As he glanced over to see Cara, he still felt the wordless joy of her being alive and well. It lifted his heart just to see her looking back at him. He felt a profound connection to her as a result of the experience of healing her. He felt as if he knew the woman beneath the armor of Mord-Sith a little better.
Now he needed to help Kahlan, to see her alive and well.
Two of the horses were already saddled and waiting, with the supplies loaded on the others. Ishaq had always been as good as his word. Richard ran his hand along the flanks of the bigger bay mare as he entered her stall, feeling her muscles and letting her know he was behind her so she wouldn’t be spooked. One ear swiveled toward him.
With all that had happened, to say nothing of the scent of blood in the air, the horses were all jumpy. The mare tossed her head and stomped nervously at having a stranger near. Before he went about hooking his bow to the saddle, he first stroked the mare’s neck and spoke softly to her. He reached up and gently caressed her ear. He was pleased that she settled down after a little assurance.
When he stepped back out from the stall, Nicci was watching him, waiting for him. She looked lost and lonely.
“You will be careful?” she asked.
“Don’t worry,” Cara said as she walked past carrying some of her things. On her way into the stall holding the smaller of the two saddled mares she said, “I will be giving him a very long lecture on the foolishness of his unthinking actions tonight.”
“What unthinking actions?” Victor asked.
Cara laid an arm over the shoulder of her horse, idly running her fingers through its mane as she turned back to the blacksmith.
“We have a saying in D’Hara. We are the steel against steel so that the Lord Rahl can be the magic against magic. What it means is that it’s foolish for the Lord Rahl to needlessly risk his life in things like battles with blades. We can do that. But we cannot battle the magic. He alone is the one who must do that. To do so, he must be alive. Our job is keeping the Lord Rahl safe from weapons of steel so that he can protect us against magic. That is the Lord Rahl’s duty. That is his part of the bond.”
Victor gestured toward Richard’s sword. “I’d say he seems to do all right with a blade.”
Cara arched an eyebrow. “Sometimes he is lucky. Need I remind you that he almost died from getting himself shot with a simple arrow? Without a Mord-Sith, he would be helpless,” she added for good measure.
Richard silently rolled his eyes when Victor cast a worried look his way. Ishaq, too, seemed concerned as he peered at Richard as if he were a stranger he was seeing for the first time. Both men had known him for nearly a year as simply Richard, a man who loaded wagons for Ishaq’s transport company and hauling iron to Victor’s blacksmith shop. They had thought that he was married to Nicci. They didn’t know that he had really been Nicci’s captive at the time.
Discovering that he was in fact the Lord Rahl, the nearly mythical freedom fighter from far to the north, was still somewhat disorienting for both men. They tended to view him as one of their own who had risen up to fight tyranny with them. That was how they knew him. Whenever the Lord Rahl issue came up, they got nervous, as if they suddenly didn’t know how they should behave around him.
As Cara went about loading the rest of her things into saddlebags, Nicci laid a hand on Ishaq’s shoulder.
“If you don’t mind, I need to see Richard alone for a moment before he leaves.”
Ishaq nodded. “Victor and I will be outside. We have matters to discuss.”
As the two men made for the door, Nicci cast Cara a brief glance. Cara gave her horse a quick pat on the side and then followed the two men out of the stable, pulling the big door closed behind herself. Richard was amazed, and just a little concerned, to see Cara leave without an argument.
Nicci stood before him in the soft lamplight twining her fingers together and looking rather uneasy, he thought.
“Richard, I’m worried about you. I should be with you.”
“You’ve started something tonight that I think you will have to be the one to finish.”
She sighed. “You’re right about that.”
Richard wondered just what it was she had started, what it was she had in mind, but he was in a hurry to leave. While he was concerned for Nicci’s safety, he was vastly more worried about Kahlan. He wanted to get going.
“But I still . . .”
