温馨提醒：系统正在全面升级。您可以访问最新站点。谢谢！

  　Sister Alessandra 【创建和谐家园】iled in a long-suffering sort of way. "You don't understand, Nicci. We would like you to continue your work with us at the Palace of the Prophets. You would be a novice at first, of course, but one day, you will be a Sister of the Light, and as such, you will carry on with what you have started."

  　Panic welled up in Nicci like rising floodwaters. There were so many people who hung to life only by a thread she tended. She had friends at the fellowship whom she had come to love. She had so much to do. She didn't want to leave Mother, and even Father. He was evil, she knew, but he wasn't evil to her. He was selfish and greedy, she knew, but he still tucked her into bed, sometimes, and patted her shoulder. She was sure she would see something in his blue eyes again, if she just gave it time. She didn't want to leave him. For some reason, she desperately needed to again see that spark in his eyes. She was being selfish, she knew.

  　"I have needy people here, Sister Alessandra." Nicci blinked at her tears. "My responsibility is to them. I'm sorry but I can't abandon them."

  　At that moment, Father came in the door. He stopped in an awkward posture, his legs frozen in midstride, with his hand on the lever, staring at the Sister.

  　"What's this, then?"

  　Mother stood. "Howard, this is Alessandra. She is a Sister of the Light. She's come to - "

  　"No! I'll not have it, do you hear? She's our daughter, and the Sisters can't have her."

  　Sister Alessandra stood, giving Mother a sidelong glance. "Please ask your hu【创建和谐家园】and to leave. This is not his business."

  　"Not my business? She's my daughter! You'll not take her!"

  　He lunged forward to seize Nicci's outstretched hand. The Sister lifted a finger and, to Nicci's astonishment, he was thrown back in a sparkling flash of light.

  　Father's back slammed against the wall. He slid down, clutching his chest as he gasped for breath. Tears bursting forth, Nicci ran for him, but Sister Alessandra snatched her by the arm and held her back.

  　"Howard," Mother said through gritted teeth, "the child is my business to raise. I carry the Creator's gift. You gave your word when our union was arranged that if we had a girl and she had the gift I would have the exclusive authority to raise her as I saw fit. I believe this to be the right thing to do, what the Creator wants. With the Sisters she will have time to learn to read. She will have time to learn to use her gift to help people as only the Sisters can. You will keep your word. I will see to this. I'm sure you have work to which you must immediately return."

  　With the flat of his hand, he rubbed his chest. Finally, his arms dropped to his sides. Head down, he shuffled to the door. Before he pulled closed the door, his gaze met Nicci's. Through the tears, she saw the spark in his eyes, as if he had things to tell her, but then it was gone, and he pulled the door shut behind himself.

  　Sister Alessandra said it would be best if they left at once, and if Nicci didn't see him just now. She promised that if Nicci followed instructions, and after she was settled, and after she had learned to read, and after she had learned to use her gift, she would see him again.

  　Nicci learned to read and to use her gift and mastered everything else she was supposed to master. She fulfilled all the requirements. She did everything expected of her. Her life, as a novice to become a Sister of the Light, was numbingly selfless. Sister Alessandra forgot her promise. She was not pleased to be reminded of it, and found more work that Nicci needed to do.

  　Several years after she had been taken to the palace, Nicci again saw Brother Narev. She came across him quite by accident; he was working as a stablehand at the Palace of the Prophets. He 【创建和谐家园】iled his slow 【创建和谐家园】ile with his eyes fixed on her. He told her that he had gotten the idea to go to the palace by her example. He said he wished to live long enough to see order come to the world.

  　She thought it an odd occupation for him. He said that he found working for the Sisters morally superior to contributing his labor to the evil of profit. He said it mattered not if she chose to tell anyone at the palace anything about him or his work for the fellowship, but he asked her not to tell the Sisters that he was gifted, since they would not allow him to continue to stay and work in the stables if they knew, and he would refuse to serve them should they discover his gift, because, he said, he wanted to serve the Creator in his own quiet way.

  　Nicci honored his secret, not so much out of any sense of loyalty, but mostly because she was kept far too busy with her studies and work to concern herself with Brother Narev and his fellowship. She rarely had occasion to see him, mucking out horse stalls, and as his importance in her childhood had faded into her past, she never really even gave him a second thought. The palace had work they wished her to put her attention to - much the same sort of work Brother Narev would have approved of. Only many years later did she come to discover his real reasons for having been at the Palace of the Prophets.

  　Sister Alessandra saw to it that Nicci was kept busy. She was allowed no time for such selfish indulgences as going home for a visit. Twenty-seven years after she had been taken away to become a Sister of the Light, still a novice, Nicci again saw her father. It was at his funeral.

  　Mother had sent word for Nicci to return home to see Father because he was is failing health. Nicci immediately rushed home, accompanied by Sister Alessandra. By the time Nicci arrived, Father was already dead.

  　Mother said that for several weeks he had been begging her to send for his daughter. She sighed and said she put it off, thinking he would get better. Besides, she said, she hadn't wanted to disturb Nicci's important work - not for such a trivial matter. She said it had been the only thing he asked for: to see Nicci. Mother thought that was silly, since he was a man who didn't care about people. Why should he need to see anyone? He died alone, while Mother was out helping the victims of an uncaring world.

  　By that time, Nicci was forty. Mother, though, still thinking of Nicci as a young woman because under the spell at the palace she had aged only enough to look to be maybe fifteen or sixteen, told her to wear a pretty, brightly colored dress, because it wasn't really a sad occasion, after all.

