The soldiers disliked the duty of feeding an old woman. She suspected their comrades made sport of their domestic duty. They would come in, grab her hair in their fist, and push the bread in her mouth, packing it in with stubby filthy fingers, as if they were stuffing a goose for roasting. As Ann tried to swallow the dry mass before she choked, they would start pouring water down her throat to wash down-the bread.
It was an unpleasant experience, one over which Ann had
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no control. As much as she enjoyed food, she was coming to fear it would be the end of her.
Once, the soldier who came to feed her had simply thrown the bread on the ground and set a wooden bowl of water beside it, as if she were a dog. He seemed proud of himself in that he had shown her disrespect and saved himself considerable trouble all at the same time.
He didn't realize it, but Ann much preferred that method. After he had his laugh and left, she could flop on her side, squirm close, and eat the bread at her own pace, even if she didn't have the luxury of wiping off the dirt.
The tent flap opened. A dark shape stepping in blocked out the campfires beyond. Ann wondered what it would be: stuffed goose, or dog-eating-off-the-ground. To her surprise, it was Sister Alessandra, bringing a bowl giving off the aroma of sausage soup. She even had a candle with her.
Sister Alessandra pressed the candle into the dirt to the side. The woman was not smiling. She said nothing. She didn't meet Ann's gaze.
In the dim candlelight, Ann could see that Alessandra's face was bruised and scraped. She had a nasty cut on the cheekbone below her left eye, but it looked to be on the mend. The relatively minor wounds seemed to be a variety of ages, from old and near healed to freshly inflicted.
Ann didn't have to ask how the woman came to be in such a condition. Her cheeks and both sides of her jaw were red and raw from the stubble of countless unshaven faces. "Alessandra, I'm relieved to see you ... alive. I feared greatly for you."
Alessandra raised one shoulder in a gesture of feigned indifference. She wasted no time in bringing a steaming spoonful of sausage soup to Ann's mouth.
Ann swallowed before she had time to savor the taste, such was her hunger. But just the warm feel of it in her stomach was solace.
"I feared greatly for myself, too," Ann said. "I dreaded those men were as likely to kill me as get the food stuffed in me."
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"I know the feeling," Alessandra said under her breath.
"Alessandra, are you ... are you all right?"
"Fine." She seemed to have retreated to an emotionless place.
"You're not badly injured, then?"
"I'm better off than some of the others. If we ... if we get hurt, a bone broken, or something like that, Jagang allows us to use our magic to heal one another."
"But healing is Additive Magic."
Sister Alessandra brought the spoon to Ann's mouth. "That is why I'm lucky; I've no broken bones, like some of the others. We've tried to help them, to heal them, but we were unable to, and so they must suffer." She met Ann's gaze. "A world without magic is a dangerous place."
Ann wanted to remind the woman that she had told her as much, that the chimes were loose, and magic-Additive Magic anyway-wouldn't work.
As Alessandra fed Ann another spoonful, she said, "But I guess you tried to tell me that, Prelate."
Ann gave a shrug of her own. "When people tried to convince me the chimes were loose, I at first wouldn't believe them, either. We have that in common. I would say that as exceptionally stubborn as you are, Sister Alessandra, there is hope you could one day be Prelate."
Alessandra, seemingly against her will, smiled with Ann.
Ann watched the spoon, with a chunk of sausage, linger in the bowl. "Prelate, did you fully expect the Sisters of the Light would believe you that magic had failed and that they would willingly try to escape with you?"
Ann looked up into Alessandra's eyes. "Not fully, no. Although I hoped they would trust my word, having always known me as a woman who values truth, I knew the possibility existed, so great was their fear, that-whether they believed me or not-they would refuse to leave.
"Slaves, slaves to anything or anyone, despite how much they abhor it, will often cling to that slavery out of fear the alternative would be insufferable. Look at a drunk, a slave
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to liquor, who thinks us cruel for trying to get him to abandon his slavery."
"And what were you planning in the event the Sisters of the Light refused to abandon their slavery?"
"Jagang uses them, uses their magic, the same as he uses yours. When the chimes are banished magic will return and the Sisters will have their power back. Many people will die at their hands, no matter how unwilling are those hands. If they refused to cast off their slavery and leave with me, they were to be killed."
Sister Alessandra lifted an eyebrow. "My, my, Prelate. We are not so different after all. That would have been the reasoning of a Sister of the Dark as well."
"Just common sense. The lives of a lot of people are at risk." Ann was famished, and eyed with longing the spoon holding the sausage as it hovered above the nearly full bowl.
"So, why were you caught, then?"
Ann signed. "Because I didn't think they would lie to me, not about something so important. Though it would be no reason to execute them, it will make the onerous but necessary task a little easier."
