Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Chapter 19

It felt to Richard as if he were trapped beneath the ice in the swill, raven waters of a frozen river. The shadow of panic swirled ever closer around him.

He was exhausted and didn’t have any reserve of strength left.

As the specter of failure loomed, and the full realization of what such a failure would mean came to him, he rallied his will and exerted greater effort to fight his way toward the remote light of consciousness. Even though he was aware that he had managed to come partially awake, he was still in some distant, deep place and having difficulty completing the journey. He struggled to rise up, struggled for the life above, but couldn’t break through.

Even as Richard tried to press himself harder, it seemed too difficult, too far. For the first time, he considered the peace of surrender—truly considered it, as had she before it had dragged her under.

The deadly fangs of failure hovered closer.

Driven by the fright of the full realization of everything that such a defeat would mean, he drew together his strength, focused his will, and with desperate passion reached toward the world of life.

With a gasp, his eyes opened.

The pain had been crushing. He felt dizzy and sick from the encounter with such malevolence. He still trembled with the power of it. After such raw inner violence, he feared that every hammer beat of his heart might be the last. The slick touch of depravity had bequeathed him a repugnant memory of the gagging stench of rotting corpses, making it nearly impossible to draw the full breath he needed.

He had reached into Cara’s soul and he had felt an alien evil lurking there, within her, sucking the life from her, pulling her into the dark eternity of death. It had been a debilitating dread beyond anything he had ever felt before, beyond the mere fear of the black abyss of eternity.

It had been the grinning, linked vow of unimaginable terrors that were coming for him.

At first it had seemed that he had touched the icy face of death itself, but he now knew that he hadn’t. Despite his revulsion, he knew that it was something other than simply death.

Death was merely a part of its poisonous architecture.

Death was inanimate. This was not.

He hurt so much that he was unsure at that moment if he would have the strength to ever stand again, the strength required to live. His bones ached. The marrow of his bones ached. He couldn’t seem to stop trembling. Yet the pain was more than mere physical agony; it was an abhorrent misery that had seeped through his soul and touched every aspect of his existence.

The quiet room at last began to float into focus around him. The lamps still held back the veil of darkness. Beyond the heavy drapes the cicadas still sang their song of life.

Lying on the bed, still embracing Cara protectively in his arms, Richard was at last able to draw the full breath he so desperately needed. As he did, he relished the fragrance of her hair, savored the scent of the warm, moist skin along the curve of her neck, and in so doing the agony began to recede.

He felt Cara’s arms tightly embracing him. Downy soft hair behind her ear caressed the side of his face.

“Cara?” he whispered.

She reached up and ran a hand tenderly down the back of his head as she unashamedly held him against her. “Shh,” she soothed in his ear. “It’s all right.”

He was having trouble making sense of things.

He was somewhat disoriented to find himself holding Cara in his arms, to find her holding him so tenderly in hers, to realize they were locked in such an intimate embrace. He could feel the entire length of her pressed against him. But then, nothing could be more intimate than what they had shared in that dark place as they together faced the evil that had taken her.

He ran his tongue across his cracked lips and tasted salty tears.

“Cara . . .”

She nodded against the side of his face. “Shh,” she soothed again. “It’s all right. I’m with you. I won’t leave you.”

He drew away just enough to look into her eyes. They were blue and clear, revealing a depth he had never seen before. She studied his face with a kind of caring, knowing sympathy.

At that moment, he clearly saw in her eyes that this was Cara and no more. In that moment, he saw that the appellation of Mord-Sith had been stripped away down to her soul. In that moment, it was Cara, the woman, the individual, and nothing else.

It was as revealing and profound a view of her as he had ever had. It was startlingly beautiful.

“You are a very rare person, Richard Rahl.”

The soft breath of her words against his face soothed some of the lingering pain as seductively as did her arms, as did her eyes, as did her words, as did the living, breathing warmth of her.

Even so, the agony he had lifted from her still coursed through him, seeking to pull him back toward darkness and death. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he fought it with his love of life, and with his joy that Cara was alive.

“I am a wizard,” he whispered back.

She stared up into his eyes as she slowly shook her head in wonder.

“There has never been a Lord Rahl like you before. I swear, there never has.”

With her arms around his neck, she pulled his head closer and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Lord Rahl, for bringing me back. Thank you for saving me. You made me see again that I want to live. It is I who is supposed to be protecting your life, and you are the one to risk yours to save me.”

She again searched his eyes with leisurely satisfaction. It was completely unlike the way a Mord-Sith had of gazing through a person, of seeing all the way into their soul. This was an emotion of regard born of her appreciation for his value to her. In the purest sense, it was love. She showed absolutely no reticence in him seeing her feelings laid bare.

He supposed that, after what they had just shared, any such modesty would be pointless. He knew, though, that this was more, that this was Cara; sincere, unafraid, and unashamed.

“There has never been a Lord Rahl like you.”

“Cara, you don’t know how glad I am to have you back with me.”

She held his head in both her hands and kissed his forehead. “Oh, but I do know. I know what you suffered for me this night. I know very well how much you wanted me back. I know very well what you did for me.” She slipped her arms around his neck again and hugged him tight. “I have never been afraid like that, not even when I was first . . .”

He touched his fingers to her lips to silence what she had been about to say for fear that it would break the spell, that it would too soon bring the armor of Mord-Sith back into her beautiful blue eyes. He knew what she had been about to say. He knew that madness.

“Thank you, Lord Rahl,” she whispered in wonder when he took his lingers away. “Thank you for everything, and for not letting me say what I had been about to say.” With a twitch of her brow, pain ghosted across her face. “That is why there has never been a Lord Rahl like you before. They all created Mord-Sith. They all brought the pain. You ended it.”

Richard couldn’t force any words past the lump in his throat, so he simply brushed her blond hair from her forehead and smiled at her. He was so happy to have her back that he couldn’t put it into words.

He gazed around the room, then, trying to judge how late it was.

“I don’t know how long it took you to heal me,” she said as she watched him surveying the curtains for any sign of the approach of dawn. “But after you did, you were so exhausted that you seemed to collapse into sleep. I couldn’t wake you—I didn’t want to wake you.” Her arms still loosely around his neck, she gazed up at him with a blissful smile, looking as if she never wanted to move. “I was so weak that I fell asleep as well.”

“Cara, we have to get out of here.”

“What do you mean?”

Richard pushed himself up, the urgency of the situation becoming all too clear. His head spun sickeningly. “I used magic to heal you.”

She nodded, looking uncharacteristically content at the mention of magic and her in the same breath. This had been magic that had shown her the wonder of life.

What he was getting at abruptly became clear to her. She sat up in a rush, but had to put a hand back to steady herself.

Richard stood on trembling legs. He realized then that he was still wearing his sword. He was glad to have it at hand. “If Jagang’s beast is around, then it might have sensed that I used my gift. I don’t know where it might be, but I’d not like to be lying here when it returns.”

“Nor would I. Once was enough for a lifetime.”

He held out an arm and helped her stand. She balanced in a stiff posture for a moment before gathering her senses and loosening her pose. It somehow seemed startling to him to see that she was dressed in her red leather. After having been so close to her, after having been within her, in a sense, clothes seemed somehow alien.

In some inexplicable manner, Cara drew the aura of Mord-Sith around herself.

She smiled. The composed confidence in that smile lifting his heart. “I’m all right,” she said as if to tell him to stop worrying. “I’m back with you.”

The steel was back in her eyes. Cara was indeed back.

Richard nodded. “Me too. I’m feeling better now that I’m waking up.” He gestured to her pack. “Let’s get our things and get moving.”