When Nicci broke the kiss on his cheek the world inside the stables swirled back in around him, and yet it seemed more intense than it had before, the sights and smells more vibrant than he remembered. It was quiet but for the hiss of a nearby lamp and the soft neigh of one of the horses. Richard's hands trembled with the lingering sensation of her kiss.
He didn't know if what Nicci had done had lasted for a second or an hour. It was magic completely unlike any Richard had ever felt before. It left him so breathless that he had to remind himself to breath again.
He blinked at her. "What… what did you do?"
The slightest smile blossomed in the curve of her lips and in her blindingly blue eyes. "I touched you with a small trace of my magic so that I can find you. I recognize my power. I will be able to follow it to you. Fear not, the effect will last long enough for me to be able to find you."
"I think you did more, Nicci."
Her smile ghosted away. Her brow tightened with her concern. It took her a moment to find the words. At last she peered at him with an intensity that told him that it was important to her that he understand.
"Always before, Richard, I have hurt you with magic—when I took you away; when I held you prisoner; even when I healed you. It was always hurtful or painful. Forgive me, but I wanted, just once, to give you a touch of magic that would not leave you being hurt by me, or hating me."
Her gaze sank away from his. "I wanted you to have a better memory of me than of those times before when I touched you with the pain of magic. I wanted, just once, to give you a small trace of something pleasant, instead."
He could not begin to imagine what any more than a "small trace" would have been like.
He lifted her chin, making her look up into his eyes. "I don't hate you, Nicci. You know that. And I know that the times when you healed me you were giving me my life. That was what counted."
Finally, he was the one who had to look away from her blue eyes. It occurred to him that Nicci was probably the most beautiful woman he had ever met.
Other than Kahlan.
"Thank you, though," he managed, still feeling the lingering affects of the sensation.
She gently clutched his arm. "You did a good thing, tonight, Richard. I thought some pleasant magic would give you back some of your strength."
"I've seen a lot of people suffer and die. I couldn't stand the thought of the little girl dying, too."
"I meant in saving Cara's life."
"Oh. Well, I couldn't stand the thought of the big girl dying, either."
Nicci smiled at that.
He gestured to the horses. "I need to get going."
She nodded and he moved off to collect the horses and check their gear. Nicci went to open the stable door. After she did, Cara came back in to get her horse.
Dawn was still a couple of hours off. Richard realized that he was terribly tired, especially after the emotional strain of having used his sword, but he did feel better after what Nicci had just done. He knew, though, that they wouldn't be getting much sleep for a quite a while. They had a very long way to travel and he fully intended to do it as swiftly as possible. By taking fresh horses with them they would be able to ride hard, change mounts, and then continue to ride just as hard in order to make good time. He intended to ride more than hard.
Nicci held his horse's bit as he stuffed his boot into the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. The horse flicked her tail and danced about, eager to be out of the stable even if it was still night. Richard patted her shoulder to settle her down; she would have plenty of time to show him her spirit.
Cara, once in her saddle, turned to frown at him. "By the way, Lord Rahl, where is it we're traveling to in such a hurry?"
"I need to go see Shota."
"Shota!" Cara's jaw dropped. "We're going to see the witch woman? Are you out of your mind?"
Nicci, suddenly mortified, rushed to his side. "Going to the witch woman is madness—to say nothing of the Imperial Order troops all along the way back up through the New World. You can't do this."
"I have to. I think that Shota may be able to help me find Kahlan."
"Richard, she's a witch woman!" Nicci was beside herself. "She's not going to help you!"
"She's helped me before. She gave Kahlan and me a wedding gift. I think she may remember it."
"A wedding gift?" Cara asked. "Are you crazy? Shota would just as soon kill you as not."
There was more truth in that than Cara knew. His relation with Shota had always been an uneasy one.
Nicci put a hand on his leg. "What wedding gift? What are you talking about?"
"Shota wanted Kahlan to die because she feared that together we would conceive what Shota believed would be a monster child: a gifted Confessor. At our wedding, as a truce, she gave Kahlan a necklace with a small dark stone. It's magic of some sort that prevents Kahlan from getting pregnant. Kahlan and I decided that for the time being, with all that's going on and all that we have to worry about, we would accept Shota's truce."
There had been a time, when the chimes had been loosed, that magic of every sort had failed. For a while they hadn't known about the chimes, and that the necklace's magic had failed. It was then that Kahlan had conceived a child. The men who beat her that terrible night had ended that.
It was also possible that because of that brief failure of magic, the nature of the world had undergone a fundamental, irrevocable change that would eventually lead to the end of all magic. Kahlan certainly believed that it was happening. There had been a number of strange events that were otherwise inexplicable. Zedd had called it the cascade effect. He said that once begun such a thing could not be stopped. Richard didn't know if it was true that magic was failing or not.
"Shota will remember the necklace she gave Kahlan. She will remember her magic, just as you will remember yours so that you will be able to find me. If anyone will remember Kahlan, Shota will. I've had my disagreements with the witch woman, but in the past I've also inadvertently helped her as well. She owes me. She will help me. She has to."
