Temple of the Winds

Warren pressed his fists to the sides of his head. "I don't know! Please, Excellency, I don't know. I can't make the visions of prophecy come at will. I'm not a prophet yet. I am only beginning." Warren cried out, squirming in his chair. "I'll try! I'll try! Please, let me try!"

Warren panted as his agony subsided. He bent over the book, licking his lips. Fingers shook as he set them to the book, following along the line of words, the line of prophecy.

" 'Patronizing past, " he muttered as he read to himself. " 'Patronizing past carries forward the same disfavor twisted to new use, for a new master… Dear Creator, I don't know what it means. Please, let the vision come." Clarissa peered out into the darkness as the coach rocked to a stop. Dust hung in the air, their ghostlike escort. A stone fortress rose up just outside the coach's window. It was dark, and she couldn't see the whole thing, but what she could see made her heart pound out of control.

She waited, twisting her fingers together, until the soldier opened the door. "Clarissa," he whispered. "This is the place."

Clarissa took his hand as she stepped out into the inky night. "Thank you, Walsh."

The other one of Nathan's soldier friends, a man named Bollesdun, waited up in the driver's seat, keeping tight the reins.

"Hurry, now," Walsh told her. "Nathan said he doesn't want you in there for more than a few minutes. If anything happens, the two of us aren't going to be able to fight much of a battle to get you out."

She knew the truth of that. They had ridden past so many tents that it left her stunned by their numbers. The hoard who had overrun Renwold had been nothing compared to the numbers of men here.

Clarissa pulled up the hood on her cloak. "Don't you worry, I know better than to dally. Nathan told me what to do."

She clutched her cloak together in her fist. She had promised Nathan. He had done so much for her. He had saved her life. She would do this for him. She would do this so others wouldn't die.

As terrified as she was, she would do anything for Nathan. There was no better man in the whole world. No kinder man. no more compassionate, no braver.

Walsh walked beside her as they passed under an iron portcullis, and then into an entryway under a barreled roof. Two brutish guards, wearing hide mantles and hung with grisly-looking weapons, stood beside a hissing torch.

Clarissa kept her cloak tightly drawn and her hood pulled forward. She hung her head so that the guards couldn't see her face in the shadow. She let Walsh do the talking, as she had been instructed.

Walsh flicked his hand toward her. "The representative of His Excellency's plenipotentiary. Lord Rahl," he said in a gruff voice, as if unhappy that this assignment had fallen to him.

The bearded guard grunted. "So I've been told." He lifted a thumb toward the door. "Go on in. Someone is supposed to be waiting for you."

Walsh adjusted his weapons belt. "Good. I have to drive this one back tonight. Can you believe it? Won't even let us wait until morning. That Lord Rahl is as demanding as they come."

The guard grunted, as if he well understood the annoyance of night duty. "Oh." Walsh added, as if in afterthought, "Lord Rahl also wanted to know if his representative could pay the Lord Rahl's respects to His Excellency."

The guard shrugged. "Sorry. Jagang took out of here this morning. He took most everyone with him. Just left a few behind to mind things."

Clarissa's heart sank with disappointment. Nathan had been hoping that Jagang would be here, but he had said that even though he hoped it, Jagang would likely be smarter than that. Jagang wasn't one to trust his life to the unknown abilities of a wizard as powerful as Nathan.

Walsh took Clarissa's arm and pushed her on ahead as he gave the guard a good-natured slap on the shoulder. "Thanks."

"Yea, just go on in down the hall. There's one of the women waiting there for you. Last I saw her, she was pacing by the second set of torches."

Walsh and Bollesdun were Imperial Order soldiers, and they had had no trouble with any of the other soldiers, either. Clarissa dreaded to think what would have happened to her without those two the times their coach had been stopped by troops to query its mission. Walsh and Bollesdun also had little trouble ushering her through checkpoints.

Clarissa remembered all too well what happened to the women in Renwold. She still had nightmares about what she had seen happening to Manda Perlin when the Order's troops captured Renwold. And right there, on the floor beside her murdered husband. Rupert.

Their footsteps echoed as they hurried down the stone corridor. It was a dark, dank, and depressing place. It looked to Clarissa to have no comforts other than a few wooden benches. This was a place for soldiers, not a place for families to live. As the guard had said, the woman was waiting near the second set of torches. "Yes," the woman asked, "what is it?"