlight  slanting across his  lined face cast
his hooded eyes in deep shadows.  She was not  moved by his disfavor. He was
never satisfied with anything. Well, she corrected herself, almost never.
     "People  can only  achieve virtue through obedience and sacrifice. Your
contribution to the Order is to implement their compliance. We are not  here
to hold civic lessons!"
     Commander Kardeef was confident in his privileged mastery over her. He,
too, had given her pain. She endured what Kadar Kardeef  did to her with the
same detachment with which she endured what Jagang did to her.
     Only in  the furthest depths of pain could she begin  to feel anything.
Even pain was preferable to the nothingness she usually felt.
     Kadar  Kardeef was probably unaware  of the punishment Jagang had  just
completed,  or his  orders; His  Excellency didn't use  Commander  Kardeef's
mind. It was an arduous undertaking for Jagang to control  those  who didn't
possess the gift-lu could do it, but  it was rarely worth his effort; he had
the gifted to control people for  him. A dream walker somehow used  the gift
in  those  who  possessed it in order  to m help complete the  connection to
their minds. In a way, the gifted made it possible
     for Jagang to so easily control them.
     Kadar Kardeef glowered down at her as she gazed up at his darkly tanned
creased face. He was an  imposing  figure, with the  studded leather  straps
that  crossed  his  massive chest,  his armored  leather shoulder and breast
plates, his chain mail, array of well-used weapons. Nicci had seen him crush
men's  throats  in  one of  big, powerful  hands.  As silent witness  to his
bravery in battle, he bore a number scars. She had seen them all.
     Few officers ranked higher or were more  trusted than Kadar Kardeef. He
been  with the Order since  his youth,  rising  through  the ranks  to fight
alongside ' Jagang as  they expanded the empire of the Imperial Order out of
their homeland Altur'Rang to eventually subjugate the rest of the Old World.
Kadar Kardeef was the hero of the Little Gap campaign,  the  man who  almost
single-handedly

     the course of the battle, breaking  through enemy lines and  personally
slaying  the three great  kings who  had joined forces to trap and crush the
Imperial Order before it  could seize the imaginations  of the  millions  of
people living  in a patchwork of kingdoms, fiefdoms, clans, city-states, and
vast regions controlled by alliances of warlords.
     The  Old  World  had  been  a  tinderbox,  waiting  for  the  spark  of
revolution. The preachings of the Order were that spark. If the high priests
were the Order's soul, Jagang was its bone and muscle. Few people understood
Jagang's genius-they saw only a dream walker, or a ferocious warrior. He was
far more.
     It had taken Jagang  decades to finally bring the rest of the Old World
to heel-to  put  the Order on its final path to  greater glory. During those
years  of  struggle  for the  Order, while  engaged in  nearly constant war,
Jagang  toiled building the road system  that allowed  him  to move men  and
supplies great distances with lightning speed. The more lands and peoples he
annexed,  the  more laborers he put to the construction of yet more roads by
which he could  conquer yet  more territory. He was  thus able  to  maintain
communications  and to react to situations  faster  than anyone  would  have
believed possible.  Formerly  isolated lands were  suddenly connected to the
rest of the Old World. Jagang had knitted them together with a net of roads.
Along those roads, the people of the Old World had risen up to follow him as
he forged the way for the Order.
     Kadar Kardeef  had been part of it  all. More  than once  he  had taken
wounds to save  Jagang's life. Jagang had once taken a bolt  from a crossbow
to save Kardeef. If Jagang could be said to have a friend, Kadar Kardeef was
as close as any came to it.
     Nicci first met Kardeef when he had  come to the Palace of the Prophets
in Tanimura  to pray.  Old King Gregory, who  had ruled  the  land including
Tanimura,  had disappeared  without a trace. Kadar Kardeef  was  a  solemnly
devout man; before battle he  prayed to the  Creator for the  blood  of  the
enemy,  and after,  for the souls of the men he had killed. That  day he was
said  to have prayed  for the  soul of King  Gregory. The Imperial Order was
suddenly  the new rule in Tanimura. The people celebrated in the streets for
days.
     Over the course of three thousand years, the Sisters,  from  their home
at the Palace of the Prophets in Tanimura, had seen governments come and go.
For the most part,  the Sisters, led by their prelate, considered matters of
rule  a petty foolishness best  ignored.  They believed in a higher calling.
The  Sisters  believed  they  would remain at  the Palace  of  the Prophets,
undisturbed  in their work, long after the Order had vanished  into the dust
of history.  Revolutions had  many times  come and gone. This  one,  though,
caught them up.
     Kadar Kardeef  had  been nearly twenty  years younger,  then-a handsome
conqueror riding into the city. Many of the Sisters  were fascinated  by the
man. Nicci never was. But he was fascinated by her.