  　Nicci stood looking at the body for a long time. Her chance to see his blue eyes again was forever lost. For the first time in years, the pain made her feel something, down deep inside. It felt good to feel something again, even if it was pain.

  　As Nicci stood looking at her father's sunken face, Sister Alessandra told Nicci that she was sorry she had to take her away, but that in her whole life, she had not encountered a woman with the gift as powerful as it was in Nicci, and that such a thing as the Creator had given her was not to be wasted.

  　Nicci said she understood. Since she had ability, it was only right that she use it to help those in need.

  　At the Palace of the Prophets, Nicci was said to be the most selfless, caring novice they had under their roof. Everyone pointed to her, and told the younger novices to look to Nicci's example. Even the Prelate had commended her.

  　The praise was but a buzz in her ear. It was an injustice to be better than others. Try as she might, Nicci could not escape her father's legacy of excellence. His taint coursed through her veins, oozed from every pore, and infected everything she did. The more selfless she was the more it only confirmed her superiority, and thus her wickedness.

  　She knew that could mean only one thing: she was evil.

  　"Try not to remember him like this," Sister Alessandra said after a long silence as they stood before the body. "Try to remember what he was like when he was alive."

  　"I can't," Nicci said. "I never knew him when he was alive."

  　Mother and her friends at the fellowship ran the business. She wrote Nicci joyful letters, telling her how she had put many of the needy to work at the armorers. She said the business could afford it, with all the wealth it had accumulated. Mother was proud that that wealth could now be put to a moral use. She said Father's death had been a cloaked blessing, because it meant help at last for those who had always deserved it most. It was all part of the Creator's plan, she said.

  　Mother had to raise her prices in order to pay the wages of all the people she'd given work. A lot of the older workers left. Mother said she was glad they were gone because they had uncooperative attitudes.

  　Orders fell behind. Suppliers began demanding to be paid before delivering goods. Mother discontinued having the armor proofed because the new workers complained that it was an unfair standard to be held to. They said they were trying their best, and that was what counted. Mother sympathized.

  　The battering-mill had to be sold. Some of the customers stopped ordering armor and weapons. Mother said they would be better off without such intolerant people. She sought new laws from the duke to require work to be spread out equally, but the laws were slow in coming. The few remaining customers hadn't paid their account for quite a while, but promised to catch up. In the meantime, their goods were shipped, if late.

  　Within six months of Father dying, the business failed. The vast fortune he had built over a lifetime was gone.

  　Some of the skilled workers once hired by Father moved on, hoping to find work at armories in distant places. Most men who stayed could find only menial work; they were lucky to have that. Many of the new workers demanded Mother do something; she and the fellowship petitioned other businesses to take them on. Some business tried to help, but most were in no position to hire workers.

  　The armory had been the largest employer in the area, and drew many other people employed in other occupations. Other businesses, like traders, 【创建和谐家园】aller suppliers, and cargo earners, who had depended on the armory, failed for lack of work, Businesses in the city, everything from bakers to butchers, lost customers and were reluctantly forced to let men go.

  　Mother asked the duke to speak with the king. The duke said the king was considering the problem.

  　Like her father's armory, other buildings were abandoned as people left to find work in thriving cities elsewhere. Squatters, at the fellowship's urging, took over many of the abandoned buildings. The empty places became the sites of robberies and even murders. Many a woman who went near those places regretted it. Mother couldn't sell the weapons from her closed armory, so she gave them to the needy so they might protect themselves. Despite her efforts, crime only increased.

  　In honor of all her good work, and her father's service to the government, the king granted Mother a pension that allowed her to stay in the house, with a reduced staff. She continued her work with the fellowship, trying to right all the injustice that she believed was responsible for the failure of the business. She hoped one day to reopen the shop and employ people. For her righteous work, the king awarded her a silver medal. Mother wrote that the king proclaimed she was as close to a good spirit in the flesh as he had ever seen. Nicci regularly received word of awards Mother was given for her selfless work.

  　Eighteen years later, when Mother died, Nicci still looked like a young woman of perhaps seventeen. She wanted a fine black dress to wear to the funeral - the finest available. The palace said that it was unseemly for a novice to make such a selfish request, and it was out of the question. They said they would supply only simple humble clothes.

  　When Nicci arrived home, she went to the tailor to the king and told him that for her mother's funeral she needed the finest black dress he had ever made. He told her the price. She informed him she had no money, but said she needed the dress anyway.

  　The tailor, a man with three chins, waxy down growing from his ears, abnormally long yellowish fingernails, and an unfailing lecherous 【创建和谐家园】irk, said there were things he needed, too. He leaned close, lightly holding her 【创建和谐家园】ooth arm in his knobby fingers, and intimated that if she would take care of his needs, he would take care of hers.

  　Nicci wore the finest black dress ever made to her mother's funeral.

  　Mother had been a woman who had devoted her entire life to the needs of others. Nicci could never again look forward to seeing her mother's cockroach brown eyes. Unlike at her father's funeral, Nicci felt no pain reach down to touch that aby【创建和谐家园】al place inside her. Nicci knew she was a terrible person.

  　For the first time, she realized that for some reason she simply no longer cared.

  　From that day on, Nicci never wore any dress but black.

  　One hundred and twenty-three years later, standing at the railing overlooking the great hall, Nicci saw eyes that stunned her with their sense of an inner value held dear. But what had been an uncertain ember in her father's eyes was ablaze in Richard's. She still didn't know what it was.

  　She knew only that it was the difference between life and death, and that she had to destroy him.

  　Now, at long last, she knew how.