Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Chapter 8

Richard untied the leather thongs beneath his pack and opened his bedroll, spreading it out in the narrow space left between the other two.

“Nicci, back at the place where the men were killed you said that it had been a blood frenzy.” He leaned back against the rock wall underneath the overhang. “What did you mean?”

Nicci folded herself into a sitting position to his right, atop her own bedroll. “What we saw back there wasn’t simply killing. Isn’t that obvious?”

He supposed she had a point. He had never witnessed a scene so shaped by rage. He was well aware, though, that she knew far more about it.

Cara curled up to his left. “I’m telling you,” she said to Nicci, “I don’t think he knows.”

Richard cast a leery gaze at the Mord-Sith and then at the sorceress. “Knows what?”

Nicci ran her fingers back through her wet hair, pulling strands off her face. She looked a little puzzled. “You said that you got the letter I sent.”

“I did.” It had been quite a while back. He tried to remember through the daze of weariness and worry everything Nicci’s letter had said—something about Jagang creating weapons out of people. “Your letter was valuable in helping figure out what was happening at the time. And I did appreciate your warning about Jagang’s darker pursuits of creating weapons out of the gifted; Nicholas the Slide was as nasty a piece of work.”

“Nicholas.” Nicci spat the name before wrapping a blanket around her shoulders. “He is but a flea on the rump of the wolf.”

If Nicholas was the flea, Richard hoped never to run into the wolf. Nicholas the Slide had been a wizard whom the Sisters of the Dark had altered to have abilities that were well beyond any human traits. It had been thought that accomplishing such conjuring with people was not only a lost art but impossible because, among other things, such nefarious work required the use of not only Additive but Subtractive Magic. While a rare few had learned to manipulate it, until Richard’s birth there hadn’t been anyone born with the actual gift for Subtractive Magic in thousands of years.

But there had been those who, even though they had not been born with that side of the gift, still had managed to gain the use of Subtractive Magic. Darken Rahl had been one such person. It was said that he had traded the pure souls of children to the Keeper of the underworld in exchange for dark indulgences, including the ability to use Subtractive Magic.

Richard supposed that it could also have been through morbid promises to the Keeper that the first Sisters of the Dark had contrived to obtain the knowledge of how to use Subtractive Magic, thereafter passing it on in secret to their covert disciples.

When the Palace of the Prophets had fallen, Jagang had captured many of the Sisters, both Sisters of the Light and Sisters of the Dark, but their numbers were dwindling. From what Richard had learned, the dream walker’s ability enabled him to enter every part of a person’s mind and thereby control them. There was no private thought he did not know or intimate deed he could not witness. It was an inner violation so complete that no hidden corner of the mind was safe from the dream walker’s direct scrutiny. What was worse, the victim could not always tell if Jagang was lurking there, in their mind, witness to their most secret thoughts.

Nicci had said that the haunting possession by the dream walker had driven a few of the Sisters mad. Richard also knew that through that link Jagang could measure out excruciating pain and, if he wished it, death. With such control, the dream walker could make the Sisters do anything he wished.

Through an ancient magic created by one of Richard’s ancestors to protect his people from the dream walkers of that time, those who swore fidelity to the Lord Rahl were protected. Along with the rest of his gift, Richard had inherited that bond and, with a dream walker again born into the world, it now safeguarded those loyal to him from Jagang stealing into their minds and enslaving them. While a formal devotion was spoken by the people of D’Hara to their Lord Rahl, the protection that the bond provided was actually invoked through the conviction of the person bonded—through their doing what they thought was called for by their fidelity.

Both Ann, the Prelate of the Sisters of the Light, and Verna, the woman Ann had named as her successor, had stolen into the Imperial Order’s camp and tried to rescue their Sisters. The captive Sisters had been offered the protection of the bond—all they had to do was accept in their hearts their loyalty to Richard—but most were so terrified of Jagang that more than once they had refused their chance at freedom. Not everyone was willing to embrace liberty; liberty required not just effort, but risk. Some people chose to delude themselves and see their chains as protective armor.

