“Who?” Cara asked.
“Richard Cypher. He’s a woods guide where I live, in Hartland, that’s in Westland, where we live. ”
“What do you mean, you’re to wed him?” Kahlan finally managed in a whisper. She felt her world threatening to crush in around her as a thousand things all at once whirled chaotically in her mind. “Did he tell you that?”
Nadine twisted her damp kerchief. “Well, he was courting me . . . it was understood . . . but then he disappeared. A woman came and told me that we’re to be married. She said that the sky had spoken to her—she was a mystic of some sort. She knew all about my Richard, how kind and strong and handsome he is and all. She knew all manner of things about me, too. She said that it’s my destiny to marry Richard and Richard’s destiny to be my husband.”
“Woman?” Kahlan could get out no more than that one word.
Nadine nodded. “Shota, she said her name was.”
Kahlan’s hands balled into fists. Her voice returned with venom. “Shota. Did this woman, Shota, have anyone with her?”
“Yes. A strange little . . . fellow. With yellow eyes. He kind of scared me, but she said he was harmless. Shota is the one who told me to come see Lord Rahl. She said Lord Rahl could help me find my Richard.”
Kahlan recognized the description of Shota’s companion, Samuel. This woman’s voice, calling Richard, “my Richard,” kept thundering around in the storm in Kahlan’s head. She worked at making her voice sound calm. “Nadine, please wait here.”
“I will,” Nadine said, gathering her composure. “Is everything all right? You believe me, don’t you? Every word is true.”
Kahlan didn’t answer, but instead pulled her stunned stare from Nadine and marched from the room. Cara closed the door as she followed on Kahlan’s heels.
Kahlan staggered to a halt in the outer room, everything swimming in a watery red blur.
“Mother Confessor,” Cara whispered, “what’s wrong? Your face is as red as my leather. Who is this Shota?”
“Shota is a witch woman.”
Cara stiffened at that news. “And do you know this Richard Cypher?”
Kahlan twice swallowed past the painful lump in the back of her throat. “Richard was raised by his stepfather. Until Richard found out that Darken Rahl was his real father, his name was Richard Cypher.”
Chapter 5
“I’ll kill her,” Kahlan rasped in a hoarse voice as she stared off at nothing. “With my bare hands. I’ll strangle the life out of her!”
Cara turned toward the bedroom. “I will take care of it. Better if you let me take care of her.”
Kahlan hooked Cara’s arm. “Not her. I’m talking about Shota.” She gestured toward the bedroom door. “She doesn’t understand any of this. She doesn’t know about Shota.”
“You know this witch woman, then?”
Kahlan bitterly huffed out a breath. “Oh yes, I know her. She’s been trying to prevent Richard and me from being together since the first.”
“Why would she do that?”
Kahlan turned away from the bedroom door. “I don’t know. She gives a different reason every time, but I sometimes fear that it’s because she wants Richard for herself.”
Cara frowned. “How would getting Lord Rahl to marry this little strumpet gain Shota Lord Rahl?”
Kahlan flicked a hand. “I don’t know. Shota is always up to something. She’s caused us trouble at every turn.” Her fists tightened with resolve. “But it won’t work, this time. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to end her meddling. And then Richard and I are going to be married.” Her voice dropped to a whispered oath. “If I have to touch Shota with my power and send her to the underworld, I will end her meddling.”
Cara folded her arms as she considered the problem. “What do you wish done with Nadine?” Her blue eyes turned toward the bedroom. “It still might be best to . . . get rid of her.”
Kahlan squeezed the bridge of her nose between a finger and thumb. “This isn’t Nadine’s doing. She’s simply a pawn in Shota’s plotting.”
“One foot soldier can sometimes cause you more trouble than a general’s battle plan if he . . .”
Cara’s words trailed off as her arms came unfolded. She cocked her head, as if listening to a wind in the halls.
“Lord Rahl is coming.”
The ability of the Mord-Sith to sense Richard through their bond to him was uncanny, if not unnerving. The door opened. Berdine and Raina, wearing leather of the same cut and skintight style as Cara’s, but brown rather than red, strutted into the room.