Nicci threw her hands up. "Of course such a thing has to be a necklace that Kahlan would wear, and not something that you would have. Don't you see what you're doing? Once again your mind has invented something that conveniently can't be proven. Everything you come up with is somewhere else or something we can't see. This necklace is just more of your dream." Nicci pressed a hand to her forehead. "Richard, this witch woman is not going to remember Kahlan because Kahlan doesn't exist."
"Shota can help me. I know she can. I know she will. I can't think of any better opportunity to get answers. Time is slipping away. The longer Kahlan is with whoever has her, the greater the danger to her life and the less my chance of helping get her back. I have to go to Shota."
"And what if you're wrong?" Nicci demanded. "What if this witch woman refuses to help you?"
"I will do whatever it takes to make her help me."
"Richard, please, put this off for at least a day or two. We can talk it through. Let me help you properly consider your options."
Richard pulled the reins around, letting his horse and the ones tethered to it start toward the door. "Going to Shota is my best chance of getting answers. I'm going."
Richard ducked under the big doorway as they rode out into the night. Out across the expanse of grounds the cicadas droned on.
He pulled his horse around to see Nicci standing in the doorway, lit from behind by the lanternlight. "You be careful," he told her. "If not for yourself, then for me."
That, at least, made her smile. She shook her head in resignation. "By your command, Lord Rahl."
He waved his farewell to Victor and Ishaq.
"Safe journey," Ishaq said as he removed his hat.
Victor saluted with a fist over his heart. "Come back to us when you can, Richard."
Richard promised them he would.
As they started down the road, Cara shook her head. "I don't know why you bothered going to all the trouble to save my lif
e. We're going to die, you know."
"I thought you were coming with me to prevent that from happening."
"Lord Rahl, I don't know if I can protect you against a witch woman. I've never faced their power, nor have I heard of any Mord-Sith who has. A Confessor's power used to be deadly to Mord-Sith; it could be that witch woman's power is just as fatal. I will do my best, but I just think you should know that I might not be able to protect you from a witch woman."
"Oh, I'd not worry about it, Cara." Richard said as he squeezed his legs and shifted his weight, urging his horse into a canter. "If I know Shota, she won't let you get anywhere near her, anyway."
CHAPTER 25
As she marched down the side of a wide thoroughfare leading a small knot of men, Nicci thought that in a way it seemed like the sun had gone out since Richard had left. She missed just being able to look into his eyes, at the spark of life in them. For two days she had tirelessly gone about the urgent preparations for the imminent attack, but, without Richard around, life seemed empty, less bright, less… less of everything.
At the same time, when he had been around, his single-minded determination to find his imagined love had been draining. In fact, she had sometimes wanted to strangle him. She had tried everything from patience to anger in an attempt to get him to come around to seeing the truth, but it had been like trying to push against a mountain. In the end, nothing she'd done or said had made any difference.
For his own sake she earnestly wanted to help him to come to grips with reality. To do so she had to challenge him in an effort to try to get him to come to his senses before something terrible happened, but at the same time trying to make him see the truth somehow always seemed to cast her as a villain working against him. She hated being in that position.
Nicci hoped that by the time she finished helping to rid Altur'Rang of the threat of the approaching Imperial Order troops and their wizard, Kronos, she could quickly catch up with Richard and Cara. With spare horses and as fast as she knew he would ride, Nicci realized that she would not be able to catch up with him until after he reached the witch woman. If he even made it that far. If Shota didn't kill him once he did.
From what Nicci knew of witches, Richard's chances of coming out of her lair alive were pretty slim. He would have to face the witch woman without Nicci's help and protection. Still, he knew the woman, and she was a woman in every sense, from what Nicci had heard of her, so maybe Richard would at least be civil. It was not at all wise to be impolite to witches.
But even surviving an encounter with a witch woman he would still be devastated if she didn't help him and Nicci knew she couldn't because there was no missing woman for Richard to find. At times it infuriated her that he was so obstinate about something so obviously nothing more than an illusion. At other times she worried that he really was losing his mind. That was too chilling a thought to contemplate.
Nicci paused at the side of the road with a sudden, terrible realization.
The men following her lurched to a halt when she did, bringing her out of her thoughts. They were all with her either to see to her instructions in regard to some of the defenses of the city or else to carry messages as needed. Now they stood silent and uneasy, not knowing why she had stopped.
"Up there," she said to the men, pointing at a three story brick building on the corner across the street. "Make sure that we can use that place to good advantage and put at least a couple dozen archers in the windows. See that they have a large supply of arrows."
"I will go take a look," one of the men said before running off across the road, dodging wagons, horses, and hand-drawn carts.
People rushed along the side of the street passing around Nicci and the men with her as if they were a rock in a swiftly moving river. Passersby spoke in hushed tones among themselves as they coursed between clusters of hawkers calling out trying to sell their goods, or people gathered to urgently discuss the impending battle for the city and what they would do to protect themselves. Wagons of every sort, from big freight wagons pulled by teams of six horses to small wagons pulled by a single horse, sped past in a hurry to complete the stockpiling of provisions or other necessary work while they still could.
