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I am your wife."
Richard's fists tightened on the reins. "I have a wife. You are not
she. I'm not going to pretend you are."
Swaying gently in her saddle, Nicci seemed indifferent to his words or
the emotion behind them. She gazed skyward, taking in the darkening sky.
It was too warm down in the lowlands for snow. Through occasional
breaks in the low clouds, though, Richard had caught glimpses of windswept
mountain slopes behind them cloaked in thick white drifts. Kahlan was sure
to be dry, warm, and stuck.
"Do you think you could find us another of those shelter trees?" Nicci
asked. "Where it would be dry, like last night? I'd dearly love to get dry
and warm."
Between sporadic gaps in the pine trees, and through the scramble of
bare branches of the alder and ash, Richard surveyed the hillside descending
before them.
"Yes."
"Good. We need to have a talk."
As Richard dismounted near one of his shelter trees at the edge of a
small, slanted, open patch of grassy ground, Nicci took the reins of his
horse. She could feel his smoldering glare on her back as she picketed the
horses to the thick branches of an alder heavy with catkins. The horses were
hungry, and promptly started cropping the wet grass. Without a word, Richard
began casting about, collecting deadwood from under dense thickets of spruce
trees, where, she supposed, it might be a little dryer.
She watched him, not openly, but casually, covertly, from the corner of
her eye as he went about his chore. He was everything she remembered, and
more. It was not so much that he was just big, physically, but he had a
commanding presence that had matured since she had last seen him. Before,
she had been tempted at times to think of him as little more than a boy. No
more.
Now, he was a powerful wild stallion trapped in a pen of his own
construction. She kept her distance, letting him kick at the walls of that
pen. It would bring her no gain to taunt this wild beast. Taunting him,
torturing him in his anguish, was the last thing in the world she wanted.
Nicci could understand his smoldering anger. It was to be expected. She
could plainly see his feelings for the Mother Confessor, and hers for him.
The integrity of the walls of his pen consisted of nothing more than the
gossamer fence rails of his feelings for her. While Nicci sympathized with
his pain, she knew that she, of all people, could do nothing to alleviate
it. It would take time for his hurt to heal. Over time, the rails of his
fence would be replaced by others.
Someday, he would come to terms with what had to be. Someday, he would
come to understand the truth of the things she intended to show him.
Someday, he would come to understand the necessity of what she was doing. It
was for the best.
At the edge of the clearing, Nicci settled herself on a gray slab of
granite that, by the unique angles of its broken face, had once belonged to
the ledge poking out from under the deep green of balsam and spruce behind
her, but over time had been moved away from it by the inexorable effort of
nature, leaving a gap the shape of a jagged lightning bolt between their
once-mated edges.
Nicci sat with her back straight, a habit instilled in her from a young
age by her mother, and watched Richard going about unsaddling the horses. He
let them both eat some oats from canvas nosebags while he collected rocks
from the clearing. At first, she couldn't imagine what he was doing. When he
took them, along with the wood he had collected, in under the boughs of the
shelter tree, she realized he must be going to use the rocks to ring a fire
pit. He was inside a long time, so she knew he must be working on building a
fire out of the wet wood. She could have used her gift to help, had her gift
enough power left to light wet wood. It didn't.
Richard seemed up to the task, though; she had watched him light a fire
the night before, starting it in birch bark, shavings, and twigs. Nicci had
never been one for such outdoor activities. She left him to it and set about
the small chore of repairing her horse's cinch strap. The rain had let up
for the time being, leaving behind the tingle of a fine mist against her
cheeks.
As she worked at knotting the loose cords of the heavy twine strap back
onto its buckle, she heard little crackling sounds coming from under the
tree. The sputtering and popping told her that Richard had gotten the fire
going. She heard the clang of a pot on rock, so she reasoned that we was
leaving water to boil when the fire got hot enough.
Sitting on the slab of granite, Nicci quietly worked a tangle out of
the cinch strap as he came back out to care for the horses. Free of the
nosebags, the horses drank from a pool of water in a depression in the
smooth tan ledge. Though Richard wore dark clothes appropriate for the
woods, they could not diminish his bearing. His gray-eyed gaze swept over
her, taking in what she was doing. He left her to her knot work as he went
about his chore of currying the horses. His big hands worked smoothly, with
a sure touch. She was certain the horses would appreciate having all the
caked mud cleaned from their legs. She would, were she they.
"You said we needed to talk," Richard finally said to her as he stroked
the curry comb over the mare's rump, whisking away a last spatter of mud. "I
presume a talk consists of you dictating the terms of my imprisonment. I
imagine you have rules for your captives."
By his icy inflection, it sounded as if he had decided to provoke her a
little, to test her reaction. Nicci set the cinch strap aside. She met his
challenging tone with one of genuine sympathy, instead.
"Just because something has happened to you before, Richard, don't
assume that means it will again. Fate does not give birth to the same child
over and over. Each is different. This is not like the two times before."
Her response, as well as the compassion in her eyes, appeared to have
caught him off guard. He stared at her a moment before crouching to replace
the curry comb in a pocket in the saddlebag and take out a pick.
"Two times before?" There was no way he could miss her meaning. His
blank expression didn't betray what he might be thinking as he lifted the
stallion's right forefoot to pick its hoof clean. "I don't know what you're
talking about."
Just as he probed the hoof with his pick, she knew he was probing her
as well, wanting to know just how much she knew of those two times, and what
she thought was different, this time. He would surely want to know how she
intended to avoid the mistakes of his past captors. Any warrior would.
He was not yet ready to accept how fundamentally different this was.
Richard worked his way around the big black horse, cleaning its hooves,
until he ended at the left forefoot, close to her. As he finished and let
the stallion's leg down, Nicci stood. When he turned around, she was close
enough to feel his warm breath on her cheek. He fixed her with his glare, a
look that was no longer as unsettling to her as it had been at first.
She found herself, instead of shrinking back, staring into that
penetrating gaze of his, marveling that she had him. She finally had him. It
could have been no more wondrous to her had she somehow managed to bottle
the moon and stars.
"You are a prisoner," Nicci said. "Your anger and resentment are
entirely understandable. 1 would never have expected you to be pleased about
this, Richard. But
it is not the same as those times before." She gently gripped his
throat. He was surprised, but sensed he was in no immediate danger.
"Before," she said in quiet solace, "you had a collar around your neck. Both
times."
"You were at the Palace of the Prophets, where I was taken." She felt
him swallow. "But the other . . ."
She released his throat. "I do not use a collar, as did the Sisters of
the Light, to control you, to give you pain in order to make you obey, or to
put you through their ridiculous tests. My purpose is nothing like that."
She pulled her cloak forward over her shoulders as she smiled
distantly. "Remember when you first came to the Palace of the Prophets?
Remember the speech you gave?"
Richard's words were brittle with caution. "Not . . . exactly."
She was still staring off into the memories. "I do. It was the first
time I saw you. I remember every word."
Richard said nothing, but in his eyes she could see the shadows of his
mind working.
"You were in a rage-not unlike now. You held out a red leather rod
hanging around your neck. Remember, Richard?"
"I guess I did." His suspicious glare broke. "A lot has happened since
then. I guess I'd put it out of my mind."
"You said that you had been collared before. You said that the person
who had once put that collar around your neck had brought you pain to punish
you, to teach you."
His posture shifted to stiff wariness. "What of it?"
She focused once more on his gray eyes, eyes that watched her every
blink, her every breath, as he weighed her every word. It was all going into
some inner calculation, she knew-some inner master analysis of how high was
his fence, and if he could jump it. He could not.
"I always wondered about that," she said. "About what you had said
about having been in a collar before. Some months back, we captured a woman
in red leather. A Mord-Sith." His color paled just a little. "She said she
was searching for Lord Rahl, to protect him. I persuaded her to tell me
everything she knew about you."
"I'm not from D'Hara." His voice sounded confident, nevertheless, she
sensed a subterranean torrent of dread. "A Mord-Sith would know next to
nothing about me."
Nicci reached inside her cloak for the thing she had brought with her.
She let the small red leather rod roll from her fingers to fall to the
ground at his feet. He stiffened.
"Oh, but she did, Richard. She knew a great deal." She smiled a small
smile, not pleasure, nor mockery, but in distant sadness at the memory of
that brave woman. "She knew Derma. She had been at the People's Palace in
D'Hara, where you were taken after Derma captured you. She knew all about
it."
Richard's gaze fell away. On bended knee he reverently picked the red
leather rod off the wet ground. He wiped the thing clean on his pant leg as
if it were priceless.
"A Mord-Sith would not tell you anything." He stood and boldly met her
gaze. "A Mord-Sith is a product of torture. She would say only enough to
make you believe she was cooperating. She would feed you a clever lie to
deceive you. She would die before speaking any words to harm her Lord Rahl."
With one long finger, Nicci pulled a sodden strand of blond hair off
her cheek. "You underestimate me, Richard. That woman was very brave. I felt
great sorrow for her, but there were things I wanted to know. She told it
all. She told me everything I wanted to know."
Nicci could see the rage rising in him, bringing a flush to his cheeks.
That was not what she had intended, or wanted. She was telling him the
truth, but he rejected it, trying to overlay it instead with his own false
assumptions.
A moment passed, and that truth finally found its way into his eyes.
