“Well?” Commander Kardeef shrieked. He planted his fists on his hips. “Are you through with your games? It’s time these people learned the true meaning of ruthless!”
Nicci stared into the depths of his dark eyes. They were defiant, angry, and determined—yet they were nothing at all like Richard’s eyes.
Nicci turned to the soldiers.
She gestured. “You two. Seize the commander.”
The men blinked dumbly. Commander Kardeef’s face went red with rage. “That’s it! You’ve finally gone too far!” He wheeled to his men, a whole field of them—two thousand of them. He pointed a thumb back over his shoulder at Nicci. “Grab this lunatic witch!”
Half a dozen men nearest to her drew weapons as they rushed her. Like all Order field troops, they were big, strong, and quick. They were also experienced.
Nicci thrust a fist out in the direction of the closest as he lifted his whip to lash out and entangle her. With the speed of thought, both Additive Magic and Subtractive twined together in a lethal mix as she unleashed a focused bolt of power. It produced a burst of light so hot and so white that for an instant it made the sunlight seem dim and cold by comparison.
The blast blew a mellon-sized hole through the center of the soldier’s chest. For an instant, before the internal pressure forced his organs to fill the sudden void, she could see men behind through the gaping hole in his chest.
The afterimage of the flare lingered in her mind’s eye like lightning’s arc. The acrid smell of scorched air stung her eyes. The clap of her power’s thunder rumbled out across the surrounding green fields of wheat.
Before the soldier hit the ground, Nicci unleased her power on three more of the charging men, taking off one’s entire shoulder, the wallop whirling him around like a ghastly fountain, the dangling limb flinging off into the crowd. A third man was cut almost in two. She felt the concussion of the following bolt deep in her chest and, amid a blinding flash, the fourth man’s head came apart in a cloud of red mist and bony debris.
Her warning gaze met the eyes of two men with knives gripped in white-knuckled fists. They halted. Many more took a step back as the four reports, to her so separate yet so close atop one another that they almost merged into one ripping blast, still echoed off the buildings.
“Now,” she said in a quiet, calm, composed voice that by its very gentleness betrayed how deadly earnest was the threat, “if you men do not follow my orders, and seize Commander Kardeef, I will seize him myself. But, of course, not until after I’ve killed every last one of you.”
The only sound was the moan of wind between the buildings.
“Do as I say, or die. I will not wait.”
The big men, knowing her, made their decision in the instant they knew was all she would grant them, and leaped to seize the commander. He managed to draw his sword. Kadar Kardeef was no stranger to pitched battle. He screamed orders as he fought them off. More than one man fell dead in the melee. Others cried out as they took wounds. From behind, men finally caught the deadly sword arm. Additional men piled on the commander until they had him disarmed, down on the ground, and finally under control.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Kadar Kardeef roared at her as the men pulled him to his feet.
Nicci closed the distance between them. The soldiers held his arms twisted behind his back. She stared into his wild eyes.
“Why, Commander, I am merely following your orders.”
“What are you talking about!”
She smiled without humor just because she knew it would further madden him.
One of the men glanced back over his shoulder. “What do you want done with him?”
“Don’t hurt him—I want him fully conscious. Strip him and bind him to the pole.”
“Pole? What pole?”
“The pole that held the pigs you men ate.”
Nicci snapped her fingers, and they began pulling off their commander’s clothes. She watched without emotion as he was finally stripped. His gear and prized weapons became plunder, quickly disappearing into the hands of men he had commanded. They grunted with effort as they fought to bind the struggling, naked, hairy commander to the pole at his back.
Nicci turned to the stunned crowd. “Commander Kardeef wishes you to know how ruthless we can be. I am going to carry out those orders, and demonstrate it for you.” She turned back to the soldiers. “Put him over the fire to roast like a pig.”