     Emperor  Jagang,  of  course,  did  not send  such  invaluable  men  as
Commander Kardeef out  to pacify conquered  lands. He had  entrusted Kardeef
with a much more important task: guarding his valuable property-Nicci.
     Nicci turned  her attention away  from Kadar  Kardeef  and  back to the
people.
     She settled her gaze on the man who had spoken before. "We cannot allow
anyone to shirk their responsibility to others and to our new beginning."
     "Please, Mistress . . . We have nothing-"
     "Disregard of our cause is treasonous."

     He thought better of disagreeing with that pronouncement.
     "You don't seem to understand that this man behind me wants  you to see
that the Imperial Order is  resolute in their devotion to their cause-if you
don't do your duty.  I know you have heard  the stories,  but this man wants
you to experience the grim  reality.  Imagining it  is never quite the same.
Never quite as gruesome."
     She  stared  at  the  man,  waiting  for  his  answer.  He  licked  his
weather-cracked lips,
     "We just need  some more time  .... Our crops are doing  well. When the
harvest  comes in  . .  . we could  contribute  our  fair  share  toward the
struggle for . . . for. . ."
     "The new beginning."
     "Yes, Mistress," he said, bobbing  his head, "the  new beginning." When
his gaze returned to the dirt at his feet, she moved on down the line.
     Her purpose was not really to collect, but to cow.
     The time had come.
     A girl gazing up at her  snagged Nicci to  a stop, distracting her from
what she  had intended. The girl's  big,  dark  eyes sparkled  with innocent
wonder. Everything was new to her, and she was  eager to see it  all. In her
dark  eyes shone  that  rare, fragile,  and  most perishable of qualities: a
guileless view of life that had yet to be touched by pain or loss or evil.
     Nicci  cupped  the  girl's  chin,  staring  into  the  depths  of those
thirsting eyes.
     One of  Nicci's earliest  memories was  of her mother standing over her
like this, holding her chin, looking down at her. Nicci's mother was gifted,
too.  She  said that', the  gift  was a curse, and  a test. It  was  a curse
because it gave her abilities others didn't have,  and it was a test  to see
if she  would wrongly exert that  superiority.  Nicci's mother almost  never
used her  gift. Servants handled the work; she spent most of her time nested
among her clutch of friends, devoting herself to higher pursuits.
     "Dear Creator,  but Nicci's father is a monster," she would complain as
she wrung her  hands. Some of  her friends would murmur their sympathy. "Why
must he burden me so! I fear his eternal soul is beyond hope or prayer." The
other women would ask in grim agreement.
     Her  mother's eyes were the same  dull brown as  a cockroach's back. To
Nicci's mind, they were set too close together. Her mouth, too,  was narrow,
as  if fixed is  -. place  by her perpetual disapproval. While  Nicci  never
really  thought of  her  mother  as  homely,  neither  did she  consider her
beautiful, although her friends regularly reassured her that she most surely
was.
     Nicci's mother said beauty was a curse to a caring woman and a blessing
only to whores.
     Puzzled by her  mother's  displeasure of her  father, Nicci had finally
asked why had done.
     "Nicci,"  her mother  had said, cupping  Nicci's small  chin that  day.
Nicci eagerly awaited her mother's words. "You have beautiful eyes, but  you
do  not yet see  with .them. All people are miserable wretches,  that is the
lot of  man. Do  you  have any idea  how  it  hurts  those without all  your
advantages to see your beautiful face?  That  , is all  you bring to others:
insufferable pain.  The Creator brought you into  the world 1  for no reason
but to ease the misery of others, and here you bring only hurt." Ha mother's
friends, sipping tea, nodded, whispering to one another their sorrowful  b `
firm agreement.
     That was when Nicci had first learned that she bore the indelible stain
of so shadowy, nameless, unconfessed evil.
     Nicci gazed into the  rare face  looking up  at her. Today this  girl's
dark  eyes would  see things they  could not  yet  imagine.  Those  big eyes
eagerly watched without  seeing. She  could not possibly understand what was
to come, or why.
     What kind of life could she have?
     It would be for the best, this way.
     The time had come.


        Chapter 8

     Before  she   could  begin,  Nicci  saw   something  that  ignited  her
indignation. She whirled to a nearby woman.
     "Where is there a washtub?"
     Surprised by the  question, the woman pointed a trembling finger toward
a two story building not far  off. "There, Mistress. In the yard behind  the
pottery shop are laundry tubs where we were washing clothes."
     Nicci seized the woman by her throat. "Get me a pair of scissors. Bring
them  to me there." The woman stared  in wide-eyed fright. Nicci shoved her.
"Now! Or would you prefer to die on the spot?"