The rage departed reluctantly, replaced by the weight of sadness that made
him swallow at his grief for this woman. Nicci had expected no less from
him.
"Apparently," Nicci whispered, "Derma was very talented at torture-"
"I neither need nor want your sympathy."
"But I did feel sympathy, Richard, for what that woman put you through
for no purpose but to give pain. That's the worst kind of pain, isn't
it?-pain to no benefit, no confession? The pointlessness of it only adds to
its torture. That was what you suffered."
Nicci gestured to the red leather weapon in his fist. "This woman did
not suffer that kind of pain. I want you to know that."
He pressed his lips tight in mistrust as he looked away from her eyes,
gazing out at the gathering darkness.
"You killed her, this Mord-Sith named Denna, but not before she did
unspeakable things to you."
"So I did." Richard's expression hardened with the implied menace of
his words.
"You threatened the Sisters of the Light because they, too, collared
you. You told them they were not good enough to lick the boots of that
woman, Denna, and so they were not. You told the Sisters that they thought
they held the leash to your collar, but you promised them that they would
find that what they held was a bolt of lightning. Don't think for one moment
that I don't understand your feelings in this, or your resolve."
Nicci reached out and tapped the center of his chest.
"But this time, Richard, the collar is around your heart and it is
Kahlan who will be forfeit, should you make a mistake."
His fists, at the ends of his rigid arms, tightened. "Kahlan would
rather die than have me be a slave at her expense. She begged me to forfeit
her life for my freedom. A day may dawn when it becomes necessary for me to
honor her request."
Nicci felt a weary boredom at his threats. People so often resorted to
threatening her.
"That is entirely up to you, Richard. But you make a great mistake if
you think I care."
She couldn't begin to recall how many times Jagang had made solemn
threats on her life, or how many of those times his hands had tightened
around her throat choking the life out of her after he had beaten her
senseless. Kadar Kardeef had at times been no less brutal. She'd lost count
of the times she fully expected to die, starting with the time when she was
little and the man pulled her into the alley to rob her.
But such men were not the only ones who promised her suffering.
"I cannot tell you the promises the Keeper of the underworld has made
to me in my dreams, promises of unending suffering. That is my fate.
"So, please, Richard, do not think to frighten me with your petty
threats. More
savage men than you have made credible promises as to my doom. I long
ago accepted my fate and ceased to care."
Her arms felt heavy at her sides. She felt empty of feeling. Thoughts
of Jagang, of the Keeper, reminded her that her fife was meaningless. Only
what she had seen in Richard's eyes gave her a hint that there might be
something more, something she had yet to discover or understand.
"What is it you want?" Richard demanded.
Nicci returned her mind to the here and now. "I told you. Your part in
fife now is as my husband. That is the way it is going to be-if you wish
Kahlan to live. I've told you the truth about all of it. If you come with me
and do the simple things I ask, such as assuming the role of my husband,
then Kahlan will live a long life. I can't say it will be entirely happy, of
course, for I know she loves you."
"How long do you think you can hold me, Nicci?" In frustration, Richard
ran his fingers back through his wet hair. "It isn't going to work, whatever
it is you want. How long until you tire of this absurd sham?"
Her eyes narrowed, studying his profound innocence, if not ignorance.
"My dear boy, I was born into this wretched world one hundred and
eighty-one years past. You know that. Do you suppose I have not learned a
great deal of patience, in all that time`? Though our bodies may look about
the same age, and in many ways I am no older than you, I have lived near to
seven of your lifetimes. Do you honestly believe that you would have
patience to exceed mine? Do you think me some young foolish girl for you to
outwit or outwait?"
His demeanor cooled. "Nicci, 1
"And don't think to make friends with me, or win me over. I am not
Denna, or Verna, or Warren, or even Pasha, for that matter. I'm not
interested in friends."
He turned a little and ran a hand over the stallion's shoulder when the
horse snorted and stamped a hoof at the smell of the woodsmoke curling out
from the upper limbs of the shelter tree.
"I want to know what vile thing you did to that poor woman to make her
tell you about Denna."
"The Mord-Sith told me in return for a favor."
Frowning his incredulity, he turned to her once more. "What favor could
you possibly do for a MordSith?"
"I cut her throat."
Richard closed his eyes as his head sank with grief for this unknown
woman who had died because of him. He clenched her weapon in his fist to his
heart.
His voice lost its fire. "1 don't suppose you know her name?"
It was this, his empathy for others, even others he didn't know, that
not only made him the man he was, but shackled him. His concern for others
would also be the thing that eventually brought him to understand the virtue
in what she was doing. He, too, would then willingly work for the righteous
cause of the Order.
"I do." Nicci said. "Hania."
"Hania." He looked heartsick. "I didn't even know her."
"Richard." With a finger under his chin, Nicci gently brought his face
up. "I want you to know that I did not torture her. I found her being
tortured. I was not happy about what I saw. I killed the man who did it.
Hania was beyond any help. I offered her release from her pain, a quick end,
if she would tell me about you. I never asked her to betray you in any way
that the Order would want. I asked only
about your past, about your first captivity. I wanted to understand
what you said that first day at the Palace of the Prophets, that's all."
Richard didn't look relieved, as she had intended.
"You withheld that quick release, as you call it, until she had given
you what you wanted. That makes you a party to her torture."
In the gloom, Nicci looked away in pain and anguish at the memory of
that bloody deed. It had long since lost its ability to make her feel
anything more than a ghost of emotions.
There were so many needing release from their suffering-so many old and
sick, so many wailing children, so many destitute and hopeless and poor.
This woman had merely been another of life's victims needing release. It was
for the best.
Nicci had renounced the Creator in order to do His work, and sworn her
soul to the Keeper of the underworld. She had to; only one as evil as she
would fail to feel any fitting feelings, any proper compassion, for all the
suffering and desperate need. It was grim irony-faithfully serving the needy
in such a way.
"Perhaps you see it that way, Richard," Nicci said in a hoarse voice as
she stared into the numb nightmare of memories. "I did not. Neither did
Hania. Before I cut her throat for her, she thanked me for what I was about
to do."
Richard's eyes offered no mercy. "And why did you make her tell you
about me-about Denna?"
Nicci snagged her cloak tighter on her shoulders. "Isn't it obvious?"
"You couldn't possibly make the same mistake Denna made. You aren't the
woman she was, Nicci."
She was tired. The first night, he had not slept, she knew. She had
felt his eyes on her back. She knew how much he hurt. Turned away from him,
she had wept silently at the hate his eyes held, at the burden of being the
one to have to do what was best. The world was such an evil place.
"Perhaps, Richard," she said in a soft voice, "you will someday teach
me the difference."
She was so very tired. The night before, when he had succumbed to his
weariness, and turned away from her to sleep, Nicci had in turn stayed awake
all night, watching him in his sound sleep as she felt the connection of
magic to the Mother Confessor. The connection brought Nicci great empathy
for her, as well.
It was all for the best.
"For now," Nicci said, "let's get inside out of this foul weather. I'm
cold and I'm hungry. We need to get some rest, too. And as I've told you, we
have things to discuss, first."
She couldn't lie to him, she knew. She couldn't tell him everything, of
course, but she dared not lie to him in the things she did tell him.
The dance had begun.
Richard broke up the sausage Nicci gave him from her saddlebag and
tossed it in the pot with the simmering rice. The things she had told him
kept shouting in his mind as he tried to fit them into their proper order.
He didn't know how much of what she had said he dared to believe. He
feared it was all true. Nicci just didn't seem to need to lie to him-at
least not about what she had told him so far. She didn't seem as . . .
hostile, as he thought she would have to be. If anything, she seemed
melancholy, perhaps because of what she had done-although, he had trouble
believing that a confessed Sister of the Dark would suffer a guilty
conscience. It was probably just some bizarre part of her act, some artifice
directed toward her ends.
He stirred the pot of rice with a stick he'd peeled the bark off of.
"You said there were things to discuss." He rapped the stick clean on the
edge of the pot. "I assume that means there are orders you wish to issue."
Nicci blinked, as if he'd caught her thinking about something else. She
looked out of place, sitting prim and straight in a wayward pine, dressed as
she was in her fine black dress. Richard would never before have ever
thought of Nicci out-of-doors, much less sitting on the ground. The very
idea had always seemed ludicrous to him. Her dress constantly made him think
of Kahlan, not only because of it being so completely opposite that it
evoked the comparison, but also because he so vividly recalled Nicci
connected to Kahlan by that awful rope of magic.
That memory twisted him in agony.
"Orders?" Nicci folded her hands in her lap and met his gaze. "Oh, yes,
I have a few requests I wish you to honor. First, you may not use your gift.
Not at all. Not in any way. Is that clear? Since, as I recall, you have no
love of the gift, this should be neither a burden nor a difficult request
for you to follow, especially because there is something you do love which
would not survive such a betrayal. Do you understand?"
Her cold blue eyes conveyed the threat perhaps even better than her
words. Richard gave her a single nod, committing himself to what, exactly,
he wasn't entirely sure at the moment.
He poured her steaming dinner in a shallow wooden bowl and handed it to
her along with a spoon. Nicci smiled her thanks. He set the pot on the
ground between his legs and took a spoonful of rice, blowing on it until it
was cool enough to eat. He watched her from the corner of his eye as she
took a dainty taste.