Alessandra finally fed Ann the spoonful of sausage. This time, Ann made herself chew it slowly so as to enjoy its flavor.
"You could still escape with me, Alessandra," Ann said in a quiet tone after she had finally swallowed.
Alessandra picked something from the bowl and cast it aside. She stirred the soup again.
"I told you before, that would not be possible."
"Why? Because Jagang told you so? Told you he is still in your mind?"
'That's one reason."
"Alessandra, Jagang promised you that if you took care of me, he wouldn't send you out to the tents to whore for his men. You told me that was what he said."
The woman paused with the spoon, her eyes brimming with tears. "We belong to His Excellency." With her other hand, she touched the gold ring through her bottom lip-
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the mark of Jagang's slaves. "He can do with us as he wishes."
"Alessandra, he lied to you. He said he wouldn't do that if you took care of me. He lied. You can't trust a liar. Not with your future or your life. That was my mistake, but I wouldn't give a liar a second chance at harming me. If he lied about that much of it, how much else is he lying about?"
"What do you mean?"
"About how you can never escape because he is still in your mind. He is not, Alessandra. Just as he can't get into my mind, he can't get into yours for now. Once the chimes are banished, yes, but not now.
"If you swear loyalty to Richard, then you will be protected even after the chimes are banished. You can get away, Alessandra. We could do our grisly duty with the Sisters who lied and chose to stay with another liar, and then escape."
Sister Alessandra's voice was as emotionless as her face. "Prelate, you forget, I am a Sister of the Dark, sworn to the Keeper."
"In return for what, Alessandra? What has the Keeper of the underworld offered you? What has he offered that could be better than eternity in the Light?"
"Immortality."
Ann sat watching the woman's unflinching gaze. Outside, men, some of whom had abused this helpless five-hundred-year-old Sister of the Dark, laughed and carried on their nightly amusements. Smells, both fair and foul, drifted in and out of the tent: sizzling garlic, dung, roasting meat, burning fur, the sweet smell of a birch log in a nearby fire, stale sweat.
Ann, too, did not flinch from the gaze.
"Alessandra, the Keeper is lying to you."
Emotion returned to the Sister's eyes.
She stood and poured the nearly full bowl of soup on the ground outside the tent.
Sister Ale
ssandra, one foot outside, one inside, turned back.
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"You can starve for all I care, old woman. I would rather go back to the tents than listen to your blasphemy."
In her forlorn solitary silence, in her pain of body and soul, Ann prayed to the Creator, asking that He give Sister Alessandra a chance to return to the Light. She prayed, too, for the Sisters of the Light, as lost now as were the Sisters of the Dark.
From her place sitting chained in the dark and lonely tent, it seemed the world had gone mad.
"Dear Creator, what have you wrought?" Ann wept. "Is it all lies, too?"
CHAPTER 58
DALTON RUSHED UP TO the head table and smiled at Teresa. She looked lonely and forlorn. She did look relieved to see him, though, even though he was late. He saw too little of her lately. There was no helping it. She understood.
Dalton kissed her cheek before taking his seat.
The Minister only acknowledged him with a brief glance. He was busy sharing a lusty look with a woman at a table to the right of the dining hall. It looked as if she could be making suggestive gestures with a piece of rolled beef. The Minister was smiling.
Rather than being repelled by Bertrand's sexual indul-
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gences, many more women were actually attracted to him because of it, even if they had no intention of acting on that attraction. It seemed to be a quirk of the female mind that some women were irresistibly drawn to tangible evidence of sexual virility, regardless of its impropriety. It was a visceral whiff of danger, something tantalizing but forbidden. The more some men behaved the rogue, the heavier many women panted.
"I hope you've not been too bored," Dalton whispered to Teresa, pausing momentarily to appreciate the glow of her faithful affection.
Other than his brief smile to Teresa, he was doing his best to maintain his customary placid face with the fruition of all his work close at hand. He took a long drink of wine, not tasting it, but impatient for its effects to settle in.
"I've missed you, that's all. Bertrand has been telling jokes." Teresa blushed. "But I can't repeat them. Not here, anyway." Her smile, her mischievous smile, stole onto her face. "Maybe when we get home, I'll tell you."
He mimed a smiled, his mind already racing forward to weighty matters. "If I get in early enough. I have to get a new batch of messages out yet tonight. Something"-he forced himself to stop drumming his fingers on the table- "something important, momentous, has happened."
Tantalized, Teresa leaned forward. "What?"
"Your hair is growing out well, Tess." It was as long as her present station allowed it. He couldn't keep himself from hinting. "But I do believe it may have considerably longer to grow."
"Dalton ..." Her eyes were widening as she considered what he could possibly mean, but confusion visited her face, too, for she was unable to imagine how the fulfillment of his long-held ambition was possible, given present circumstances. "Dalton, has this anything to do with ... with what you have always told me ..."
