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“Here,” Sister Ulicia said. “Stop here.”
Kahlan halted, staring across the hall at the thick mahogany doors. The snakes carved in the doors stared back at her. Their tails coiled around branches carved into the tops of the doors. The snakes’ bodies hung down so that the heads were at eye level. Fangs jutted out from gaping jaws, as if the pair were about to strike. Kahlan couldn’t imagine why anyone would carve such hideous creatures in doors. Everything else in the palace was beautiful, but these doors were not.
Sister Ulicia leaned close. “You remember all of your instructions?”
Kahlan nodded. “Yes, Sister.”
“If you have any questions, ask them now.”
“No, Sister. I remember everything you told me.”
Kahlan wondered why it was that she could remember some things so well, but so many other things seemed lost in a fog.
“And don’t dawdle,” Tovi said.
“No, Sister Tovi, I won’t.”
“We need what you’re being sent to recover for us, and we need it without any foolishness.” Malevolence gleamed in Tovi’s eyes. “Do you understand, girl?”
Kahlan swallowed. “Yes, Sister Tovi.”
“You’d better,” Tovi said, “Or you’ll answer to me and you would not want that, believe me.”
“I understand, Sister Tovi.”
Kahlan knew that Tovi was deadly serious. The woman was usually relatively even tempered, but when provoked she could turn vicious in a flash. Worse, once she started in, she enjoyed seeing others helpless and in agony.
“Go on then,” Sister Ulicia said. “And don’t forget, don’t talk to anyone. If the men up there say anything, just ignore them. They will leave you be.”
The look in Sister Ulicia’s eyes gave Kahlan pause. She nodded before hurrying off across the hall. Her exhaustion forgotten, she knew what she had to do, and she knew that if she didn’t there would be trouble.
At the doors she grasped one of the handles that looked like a grinning skull, only made of bronze. She deliberately didn’t look at the snakes as she put her muscle into pulling open the heavy door.
Inside, she paused, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light of lamps. The thick carpets of golds and blues quieted the room and prevented any of the echoes like there were in so many of the halls. The intimate room, paneled in the same mahogany as the tall doors, seemed a quiet refuge from the sometimes noisy palace.
With the door closed behind her, she realized that she was finally, totally away from the four Sisters. She couldn’t remember a time when she had ever been alone from them. At least one of the Sisters was always watching her, watching their slave. She didn’t know why they watched her so closely, after all, Kahlan had never actually tried to escape. She had often used to seriously consider it, but she had never actually gotten to the point of trying it.
Just the thought of trying to escape from the Sisters brought on such terrible pain that it made her feel like blood would run from her ears and nose and that her eyes would surely burst. When she thought of leaving the Sisters and the pain closed in to bear down on her, she couldn’t get the thought out of her head fast enough, and even then the pain lingered. Such an episode usually left her so sick to her stomach that it was hours before she could even stand, much less walk.
The Sisters always knew when it happened, probably because they found her in a heap on the ground. When the pain in her head finally faded, they beat her. The worst was Sister Ulicia because she used the stout stick she always carried. It left welts that were slow to heal. Some still had not healed.
This time, though, they had ordered Kahlan to leave them and go in alone. They had told her that it would not bring on the pain so long as she kept to her instructions. It felt so good to be away from those four terrible women that Kahlan thought she might cry with joy.
Inside the room, though, were four big guards to replace the four Sisters. She paused, unsure what to do.
Serpents on one side of a door with serpents carved on it, and serpents on the other. She seemed never to be able to find any peace.
Kahlan stood frozen for a moment, afraid to try to go past the guards, afraid of what they might do to her for being in a place that she so obviously did not belong.
They were staring at her in a most curious way.
Kahlan gathered her courage, hooked some of her long hair behind an ear, and started for the stairwell she saw across the room.
Two guards stepped together to block her way. “Where do you think you’re going?” one of them asked her.
Kahlan kept her head down and kept moving. She turned a little sideways to be able to slip between them.
As she went past, the second guard said to the first “What did you say?”
The first man, who had asked Kahlan where she thought she was going, stared at him.
“What? I didn’t say anything.”
As Kahlan made it to the stairs, the other two guards strolled over to the ones who had tried to block Kahlan’s path.
“What are you two babbling about?” one of them asked.
The first waved a hand. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”
Kahlan hurried up the steps as fast as her tired legs would carry her. She paused on the broad landing to catch her breath, but she knew she dared not rest for long. She grabbed the polished stone handrail and hurried on up the rest of the way.
A soldier at the top immediately turned to the sound of her footsteps. He stared at her as she climbed up into the hallway. She rushed past him. He paused only briefly before turning and ambling off to continue his patrol.
There were other men in the hall—soldiers. Soldiers everywhere. Lord Rahl had a lot of soldiers, all of them huge, intent looking men.
Kahlan swallowed in wide-eyed fright at seeing so many soldiers in the way of what she had been told to do. If they slowed her, Sister Ulicia would not be understanding nor forgiving. Some of the soldiers saw Kahlan and started her way, but when they reached her they lost their intent gazes and walked right by. As Kahlan hurried along the hall, other guards turned urgently to officers, but then, when questioned, said that it was nothing, and to forget it. Other men lifted an arm to point, only to then let the arm drop before continuing on their way.
As the men saw her and at the same time forgot her, Kahlan steadily made her way down the hall toward where she had been told she had to go. It concerned her, though, that so many of the men were carrying crossbows. The men with the crossbows wore black gloves. Their cocked weapons were loaded with deadly-looking red-fletched arrows.
Sister Ulicia had told Kahlan that as part of the magic that brought on the pain to prevent her from escaping, she was shrouded by webs of magic that kept people from noticing her. Kahlan tried to think of why the Sister would do such a thing, but her thoughts simply would not connect, would not link together into understanding. It was the most ghastly thing, not being able to make herself think about specific things when she wanted to. She would start out with the question, then the answer would begin to form, but simply run out as if there was nothing more there.
Despite the conjured shroud around her, though, Kahlan knew that if one of the soldiers pointed his crossbow at her and pulled the bolt release before he forgot her, she would be dead.
She wouldn’t mind being dead because it would at least mean being freed of the anguish that was her life, but Sister Ulicia had warned her that the Sisters had great influence with the Keeper of the dead. Sister Ulicia said that if Kahlan ever thought to slip away from her duties to them by slipping the bounds of the world of the living and taking the long journey into the world of the dead, she would find that it was no refuge and in fact would prove to be a far worse place. It was then that Sister Ulicia had told Kahlan that they were Sisters of the Dark, as if to drive home the veracity of the warning.
Kahlan hadn’t really needed the assurance; she had always been sure that any of the four Sisters could chase her down any hole and get her, even if that
hole was a grave like the one they’d opened one dark night for reasons Kahlan couldn’t even imagine and didn’t want to know.
Looking into the Sister’s terrible eyes, Kahlan had known that she was hearing the truth. After that, while death invited her with release, it also terrified her with dark promises.
She didn’t know if this had always been her life, the life of chattel belonging to others. No matter how hard she tried, though, she could remember no other.
As she slipped by men patrolling, she made her way through a series of intersections that Sister Ulicia had drawn in the dirt for her at various camps as they traveled. The Sister had used her oak rod to diagram the halls so that Kahlan would know where she had to go.