Beyond her physical perfection, Nicci had a singularly expressive face.
She seemed to go cold and blank when she was unhappy, or when she meant to
convey anger, threat, or displeasure. She didn't really scowl the way other
people did when
they felt those emotions; rather, a look of cool detachment descended
on her. That look was, in its own way, far more disturbing. It was her
impenetrable armor.
On the other hand, she was expressively animated when she was pleased
or thankful. Even more than that, though, such pleasure or gratitude
appeared genuine. He remembered her as aloof, and while she still possessed
a noble bearing, to some extent her air of reticence had lifted to reveal an
innocent delight in any kindness, or even simple courtesy.
Richard still had bread Cara had baked for him. He hated sharing that
bread with this evil woman, but it now seemed a childish consideration. He
tore off a piece and offered it to Nicci. She took it with the reverence due
something greater than mere bread.
"I also expect you to keep no secrets from me," she said after another
bite. "You would not like me to discover you were doing so. Husbands and
wives have no need for secrets."
Richard supposed not, but they were hardly husband and wife. Rather
than say so, he said instead, "You seem to know a lot about how husbands and
wives behave."
Rather than rising to his bait, she gestured with her bread at her
bowl. "This is very good, Richard. Very good indeed."
"What is it you want, Nicci? What is the purpose of this absurd
pretense?"
The firelight played across her alabaster face, and lent her hair a
torrid color it didn't in reality possess. "I took you because I need an
answer which I believe you will provide."
Richard broke a stout branch in two across his knee. "You said husbands
and wives have no need for secrets." He used half the branch to push the
burning wood together before placing the branch atop the fire. "Then aren't
wives, too, supposed to be honest?"
"Of course." Her hand with the bread lowered. She rested her wrist over
her knee. "I will be honest with you, too, Richard."
"Then what's the question? You said you took me because you need an
answer you think I can provide. What's the question?"
Nicci stared oft again. once more looking anything but the grim captor.
She looked as if memories, or perhaps fears, haunted her. It was somehow
more unsettling than the sneer of an armed guard outside of the bars of his
cage.
The rain outside had increased to a dull roar. They'd made camp just in
time. Richard couldn't help but remember the cozy times he'd had in wayward
pines huddled beside Kahlan. At the thought of Kahlan, his heart sank.
"I don't know," Nicci finally said. "I honestly don't, Richard. I seek
something, but I will only know it when I find it. After nearly all my one
hundred and eightyone years without knowing it existed, I finally saw the
first hint of it not long ago . . . ." She seemed to be looking through him
again, to some point beyond. Her voice, too, seemed to be addressed to that
distant place her vision beheld. "That was when you stood in a collar before
all those Sisters, and defied them. Perhaps I will find the answer when I
understand what it was I saw that day, in that room. It was not just you,
but you were its center . . . ."
Her eyes focused once more on his face. She spoke with gentle
assurance. "Until then, you will live. I have no intention of harming you.
You need fear no torture from me. I'm not like them-that woman, Derma, or
like the Sisters of the Light, using you for their games."
"Don't patronize me. You are using me for your own game, no less than
they used me for theirs."
She shook her head. "I want you to know, Richard, that I have nothing
but respect for you. I probably have more respect for you than any person
you have ever met. That's why I took you. You are a rare person, Richard."
"I'm a war wizard. You've just never seen one of those before."
She spurned the notion with a dismissive flick of her hand. "Please
don't try to impress me with your `power.' I'm not in the mood for such
silliness."
Richard knew it was no idle boast on her part. She was a sorceress of
remarkable ability. He doubted he had any hope of outsmarting her knowledge
of magic.
She was not acting the way he had expected a Sister of the Dark would
act, though. Richard put his anger, hurt, and heartache aside for the
moment, knowing he had to face what was, rather than putting his hope in
wishes, and spoke to Nicci in the same gentle fashion she used with him.
"I don't understand what it is you want of me, Nicci."
She shrugged in an involuntary gesture of frustration. "Neither do I.
Until I do, you will do as I ask and everything will be fine. I will not
harm you."
"Considering the circumstances, do you really expect me to take your
word?"
"I'm telling you the truth, Richard. If you were to twist your ankle, I
would, like a good wife, put my shoulder under your arm and help you to
walk. From now on, I am devoted to you, and you to me."
He could only blink at how crazy this was. He almost thought she might
be mad. Almost. He knew that would be too easy an answer. As Zedd always
said, nothing was ever easy.
"And if I choose not to go along with your wishes?"
Again, she shrugged. "Then Kahlan dies."
"I understand that, but if she dies, then you lose the collar around my
heart."
She fixed him with cold blue eyes. "Your point?"
"Then you couldn't get what you wanted from me. You would have no
leverage."
"I don't have what I want now, so I would be losing nothing. Besides,
if you were to do that, then Emperor Jagang would welcome your head as a
gift. I would no doubt be showered with gifts and riches."
Richard didn't think Nicci wanted gifts or riches showered on her. She
was a Sister of the Dark, after all, and he supposed she could manage to be
so showered if she really wished it.
Even so, he was sure his head would have a price, and she could salvage
that much out of it if he proved ungovernable. She might not care for gifts
and riches, but if there was one thing she did want, it had to be power. He
was pretty sure she could gain a good measure of that, should she slay the
enemy of the Imperial Order.
He bent over the pot between his legs and went back to his dinner, and
his dark thoughts. Talking to her was useless. They just went around in
circles.
"Richard," she said in a quiet tone, drawing his eyes to her gaze, "you
think I'm doing this to hurt you, or to defeat you because you are the enemy
of the Order. I am not. I told you my true reasons."
"So, when you finally find this answer you seek, in return for my
`help,' then you will let me go?" It was not really meant as a question, but
as trenchant incrimination.
"Go?" She stared down into her bowl of rice and sausage, stirring it
around as if it might reveal a secret. She looked up. "No, Richard, then I
will kill you."
"I see." He hardly thought that was a way to encourage his cooperation
in her search, but he didn't say so. "And Kahlan'? After you kill me, I
mean."
"You have my word that if I decide I must kill you, as long as I live,
she will, too. I have no ill will toward her."
He tried to find solace in that much of it. For some reason, he
believed Nicci. Knowing that Kahlan would be all right gave him courage. He
could endure what was to happen to him, if only she would be all right. It
was a price he was willing to pay.
"So, `wife,' where are we going? Where is it you're taking me?"
Nicci didn't look at him but instead used her bread to sop up some of
her dinner. She considered his question as she nibbled.
"Who are you fighting, Richard? Who is your enemy?" She took another
small bite of her bread.
"Jagang. Jagang and his Imperial Order."
Like an instructor correcting him, Nicci slowly shook her head. "No.
You are wrong. I think perhaps you are in need of answers, too."
Games. She was playing foolish games with him. Richard ground his
teeth, but held his temper in check.
"Then who, Nicci? Who, or what, am I fighting if it is not Jagang."
"That is what I hope to show you." She watched his eyes in a way he
found unsettling. "I am going to take you to the Old World, to the heart of
the Order, to show you what you are fighting-the taste nature of what you
believe to be your enemy."
Richard frowned. "Why'?"
Nicci smiled. "Let's just say it amuses me."
"You mean we're going back to Tanimura? Back to where you lived all
that time as a Sister?"
"No. We are going to the heart and soul of the Old World: Altur'Rang.
Jagang's homeland. The name means, roughly, `the Creator's chosen.' "
Richard felt a chill run up his spine. "You expect to take me, Richard
Rahl, there, into the heart of enemy territory? I hardly doubt we will be
living as `husband and wife' for long."
"Besides not using your magic, you will not use the name associated
with that magic-Rahl-but instead the name you grew up with: Richard Cypher.
Without your magic, or your name, no one will know you are anyone but a
humble man with his wife. That is exactly what you shall be-what we both
shall be."
Richard sighed. "Well, if the enemy should find I'm more, I guess a
Sister of the Dark can . . . exert her influence."
"No, I can't."
Richard's eyes turned up. "What do you mean?"
"I can't use my power."
Gooseflesh prickled his arms. "What?"
"It's devoted to the link with Kahlan, to keeping her alive. That is
how a maternity spell works. It requires a prodigious amount of power to
even establish such a complex spell, much less maintain it. My power must be
invested into the labor of preserving the living link. A maternity spell
leaves nothing to spare; l doubt I could make a spark.
"If we have any trouble, you will have to handle it. Of course, I can
at any time
call upon my ability as a sorceress, but to do so I would have to draw
the power from our link. If I do that without her near . . . Kahlan dies."
Alarm raced through him. "But what if you accidentally
"I won't. As long as you take good care of me, Kahlan will be safe
enough. If, however, I should fall off my horse and break my neck, her neck
snaps, too. As long as you take good care of me, you are taking good care of
her. This is why it's important that we live as husband and wife-so that you
can be close at hand, and so that I can guide and help you, too. It will be
a difficult life with both of us living without our power, just as any other
married couple, but 1 believe this to be necessary if I am to find what I
seek from you. Do you understand?"
He wasn't sure he really did, but he said "Yes," anyway.
Numb dismay swamped him. He would never have believed this woman would
have willingly given up her power for some unspecified knowledge. The very
idea of it unleashed cold panic through his veins.
