"Or it's possible that they knew her well."

Nicci shrugged. "Maybe. You'd have to ask them. I suggest you hurry — Samuel has already killed one of them."

Shota ignored the taunt and turned away to stare into the still waters of the fountain. "You must have heard them say something about her."

"Nothing very specific," Nicci said.

"Well," Shota said with exaggerated patience as she turned back around, "what was the general nature of what they were saying about her?"

"I only got a sense of two things. I heard that the witch, Six, lived far to the south. The Sisters mentioned that she lived much deeper down in the Old World, in some of the trackless forests and swampland." Nicci gazed resolutely into Shota's eyes. "And they were afraid of her."

Shota folded her arms across her breasts again. "Afraid of her," she repeated in a flat tone.

"Terrified."

Shota appraised Nicci's eyes for a time before finally yet again turning to stare into the fountain, as if hoping to see some secret revealed in the placid waters.

"There's nothing to say that it's the same woman," Richard said. "There's no evidence to say that it's this witch woman, Six, from the Old World."

Shota glanced back over her shoulder. "You, of all people, suggest that it's mere coincidence?" Her gaze again sought solace in the waters. "It doesn't really matter if it is or not. It matters only that it is a witch woman and she is bent on causing me trouble."

Richard stepped closer to Shota. "I find it pretty hard to believe that this other witch woman would have bewitched Samuel away from you just to show you up and have what's yours. There has to be more to it."

"Maybe it's a challenge," Cara said. "Maybe she is daring you to come out and fight."

"That would require her to make herself known," Shota said. "She has done just the opposite. She is deliberate and calculating about remaining concealed so that I can't fight her."

As he considered, Richard rested a boot on the marble bench surrounding the fountain. "I still say there has to be something more to this. Having Samuel steal one of the boxes of Orden has darker implications."

"The more likely answer points to none other than your own hand, Shota." Zedd's words drew everyone's attention. "This sounds more like one of your grand deceptions."

"I can understand why you would think so, but if that were true then why would I come here to tell you of it?"

Zedd's glare didn't falter. "To make yourself look innocent when you are really the one in the shadows directing events."

Shota rolled her eyes. "I don't have time for such childish games, wizard. I have not been directing Samuel's hand. My time has been spent on other, more important matters."

"Such as?"

"I have been to Galea."

"Galea!" Zedd snorted his disbelief. "What business would you have in Galea?"

Jebra laid a hand on Zedd's shoulder. "She came to rescue me. I was in Ebinissia, caught up in the invasion and then enslaved. Shota pulled me out of the middle of it."

Zedd turned a suspicious look on Shota. "You went to the crown city of Galea to rescue Jebra?"

Shota glanced briefly at Richard, a clouded look laden with meaning. "It was necessary."

"Why?" Zedd pressed. "I'm relieved to have Jebra at last rescued from that horror, of course, but what exactly do you mean when you say that it was necessary?"

Shota caught a diaphanous point of the material making up her dress as it lifted ever so gently upward, like a cat arching its back, craving a gentle stroke from its mistress's hand. "Events march onward toward a grim conclusion. If the course of those events does not change then we will be doomed to the rule of the invaders, bound to the mandate of people whose conviction, among other things, is that magic is an evil corruption that must be eradicated from the world. They believe that mankind is a sinful and corrupt being who should properly be unremarkable and helpless in the face of the almighty spectacle of nature. Those of us who possess magic, precisely because we are not unremarkable and helpless, will all be hunted down and destroyed."

Shota's gaze passed among those watching her. "But that is merely our personal tragedy, not the true scourge of the Order.

"If the course of events does not change, then the monstrous beliefs that the Order imposes will settle like a burial shroud over the entire world. There will be no safe place, no refuge. An iron mandate of conformity will be locked around the necks of all those left alive. For the delusion of the common welfare, in the form of lofty slogans and vacuous notions that incite the feckless rabble into nothing more than a mindless lust for the unearned, everything good and noble will be sacrificed, deadening civilized man into little more than an organized mob of looters.

"But once everything of value is plundered, what will be left of their lives? By their contempt for the magnificent and disdain of all that is good, they embrace the petty and the crude. By their rabid hatred for any man who excels, the beliefs of the Order will doom all men to grubbing in the muck to survive.

"The unwavering view of mankind's inherent wickedness will be the collective faith. That belief, enforced through ruthless brutality and unspeakable hardship, will be their enduring high-water mark. Their legacy will be mankind's descent into a dark age of suffering and misery from which it may never again emerge. That is the terror of the Order — not death, but life under their beliefs." Shota's words cast a pall over the room. "The dead, after all, can't feel, can't suffer. Only the living can."

Shota turned to the shadows, where Nathan stood. "And what say you, prophet? Does prophecy say it otherwise, or do I speak the truth?"

Nathan, tall and grim, answered quietly. "As far as the Imperial Order goes, I'm afraid that prophecy can offer no testimony to the contrary. You have aptly and succinctly described several thousand years of forewarning."

"Such ancient works are not easily understood," Ann cut in. "The written word can be quite ambiguous. Prophecy is not a subject for the inexperienced. To the untrained it can seem — "

"I sincerely hope that is a judgment based on a shallow opinion of my looks, Prelate, and not my talent."

"I was only…" Ann began.

Shota dismissively flicked a hand as she turned away. Her gaze settled on Richard, as if he were the only one in the room. She spoke as if addressing him alone.

"Our lives may be the last lives lived free. This may very well be the end for all time of the best of what can be, of striving for values, of the potential for each of us to rise up and achieve something better. If the course of events does not change, then we are now witnessing the dawn of the worst of what can be, of an age where, lest anyone dare live better through their own effort and for their own ends, mankind will be reduced to living the Order's idealized lives of ignorant savages."

"We all know that," Richard said, hands fisted at his sides. "Don't you understand how hard we've been fighting to prevent that very thing? Don't you have any idea of the struggle we've all endured? Just what do you think I've been fighting for?"

"I don't know, Richard. You claim to be committed, and yet you have failed to change the course of events, failed to stem the tide of the Imperial Order. You say that you understand, yet still the invaders come, subjugating more and more people with every passing day.

"But even that is not what this is about. It is about the future. And in the future, you are failing us."

Richard could hardly believe what he was hearing. He wasn't just angry but appalled that Shota would say such a thing. It was as if everything he had done, every sacrifice he had made, every effort, was meaningless to her — not only now, but in the future.