Nicci had once been in servitude to the Fellowship of Order, the Sisters of the Light, and then the Sisters of the Dark, and finally to Jagang. She no longer was; she had instead embraced Richard’s love of life. Her steadfast loyalty to him and what he believed in had freed her from the clutches of the dream walker, but far more than that, it had freed her from the yoke of servitude she had worn her whole life. Her life was now hers alone. He thought that maybe that might have something to do with the resolute nobility of her bearing.

“I didn’t read the whole letter,” Richard admitted. “Before I was able to finish it, we were attacked by men that Nicholas had sent to capture us. I told you about it before—that was when Sabar was killed. During that fight the letter fell into the fire.”

Nicci slouched back. “Dear spirits,” she murmured. “I thought you knew.”

Richard was tired and at the end of his patience. “Knew what?”

Nicci let her arms slip to her sides. She looked up at him in the dim light and let out a frazzled sigh.

“Jagang found a way for the Sisters of the Dark he holds captive to use their ability to begin creating weapons out of people, as had been done during the great war. In many ways, he is a brilliant man. He makes it his business to learn. He collects books from the places he sacks. I’ve seen some of those books. Among all sorts of tomes, he has ancient handbooks of magic from around the time of the great war.

“The problem is, while he may be a dream walker and brilliant in certain areas, he does not have the gift and so his understanding of it, of exactly what Han is and how this force of life functions, is crude at best. It’s not easy for one without magic to comprehend such things. You have the gift and yet even you don’t really understand it or know very much about how it works. But because Jagang doesn’t know how to work magic, he blunders around demanding that things be done simply because he has dreamed them up, because he is the great emperor and he wishes his visions to be brought to life.”

Richard rubbed his fingers back and forth on his brow, rolling off the dirt. “Don’t sell him short in that regard. It’s possible that he knows more about what he’s doing than you realize.”

“What do you mean?”

“I may not know a lot about the subject of magic, but one of the things I have learned is that magic can also be thought of much like an art form. Through artistic expression—for lack of a better term—magic that has never been before can be created.”

Nicci stared in astonished disbelief. “Richard, I don’t know where you could have heard such a thing, but it just doesn’t work that way.”

“I know, I know. Kahlan thinks I’m out on a limb with this, too. Having been raised around wizards, she knows a lot about magic and in the past she has flatly insisted that I’m wrong. But I’m not. I’ve done it before. Using the gift in such a way, in new and original ways, got me out of what would otherwise have been unbreakable traps.”

Nicci was peering at him in that analytical way of hers. He suddenly realized why. It wasn’t only what he’d said about magic. He was talking about Kahlan again. The woman who did not exist, the woman he had dreamed. Cara’s expression betrayed her mute concern.

“Anyway,” Richard said, getting back to the crux of the matter, “just because Jagang doesn’t have the gift, doesn’t mean he can’t still dream up things—dream up nightmares—like Nicholas. It is through such original conceptualization that the most deadly things, for which there may be no conventional counter, are created. I suspect that this may have been the method those wizards in ancient times used for creating weapons out of people in the first place.”

Nicci was beside herself with bottled agitation.

“Richard, magic just doesn’t work like that. You can’t dream up whatever you’d like to have, wish for what you want. Magic functions by the laws of its nature, just like all other things in the world. Whim will not make boards out of trees; you must cut the tree to the desired form. If you want a house, you can’t wish up bricks and boards to stack themselves into a dwelling; you must use your hands to craft the structure.”

Richard leaned toward the sorceress. “Yes, but it’s the human imagination that makes those concrete actions not just possible, but effective. Most builders think in terms of houses or barns; they do what’s been done before simply because that was what was done before. Much of the time they don’t want to think, so they never envision anything more. They limit themselves to repetition and as an excuse they insist that it must be done that way because it has always been done that way. Most magic is like that—the gifted simply repeating what has already been done before, believing that it must be done that way with no more justification than that it has always been done that way.

