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 wel
l 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.