CHAPTER 56

Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us,» Kahlan murmured yet again.

«In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.»

Her shoulders ached from kneeling on the floor with her forehead against the tiles, saying the devotion over and over. Despite the aching fatigue, she didn't really mind it.

«Master Rahl guide us,» Kahlan said as she started in again in harmony with the joined voices that echoed softly through the marble halls.

«Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.»

In fact, she found it rather pleasant saying the same words over and over. They filled her mind, helping numb the terrible void. The words made her feel not so alone.

So lost.

«Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.»

Some of those concepts struck a cord with her and she found them comforting: safe, thriving lives where knowledge and wisdom prevailed. She liked the image of that. Such ideas seemed quite the marvelous dream.

The others with her had been in a hurry, but when they'd seen the soldiers look their way, they had decided that they'd better go with the rest of the people collecting in a square that was open to the overcast sky. Under that cloudy sky lay white sand raked in concentric lines around a dark, pitted rock. On the top of the rock sat a bell in a stout frame. This was the bell that had rung and called all the people together.

Pillars supported arches on all four sides of the opening in the roof of the square. On the tile floor among the columns, all around Kahlan, people were on their knees, bent forward, with their foreheads touching the tile. In unison, everyone chanted the devotion to the Lord Rahl.

Right near the end of the next repetition, the bell atop the dark, pitted rock rang twice. The voices all around Kahlan trailed off as they all finished together with «Our lives are yours.»

In the sudden quiet, people rose up on their knees, many of them stretching and yawning before getting to their feet. Conversation welled up again as the people began moving off, going back to their business, to whatever they had been doing before the bell had called them to devotion.

When the others with her gestured, Kahlan followed the orders and moved off down the passageway, away from the open square. They passed statues and an intersection before they angled their way over to one side of the broad hall. The other three stopped. Kahlan stood silently as she waited and watched people going past.

The long climb up endless stairs, down miles of corridors, and up random flights of yet more stairs, all after the journey to get there in the first place, had left her dead on her feet. She would have liked to have sat down, but she knew better than to ask. The Sisters didn't care if she was exhausted. Worse, though, she could tell how tense and edgy they were, especially after the unexpected interruption for the chanting. They would not react sympathetically or kindly to a request to sit down.

With the mood they were in, if Kahlan even asked, she knew they would not have the slightest compunctions about beating her. She didn't think that they would do it right there, not with all the people around, but they certainly would later. She stood quietly, trying to be invisible and not draw their ire.

She guessed that the kneeling would have to be rest enough; it was all she was going to get.

Soldiers in handsome uniforms, carrying a variety of polished weapons at the ready, patrolled the halls, watching everyone. Each time guards passed, whether in pairs or larger groups, their gazes took careful note of the three women standing with Kahlan. When that happened, the three Sisters pretended to be looking at statues, or some of the rich tapestries of country scenes. One time, to avoid the attention of passing soldiers, they huddled close, pretending to be oblivious of the soldiers as they pointed out a grand statue of a woman holding a sheaf of wheat as she leaned on a spear. They smiled as they spoke softly among themselves as if enjoying a pleasant discussion of the artistic merits of the work until the soldiers had gone on past.

«Would you two sit down on that bench,» Sister Ulicia growled. «You look like cats being sniffed by a pack of hounds.»

Sisters Tovi and Cecilia, both older, glanced around and saw the bench a few steps behind them, up against the white marble wall. They scooped their dress under their legs as they sat beside each other. Tovi, as heavy as she was, appeared especially weary. Her wrinkled face was red as a beet from kneeling with her face to the floor. Cecilia, always tidy, used the opportunity provided by sitting on the bench to fuss with her gray hair.

Kahlan started for the bench, relieved at last have a chance to sit.

«Not you,» Sister Ulicia snapped. «No one is going to notice you. Just stand there beside them so I will be better able to keep an eye on you.»

Sister Ulicia lifted an eyebrow in warning.

«Yes, Sister Ulicia,» Kahlan said.

