Oba bent over his brother and pushed his eyelids closed. He did the same for the old man. He paused, deciding to let the other woman watch. It would undoubtedly arouse her to see Oba in action. Such arousal was a small favor, but Oba was inclined to do such favors for attractive women.
Trembling with anticipation, knowing he could grant her the thrill he knew she craved, Oba bent to rip open the Mother Confessor’s clothes. Before his fingers could touch her, a violent flash of violet light threw him back. Oba sat up, stunned, confused, pressing his hands to the nerveshredding agony shrieking through his head. The voice was crushing his mind with punishing pain.
Oba shoved at the ground with his feet, backing away from the Mother Confessor, and at last the pain eased. He sagged, panting with exhaustion after the brief bout. He felt downhearted that the voice would punish him so, dejected that the voice would be so cruel as to deny him so simple a pleasure, and after all the good things he had done.
The voice changed, then, cooing to him, whispering about the important calling it had for him—important works that only Oba was qualified to do. Through his melancholy, Oba listened.
Oba was important, or the voice would not rely on him. Who else but Oba could accomplish such things as the voice asked of him? Who else could the voice depend on to set things right?
Now, in the silence of the still night, the voice made clear what it was Oba was to do. If he did as he was asked, then there would be rewards. Oba grinned at the pledges. First, he had to do the favor; then the Mother Confessor would be his. That wasn’t so hard. Once she was his, he could do with her whatever he wanted, with the voice’s blessing, and no one would interfere. Pictures of it—along with the smells, the feel, the cries of her pleasure—came into his mind, and he nearly fainted with the promise of such rapture. Oba could wait for an encounter such as this would be.
He glanced over at the Mord-Sith. She could provide him some entertainment in the meantime. A man such as he, a man of action, great intellect, and heavy responsibilities, had to have a release of his pent-up tensions. Such diversions were a necessary outlet for a man of Oba’s importance.
He bent over the Mord-Sith, grinning into her open eyes. She was to be honored to be the first to have him. The Mother Confessor would have to wait her turn. He reached out to pull off her clothes.
Oba’s head suddenly flared with howling, blinding agony. He pressed his hands to his ears until it stopped—after he agreed.
The voice was right. Of course it was; he could see that, now. Only when Richard Rahl was dead could Oba take his rightful place. That made sense. It would be best to do things right. In fact, it would be wrong to bring pleasure to these women before he had done what needed doing.
What had he been thinking? They didn’t deserve him, yet. They should first see him as the important man he was shortly to become, and then they would have to beg to have him. They didn’t deserve him until they begged.
He had to be quick. The voice said they would wake soon—that Lord Rahl would soon figure out how to break the spell of sleep.
Oba pulled his knife and crawled to his brother. Lord Rahl was still staring dumbly at the stars.
“Who’s the big oaf, now?” he asked his brother.
Lord Rahl had no answer. Oba put the knife to Richard’s throat, but the voice warned him back, and filled his mind instead with what he must do. He had to do it right. He had to hurry. There was no time for such common retribution. There were much better ways to do such things—ways that would punish the man for all the years he had kept Oba from his rightful place. Yes, that was what Richard Rahl needed: proper punishment.
Oba put his knife away and ran back over the nearby hill as fast as his legs would carry him. When he returned with his horse, the four were still lying there in the blue fog, staring up at the stars.
Oba did as the voice asked, and scooped up the Mother Confessor in his arms. She had now been promised to him. He would have her when the voice was done borrowing her. Oba could wait. The voice had promised him delights that Oba would never have dreamed up on his own. This was turning out to be a very beneficial partnership. For the paltry work involved, and the small delay, Oba would have everything that rightfully belonged to him: the rule of D’Hara and the woman who would be his queen.
Queen. Oba puzzled at that as he heaved her body over the back of the saddle. Queen. If she was a queen, then he would have to be a king. He supposed that would be better than “Lord” Rahl. King Oba Rahl. Yes, that made better sense. He worked quickly to lash her down.
