Marlin had in fact given them a great deal of trouble. He had nearly killed Cara and Kahlan both. Kahlan hoped Cara remembered how tenuous was her control over someone possessed by the dream walker.

The mood in the quiet woods was still and tense as the boy glared up at Kahlan.

"We discovered your scheme in time, Jagang. You made a mistake thinking you could get by our scouts. I hope you're with those men, so that when we wipe them out we can cut your throat."

The bloody grin widened. "A woman like you is wasted on the side of the weak," the boy said in the menacing voice of a man. "You'd have a much better time serving strength, and the Order."

"I'm afraid my husband likes me right where I am."

"And where is your husband, darlin? I was hoping to say hello."

"He's around," Kahlan said in the same dispassionate voice.

She saw Warren, when she had spoken the words, move in a way that was a little too much like surprise.

"Is he, now?" The boy's eyes turned from Warren, back to Kahlan. "Why is it I don't believe you?"

She wanted to kick the boy's teeth in as she watched his cruel grin.

Kahlan's mind raced, trying to figure out what Jagang could possibly know, and what he was trying to discover.

"You'll see him soon enough, when we get this poor child back to camp.

I'm sure Richard Rahl will want to laugh in your cowardly face when I tell him how we discovered the great emperor's plan to sneak troops north. He'll want to personally tell you what a fool you are."

The boy tried to take a step toward her, but Cara's fist in his hair restrained him. He was a cougar on a leash, still testing its chains. The bloody smile remained, but it was not as self-satisfied as it had been. In the brown eyes, Kahlan thought she saw hesitation.

"Ah, but I don't believe you," he said, as if losing interest. "We both know he's not there at all. Don't we, darlin?"

Kahlan resolved to take a risk. "You'll see him for yourself, soon enough." She made to look as if she were going to turn away, but turned back to him instead.

Kahlan let a sarcastic smile taint her lips. "Oh-you must mean Nicci?"

The smile vanished from the boy's face. The brow drew down, but he managed to keep any anger out of his voice.

"Nicci? I don't know what you're talking about, darlin."

"Sister of the Dark? Shapely? Blond hair? Blue eyes? Black dress?

Surely, you would remember a woman that hauntingly beautiful. Or, besides your other shortcomings, are you also a eunuch?"

The eyes watched, and in them Kahlan could see careful calculations weighing her every word. But it was Nicci's words about Jagang that Kahlan was remembering.

"I know who Nicci is. I know every private inch of her. One day, I will come to know you as intimately as I know Nicci."

Such an obscene threat was somehow more chilling, coming as it did from the mouth of a boy. It made her sick to her stomach to hear a child express Jagang's vile thoughts.

The boy's arm gestured for his master. "One of my beauties, and quite the lethal lady, besides." Kahlan thought she detected in Jagang's gravelly growl a hint of the false bravado of a bluff. Almost in afterthought, he added, "You haven't really seen her."

Kahlan heard in the assertion the ghost of a question he dared not ask, and knew by it that there was something more to this. She wished she knew what.

She shrugged again. "Lethal? I wouldn't know."

He licked the blood from his lips. "That's what I thought."

"I wouldn't know because she didn't seem all that lethal. She didn't manage to harm any of us."

The grin returned. "You lie, darlin. If you really saw Nicci, she would have killed at least some of you, even if she didn't manage to kill you all.

You couldn't best that one without her scratching someone's eyes out, first."

"Really? So sure, are we?"

The boy let out a belly laugh. "Darlin, I know Nicci. I'm sure."

Kahlan smiled her contempt into the boy's brown eyes. "You know I'm telling you the truth."

"Really?" he said, still chuckling. "How's that?"

"You know it's the truth because she's one of your slaves, so you should be able to enter her mind. You can't, though. I know why you can't.

Even though you aren't too bright, I don't suppose you'll need to think too long to imagine why not."

Fierce rage fired the boy's eyes. "I don't believe you."

Kahlan shrugged. "Suit yourself."

"If you saw her, then where is she now?"

As she turned her back on him, Kahlan told him the brutal, bitter truth and let him interpret it his own way. "Last I saw her, she was on her way into oblivion."

Kahlan heard the bellow behind her. She spun back to see Cara trying to stop him with her Agiel. Kahlan heard the bone in his arm snap. It didn't even slow him. The boy, in a wild rage, his hands clawed, his teeth bared, lunged for Kahlan.

Half turned back to him, Kahlan lifted her hand against the full weight of the boy crashing toward her as he leaped for her throat. His small chest contacted her hand. His feet were clear of the ground. It felt not as if he were throwing himself at her, but no more than dandelion fluff, floating to her on a breath of air.

Time was hers.

It was not necessary for Kahlan to invoke her birthright, but merely to withdraw her restraint of it. Her feelings could provide her no safe haven; only the truth would serve her now.

This was not a small boy, hurt, alone, afraid.

This was the enemy.

The inner violence of her power's cold coiled force slipping its bounds was breathtaking. It surged up from that deep dark core within, obediently inundating every fiber of her being.

She could count each small rib under her fingers.

She contained no hate, no rage, no horror. . no sorrow. In that infinitesimal spark of time, her mind was in a void where there was no emotion, only the allconsuming rush of time suspended.

He had no chance. He was hers.

Kahlan did not hesitate.

She unleashed her power.

From an ethereal state as part of her innermost essence, that power became all.

Thunder without sound jolted the air-exquisite, violent, and for that pristine instant, sovereign.

The boy's face was twisted by the hate of the man who had controlled him. In that singular moment, if she was the absence of emotion, then he was the embodiment of it. Kahlan stared back into that lost child's face, knowing that he saw only her merciless eyes.

His mind, who he was, who he had been, was already gone.

Trees all around shook from the force of the concussion. Snow dropped from branches and boughs. The terrible shock to the air lifted a ring of snow that grew around the two of them in an ever-expanding circle.

Kahlan had known that Jagang could slip into and out of a person's mind between thought, when time itself did not exist. She had no choice but to do as she had done. She could not afford to hesitate. With Jagang in a person's mind, even Cara could not control them.

Jagang had burned his bridges behind him as he fled the young mind.

The boy fell dead at Kahlan's feet.