The soldiers bore the struggling, furious Kadar Kardeef, the hero of the Little Gap campaign, to the fire pit. They knew that Jagang watched them through her eyes. They had reason to be confident that the emperor would stop her if he wished to. After all, he was the dream walker, and they had seen him force her and the other Sisters to submit to his wishes countless times, no matter how degrading those wishes were.
They could not know that, for some reason, Jagang did not have access to her mind right then.
The wooden ends of the pole clattered into the sockets in the stone supports to each side of the fire pit. The pole sprang up and down with the weight of its load. The weight finally settled, leaving Kadar Kardeef to hang facedown. He had little choice but to watch the glowing coals beneath him.
Even though the fire had burned down, it wasn’t long before the heat of the wavering, low flames began causing him distress. As people watched in silent dismay, the commander twisted as he shrieked orders, demanding that his men take him down, promising them punishment if they delayed. His diatribe trailed off as he began gasping for control of his growing dread.
Watching the eyes of the town’s people, Nicci pointed behind her.
“This is how ruthless the Imperial Order is: they will slowly, painfully, burn to death a great commander, a war hero, a man known and revered far and wide, a man who has served them well, just to prove to you, the people of an insignificant little town, that they will not hesitate to kill anyone. Our goal is the good of all, and that goal is held more important than any mere man among us. This is the proof. Now, do you people, for any reason, still think that we would shrink from harming any or all of you if you don’t contribute to the common good?”
Nearly everyone shook their heads as they all mumbled, “No, Mistress.”
Behind her, Commander Kardeef writhed in pain. He again yelled at his men, commanding them to bring him down, and to kill “the crazy witch.” None of the soldiers moved to comply with his orders. To look at them, they didn’t even hear him. These men had no notion of compassion. There was only life, and death. They chose life; that choice required his death.
Nicci stood watching the eyes of the people as the minutes dragged on. The commander was up a good distance from the low flames, but there was a expansive bed of broiling hot coals. She knew that, from time to time, the gusty breeze diverted the fierce heat to give him a fleeting reprieve. It would only prolong his ordeal; the heat was inexorable. Still, it would take some time. She didn’t ask for more firewood. She was in no hurry.
People’s noses wrinkled; everyone could smell his body hair burning. No one dared speak. As the ordeal wore on, the skin across Kardeef’s chest and stomach reddened, and then darkened. It was a good fifteen minutes before it finally began to crack and split open. He shrieked in pain nearly the entire time. The smell turned to a surprisingly pleasant aroma of cooking meat.
In the end, he gave in to wailing for mercy. He called her name, begging her to bring it to an end, to either free him or to finish him quickly. As she listened to him sob her name, she stroked the gold ring through her lower lip, his voice little more to her than the buzzing of a fly.
The thin layer of fat that lay over his powerful muscles began melting. He grew hoarse. Fueled by the fat, flames flared up, scorching his face.
“Nicci!” Kardeef knew his pleas for mercy were falling on indifferent ears. He betrayed his true feelings. “You vicious bitch! You deserved everything I did to you!”
She casually confronted his wild gaze. “Yes, I did. Give my rega
rds to the Keeper, Kadar.”
“Tell him yourself! When Jagang finds out about this, he’ll tear you limb from limb! You’ll soon be in the underworld, in the Keeper’s hands!”
His words were once more but a trifling drone.
Sweat beaded on people’s foreheads as the spectacle dragged on. They needed no spoken orders to know she expected them to remain and watch the whole thing. Their own imaginations, should they consider disobeying her unspoken orders, would dream up punishments she never could. Only the boys were fascinated by the remarkable exhibition. Knowing looks passed among them; torture such as this was a treat to the minds of young immortals. Someday, they might make good Order troops—if they didn’t grow up.
Nicci met the glare of the girl. The hatred in those eyes was breathtaking. Even though the girl had been afraid of the dunking and scrubbing, her eyes, at the time, had shown that the world was still a wondrous place, and she was someone special. Now, her eyes betrayed her lost innocence.
