Sister Greta chuckled.

"Get up," Sister Armina said, "or I will show you some real pain."

Nicci pushed herself up on her hands and knees again. She gasped, getting her breath. Tears dripped onto the dusty floor. Knowing better than to delay, she struggled to her feet. Her legs wobbled, but she managed to stay upright.

"Just kill me," Nicci said. "I'm not going to cooperate, no matter how much you make it hurt."

Sister Armina cocked her head, peering closely at Nicci with one eye. "Oh, darlin, I think you're wrong about that."

It was once again Jagang speaking.

A blinding shimmer of agony, delivered by the collar around her neck, cascaded down through Nicci's core. The pain was so stunning that it dropped her to her knees.

She had endured pain from Jagang before, when he had been able to enter her mind, before she learned how to stop him. It was her devotion to Richard-the bond-that had protected her just as it protected those from D'Hara and those who followed the Lord Rahl. But before that, when he had been able to enter her mind, just as he could enter the minds of these Sisters, now, he had been able to make it feel like he was pushing thin iron spikes deep into Nicci's ears, then send the pain ripping downward through her insides.

This was worse.

She stared at the floor, fully expecting blood to run from her ears and nose and begin carpeting the stone. She blinked as she gasped in utter agony, but she saw no blood. She wished she did. If she bled enough she would die.

She knew Jagang well enough, though, to know that he would not allow her to die. Not yet, anyway.

The dream walker didn't like a swift death for people who angered him. Nicci knew that there was probably no one Jagang wanted to make suffer more than her. He would eventually kill her, of course, but he would extract his vengeance first. He would no doubt give her to his men for a time, just to humiliate her, then send her to the torture tents. That part of it, she knew, would last a very long time. When he eventually became bored with her suffering, she would spend her final days having her intestines pulled slowly out of a slit in her belly. He would want to be there to see her finally die, to make sure that the last thing she saw before the end was him smiling in triumph.

The one thing that she regretted at that moment, in the realization of what was about to befall her, was that she would never see Richard again. She thought that if she could only see him one more time she could endure what was to come.

Sister Armina stepped closer, close enough to be sure that Nicci could see her superior smile. She was now in control of the collar around Nicci's neck. Jagang, too, could now dominate her through that connection as well.

The Rada'Han was meant to control young wizards. It acted on the gift. Though the People's Palace diminished her gift-prevented the projection of power-it would not impede the collar, because the Rada'Han worked internally. The device could cause unimaginable pain-enough pain that a boy would do anything to make it stop.

Nicci, on her knees, trembled as she gasped in agony. Her vision went darker and darker until she could hardly see anything. Her ears rang.

"Do you now fully understand what will happen should you disobey us?" Sister Armina asked.

Nicci couldn't answer. She had no voice. She managed a slight nod.

Sister Armina leaned down. The blood had finally stopped running from her scalp. "Then get to your feet, Sister."

The pain finally lifted enough for Nicci to be able to stand.

She didn't want to stand. She wanted them to kill her. Jagang was not going to allow that, though. Jagang wanted to get his hands on her.

As her vision began to clear, she saw that Sister Greta was back across the hall, rummaging through Ann's pockets. She pulled something from a pocket hidden under Ann's belt. She looked it over and then held it up.

"Guess what I found," she said, waving it for the other two to see. "Should we take it?"

"Yes," Sister Armina said, "but be quick about it."

Sister Greta shoved the small item in her pocket and returned to the other two. "There's nothing else on her."

Sister Armina nodded. "We'd best be quick."

The three stood shoulder to shoulder, facing back down the hall toward Ann. Nicci could tell that, even with the link, they were still having difficulty using their power. Without the spell of the People's Palace draining their Han, any of the three of them, by herself, could have easily wielded the kind of power that had killed Ann.

The air cracked with the ignition of Subtractive Magic. The hallways dimmed as several more torches were blown out by the blast. Inky darkness undulated through the passageway, back toward the Prelate, finally enveloping the dead woman. The hum of power made Nicci again momentarily lose her vision under the oppressive blanket of blackness.

When her sight returned, Ann was gone. Even her blood was gone. Every trace of her existence had been wiped away by Subtractive Magic. It seemed impossible that nearly a thousand years of life could be gone in an instant.

No one would ever know what had happened to her.

While the body and the blood had been eliminated, the shattered marble was not so easily fixed. The Sisters didn't seem to care.

To Nicci, it felt as if everything, even all hope, had just died.

Sister Armina seized Nicci under the arm and shoved her down the passageway. Nicci stumbled but regained her footing before she fell. She walked woodenly ahead of the three, prodded to keep moving by sharp reminders the collar sent into her tender kidneys.

They hadn't gone far before Nicci was directed to turn down a hallway to the left. She numbly followed their orders, making turns and taking several smaller passageways when told to until at the end of a lesser hallway they ended at an entrance to a tomb. Rather simple brass-clad doors stood closed. They weren't nearly as massive, or ornately decorated, as some of the others she'd seen when she'd visited the tomb of Richard's grandfather, Panis Rahl, located in a distant area.

Nicci thought that it was odd to be going to a tomb. She wondered if the Sisters were intending to hide until they could think of a way to make good their escape from the heavily guarded palace. Since it was night, perhaps they intended to wait until a busier time of day so they wouldn't be as easily noticed. How they had gotten in, Nicci couldn't imagine.

Each door was embossed with a simple circle-within-a-circle motif. Sister Greta pulled one door open and ushered the others in, Nicci in the lead.

Inside, the Sisters used a spark of power to light a single torch. An ornately decorated coffin rested on a raised floor in the center of the small room. The walls above the height of the coffin were covered in stone of swirling browns and tans. Black granite that in the torchlight sparkled with copper flakes covered the lower portion of the walls.

It was an odd arrangement, almost making the upper portion, above coffin height, seem like the world of life, while the area below covered in black stone was reminiscent of the underworld.

Cut into the upper, lighter stone were the primary invocations in High D'Haran. They ran in bands around the room. Nicci scanned the script, seeing that it appeared to be rather common appeals to the good spirits to welcome this Rahl leader into the ranks of the good spirits along with others who had come before him. It spoke of the man's life and the things he had done for his people.

Nothing of any particular significance in the writing stood out to Nicci. It seemed to be the tomb of a Lord Rahl from the distant past who had served his people by ruling during a rather peaceful time in D'Haran history. The words called it a time of "transition."