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  　"Sounds like an ugly witch," Cara said.

  　"Quite the contrary. She has blue eyes and long blond hair. She is said to be one of the most beautiful women you could ever lay eyes upon. They say she looks like a vision of a good spirit."

  　Kahlan couldn't help notice the captain's furtive glance at Cara, who had blue eyes and long blond hair, and was also one of the most beautiful women you could ever lay eyes upon. She, too, was deadly.

  　Richard was frowning. "Blond. . . blue eyes . . . there are several it could be .... Too bad they didn't catch her name."

  　"Sorry, but they gave no other name, Lord Rahl, only that description .... Oh yes, and that she always wears black."

  　"Dear spirits," Richard whispered as he rose to his full height, gripping his carving by its throat.

  　"From what I've been told, Lord Rahl, though she looks like a vision of one, the good spins themselves would fear her."

  　"With good reason." Richard said, as he stared into the distance, as if looking beyond the black wall of mist to a place only he could see.

  　"You know her, then, Lord Rahl?"

  　Kahlan listened to the fire pop and crackle as she waited along with the other two for his answer. It almost seemed Richard was trying to find his voice as his gaze sank back down to meet the eyes of the carving in his hand.

  　"I know her," he said, at last. "I know her all too well. She was one of my teachers at the Palace of the Prophets."

  　Richard tossed his carving into the flames.

  　"Pray you never have to look into Nicci's eyes, Captain."

  　CHAPTER 7

  　Look into my eyes, child," Nicci said in her soft, silken voice as she cupped the girl's chin.

  　Nicci lifted the bony face. The eyes, dark and wide-set, blinked with dull bewilderment. There was nothing to be seen in them: the girl was simple.

  　Nicci straightened, feeling a hollow disappointment. She always did. She sometimes found herself looking into people's eyes, like this, and then wondering why. If she was searching for something, she didn't know what it was.

  　She resumed her leisurely walk down the line of the townspeople, all assembled along one side of the dusty market square. People in outlying farms and 【创建和谐家园】aller communities no doubt came into the town several times a month, on market days, some staying overnight if they had come from far away. This wasn't a market day, but it would suit her purpose well enough.

  　A few of the crowded buildings had a second story, typically a room or two for a family over their 【创建和谐家园】all shop. Nicci saw a bakery, a cobbler's shop, a shop selling pottery, a black【创建和谐家园】ith, an herbalist, a shop offering leatherwork - the usual places. One of these towns was much the same as the next. Many of the town's people worked the surrounding fields of wheat or sorghum, tended animals, and had extensive vegetable plots. Dung, straw, and clay being plentiful, they lived in homes of daub and wattle. A few of the shops with a second story boasted beam construction with clapboard siding.

  　Behind her, sullen soldiers bristling with weapons filled the majority of the square. They were tired from the hot ride, and worse, bored. Nicci knew they were a twitch away from a rampage. A town, even one with meager plunder, was an inviting diversion. It wasn't so much the taking as the breaking that they liked. Sometimes, though, it was the taking. The nervous women only rarely met the soldiers' bold stares.

  　As she strolled past the scruffy people, Nicci looked into the eyes watching her. Most were wide with terror and fixed not on the soldiers, but on the object of their dread: Nicci - or as people had taken to calling her, "Death's Mistress." The designation neither pleased nor displeased her; it was simply a fact she noted, a fact of no more significance to her than if someone had told her that they had mended a pair of her stockings.

  　Some, she knew, were staring at the gold ring through her lower lip. Gossip would have already informed them that a woman so marked was a personal slave to Emperor Jagang - something lower even than simple peasants such as themselves. That they stared at the gold ring, or what they thought of her for it, was of even less significance to her than being called "Death's Mistress."

  　Jagang only possessed her body in this world; the Keeper would have her soul for eternity in the next. Her body's existence in this world was torment; her spirit's existence in the next would be no less. Existence and torment were simply the two sides of the same coin - there could be no other.

  　【创建和谐家园】oke, rolling up from the fire pit over her left shoulder, sailed away on a fitful wind to make a dark slash across the bright blue afternoon sky. Stacked stones to each side of the communal cooking pit supported a rod above the fire. Two or three pigs or sheep, skewered on the rod, could be roasted at once. Temporary sides were probably available to convert the fire pit into a 【创建和谐家园】okehouse.

  　At other times, an outdoor fire pit was used, often in conjunction with butchering, for the making of soap, since making soap was not something typically done indoors. Nicci saw a wooden ash pit, used for making lye, standing to the side of the open area, along with a large iron kettle that could be used for rendering fat. Lye and fat were the primary ingredients of soap. Some women liked to add fragrance to their soap with herbs and such, like lavender or rosemary.

  　When Nicci was little, her mother made her go each autumn, when the butchering was being done, to help people make soap. Her mother said helping others built proper character. Nicci still had a few 【创建和谐家园】all dots of scars on the backs of her hands and forearms where she had been splashed and blistered by the hot fat. Nicci's mother always made her wear a fine dress - not to impress the other people who didn't have such clothes, but to make Nicci conspicuous and uncomfortable. The attention her pink dress attracted was not admiration. As she stood with the long wooden paddle, stirring the bubbling kettle while the lye was being poured in, some of the other children, trying to splash the dress and ruin it, burned Nicci, too. Nicci's mother had said the burns were the Creator's punishment.

