Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Chapter 21

As Cara went past, following in Richard’s wake, Nicci caught the Mord-Sith’s arm, holding her back until she could speak without Richard hearing.

“How are you, Cara? Really?”

Cara met Nicci’s direct gaze with a steady look of her own. “I’m tired, but I’m fine, now. Lord Rahl made it right.”

Nicci nodded her satisfaction. “Cara, may I ask you a personal question?”

“As long as I don’t have to promise I’ll answer it.”

“Do you have a man for whom you care greatly named Benjamin Meiffert?”

Even in the dim light, Nicci could see Cara’s face go as scarlet as her red leather outfit. “Who told you such a thing?”

“Do you mean to say, then, that it’s a secret and no one knows?”

“Well, that’s not what I’m saying, exactly,” Cara stammered. “I mean—you’re trying to trip me into saying something I don’t intend.”

“I’m not trying to trip you into saying anything, especially something that isn’t true. I only asked about Benjamin Meiffert.”

Cara’s brow drew tight. “Who told you such a thing?”

“Richard.” Nicci arched an eyebrow. “Is it true?”

Cara pressed her lips tight. At last she looked away from Nicci to glare off into the night. “Yes.”

“So you told Richard all about how you care a great deal for this soldier?”

“Are you crazy? I would never have told such a thing to Lord Rahl. Where could he have heard it?”

For a moment, Nicci listened to the cicadas singing their incessant mating songs as she considered the Mord-Sith.

“Richard said that Kahlan told him all about it.”

Cara stood with her mouth agape. She at last touched her fingers to her forehead as she worked to gather her senses.

“Well that’s just crazy—I, I must have told him myself. I guess I just forgot. We talk about so much. It’s hard to recall everything I told him—but now that you bring it up, I think I do recall mentioning it one night when we were both talking about such sentimental things. I think that must have been when I told him about Benjamin Meiffert. I guess I pushed such a personal discussions to the back of my mind. I guess he didn’t. I ought to learn to keep my mouth shut.”

“You have no need to fear anything you tell Richard. You have no better friend in the world. And you have no need to fear me knowing such things, either. He told me about it in the depth of his grief for you because he wanted me to know that you are more than just Mord-Sith, that you’re a person with a life and desires of your own and you had come to value a good man. He was honoring you by telling me. But I will keep it to myself. Your feelings are safe with me, Cara.”

Cara idly tugged at strands of hair at the end of her single braid. “I guess I never looked at it quite that way—I mean about him honoring me by telling you. That’s kind of—nice.”

“Love is a passion for life shared with another person. You fall in love with a person who you think is wonderful. It’s your deepest appreciation of the value of that individual, and that individual is a reflection of what you value most in life. Love, for sound reasons, can be one of life’s greatest rewards. You shouldn’t be ashamed or embarrassed about being in love. I mean, if you really do love Benjamin, that is.”

Cara thought it over a moment. “I’m not ashamed of it; I am Mord-Sith.” Some of the tension went out of her shoulders. “But I don’t know if I’m in love with him, either. I don’t know for certain what I think about it. I know I care greatly for him. I’m not sure it’s love, though. Maybe it’s only the first step along the path to love. It’s kind of hard for me to tell about such things. I’m not used to it mattering what I think or how I feel.”

Nicci nodded as she began walking slowly through the shadows. “For a lot of my life I didn’t understand what love was either. Jagang used to sometimes think that he was in love with me.”

“Jagang? Seriously? He’s in love with you?”

“No, he’s not really in love with me; he just thinks he is. Even back then I knew that it wasn’t love, even if I didn’t understand why. Jagang’s measure of worth runs from hate to lust. He scorns and defiles anything that’s good about life, so he couldn’t possibly experience true love. He can only discern it as the faint fragrance of something tantalizing and mysterious beyond his reach and he longs to possess it.

“He imagined that he could experience love by grabbing me by my hair and forcing me down on him. He interpreted his enjoyment as he watched as feelings of love. He thought that I should be grateful that he had such powerful feelings for me that he would be overcome with desire for me to the exclusion of everything else. Since he believed that forcing himself on me was an expression of his love, he thought I should accept it as an honor.”

“He would have liked Darken Rahl,” Cara muttered. “They would have gotten along splendidly.” She looked over, suddenly puzzled. “You’re a sorceress. Why didn’t you use your power to incinerate the bastard?”