     Nicci  yanked  free  a  well-worn, reserve  studded strap  bunched with
several others  and secured over Commander  Kardeef's  shoulder. He made  no
effort to stop her, but as  she  gathered up the strap, he seized  her upper
arm in his powerful grip.
     "You  had  better  be  planning  on drowning this little brat-or  maybe
cutting  off hunks of her hide and then stabbing  out  her eyes." His breath
smelled of  onion and ale. He smirked.  "In fact, you start  in on her,  and
while she's  screaming and begging  for her life, I'll begin  separating out
some young men, or  perhaps  I'll select some women to be  an example. Which
would you prefer, this time?"
     Nicci turned her glare down at his fingers on her  arm. He removed them
as he  growled a warning. She turned to the girl and whipped the strap twice
around her neck to  serve as a collar, twisting it into a handle in the back
so she could control the girl with it. The girl squeaked in choked surprise.
She had  probably never  been handled so roughly  in  her entire life. Nicci
forced her ahead, toward the building the woman had pointed out.
     Seeing how angry Nicci had  suddenly  become, no  one followed. A woman
not far off, undoubtedly the girl's mother, began to cry out in protest, but
then  fell  silent as  Kardeef's men turned their attention  on her. By then
Nicci already had the perplexed girl around the corner.
     Out back, drab  laundry, deformed and crumpled from its  ordeal  on the
washboard, and  now stretched and pinned to lines, twisted in the wind as if
struggling to escape. Smoke from  the  fire  pit peeked over  the top of the
building. The nervous woman waited with a large pair of shears.
     Nicci  marched the  girl up to  a tub of  water, drove her down  on her
knees, and shoved her head under the water.  While the girl struggled, Nicci
snatched the  scissors from the woman. Her chore completed,  the  woman held
her apron up over her mouth to muffle her wails as she ran off in tears, not
wanting to watch a child being murdered.
     Nicci pulled  the  girl's  head up  out of  the  water, and  while  she
sputtered and gasped for air,  began clipping  her dark,  soaking  wet  hair
close to the scalp. When

     Nicci had finished cutting it off in sodden clumps, she dunked the girl
again while leaning over and scooping up a cake of pale yellow soap from the
washboard on the ground beside the tub. Nicci hauled  the girl's head up and
then  began  scrubbing.  The  girl  screeched, flailing her spindly arms and
clawing at  the strap around her neck by which Nicci  controlled  her. Nicci
realized she was probably hurting  her, but from within the grip of rage, it
was only a dim realization.
     "What's the matter with you!" Nicci shook the gasping girl. "Don't  you
know you're crawling with lice?"
     "But, but-"
     The soap was harsh and as  rough as  a rasp. The girl squealed as Nicci
bent her over and put more muscle into the scouring.
     "Do you like having a head full of lice?"
     "No--"
     "Well, you must! Why else would you have them?"
     "Please! I'll try to do better. I'll wash. I promise!"
     Nicci remembered how  much  she hated catching lice from the places her
mother sent her.  She remembered scrubbing herself, using the harshest  soap
she could  find, only to again be sent off to another place, where she would
get infested with the hated things all over again.
     When Nicci had scrubbed  and dunked  a dozen times, she finally dragged
the girl to a tub of  clean water and swished her head about in it  to rinse
her  off.  The  girl  blinked  furiously, trying to clear her  eyes  of  the
stinging, soapy water as it streamed down off her face.
     Gripping  the girl's chin,  Nicci  peered into her red  eyes. "No doubt
your  clothes  are lousy  with nits. You're  to  scrub  your  clothes  every
day-underthings,  especially-or the  lice  will just  be right  back." Nicci
squeezed the  girl's cheeks until her eyes watered. "You are better  than to
be filthy with lice! Don't you know that?"
     The  girl  nodded,  as  best as  she  could with Nicci's strong fingers
holding her  face. The big,  dark, intelligent  eyes, although red  from the
water and wide with shock, were still filled with that rare sense of wonder.
As painful and frightening as the experience was, this had not dispelled it.
     "Burn  your bedding.  Get new."  Given the way  these people  lived and
worked, it seemed a hopeless challenge. "Your  whole family must  burn their
bedding. Wash all their clothes."
     The girl nodded her oath.
     Task completed, Nicci marched the  girl back toward the gathered crowd.
Forcing  her  along  by  the studded  strap used  as  a  collar,  Nicci  was
unexpectedly struck by a memory.
     It was a memory of the first time she had seen Richard.
     Nearly every Sister at the  Palace of the Prophets had been gathered in
the  great  hall  to see the  new  boy Sister  Verna  had brought  in. Nicci
lingered  at the mahogany rail,  twining around her finger a  lace  dangling
from her bodice, only to pull the  lace straight and then to twine it again,
when  the  pair  of  thick  walnut  doors  opened.  The  rumbling  drone  of
conversation, sprinkled  with bright laughter, trailed  to an expectant hush
as the group, led by Sister Phoebe, marched into the chamber, past the white
columns topped by gold capitals, and in under the huge vaulted dome.
