Merissa’s back stiffened. Her eyes were a window into her frozen heart. “I have given my soul oath to the Keeper. If we must serve this vulgar beast in order to return to our Master’s graces, then I will serve. I will lick this man’s feet, if I must.”
Ulicia remembered Jagang, just before he had departed the semicircle in the dream that was not a dream, commanding Merissa to stand. He had then casually reached out, grabbed her right breast in his powerful fingers, and squeezed until her knees buckled. Ulicia glanced at Merissa’s breast, now, and saw lurid bruises there.
Merissa made no effort to cover herself as her serene expression settled on Ulicia’s eyes. “The emperor said we would regret it, if we made him wait.”
Ulicia, too, had heard the same instructions. Jagang had displayed what bordered on contempt for the Keeper. How was he able to supplant the Keeper in the dream that was not a dream? He had—that was all that mattered. It had happened to all of them. It had not been a mere dream.
Tingling dread thickened in the pit of her stomach as the small flame of hope extinguished. She, too, had been given a taste of what disobedience would mean. The blood that was crusting over her eyes reminded her of how much she had wanted to escape that lesson. It had been real, and they all knew it. They had no choice. There wasn’t a moment to lose. A cold bead of sweat trickled down between her breasts. If they were late…
Ulicia bounded out of bed.
“Turn this ship around!” she shrieked as she flung open the door. “Turn it around at once!”
No one was in the passageway. She sprang up the companionway, screaming as she went. The others raced after her, pounding on cabin doors as they followed. Ulicia didn’t bother with the doors; it was the helmsman who pointed the ship where it was going and commanded the deckhands to the sails.
Ulicia heaved open the hatch door to be greeted by murky light; dawn was not yet upon them. Leaden clouds seethed above the dark cauldron of the sea. Luminous foam frothed just beyond the rail as the ship slid down a towering wave, making it seem they were plunging into an inky chasm. The other Sisters poured from the hatchway behind her out onto the spray-swept deck.
“Turn this ship around!” she screamed to the barefoot sailors who turned in mute surprise.
Ulicia growled a curse and raced aft, toward the tiller. The five Sisters followed on her heels as she dashed across the pitching deck. Hands gripping the lapels of his coat, the helmsman stretched his neck to see what the trouble was. Lantern light came through the opening at his feet, showing the faces of the four men manning the tiller. Sailors gathered near the bearded helmsman, and stood gawking at the six women.
Ulicia gulped air trying to catch her breath. “What’s the matter with you slack-jawed idiots? Didn’t you hear me? I said to turn this ship around!”
Suddenly, she fathomed the reason for the stares: the six of them were naked. Merissa stepped up beside her, standing tall and aloof, as if she were dressed in a gown that covered her from neck to deck.
One of the leering deckhands spoke as his gaze played over the younger woman. “Well, well. Looks like the ladies have come out to play.”
Cool and unattainable, Merissa regarded his lecherous grin with unruffled authority. “What’s mine is mine, and not anyone else’s, even to look upon, unless I decide it is so. Remove your eyes from my flesh at once, or have them removed.”
Had the man the gift, and Ulicia’s mastery of it, he would have been able to sense the air about Merissa cracking ominously with power. These men knew them only as wealthy nobility wanting passage to strange and distant places; they didn’t know who, or what, the six women really were. Captain Blake knew them as Sisters of the Light, but Ulicia had ordered him to keep that knowledge from his men.
The man mocked Merissa with a lecherous expression and obscene thrusts of his hips. “Don’t be standoffish, lass. You wouldn’t of come out here like that unless you had in mind the same as us.”
The air sizzled around Merissa. Blood blossomed at the crotch of the man’s trousers. He squealed as he looked up with eyes gone wild. Lightning glinted off the long knife at his belt as he yanked it free. Yelling an oath of retribution, he staggered ahead with lethal intent.
A distant smile touched Merissa’s full lips. “You filthy scum,” she murmured to herself. “I deliver you into the cold embrace of my Master.”