Richard couldn't make sense of it. With his mind groping blindly in a
world gone insane, he spoke without even considering his words.
"I'm already married. I'll not sleep with you as your husband."
Nicci blinked in surprise, then let out a dainty titter, covering it
with the back of her hand, not in shyness, but at his presumption. Richard
felt his ears heating.
"That is not the way in which I want you, Richard."
Richard cleared his throat. "Good."
In the quiet of the wayward pine, with the rain outside falling in a
gentle patter and the glowing checkered wood hissing softly, Nicci's
focused, intense, resolute expression turned very cold and very still.
"But if I should decide I do, Richard, you will comply with that, too."
Nicci was a beautiful woman, the kind of woman most any man would
eagerly accept. It was hardly that, though, that made him believe her. It
was the look in her eyes. Never had the vague possibility of the act of sex
seemed so vicious.
Her voice lost the conversational quality. It went on in a lifeless
drone, a thing not human, pronouncing a sentence on his life. A sentence he
himself would enforce, or Kahlan would die.
"You will act as my husband. You will provide for us as any husband
would. You will care for me, and I for you, in the sense of worldly needs. I
will mend your shirts and cook your meals and wash your clothes. You will
provide us with a living."
Nicci's leaden words slammed into him with the deliberate methodical
force of a beating delivered with an iron bar.
"You will never see Kahlan again-you must understand that-but as long
as you do as I wish, you will know she lives. In that way you will be able
to show your love for her. Every day she wakes, she will know you are
keeping her alive. You have no other way to show her your love."
He felt sick to his stomach. He stared off into memories of another
place and time.
"And if I choose to end it?" The weight of such madness was so crushing
that he earnestly considered it. "Rather than be your slave?"
"Then perhaps that is the form the knowledge I seek will take. Maybe
that senseless end will be what I must learn." She brought her first and
second fingers together in a snipping motion, simulating the cutting of the
umbilical cord of magic that sustained Kahlan's life. "One last evil
convulsion to finally confirm the senselessness of existence."
It dawned on Richard that this woman could not be threatened, because
she was a creature who, he was beginning to understand, welcomed any
terrible outcome.
"Of all there is to me in this world," he whispered in dim agony, more
to himself and to Kahlan than to his implacable captor, "there is only one
thing that is irreplaceable: Kahlan. If I must be a slave in order for
Kahlan to live, then I shall be a slave."
Richard realized Nicci was silently studying his face. He met her gaze
briefly, then looked away, unable to bear the terrible scrutiny of her
beautiful blue eyes while he held the image of Kahlan's love in his mind.
"Whatever you shared with her, whatever happiness, joy, or pleasure,
will always be yours, Richard." Nicci seemed almost to be peering inside
him, reading the pages of his past written in his mind. "Treasure those
memories. They will have to sustain you. You will never see her again, nor
she you. That chapter of your life is ended. You both have new lives, now.
You may as well get used to it because that is the reality of the
situation."
The reality of what was. Not the world as he would wish it. He himself
had told Kahlan that they must act according to the reality of what was, and
not waste their precious lives wishing for things that could not be.
Richard ran his fingertips across his forehead as he tried to hold his
voice steady. "I hope you don't expect me to learn to be pleased with you."
"I am the one, Richard, who expects to learn."
Fists at his side, Richard shot to his feet. "And what is it you wish
this knowledge for?" he demanded in unrestrained, violent bitterness. "Why
is it so important to you!"
"As punishment."
Richard stared in stunned disbelief. "What?"
"I wish to hurt, Richard." She smiled distantly.
Richard sank back to the ground.
"Why?" he whispered.
Nicci folded her hands in her lap. "Pain, Richard, is all that can
reach that cold dead thing within me that is my life. Pain is the only thing
for which I live."
He stared numbly at her. He thought about his vision. There was nothing
he could do to fight the advance of the Imperial Order. He could think of
nothing he could do to fight his fate with this woman.
If not for Kahlan, he would, at that moment, have thrown himself into a
battle with Nicci that would have decided it once and for all. He would have
willingly gone to his death fighting this cruel insanity. Except his reason
denied him that.
He had to live so that Kahlan would live. For that, and that alone, he
had to put one foot in front of the other and march into oblivion.
Kahlan yawned as she rubbed her eyes. Squinting, she arched her back
and stretched her sore muscles. The terrible desperate memories swooped in
from the sleep-darkened corners of her mind, leaving little chance for any
other thoughts to long survive.
She was beyond the realm of merciless anguish and crying; she had
entered the sovereign dominion of unbridled anger.
Her fingers found the cold steel scabbard of his sword lying at her
side. It felt alive with icy rage. That, the carving of Spirit, and her
memories were about all she had of him.
There wasn't a lot of firewood, but since they wouldn't be needing much
more anyway, Kahlan put another stick of what was left into the fire. She
squatted, holding her hands close over the top of the feeble flames, hoping
to bring feeling to her numb fingers. The wind shifted a little. Pungent
smoke billowed up into her face, making her cough. The smoke rolled past her
face and followed the rock overhang up and out from their shelter.
Cara was gone, so Kahlan pushed the little pot of water back onto the
fire to warn it for tea for when the Mord-Sith returned. Cara was probably
visiting their makeshift privy. Or maybe she was checking the traps they'd
set the night before for rabbits. Kahlan didn't hold out any real hope that
they would catch a rabbit for their breakfast. Not in this weather. They had
brought enough provisions, in any event.
Through slits in the clouds, the crimson light of a cold crisp dawn
penetrated gaps in the snowcrusted limbs of trees to slant in under the rock
overhang, casting everything in their little campsite in a blush glow. The
two of them had tried without avail to find a wayward pine. The screen of
trees, along with a short wall of boughs she and Cara had cut and placed the
night before to protect them from the wind, as Richard had taught them to
do, shielded the secluded spot. With their improvements it had proven a fit
shelter. They had been lucky to find it in the driving snow. Outside, the
snow was fairly deep, but in the shelter they had had a relatively dry, if
cold, night. Kahlan and Cara had huddled together under blankets and their
thick wolf fur mantles to keep each other warm.
Kahlan wondered where Richard was, and if he was cold, too. She hoped
not. Probably, since he had started out a few days sooner, he had been lucky
and had made it down to the lowlands already, avoiding the snow.
Cara and Kahlan had stayed in their home, as he had asked, for three
days. Snow had arrived the morning after he'd left. Kahlan had been tempted
to wait for a break in the weather before they started out, but she had
learned a bitter lesson from Sister
Nicci: don't wait, act. When Richard didn't return, Kahlan and Cara had
immediately struck out.
It was hard going at first. They struggled through the drifts, leading
the horses at times, riding them occasionally. They couldn't see very far,
and most of the time had to keep the wind from the west at their right
shoulder as their only clue as to which direction they faced. It was
dangerous traveling over the passes in such conditions. For a time, they
feared that they had made a terrible mistake leaving the safety of their
house.
Through a break in the clouds just before dark the night before, as
they were gathering boughs for their shelter, they'd caught a glimpse of the
lower hills; they were green and brown, not white. They would be below the
snow line before long. Kahlan was confident that they were through the worst
of it.
As she stuffed an arm into a sleeve, pulling another shirt on over the
top of the two she was wearing, Kahlan heard the crunch of snow underfoot.
When she realized it was more than one pair of footsteps, she stood up in a
rush.
Cara pushed her way through the boughs of the sheltering trees. "We
have company," she announced in a grim voice. Kahlan saw that Cara's fist
held her Agiel.
A bundled up squat woman came through the trees, following in Cara's
footsteps. Under layers of cloaks, scarves, and other dangling corners of
thick cloth, Kahlan was surprised to recognize Ann, the old Prelate of the
Sisters of the Light.
Behind Ann came a taller woman, her scarves pushed back to reveal
graying brown hair loose to her shoulders. She had an intense, steady,
calculating gaze that had earned her an enduring network of fine wrinkles
radiating out from the corners of her deep-set eyes. Her brow was less
steady, twitching down several times toward her prominent nose. She looked
like a woman who used a switch to teach children.
"Kahlan!" Ann rushed forward, seizing Kahlan's arms. "Oh, my dear, it's
so good to see you!" She looked back when Kahlan glanced up behind her.
"This is one of my Sisters, Alessandra. Alessandra, may I introduce the
Mother Confessorand Richard's wife."
The woman stepped forward and smiled. The pleasant grin completely
altered her face, instantly erasing the severity of it with open good
nature. It was a somewhat disorienting transformation, making her seem like
two different people sharing one face. Or, Kahlan thought, perhaps one
person with two faces.
"Mother Confessor, it's so good to meet you. Ann has told me all about
you, and what a wonderful person you are." Her eyes took in the campsite
with a quick glance. "I'm so happy for you and Richard."
Ann's eyes turned left and right, searching. Her gaze snagged on the
sword.
"Where's Richard? Cara wouldn't say a word." She looked up into
Kahlan's eyes. "Dear Creator," she whispered. "What's wrong? What's
happened? Where's Richard?"
Kahlan finally managed to unclench her teeth. "One of your Sisters took
him."
Ann pushed her scarves back off her gray hair and took ahold of
Kahlan's arm again. The top of Ann's head came up only to Kahlan's chest,
Richard's fists tightened on the reins. "I have a wife. You are not
she. I'm not going to pretend you are."
