Faith of the Fallen

Richard brushed Pasha aside, a stag dismissing a vole, and stepped out alone into the center of the room. His whole bearing conveyed the same quality Nicci beheld in his eyes.

"I have something to say."

The vast chamber fell to an astonished hush.

His gaze swept the room. Nicci's breath caught when, for an instant, their eyes met, as he probably met countless others.

Her trembling fingers clutched the rail for support.

Nicci swore at that moment to do whatever was necessary to be named as one of his teachers.

His fingers tapped the Rada'Han around his neck.

"As long as you keep this collar on me, you are my captors, and I am your prisoner."

Murmurs hummed in the air. A Rada'Han was put around a boy's neck not joust to govern him, but to protect him as well. The boys were never thought of as prisoners, but wards who needed security, care, and training. Richard, though, did not set it that way.

"Since I have committed no aggression against you, that makes us enemies. We are at war."

Several older Sisters teetered on their heels, nearly fainting. The faces of half the women in the room went red. The rest went white. Nicci could not have imagined such an attitude. His demeanor kept her from blinking, lest she overlook something. She drew slow breaths, lest she miss a word. Her pounding heart, though, was beyond her ability to control.

"Sister Verna has made a pledge to me that I will be taught to control the gift, and when I have learned what is required, I will be set free. For now, as long as you keep that pledge, we have a truce. But there are conditions."

Richard lifted a red leather rod hanging on a fine gold chain around his neck. At the time, Nicci hadn't known it to be the weapon of a Mord-Sith.

"I have been collared before. The person who put that collar on me brought me pain, to punish me, to teach me, to subdue me."

Nicci knew that such could be the only fate of one like him.

"That is the sole purpose of a collar. You collar a beast. You collar your enemies.

"I made her much the same offer I am making you. I begged her to release me. She would not. I was forced to kill her.

"Not one of you could ever hope to be good enough to lick her boots.

She did as she did because she was tortured and broken, made mad enough to use a collar to hurt people. She did it against her nature.

"You. ." His gaze swept all the eyes watching him. "You do it because you think it is your right. You enslave in the name of your Creator.

I don't know your Creator. The only one beyond this world who I know would do as you do is the Keeper." The crowd gasped. "As far as I'm concerned, you may as well be the Keeper's disciples."

Little did he know that some of them were.

"If you do as she, and use this collar to bring me pain, the truce will be ended. You may think you hold the leash to this collar, but I promise you, if the truce ends, you will find that what you hold is a bolt of lightning."

The room was as silent as a tomb.

He was alone, defiant, in the midst of hundreds of sorceresses who knew how to harness every nuance of the power with which they were born; he knew next to nothing of his ability, and was collared by a Rada'Han besides. In this, he may have been a stag, but a stag challenging a congregation of lions. Hungry lions.

Richard rolled up his left sleeve. He drew his sword-a sword! — in defiance of the prodigious power arrayed before him. The distinctive ring of steel filled the silence as the blade was brought free.

Nicci stood spellbound as he listed his conditions.

He finally pointed back with the sword. "Sister Verna captured me. I have fought her every step of this journey. She has done everything short of killing me and draping my body over a horse to get me here. Though she, too, is my captor and enemy, I owe her certain debts. If anyone lays a finger to her because of me, I will kill that person, and the truce will be ended."

Nicci couldn't fathom such a strange sense of honor, but somehow she knew it fit what she saw in his eyes.

The crowd gasped as Richard drew his sword across the inside of his arm. He turned it, wiping both sides in the blood, until it dripped from the tip. Nicci could plainly see, even if the others could not much as she saw in his eyes a quality others did not see-that the sword united with, and completed, magic within him.

His knuckles white around the hilt, he thrust the glistening crimson blade into the air.

"I give you a blood oath!" he cried out. "Harm the Baka Ban Mana, harm Sister Verna, or harm me, and the truce will be ended, and I promise you we will have t, war! If we have war, I will lay waste to the Palace of the Prophets!"

From the upper balcony, where Richard couldn't see him, Jedidiah's mocking voice drifted out over the crowd. "All by yourself?"

"Doubt me at your peril. I am a prisoner; I have nothing to live for. I am the t flesh of prophecy. I am the bringer of death."