“But how—”
“Do you think that Lord Rahl would allow me to carry the knife if I wasn’t competent?”
“But an Agiel—”
The captain was coming to his feet. “What’s the matter with you? I fight for the same cause as you.”
“And that cause is protecting Lord Rahl,” the woman snapped. She held her Agiel up. “This is my means of protecting him. I have to know what’s wrong lest I fail him.”
Jennsen reached up and curled her fingers around the weapon, holding it tight as she met the Mord-Sith’s gaze. She told herself that she had to remember who she was supposed to be and to maintain the pretense. She tried to think of what she would do if she really were one of Lord Rahl’s elite.
“I understand your concern,” Jennsen said with resolve, determined not to miss her unexpected chance, even if she didn’t fully understand it herself. “I know you want to protect Lord Rahl. We share that devotion and sacred duty. Our lives are his. I have vital business doing the same as you—protecting Lord Rahl. You don’t know all that’s involved in this and I don’t have the time to even begin to explain it to you.
“I’ve had enough of this. Lord Rahl’s life is in danger. I have no more time to spare. If you don’t let me do my job of protecting him, then you are imperiling him and I will remove you as I would any threat to his life.”
The Mord-Sith considered Jennsen’s words. What she could be thinking, Jennsen had no idea, but that very notion—thought—was one Jennsen had never ascribed to the Mord-Sith. She had always considered them to be mindless killers. In this woman’s eyes, Jennsen could see cognition.
Finally, the Mord-Sith reached down and with a hand under Sebastian’s arm, helped him to his feet. When he was standing steadily, she turned back to Jennsen.
“I’d gladly suffer the horsewhipping—and far worse—if it would help protect this Lord Rahl. Get going—and be quick about it.” She gave Jennsen a small but warm smile and then a firm clap on the side of the shoulder. “May the good spirits be with you.” She hesitated. “But, I need to know how it is that you don’t feel the power of an Agiel. Such a thing is simply not possible.”
Jennsen was taken aback that a person this evil dared to invoke the name of the good spirits. Jennsen’s mother was a good spirit, now. “I’m sorry, but that’s part of what I have no time to begin to tell you, and besides, Lord Rahl’s safety hinges on me keeping it secret.”
The woman stared long and hard. “I am Nyda,” she said at last. “Swear to me, personally, that you will do as you say, and protect him.”
“I swear, Nyda. Now, I have to go. I can’t spare any more time—not for anything.”
Before Jennsen could move, the Mord-Sith seized a fistful of her dress and cloak at her shoulder. “This is one Lord Rahl we cannot afford to lose, or we all lose everything. If I ever find out you’re lying to me, I promise you two things. First, there will never be a hole deep enough for you to hide in that I won’t find you, and, second, your death will be beyond anyone’s worst nightmare. Do I make myself clear?”
Jennsen could only nod dumbly at the look of fierce resolve in Nyda’s eyes.
The woman turned and started up the steps. “Get going, then.”
“Are you all right?” the captain asked Sebastian.
Sebastian brushed dirt off his knees as he headed for the steps. “I’d have rather had the horsewhipping than that, but I guess I’ll live.”
The captain grimaced his sympathy as he comforted his own arm. “I have your things up there, locked away. Your weapons and your money.”
“Lord Rahl’s money,” Sebastian corrected.
Jennsen wanted nothing so much as to be out of the palace. She hurried up the steps, forcing herself not to break into a dead run.
“Oh,” the Mord-Sith called back down the steps. She had paused, her hand on the rusty rail as they rushed up after her. “I forgot to tell you.”
“Forgot to tell us what?” Jennsen asked. “We’re in a hurry.”
“That official who came to get me? The one in white robes?”
“Yes?” Jennsen asked as she reached the woman.
“After he came for me, he was going to go looking for Wizard Rahl, to bring him down to see you, too.”
Jennsen felt the blood drain from her face.
“Lord Rahl is far to the south,” the captain scoffed as he came up the stairs behind them.
“Not Lord Rahl,” Nyda said. “Wizard Rahl. Wizard Nathan Rahl.”
Chapter 28
Jennsen remembered that name, Nathan Rahl. Althea had said she met him in the Old World, at the Palace of the Prophets. He was a real Rahl, she said. She said he was powerful and inconceivably dangerous, so they kept him locked away behind impenetrable shields of magic where he could cause no harm, yet he sometimes still managed it. Althea had said that Nathan Rahl was over nine hundred years old.