Swaying gently in her saddle, Nicci seemed indifferent to his words or
the emotion behind them. She gazed skyward, taking in the darkening sky.
It was too warm down in the lowlands for snow. Through occasional
breaks in the low clouds, though, Richard had caught glimpses of windswept
mountain slopes behind them cloaked in thick white drifts. Kahlan was sure
to be dry, warm, and stuck.
"Do you think you could find us another of those shelter trees?" Nicci
asked. "Where it would be dry, like last night? I'd dearly love to get dry
and warm."
Between sporadic gaps in the pine trees, and through the scramble of
bare branches of the alder and ash, Richard surveyed the hillside descending
before them.
"Yes."
"Good. We need to have a talk."
As Richard dismounted near one of his shelter trees at the edge of a
small, slanted, open patch of grassy ground, Nicci took the reins of his
horse. She could feel his smoldering glare on her back as she picketed the
horses to the thick branches of an alder heavy with catkins. The horses were
hungry, and promptly started cropping the wet grass. Without a word, Richard
began casting about, collecting deadwood from under dense thickets of spruce
trees, where, she supposed, it might be a little dryer.
She watched him, not openly, but casually, covertly, from the corner of
her eye as he went about his chore. He was everything she remembered, and
more. It was not so much that he was just big, physically, but he had a
commanding presence that had matured since she had last seen him. Before,
she had been tempted at times to think of him as little more than a boy. No
more.
Now, he was a powerful wild stallion trapped in a pen of his own
construction. She kept her distance, letting him kick at the walls of that
pen. It would bring her no gain to taunt this wild beast. Taunting him,
torturing him in his anguish, was the last thing in the world she wanted.
Nicci could understand his smoldering anger. It was to be expected. She
could plainly see his feelings for the Mother Confessor, and hers for him.
The integrity of the walls of his pen consisted of nothing more than the
gossamer fence rails of his feelings for her. While Nicci sympathized with
his pain, she knew that she, of all people, could do nothing to alleviate
it. It would take time for his hurt to heal. Over time, the rails of his
fence would be replaced by others.
Someday, he would come to terms with what had to be. Someday, he would
come to understand the truth of the things she intended to show him.
Someday, he would come to understand the necessity of what she was doing. It
was for the best.
At the edge of the clearing, Nicci settled herself on a gray slab of
granite that, by the unique angles of its broken face, had once belonged to
the ledge poking out from under the deep green of balsam and spruce behind
her, but over time had been moved away from it by the inexorable effort of
nature, leaving a gap the shape of a jagged lightning bolt between their
once-mated edges.
Nicci sat with her back straight, a habit instilled in her from a young
age by her mother, and watched Richard going about unsaddling the horses. He
let them both eat some oats from canvas nosebags while he collected rocks
from the clearing. At first, she couldn't imagine what he was doing. When he
took them, along with the wood he had collected, in under the boughs of the
shelter tree, she realized he must be going to use the rocks to ring a fire
pit. He was inside a long time, so she knew he must be working on building a
fire out of the wet wood. She could have used her gift to help, had her gift
enough power left to light wet wood. It didn't.
Richard seemed up to the task, though; she had watched him light a fire
the night before, starting it in birch bark, shavings, and twigs. Nicci had
never been one for such outdoor activities. She left him to it and set about
the small chore of repairing her horse's cinch strap. The rain had let up
for the time being, leaving behind the tingle of a fine mist against her
cheeks.
As she worked at knotting the loose cords of the heavy twine strap back
onto its buckle, she heard little crackling sounds coming from under the
tree. The sputtering and popping told her that Richard had gotten the fire
going. She heard the clang of a pot on rock, so she reasoned that we was
leaving water to boil when the fire got hot enough.
Sitting on the slab of granite, Nicci quietly worked a tangle out of
the cinch strap as he came back out to care for the horses. Free of the
nosebags, the horses drank from a pool of water in a depression in the
smooth tan ledge. Though Richard wore dark clothes appropriate for the
woods, they could not diminish his bearing. His gray-eyed gaze swept over
her, taking in what she was doing. He left her to her knot work as he went
about his chore of currying the horses. His big hands worked smoothly, with
a sure touch. She was certain the horses would appreciate having all the
caked mud cleaned from their legs. She would, were she they.
"You said we needed to talk," Richard finally said to her as he stroked
the curry comb over the mare's rump, whisking away a last spatter of mud. "I
presume a talk consists of you dictating the terms of my imprisonment. I
imagine you have rules for your captives."
By his icy inflection, it sounded as if he had decided to provoke her a
little, to test her reaction. Nicci set the cinch strap aside. She met his
challenging tone with one of genuine sympathy, instead.
"Just because something has happened to you before, Richard, don't
assume that means it will again. Fate does not give birth to the same child
over and over. Each is different. This is not like the two times before."
Her response, as well as the compassion in her eyes, appeared to have
caught him off guard. He stared at her a moment before crouching to replace
the curry comb in a pocket in the saddlebag and take out a pick.
"Two times before?" There was no way he could miss her meaning. His
blank expression didn't betray what he might be thinking as he lifted the
stallion's right forefoot to pick its hoof clean. "I don't know what you're
talking about."
Just as he probed the hoof with his pick, she knew he was probing her
as well, wanting to know just how much she knew of those two times, and what
she thought was different, this time. He would surely want to know how she
intended to avoid the mistakes of his past captors. Any warrior would.
He was not yet ready to accept how fundamentally different this was.
Richard worked his way around the big black horse, cleaning its hooves,
until he ended at the left forefoot, close to her. As he finished and let
the stallion's leg down, Nicci stood. When he turned around, she was close
enough to feel his warm breath on her cheek. He fixed her with his glare, a
look that was no longer as unsettling to her as it had been at first.
She found herself, instead of shrinking back, staring into that
penetrating gaze of his, marveling that she had him. She finally had him. It
could have been no more wondrous to her had she somehow managed to bottle
the moon and stars.
"You are a prisoner," Nicci said. "Your anger and resentment are
entirely understandable. 1 would never have expected you to be pleased about
this, Richard. But
it is not the same as those times before." She gently gripped his
throat. He was surprised, but sensed he was in no immediate danger.
"Before," she said in quiet solace, "you had a collar around your neck. Both
times."
"You were at the Palace of the Prophets, where I was taken." She felt
him swallow. "But the other . . ."
She released his throat. "I do not use a collar, as did the Sisters of
the Light, to control you, to give you pain in order to make you obey, or to
put you through their ridiculous tests. My purpose is nothing like that."
She pulled her cloak forward over her shoulders as she smiled
distantly. "Remember when you first came to the Palace of the Prophets?
Remember the speech you gave?"
Richard's words were brittle with caution. "Not . . . exactly."
She was still staring off into the memories. "I do. It was the first
time I saw you. I remember every word."
Richard said nothing, but in his eyes she could see the shadows of his
mind working.
"You were in a rage-not unlike now. You held out a red leather rod
hanging around your neck. Remember, Richard?"
"I guess I did." His suspicious glare broke. "A lot has happened since
then. I guess I'd put it out of my mind."
"You said that you had been collared before. You said that the person
who had once put that collar around your neck had brought you pain to punish
you, to teach you."
His posture shifted to stiff wariness. "What of it?"
She focused once more on his gray eyes, eyes that watched her every
blink, her every breath, as he weighed her every word. It was all going into
some inner calculation, she knew-some inner master analysis of how high was
his fence, and if he could jump it. He could not.
"I always wondered about that," she said. "About what you had said
about having been in a collar before. Some months back, we captured a woman
in red leather. A Mord-Sith." His color paled just a little. "She said she
was searching for Lord Rahl, to protect him. I persuaded her to tell me
everything she knew about you."
"I'm not from D'Hara." His voice sounded confident, nevertheless, she
sensed a subterranean torrent of dread. "A Mord-Sith would know next to
nothing about me."
Nicci reached inside her cloak for the thing she had brought with her.
She let the small red leather rod roll from her fingers to fall to the
ground at his feet. He stiffened.
"Oh, but she did, Richard. She knew a great deal." She smiled a small
smile, not pleasure, nor mockery, but in distant sadness at the memory of
that brave woman. "She knew Derma. She had been at the People's Palace in
D'Hara, where you were taken after Derma captured you. She knew all about
it."
Richard's gaze fell away. On bended knee he reverently picked the red
leather rod off the wet ground. He wiped the thing clean on his pant leg as
if it were priceless.
"A Mord-Sith would not tell you anything." He stood and boldly met her
gaze. "A Mord-Sith is a product of torture. She would say only enough to
make you believe she was cooperating. She would feed you a clever lie to
deceive you. She would die before speaking any words to harm her Lord Rahl."
With one long finger, Nicci pulled a sodden strand of blond hair off
her cheek. "You underestimate me, Richard. That woman was very brave. I felt
great sorrow for her, but there were things I wanted to know. She told it
all. She told me everything I wanted to know."
Nicci could see the rage rising in him, bringing a flush to his cheeks.
That was not what she had intended, or wanted. She was telling him the
truth, but he rejected it, trying to overlay it instead with his own false
assumptions.
A moment passed, and that truth finally found its way into his eyes.
