Confessor

  Sister Greta, holding Nicci tightly around the middle, twisted to the side, easily throwing her face-first to the ground. Nicci flipped over to kick Sister Greta away.

  Sister Armina, blood running down her face, planted a boot on Nicci’s chest. Sister Greta rose up next to her, catching her breath.

  Before Nicci could struggle to get up, a jolt of pain seared up through her body, exploding at the base of her skull. The shock of it drove the air from her lungs. The two of them joining their gift was enough to incapacitate Nicci.

  “Not a very gracious way to greet your Sisters,” Sister Greta said.

  Nicci tried to ignore the pain. Her arms flailed as she tried to get up, but Sister Armina put more weight on her foot and at the same time expanded the sharp barbs of pain. Nicci’s vision blurred down to a small spot at the center of a dark tunnel of blackness, her back arched as her muscles convulsed into knots. Her fingers clawed at the floor. She thought that she might do anything to make it stop.

  “I suggest that you stay where you are,” Sister Armina said, “or, if you prefer, we’ll remind you just how much more agony we can deliver.” She arched an eyebrow at Nicci. “Hmm?”

  Nicci couldn’t speak. Tears of torment streaming from her eyes, she instead nodded.

  Sister Julia stumbled close, both hands held tightly over her mouth as she bawled in pain and anger. Blood hung in strings from her chin, covered the front of her faded blue dress, and dripped from her elbows.

  Sister Armina, her foot still on Nicci’s chest, leaned down, resting an arm across her knee.

  In a voice only partly her own, she said, “Returned to us at long last, darlin?”

  Nicci’s blood flashed icy cold.

  She realized that it was Jagang’s gaze looking down at her.

  Had she not been in such agony, had it not been all she could do just to breathe, she surely would have run, even if it would have meant sudden death. Sudden death would be preferable.

  Unable to run, she instead envisioned gouging out Sister Armina’s eyes—Jagang’s window.

  “I’m going to kick your teeth in for this!” Sister Julia said in a muffled voice from behind the hands clamped over her mouth. “I’m going to—”

  “Shut up,” Sister Armina said in that terrible voice only half her own, “or I’ll not allow them to heal you.”

  Sister Julia’s eyes flashed with terror at recognizing Jagang addressing her. She fell silent.

  Sister Armina held a hand out to her. “Give it to me.”

  Sister Julia slipped bloody fingers into a pocket and brought out something unexpected, something that made Nicci’s breath catch with fright. Sister Julia handed it to Sister Armina.

  Sister Armina removed her foot and went down on one knee, leaning over a prostrated Nicci. Nicci knew what was coming. She struggled with all her might, all her panic, but she couldn’t manage to make her body respond. Her muscles were locked rigid with the tingling power searing through her nerves.

  Sister Armina bent forward and forced the blood-slicked collar around Nicci’s neck.

  Nicci felt the Rada’Han snap closed.

  In the same instant, she lost the link to her Han.

  She had been born with the gift. Most of the time she never gave it any thought. Now she was cut completely off from her ability. Like her eyesight or hearing, it had always been there, always been something she used without thought. Now there was only a terrifyingly unfamiliar void.

  Such an abrupt separation from her gift stunned her. To be without it was to be without a part of her, without the very core of her, of who she was, of what she was.

  “On your feet,” Sister Armina said.

  When the pain at last eased off, Nicci’s whole body sagged against the floor. She didn’t know if her muscles would work, or if she would have the strength to get up, but she knew Sister Armina well enough not to hesitate. She flopped over and pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. When she didn’t move fast enough for Sister Armina, a stunning shock of pain slammed into the small of Nicci’s back. She sucked back a scream. Her arms and legs shot out straight involuntarily and she dropped flat to the floor.

  Sister Greta chuckled.

  “Get up,” Sister Armina said, “or I will show you some real pain.”

  Nicci pushed herself up on her hands and knees again. She gasped, getting her breath. Tears dripped onto the dusty floor. Knowing better than to delay, she struggled to her feet. Her legs wobbled, but she managed to stay upright.