The whole time, Nicci stood tall, with her back straight and shoulders square, to take the full blow of the girl’s bright new hatred, feeling the rare sensation of experiencing something.
The girl had no idea that Commander Kardeef had taken her place in the flames.
When the commander finally went silent, Nicci turned her eyes from the girl and spoke to the town’s people.
“The past is gone. You are part of the Imperial Order. If you people don’t do the moral thing by contributing toward the well-being of your fellow citizens of the Order, I will return.”
They did not doubt her. If there was one thing they obviously wanted, it was never to see her again.
One of the soldiers, his fists trembling at his sides, tramped forward in halting steps. His eyes were wide with bewildered pain. “I want you back, darlin,” he growled in a voice that didn’t match the startled expression in his eyes. The voice turned deadly. “And I want you back right now.”
There was no mistaking Jagang’s voice, or the rage in it.
It was difficult for him to control the mind of one without the gift. He had the soldier in a tenacious grip. Jagang would not have used a soldier, thereby betraying his impotence, had he been able to reach in and control Nicci’s mind.
She had absolutely no idea why he had suddenly lost the link to her. It had happened before. She knew he would eventually reestablish his ability to hurt her. She had merely to wait.
“You are angry with me, Excellency?”
“What do you think?”
She shrugged. “Since Kadar was your better in bed, I would think you would be pleased.”
“Get yourself back here right now!” the soldier roared in Jagang’s voice. “Do you understand? Right now!”
Nicci bowed. “But, of course, Excellency.”
As she straightened, she yanked the soldier’s long knife from the sheath at his belt and slammed it hilt-deep into his muscled gut. She gritted her teeth with the effort of pivoting the handle sideways, sweeping the blade in a lethal arc through his insides.
She doubted the man felt his messy death writhing at her feet while she waited for her carriage to make its way around the square. He died with Jagang’s chuckle on his lips. Since a dream walker could only be in a living mind, for the time being, the afternoon returned to quiet.
After her carriage rocked to a dusty halt, a soldier reached up and opened the door. She leaned out from the step, turning back to the crowd, holding the outside handrail in order to stand straight so that they all might see her. Her blond hair fluttered in the sunny breeze.
“Do not forget this day, and how your lives were all spared by Jagang the Just! The commander would have murdered you; the emperor, through me, has instead shown his compassion. Spread the word of the mercy and wisdom of Jagang the Just, and I will have no need to return.”
The crowd mumbled that they would.
“Do you want us to bring the commander with us,” a soldier asked. The man, Kadar Kardeef’s loyal second, now wore Kardeef’s sword. Like vegetables, fidelity’s fresh vitality was fleeting, its final fate stench and rot.
“Leave him to roast as a reminder. Everyone else will return with me to Fairfield.”
“By your command,” he said with a bow. He circled his arm and ordered the men to mount up and move out.
Nicci leaned out farther and looked up at the driver. “His Excellency wishes to see me. Although he has not said as much, I’m reasonably sure he would like you to hurry.”
Nicci took her place on the hard leather cushion inside, her back straight against the upright seat, while the driver let out a shrill whistle and cracked his whip. The team leaped forward, jerking the carriage ahead. With a hand on the windowsill, she steadied herself as the ironbound wheels bounced over the hard, rough ground of the town square until they reached the road, where the carriage settled down into this familiar jolting ride. Sunlight slanted in the window, falling across the empty cushion opposite her. The bold bright patch glided off the seat as the carriage negotiated a curve in the road, finally slipping up to come to rest in her lap like a warm cat. Darkly clad riders to each side, ahead, and behind stretched forward over the withers of their galloping mounts. A rumbling roar along with billowing plumes of dust lifted into the air from the thundering hooves.
For the moment, Nicci was free of Jagang. She was surrounded by two thousand men, yet she felt totally alone. Before long, she would have pain to fill the terrible void.
She felt no joy, no fear. She sometimes wondered why she felt nothing but the need to hurt.
