"Do you know what I am?" She didn't wait for Ann to answer. "I am Mord-Sith. I give you this one warning as a courtesy. It is the only warning, or courtesy, you will receive, so listen closely. You came here with hostile intent against Wizard Rahl. You are now my prisoner. Use of your magic against a Mord-Sith will result in the capture of that magic by me or one of my sister Mord-Sith and its use as a weapon against you. A.
very, very unpleasant weapon."
"Well," Ann said, "in this place my magic is not very useful, I'm afraid. Hardly worth a hoot, as a matter of fact. So, you see, I'm quite harmless."
"I don't care how useful you find your magic. If you try to so much as light a candle with it, your power will be mine."
"I see," Ann said.
"Don't believe me?" Nyda leaned down. "I encourage you to try to attack me. I haven't captured a sorceress's magic for quite a while. Might be…
fun."
"Thank you, but I'm a bit too tired out-from my travels and all-to be attacking anyone just now. Maybe later?"
Nyda smiled. In that smile Ann could see why Mord-Sith were so feared.
"Fine. Later, then."
"So, what is it you intend to do with me in the meantime, Nyda? Put me up in one of the palace's fine rooms?"
Nyda ignored the question and gestured with a tilt of her head. Two of the men a short way back up the hall rushed forward. They towered over Ann like two oak trees. Each grasped her under an arm.
"Let's go," Nyda said as she marched off down the hall ahead of them.
The men started out after her, pulling Ann along with them. Her feet seemed to touch the floor only every third or fourth step. People in the hall parted for the Mord-Sith. Passersby pressed themselves up against the walls to the side, a goodly distance away. Some people disappeared into the open shops, from where they peered out windows. Everyone stared at the squat woman in the dark dress being hauled along by the two palace guards in burnished leather and gleaming mail. Behind she could hear the jangle of metal gear as the rest of the men followed along.
They turned into a small hall to the side going back between columns holding a projecting balcony. One of the men rushed forward to unlock the door. Before she knew it, they'd all swept through the little door like wine through a funnel.
The corridor beyond was dark and cramped-nothing like the marble-lined hallways most people saw. Not far down the hall, they turned down a stairway. The oak treads creaked underfoot. Some of the men handed lanterns forward so Nyda could light her way. The sound of all the footsteps echoed back from the darkness below.
At the bottom of the steps, Nyda led them through a maze of dirty stone passageways. The seldom-used halls smelled musty, and in places damp. When they reached another stairwell, they continued down a square shaft with landings at each turn, descending into the dark recesses of the People's Palace. Ann wondered how many people in the past were taken by routes such as this, never to be seen again. Richard's father, Darken Rahl, and his father before him, Panis, were rather fond of torture. Life meant nothing to men such as those.
Richard had changed all that.
But Richard wasn't at the palace, now. Nathan was.
Ann had known Nathan for a very long time-for nearly a thousand years.
For most of that time, as Prelate, she had kept him locked in his apartments. Prophets could not be allowed to roam free. Now, though, this one was free. And, worse, he had managed to establish his authority in the palace-the ancestral home of the House of Rahl. He was an ancestor to Richard. He was a Rahl. He was a wizard.
Ann's plan suddenly started to seem very foolish. Just catch the prophet off guard, she'd thought. Catch him off guard and snap a collar back around his neck. Surely, there would be an opening and he would be hers again.
It had seemed to make sense at the time.
At the bottom of the long descent, Nyda swept to the right, following a narrow walk with a stone wall soaring up on the right and an iron railing on the left. Ann gazed off over the railing, but the lantern light showed nothing but inky darkness below. She feared to think how far it might drop-not that she had any ideas of a battle with her captors, but she was beginning to worry that they just might heave her over the edge and be done with her.
Nathan had sent them, though. Nathan, as irascible as he could sometimes be, wouldn't order such a thing. Ann considered, then, the centuries she had kept him locked away, considered the extreme measures it had sometimes taken to keep that incorrigible man under control. Ann glanced over the iron rail again, down into the darkness.
"Will Nathan be waiting for us?" she asked, trying to sound cheerful.
"I'd really like to talk to him. We have business we must discuss."
Nyda shot a dark look back over her shoulder. "Nathan has nothing to talk to you about."