Nicci let out a deep breath. How could she simply explain a lifetime of indoctrination?

“I don’t think that a day goes by that I don’t wish I would have killed that vile man. But, brought up as I was under the teachings of the Fellowship of Order, the same as he, I believed that moral virtue was only realized through self-sacrifice. Under their tenets, your duty is to those in need. Such dictates are imposed under the banner of the common good, or the betterment of mankind, or dutiful obedience to the Creator.

“By the ideology of the Order we were to devote ourselves not to those we regarded as the best among mankind, but to those who we ourselves regarded as the worst among men—not because they had earned it, but precisely because they hadn’t. This, the Order claims, is the heart of morality and the only means by which we earn our entry into the everlasting light of the Creator in the afterlife. It’s the sacrifice of the virtuous into servitude to the vile. It is never done under the banner of what it really is: naked greed for the unearned.

“Jagang’s worldly needs revolved around his crotch. I had what he believed he needed, so I was morally required to sacrifice myself to his need. Especially since he is the leader bringing the Order’s moral teachings to the heathens of the world.

“When Jagang would beat me until I was only half conscious and then throw me on his bed to have his way with me, I was doing what I had been taught was not only right, but my selfless moral duty. I thought I was evil for hating it.

“Since I believed that I was evil for such self-interest, I felt that I deserved all the pain I got in this world and eternal punishment in the next. I couldn’t kill a man who was, under the creed taught to me by the Fellowship of Order, morally superior to me by virtue of his need. How could I possibly harm someone who I had been taught to serve? How could I possibly object to the harm done to me when I so deserved all I got and more? What could I object to? Justice? That’s the endless, miserable trap of teachings about your duty to the greater good.”

They strolled in silence as Nicci endured an array of ghastly memories.

“What changed?” Cara finally asked.

“Richard,” Nicci said softly. Right then, she was glad for the darkness. Despite her tears, she lifted her head with pride. “The Imperial Order’s teachings can only endure through brutality. Richard showed me that no one has a right to my life, not the whole of it, nor pieces of it. He showed me that my life is mine to live for myself, for my own purpose, and does not belong to others.”

Cara watched with a kind of knowing sympathy. “I guess that you had a great deal in common with Mord-Sith under the rule of Darken Rahl. D’Hara was once a place of darkness, as life is now under the Imperial Order. Richard didn’t just kill Darken Rahl, he ended that kind of sick doctrine for D’Hara. He gave us the same thing he gave you; he gave us back our lives.

“I guess Lord Rahl could understand us because he was treated much the same.”

Nicci wasn’t sure what Cara meant. “The same?”

“He was once a captive of a Mord-Sith named Denna. At the time it was our duty to torture Darken Rahl’s enemies to death. Denna was the best of the best. Darken Rahl had personally selected her to capture Richard and be in charge of his training. Darken Rahl had been hunting Richard for quite a while because he knew something important about the boxes of Orden. Darken Rahl wanted that information. It was Denna’s job to torture Richard into being eager to answer any question Darken Rahl asked.”

Nicci glanced over and saw tears glistening in Cara’s eyes as she slowed to a halt. She lifted her Agiel, staring at it as she rolled it in her fingers. Nicci knew all about Denna and what she had done to Richard, but she decided that right then it might be best to remain silent and simply listen. Sometimes people needed to say things for themselves more than they needed to say them for others. Nicci thought that perhaps after coming so close to dying, this was one of those times for Cara.

“I was there,” Cara said in a near whisper as she stared at her Agiel. “He doesn’t remember because Denna had tortured him until he was delirious and only partially conscious, but I saw him there, at the People’s Palace, and I saw some of what she did to him—of what we all did.”

Nicci’s breath paused. She cautiously glanced over at Cara. “Of what you all did? What do you mean?”

“It was standard practice for Mord-Sith to pass their captives around. It made it more difficult for them to learn to endure any particular pattern of torture from one individual. It helped to keep them confused and afraid. Fear is an integral part of torture. That’s something a Mord-Sith learns from the first moment she is taken to be trained to become Mord-Sith—that fear and the unknown makes any pain infinitely worse. Most of the time Denna let a Mord-Sith named Constance share in training Richard. But sometimes Denna wanted to use others, besides Constance.”