“Before a grand palace can be built, it first has to be imagined by someone bold enough to have a vision of what could be. A palace will not spontaneously spring forth to the surprise of all while men are attempting to build a barn. Only the conscious act of conceptualization can bring about the reality.

“For that act of creative imagination to bring about the existence of a palace, it cannot violate any of the laws of the nature of the things that are used. On the contrary, the person who imagines a grand palace with the goal of seeing it built must be intimately aware of the nature of all the things he will use in the construction. If he isn’t, the palace will fall down. He must know the nature of the materials better than the man who uses them to build a simple barn. It’s not a matter of wishing for something that transcends the laws of nature, but a matter of original thinking based on those laws of nature.

“I grew up in the woods around Hartland, never having seen a palace.” Richard spread his arms, as if to show her the things he had seen since leaving his homeland. “Until I saw the castle at Tamarang, the Wizard’s Keep and the Confessors’ Palace in Aydindril, or the People’s Palace in D’Hara, I never imagined that such places existed—or even that they could exist. They were beyond the scope of my thinking at the time.

“And yet, even though I never imagined that such places could be built, other men thought them up, and they were built. I think that one of the important functions of grand creations is that they inspire people.”

Nicci appeared not only to be swept up in his explanation, but to be considering his words with serious interest. “Do you mean to say, then, that you think an art form can also shape such important things as the function of magic?”

Richard smiled. “Nicci, you could not grasp the importance of life until I carved the statue back in Altur’Rang. When you saw the concept in tangible form you were able at last to put together all the things you had learned throughout your life and finally grasp its meaning. An artistic creation touched your soul. That’s what I mean about an important function of great works is that they inspire people.

“Because it inspired you with the beauty of life, with the nobility of man, you acted to become free—something you had never thought was possible. Because the people of Altur’Rang as well could see in that statue what could and should be, they were stirred to stand up to the tyranny crushing their lives. It was not accomplished by copying other statues, by doing what was the accepted norm for statues in the Old World of showing man as weak and ineffective, but by an idea of beauty, a vision of nobility, that shaped what I carved.

“I didn’t violate the nature of the marble I used, but rather I used the nature of the stone to accomplish something different than what others routinely did with it. I studied the properties of stone, I learned how to work it, and I sought to understand what more I could do with it in order to bring about my objective. I had Victor make me the finest tools that would enable me to do the work in the way it needed to be done. In that way I brought to reality what I wanted to create, what had never been before.

“I think that magic can work this way as well. I believe that such original ideas played a part in how weapons were once created out of people. After all, when such weapons were made, they were effective in large part because they were original, because they had never been thought of or seen before. In many instances, the other side in the war then had to work to create entirely new things out of magic that were able to counter those weapons. In many cases they were able to render the weapon obsolete by creating a countermagic, and then someone on the other side immediately went to work thinking up some new horror. If using magic creatively was not possible, then how did the wizards of old create weapons with it? You can’t say they simply got the knowledge from a book, or from past experience; where and how would the first such weapons have originated if not with an original idea? Someone had to have used magic creatively in the first place.

“I think that Jagang is again doing this very thing with magic. He has studied some of what was done in the great war, what weapons were created, and learned from that. He sometimes may direct that what was once created to be created again, such as with Nicholas, but in other instances I think he imagines what has never been, what goes beyond what has been done before, and has it brought to reality by those who know how to use magic to build what he wants.

“In these acts of creation it isn’t the work that is the most remarkable aspect, but the idea and vision that makes the labor effective, just as carpenters and bricklayers who built houses and barns can be employed to construct a palace. It wasn’t so much their labor that was remarkable in the creation of palaces, but the act of insight and creation that gave it direction.”

