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The sheer weight of such multitudes would have crushed the defenses of any city. Any armed opposition would hardly have been noticed by an army as vast as this one. Men gathered in such numbers could not be halted by anything.
But as much as this army seemed to be a mass, a mob, a thing, she knew that it was wrong to think of it in those terms; this was a group of individuals. These men had not been born monsters. Each had once been a helpless babe cradled in a mother's arms. Each had once been a child with fears, hopes, and dreams. While an occasional aberrant individual could, because of a sick mind, grow up to be a remorseless killer, this many individuals had not. Each was a killer by conviction to a cause, a killer by choice, all united under a banner of perverse beliefs that gave sanction to their savagery.
These were all individuals who when confronted with the choice had willfully cast away the inherent nobility of life, and chose instead to be servants of death.
Kahlan had been horrified at the butchery she'd seen back in the city, nauseated by the things she had seen. For a time she'd hardly been able to breathe, not just from the stench of death, but from her tearful despair at such mindless brutality, at such monumental and intentional depravity. She felt a sense of sickening dread for those helpless souls yet to face the horde and a crushing loss of any hope that life could ever be worth living, that it could ever be reasoned and secure, much less joyous.
But now, at the sight of the source of the slaughter, the great force of men who had all willingly perpetrated such atrocities, all those desolate feelings melted away. In their place smoldering anger ignited, the kind of inner rage she didn't think a person very often felt in their life. Remembering the old people who had been hacked apart, the infants dispatched by bashing in their brains, and the savage treatment of the women, Kahlan could think of little else but her burning desire for vengeance for the silent dead.
That sense of rage seethed through her, a rage so terrible that it seemed to forever change something within her. In that moment, she felt a profound affinity with the small statue she'd had to leave in Richard Rahl's peaceful garden, an understanding of its spirit that she hadn't had before.
"It's Jagang, all right," Sister Cecilia finally said in a bitter voice.
Sister Armina nodded. "And we have to get past him if we're to get to Caska."
Sister Ulicia gestured to the wall of mountains to the left. "Their army, with all their horses, wagons, and supplies, can't cross the narrow passes between those peaks, but we can. As slow as Jagang moves, we can easily get over the passes and then to Caska long before they can travel south to get past the mountains and then move up into D'Hara."
Sister Cecilia stared off to the horizon. "The D'Haran army doesn't stand a chance against that."
"That's not our problem," Sister Ulicia said.
"But what about our bond to Richard Rahl?" Sister Armina asked.
"We're not the ones attacking Richard Rahl," Sister Ulicia said. "Jagang is the one going after him, seeking to destroy him, not us. We are the ones who will wield the power of Orden and then we will grant Richard Rahl what only we will have the power to grant. That is enough to preserve our bond and protect us from the dream walker. Jagang and his army are not our problem and what they aim to do is not our responsibility."
Kahlan remembered being at the People's Palace and wondering what the man was like. Even though she didn't know him, she feared for him and his people having to face what was coming for them.
"It will be our problem if they get to Caska before us," Sister Cecilia said. "Besides catching up with Tovi, Caska is the only other central site we can get into for now."
Sister Ulicia dismissed the notion with a flick of her hand. "They're a long way from Caska. We can easily cut the distance and outpace them by going over the mountains rather than down, around, and then back up as they will have to do."
"You don't think they might quicken their pace?" Sister Armina asked. "After all, Jagang might be eager to finally finish off Lord Rahl and the D'Haran forces."
Sister Ulicia huffed at the very idea. "Jagang knows the D'Haran army has nowhere else to go—Richard Rahl has no choice now but to stand and fight. The matter is as good as decided. It's only a matter of time.
"The dream walker is in no hurry, nor could he be—not with an army that huge and unwieldy. And even if they could quicken their pace they have to travel a much greater distance so that still wouldn't get him to Caska before we can get there. Besides, Jagang's army is the same now as it has been since they first took over the Old World, decades ago, and as it has been throughout this entire war. They never hurry their pace. They are like the seasons—they move with great force, but very slowly."
She cast a meaningful look at the other two Sisters. "Besides, they've just stripped the city of women. Jagang's men will be eager to enjoy their new spoils."
The blood drained from Sister Armina's face. "Don't we know the truth of that."
"Jagang and his men never tire of the use of captive women," Sister Cecilia said, half to herself.