Sister Ulicia expected an answer when she spoke.

Kahlan had learned that lesson the hard way, and would have answered sooner had she not stopped really listening after she'd been told that the offer to sit didn't include her. She reminded herself that even if she was tired she had better pay more attention or she would earn a slap for now and a lot worse later.

Sister Ulicia did not look away, or allow Kahlan to, but instead placed the tip of her stout, oak rod under Kahlan's chin and used it to forcefully tilt her head up.

«The day is not over, yet. You still have your part to do. You had better not even think of letting me down in any way. Do you understand?»

«Yes, Sister Ulicia.»

«Good. We're all just as tired as you, you know.»

Kahlan wanted to say that they may be tired, but they had ridden horses. Kahlan always had to walk and keep up with their horses. Sometimes she had to trot or even run to keep from falling behind. Sister Ulicia was never pleased if she had to turn her horse and go back to collect her lagging slave.

Kahlan glanced around the passageway at all the wondrous things displayed. Her curiosity overcame her caution.

«Sister Ulicia, what is this place?»

The Sister tapped her rod against her thigh as she briefly took in her surroundings. «The People's Palace. Quite the beautiful place.» She looked back at Kahlan. «This is the home of the Lord Rahl.»

She waited, apparently to see if Kahlan would say anything. Kahlan had nothing to say. «Lord Rahl?»

«You know, the man we've been praying to? Richard Rahl, to be precise. He is the Lord Rahl now.» Sister Ulicia's eyes narrowed. «Have you ever heard of him, my dear?»

Kahlan thought about it. Lord Rahl. Lord Richard Rahl. Her mind seemed empty. She wanted to think things, to remember, but she couldn't. She guessed that there was simply nothing for her to remember.

«No, Sister. I don't believe I have ever heard of the Lord Rahl.»

«Well,» Sister Ulicia said with that sly smile she brought out from time to time, «I don't suppose you would. After all, who are you? Just a nobody. A nothing. A slave.»

Kahlan swallowed back her urge to protest. How could she? What would she say?

Sister Ulicia's smile widened. It seemed her eyes could look right down into Kahlan's soul. «Isn't that right, my dear? You are a worthless slave who is fortunate for the charity of a meal.»

Kahlan wanted to object, to say that she was more, to say that her life had value and was worthwhile, but she knew that such things were only a dream. She was tired to the bone. Now, her heart felt heavy, too.

«Yes, Sister Ulicia.»

Whenever she tried to think about herself, there was only an empty void. Her life seemed so barren. She didn't think it was supposed to be, but it was.

Sister Ulicia turned when she noticed Kahlan's gaze going to the returning Sister Armina, a mature woman with a straightforward personality. Sister Armina's dark blue dress swished as she hurried down the wide corridor in a weaving course to make her way among the people strolling through the palace engaged in conversation and not watching where they were going.

«Well?» Sister Ulicia asked when Sister Armina reached them.

«I got caught up in a mass chanting to our Lord Rahl.»

Sister Ulicia sighed. «Us, too. What did you find?»

«This is the place-just behind me at the next intersection, then down the hall to the right. We need to be careful, though.»

«Why?» Sister Ulicia asked as Sisters Tovi and Cecilia hurried close to listen.

The four Sisters put their heads closer.

«The doors are right there at the side of the hallway. There isn't any way to go in there without being seen. At least for us. It's pretty clear that no one is supposed to even think of going in there.»

Sister Ulicia glanced up and down the hall to make sure no one was paying them any heed. «What do you mean, it's pretty clear?»

«The doors are made specifically to warn people away. They have snakes carved on them.»

Kahlan shrank back. She hated snakes.

Sister Ulicia slapped her rod against her leg as she pressed her lips together. Fuming, she finally turned her sour visage on Kahlan.

«You remember your instructions?»

«Yes, Sister,» Kahlan answered immediately.