Nicci nodded ever so slightly in concentration as she weighed his words. “I can see that your notion isn’t at all the wild idea I thought it was at first. This is a line of reasoning that I’ve never encountered. I’ll have to think about the possibilities. You may be the first to really understand the mechanism behind Jagang’s scheme—or, for that matter, behind the creations of wizards in ancient times. This would explain a great many things that have nagged at me over the years.”

Nicci’s words were spoken with intellectual respect for a concept new to her, but a concept she fully grasped. No one who had ever spoken to Richard about magic had ever treated his ideas with such an insightful understanding. He felt as if this was the first time anyone had truly understood what he saw.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve had to deal with Jagang’s creations. Like I said, Nicholas was a great deal of trouble.”

In the dim light, Nicci studied his face for a moment.

“Richard, from what I was able to find out,” she said in a soft voice, “Nicholas was not Jagang’s actual goal. Nicholas was merely practice.”

“Practice!” Richard thumped his head back against the wall. “I don’t know, Nicci. I’m not so sure about that. Nicholas the Slide was a formidable creation and one nasty piece of work. You don’t know the trouble he caused us.”

Nicci shrugged. “You defeated him.”

Richard blinked in astonishment. “You make it sound like he was just a bump in the road. He wasn’t. I’m telling you, he was a frightening creation who nearly killed us.”

Nicci slowly shook her head. “And I’m telling you, as formidable as he may have been, Nicholas was not what Jagang was after. You told me not to sell the dream walker short—don’t you now do that same thing. I never thought Nicholas was fully your match.

“What you say about the process of imagination in creating new things actually makes sense, especially in this instance. It may even explain a few things. From the little I was able to learn, I believe that from the beginning Nicholas was only meant to expand the skills of the Sisters that Jagang had assigned to the task of creating weapons. Nicholas was not Jagang’s objective, but simply practice on the way to that objective.

“With his dwindling number of Sisters that practice has gained a new urgency. Even so, he apparently has enough Sisters for the work of creating his weapons.”

Richard felt goose bumps tingling up his arms as he began to realise the full implications of what Nicci was telling him.

“You mean to say that in creating Nicholas, it was like Jagang was just having his carpenters build a house as practice before he sends them on to build something vastly more complicated, like a palace?”

Nicci looked up at him and smiled. “Yes, that’s it exactly.”

“But he sent Nicholas with troops to govern a land as well as to capture us.”

“A mere matter of convenience. Jagang had instilled in Nicholas a need to hunt you, but only as part of the testing for his greater goals. He didn’t really expect the Slide to be able to accomplish his transcendent ambitions. The emperor may hate you for impeding his progress in conquering the New World, he may consider you unworthy as an opponent, and he may deem you an immoral heathen worthy only of death, but he’s smart enough to give you credit for your ability. It’s like when you said that you sent that captured soldier to assassinate Jagang. You didn’t really expect that lone soldier to succeed at the difficult task of assassinating a well-guarded emperor, but the soldier was of no other value to you and since you thought that there was at least a chance that he might accomplish something, you might as well send him on the mission while you worked on far better ideas that you expected to have a more reasonable chance of success. And if the soldier was killed, then that was fine by you because he only got what was coming to him anyway.

“Nicholas was like that. He was a conjured creation, practice along the path to something altogether superior. In the scheme of things, Nicholas wasn’t all that valuable to Jagang, so Jagang, instead of having him killed, used him. If Nicholas succeeded, then Jagang would be ahead of the game and if you killed him, then you did him a service.”

Richard ran his hand back over his hair. He felt overwhelmed at the implications. He had criticized Nicci for not being open to seeing the larger picture, and here he had just been guilty of doing the same thing.

“Well then,” he asked her, “what do you think Jagang might conjure up that’s worse than Nicholas the Slide?”

The drone of the cicadas seemed oppressive, invasive, at that moment, as if they were the enemy surrounding him.