Both were a bit shorter than Cara, but no less attractive. Where Cara was leggy, muscular, and without a spare ounce of fat, blue-eyed Berdine had a more curvaceous shape. Berdine’s wavy brown hair was plaited in the characteristic long braid of a Mord-Sith, as was graceful Raina’s fine, dark hair. All three shared the same ruthless confidence.
Raina’s incisive, dark-eyed gaze took in Cara’s red leather, but she made no comment. Both she and Berdine wore grim, forbidding expressions. The two Mord-Sith turned to face one another from either side of the door.
“We present Lord Rahl,” Berdine said in an officious tone, “the Seeker of Truth and wielder of the Sword of Truth, the bringer of death, the Master of D’Hara, the ruler of the Midlands, the commander of the gar nation, the champion of free people and bane of the wicked”—her penetrating blue eyes turned to Kahlan—“and the betrothed of the Mother Confessor.” She lifted an introductory arm toward the door.
Kahlan couldn’t imagine what was going on. She had seen the Mord-Sith display a variety of temperaments, from imperious to mischievous, but she had never seen them acting ceremonial.
Richard strode into the room. His raptor gaze locked on Kahlan. For an instant, the world stopped. There was nothing else but the two of them, joined in a silent link.
A smile widened on his lips and gleamed in his eyes. A smile of unbounded love.
There was only her and Richard. Only his eyes.
But the rest of him . . .
She felt her mouth drop open. In astonishment, Kahlan put a hand over her heart. As long as she had known him, he had worn only his simple woods clothes. But now . . .
His black boots were all she recognized. The tops of the boots were wrapped with leather thongs pinned with silver emblems embossed with geometric designs, and covered new, black wool trousers. Over a black shirt was a black, open-sided tunic, decorated with symbols snaking along a wide gold band running all the way around its squared edges. A wide, multilayered leather belt bearing several more of the silver emblems and a gold-worked pouch to each side cinched the magnificent tunic at his waist. The ancient, tooled-bather baldric holding the gold and silver wrought scabbard for the Sword of Truth crossed over his right shoulder. At each wrist was a wide, leather-padded silver band bearing linked rings encompassing more of the strange symbols. His broad shoulders bore a cape that appeared to be made of spun gold. He looked at once noble and sinister. Regal, and deadly. He looked like a commander of kings. And like a vision of what the prophecies had named him: the bringer of death.
Kahlan would never have thought he could look more handsome than he always did. More commanding. More imposing. She was wrong.
As her jaw worked, trying to bring forth words that weren’t there, he crossed the room. He bent and kissed her temple.
“Good,” Cara announced. “She needed that; she had a headache.” She lifted an eyebrow to Kahlan. “All better now?”
Kahlan, hardly able to get her breath, hardly hearing Cara, touched her fingers to him, as if to test it this was a vision, or real.
“Like it?” he asked.
“Like it? Dear spirits . . .” she breathed.
He chuckled. “I’ll take that for a yes.”
Kahlan wished everyone was gone. “But, Richard, what is this? Where did you get all this?”
She couldn’t take her hand from his chest. She liked the feel of his breathing. She could fe
el his heart beating, too. And she could feel her own heart pounding.
“Well,” he said, “I knew you wanted me to get some new clothes—”
She pulled her gaze from his body and looked up into his gray eyes. “What? I never said that.”
He laughed. “Your beautiful green eyes said it for you. When you looked at my old woods outfit, your eyes spoke quite clearly.”
She took a step back and gestured to the new clothes. “Where did you get all this?”
He clasped one of her hands and with the fingers of his other lifted her chin to gaze into her eyes. “You’re so beautiful. You’re going to look magnificent in your blue wedding dress. I wanted to look worthy of the Mother Confessor herself when we’re married. I had it made in a hurry so as not to delay our wedding.”
“He had the seamstresses make it for him. It was a surprise,” Cara said. “I never told her your secret, Lord Rahl. She tried her best to get it out of me, but I didn’t tell her.”
“Thank you, Cara.” Richard laughed. “I bet it wasn’t easy.”