Before he mounted up, Oba peered down at his brother. He couldn’t kill him. Not yet. The voice had plans. If Oba was anything, he had always been accommodating; he would oblige the voice. He put a foot in the stirrup. The voice tickled at him. He turned back, looking.
He wondered . . .
He cautiously returned to Richard’s side. Carefully, Oba reached out and experimentally touched the sword. The voice murmured indulgently.
A king should have a proper sword. Oba grinned. He deserved a small reward for all his hard work.
He pulled the baldric off over Richard Rahl’s head. He lifted the scabbard close, inspecting his gleaming new sword. The wire-wound hilt had a word woven into each side.
“TRUTH”
Well, wasn’t that just something.
He lifted the baldric over his head and placed the scabbard at his hip. He patted his new wife’s bottom before he mounted up. From the saddle, Oba grinned out at the night. He circled his horse around until the voice pointed him in the right direction.
Hurry hurry, before Lord Rahl woke. Hurry hurry, before he could be caught. Hurry hurry, away with his new bride.
He thumped his heels to the horse’s ribs and off they charged. The hounds bounded out of the woods, a king’s faithful escort.
Chapter 57
Standing outside the squat buildings made of sun-dried bricks, Jennsen idly surveyed the barren landscape broiling under a brutally blue sky. The rocks, the seemingly endless expanse of flat hardpan to her right, and the rugged range of mountains plummeting into the shimmering valley in the distance to her left, were all stained with variations of the same ruddy gray color as the sparse collection of square structures huddled nearby.
The bone-dry air was so hot that it reminded her of nothing so much as bending over a bonfire and trying to breathe. Blistering heat radiated from the rocks and buildings around her and rose from the ground beneath her feet as if there were a blast furnace below. Using bare hands to touch anything baking under the ruthless sun was a painful experience. Even the hilt of her knife, shaded by her body, was so warm that it felt feverish.
Jennsen leaned a hip wearily against a low wall, nearly numb from the long and difficult journey. She patted Rusty’s neck and then stroked an ear when the horse neighed gently and put her head close. At least Jennsen was nearly at her journey’s end. She felt as if she had lost sight of how it had all begun that day so long ago when she had found the dead soldier at the bottom of the ravine and Sebastian had happened by.
What a long and tortured journey fate would deal her, she could never have guessed that day. She hardly knew herself anymore. Back then, she could never have guessed how much her life would change, or how much she would change.
Sebastian, pulling Pete behind, reached out and gripped her arm. “You all right, Jenn?” Pete nudged Rusty’s flanks, as if to ask the same question of the mare.
“Yes,” Jennsen said. She smiled for him and then gestured to the knot of black-robed men in the doorway of a nearby building. “Any luck?”
“He’s asking the others.” Sebastian sighed in annoyance. “They’re a strange people.”
Despite being part of the Old World, and a part of the domain of the Imperial Order, the traders who traveled the vast deserted land, sometimes using the desolate trading outpost where Sebastian had found them, were an independent lot. Apparently, there were not enough of them to worry about, so the Order didn’t bot
her.
Sebastian leaned against the wall beside her as he gazed out at the silent wasteland. He was weary, too, from the long journey back to his homeland of the Old World. But at least he was well, now, just as Sister Perdita had promised.
The journey, though, had been nothing like what Jennsen had thought it would be. She had imagined that she and Sebastian would be off on their own again, as they had been before traveling to the army of the Imperial Order. But behind them stretched a column of Imperial Order soldiers a thousand strong. A small escort, Sebastian had called them. She had told him that she wanted to go alone, but he said that there were more important considerations.
With a thumbnail, Jennsen idly picked at the leather reins while watching the figures in black. “The men are afraid of all the soldiers,” she told Sebastian. “That’s why they don’t want to talk to us.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I can just tell by the way they keep peeking out. They’re trying to decide if telling us anything will somehow get them in trouble with all the soldiers.”