Despite the din of horses, wagons, and people, Nicci didn't really hear any of it; she was thinking about the witch woman.
Nicci had suddenly realized that Shota might not simply be unwilling to help Richard, but she might not tell him so. Witch women had their own way of doing things, and their own ends.
If this woman thought Richard was being too insistent or assertive, she very well might decide to get rid of him by sending him on a useless quest to the ends of the world. She very well might do such a thing simply to amuse herself, or to doom him to die a slow death on an endless march across some distant desert. A witch woman might do such a thing just because she could. Richard, in his urgency to find his fantasy woman, wouldn't consider those possibilities. He would promptly head off to where she pointed.
Nicci was furious with herself for letting him leave to go to such a dangerous woman. But what could she do? She couldn't very well forbid him from going.
Her only chance was to get rid of Brother Kronos and his troops as swiftly as possible and then go after Richard and do what she could to protect him.
She spotted the man she had sent to check the brick building sidestepping his way between the wagons and horses as he ran back across the road. Nicci noticed that even with all the people out traveling the roads of the city, it was still much less busy than an ordinary day. People everywhere were making preparations; some had already holed up in places where they thought they might be safe. Nicci had been with the Order when they swept into a city; there was no safe place.
The man dodged his way around an empty wagon bouncing past and at last reached Nicci's side. He stood silently waiting. He was afraid to speak until she requested his report. He was afraid of her. Everyone was afraid of her. She wasn't just a sorceress; she was a sorceress in a bad mood and they all knew it.
No one understood why she seemed so ill-tempered, but for two days everyone had walked on egg shells when they were around her. It had nothing to do with them, and not even anything to do with Richard racing off on his mad search for a woman who didn't exist, but none of them knew that. Nicci was mentally immersed in preparing herself for the ferocity of the violence to come, rehearsing in her mind the various things she might need to do, and hardening herself to it all.
When on the brink of unleashing almost inconceivable savagery, one did not hum a merry tune and remark on the lovely day. One nursed dark thoughts.
Nicci never bothered to try to explain her mood; going through the effort of doing so would drain some of her store of energy. Preparing in her mind to gather every bit of skill, knowledge, wisdom, and power she had at her disposal required a certain kind of withdrawal. There were violent and deadly forces these people could never begin to comprehend that she had to be ready to unleash in an instant. She couldn't explain all of that to everyone. They would just have to deal with it.
"Well?" she calmly asked the man as he stood silently catching his breath.
"It will work," he said. "They do knitting and make cloth there. All three floors are pretty open so archers will be able to quickly and easily move from window to window to get the best shot."
Nicci nodded. She put a hand to her brow to shield her eyes from the low sun as she looked back to the west along the wide boulevard. She studied the layout of the roads and the angles at which they crossed. She finally decided that the crossroads where they stood, with the brick building across the way, was the best spot. With as wide as both thoroughfares were, these roads would likely be the choice of enemy cavalry in the eastern part of the city. She knew the way the Order ran their attacks. They liked width so as to present the strongest front, the most powerful blow in order to break the enemy apart. She was pretty sure that they would send cavalry in this way if they came in from the east, as she expected.
As he ran to see to it, Nicci spotted Ishaq in the distance racing up the road in a wagon pulled by two of his big draft horses. He looked to be in a hurry. She had a good idea why he was coming for her, but she tried not to think about it. She turned to another of the men with her.
"Back there, just after the brick building where we will station the archers, I want spikes placed. The span of the road is hemmed in by buildings on both sides." She gestured to the road that crossed the main thoroughfare before the brick building. "Down the street to each side as well, so that if the remaining men charging in try to take either route to escape they will get the same."
Once the enemy charged up the main route into Altur'Rang, they would abruptly pull up the spikes to impale them. The archers would then pick off all the those caught in the bottleneck between the spikes and the men still rushing up from the rear.
The man nodded and ran off to see to her orders. She had already instructed everyone on the spikes. Victor had his blacksmith shop and a number of others working feverishly to manufacture the simple but deadly traps. They were little more than sharpened iron bar stock that was all connected together, almost like a picket fence, but with different length chain between the top crossbar and the upper portion of the spikes.
Sections of these linked spikes were laid in the roads all over the city. Lying down flat they didn't prevent travel on the road, but when cavalry charged in the pointed ends of the entire section were lifted and an iron brace was jammed in place. The different length of chains attaching the spikes to the crossbar allowed the deadly spikes to hang at varying distances from the crossbar, thus making them stick up at different angles. Making them stick up at uneven angles allowed them to be far more treacherous than a simple straight line of spikes. If it was done properly, the enemy cavalry would unexpectedly run their horses right onto the sharp iron tips. Even if they tried to jump them the horses would more likely than not be ripped open. It was simple but highly effective.
[Sword of Truth 9] - Chainfire Page 28