Phantom, Page 2

  "Her hair is as long as…"

  Orlan's bawdy smile evaporated.

  He blinked in surprise. His eyes widened. "Dear spirits," he whispered as his face went ashen. He dropped to a knee. "Forgive me," he said, addressing Kahlan. "I didn't recognize—"

  The room rang with a crack as Sister Ulicia whacked him across the top of the head with her oak rod, dropping him to both knees.

  "Silence!"

  "What's the matter with you!" the man's wife cried out as she rushed to her husband's side. She squatted, putting an arm around his shoulders to steady him as he groaned and put a big hand over the bloody wound on the top of his bowed head. His sandy-colored hair turned dark and wet under his fingers.

  "Are all of you crazy!" She cradled her husband's head to her breast, where a red stain grew against her nightdress. He appeared stunned senseless. "Unless you travel in the company of a spirit, there are only three of you! How dare you—"

  "Silence," Sister Ulicia growled in a way that gave Kahlan an icy shiver and made the woman's mouth snap closed.

  Rain paltered against the window while in the distance a slow rumble of thunder rolled through the forested hills. Kahlan could hear the sign squeaking as it swung to and fro each time the wind gusted. Inside the house it had gone dead silent. Sister Ulicia looked over at the girl, now at the bottom of the steps, where she stood gripping the simple, square, wooden newel post.

  Sister Ulicia fixed the girl in a glare that only a sorceress in a vile mood could marshal. "How many visitors do you see?"

  The girl stood wide-eyed, too frightened to speak.

  "How many?" Sister Ulicia asked again, this time through gritted teeth in a voice so threatening that it made the girl's grip on the newel post tighten until her fingers stood out white and bloodless against the dark wood.

  The girl finally answered in a meek voice. "Three."

  Sister Armina, looking like bottled thunder, leaned close. "Ulicia, what's going on? This isn't supposed to be possible. Not possible at all. We cast the verification webs."

  "Exterior," Sister Cecilia corrected.

  Sister Armina blinked at the older woman. "What?"

  "We only cast exterior verification webs. We didn't do an interior review."

  "Are you out of your mind?" Sister Armina snapped. "In the first place it isn't necessary and in the second place who would be fool enough to be the one to do an aspect analysis of a verification web from an interior perspective! No one ever does such a thing! It isn't necessary!"

  "I'm only saying—"

  With a withering look, Sister Ulicia silenced them both. Sister Cecilia, her wet curls plastered to her scalp, looked like she was about to finish her complaint, but then decided instead to remain mute.

  Orlan seemed to recover his senses as he pulled away from his wife's embrace and began to stagger to his feet. Blood ran down his forehead and to either side of his broad nose.

  "Were I you, innkeeper," Sister Ulicia said, turning her attention back to him, "I'd remain on my knees."

  The menace in her voice gave him pause for only a moment. He was clearly angry as he rose up to his full height, letting his bloody hand drop away from his head. His back straightened, his chest expanded, and his fists tightened. Kahlan could clearly tell that his temper was outpacing his sense of caution.

  Sister Ulicia indicated with her rod that she wanted Kahlan to back away. Kahlan, ignoring the direction, instead stepped closer to Sister Ulicia, hoping to change the rush of events before it ended up being too late.

  "Please, Sister Ulicia, he will answer your questions—I know he will. Let him be."

  The three Sisters turned unpleasantly surprised looks on Kahlan. She had not been spoken to, or asked to speak. Such insolence would cost her dearly, she knew, but she also knew what was liable to happen to the man if something didn't change, and right then it seemed to her that she was the only one who could effect a change.

  Resides, Kahlan knew that this was her only chance to find out something about herself—to perhaps find out who she really was and maybe even why she could remember only the most recent parts of her life. This man had clearly recognized her. He very well might be the key that could unlock her lost past. She dared not let the chance slip away—even if she had to risk the Sisters' wrath.

  Before the Sisters had a chance to say anything, Kahlan addressed the man. "Please, Master Orlan, listen for a moment. We're looking for an older woman named Tovi. She was to meet these women here. We were delayed, so she should already be here, waiting for us. Please, answer their questions about their friend. This could all be quickly resolved if you would hurry upstairs and get Tovi for them. Then, like this passing storm, we will all soon be out of your lives."