Somehow, the old wizard had escaped those impenetrable shields of magic.
Jennsen seized the Mord-Sith by the elbow. “Nyda, what’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know. I’ve not met him.”
“It’s important he not see us.” Jennsen nudged Nyda ahead, urging her to hurry. “I don’t have time to explain, but he’s dangerous.”
At the top of the stairs, Nyda looked both ways before meeting Jennsen’s gaze. “Dangerous? Are you sure about this?”
“Yes!”
“All right. Come with me, then.”
“I need my things,” Sebastian said.
“Here.” The captain pointed at a door not far away.
While Nyda stood guard, Sebastian followed Captain Lerner inside. Jennsen, her knees trembling, stood in the doorway watching as the captain set the lamp down and unlocked a second door inside. He and Sebastian went into the room beyond, taking the lamp. Jennsen could hear brief words and the sounds of things being dragged off shelves.
With every passing moment, Jennsen could almost hear the wizard’s footsteps bringing him ever closer. If he caught them, Sebastian’s weapons would do them no good. If Wizard Rahl saw them, he would recognize Jennsen for what she was—a hole in the world, the ungifted offspring of Darken Rahl. There would be no bluffing her way out of that. They would have her at last.
Sebastian emerged ahead of the captain. “Let’s go.”
He simply looked like a man in a dark green cloak, the same as before. Few would suspect the collection of weapons he carried. His blue eyes and spikes of white hair made him look different from other people; maybe that was why the guards had stopped him.
The captain caught Jennsen by the arm. “As she said”—he nodded toward the Mord-Sith—“may the good spirits be with you always.”
He handed her the lamp. Jennsen whispered her sincere gratitude before rushing to follow the other two down the passageway, leaving the captain of the guards behind.
Nyda led them down dark halls and through empty rooms. They raced through a narrow cleft without a ceiling—at least, when Jennsen looked up she could see nothing but darkness above. The floor appeared to be bedrock. The wall to the right was rather unremarkable fitted stone. To the left, though, the passageway was lined with colossal, speckled pink granite blocks. Each smooth-faced block was larger than any house Jennsen had ever lived in, yet the joints were so tight that no blade could have slipped between them.
At the end of the passageway beside the huge stone blocks, they ducked through a low door and out onto a narrow walkway made of iron and laid with planks to cross on. The thread of a footbridge spanned a wide chasm in the bedrock of the plateau. Jennsen could see by the light of her
lamp that the walls of sheer rock to each side dropped straight down, fading away far below. The light of the lamp wasn’t enough for her to see the bottom. Standing there on the slender stretch of walkway suspended over the enormous void made her feel as tiny as an ant.
The Mord-Sith, a hand on the iron rail as she moved across the bridge, paused and looked back over her shoulder. “Why is Wizard Rahl dangerous?” It was obvious that the question had been playing on her mind. “What trouble can he cause you?” The brittle tone of her voice reverberated off the surrounding rock walls.
Stopped there in the center of the walkway over the black abyss, Jennsen could feel the bridge swaying underfoot. It was making her dizzy. The Mord-Sith waited. Jennsen tried to think of something to say. A glance back at Sebastian’s blank expression told her that he had no ideas. She quickly decided to mix in some of the truth, in case Nyda knew anything about the man.
“He’s a prophet. He escaped from a place where he was held, a place where he couldn’t hurt anyone. They had him there because he’s dangerous.”
The Mord-Sith pulled her long blond braid over her shoulder, drawing her hand down its length as she considered Jennsen’s words. She clearly didn’t intend to move, yet. “I’ve heard he’s quite an interesting man.” In her eyes was awakened challenge.
“He’s dangerous,” Jennsen insisted.
“Why?”
“He can harm my mission.”
“How?”
“I’ve already said it—he’s a prophet.”
“Prophecy could be a benefit. It might help you in your mission to protect Lord Rahl.” The Mord-Sith’s frown darkened. “Why wouldn’t you want such help?”
Jennsen recalled what Althea said about prophecy. “He might tell me how I’ll die, even the very day. What if you were the one who had to protect Lord Rahl against an approaching threat, and you knew that the very next day you were going to die in some horrifying fashion? Knew the exact hour, the agonizing details. It might put you in a state of paralyzing fear, and in that panic of knowing exactly when and how you were to die, you would naturally be ill suited to protect Lord Rahl’s life.”