Sister Armina's color came back in a red rush. "I'd love to string Jagang up and have my way with him."
"We'd all enjoy a bit of dealing out lessons to those men," Sister Ulicia said as she stared off into the distance, "but we have better things to do." She smirked. "Someday, though…"
The three Sisters were silent for a time as they gazed off at the vast horde spread across the horizon.
"Someday," Sister Cecilia said in a low, rancorous voice, "we will open the boxes of Orden and we will have the power to make that man twist in the wind."
Sister Ulicia turned and headed back toward the horses. "If we are ever going to open one of the three boxes, then we will first have to get to Tovi and the last box—and to what else is in Caska. Forget about Jagang and his army. This is the last we'll have to see them—until the day conies when we've unleashed the power of Orden and we can have a bit of fun dealing out our own, personal retribution to the dream walker."
* * *
CHAPTER 9
Nicci opened her eyes. She saw only vague shapes.
"Zedd is angry with you."
Even though it sounded as if it had come from some hazy, faraway place, she knew that it was Richard's voice. She was surprised to hear it. She was surprised to hear anything. She thought that by all rights she should be dead.
As her vision started coming into focus, Nicci rolled her head to the right and saw him sitting huddled close on a chair that had been pulled right up beside the bed. Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, his fingers folded neatly together, he was watching her.
"Why?" she asked.
Looking relieved to see her awake, he leaned back in the simple wooden chair and smiled that crooked smile of his that she so loved seeing.
"Because you broke the window back in that room where you were all doing the verification web."
In the light of a lamp glowing softly beneath a milky white shade, she saw that she was covered up to her armpits in a luxuriously embroidered gold bedcover with lustrous sage green fringe. She had on a satiny nightdress that she didn't recognize. The sleeves went all the way down to her wrists. It was pale pink. Not her color.
She wondered where the nightdress had come from and, more to the point, who had undressed her and put it on her. Back at the Palace of the Prophets, so long ago, Richard had been the first person she'd ever met who didn't expect that he had a right to her body or some other aspect of her life. That forthright attitude had helped start the process of reasoning that eventually led to her casting off a lifetime of teachings of the Order. Through Richard, she had come to truly see that her life belonged to her alone. Along with that comprehension, she had since then discovered the dignity and self-worth in propriety.
Right then, though, she had concerns other than finding herself in a pink nightdress. Her throbbing head felt impossibly heavy against the cozy pillow.
"Technically," she said, "the lightning broke the window.
Not me."
"Somehow," Cara said from another chair tipped back against the wall beside the door, "I don't think the distinction will much impress him."
"I suppose not," Nicci said with a sigh. "That room is in the hardened section of the Keep."
Richard twitched a frown. "It's where?"
She squinted slightly in an effort to bring his face more into focus. "That section of the Keep is a special place. It's hardened against intentional interference as well as aberrational and errant events."
Cara folded her arms. "Mind giving us the translation?"
The woman was in her red leather. Nicci wondered if that meant there was more trouble about or if she was just surly from the beast paying them a visit.
"It's a containment field," Nicci said. "We know very little about the ancient, bewilderingly intricate makeup of the Chainfire spell. It's hazardous to even study such unstable components all tangled together the way that one is. That's why we were using that particular place to run the verification web. That room is in the original core of the Keep—an important sanctuary used for tasks involving anomalous material. Various kinds of both constructed and free-formed conjuring are apt to contain innate tangential outflows that can convey domain breaches, so when working with them it's best to confine such potentially hazardous components to a containment field."
"Oh, well, thanks for the translation," Cara said in a cutting tone. "It's all so clear, now. It's a field thing."
Nicci nodded as best she could. "Yes—a containment field." When Cara's frown only darkened, Nicci added, "Doing magic in there is like keeping a wasp in a bottle."
"Oh." Cara let out a sigh, finally grasping the simplified concept. "I guess that explains why Zedd was so grumpy about it."
"Maybe he can fix it back to the way it was," Richard offered. "Surprisingly enough, the room isn't too badly torn up. It's mostly the broken windows that he's riled about."
Nicci lifted a hand in a weak gesture. "I don't doubt it. The glass in there is unique. It has embedded properties designed to contain conjured magic from escaping—and to prevent gifted assaults. Its function is much the same as shields, except that it deters power rather than people."