  The man reverently dipped his head, as if a queen had asked his help. Kahlan was not only surprised, but completely bewildered by such an act of deference.

  "But we have no guest named Tovi here, Mot—"

  The room lit with a blinding flash—lightning that was the match of anything out in the raging storm. The twisting rope of liquid heat and light that ignited from between Sister Ulicia's hands blasted across Orlan's chest before he could finish the appellation he had been about to use. The jarring concussion from being so close to the explosive detonation of such thunderous power hammered deep into the core of Kahlan's chest. The impact threw Orlan back, sending him crashing through a table and both benches, slamming him against the wall. The deadly contact with such power had nearly cut the man in half. Smoke curled up from what was left of his shirt. A glistening red splatter of gore marked the wall where he'd tut before slumping to the ground.

  In the aftermath of the deafening blast, Kahlan's ears rang in what seemed the sudden silence.

  Emmy, her eyes wide with the shock of an event that had in an instant forever altered the course of her life, wailed the single word "No!"

  Kahlan pressed a hand over her mouth and nose, not just in revulsion, but to mask the smell of blood and the stench of burned flesh. The lantern that had been on the table had been thrown to the floor and extinguished, leaving the room mostly to the wavering shadows cast by the fire in the hearth and the sporadic flashes of lightning coming in the slender windows.

  Had it not been a night already filled with thunder and lightning, such a blast would surely have awakened the entire town.

  The wooden bowls Emmy had been holding cluttered down onto the floor and rolled drunkenly away. She screamed in horror and ran toward her husband.

  Sister Ulicia came unhinged. In a fury she intercepted Emmy before she could reach her dead husband.

  Sister Ulicia slammed the woman against the wall. "Where's Tovi! I want answers and I want them right now!"

  Kahlan saw that the Sister had brought her dacra to hand. The simple weapon looked like nothing more than a knife handle with a sharpened metal rod in place of a blade. All three Sisters carried a dacra. Kahlan had seen them use the weapons when they had encountered Imperial Order scouts. She knew that once the dacra had pierced a victim, no matter how minor the penetration, it took only a thought on the Sister's part to kill. With the dacra it was not the wound itself that killed, but rather the Sister who, through the dacra, extinguished the spark of life. If the Sister didn't withdraw the weapon, along with her intent to kill, there was no defense, and no chance of salvation.

  A confusing, faltering flash of lightning lit the room through the narrow windows beside the door, throwing long spikes of shadows across the floor and against the walls as two Sisters together snatched the panicked woman, struggling to control her. As the fit of lighting ended and a dark pall again descended over the room, the third Sister raced up the stairwell.

  Kahlan went for the girl.

  As she ran toward her mother, Kahlan intercepted the girl, hooking her around her middle, holding her back. Her eyes went wide in panic, her mind unable to maintain the memory of seeing Kahlan even long enough for her to be aware of who or what had grabbed her—seemingly out of'th
in air. Far worse, though, she had just seen her father killed. Kahlan knew that the girl would never be able to forget such a terrible sight.

  Over the steady drumbeat of rain and wind, Kahlan heard the footfalls of the Sister upstairs as she rushed down the hallway. She paused intermittently, stopping at each room to throw open a door. Any guests who had been awakened by the commotion and shouting, and dared to come out of their room into the dark hall, were about to face a Sister of the Dark on a rampage. Those still asleep behind their doors would face no less.

  Emmy cried out in pain. Kahlan knew why.

  "Where is she!" Sister Ulicia yelled at the woman. "Where's Tovi!"

  Emmy screamed, begging that her daughter not be harmed.

  Kahlan knew that it was a grave tactical mistake to betray to an enemy what you feared most.

  In this case, however, she supposed that such information was irrelevant; not only was it pretty obvious what a mother would fear, but the Sisters needed no such leverage. Seeing her mother in a state of unbridled terror was only serving to frighten the child all that much more. She struggled mightily. Despite her frantic effort, such a slender girl was no match for Kahlan.