The rage departed reluctantly, replaced by the weight of sadness that made
him swallow at his grief for this woman. Nicci had expected no less from
him.
"Apparently," Nicci whispered, "Derma was very talented at torture-"
"I neither need nor want your sympathy."
"But I did feel sympathy, Richard, for what that woman put you through
for no purpose but to give pain. That's the worst kind of pain, isn't
it?-pain to no benefit, no confession? The pointlessness of it only adds to
its torture. That was what you suffered."
Nicci gestured to the red leather weapon in his fist. "This woman did
not suffer that kind of pain. I want you to know that."
He pressed his lips tight in mistrust as he looked away from her eyes,
gazing out at the gathering darkness.
"You killed her, this Mord-Sith named Denna, but not before she did
unspeakable things to you."
"So I did." Richard's expression hardened with the implied menace of
his words.
"You threatened the Sisters of the Light because they, too, collared
you. You told them they were not good enough to lick the boots of that
woman, Denna, and so they were not. You told the Sisters that they thought
they held the leash to your collar, but you promised them that they would
find that what they held was a bolt of lightning. Don't think for one moment
that I don't understand your feelings in this, or your resolve."
Nicci reached out and tapped the center of his chest.
"But this time, Richard, the collar is around your heart and it is
Kahlan who will be forfeit, should you make a mistake."
His fists, at the ends of his rigid arms, tightened. "Kahlan would
rather die than have me be a slave at her expense. She begged me to forfeit
her life for my freedom. A day may dawn when it becomes necessary for me to
honor her request."
Nicci felt a weary boredom at his threats. People so often resorted to
threatening her.
"That is entirely up to you, Richard. But you make a great mistake if
you think I care."
She couldn't begin to recall how many times Jagang had made solemn
threats on her life, or how many of those times his hands had tightened
around her throat choking the life out of her after he had beaten her
senseless. Kadar Kardeef had at times been no less brutal. She'd lost count
of the times she fully expected to die, starting with the time when she was
little and the man pulled her into the alley to rob her.
But such men were not the only ones who promised her suffering.
"I cannot tell you the promises the Keeper of the underworld has made
to me in my dreams, promises of unending suffering. That is my fate.
"So, please, Richard, do not think to frighten me with your petty
threats. More
savage men than you have made credible promises as to my doom. I long
ago accepted my fate and ceased to care."
Her arms felt heavy at her sides. She felt empty of feeling. Thoughts
of Jagang, of the Keeper, reminded her that her fife was meaningless. Only
what she had seen in Richard's eyes gave her a hint that there might be
something more, something she had yet to discover or understand.
"What is it you want?" Richard demanded.
Nicci returned her mind to the here and now. "I told you. Your part in
fife now is as my husband. That is the way it is going to be-if you wish
Kahlan to live. I've told you the truth about all of it. If you come with me
and do the simple things I ask, such as assuming the role of my husband,
then Kahlan will live a long life. I can't say it will be entirely happy, of
course, for I know she loves you."
"How long do you think you can hold me, Nicci?" In frustration, Richard
ran his fingers back through his wet hair. "It isn't going to work, whatever
it is you want. How long until you tire of this absurd sham?"
Her eyes narrowed, studying his profound innocence, if not ignorance.
"My dear boy, I was born into this wretched world one hundred and
eighty-one years past. You know that. Do you suppose I have not learned a
great deal of patience, in all that time`? Though our bodies may look about
the same age, and in many ways I am no older than you, I have lived near to
seven of your lifetimes. Do you honestly believe that you would have
patience to exceed mine? Do you think me some young foolish girl for you to
outwit or outwait?"
His demeanor cooled. "Nicci, 1
"And don't think to make friends with me, or win me over. I am not
Denna, or Verna, or Warren, or even Pasha, for that matter. I'm not
interested in friends."
He turned a little and ran a hand over the stallion's shoulder when the
horse snorted and stamped a hoof at the smell of the woodsmoke curling out
from the upper limbs of the shelter tree.
"I want to know what vile thing you did to that poor woman to make her
tell you about Denna."
"The Mord-Sith told me in return for a favor."
Frowning his incredulity, he turned to her once more. "What favor could
you possibly do for a MordSith?"
"I cut her throat."
Richard closed his eyes as his head sank with grief for this unknown
woman who had died because of him. He clenched her weapon in his fist to his
heart.
His voice lost its fire. "1 don't suppose you know her name?"
It was this, his empathy for others, even others he didn't know, that
not only made him the man he was, but shackled him. His concern for others
would also be the thing that eventually brought him to understand the virtue
in what she was doing. He, too, would then willingly work for the righteous
cause of the Order.
"I do." Nicci said. "Hania."
"Hania." He looked heartsick. "I didn't even know her."
"Richard." With a finger under his chin, Nicci gently brought his face
up. "I want you to know that I did not torture her. I found her being
tortured. I was not happy about what I saw. I killed the man who did it.
Hania was beyond any help. I offered her release from her pain, a quick end,
if she would tell me about you. I never asked her to betray you in any way
that the Order would want. I asked only
about your past, about your first captivity. I wanted to understand
what you said that first day at the Palace of the Prophets, that's all."
Richard didn't look relieved, as she had intended.
"You withheld that quick release, as you call it, until she had given
you what you wanted. That makes you a party to her torture."
In the gloom, Nicci looked away in pain and anguish at the memory of
that bloody deed. It had long since lost its ability to make her feel
anything more than a ghost of emotions.
There were so many needing release from their suffering-so many old and
sick, so many wailing children, so many destitute and hopeless and poor.
This woman had merely been another of life's victims needing release. It was
for the best.
Nicci had renounced the Creator in order to do His work, and sworn her
soul to the Keeper of the underworld. She had to; only one as evil as she
would fail to feel any fitting feelings, any proper compassion, for all the
suffering and desperate need. It was grim irony-faithfully serving the needy
in such a way.
"Perhaps you see it that way, Richard," Nicci said in a hoarse voice as
she stared into the numb nightmare of memories. "I did not. Neither did
Hania. Before I cut her throat for her, she thanked me for what I was about
to do."
Richard's eyes offered no mercy. "And why did you make her tell you
about me-about Denna?"
Nicci snagged her cloak tighter on her shoulders. "Isn't it obvious?"
"You couldn't possibly make the same mistake Denna made. You aren't the
woman she was, Nicci."
She was tired. The first night, he had not slept, she knew. She had
felt his eyes on her back. She knew how much he hurt. Turned away from him,
she had wept silently at the hate his eyes held, at the burden of being the
one to have to do what was best. The world was such an evil place.
"Perhaps, Richard," she said in a soft voice, "you will someday teach
me the difference."
She was so very tired. The night before, when he had succumbed to his
weariness, and turned away from her to sleep, Nicci had in turn stayed awake
all night, watching him in his sound sleep as she felt the connection of
magic to the Mother Confessor. The connection brought Nicci great empathy
for her, as well.
It was all for the best.
"For now," Nicci said, "let's get inside out of this foul weather. I'm
cold and I'm hungry. We need to get some rest, too. And as I've told you, we
have things to discuss, first."
She couldn't lie to him, she knew. She couldn't tell him everything, of
course, but she dared not lie to him in the things she did tell him.
The dance had begun.
Richard broke up the sausage Nicci gave him from her saddlebag and
tossed it in the pot with the simmering rice. The things she had told him
kept shouting in his mind as he tried to fit them into their proper order.
He didn't know how much of what she had said he dared to believe. He
feared it was all true. Nicci just didn't seem to need to lie to him-at
least not about what she had told him so far. She didn't seem as . . .
hostile, as he thought she would have to be. If anything, she seemed
melancholy, perhaps because of what she had done-although, he had trouble
believing that a confessed Sister of the Dark would suffer a guilty
conscience. It was probably just some bizarre part of her act, some artifice
directed toward her ends.
He stirred the pot of rice with a stick he'd peeled the bark off of.
"You said there were things to discuss." He rapped the stick clean on the
edge of the pot. "I assume that means there are orders you wish to issue."
Nicci blinked, as if he'd caught her thinking about something else. She
looked out of place, sitting prim and straight in a wayward pine, dressed as
she was in her fine black dress. Richard would never before have ever
thought of Nicci out-of-doors, much less sitting on the ground. The very
idea had always seemed ludicrous to him. Her dress constantly made him think
of Kahlan, not only because of it being so completely opposite that it
evoked the comparison, but also because he so vividly recalled Nicci
connected to Kahlan by that awful rope of magic.
That memory twisted him in agony.
"Orders?" Nicci folded her hands in her lap and met his gaze. "Oh, yes,
I have a few requests I wish you to honor. First, you may not use your gift.
Not at all. Not in any way. Is that clear? Since, as I recall, you have no
love of the gift, this should be neither a burden nor a difficult request
for you to follow, especially because there is something you do love which
would not survive such a betrayal. Do you understand?"
Her cold blue eyes conveyed the threat perhaps even better than her
words. Richard gave her a single nod, committing himself to what, exactly,
he wasn't entirely sure at the moment.
He poured her steaming dinner in a shallow wooden bowl and handed it to
her along with a spoon. Nicci smiled her thanks. He set the pot on the
ground between his legs and took a spoonful of rice, blowing on it until it
was cool enough to eat. He watched her from the corner of his eye as she
took a dainty taste.