Cara stood stock-still as she stared at her Agiel. “It was not long after he arrived at the People’s Palace. Richard doesn’t remember—I don’t think he even knew his own name at the time because Denna had him in a fog of delirium, in a state of madness from the things she had done to him—but he spent a day with me.”

This, Nicci hadn’t known. She stood frozen, afraid to say anything. She had no idea what she could say.

“Denna took Richard as her mate,” Cara said. “I don’t think she understood love any better than Jagang or Darken Rahl. At the end, though, she came to have a deep and genuine love for Richard. I saw the change coming over her. As you described it, she came to value him as an individual. She came to have sincere passion for him. She loved him so much that in the end she let him kill her so that he could escape.

“But before then, when Denna was still torturing him, I saw him there more than once, hanging helpless, covered in blood and begging for the release of death.” A tear ran down Cara’s cheek. “Dear spirits, I too made him beg for death as I stood over him.”

Cara seemed to suddenly realize what she had just said aloud. Panic flooded her eyes. “Please don’t say anything to him. It was so long ago—it’s over and everything has changed, now. I don’t want him to know—about me there with him like that.” Tears ran down her face. “Please . . .”

Nicci took up one of Cara’s hands in both of hers. “Of course I wouldn’t say anything about it. I, of all people, understand the way you feel; I too, once did terrible things to him, only for a great deal longer than anyone else. As you say, that’s over.” Nicci let out a deep sigh. “I guess we all three know a little about what love is, and what it isn’t.”

Cara nodded not just her relief, but her sincere appreciation that Nicci understood. “We’d better catch up with Lord Rahl.”

Nicci gestured casually toward the stables. “Richard is talking to the relatives of Victor’s men who were killed.” She tapped the side of her forehead. “I can just barely hear him with my gift.” She reached out and gently wiped a tear from Cara’s cheek. “We have the time to gather our senses before we get there.”

As they started slowly walking toward the stable, Cara said, “Nicci, could I tell you something, then—something personal?”

On a night of such surprises, this was yet another. “Of course.”

“Well . . .” Cara began as she frowned, trying to find the words, “when Lord Rahl came to me—to heal me—he was close to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he was lying there with me, in the bed with me, with his arms around me—you know, protecting me and keeping me warm.” She rubbed her arms as if the memory had brought the chill back. “I was so cold.” Cara stole a quick glance over at Nicci. “I guess that, well, I guess that in my condition, and all, I was kind of holding on to him, too.”

Nicci lifted an eyebrow. “I see.”

“And the thing is, I felt things when he came into me—and if you tell him this I’ll kill you, I swear I will.”

Nicci smiled as she nodded her assurance. “We both care a great deal about him. I assume that what you’re telling me is only because you are concerned for him.”

“That’s right.” She rubbed her arms again as she went on. “When he came to—to pull me back, or whatever it is he did, it was like he was inside me, inside my head, I mean. It was a kind of intimacy unlike any other.

“Lord Rahl healed me once before when I was seriously hurt, but this was different. Parts were the same, some of the feelings were the same, the sincere caring and such that I felt from him, but this was different, somehow—really different. That time he was healing my physical injury.” Cara leaned closer in an effort to try to get her point across. “This time it was more; this time the touch of that evil thing was inside me, like it was poisoning me, poisoning my existence, my will to live.”

She straightened, then, seemingly frustrated and unable to think of how to explain it better.

“I know the difference you’re trying to define,” Nicci offered. “This time it was a more personal connection between the two of you.”

Cara nodded as if relieved that Nicci seemed to understand.

“Yes, that’s right, it was more personal. A lot more personal,” she added under her breath. “It was like my soul was laid bare to him. It was kind of like—well, never mind.”

Cara went silent. Nicci wondered if the woman had said all she had really wanted to say and would decide to stop there, but then she went on.

“The point is that he felt so much of me, of my inner thoughts and all. No one has ever . . .”

Cara again went silent, but this time in apparent frustration at trying to find the words to explain what she meant.

“I understand, Cara,” Nicci assured her. “I really do. I’ve healed people so I know the sensations you experienced, if not as deeply. I’ve never been able to succeed to the extent that Richard did with you, but I’ve experienced more or less the same kinds of conditions when I heal people, especially when I healed Richard.”