His sober expression took the rest of her words. "I'm sorry, darling, I shouldn't get ahead of myself. I may be
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reading too much into it, anyway. Be patient, you will hear in a few minutes. Best if news such as this come from the Minister."
Lady Chanboor glanced briefly to the woman with the rolled meat. The woman, as if doing nothing more than minding her table companions, pulled her curls across her face as she returned her gaze to them. Hildemara gave Bertrand a brief, private, murderous glare before leaning past him toward Dalton.
"What have you heard?"
Dalton dabbed wine from his lips and returned the napkin to his lap. He thought it best to get the perfunctory information out of the way, first. Besides, it would help put into perspective the importance of what had to be done.
"Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor are working from sunup until sundown, visiting as many places as they can. They are speaking to crowds eager to hear them.
"The Mother Confessor draws crowds agog to see her, if nothing else. I'm afraid the people are responding to her with more warmth than we would wish. That she recently married has won the hearts and love of many. People cheer the happy, newly wedded couple wherever they go. Country people come from miles around to the towns where she and Lord Rahl speak."
Folding her arms, Lady Chanboor muttered a curse to the newlyweds, expressing it in remarkably vulgar profanity, even for her. Dalton idly wondered at what obscene attributes she ascribed to him, when he had unknowingly displeased her and wasn't about. He knew some of the colorful invectives she used about her husband.
Although some of the staff knew all too well the petulant side of her, the people at large believed her so pure that vituperation could not possibly cross her lips. Hildemara well understood the value of having the support of the people. When she, as Lady Chanboor, loving wife of the Minister of Culture, champion of wives and mothers everywhere, toured the countryside to promote her husband's good works, to say nothing of cultivating their relation-
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ship with wealthy backers, she received fawning receptions not unlike the ones the Mother Confessor was receiving.
Now, more than ever, she would need to play that part well, were they to succeed.
Dalton took another drink of wine before going on. "The Mother Confessor and the Lord Rahl met with the Directors several times, and I hear the Directors have expressed to them their pleasure with the fair terms of Lord Rahl's offer, and with his reasoning, in addition to his stated purpose."
Bertrand's fist tightened. His jaw muscles flexed.
"At least," Dalton added, "in the company of the Lord Rahl they express pleasure. Once Lord Rahl left to tour the countryside, the Directors, after more reasoned thought, had a change of heart." •
Dalton met the gaze of both the Minister and his wife to check he had their attention before he went on.
"This is very fortunate, with what has just happened."
The Minister studied Dalton's face before letting his gaze wander back to explore the young lady. "And what just happened?"
Dalton took Teresa's hand under the table.
"Minister Chanboor, Lady Chanboor, I regret to inform you the Sovereign has died."
Recoiling with the shock of the news, Teresa gasped, before putting her napkin to her face so people wouldn't see her sudden tears of grief. Teresa was loath to let people see her cry. .
Bertrand's intent gaze locked on Dalton's. "I thought he was getting better."
It was a statement of suspicion-not that he would be at all against the Sovereign's death. Suspicion because he was unsure Dalton would have the wherewithal to accomplish such a thing, and more than that, as to why Dalton would take such a bold step, if indeed he had.
Although the Minister without doubt privately would be delighted that the old Sovereign had vacated his position in such a timely fashion, any hint of his demise being by other
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than natural causes could compromise everything they had worked for just as they stood at the threshold of victory.
Dalton leaned toward the Minister, not shying from the innuendo. "We have trouble. Too many people are willing to mark a circle to have us all joined with Lord Rahl. We need to make this a personal choice, between our loving benevolent Sovereign and a man who may have evil in his heart for our people.
"As we have previously discussed, we need to be able to deliver to... our backer, on commitments already made. We can no longer afford the risk this vote presents. We must now take a more forceful stand against joining with Lord Rahl, despite the risk that course holds."
Dalton lowered his voice even more. "We need you to take such a stand with the weight of the words of the Sovereign. You must be the Sovereign, and put voice to those words."
A satisfied smile spread on Bertrand's face. "Dalton, my loyal and resourceful aide, you have just earned yourself a very important appointment to the soon-to-be vacant office of Minister of Cul
ture."
Everything, at long last, was clicking into place.
Hildemara's expression was stunned-but pleased- disbelief. She knew the layers of protection around the Sovereign; she knew because she had tried but failed to penetrate them.
By the look on her face, she was no doubt envisioning herself as wife to the Sovereign, worshiped as near to a good spirit in the world of life as a person could get, her words profoundly more weighty than those of the mere wife to the Minister, a station that only moments before had been lofty, but now seemed paltry and unworthy of her.
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