His flesh burst apart as if he were a rotten melon whacked with a stick. A concussion of air driven by the power of the gift slammed him over the rail. A bloody trail traced his course across the planks. With scarcely a splash, the black water swallowed the body. The other men, near to a dozen, stood wide-eyed and still as statues.
“You will all keep your eyes on our faces,” Merissa hissed, “and off everything else.”
The men nodded, too appalled to voice their consent. One man’s gaze involuntarily flicked down at her body, as if her speaking aloud what was forbidden to look upon had made the impulse to view it impossible to control. In ragged terror, he began to apologize, but a focused line of power as sharp as a battle-axe sliced across his eyes. He tumbled out over the rail as had the first.
“Merissa,” Ulicia said softly, “that will be quite enough. I think they’ve learned their lesson.”
Eyes of ice, distant behind the haze of Han, turned to her. “I will not have their eyes taking what does not belong to them.”
Ulicia lifted an eyebrow. “We need them to get back. You do remember our urgency, don’t you?”
Merissa glanced at the men, as if surveying bugs beneath her boots. “Of course, Sister. We must return at once.”
Ulicia turned to see that Captain Blake had just arrived and was standing behind them, his mouth agape.
“Turn this ship around, Captain,” Ulicia said. “At once.”
His tongue darted out to wet his lips as his gaze skipped among the women’s eyes. “Now you’re wanting to go back? Why?”
Ulicia lifted a finger in his direction. “You were paid well, Captain, to take us where we want to go, when we want to go. I told you before that questions were not part of the bargain, and I also promised you that I would separate you from your hide if you violated any part of that bargain. If you test me you will find that I am not nearly as indulgent as Merissa here; I don’t grant a quick death. Now, turn this ship around!”
Captain Blake leaped into action. He straightened his coat and glared at his men. “Back to it, you sluggards!” He gestured to the helmsman. “Mister Dempsey, bring ‘er about.” The man seemed to be still frozen in shock. “Right bloody now, Mister Dempsey!”
Snatching his scruffy hat from his head, Captain Blake bowed to Ulicia, careful not to let his gaze stray from her eyes. “As you wish, Sister. Back around the great barrier, to the Old World.”
“Set a direct course, Captain. Time is of the essence.”
He squashed his hat in a fist. “Direct course! We can’t be sailing through the great barrier!” He immediately softened his tone. “It’s not possible. We’ll all be killed.”
Ulicia pressed a hand over the burning pang in her stomach. “The great barrier is down, Captain. It is no longer a hindrance to us. Set a direct course.”
He rung his hat. “The great barrier is down? That’s impossible. What makes you think…”
She leaned toward him. “Again, you would question me?”
“No, Sister. No, course not. If you say the barrier is down, then it is. Though I don’t understand how what cannot happen has happened, I know it’s not my place to question. A direct course it is.” He wiped his hat across his mouth. “Merciful Creator protect us,” he muttered, turning to the helmsman, anxious to retreat from her glare. “Hard a-starboard, Mister Dempsey!”
The man glanced down at the men on the tiller. “We’re already hard a-starboard, Captain.”
“Don’t argue with me or I’ll let you swim back!”
“Aye, Captain. Get to the lines!” he shouted at men already slipping some lines and hauling in
on others. “Prepare to come about!”
Ulicia surveyed the men glancing nervously over their shoulders. “Sisters of the Light have eyes in the backs of their heads, gentlemen. See that yours look nowhere else, or it will be the last thing you see in this life.” Men nodded before bending to their tasks.
Back in their crowded cabin, Tovi wrapped her shivering bulk in her coverlet. “It’s been quite a while since I had strapping young men leering at me.” She glanced to Nicci and Merissa. “Enjoy the admiration while you’re still worthy of it.”
Merissa pulled her shift from the chest at the end of the cabin. “It wasn’t you they were leering at.”
A motherly smile wrinkled Cecilia’s face. “We know that, Sister. I think what Sister Tovi means is that now that we’re away from the spell of the Palace of the Prophets, we will age like everyone else. You won’t have the years to enjoy your looks that we’ve had.”
Merissa straightened. “When we earn back our place of honor with the Master, I will be able to keep what I have.”
