For nearly an hour, she was lost among the ghosts.

Richard stood off to the side, leaning a hip against the charred remains of part of a workbench, one of the only things left inside the brick frame.

"Do you know this place?" he finally asked her.

She blinked at his question. She stared into his eyes for a long time, as if he, too, were a ghost. She stepped close to him then, her blue eyes finally looking away to let her fingers reminisce as they glided lightly over the remains of the workbench.

"I grew up in this town," she answered in a distant voice.

"Oh." Richard gestured around them. "And this place?"

"They made armor here," she whispered.

He couldn't imagine why she would want to see such a place. "Armor?"

"The best armor in all the land. Double-proofed standard. Kings and noblemen came here to buy armor."

Richard gazed around at the ruins of the place, wondering what more there must be to the story.

"Did you know the man who made the armor?"

Her blue eyes seeing ghosts again, she shook her head.

"No," she whispered. "I'm so sorry, but I never knew him."

A tear ran down her cheek to drip off her smooth jaw. She seemed very much a child at that moment, alone in the world, and frightened.

Had he not known what he knew about her, Richard would have put his arms around this forlorn frail child and comforted her.

Ncci was tired, cold, and impatient. She wanted a room.

Her purpose in guiding Richard to the center of the empire in Altur'Rang was to bring him face-toface with the righteous cause of the Order. She knew Richard to be a man of profound moral integrity, and she wanted to see how he would react when confronted by the undeniable virtue of his enemy's intentions.

She wanted Richard to learn how difficult it was for ordinary people to live, to get along in the world. She was curious as to how he would fare in the same circumstances-she wanted to throw him into the fire and see how he reacted to the heat, as it were. She had expected him to be agitated and frustrated by now. He remained cool and unruffled.

She thought he would be furious at learning what he had to do to get a job. He was not. He had listened to that Mr. Gudgeons fellow explaining the near impossible task that faced anyone wanting work. Nicci had expected him to punch the pompous official; instead, Richard had cheerfully thanked him.

It was as if the things he so naively stood for, so selfishly defended when she had known him before, no longer mattered to him.

At the Palace of the Prophets when she had been his teacher, every time she thought she knew how he would react, he did something she would never have anticipated. He did that now, too, but in a subtly different way. What before had been, in a manner of speaking, unorganized youthful rebellion had turned to the dangerous scrutiny of a predator. Only the chains around his heart kept him from turning his claws on her.

When Nicci had first captured Richard, she had briefly seen, standing in the window of his house, a carving of a proud woman. Nicci had known, as sure as she knew night followed day, that Richard had carved it; it betrayed his unique vision, which she recognized. The statue was tangible evidence of a hidden side to his gift; it was a form of balance to his ability for war, yet she detected no magic in it.

Knowing that Richard had carved it, Nicci expected that he would have been interested in the carving job offered him back in Tanimura. He turned it down. He became moody and hardly spoke for several days afterward.

Whenever they went through a new city, she saw him taking in the statues and relief carvings. Since he, too, carved, she expected him to find such creations fascinating. He did not. She couldn't understand it. None were as finely executed as what he had carved, to be sure, but still, they were carvings and she thought he would be at least interested in them. She was baffled by his grim mood whenever he saw them.

One time, she had taken the two of them out of their way for no reason but to show him a famous city square and the heroic work of art proudly displayed there. It was her thought to bring him a bit of cheer at seeing such a widely heralded work. He was not cheered. Surprised, she had asked him why he appeared to so dislike the sculpture, called Tormented Vision.

"It's death," he had said with distant revulsion as he turned away from the widely worshiped work.

It was a grand scene of a group of men, some gouging out their eyes after having seen the perfect Light of the Creator. Other of the men at the base of the statue, who'd not blinded themselves, were being mauled by underworld beasts. The Keeper's minions shrank from the blinded men wailing at what they had seen before taking their own sight.

"No," Nicci said, trying not to laugh and thereby humiliate him for his unenlightened view. She sought instead to gently rectify his perception of the famous work by explaining it to him.

"It's a portrayal of the unworthy nature of mankind. It shows men who have just witnessed His perfect Light, and in so doing have thus been able to see the hopeless nature of man's depravity. That they would cut out their own eyes shows how perfect the Creator is that they could no longer bear to look upon themselves.

"These men in the statue are heroes for showing us that we must not arrogantly endeavor to rise above our corrupt essence, for that would be sinfully comparing ourselves to the Creator. It shows that we are but faceless, insignificant parts of a greater whole of mankind, which He created, and thus no single life can hold any importance. This work teaches us that only the society as a whole can be worthwhile. Those at the bottom, here, who failed to join in with their fellow man and blind themselves, are suffering their grim eternal fate at the Keeper's hands.

"Do you see, now? It honors mankind as the flawed creature he is, in order that we may see that each of us must devote ourselves to the betterment of our fellow man because that is our only means of doing good and honoring the Creator's creation-us. So, you see, it's not about death at all, but about the true nature of life."

Nicci had been taught that the statue was uplifting for the people, since it confirmed everything they knew to be true.

In the whole of her life, no one had ever given her a look that made her feel smaller than the look Richard gave her.

Nicci swallowed in horror at that look in his eyes-it was the complete opposite of that elusive thing she sought from him. Without saying a word, he had made her want nothing so much at that moment as to crawl under a rock and die.

She couldn't fathom how, but he made her feel unworthy to live. In some bewildering way, that look made her feel as blind as the men in the statue.

He hadn't said one word, but it was days before she could bring herself to look him in the eye again.

Sometimes, Richard seemed meek when she expected fierceness, and intense when she expected indifference. She was beginning to wonder if she had been mistaken in thinking there was something special about him.

Once, she had even given in to despair of there really being anything in him worth discovering. Watching him sleep, dejected that she had dared hope to uncover some meaning to life beyond what her mother had taught her, she had sadly resolved that the next day, after visiting the place she had grown up, she would end the whole senseless undertaking and return to Jagang.

After they went to her father's business, though, she had seen again that quality in his gray eyes, and knew beyond doubt that she had not been mistaken.

This dance had only begun.