She understood the way the small band of traders felt to be under the scrutiny of so many brutish men sitting up on their big cavalry horseshow it felt to be watched by such grim soldiers layered with leather and chain-mail armor and bristling with weapons. The black-robed men, with their pack mules, were traders, not soldiers, nor were they used to dealing with soldiers. They feared for their safety, feared that if they said something wrong these warriors might decide to slaughter them out here in this wasteland. At the same time, while vastly outnumbered, the traders seemed reluctant to be cowed, lest they set a precedent for how they were treated thereafter. They were debating, now, trying to figure out the balance where their safety lay.
Sebastian pushed away from the wall. “Maybe you’re right. I’ll go in and talk to them alone—in their building, instead of out here under the eyes of the army.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said.
“What is it? What do you think?” Sister Perdita asked Sebastian as she marched up from behind.
With a casual flip of his hand, Sebastian dismissed her concern. “I think they just want to bargain. They’re traders. That’s what they do—bargain. It might be counterproductive to try to force them.”
“I will go in and change their minds,” the Sister said with dark intent.
“No,” Sebastian said. “Now is not the time to complicate a simple matter. We can always apply more pressure if we need to. Just let Jennsen and me go in and talk to them, first.”
Jennsen walked away from a scowling Sister Perdita, sticking close to Sebastian’s side, pulling Rusty along behind. The other thing about the journey that had been unexpected—in addition to the escort of the thousand troops—had been that Sister Perdita had decided to come along. She said that it was necessary, in case Jennsen needed any more help in getting close to Lord Rahl.
Jennsen just wanted to plunge her knife into that murderous bastard son of Darken Rahl and be done with it all. She had long since given up any hope of it freeing her to have her own life. After that night in the woods with Sister Perdita and the seven other Sisters, everything had changed. Jennsen had made a bargain that she knew would mean she would have no life after she finally killed Richard Rahl. But at least everyone else would have their lives back. The world would at last be free of her half brother and his evil rule.
And she would have vengeance. Her mother, who had been denied even a proper burial, could at last rest in peace knowing that her murderer had finally been visited with justice. That was all Jennsen could do for her mother.
Jennsen and Sebastian led Rusty and Pete to where the Sister’s horse was waiting, in a small side paddock. Rusty and Pete welcomed the shade and the water trough.
After closing the small rickety gate to the paddock, Jennsen followed Sebastian into the shadow of the doorway of the squat building. The jabbering voices of the men echoing inside the single room fell silent. All the men were swathed in the traditional black robes of the nomadic traders who lived in this part of the world.
“Leave us, then,” the lead man said, waving his fellows out at seeing Sebastian and Jennsen enter.
The men, their eyes peering out at her from gaps in the black cloth they were pulling back up across their mouths and noses, nodded as they filed by. By their crinkled exposed eyes, the men seemed to be smiling congenially at her from beneath the masks, but she couldn’t be sure. Just in case, and considering what was at stake, she smiled back as she returned a bow of her head.
The stagnant air inside the room was sweltering, but at least the shade was a relief. The one man remaining inside hadn’t pulled the loose wraps of black cloth back up, so they sagged around his neck, away from his smiling, weathered, leathery face.
“Please,” he said to Jennsen, “come in. You look fiery.”
“Fiery?” she asked.
“Hot,” he said. “You are not dressed for this place.” He shuffled over to the rough plank shelves at the side and returned with one of the black bundles stored there. “Please to wear this.” He lifted it toward her several times, urging her to take it. “It will make you better. It will cover you from the sun and hold in your sweat so you don’t dry like rock.”
Jennsen again bowed her head toward the small wiry man and smiled her appreciation. “Thank you.”
“Well?” Sebastian asked when the man turned away from Jennsen. Sebastian wearily pulled his pack off his back. “Any luck finding out anything from those other men?”