Kahlan laughed with him. “But this is wonderful. Mistress Wellington made all this for you?”
“Well, not all of it. I told her what I wanted, and she and the other seamstresses went to work. I think she did a fine job.”
“I will give her my compliments. If not a hug.” Kahlan tested the cape between a finger and thumb. “She made this? I’ve never seen anything like it. I can’t believe she made this.”
“Well, no,” Richard admitted. “That, and some of the other things came from the Wizard’s Keep.”
“The Keep! What were you doing up there?”
“When I was there before, I came across these rooms where the wizards used to stay. I went back and had a better look at some of the things that belonged to them.”
“When did you do this?”
“A few days ago. When you were busy meeting with some of the officials from our new allies.”
Kahlan’s brow tightened as she appraised the outfit. “The wizards of that time wore this? I thought wizards always wore simple robes.”
“Most of them did. One wore some of this.”
“What kind of wizard wore an outfit like this?”
“A war wizard.”
“A war wizard,” she whispered in astonishment. Though he largely didn’t know how to use his gift, Richard was the first war wizard to have been born in nearly three thousand years.
Kahlan was about to launch into a raft of questions, but remembered that there were more consequential matters at the moment. Her mood sank. “Richard”—she looked away from his eyes—“there is someone here to see you . . .”
She heard the bedroom door squeak.
“Richard?” Nadine, standing in the doorway, expectantly twisted her kerchief in her fingers. “I heard Richard’s voice.”
“Nadine?”
Nadine’s eyes went as big as Sanderian gold crowns. “Richard.”
Richard smiled politely. “Nadine.” His mouth smiled, anyway.
His eyes, though, held no hint of a smile. It was as discordant a look as Kahlan had ever seen on his face. Kahlan had seen Richard angry, she had seen him in the lethal rage from magic of the Sword of Truth, when the magic danced dangerously in his eyes, and she had seen him with the deadly calm countenance invoked when he turned the blade white. In the fury of commitment and determination, Richard was capable of looking frightening.
But no look she had ever seen on his face was as terrifying to Kahlan as the one she saw now.
This wasn’t a deadly rage that gripped his eyes, or a lethal commitment. This was somehow worse. The depth of disinterest in that empty smile, in his eyes, was frightening.
The only way Kahlan could imagine it being worse would be if such a gaze were directed her way. That look, so devoid of fervor, if directed at her, would have broken her heart.
Nadine apparently didn’t know him as well as did Kahlan; she didn’t see anything but the smile on his lips.
“Oh, Richard!”
Nadine dashed across the room and threw her arms around his neck. She seemed ready to throw her legs around Richard too. Kahlan shot an arm out to stop Cara before the Mord-Sith could take more than a step.
Kahlan had to force herself to stand her ground and hold her tongue. Despite everything she and Richard meant to each other, she knew that this was something beyond her say. This was Richard’s past, and as well as she knew him, some of that past—his romantic past, anyway—was largely unknown territory. Up until that moment it had seemed unimportant.
Fearing to say the wrong thing, Kahlan said nothing. Her fate was in Richard’s hands, and those of a beautiful woman who at that moment had hers around his neck—but worse, her fate seemed once again in Shota’s hands.
Nadine began planting kisses all over Richard’s neck even as he tried to hold his head away from her. He placed his hands on her waist and pushed her away.
“Nadine, what are you doing here?”
“Looking for you, silly,” she said in a breathless voice. “Everyone’s been puzzled—worried—since you disappeared last autumn. My father missed you—I’ve missed you. None of us knew what happened to you. Zedd’s missing, too. The boundary came down and then you came up missing, and Zedd, and your brother. I know you were upset when your father was murdered, but we didn’t expect you to run away.” Her words were running together in breathless excitement.
“Well, it’s a long story, and one I’m sure you wouldn’t be interested in.”
True to Richard’s words, she didn’t seem to hear a bit of it, and simply rambled on.