She wanted to get it over with. The sooner the Sisters were happy the better. It was getting late in the day. The long climb up through the inside of the plateau and then the chanting had taken more time than the Sisters had expected. They had thought they would be finished and on their way by now.

Kahlan was hoping that when she was done they could make camp and get some sleep. They never let her get enough sleep. Setting up camp meant more work for her, but at least there was sleeping to look forward to-as long as she didn't earn the Sisters' displeasure and a beating.

«All right, this actually makes little practical difference. We will just have to stand off a little farther than we planned, that's all.» Sister Ulicia scratched her cheek as an excuse to take a careful look, checking for guards, before leaning in again. «Cecilia, you stay here and watch this end of the hall for any sign of trouble. Armina, you go back past the entrance and watch the other side. Start now so that it doesn't look like we're together as we near the doors, in case they're being watched.»

Sister Armina flashed a crafty grin. «I will saunter down the halls and look like an awed visitor until she's done.»

Without further word, she hurried off.

«Tovi,» Sister Ulicia said, «you come with me. We'll be two friends, walking and chatting while visiting the Lord Rahl's grand palace. Meanwhile, Kahlan will be seeing to her tasks.»

Sister Ulicia snatched Kahlan's upper arm and spun her around. «Come on.»

With a shove, Kahlan was pushed on ahead of them. She hiked her pack up as she was hurried along. Together, the two Sisters followed her down the hall. As they reached the intersection where they had to turn right, two big soldiers came around toward them. They gave Sister Tovi only a passing glance, but they smiled at Sister Ulicia's smile. Sister Ulicia could appear innocently enchanting when she wanted to, and she was attractive enough that men paid her notice.

No one noticed Kahlan.

«Here,» Sister Ulicia said. «Stop here.»

Kahlan halted, staring across the hall at the thick mahogany doors. The snakes carved in the doors stared back at her. Their tails coiled around branches carved into the tops of the doors. The snakes' bodies hung down so that the heads were at eye level. Fangs jutted out from gaping jaws, as if the pair were about to strike. Kahlan couldn't imagine why anyone would carve such hideous creatures in doors. Everything else in the palace was beautiful, but these doors were not.

Sister Ulicia leaned close. «You remember all of your instructions?»

Kahlan nodded. «Yes, Sister.»

«If you have any questions, ask them now.»

«No, Sister. I remember everything you told me.»

Kahlan wondered why it was that she could remember some things so well, but so many other things seemed lost in a fog.

«And don't dawdle,» Tovi said.

«No, Sister Tovi, I won't.»

«We need what you're being sent to recover for us, and we need it without any foolishness.» Malevolence gleamed in Tovi's eyes. «Do you understand, girl?»

Kahlan swallowed. «Yes, Sister Tovi.»

«You'd better,» Tovi said, «Or you'll answer to me and you would not want that, believe me.»

«I understand, Sister Tovi.»

Kahlan knew that Tovi was deadly serious. The woman was usually relatively even tempered, but when provoked she could turn vicious in a flash. Worse, once she started in, she enjoyed seeing others helpless and in agony.

«Go on then,» Sister Ulicia said. «And don't forget, don't talk to anyone. If the men up there say anything, just ignore them. They will leave you be.»

The look in Sister Ulicia's eyes gave Kahlan pause. She nodded before hurrying off across the hall. Her exhaustion forgotten, she knew what she had to do, and she knew that if she didn't there would be trouble.

At the doors she grasped one of the handles that looked like a grinning skull, only made of bronze. She deliberately didn't look at the snakes as she put her muscle into pulling open the heavy door.

Inside, she paused, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light of lamps. The thick carpets of golds and blues quieted the room and prevented any of the echoes like there were in so many of the halls. The intimate room, paneled in the same mahogany as the tall doors, seemed a quiet refuge from the sometimes noisy palace.

With the door closed behind her, she realized that she was finally, totally away from the four Sisters. She couldn't remember a time when she had ever been alone from them. At least one of the Sisters was always watching her, watching their slave. She didn't know why they watched her so closely, after all, Kahlan had never actually tried to escape. She had often used to seriously consider it, but she had never actually gotten to the point of trying it.