Beyond her physical perfection, Nicci had a singularly expressive face.
She seemed to go cold and blank when she was unhappy, or when she meant to
convey anger, threat, or displeasure. She didn't really scowl the way other
people did when
they felt those emotions; rather, a look of cool detachment descended
on her. That look was, in its own way, far more disturbing. It was her
impenetrable armor.
On the other hand, she was expressively animated when she was pleased
or thankful. Even more than that, though, such pleasure or gratitude
appeared genuine. He remembered her as aloof, and while she still possessed
a noble bearing, to some extent her air of reticence had lifted to reveal an
innocent delight in any kindness, or even simple courtesy.
Richard still had bread Cara had baked for him. He hated sharing that
bread with this evil woman, but it now seemed a childish consideration. He
tore off a piece and offered it to Nicci. She took it with the reverence due
something greater than mere bread.
"I also expect you to keep no secrets from me," she said after another
bite. "You would not like me to discover you were doing so. Husbands and
wives have no need for secrets."
Richard supposed not, but they were hardly husband and wife. Rather
than say so, he said instead, "You seem to know a lot about how husbands and
wives behave."
Rather than rising to his bait, she gestured with her bread at her
bowl. "This is very good, Richard. Very good indeed."
"What is it you want, Nicci? What is the purpose of this absurd
pretense?"
The firelight played across her alabaster face, and lent her hair a
torrid color it didn't in reality possess. "I took you because I need an
answer which I believe you will provide."
Richard broke a stout branch in two across his knee. "You said husbands
and wives have no need for secrets." He used half the branch to push the
burning wood together before placing the branch atop the fire. "Then aren't
wives, too, supposed to be honest?"
"Of course." Her hand with the bread lowered. She rested her wrist over
her knee. "I will be honest with you, too, Richard."
"Then what's the question? You said you took me because you need an
answer you think I can provide. What's the question?"
Nicci stared oft again. once more looking anything but the grim captor.
She looked as if memories, or perhaps fears, haunted her. It was somehow
more unsettling than the sneer of an armed guard outside of the bars of his
cage.
The rain outside had increased to a dull roar. They'd made camp just in
time. Richard couldn't help but remember the cozy times he'd had in wayward
pines huddled beside Kahlan. At the thought of Kahlan, his heart sank.
"I don't know," Nicci finally said. "I honestly don't, Richard. I seek
something, but I will only know it when I find it. After nearly all my one
hundred and eightyone years without knowing it existed, I finally saw the
first hint of it not long ago . . . ." She seemed to be looking through him
again, to some point beyond. Her voice, too, seemed to be addressed to that
distant place her vision beheld. "That was when you stood in a collar before
all those Sisters, and defied them. Perhaps I will find the answer when I
understand what it was I saw that day, in that room. It was not just you,
but you were its center . . . ."
Her eyes focused once more on his face. She spoke with gentle
assurance. "Until then, you will live. I have no intention of harming you.
You need fear no torture from me. I'm not like them-that woman, Derma, or
like the Sisters of the Light, using you for their games."
"Don't patronize me. You are using me for your own game, no less than
they used me for theirs."
She shook her head. "I want you to know, Richard, that I have nothing
but respect for you. I probably have more respect for you than any person
you have ever met. That's why I took you. You are a rare person, Richard."
"I'm a war wizard. You've just never seen one of those before."
She spurned the notion with a dismissive flick of her hand. "Please
don't try to impress me with your `power.' I'm not in the mood for such
silliness."
Richard knew it was no idle boast on her part. She was a sorceress of
remarkable ability. He doubted he had any hope of outsmarting her knowledge
of magic.
She was not acting the way he had expected a Sister of the Dark would
act, though. Richard put his anger, hurt, and heartache aside for the
moment, knowing he had to face what was, rather than putting his hope in
wishes, and spoke to Nicci in the same gentle fashion she used with him.
"I don't understand what it is you want of me, Nicci."
She shrugged in an involuntary gesture of frustration. "Neither do I.
Until I do, you will do as I ask and everything will be fine. I will not
harm you."
"Considering the circumstances, do you really expect me to take your
word?"
"I'm telling you the truth, Richard. If you were to twist your ankle, I
would, like a good wife, put my shoulder under your arm and help you to
walk. From now on, I am devoted to you, and you to me."
He could only blink at how crazy this was. He almost thought she might
be mad. Almost. He knew that would be too easy an answer. As Zedd always
said, nothing was ever easy.
"And if I choose not to go along with your wishes?"
Again, she shrugged. "Then Kahlan dies."
"I understand that, but if she dies, then you lose the collar around my
heart."
She fixed him with cold blue eyes. "Your point?"
"Then you couldn't get what you wanted from me. You would have no
leverage."
"I don't have what I want now, so I would be losing nothing. Besides,
if you were to do that, then Emperor Jagang would welcome your head as a
gift. I would no doubt be showered with gifts and riches."
Richard didn't think Nicci wanted gifts or riches showered on her. She
was a Sister of the Dark, after all, and he supposed she could manage to be
so showered if she really wished it.
Even so, he was sure his head would have a price, and she could salvage
that much out of it if he proved ungovernable. She might not care for gifts
and riches, but if there was one thing she did want, it had to be power. He
was pretty sure she could gain a good measure of that, should she slay the
enemy of the Imperial Order.
He bent over the pot between his legs and went back to his dinner, and
his dark thoughts. Talking to her was useless. They just went around in
circles.
"Richard," she said in a quiet tone, drawing his eyes to her gaze, "you
think I'm doing this to hurt you, or to defeat you because you are the enemy
of the Order. I am not. I told you my true reasons."
"So, when you finally find this answer you seek, in return for my
`help,' then you will let me go?" It was not really meant as a question, but
as trenchant incrimination.
"Go?" She stared down into her bowl of rice and sausage, stirring it
around as if it might reveal a secret. She looked up. "No, Richard, then I
will kill you."
"I see." He hardly thought that was a way to encourage his cooperation
in her search, but he didn't say so. "And Kahlan'? After you kill me, I
mean."
"You have my word that if I decide I must kill you, as long as I live,
she will, too. I have no ill will toward her."
He tried to find solace in that much of it. For some reason, he
believed Nicci. Knowing that Kahlan would be all right gave him courage. He
could endure what was to happen to him, if only she would be all right. It
was a price he was willing to pay.
"So, `wife,' where are we going? Where is it you're taking me?"
Nicci didn't look at him but instead used her bread to sop up some of
her dinner. She considered his question as she nibbled.
"Who are you fighting, Richard? Who is your enemy?" She took another
small bite of her bread.
"Jagang. Jagang and his Imperial Order."
Like an instructor correcting him, Nicci slowly shook her head. "No.
You are wrong. I think perhaps you are in need of answers, too."
Games. She was playing foolish games with him. Richard ground his
teeth, but held his temper in check.
"Then who, Nicci? Who, or what, am I fighting if it is not Jagang."
"That is what I hope to show you." She watched his eyes in a way he
found unsettling. "I am going to take you to the Old World, to the heart of
the Order, to show you what you are fighting-the taste nature of what you
believe to be your enemy."
Richard frowned. "Why'?"
Nicci smiled. "Let's just say it amuses me."
"You mean we're going back to Tanimura? Back to where you lived all
that time as a Sister?"
"No. We are going to the heart and soul of the Old World: Altur'Rang.
Jagang's homeland. The name means, roughly, `the Creator's chosen.' "
Richard felt a chill run up his spine. "You expect to take me, Richard
Rahl, there, into the heart of enemy territory? I hardly doubt we will be
living as `husband and wife' for long."
"Besides not using your magic, you will not use the name associated
with that magic-Rahl-but instead the name you grew up with: Richard Cypher.
Without your magic, or your name, no one will know you are anyone but a
humble man with his wife. That is exactly what you shall be-what we both
shall be."
Richard sighed. "Well, if the enemy should find I'm more, I guess a
Sister of the Dark can . . . exert her influence."
"No, I can't."
Richard's eyes turned up. "What do you mean?"
"I can't use my power."
Gooseflesh prickled his arms. "What?"
"It's devoted to the link with Kahlan, to keeping her alive. That is
how a maternity spell works. It requires a prodigious amount of power to
even establish such a complex spell, much less maintain it. My power must be
invested into the labor of preserving the living link. A maternity spell
leaves nothing to spare; l doubt I could make a spark.
"If we have any trouble, you will have to handle it. Of course, I can
at any time
call upon my ability as a sorceress, but to do so I would have to draw
the power from our link. If I do that without her near . . . Kahlan dies."
Alarm raced through him. "But what if you accidentally
"I won't. As long as you take good care of me, Kahlan will be safe
enough. If, however, I should fall off my horse and break my neck, her neck
snaps, too. As long as you take good care of me, you are taking good care of
her. This is why it's important that we live as husband and wife-so that you
can be close at hand, and so that I can guide and help you, too. It will be
a difficult life with both of us living without our power, just as any other
married couple, but 1 believe this to be necessary if I am to find what I
seek from you. Do you understand?"
He wasn't sure he really did, but he said "Yes," anyway.
Numb dismay swamped him. He would never have believed this woman would
have willingly given up her power for some unspecified knowledge. The very
idea of it unleashed cold panic through his veins.