  “Just kill me,” Nicci said. “I’m not going to cooperate, no matter how much you make it hurt.”

  Sister Armina cocked her head, peering closely at Nicci with one eye. “Oh, darlin, I think you’re wrong about that.”

  It was once again Jagang speaking.

  A blinding shimmer of agony, delivered by the collar around her neck, cascaded down through Nicci’s core. The pain was so stunning that it dropped her to her knees.

  She had endured pain from Jagang before, when he had been able to enter her mind, before she learned how to stop him. It was her devotion to Richard—the bond—that had protected her just as it protected those from D’Hara and those who followed the Lord Rahl. But before that, when he had been able to enter her mind, just as he could enter the minds of these Sisters, now, he had been able to make it feel like he was pushing thin iron spikes deep into Nicci’s ears, then send the pain ripping downward through her insides.

  This was worse.

  She stared at the floor, fully expecting blood to run from her ears and nose and begin carpeting the stone. She blinked as she gasped in utter agony, but she saw no blood. She wished she did. If she bled enough she would die.

  She knew Jagang well enough, though, to know that he would not allow her to die. Not yet, anyway.

  The dream walker didn’t like a swift death for people who angered him. Nicci knew that there was probably no one Jagang wanted to make suffer more than her. He would eventually kill her, of course, but he would extract his vengeance first. He would no doubt give her to his men for a time, just to humiliate her, then send her to the torture tents. That part of it, she knew, would last a very long time. When he eventually became bored with her suffering, she would spend her final days having her intestines pulled slowly out of a slit in her belly. He would want to be there to see her finally die, to make sure that the last thing she saw before the end was him smiling in triumph.

  The one thing that she regretted at that moment, in the realization of what was about to befall her, was that she would never see Richard again. She thought that if she could only see him one more time she could endure what was to come.

  Sister Armina stepped closer, close enough to be sure that Nicci could see her superior smile. She was now in control of the collar around Nicci’s neck. Jagang, too, could now dominate her through that connection as well.

  The Rada’Han was meant to control young wizards. It acted on the gift. Though the People’s Palace diminished her gift—prevented the projection of power—it would not impede the collar, because the Rada’Han worked internally. The device could cause unimaginable pain—enough pain that a boy would do anything to make it stop.

  Nicci, on her knees, trembled as she gasped in agony. Her vision went darker and darker until she could hardly see anything. Her ears rang.

  “Do you now fully understand what will happen should you disobey us?” Sister Armina asked.

  Nicci couldn’t answer. She had no voice. She managed a slight nod.

  Sister Armina leaned down. The blood had finally stopped running from her scalp. “Then get to your feet, Sister.”

  The pain finally lifted enough for Nicci to be able to stand.

  She didn’t want to stand. She wanted them to kill her. Jagang was not going to allow that, though. Jagang wanted to get his hands on her.

  As her vision began to clear, she saw that Sister Greta was back across the hall, rummaging through Ann’s pockets. She pulled something from a pocket hidden unde
r Ann’s belt. She looked it over and then held it up.

  “Guess what I found,” she said, waving it for the other two to see. “Should we take it?”

  “Yes,” Sister Armina said, “but be quick about it.”

  Sister Greta shoved the small item in her pocket and returned to the other two. “There’s nothing else on her.”

  Sister Armina nodded. “We’d best be quick.”

  The three stood shoulder to shoulder, facing back down the hall toward Ann. Nicci could tell that, even with the link, they were still having difficulty using their power. Without the spell of the People’s Palace draining their Han, any of the three of them, by herself, could have easily wielded the kind of power that had killed Ann.

  The air cracked with the ignition of Subtractive Magic. The hallways dimmed as several more torches were blown out by the blast. Inky darkness undulated through the passageway, back toward the Prelate, finally enveloping the dead woman. The hum of power made Nicci again momentarily lose her vision under the oppressive blanket of blackness.