As the carriage raced toward Jagang, her thoughts were focused instead on another man, trying to recall every occasion that she had seen him. She went over every moment she had spent with Richard Cypher, or as he was now known—and as Jagang knew him—Richard Rahl.
She thought about his gray eyes.
Until the day she saw him, she had never believed such a person could exist.
When she thought about Richard, like now, only one haunting need burned in her: to destroy him.
Chapter 9
Huge garish tents festooned the prominent hill outside the city of Fairfield, yet despite the festive colors erected amid the gloom, despite the laughing, the shouting, the coarse singing, and the riotous excess, this was no carnival come to town, but an occupying army. The emperor’s tents, and those of his retinue, were styled in the fashion of the tents used by some of the nomadic people from Jagang’s homeland of Altur’Rang, yet they were embellished far beyond any actual tradition. The emperor, a man vastly exceeding any nomadic tribal leader’s ability to imagine, created his own cultural heritage as he saw fit.
Around the tents, covering the hills and valleys as far as Nicci could see, the soldiers had pitched their own small grimy tents. Some were oiled canvas, many more were made from animal skins. Beyond the shared basics of practicality, there was uniformity only in their lack of conformity to any one style.
Outside some of the shabby little tents, and almost as large, sat ornate upholstered chairs looted from the city. The juxtaposition almost looked as if it had been intentionally done for a comical effect, but Nicci knew the reality had no kinship to humor. When the army eventually moved on, such large, meticulously crafted items were too cumbersome to take and would be left to rot in the weather.
Horses were picketed haphazardly, with occasional paddocks holding small herds. Other enclosures held meat on the hoof. Individual wagons were scattered here and there, seemingly wherever they could find an empty spot, but in other places they had been set up side by side. Many were camp followers, others were army wagons with everything from basic supplies to blacksmith equipment. The army brought along minimal siege equipment; they had the gifted to use as weapons of that sort.
Brooding clouds scudded low over the scene. The humid air reeked of excrement from both animals and men. The green fields all around had been churned to a muddy morass. The two thousand men who had returned with Nicci had disappeared into the
sprawling camp like a sprinkling of raindrops into a swamp.
An Imperial Order army encampment was a place of noise and seeming confusion, yet it was not as disorderly as it might appear. There was a hierarchy of authority, and duties and chores to attend. Scattered men worked in solitude on their gear, oiling weapons and leather or rolling their chain mail inside barrels with sand and vinegar to clean it of rust, while others cooked at fires. Farriers saw to the horses. Craftsmen saw to everything from repairing weapons to fashioning new boots to pulling teeth. Mystics of all sorts prowled the camp, tending impoverished souls or warding troublesome demons. Duties completed, raucous gangs gathered together for entertainment, usually gambling and drinking. Sometimes the diversions involved the camp followers, sometimes the captives.
Even surrounded by such vast numbers, Nicci felt alone. Jagang’s absence from her mind left a feeling of staggering isolation—not a sense of being forsaken, but simply solitude by contrast. With the dream walker in her mind, not even the most intimate detail of life—no thought, no deed—could be held private. His presence lurked in the dark mental corners, and from there he could watch everything: every word you spoke; every thought you had; every bite you took; every time you cleared your throat; every time you coughed; every time you went to the privy. You were never alone. Never. The violation was debilitating, the trespass complete.
That was what broke most of the Sisters: the brutal totality of it, the awareness of his constant presence in your own mind, watching. Worse, almost, the dream walker’s roots sunk down through you, but you never knew when his awareness was focused on you. You might call him a vile name, and, with his attention elsewhere, it would go unnoticed. Another time, you might have a brief, private, nasty thought about him, and he would know it the same instant you thought it.
Nicci had learned to feel those roots, as had many of the other Sisters. She had also learned to recognize when they were absent, as now. That never happened with the others; with them, those roots were permanent. Jagang always eventually returned, though, to once again sink his roots into her, but for now, she was alone. She just didn’t know why.
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