“I believe he has forged ahead and already created such a masterwork,” Nicci said with quiet finality. She pulled her blanket up around her shoulders and held it closed at her throat. “I think that’s what those men back there in the woods faced.”

Richard watched her expression in the near darkness. “What do you know about what Jagang has done?”

“Not a great deal,” Nicci admitted. “Only a few words whispered as one of my former fellow Sisters was leaving on a journey.”

“A journey?”

“To the world of the dead.”

By her tone of voice and the way she stared off, Richard didn’t want to ask what had brought about the woman’s travel plans. “So, what did she tell you?”

Nicci let out a weary sigh. “That Jagang had been making things from the lives of captives and volunteers both. Some of those young wizards actually think they are sacrificing themselves for a greater good.” Nicci shook her head at such a sad delusion. “The Sister was the one who told me that Nicholas was but a stepping-stone to His Excellency’s true and noble ends.” Nicci looked up again to make sure that Richard was paying attention. “She said that Jagang was on the brink of creating a creature similar to one he had found in ancient writings, but far better, far more deadly, and invincible.”

The hair at the back of Richard’s neck lifted. “A creature? What kind of creature?”

“A beast. An invincible beast.”

Richard swallowed at the baleful sound of the word. “What’s this creature do? Were you able to find out? What’s its nature?”

For some reason, he just couldn’t seem to bring himself to use the same word aloud right then, as if speaking it might summon it from out of the surrounding night.

Nicci’s troubled eyes turned away. “As the Sister slipped into the arms of death, she smiled like the Keeper himself with a booty of souls, and said, ‘Once he uses his power, the beast will at last know Richard Rahl. Then it will find him, and kill him. His life, like mine, is finally at its end.’ ”

Richard made himself blink. “Did she say anything else?”

Nicci shook her head. “At that point, she convulsed in the agony of death. The room went black as the Keeper snatched her soul in payment for bargains she had once struck.

“The one thing that’s been troubling me is how this creature found us. Still, I don’t think the situation is as desperate as it may seem. There is really no conclusive evidence to make us believe that it really was this beast that attacked the men back there. After all, you haven’t used your power, so there wouldn’t have been any way for Jagang’s beast to find you.”

Richard looked down at his boots. “When the soldiers attacked,” he said in a low voice as he rubbed a finger along the edge of the leather sole, “I used my gift to deflect the arrows. I didn’t do so well with the last one.”

“Lord Rahl,” Cara said, “I don’t think that’s true. I think you used your sword to deflect the arrows.”

“You weren’t there right then so you didn’t see what was happening,” Richard said as he grimly shook his head. “I was using my sword on the soldiers; I couldn’t use it to deflect the dozens of arrows as well. I deflected the arrows with my gift.”

Nicci was now sitting up straight. “You used your gift? How did you summon it?”

Richard shrugged self-consciously. He wished he knew more about what he’d done. “Through need, I guess. I didn’t know I would end up being responsible . . .”

She gently touched his arm. “Don’t foolishly blame yourself. You had no way to know. Had you not done as you did you would have been killed. You were acting to save your life. You didn’t know anything about the beast. More than that, though, you may not be entirely responsible.”

Richard frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

Nicci sank back against the rock wall. “I fear that I may have contributed to its finding us.”

“You? But how?”

“I used Subtractive Magic to get rid of your blood so I could heal you. While the Sister didn’t say anything specific that I could point to, I still got the uneasy feeling that this creature may somehow be tied to the underworld. If that’s true, then when I got rid of your blood with the use of Subtractive Magic I may have inadvertently given it a taste of your blood, so to speak.”

“You did the right thing,” Cara said. “You did the only thing you could do. To let Lord Rahl die instead would have been handing Jagang what he sought.”

Nicci nodded her appreciation of Cara’s words.

Richard let out the breath he had been holding. “What else can you tell me about this thing?”