Just the thought of trying to escape from the Sisters brought on such terrible pain that it made her feel like blood would run from her ears and nose and that her eyes would surely burst. When she thought of leaving the Sisters and the pain closed in to bear down on her, she couldn't get the thought out of her head fast enough, and even then the pain lingered. Such an episode usually left her so sick to her stomach that it was hours before she could even stand, much less walk.

The Sisters always knew when it happened, probably because they found her in a heap on the ground. When the pain in her head finally faded, they beat her. The worst was Sister Ulicia because she used the stout stick she always carried. It left welts that were slow to heal. Some still had not healed.

This time, though, they had ordered Kahlan to leave them and go in alone. They had told her that it would not bring on the pain so long as she kept to her instructions. It felt so good to be away from those four terrible women that Kahlan thought she might cry with joy.

Inside the room, though, were four big guards to replace the four Sisters. She paused, unsure what to do.

Serpents on one side of a door with serpents carved on it, and serpents on the other. She seemed never to be able to find any peace.

Kahlan stood frozen for a moment, afraid to try to go past the guards, afraid of what they might do to her for being in a place that she so obviously did not belong.

They were staring at her in a most curious way.

Kahlan gathered her courage, hooked some of her long hair behind an ear, and started for the stairwell she saw across the room.

Two guards stepped together to block her way. «Where do you think you're going?» one of them asked her.

Kahlan kept her head down and kept moving. She turned a little sideways to be able to slip between them.

As she went past, the second guard said to the first «What did you say?»

The first man, who had asked Kahlan where she thought she was going, stared at him.

«What? I didn't say anything.»

As Kahlan made it to the stairs, the other two guards strolled over to the ones who had tried to block Kahlan's path.

«What are you two babbling about?» one of them asked.

The first waved a hand. «Nothing. It's nothing.»

Kahlan hurried up the steps as fast as her tired legs would carry her. She paused on the broad landing to catch her breath, but she knew she dared not rest for long. She grabbed the polished stone handrail and hurried on up the rest of the way.

A soldier at the top immediately turned to the sound of her footsteps. He stared at her as she climbed up into the hallway. She rushed past him. He paused only briefly before turning and ambling off to continue his patrol.

There were other men in the hall-soldiers. Soldiers everywhere. Lord Rahl had a lot of soldiers, all of them huge, intent looking men.

Kahlan swallowed in wide-eyed fright at seeing so many soldiers in the way of what she had been told to do. If they slowed her, Sister Ulicia would not be understanding nor forgiving. Some of the soldiers saw Kahlan and started her way, but when they reached her they lost their intent gazes and walked right by. As Kahlan hurried along the hall, other guards turned urgently to officers, but then, when questioned, said that it was nothing, and to forget it. Other men lifted an arm to point, only to then let the arm drop before continuing on their way.

As the men saw her and at the same time forgot her, Kahlan steadily made her way down the hall toward where she had been told she had to go. It concerned her, though, that so many of the men were carrying crossbows. The men with the crossbows wore black gloves. Their cocked weapons were loaded with deadly-looking red-fletched arrows.

Sister Ulicia had told Kahlan that as part of the magic that brought on the pain to prevent her from escaping, she was shrouded by webs of magic that kept people from noticing her. Kahlan tried to think of why the Sister would do such a thing, but her thoughts simply would not connect, would not link together into understanding. It was the most ghastly thing, not being able to make herself think about specific things when she wanted to. She would start out with the question, then the answer would begin to form, but simply run out as if there was nothing more there.

Despite the conjured shroud around her, though, Kahlan knew that if one of the soldiers pointed his crossbow at her and pulled the bolt release before he forgot her, she would be dead.

