With a gasp, Nicholas drew a desperate breath. His head spun with the burning torture of the abrupt return, an uncontrolled return not of his doing.

He blinked, his mouth open wide in an attempt to let out a cry, but no sound came. His eyes bulged with the effort, but no cry came. He was back.

Whether or not he wanted to be, he was back.

He looked around at the room. He was back, that was the reason no cry came. No screech of a race joined his own. They were dead. All five.

Nicholas turned to the four impaled on stakes behind him. All four were slumped. The fifth man lay slouched in the far corner. All five limp and still. All five dead. Their spirits gone.

The room was as silent as a crypt. The bowl before him glowed only with the fragment of his own spirit. He drew it back in.

He sat in the stillness for a long time, waiting for his head to stop spinning. It had been a shock to be in a creature as it was killed-to have a spirit of a person in him as they died. As five of them died. It had been a surprise.

Lord Rahl was a surprising man. Nicholas hadn't thought, back that first time, that he would be able to get all five. He had thought it was luck. A second time was not luck. Lord Rahl was a surprising man.

Nicholas could cast his spirit out again if he wanted, seek out new eyes, but his head hurt and he didn't feel up to it; besides, it didn't matter. Lord Rahl was coming west. He was coming to the great empire of Bandakar.

Nicholas owned Bandakar.

The people here revered him.

Nicholas smiled. Lord Rahl was coming. He would be surprised at the kind of man he found when he arrived. Lord Rahl probably thought he knew all manner of men.

He did not know Nicholas the Slide.

Nicholas the Slide, who would be emperor of D'Hara when he gave Jagang the prizes he sought most: the dead body of Lord Rahl, and the living body of the Mother Confessor.

Jagang would have them both for himself.

And in return, Nicholas would have their empire.

CHAPTER 29

Ann heard the distant echo of footsteps coming down the long, empty, dark corridor outside the far door to her forgotten vault under the People's Palace, the seat of power in D'Hara. She was no longer sure if it was day or night. She'd lost track of time as she sat in the silent darkness. She saved the lamp for times when they brought food, or the times she wrote to Verna in the journey book. Or the times she felt so alone that she needed the company of a small flame, if nothing else.

In this place, within this spell of a palace for those born Rahl, her power was so diminished that it was all she could do to light that lamp.

She feared to use the little lamp too often and run out of oil; she didn't know if they would give her more. She didn't want to run out and only then find they would give her no more. She didn't want not to have at least the possibility of that small flame, that small gift of light.

In the dark she could do nothing but consider her life and all she had worked so hard to accomplish. For centuries she had led the Sisters of the Light in their effort to see the Creator's light triumph in the world, and see the Keeper of the underworld kept where he belonged, in his own realm, the world of the dead. For centuries she had waited in dread of the time that prophecy said was now upon them.

For five hundred years she had waited for the birth of the one who had the chance to succeed in leading them in the struggle to see the Creator's gift, magic, survive against those who would cast that light out of the world. For five hundred years she had worked to insure that he would have a chance to do what he must if he was to have a chance to stop the forces that would extinguish magic.

Prophecy said that only Richard had the chance to preserve their cause, to keep the enemy from succeeding in casting a gray pall over mankind, the only one with a chance to prevent the gift from dying out. Prophecy did not say that he would prevail; prophecy said only that Richard was the only one to have a chance to bring them victory. Without Richard, all hope was lost-that much was sure. For this reason, Ann had been devoted to him long before he was born, before he rose up to become their leader.

Kahlan saw all of Ann's efforts as meddling, as tinkering with the lives of others. Kahlan believed that Ann's efforts were in fact the cause of the very thing she feared most. Ann hated that she sometimes thought that maybe Kahlan was right. Maybe it was meant to be that Richard would be born and by his free will alone would choose to do those things that would lead them to victory in their battle to keep the gift among men. Zedd certainly believed that it was only by Richard's mind, by his free will, but his conscious intent, that he could lead them.

Maybe it was true, and Ann, in trying to direct those things that could not be and should not be directed, had brought them all to the brink of ruin.

The footsteps were coming closer. Maybe it was time to eat and they were bringing dinner. She wasn't hungry.

When they brought her food, they put it on the end of a long pole and then threaded that pole through the little opening in the outer door, all the way across the outer shielded room, through the opening in the second, inner door, and finally in to Ann. Nathan would risk no chance for escape by having her guards have to open her cell door merely to give her food.

They passed in a variety of breads, meats, and vegetables along with waterskins. Although the food was good, she found no satisfaction in it.

Even the finest fare could never be satisfying eaten in a dungeon.

At times, as Prelate, she had felt as if she were a prisoner of her post. She had rarely gone to the dining hall where the Sisters of the Light had eaten-especially in the later years. It put everyone on edge having the Prelate among them at dinner. Besides, done too often it took the edge off their anxiety, their discomposure, around authority.

Ann believed that a certain distance, a certain worried respect, was necessary in order to maintain discipline. In a place that had been spelled so that time slowed for those living there, it was important to maintain discipline. Ann appeared to be in her seventies, but with her aging process slowed dramatically while living under the spell that had covered the Palace of the Prophets, she had lived close to a thousand years.

Of course, a lot of good her discipline had done her. Under her watch as Prelate the Sisters of the Dark had infested her flock. There were hundreds of Sisters, and there was no telling just how many of them had taken dark oaths to the Keeper. The lure of his promises were obviously effective. Such promises were an illusion, but try to tell that to one so pledged. Immortality was seductive to women who watched everyone they knew outside the palace grow old and die while they remained young.

Sisters who had children saw those children sent out of the palace to be raised where they could have a normal life, saw those children grow old and die, saw their grandchildren grow old and die. To a woman who saw such things, saw the constant withering and death of those she knew while she herself all the time seemed to remain young, attractive, and desirable, the offer of immortality grew increasingly tempting when her own petals began to wilt.

Growing old was a final stage, the end of a life. Growing old in the Palace of the Prophets was a very long ordeal. Ann had been old for centuries. Being young for a very long time was a wonderful experience, but being old for a very long time was not-at least it was not for some. For Ann, it was life itself that was wonderful, not so much her age, and all she had learned. But not everyone felt that way.