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 conditions.”
“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.’”
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“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 spirts 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.