“Nothing of any consequence, I’m afraid. The Sister told me that the Sisters who were experimenting with creating weapons out of people had only created Nicholas to work out some of the preliminary details before moving on to their important work. Even so, some of them died in the task of conjuring the Slide—and, with as many as have already died, Jagang is getting to the point where he has few to spare. He has used those he still has, while he still has enough, to accomplish his goal. Apparently, creating the beast was vastly more complex and difficult than creating a Slide, but the results were said to have been worth it. I suspect that along the way he may have directed that shortcuts be taken, shortcuts that involve the underworld.

“If we’re going to fight this thing, we need to find out everything we can about this beast. And we need to find out before it catches us. With what happened to the men, I don’t think we have much time.”

Richard knew that what she meant, but hadn’t said, was that she wanted him to forget what she thought were his meaningless dreams about Kahlan and to put his full concentration and effort toward this dangerous creation of Jagang’s.

“I have to find Kahlan,” he said in a quiet tone meant to convey his conviction and his resolve.

“You can’t do anything if you’re dead,” Nicci said.

Richard lifted the baldric over his head. He leaned the polished scabbard holding the Sword of Truth against the rock.

“Look, we’re not even sure that whatever killed those men back there really is this beast you’re talking about.”

“What do you mean?” Nicci asked.

“Well, if it can find me when I use my gift, then why did it attack the men? Sure, it was the place where I’d used my ability, but the attack was three days after the fact. If it was supposed to know me after I used my power then why attack the men?”

“Maybe it just thought you were among them,” Cara offered.

Nicci nodded. “Cara might be right.”

“Maybe,” Richard said. “But if it recognized me by me using my gift and in addition you gave it a taste of my blood, then wouldn’t it know that I wasn’t among the men?”

Nicci shrugged. “I don’t know. It very well could be that by using your gift you only summoned it to the general area, but when you stopped using your ability then the beast was blind to you, so to speak. Maybe it was so angry that it just missed you it went into a frenzy of killing whoever was there. If that’s true, then I would suspect that it needs you to again use your gift, now that it’s close, to finally be able to catch you.”

“But she said that once I used my gift it would know me. That doesn’t sound to me like I need to use it again for it to find me.”

“Maybe it does now know you,” Nicci said. “But maybe it still needs to find you. Since it knows you, now, maybe all the beast needs is for you to again use your gift so that it can pounce.”

That had a frightening kind of logic to it. “I guess it’s good that I don’t depend on my gift.”

“You’d better make sure you let us protect you,” Cara said. “I don’t think you had better do anything that might even inadvertently cause you to use your magic.”

“I’m afraid that I agree with Cara,” Nicci said. “I’m not sure about it having a taste of your blood, but the one thing we do know for sure is what the Sister told me—that if you use your gift it will find you. As long as the beast is hunting you, and until we can learn more about it and nullify the threat, you must not use your gift for any reason.”

Richard conceded with a nod. He didn’t know if that was possible. While he didn’t know how to call upon his gift, he wasn’t sure that he knew how to prevent it coming forth, either. It was awakened by anger and answered a certain kind of need. He wasn’t aware of the specific conditions that invoked his ability; it just happened. While their theory of not using his gift made sense, he wasn’t sure he could actually control it enough to prevent it if conditions caused it to spring to life.

Another frightening thought occurred to him. It was possible that the beast had found him, and knew precisely where he was, and it had only killed the men out of blood lust. For all he knew, the beast could be out in the woods watching, using the noise of the cicadas to cover its footsteps as it approached their shelter.

In the dim light Nicci watched him. As he pondered the grim possibilities, she reached out again and felt his forehead.

Drawing back, she said, “We’d better get some rest. You’re shivering with the cold. I’m afraid that in your condition you may lapse into a fever. Lie down. We’ll all have to keep each other warm. But first, you need to be dry or you’ll never get warm.”