The black-robed figure hesitated, clearing his throat. “Well, they say that maybe . . .”
Sebastian impatiently rolled his eyes when he caught the man’s veiled meaning, and then fished around in his pocket until he came up with a silver coin. “Please accept this gesture of my appreciation for the efforts of your men.”
The man took it respectfully, but it was clear the silver coin was not the price he was hoping for. He seemed hesitant, though, to say that he found the amount inadequate. Jennsen couldn’t believe that Sebastian was quibbling about money at a time like this. She pulled a heavy gold coin from her pocket and, without bothering to ask Sebastian if it was all right, simply flipped it to the man. The man caught the gold in midair, then opened his fist just enough for a peek of confirmation. He grinned his appreciation at her. Sebastian shot her a look of displeasure.
It was Lord Rahl’s blood money, the money he had given the men sent to kill her and her mother. She could think of no better use for it.
“I don’t need it,” she said before he could lecture her. “Besides, aren’t you the one who said it was your way to use what was close to the enemy to get back at him?”
Sebastian withheld any comment and turned to the man. “What about it?”
“Late yesterday,” the man said, finally more forthcoming, “some of our men spotted two people going down into the Pillars of Creation.” He went to a small, uncovered window beside shelves stocked with simple supplies along with more of the black outfits. He pointed. “Down that way. There is a trail of sorts.”
“Did your men talk to them?” Jennsen asked, stepping forward impatiently. “Do your men know who it was?”
The man looked from her to Sebastian, hesitating, apparently not comfortable answering such direct questions from a woman, even if she had been the one who had paid his price. Sebastian gave her a look that said she should let him handle it. Jennsen stepped back toward the doorway, peering out, acting disinterested so that Sebastian could get the answers they needed.
Jennsen’s heart hammered as she pictured in her mind stabbing Lord Rahl. The shadow of the awful price of luring her brother to this place where she was to kill him loomed over the scene in her mind of the act itself.
Sebastian wiped sweat from his brow and tossed his heavy pack to the side of the floor. The pack hit with a hard clank and fell over. Some of the things spilled out. Annoyed, he made to pick it up, but Jennsen intercepted him.
“I’ll
tend to this,” she whispered, waving him back to the questioning of the small fellow in black.
Sebastian leaned against the heavy, ancient-looking plank table and folded his arms. “So, did your men have a chance to talk to these two people?”
“No, sir. The men were not close enough, but stood at the rim and watched the horse pass below.”
Jennsen retrieved a cake of lye soap and replaced it in the pack. She folded the razor and put it back in, along with an extra waterskin that had tumbled out. She picked up small items—a flint, strips of dried meat wrapped in cloth, and a whetstone. A tin she had never seen before had rolled out of the pack and under a low shelf.
“What did these two people on horseback look like, then?” Sebastian was asking as he tapped a finger on the table.
As she reached under the shelf, Jennsen listened carefully, waiting to hear if this might be Richard Rahl. She couldn’t really imagine who else it could be. She didn’t believe such a thing could be coincidence.
“It was a man and a woman. But they came on only one horse.”
Jennsen thought that was strange, that both would be riding one horse. It sounded likely that it was what she expected, Lord Rahl and his wife, the Mother Confessor, but it was odd that they were on one horse. Something could have happened to the other horse. In this dangerous land such a thing wasn’t hard to imagine.
“The woman, she . . .” The man made a face, uncomfortable with what he had to say. “She was not upright, but lying flat”—he gestured as if draping something over the horse—“across the back. She was tied up with rope.”
As Jennsen pulled the tin out in a rush of surprise, the lid caught a jagged edge of the wooden shelf and popped off. The contents spilled out across the floor in front of her.
“What did the man look like?” Sebastian asked.
A short piece of wood wound with twine and fastened down with fishing hooks had fallen out of the top of the tin. Jennsen stared down at a dark pile of dried mountain fever roses that had spilled out after the twine. They looked like dozens of little Graces.
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