"I think that magic can work this way as well. I believe that such original ideas played a part in how weapons were once created out of people. After all, when such weapons were made, they were effective in large part because they were original, because they had never been thought of or seen before. In many instances, the other side in the war then had to work to create entirely new things out of magic that were able to counter those weapons. In many cases they were able to render the weapon obsolete by creating a countermagic, and then someone on the other side immediately went to work thinking up some new horror. If using magic creatively was not possible, then how did the wizards of old create weapons with it? You can't say they simply got the knowledge from a book, or from past experience; where and how would the first such weapons have originated if not with an original idea? Someone had to have used magic creatively in the first place.

"I think that Jagang is again doing this very thing with magic. He has studied some of what was done in the great war, what weapons were created, and learned from that. He sometimes may direct that what was once created to be created again, such as with Nicholas, but in other instances I think he imagines what has never been, what goes beyond what has been done before, and has it brought to reality by those who know how to use magic to build what he wants.

"In these acts of creation it isn't the work that is the most remarkable aspect, but the idea and vision that makes the labor effective, just as carpenters and bricklayers who built houses and barns can be employed to construct a palace. It wasn't so much their labor that was remarkable in the creation of palaces, but the act of insight and creation that gave it direction."

Nicci nodded ever so slightly in concentration as she weighed his words. "I can see that your notion isn't at all the wild idea I thought it was at first. This is a line of reasoning that I've never encountered. I'll have to think about the possibilities. You may be the first to really understand the mechanism behind Jagang's scheme-or, for that matter, behind the creations of wizards in ancient times. This would explain a great many things that have nagged at me over the years."

Nicci's words were spoken with intellectual respect for a concept new to her, but a concept she fully grasped. No one who had ever spoken to Richard about magic had ever treated his ideas with such an insightful understanding. He felt as if this was the first time anyone had truly understood what he saw.

"Well," he said, "I've had to deal with Jagang's creations. Like I said, Nicholas was a great deal of trouble."

In the dim light, Nicci studied his face for a moment.

"Richard, from what I was able to find out," she said in a soft voice, "Nicholas was not Jagang's actual goal. Nicholas was merely practice."

"Practice!" Richard thumped his head back against the wall. "I don't know, Nicci. I'm not so sure about that. Nicholas the Slide was a formidable creation and one nasty piece of work. You don't know the trouble he caused us."

Nicci shrugged. "You defeated him."

Richard blinked in astonishment. "You make it sound like he was just a bump in the road. He wasn't. I'm telling you, he was a frightening creation who nearly killed us."

Nicci slowly shook her head. "And I'm telling you, as formidable as he may have been, Nicholas was not what Jagang was after. You told me not to sell the dream walker short-don't you now do that same thing. I never thought Nicholas was fully your match.

"What you say about the process of imagination in creating new things actually makes sense, especially in this instance. It may even explains few things. From the little I was able to learn, I believe that from the beginning Nicholas was only meant to expand the skills of the Sisters that Jagang had assigned to the task of creating weapons. Nicholas was not Jagang's objective, but simply practice on the way to that objective.

"With his dwindling number of Sisters that practice has gained a new urgency. Even so, he apparently has enough Sisters for the work of creating his weapons."

Richard felt goose bumps tingling up his arms as he began to realist the full implications of what Nicci was telling him.

"You mean to say that in creating Nicholas, it was like Jagang was just having his carpenters build a house as practice before he sends them on to build something vastly more complicated, like a palace?"

Nicci looked up at him and smiled. "Yes, that's it exactly."

"But he sent Nicholas with troops to govern a land as well as to capture us."

"A mere matter of convenience. Jagang had instilled in Nicholas a need to hunt you, but only as part of the testing for his greater goals. He didn't really expect the Slide to be able to accomplish his transcendent ambitions. The emperor may hate you for impeding his progress in conquering the New World, he may consider you unworthy as an opponent, and he may deem you an immoral heathen worthy only of death, but he's smart enough to give you credit for your ability. It's like when you said that you sent that captured soldier to assassinate Jagang. You didn't really expect that lone soldier to succeed at the difficult task of assassinating a well-guarded emperor, but the soldier was of no other value to you and since you thought that there was at least a chance that he might accomplish something, you might as well send him on the mission while you worked on far better ideas that you expected to have a more reasonable chance of success. And if the soldier was killed, then that was fine by you because he only got what was coming to him anyway.

"Nicholas was like that. He was a conjured creation, practice along the path to something altogether superior. In the scheme of things, Nicholas wasn't all that valuable to Jagang, so Jagang, instead of having him killed, him. If Nicholas succeeded, then Jagang would be ahead of the game and if you killed him, then you did him a service." Richard ran his hand back over his hair. He felt overwhelmed at the implications. He had criticized Nicci for not being open to seeing the larger picture, and here he had just been guilty of doing the same thing.

"Well then," he asked her, "what do you think Jagang might conjure up that's worse than Nicholas the Slide?"

The drone of the cicadas seemed oppressive, invasive, at that moment, as if they were the enemy surrounding him.

"I believe he has forged ahead and already created such a masterwork," Nicci said with quiet finality. She pulled her blanket up around her shoulders and held it closed at her throat. "I think that's what those men back there in the woods faced."

Richard watched her expression in the near darkness. "What do you know about what Jagang has done?"

"Not a great deal," Nicci admitted. "Only a few words whispered as one of my former fellow Sisters was leaving on a journey."

"A journey?"

"To the world of the dead."

By her tone of voice and the way she stared off, Richard didn't want to ask what had brought about the woman's travel plans. "So, what did she tell you?"

Nicci let out a weary sigh. "That Jagang, had been making things from the lives of captives and volunteers both. Some of those young wizards actually think they are sacrificing themselves for a greater good." Nicci shook her head at such a sad delusion. "The Sister was the one who told me that Nicholas was but a stepping-stone to His Excellency's true and noble ends." Nicci looked up again to make sure that Richard was paying attention. "She said that Jagang was on the brink of creating a creature similar to one he had found in ancient writings, but far better, far more deadly, and invincible."

The hair at the back of Richard's neck lifted. "A creature? What kind of creature?"