Cara leaned past Richard, toward Nicci. “How do you think you can get him dry without a fire?”

Nicci gestured. “Both of you, lie back.”

Richard lay back; Cara hesitantly complied. Nicci leaned over them, placing a hand just above their heads. Richard felt the warm tingle of magic, but not an uncomfortable sensation like the last time. He could see the soft glow above Cara as well. It struck him how remarkable it was for Nicci to trust Cara enough to use magic on her. Using magic on a Mord-Sith gave them the opportunity to seize that magic in order to control the gifted person. Richard found it even more remarkable that Cara would trust Nicci enough to allow her to use magic on her. Mord-Sith did not like magic one bit.

Nicci’s hands moved slowly downward, just above their bodies. By the time she reached Richard’s boots, he realized that he felt dry. He ran a hand over his shirt, then his pants, and found that both were dry.

“How is that?” Nicci asked.

Cara was scowling. “I’d rather be wet.”

Nicci arched an eyebrow. “I can arrange that, if you like.”

Cara put her hands under her arms to warm them and remained silent. Satisfied that Richard was pleased, Nicci did the same for herself, moving both hands down her dress as if slowly pressing away the water.

When she finished, she was shivering and her teeth were chattering, but she and her black dress were dry.

Concerned by the way she wavered that she might pass out, Richard sat up and gently gripped her arm. “Are you all right?”

“I’m just exhausted,” she admitted. “I’ve not had much sleep for days, on top of the effort of healing you and then the exertion of the traveling we did after the attack today. I’m afraid that it’s all caught up with me. This bit of magic took what strength and warmth I had left. I just need to get some sleep, that’s all. But even if you don’t realize it, Richard, you need it even more. Lie back and sleep, now. Please. If we all lie close we can keep each other warm.”

Dry, but weary and still cold, Richard wriggled into his bedroll. She was right; he did need rest. He couldn’t get help for Kahlan if he wasn’t rested.

Without hesitation, Cara pressed up close on his left to help get him warm. Nicci pushed in on his other side. The warmth was a relief. He hadn’t realized how cold he was until the three of them crowded in tight together. He knew by how he felt that Nicci was right, that he wasn’t fully well yet. At least he only needed rest and not magic.

“Do you think this beast could have taken Kahlan in order to get to me?” he asked into the dark and quiet shelter.

Nicci was a moment in answering. “Such a creature needs no perverse method to get to you, Richard. From what the Sister said, and from what I fear I may have done, to say nothing of you having used your gift, the beast will be able to find you. From all those dead men back there, I fear it already has.”

Richard felt the weight of guilt crush down upon him. If not for him, those men would be alive.

He had difficulty swallowing past the lump in his throat. He wished there were some way to undo what was done, some way to give them their lives and their futures back.

“Lord Rahl?” Cara whispered. “I would like to make a confession, if you will swear never to repeat it.”

Richard had never heard her say such an odd thing. “All right. What is it that you wish to confess?”

Her answer was a while in coming, and then it was so soft he would not have been able to hear it were she not so close. “I’m afraid.”

Almost against his better judgment, Richard lifted his arm around her shoulders and held her close. “Don’t be. It’s coming after me, not you.”

She lifted her head and scowled at him. “That is the reason I’m afraid. After seeing what it did to those men, I’m afraid that it’s coming for you and there is nothing I can do to protect you.”

“Oh,” Richard said. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m afraid of that, too.”

Cara laid her head back down on his shoulder, content to stay under the protective comfort of his arm. The surrounding strum of the cicadas somehow made him feel more vulnerable. The seventeen-year cycle of the insects was inescapable, inexorable, unstoppable.

So was Jagang’s beast. How could he hide from such a thing?

“So,” Nicci asked, apparently trying to lighten the somber mood in the shelter, “where did you meet this woman of your dreams?”

Richard didn’t know if she was trying to soften the question with a little humor, or if she was being sarcastic. If he didn’t know better he would have thought it sounded like jealously.