  When her sight returned, Ann was gone. Even her blood was gone. Every trace of her existence had been wiped away by Subtractive Magic. It seemed impossible that nearly a thousand years of life could be gone in an instant.

  No one would ever know what had happened to her.

  While the body and the blood had been eliminated, the shattered marble was not so easily fixed. The Sisters didn’t seem to care.

  To Nicci, it felt as if everything, even all hope, had just died.

  Sister Armina seized Nicci under the arm and shoved her down the passageway. Nicci stumbled but regained her footing before she fell. She walked woodenly ahead of the three, prodded to keep moving by sharp reminders the collar sent into her tender kidneys.

  They hadn’t gone far before Nicci was directed to turn down a hallway to the left. She numbly followed their orders, making turns and taking several smaller passageways when told to until at the end of a lesser hallway they ended at an entrance to a tomb. Rather simple brass-clad doors stood closed. They weren’t nearly as massive, or ornately decorated, as some of the others she’d seen when she’d visited the tomb of Richard’s grandfather, Panis Rahl, located in a distant area.

  Nicci thought that it was odd to be going to a tomb. She wondered if the Sisters were intending to hide until they could think of a way to make good their escape from the heavily guarded palace. Since it was night, perhaps they intended to wait until a busier time of day so they wouldn’t be as easily noticed. How they had gotten in, Nicci couldn’t imagine.

  Each door was embossed with a simple circle-within-a-circle motif. Sister Greta pulled one door open and ushered the others in, Nicci in the lead.

  Inside, the Sisters used a spark of power to light a single torch. An ornately decorated coffin rested on a raised floor in the center of the small room. The walls above the height of the coffin were covered in stone of swirling browns and tans. Black granite that in the torchlight sparkled with copper flakes covered the lower portion of the walls.

  It was an odd arrangement, almost making the upper portion, above coffin height, seem like the world of life, while the area below covered in black stone was reminiscent of the underworld.

  Cut into the upper, lighter stone were the primary invocations in High D’Haran. They ran in bands around the room. Nicci scanned the script, seeing that it appeared to be rather common appeals to the good spirits to welcome this Rahl leader into the ranks of the good spirits along with others who had come before him. It spoke of the man’s life and the things he had done for his people.

  Nothing of any particular significance in the writing stood out to Nicci. It seemed to be the tomb of a Lord Rahl from the distant past who had served his people by ruling during a rather peaceful time in D’Haran history. The words called it a time of “transition.”

  Inscribed in the black granite covering the lower walls was a rather odd admonition to remember the foundation that made all that lay above them possible. That foundation, it said, had been laid by all the countless souls long forgotten.

  The coffin itself, made of smooth stone in a simple shape, was covered with inscriptions advising those who visited to keep in mind all those who had passed from this life and into the next.

  Sister Armina, surprisingly, put her weight against one end of the coffin. With a grunt of effort, she pushed, and the coffin moved a few inches, exposing a lever. She reached down into the narrow slot, grasped the lever, and pulled it up until it clicked into place.

  The coffin pivoted, making only a whisper of sound.

  Once the coffin had turned aside, Nicci was surprised to see a dark opening. This was no tomb. It was a hidden entrance to what ever lay below.

  When Sister Julia shoved her, Nicci stepped forward onto the raised platform until she saw stairs, roughly hewn from rock, descending into darkness.

  Sister Greta stepped down into the opening. She lit one of a dozen torches stuck in a row of holes in the rough stone wall and then took it with her as she started down. Sister Julia went next, also taking a torch.

  “Well,” Sister Armina said, “what are you waiting for? Get going.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Lifting the skirts of her black dress, Nicci stepped over the raised edge of the pedestal that held the coffin. She gripped the edge of the opening to steady herself as she started down the steep run of stairs. The first two Sisters were already making their way down. The wavering glow of their torches showed nothing but a nearly vertical shaft of steps.

  Once Sister Armina had climbed in after Nicci, she pushed a lever back into the wall, then took a torch for herself. Overhead, the coffin pivoted back into place, sealing them in.