Tovi stared off with a rare, dangerous look. “And I want back what I once had.”
Armina slumped down on a bunk. “This is Liliana’s fault. If not for her, we wouldn’t have had to leave the palace and its spell. If not for her, the Keeper wouldn’t have given Jagang dominion over us. We wouldn’t have lost the Master’s favor.”
They were all silent for a moment. Squeezing around and past one another, they all went about pulling on their undergarments, while trying to avoid elbows.
Merissa drew her shift over her head. “I intend to do whatever is necessary to serve, and regain the Master’s favor. I intend to have my reward for my oath.” She glanced to Tovi. “I intend to remain young.”
“We all want the same thing, Sister,” Cecilia said as she stuffed her arms through the sleeves of her simple, brown kirtle. “But the Keeper wishes us to serve this man, Jagang, for now.”
“Does he?” Ulicia asked.
Merissa squatted as she sorted through the clothes in the chest, and pulled out her crimson dress. “Why else would we have been given to this man?”
Ulicia lifted an eyebrow. “Given? You think so? I think it’s more than that; I think Emperor Jagang is acting of his own volition.”
The others halted at their dressing and looked up. “You think he could defy the Keeper?” Nicci asked. “For his own ambitions?”
With a finger, Ulicia tapped the side of Nicci’s head. “Think. The Keeper failed to come to us in the dream that is not a dream; that has never happened before. Ever. Instead comes Jagang. Even if the Keeper were displeased with us, and wanted us to serve penance under Jagang, don’t you suppose he would have come to us himself and ordered it, to show us his displeasure? I don’t think this is the Keeper’s doing. I think it is Jagang’s.”
Armina snatched up her blue dress. It was a shade lighter that Ulicia’s, but no less elaborate. “It is still Liliana who has brought this upon us!”
A small smile touched Ulicia’s lips. “Has she? Liliana was greedy. I think the Keeper thought to use that greed, but she failed him.” The smile vanished. “It is not Sister Liliana who brought this upon us.”
Nicci’s hand paused as she drew the cord tight at the bodice of her black dress. “Of course. The boy.”
“Boy?” Ulicia slowly shook her head. “No ‘boy’ could have brought down the barrier. No mere boy could have brought to ruin the plans we have worked so hard for, all these years. We all know what he is, about the prophecies.”
Ulicia looked at each Sister in turn. “We are in a very dangerous position. We must work to gain back the Keeper’s power in this world, or else when Jagang is finished with us he will kill us, and we will find ourselves in the underworld, and no longer of use to the Master. If that happens, then the Keeper surely will be displeased, and he will make what Jagang showed us seem a lover’s embrace.”
The ship creaked and groaned as they all considered her words. They were racing back to serve a man who would use them, and then discard them without a thought, much less a reward, yet none of them were prepared to even consider defying him.
“Boy or not, he has caused all this.” The muscles in Merissa’s jaw tightened. “And to think, I had him in my grasp, we all did. We should have taken him when we had the chance.”
“Liliana, too, thought to take him, to have his power for herself,” Ulicia said, “but she was reckless and ended up with that cursed sword of his through her heart. We must be smarter than she, then we will have his power, and the Keeper his soul.”
Armina wiped a tear from her lower eyelid. “But in the meantime, there must be some way we can avoid having to return—”
“And how long do you think we could remain awake?” Ulicia snapped. “Sooner or later we would fall asleep. Then what? Jagang has already shown us he has the power to reach out to us, wherever we are.”
Merissa returned to fastening the buttons at the bodice of her crimson dress. “We will do what we must, for now, but that does not mean we can’t use our heads.”
Ulicia’s brows drew together in thought. She looked up with a wry smile. “Emperor Jagang may believe he has us where he wants us, but we’ve lived a long time. Perhaps, if we use our heads, and our experience, we will not be quite as cowed as he thinks?”
Malevolence gleamed in Tovi’s eyes. “Yes,” she hissed, “we have indeed lived a long time, and we’ve learned to bring a few wild boars to ground, and gut them while they squeal.”