  Holding the girl tightly, Kahlan pulled her back through the doorway beside the stairs and into the darkened room beyond. In the flashes of lightning coming through a window at the rear, Kahlan saw that it was a kitchen and storage area for supplies.

  The girl cried in wild panic that was the match of her mother's.

  "It's all right," Kahlan whispered in the girl's ear as she held her tight, trying to calm her. "I'll protect you. It's all right."

  Kahlan knew that it was a lie, but her heart would not allow the truth.

  The slender slip of a girl pawed at Kahlan's arms. It must have seemed to her as if she were being held by a spirit clutching at her from the underworld. If she even saw Kahlan, Kahlan knew that the girl would forget her before her mind could transform perception into cognition. Likewise, Kahlan's words of comfort would evaporate from the girl's mind before they had a chance to even begin to be comprehended. Within an instant after seeing her, no one ever remembered that Kahlan existed.

  Except Orlan. And now he was dead.

  Kahlan hugged the terrified girl tight. She didn't know if it wasn't really more for her own sake than the girl's. At that moment, keeping the girl away from the terror of what was befalling her parents was all Kahlan could do. The girl, for her part, writhed madly in Kahlan's arms, trying to twist away, as if she were being held by a monster intent on bloody murder. Kahlan hated adding to her terror, but letting her go out into the other room would be worse.

  Lightning flashed again, making Kahlan glance to the window. The window was large enough for her to get through. It was dark outside, and the dense forest lay tight up to the buildings. She had long legs. She was strong and quick. She knew that if she chose, she could, in a few heartbeats, be through the window and into the thick of the woods.

  But she had tried to escape the Sisters before. She knew that neither night nor woods would conceal her from women with such dark talents. Kneeling there in the dark, her arms holding the girl in a tight embrace, Kahlan began to tremble. The mere contemplation of an attempt at escape was enough to make her brow bead in sweat for fear that such a notion would unleash within her the embedded constraints. Her head swam dizzily with the memory of past attempts, memories of the agony. She couldn't take such suffering again—not when it was to no purpose. Escaping the Sisters was impossible.

  When she glanced up, Kahlan saw the dark shadow of a Sister descending the stairs.

  "Ulicia," the woman called out. It was Sister Cecilia's voice. "The rooms upstairs are all empty. There are no guests."

  In the front room Sister Ulicia growled a dark curse.

  The shadow of Sister Cecilia turned from the stairs to fill the doorway, like death itself turning its withering gaze on the living. Beyond, Emmy wailed and wept. In her confusion, grief, pain, and terror she was unable to answer Sister Ulicia's shouted questions.

  "Do you want your mother to die?" Sister Cecilia asked from the doorway in that deadly calm voice of hers.

  She was no less cruel or dangerous than Sister Armina, or Sister Ulicia, but she had a quiet, composed way of speaking that was somehow more terrifying than Sister Ulicia's screaming. Sister Armina's straightforward the cats were simple and sincere but delivered with a bit more bile. Sister Tovi had a kind of sick glee in her approach to discipline and even torture. When any of them wanted something, though, Kahlan had long ago learned that to deny them would only bring nearly unimaginable suffering, and in the end what they had wanted in the first place.

  "Do you?" Sister Cecilia repeated with calm directness.

  "Answer her," Kahlan whispered in the girl's ear. "Please, answer her questions. Please."

  "No," the girl managed.

  "Then tell us where Tovi is."

  In the room behind Sister Cecilia, the girl's mother gasped in a terrible rattle and then went silent. Kahlan heard bony thumps as the woman hit the wood floor. The house fell quiet.

  From the dim, flickering light beyond the doorway, two more shadows glided up behind Sister Cecilia. Kahlan knew that Emmy would answer no more questions.

  Sister Cecilia slipped into the room, closer to the girl Kahlan held tightly in her arms.

  "The rooms are all empty. Why are there no guests in your inn?"

  "None have come," the girl managed as she shook. "Word of the invaders from the Old World has scared people away."