She wouldn't mind being dead because it would at least mean being freed of the anguish that was her life, but Sister Ulicia had warned her that the Sisters had great influence with the Keeper of the dead. Sister Ulicia said that if Kahlan ever thought to slip away from her duties to them by slipping the bounds of the world of the living and taking the long journey into the world of the dead, she would find that it was no refuge and in fact would prove to be a far worse place. It was then that Sister Ulicia had told Kahlan that they were Sisters of the Dark, as if to drive home the veracity of the warning.

Kahlan hadn't really needed the assurance; she had always been sure that any of the four Sisters could chase her down any hole and get her, even if that hole was a grave like the one they'd opened one dark night for reasons Kahlan couldn't even imagine and didn't want to know.

Looking into the Sister's terrible eyes, Kahlan had known that she was hearing the truth. After that, while death invited her with release, it also terrified her with dark promises.

She didn't know if this had always been her life, the life of chattel belonging to others. No matter how hard she tried, though, she could remember no other.

As she slipped by men patrolling, she made her way through a series of intersections that Sister Ulicia had drawn in the dirt for her at various camps as they traveled. The Sister had used her oak rod to diagram the halls so that Kahlan would know where she had to go.

As she moved through those halls she had memorized, no one ever tried to stop her. In a way, it was depressing that the men paid her no heed.

It was the same everywhere, though, no one ever noticed her, or if they did, they immediately disregarded her and went back to their own business. She was a slave, without her own life. She belonged to others. It made her feel invisible, insignificant, unimportant. A nobody.

Sometimes, like when making the long underground climb up into the palace, Kahlan would see men and women together, smiling, an arm around each other, touching one another. She tried to imagine what that would feel like-to have someone care about her, cherish her — to cherish them.

Kahlan swiped a tear off her cheek. She knew she would never have that. Slaves did not have a life of their own, they were used for their master's purposes; Sister Ulicia had made that very clear. One day, when Sister Ulicia had gotten that vicious look in her eyes that she sometimes got, she said that she was thinking of having Kahlan bred so that she could produce them an offspring.

But how did it come to be this way? Where had she come from? Surely, everyone's past didn't evaporate out of their minds the way Kahlan's had.

In the fog of her thoughts, she couldn't make her mind work the problem through. She asked the questions, but the concepts seemed to be soaked up into a dim haze of nothingness. She hated the way she couldn't think. Why could other people think while she could not? Even that question quickly faded away into irrelevance among the mire of twisting shadows, just the way she faded away when people saw her.

Kahlan stopped when she arrived at a pair of huge doors covered in gold. The doors looked like Sister Ulicia had said they would-a scene of rolling hills and forests all sheathed in gold. Kahlan looked both ways, then put all her weight into the task of pulling one of the massive doors open enough to slip inside. She took a last look, but none of the guards were watching her. She pulled the door closed behind herself.

It was much brighter inside than the hallway had been. Even though it was an overcast day the skylights let in a flood of light that lit a most astonishing garden. Sister Ulicia had told her about the garden, in general terms, but for Kahlan to see it, up here in the palace, was beyond anything she had imagined. The place was wondrous.

Richard Rahl was a lucky man to have such a garden that he could visit any time he wanted. She wondered if he would come and visit while she was in there, and see her — and then forget her.

Remembering her task, Kahlan admonished herself to keep her mind on what she had been sent to do. She hurried down one of the paths through a sprawl of flower beds. The ground was littered with fallen red and yellow petals. She wondered if Richard Rahl picked flowers here for his lady love.

She liked the sound of his name. It had a comforting ring to it. Richard Rahl. Richard. She wondered what he was like, if he was as pleasant as his name was to her ear.

As she made her way along the path, Kahlan gazed up at the small trees growing all about her. She loved the trees. They reminded her of — of something. She growled in frustration. She hated it when she couldn't remember things that she was sure were important. Even if they weren't important, she hated forgetting things. It was like forgetting parts of who she was.

She hurried past shrubs and vine-covered stone walls until she reached the grassy place that Sister Ulicia said would be there in the center of the garden. Across the way the grassy ring was broken by a wedge of stone atop which sat a slab of granite, looking much like a table.