He stared up in the darkness as he thought back to that day. “I was out in the woods, looking for evidence of who had killed my father—the man I grew up thinking was my father, George Cypher, the man who’d raised me. That was when I spotted Kahlan moving along a trail around Trunt Lake.

“Four men were following her. They were assassins sent by Darken Rahl to kill her. He had already killed all the other Confessors. She is the last.”

“So you rescued her?” Cara asked.

“I helped her. Together we were able to kill the assassins.

“She’d come to Westland looking for a long-lost wizard. It turned out that Zedd was the great wizard she had been sent to find—he still held the position of First Wizard, even though he had given up the Midlands and fled to Westland before I was born. The whole time I grew up I never knew that Zedd was a wizard, or my grandfather. I only knew him as my best friend in the world.”

He could sense Nicci looking at him, and feel her warm, soft breath against the side of his face. “Why did she want this great wizard?”

“Darken Rahl had put the boxes of Orden in play. It was everyone’s worst nightmare.” Richard clearly recalled his dread at hearing that news. “He had to be stopped before he opened the correct box. Kahlan had been sent to ask this long-vanished First Wizard to appoint a Seeker. After that first day when I saw her by Trunt Lake, my life was never again the same.”

Into the silence, Cara asked, “So, was it love at first sight?”

They were humoring him, trying to take his thoughts off the men who had been slaughtered by a beast sent by Jagang to kill him, trying to take his mind off the monster now coming for him.

The thought struck him that maybe somewhere back in the woods around where they had camped, somewhere in an undiscovered place where he hadn’t looked, lay Kahlan’s torn remains.

Such a thought was so painful to contemplate that it felt like it was crushing his heart.

Richard didn’t reach up and wipe away the tear that ran down his cheek. But with a gentle touch, Nicci did. Her hand briefly, tenderly, caressed his cheek.

“I think we’d better try to get some sleep,” he said.

Nicci drew back her hand and laid her head against his arm.

In the darkness, Richard couldn’t seem to make his burning eyes close. Before long he could hear Cara’s even breathing as she surrendered to sleep. Nicci softly pressed her cheek against his shoulder as she snuggled up close in their shared warmth.

“Nicci?” he whispered.

“Yes?”

“What kind of torture does Jagang use on captives?”

He could feel Nicci take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Richard, I’m not going to answer that question. I’m sure you have to know that Jagang is a man who needs killing.”

Richard had had to ask the question. He was relieved that Nicci was kind enough not to answer it.

“When Zedd first gave me the sword, I told him that I would not be an assassin. I have since come to understand the principled value of preserving life through the task of killing evil men. I wish that driving the Imperial Order out of the New World was as simple as killing Jagang.”

“I can’t tell you how many times I wished I had killed him when I had the chance, even though you are right about it not ending the war. I wish I could stop thinking about all the opportunities I missed. I wish I could stop thinking about all the things I should have done.”

Richard reached around her and held her trembling shoulders.

He felt her muscles slowly relax. Her breathing finally slowed as she slipped into sleep.

If he was to find Kahlan, Richard had to get the rest he needed. He closed his eyes as another tear leaked out. He missed her so much.

His thoughts lingered on that first day he saw Kahlan in the white, satiny smooth dress that he only much later found out distinguished her as the Mother Confessor. He remembered the way it hugged her shape, the way it made her look so noble. He remembered the way her long hair cascaded down around her shoulders, framing her in the dappled forest light. He remembered looking into her beautiful green eyes and seeing the gleam of intelligence looking back at him. He remembered feeling, from that first instant, from that first shared gaze, as if he had always known her.

He told her that there were four men following her. She asked, “Do you choose to help me?”

Before his mind could form a thought, he heard himself say, “Yes.”

He had never for an instant been sorry that he said yes.

She needed help now.

His last thoughts as he drifted into tormented sleep were of Kahlan.