  Kahlan knew that that made sense. After leaving the People's Palace in D'Hara and swiftly traveling south through mostly remote country on a small riverboat, they still had encountered detachments of Emperor Jagang's troops more than once, or been through river settlements where those brutes had been. Word of such atrocities would have spread like an ill wind.

  "Where is Tovi?" Sister Cecilia asked.

  Holding the girl protectively away from the Sisters, Kahlan glared up at them. "She's just a child! Leave her be!"

  A shock of pain slammed into her. It felt to Kahlan as if every fiber of every muscle had violently ripped. For an instant, she didn't know where she was or what was happening. The room spun. Her back hit the cupboards with bone-breaking force. Doors flew open. Pots, pans, and utensils cascaded out, bouncing and clattering across the wooden floor. Dishes and glasses shattered as they came crashing down.

  Kahlan slammed facedown onto the floor. Jagged, broken shards of pottery slashed her palms as she tried unsuccessfully to break her fall. When she felt the end of something razor-sharp pressed against the side of her tongue in back she realized that a long sliver of glass had pierced her cheek. She clenched her jaw, snapping off the glass between her teeth so that it wouldn't slash open her tongue. With effort she managed to spit out the bloody, daggerlike piece of glass.

  She lay sprawled on the floor, stunned, disoriented, unable to fully gather her senses. Grunts escaped her throat as she tried without success to move. She found that as those sounds slipped out, she couldn't draw a new breath back in. Each bit of air that escaped her lungs was a bit of air lost to her. Her muscles strained to pull the wind back into her lungs. The pain lancing through her middle was paralyzing, acting to counter her effort to get a breath.

  In desperation she gasped, at last managing to pull in an urgent breath. She spat out more blood and sharp splinters of glass. She was just beginning to feel the twinge of pain from the fragment still stuck through her cheek. Kahlan couldn't seem to make her arms work, couldn't lift herself up from the floor, much less reach up to pull out the piece of glass.

  She turned her eyes upward. She could make out the dark forms of the Sisters closing in around the girl. They lifted her and shoved her back against a heavy butcher block standing in the center of the room. A Sister held each arm as Sister Ulicia squatted down before the girl to meet her panicked gaze.

  "Do you know who Tovi is?"

  "The old woman!" the girl crie
d out. "The old woman!"

  "Yes, the old woman. What else do you know about her?"

  The girl gulped air, almost unable to get the words out. "Big. She was big. Old and big. She was too big to walk real good."

  Sister Ulicia leaned close, gripping the girl's slender throat. "Where is she'? Why isn't she here? She was supposed to meet us here. Why is she none?"

  "Gone," the girl cried. "She's gone."

  "Why! When was she here? When did she leave? Why did she leave?"

  "A few days back. She was here. She stayed with us for a while. But she left a few days back."

  Sister Ulicia, with a cry of rage, lifted the girl and heaved her against'the wall. With all her effort, Kahlan struggled to her hands and knees. The girl crashed down to the floor. Ignoring how wobbly she felt, Kahlan crawled across the floor, across broken glass and pottery, and threw herself protectively across the girl's body. The girl, not knowing what was happening, cried out all the more.

  Footsteps came toward her. Kahlan saw a cleaver lying on the floor nearby. The girl cried and struggled to get away, but Kahlan held her protectively against the floor.

  As the shadows of the woman came closer, Kahlan's fingers closed around the wooden handle of the heavy cleaver. She wasn't thinking, she was simply acting: threat, weapon. It was almost like watching someone else doing it.

  But there was a kind of deep inner satisfaction at having a weapon in her hand. Her fist tightened around the blood-slicked handle. A weapon was life. Flashes of lightning glinted off the steel.

  When the women were close enough, Kahlan suddenly raised her arm to strike. Before she could begin to accomplish her task, she felt a gut-wrenching blow, as if she had been rammed by the butt end of a log. The power of that blow hurled her across the room.

  A hard impact against the wall stunned her. The room seemed like it was far away, off at the far end of a long, dark tunnel. Pain swamped her. She tried to lift her head but couldn't. Darkness pulled her in.