“I had so much to take care of, first. I had to get Lindy Hamilton to promise to get the winter roots for Pa. He’s been beside himself without you to bring him some of the special plants he needs that only you can seem to find. I’ve done my best, but I don’t know the woods like you. He’s hoping Lindy will be able to fill in until I can get you home. Then I had to think what to take, and how to find my way. I’ve been looking so long. I came to speak with somebody named Lord Rahl, hoping he could help me find you. I never in all the world dreamed I’d find you before I even talked to him.”
“I am Lord Rahl.”
This, too, she seemed not to hear. She stepped buck and looked him up and down. “Richard, what are you doing in that outfit? Who are you pretending to be? Get changed. We’ll go home. Everything’s fine, now that I’ve found you. We’ll be back home soon, and everything will be back to the way it was. We’ll be married and—”
“What!”
She blinked. “Married. We’ll be marred, and have a house and everything. You can build us a better one—your old house won’t do. We’ll have children. Lots of children. Sons. Lots of sons. Big and strong like my Richard.” She grinned. “I love you, my Richard. We’re going to be married, at last.”
His smile, as empty as it had been, was gone, and in its place a serious scowl grew. “Where did you ever get an idea like that?”
Nadine laughed as she playfully ran a finger down his front. She finally glanced about. No one else was so much as smiling. Her laughter died out and she sought refuge in Richard’s gaze.
“But, Richard . . . you and me. Like it was always supposed to be. We’ll be married. At last. Like it was always meant to be.”
Cara leaned toward Kahlan to whisper in her ear. “You should have let me kill her.”
Richard’s glare wiped the smirk from the Mord-Sith’s mouth and drained the blood from her face. He turned back to Nadine.
“Where did you get such an idea?”
Nadine was appraising his clothes again. “Richard, you look foolish dressed like this. Sometimes I wonder if you have a lick of sense. What are you doing playing at being a king? And where did you get such a sword? Richard, I know you would never steal, but you don’t have the kind of money such a weapon would cost. If you won it in a bet or something, you can sell it so that we—”
Richard gripped her by the shoulders and
gave her a shake. “Nadine, we were never engaged to be married, or even close. Where did you get a crazy idea like that? What are you doing here!”
Nadine finally wilted under his glower. “Richard, I’ve come a long way. I’ve never been out of Hartland before. It was hard traveling. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Doesn’t that count for anything? I would never have left except to come get you. I love you, Richard.”
Ulic, one of Richard’s two huge personal bodyguards, ducked as he stepped through the doorway. “Lord Rahl, if you are not busy, General Kerson has a problem and needs to speak with you.”
Richard turned a hot glare toward the towering Ulic. “In a minute.”
Ulic, not used to Richard directing such a forbidding look, or tone, his way, bowed. “I will tell him, Lord Rahl.”
Puzzled, Nadine watched the mountain of muscle duck back out the doorway. “Lord Rahl? Richard, what in the name of the good spirits was that man talking about? What trouble have you gotten yourself into? You were always so sensible. What have you done? Why are you tricking these people? Who are you playing at being?”
He seemed to cool a bit and his voice turned weary. “Nadine, it’s a long story, and one I’m not in the mood to repeat just now. I’m afraid I’m not the same person . . . It’s been a long time since I’ve left home. A great many things have happened. I’m sorry you’ve come a long way for nothing, but what was once between us—”
Kahlan expected a sheepish glance her way. She never got one.
Nadine took a step back. She looked around at all the faces watching her: Kahlan, Cara, Berdine, Raina, and the silent hulk of Egan back near the door.
Nadine threw her hands up. “What’s the matter with all you people! Who do you think this man is? He’s Richard Cypher, my Richard! He’s a woods guide—a nobody! He’s just a simple boy from Hartland, playing at being somebody important. He’s not! Are you all blind fools? He’s my Richard, and we’re to be married.”
Cara finally broke the silence. “We all know quite well who this man is. Apparently, you do not. He is Lord Rahl, the Master of D’Hara, and the ruler of what was the Midlands. At least, he is the ruler of those who have so far surrendered to him. Everyone in this room, if not this city, would lay down their lives to protect him. We all owe him more than our loyalty; we owe him our lives.”
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