“That’s good to hear—that you know what I’m talking about.” Cara casually kicked a rock as she walked along. “Well, I don’t think Lord Rahl is aware of it, but when we were together like that he didn’t just—experience me, experience my inner feelings and thoughts, so to speak; I experienced him as well.” She growled to herself. “I shouldn’t be saying this.” She waved a hand. “Forget I said anything.”

Nicci wasn’t sure what the woman was getting at. “Cara, if you aren’t comfortable telling me, then don’t. You know how much I care for Richard, but still, if you don’t think you shouldn’t say anything, or that you are stepping out of bounds in your relationship with him, then perhaps you should trust that instinct.”

Cara sighed. “Maybe you’re right.”

Nicci couldn’t ever recall Cara appearing so flustered. If there was one thing enduring about the woman it was her resolute confidence. She was always decisive about precisely what she should do in any given circumstance. Nicci didn’t always think that Cara was right, and she knew that Richard didn’t either, but they could always count on Cara being determined to do the best thing for Richard no matter how it might endanger Cara herself—or anger them. If she felt her actions were necessary to protect him, she simply went ahead, dismissing the consequences to herself, including his disapproval.

As they walked in silence through the dark alleyway, Nicci, with the help of her gift, could hear people in the distance speaking in low voices. She didn’t try to pick out the words; she did no more than note the general nature of the conversation. It was men and women gathered at the stables, some speaking in turn. Nicci could distinguish Richard speaking gently to them, answering questions. She could hear people weeping.

At the corner of the inn where the road to the right lead down a few doors to the stables, Cara abruptly caught Nicci’s arm and brought her to a halt while they were still in the deep shadows.

“Look, you and I, well, we both started out in all this determined to kill Lord Rahl.”

Somewhat taken aback, Nicci didn’t think that this was the time to split hairs. “I guess you’re right.”

“Maybe more than anyone else, you and I have a unique perspective on Lord Rahl. I think that when you start out wanting to do someone harm and they make you see how wrong you’ve been and how your own life means more than that, well, it kind of makes you care all that much more for them.”

“I think I would have to agree with you.”

Cara gestured back the way they had come, toward the grounds of the palace that was now Liberty Square. “Back there, when the revolt started, when Lord Rahl was wounded and near death, people didn’t want to let you try to heal him. They were afraid that you would instead do him harm. I’m the one who told them to trust you. I understood the awakening you had gone through because I had gone through much the same thing. I was the only one who knew what you had come to feel about him. I told them to let you do it. They feared you might use the opportunity to take his life. I knew you wouldn’t. I knew you would save him.”

“You’re right, Cara. We both care deeply for him. We both have a special bond with him.”

“Yes, that’s it. A special bond. Different, I think, than other people.”

Mystified by what Cara could be getting at, Nicci spread her hands. “So you wish to tell me something?”

Cara looked down at her boots as she nodded. “When Lord Rahl and I shared that togetherness, I felt some of his inner emotions. Inside him he has a terrible, burning loneliness. I think that maybe all the business about this woman—this Kahlan—is because of his lonesomeness.”

Nicci took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she wondered at the precise nature of what Cara had sensed in him. “I suppose that may be a part of it.”

Cara cleared her throat. “Nicci, when you hold a man in your arms like that, and you have been—well, together in such a personal way, you come to truly feel what’s inside him.”

Nicci pushed her feelings farther back into the shadows. “I don’t doubt that you’re right, Cara.”

“I mean, I just wanted to hold him forever, to comfort him, to keep him from feeling so alone.”

Nicci stole a sidelong glance at the Mord-Sith. She was twisting her mouth as she studiously watched the ground. Nicci didn’t say anything, waiting instead for Cara to go on.

“But I just don’t think I’m the one to do such a thing for Lord Rahl.”

Nicci cautiously framed her question. “You mean, you don’t think that you’re the woman who can satisfy—his loneliness?”

“I guess not.”

“Benjamin?”

The woman shrugged. “That’s part of it.” She looked up and met Nicci’s gaze. “I love Lord Rahl. I’d give my life for him. And I have to admit that lying there and having him in my arms like that made me feel—feel like maybe I could be more than just his bodyguard and friend. As I lay there in that bed, holding him close to me, I imagined what it would be like to be his . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Nicci swallowed. “I see.”

“But I just don’t think that I’m the one. I don’t know why. I’m not exactly an expert in matters of the heart, but I don’t feel like I’m the one he needs. I just don’t think I could be. If he were to ask it of me, I would do it in a heartbeat—but not because I wanted it, exactly. Do you understand what I mean?”