  　As Nicci moved past, inspecting the assembled people, the only sounds were the horses off behind the buildings, the sporadic coughs of people, and the flags of flame in the fire pit snapping and flapping in the breeze. The soldiers had already helped themselves to the two pigs that had been roasting on the rod, so the aroma of cooking meat had mostly dissipated on the wind, leaving the sour 【创建和谐家园】ells of sweat and the stink of human habitation. Whether a belligerent army or a peaceful town, the filth of people 【创建和谐家园】elled the same.

  　"You all know why I'm here," Nicci announced. "Why have you people made me go to the trouble of such a journey?" She gazed down the line of maybe two hundred people standing four and five deep. The soldiers, who had ordered them out of their homes and in from the fields, greatly outnumbered them. She stopped in front of a man she had noticed people glancing at.

  　“ Well?"

  　The wind fluttered his thin gray hair across his balding, bowed head as he fixed his gaze on the ground at her feet. "We don't have anything to give, Mistress. We're a poor community. We have nothing."

  　"You are a liar. You had two pigs. You saw fit to have a gluttonous feast instead of helping those in need."

  　"But we have to eat." It was not an argument, so much as a plea.

  　"So do others, but they are not so fortunate as you. They know only the ache of hunger in their bellies every night. What an ugly tragedy, that every day thousands of children die from the simple want of food, and millions more know the gnawing pain of hunger - while people like you, in a land of plenty, offer nothing but selfish excuses. Having what they need to live is their right, and must be honored by those with the means to help.

  　"Our soldiers, too, need to eat. Do you think our struggle on the behalf of the people is easy? These men risk their lives daily so you may raise your children in a proper, civilized society. How can you look these men in the eye? How can we even feed our troops, if everyone doesn't help support the cause?"

  　The trembling man remained mute.

  　"What must I do to impress upon you people the seriousness of your obligation to the lives of others? Your contribution to those in need is a solemn moral dutysharing in a greater good."

  　Nicci's vision suddenly went white. With a pain like scorching hot needles driven into her ears, Jagang's voice filled her mind.

  　Why must you play this game? Make examples of people! Teach them a lesson that 1 am not to be ignored!

  　Nicci swayed on her feet. She was completely blinded by the pain bursting inside her head. She let it wash through her, as if watching it happen to a stranger. Her abdominal muscles twitched and convulsed. A rusty, barbed lance driven up through her, ripping her insides, could not have hurt more. Her arms hung limp at her sides while she waited for Jagang's displeasure to end, or for death.

  　She was unable to tell how long the torture lasted. When he was doing it, she was never able to sense time - the pain was too all - consuming. She knew, from what others told her when they saw it done to her, and from seeing it done to others, that it sometimes lasted only an instant. Sometimes it lasted hours.

  　Making it last hours was a waste of Jagang's effort - she couldn't tell the difference. She had told him as much.

  　Suddenly, she was unable to draw a breath. It felt like a fist squeezed her heart to a stop. She thought her lungs might burst. Her knees were about to buckle.

  　Do not disobey me again!

  　With a gasp, air filled her lungs. Jagang's discipline ended, as it always did, with an impossibly tart, sour taste on her tongue, like an unexpected mouthful of fresh raw lemon juice, and pain searing the nerves at the back of her jaw under her earlobes. It left her head ringing and her teeth throbbing. As she opened her eyes, she was surprised, as she always was, not to see herself standing in a pool of blood. She touched the corner of her mouth, and then brushed her fingers to an ear. She found no blood.

  　She wondered in passing why Jagang had been able to come into her mind now. Sometimes, he couldn't. It didn't happen that way for any of the other Sisters - he always had access to their minds.

  　As her vision cleared, she saw people staring at her. They didn't know why she had paused. The young men - and a few of the older ones, too - were sneaking peeks at her body. They were used to seeing women in drab, shapeless dresses, women whose bodies exhibited the toll taken by endless hard work and almost constant pregnancy from the time they were old enough for the seed to catch. They had never before seen a woman like Nicci, standing straight and tall, looking them in the eye, wearing a fine black dress that hugged a nearly flawless shape marred by neither hard work or the labor of birth. The stark black material contrasted the pale curve of cleavage revealed by the cut of the laced bodice. Nicci was numb to such stares. Occasionally, they suited her purposes, but most of the time they didn't, and so she disregarded them.

  　She began walking down the line of people again, ignoring Emperor Jagang's orders. She rarely complied with his orders. She was, for the most part, indifferent to his punishment. If anything, she welcomed it.

  　Nicci, forgive me. You know I don't mean to hurt you.

  　She ignored his voice, too, as she studied the eyes peering up at her. Not everyone did. She liked to look into the eyes of those courageous enough to risk a glimpse of her. Most were filled with simple terror.

  　There would soon be abundant justification for such apprehension.