     The  birth of  gifted boys  was rare, and a  cause of expectant delight
when they were discovered and finally brought to live at the palace. A grand
banquet was planned  for that evening. Most of the Sisters, dressed in their
finery, stood on the

     floor below, eager to  meet the new boy. Nicci remained near the center
of the lower balcony. She didn't care whether she met him or not.
     It came as something of a shock to see how Sister Verna had aged on her
journey. Such journeys typically lasted at most a year; this one, beyond the
great barrier to  the New World,  had taken nearly twenty. Events beyond the
barrier being uncertain, Verna had apparently been sent  off on  her mission
too far in advance.
     Life at the Palace of the Prophets was as long as it was serene. No one
at the Palace of the Prophets appeared to have aged at all  in so trifling a
span of  time  as two decades, but  away from the  spell  that enveloped the
palace, Verna had. Verna, probably close to one hundred and sixty years old,
had to be at least twenty years younger than Nicci; yet she now looked twice
Nicci's age. People outside the palace  aged at  the normal rate, of course,
but to see it happen so rapidly to a Sister . . .
     As the  roaring applause  thundered  on in the huge room, many  of  the
Sisters wept over the  momentous occasion. Nicci yawned. Sister Phoebe  held
up her hand until the room fell silent.
     "Sisters." Phoebe's voice trembled. "Please welcome Sister Verna home."
She finally had  to raise a hand to again bring the clamor of  applause to a
halt.
     When the  room  had quieted, she  said,  "And may  I present our newest
student, our newest child of the Creator, our newest charge." She turned and
held an arm out in introduction, wiggling her fingers, urging the apparently
timid  boy forward  as she went  on.  "Please welcome Richard  Cypher to the
Palace of the Prophets."
     Several of the women stepped back out of the way  as he strode forward.
Nicci's eyes widened; her back straightened. It was not a  young boy. He was
grown into a man.
     The  crowd, despite their shock, clapped and cheered with the warmth of
their welcome. Nicci didn't hear it. Her attention was riveted by those gray
eyes of his. He  was  introduced to some of the nearby Sisters.  The  novice
assigned to him, Pasha, was brought before him and tried to speak to him.
     Richard brushed Pasha aside, a stag dismissing a vole, and  stepped out
alone  into  the  center of the  room.  His whole bearing conveyed the  same
quality Nicci beheld in his eyes.
     "I have something to say."
     The vast chamber fell to an astonished hush.
     His gaze swept the room. Nicci's breath  caught when,  for  an instant,
their eyes met, as he probably met countless others.
     Her trembling fingers clutched the rail for support.
     Nicci swore  at that moment to do whatever was necessary to be named as
one of his teachers.
     His fingers tapped the Rada'Han around his neck.
     "As  long as you keep  this collar on me, you are my  captors, and I am
your prisoner."
     Murmurs hummed in  the air. A  Rada'Han was put around a boy's neck not
joust to govern him, but to protect him as well. The boys were never thought
of as prisoners, but wards who needed security, care, and training. Richard,
though, did not set ' it that way.
     "Since  I have  committed  no  aggression against  you,  that  makes us
enemies. We are at war."
     Several  older Sisters  teetered  on their heels, nearly  fainting. The
faces of half the  women in the room went  red. The  rest  went white. Nicci
could not have imagined
     such an  attitude.  His  demeanor  kept  her  from blinking,  lest  she
overlook something.  She drew  slow breaths,  lest  she  miss  a  word.  Her
pounding heart, though, was beyond her ability to control.
     "Sister Verna has made a pledge to  me that I will be taught to control
the gift, and when I have learned what  is required, I will be set free. For
now,  as  long  as  you  keep that pledge,  we  have a truce. But there  are
conditions."
     Richard lifted a red leather rod hanging  on  a  fine gold chain around
his neck.  At the  time,  Nicci  hadn't known  it to  be  the  weapon  of  a
Mord-Sith.
     "I have  been collared before. The person  who put  that  collar  on me
brought me pain, to punish me, to teach me, to subdue me."
     Nicci knew that such could be the only fate of one like him.
     "That is the sole purpose  of a collar. You collar  a beast. You collar
your enemies.
     "I  made  her  much the  same offer I am making you. I  begged  her  to
release me. She would not. I was forced to kill her.
     "Not one of you could ever  hope  to be good enough to lick her  boots.
She did as she did because she was  tortured and broken, made mad enough  to
use a collar to hurt people. She did it against her nature.
     "You .  . ." His  gaze swept all  the eyes  watching  him.  "You  do it
because you think