“You mean you would do it out of your deep respect and caring for him, not out of your personal wish to be his lover.”

“That’s it,” Cara said with a sigh of relief, apparently at having someone else say it aloud. “Besides, I just don’t think that Lord Rahl feels that way about me. When I was sensing his feelings, when we were in each other’s arms, I think I would have known if he felt that way about me, but he doesn’t. He loves me, I know that much, but not in that way.”

Nicci carefully eased out her own breath. “So—that’s what you wanted me to know? That you think his loneliness is the source of his fantasy woman?”

Cara nodded. “Yes—but one more thing, too.”

Nicci glanced down the street, watching men making their way to the stable. “And what would that be?”

“I think that maybe you could be the one.”

Nicci’s heart came up in her throat as she turned to see Cara staring right at her. “What?”

“I think you could be the one for Lord Rahl.” She held up her hands to forestall any argument. “Don’t say anything. I don’t want you to be saying that I’m crazy. Don’t say anything for now. Just think about it. We’ll be leaving shortly and it will be a while until you can come to meet up with us, so you have time and you could think about it. I’m not asking you to sacrifice yourself for him or anything foolish like that.

“I’m just saying that I think Lord Rahl needs someone and you could be that woman—I mean if you felt right about it.

“I’m not the one he needs. I’m Mord-Sith, and Lord Rahl is a wizard. Dear spirits, I hate magic and he is magic. We just aren’t right for each other in all kinds of little ways. But you have so much in common with him. You’re a sorceress. Who could understand him better than you? Who could help him with every aspect of his life better than you?

“I remember back that night at camp, in the shelter, when the two of you were talking about the creative dimension of magic. I didn’t understand half of it, but it struck me then how the two of you could talk so easily to each other and understand each other’s thoughts, ideas, and meaning like no one else could. I remember being taken by how the two of you, well, seemed so right together.

“And I remember thinking, too, when we lay down close to him to keep warm, how good you looked close to him like that. Like a woman would be close to a man she cared about. I remember, for some reason, half expecting him to kiss you. It would have seemed natural.”

Nicci couldn’t make her heart slow down. “Cara, I . . .” Words failed her.

Cara picked at a strip of pealing paint on the corner board of the building. “Besides, you’re about the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Lord Rahl should have a wife who is his match and I can’t think of a better match than you.”

“Wife—?”

“Don’t you see how much sense it makes? It would fill the emptiness I felt inside him. It would bring him joy and happiness to replace his misery. He would have someone to share his gift and his connection to magic. He wouldn’t be lonely. Just think about it.”

“But, Cara, Richard doesn’t love me.”

Cara appraised her for a long, uncomfortable moment. Nicci recalled then Richard once telling her how paralyzing it felt to be under the scrutiny of a Mord-Sith when she looked into your eyes, really looked into them. Nicci now understood what he meant.

“Maybe he doesn’t feel that way now, but maybe when you come back to join us you could do a little more to let him know you were open to such a notion about the two of you—I mean, if you wanted to, if you were open to the idea. Sometimes people just have to be made aware of something so that they will consider it seriously. That’s why I felt I needed to say something to you. Maybe if he thought you might be open to such a thing then he’d get interested and start looking at you in that light.

“You know, people who are in love had to fall in love at some point. They weren’t born in love with their mate. Maybe you just have to help him get to that point where he will start to think about you in that light. It could even be he thinks that a beautiful, intelligent woman like you could never care for him seriously. Sometimes men are shy that way about a woman they think is extraordinarily beautiful.”

“Cara, I just don’t think he . . .”

Cara leaned in confidentially. “It could even be that he thinks you would never be interested in him and so he dreamed up this other woman to fill the void.”

Nicci wet her lips. “I think we had better get over to the stable or he may leave without you. He seems pretty set on leaving.”

Cara offered a smile. “You’re right. Look, Nicci, if you’d rather, you could just forget I said anything. I can see that I’m making you uncomfortable. I don’t exactly feel right about saying anything, anyway.”

“Then why did you?”

Cara gazed off wistfully. “I guess because as I was holding him, and I felt the depth of his loneliness, it just broke my heart.” Her gaze drifted back to Nicci’s. “And Mord-Sith don’t get broken hearts all that often.”

Nicci almost said that neither did sorceresses.