Nicci smoothed the gathers in the skirt of her black dress. “Gutting pigs is all well and good, but Emperor Jagang is our plight, and not its cause. Nor is it advantageous to waste our anger on Liliana; she was simply a greedy fool. It is the one who truly brought this trouble upon us who must be made to suffer.”
“Wisely put, Sister,” Ulicia said.
Merissa absently touched her breast where it was bruised. “I will bathe in that young man’s blood.” Her eyes went out of focus, opening again the window to her black heart. “While he watches.”
Ulicia’s fists tightened as she nodded in agreement. “It is he, the Seeker, who has brought this upon us. I vow he will pay with his gift, his life, and his soul.”
2
Richard had just taken a spoonful of hot spice soup when he heard the deep, menacing growl. He frowned over at Gratch. The gar’s hooded eyes glowed, lit from within by cold green fire as he glared toward the gloom among the columns at the base of the expansive steps. His leathery lips drew back in a snarl, exposing prodigious fangs. Richard realized he still had a mouthful of soup, and swallowed.
Gratch’s guttural growl grew, deep in his throat, sounding like a moldy old castle’s massive dungeon door being opened for the first time in a hundred years.
Richard glanced to Mistress Sanderholt’s wide, brown eyes. Mistress Sanderholt, the head cook at the Confessors’ Palace, was still uneasy about Gratch, and not entirely confident in Richard’s assurances that the gar was harmless. The ominous growl wasn’t helping.
She had brought Richard out a loaf of freshly baked bread and a bowl of savory spice soup, intending to sit on the steps with him and talk about Kahlan, only to discover that the gar had arrived a short time before. Despite her trepidation over the gar, Richard had managed to convince her to join him on the steps.
Gratch had been keenly interested at the mention of Kahlan’s name; he had a lock of her hair that Richard had given him hanging on a thong around his neck, along with the dragon’s tooth. Richard had told Gratch that he and Kahlan were in love, and she wanted to be Gratch’s friend, just as Richard was, and so the inquisitive gar had sat down to listen, but just as Richard had tasted the soup, and before Mistress Sanderholt had been able to begin, Gratch’s mood had suddenly changed. He looked savagely intent, now, on something that Richard couldn’t see.
“Why is he doing that?” Mistress Sanderholt whispered.
“I’m not sure,” Richard admitted. He brightened his smile and shrugged off
handedly when the creases in her brow deepened. “He must just see a rabbit or something. Gars have exceptional eyesight, even in the dark, and they’re excellent hunters.” Her concerned expression didn’t ease, so he went on. “He doesn’t eat people. He would never hurt anyone,” he reassured her. “It’s all right, Mistress Sanderholt, really, it is.”
Richard glanced up at the sinister-looking, snarling face. “Gratch,” he whispered out of the side of his mouth, “stop growling. You’re scaring her.”
“Richard,” she said as she leaned closer, “gars are dangerous beasts. They are not pets. Gars can’t be trusted.”
“Gratch isn’t a pet, he’s my friend. I’ve know him since he was a pup, since he was half my size. He’s as gentle as a kitten.”
An unconvincing smile twitched onto Mistress Sanderholt’s face. “If you say so, Richard.” Dismay suddenly widened her eyes. “He doesn’t understand anything I’m saying, does he?”
“It’s hard to tell,” Richard confided. “Sometimes he understands more than I think possible.”
Gratch appeared oblivious of them as they talked. He was frozen in concentration, seeming to have either the scent or the sight of something he didn’t like. Richard thought he had seen Gratch growling like that one time before, but he couldn’t place where or when. He tried to recall the occasion, but the mental image kept slipping away, just out of grasp. The harder he tried, the more elusive the shadowy memory became.
“Gratch?” He clutched the gar’s powerful arm. “Gratch, what is it?”
Stone still, Gratch didn’t react to the touch. As he had grown, the glow in his green eyes had intensified, but never before to this ferocity. They were glowing formidably.
Richard scanned the shadows below, where those green eyes were fixed, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were no people among the columns, or along the wall of the palace grounds. It must be a rabbit, he decided at last; Gratch loved rabbit.