Richard couldn't make sense of it. With his mind groping blindly in a
world gone insane, he spoke without even considering his words.
"I'm already married. I'll not sleep with you as your husband."
Nicci blinked in surprise, then let out a dainty titter, covering it
with the back of her hand, not in shyness, but at his presumption. Richard
felt his ears heating.
"That is not the way in which I want you, Richard."
Richard cleared his throat. "Good."
In the quiet of the wayward pine, with the rain outside falling in a
gentle patter and the glowing checkered wood hissing softly, Nicci's
focused, intense, resolute expression turned very cold and very still.
"But if I should decide I do, Richard, you will comply with that, too."
Nicci was a beautiful woman, the kind of woman most any man would
eagerly accept. It was hardly that, though, that made him believe her. It
was the look in her eyes. Never had the vague possibility of the act of sex
seemed so vicious.
Her voice lost the conversational quality. It went on in a lifeless
drone, a thing not human, pronouncing a sentence on his life. A sentence he
himself would enforce, or Kahlan would die.
"You will act as my husband. You will provide for us as any husband
would. You will care for me, and I for you, in the sense of worldly needs. I
will mend your shirts and cook your meals and wash your clothes. You will
provide us with a living."
Nicci's leaden words slammed into him with the deliberate methodical
force of a beating delivered with an iron bar.
"You will never see Kahlan again-you must understand that-but as long
as you do as I wish, you will know she lives. In that way you will be able
to show your love for her. Every day she wakes, she will know you are
keeping her alive. You have no other way to show her your love."
He felt sick to his stomach. He stared off into memories of another
place and time.
"And if I choose to end it?" The weight of such madness was so crushing
that he earnestly considered it. "Rather than be your slave?"
"Then perhaps that is the form the knowledge I seek will take. Maybe
that senseless end will be what I must learn." She brought her first and
second fingers together in a snipping motion, simulating the cutting of the
umbilical cord of magic that sustained Kahlan's life. "One last evil
convulsion to finally confirm the senselessness of existence."
It dawned on Richard that this woman could not be threatened, because
she was a creature who, he was beginning to understand, welcomed any
terrible outcome.
"Of all there is to me in this world," he whispered in dim agony, more
to himself and to Kahlan than to his implacable captor, "there is only one
thing that is irreplaceable: Kahlan. If I must be a slave in order for
Kahlan to live, then I shall be a slave."
Richard realized Nicci was silently studying his face. He met her gaze
briefly, then looked away, unable to bear the terrible scrutiny of her
beautiful blue eyes while he held the image of Kahlan's love in his mind.
"Whatever you shared with her, whatever happiness, joy, or pleasure,
will always be yours, Richard." Nicci seemed almost to be peering inside
him, reading the pages of his past written in his mind. "Treasure those
memories. They will have to sustain you. You will never see her again, nor
she you. That chapter of your life is ended. You both have new lives, now.
You may as well get used to it because that is the reality of the
situation."
The reality of what was. Not the world as he would wish it. He himself
had told Kahlan that they must act according to the reality of what was, and
not waste their precious lives wishing for things that could not be.
Richard ran his fingertips across his forehead as he tried to hold his
voice steady. "I hope you don't expect me to learn to be pleased with you."
"I am the one, Richard, who expects to learn."
Fists at his side, Richard shot to his feet. "And what is it you wish
this knowledge for?" he demanded in unrestrained, violent bitterness. "Why
is it so important to you!"
"As punishment."
Richard stared in stunned disbelief. "What?"
"I wish to hurt, Richard." She smiled distantly.
Richard sank back to the ground.
"Why?" he whispered.
Nicci folded her hands in her lap. "Pain, Richard, is all that can
reach that cold dead thing within me that is my life. Pain is the only thing
for which I live."
He stared numbly at her. He thought about his vision. There was nothing
he could do to fight the advance of the Imperial Order. He could think of
nothing he could do to fight his fate with this woman.
If not for Kahlan, he would, at that moment, have thrown himself into a
battle with Nicci that would have decided it once and for all. He would have
willingly gone to his death fighting this cruel insanity. Except his reason
denied him that.
He had to live so that Kahlan would live. For that, and that alone, he
had to put one foot in front of the other and march into oblivion.
Kahlan yawned as she rubbed her eyes. Squinting, she arched her back
and stretched her sore muscles. The terrible desperate memories swooped in
from the sleep-darkened corners of her mind, leaving little chance for any
other thoughts to long survive.
She was beyond the realm of merciless anguish and crying; she had
entered the sovereign dominion of unbridled anger.
Her fingers found the cold steel scabbard of his sword lying at her
side. It felt alive with icy rage. That, the carving of Spirit, and her
memories were about all she had of him.
There wasn't a lot of firewood, but since they wouldn't be needing much
more anyway, Kahlan put another stick of what was left into the fire. She
squatted, holding her hands close over the top of the feeble flames, hoping
to bring feeling to her numb fingers. The wind shifted a little. Pungent
smoke billowed up into her face, making her cough. The smoke rolled past her
face and followed the rock overhang up and out from their shelter.
Cara was gone, so Kahlan pushed the little pot of water back onto the
fire to warn it for tea for when the Mord-Sith returned. Cara was probably
visiting their makeshift privy. Or maybe she was checking the traps they'd
set the night before for rabbits. Kahlan didn't hold out any real hope that
they would catch a rabbit for their breakfast. Not in this weather. They had
brought enough provisions, in any event.
Through slits in the clouds, the crimson light of a cold crisp dawn
penetrated gaps in the snowcrusted limbs of trees to slant in under the rock
overhang, casting everything in their little campsite in a blush glow. The
two of them had tried without avail to find a wayward pine. The screen of
trees, along with a short wall of boughs she and Cara had cut and placed the
night before to protect them from the wind, as Richard had taught them to
do, shielded the secluded spot. With their improvements it had proven a fit
shelter. They had been lucky to find it in the driving snow. Outside, the
snow was fairly deep, but in the shelter they had had a relatively dry, if
cold, night. Kahlan and Cara had huddled together under blankets and their
thick wolf fur mantles to keep each other warm.
Kahlan wondered where Richard was, and if he was cold, too. She hoped
not. Probably, since he had started out a few days sooner, he had been lucky
and had made it down to the lowlands already, avoiding the snow.
Cara and Kahlan had stayed in their home, as he had asked, for three
days. Snow had arrived the morning after he'd left. Kahlan had been tempted
to wait for a break in the weather before they started out, but she had
learned a bitter lesson from Sister
Nicci: don't wait, act. When Richard didn't return, Kahlan and Cara had
immediately struck out.
It was hard going at first. They struggled through the drifts, leading
the horses at times, riding them occasionally. They couldn't see very far,
and most of the time had to keep the wind from the west at their right
shoulder as their only clue as to which direction they faced. It was
dangerous traveling over the passes in such conditions. For a time, they
feared that they had made a terrible mistake leaving the safety of their
house.
Through a break in the clouds just before dark the night before, as
they were gathering boughs for their shelter, they'd caught a glimpse of the
lower hills; they were green and brown, not white. They would be below the
snow line before long. Kahlan was confident that they were through the worst
of it.
As she stuffed an arm into a sleeve, pulling another shirt on over the
top of the two she was wearing, Kahlan heard the crunch of snow underfoot.
When she realized it was more than one pair of footsteps, she stood up in a
rush.
Cara pushed her way through the boughs of the sheltering trees. "We
have company," she announced in a grim voice. Kahlan saw that Cara's fist
held her Agiel.
A bundled up squat woman came through the trees, following in Cara's
footsteps. Under layers of cloaks, scarves, and other dangling corners of
thick cloth, Kahlan was surprised to recognize Ann, the old Prelate of the
Sisters of the Light.
Behind Ann came a taller woman, her scarves pushed back to reveal
graying brown hair loose to her shoulders. She had an intense, steady,
calculating gaze that had earned her an enduring network of fine wrinkles
radiating out from the corners of her deep-set eyes. Her brow was less
steady, twitching down several times toward her prominent nose. She looked
like a woman who used a switch to teach children.
"Kahlan!" Ann rushed forward, seizing Kahlan's arms. "Oh, my dear, it's
so good to see you!" She looked back when Kahlan glanced up behind her.
"This is one of my Sisters, Alessandra. Alessandra, may I introduce the
Mother Confessorand Richard's wife."
The woman stepped forward and smiled. The pleasant grin completely
altered her face, instantly erasing the severity of it with open good
nature. It was a somewhat disorienting transformation, making her seem like
two different people sharing one face. Or, Kahlan thought, perhaps one
person with two faces.
"Mother Confessor, it's so good to meet you. Ann has told me all about
you, and what a wonderful person you are." Her eyes took in the campsite
with a quick glance. "I'm so happy for you and Richard."
Ann's eyes turned left and right, searching. Her gaze snagged on the
sword.
"Where's Richard? Cara wouldn't say a word." She looked up into
Kahlan's eyes. "Dear Creator," she whispered. "What's wrong? What's
happened? Where's Richard?"
Kahlan finally managed to unclench her teeth. "One of your Sisters took
him."
Ann pushed her scarves back off her gray hair and took ahold of
Kahlan's arm again. The top of Ann's head came up only to Kahlan's chest,