  It looked to Nicci like they were about to descend into the underworld itself.

  The stairs wound downward haphazardly. The shaft was only wide enough for one person at a time. Descending at a steep angle, the steps turned at small landings only to continue tunneling downward in what seemed to be random directions. The stairs themselves had been crudely hewn; they were uneven and not all the same size, making the descent treacherous. It appeared that whoever had carved the stairs had followed softer veins in the rock whenever they were available. Such work resulted in a meandering, crooked route.

  The stairs dropped so sharply that Nicci found herself having to breathe the smoke of the two torches carried by the Sisters right under her. As her mind raced, trying to think out her options, she briefly gave consideration to throwing herself down the precipitous shaft in the hope that she could break her neck, maybe even taking the two below her down as well, but with as narrow as the opening was she expected that she would probably get wedged to a stop before falling far. The landings, too, were numerous, so while the stairs were steep they paused frequently to make turns. She would probably only break an arm, not her neck.

  They climbed downward for what began to feel to Nicci like hours. Descending at such a steep angle made her thighs burn. By the way they labored to breathe, the three Sisters were feeling the strain as well. They clearly weren’t up to the demanding effort and were tiring.

  While Nicci was getting tired as well, she wasn’t having the trouble the others were. The Sisters had to pause a number of times to take brief rests. When they stopped, they would sit on a step, leaning back against the wall, panting as they caught their breath. They made Nicci stand.

  None of the three liked Nicci. As she had told Ann, she was different from the rest of the Sisters of the Dark. They’d always thought that they deserved eternal rewards. Nicci always thought that she deserved eternal punishment. It was a grim irony that only after she had finally realized the value of her life, would she have the punishment she’d thought she deserved—Jagang would see to that.

  When it seemed she could not make it down another flight, they came to a flat spot. At first, Nicci thought that it might only be another landing, but it turned out to be a level passageway.

  The way ahead burrowed in a wan
dering course in much the same way the stairs had, only it was flat. In places the tight tunnel was so low that they had to duck down under low hanging rock. The walls had been carved from that same rock, and were irregular, making it almost look like nothing so much as a cave. Some spots were a tight squeeze to get through. In the small places the choking smoke from the torches made Nicci’s eyes burn.

  The narrow tunnel abruptly widened into a proper passageway easily wide enough for two people to walk side by side. The walls, rather than being hewn from bedrock, were made of blocks of stone. The ceiling, made of huge stone blocks spanning the width of the passageway, was low and blackened by soot from torches, but at least it wasn’t so low that Nicci had to bend.

  Before long they began encountering intersections and halls to the sides. It quickly became apparent that there was a warren of passageways branching in every direction. As they passed bisecting intersections, the light of the torches briefly illuminated long, dark halls. In some of the side openings, though, Nicci saw rooms with low niches carved into the walls to the sides.

  Her curiosity got the better of her. She glanced back over her shoulder at Sister Armina.

  “What is this place?”

  “Catacombs.”

  Nicci hadn’t known that there were catacombs beneath the People’s Palace. She wondered if anyone up above them knew—Nathan, Ann, Verna, the Mord-Sith. At the same time the question came to mind she knew the answer. No one knew.

  “Well, what are we doing down here?”

  Sister Julia turned back to give Nicci a bloody, toothless grin. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  Now that she knew what the place was, Nicci realized that what she had seen stacked in some of the rooms to the sides were bodies, bodies in the thousands, wrapped in burial shrouds and covered with dust over the dark, still, silent centuries. As they passed other tightly spaced rooms she began to see recesses in the walls that held not individual remains, but mounds of bones. The bones were stacked in staggering numbers, all fit neatly into the recesses, filling them completely. As the torchlight fell into rooms to each side, Nicci saw skulls stacked together from floor to ceiling. The orderly rows of skulls went as far back as the light penetrated. There was no telling how far those rooms of snugly stacked skulls ran into the darkness.