“When you’re done helping these people end the immediate threat from the soldiers who are on their way here, you can catch up with me,” Richard told her. “With this wizard, Kronos, leading them, the people here are certainly going to need your help.”
“I know.” She was nodding, having already been over all of this ground already. “Believe me, I intend to eliminate the threat descending upon Altur’Rang. I don’t intend to allow it to waste a lot of my time and then I can leave to catch up with you.”
A wave of cold dread washed through him as he suddenly grasped the core of her plan. He wanted to tell her to forget what she was thinking, but he made himself keep silent. He had important and perilous work of his own that he needed to get to. He wouldn’t want her telling him that he couldn’t do what he had planned.
Besides, she was a sorceress who knew very well what she was doing. She had been a Sister of the Dark—one of six such women who had managed to become his teachers at the Palace of the Prophets. When one of them had tried to kill him to steal his gift, Richard had killed her instead. That had been the beginning of the battle that had brought down the palace. Jagang eventually captured the rest, including Sister Ulicia, their leader. In order to save Kahlan’s life, Richard had once allowed five of them to swear a bond to him so that they could escape the dream walker’s hold on them. Nicci hadn’t been with them at the time. Another later died in the sliph, leaving only those four Sisters of the Dark, besides Nicci, not in Jagang’s clutches.
Nicci was certainly a formidable threat to any who opposed her. He just hoped she wasn’t taking a foolish chance just to be able to more quickly get back to protect him.
Richard hooked his thumbs behind his belt, not quite knowing what it was she wanted. “You will be welcomed to join me whenever you can manage it. I told you that.”
“I know.”
“A piece of advice.” He waited until her gaze turned up to his. “No matter how powerful you think you are, something as simple as an arrow can still kill you.”
A brief smile visited her face. “That advice goes both ways, wizard.”
A thought occurred to him. “How will you find me?”
She reached up and gripped his shirt at the collar as she leaned against him. “That’s why I wanted to be alone with you. I will need to touch you with magic so that I can find you.”
Richard’s suspicion flared. “What kind of magic?”
“I guess you could say that it’s a little like your bond to the D’Haran people which allows them to find you. Now is not the time to go into an explanation of it.”
Richard began to worry about why she would need to be alone with him to do such a thing. Still gripping his shirt, she pressed against him, her eyes sliding half closed.
“Just stay still,” she whispered.
She looked rather hesitant and reluctant about whatever it was she had planned. She looked and sounded as if she were slipping into a trance.
Richard could have sworn that the lamps had been brighter, before. Now the stable was dimly lit in a mellow orange glow. The hay smelled sweeter. The air felt warmer.
Richard thought that perhaps he shouldn’t be allowing her to do whatever it was that she intended to do. In the end, though, he decided that he trusted her.
Nicci’s left hand released its grip on his shirt and slipped up and over his shoulder to the back of his neck. Her fingers glided around his neck. Her hand fisted, holding his hair at the back of his head to keep him still.
Richard’s level of alarm rose. He suddenly wasn’t so sure that he wanted her to touch hi
m with her power. He’d felt her magic several times before and it wasn’t something he was exactly eager to experience again.
He wanted to back away, but, somehow, he didn’t.
Nicci leaned in even more and gently kissed his cheek.
It was more than a kiss.
The world around him dissolved. The stables, the humid air, the sweet aroma of hay, all seemed to cease to exist. The only thing that existed was his connection to Nicci, as if she were all that held him from evaporating as well.
He was swept into a rising realm of breathless pleasure with all of life itself. It was an overpowering, disorienting, magnificent sensation. Everything, from the feel of the connection to her, the warmth and life of her, to all the beauty of the world, felt as if it flooded through him, filling him until it saturated his mind, making him dizzy with the staggering exhilaration of it.
Every kind of pleasure he had ever known swept through him with overwhelming force, amplified beyond anything he had ever experienced, engulfing him in bliss so intense that the satisfaction of it brought a gasp and tears.
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 t
o 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 life. 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.
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