Faith of the Fallen

Chapter 21

Richard heard an odd sound that stopped him in his tracks. He felt a thump through the ground and deep in his chest. He thought he’d seen a flash in the treetops, but it had been so quick he wasn’t sure.

It was the sound, though, as if some great hammer had struck off the top of a mountain, that made his blood go cold.

The house wasn’t far off through the trees. He dropped the string of trout and the jar of minnows, and ran.

At the edge of the woods where it opened into the meadow, he skidded to a halt. His pounding heart felt as if it had risen up into his throat.

Richard saw the two women not far away, in front of the house, one dressed in white, and one in black. They were connected by a snaking, undulating, crackling line of milky white light. Nicci’s arms were lifted slightly with her hands turned palms up and a little farther apart than the width of her hips.

The milky light went from Nicci’s chest, across the space between the two women, and pierced Kahlan through the heart. The wavering aurora between the two turned blindingly bright, as if twisting in an agony it was unable to escape.

Seeing Kahlan trembling with the fury of that lance of light pinning her to the wall, Richard was paralyzed by fear for her, fear he knew all too well, from when she had been on the cusp of death. That bolt pierced Nicci’s heart, too, connecting the two women. Richard didn’t understand the magic Nicci was using, but he instinctively recognized it as profoundly dangerous, not only to Kahlan, but to Nicci as well, for she, too, was in pain. That Nicci would put herself at such risk gripped him with dread.

Richard knew he had to remain calm and keep his wits about himself if Kahlan was to have a chance. He viscerally wanted to do something to strike Nicci down, but he was certain that it wouldn’t be as simple as that. Zedd’s oft-repeated expression—nothing is ever easy—flashed into Richard’s mind with sudden and tangible meaning.

In a desperate search for answers, everything Richard knew about magic cascaded in a torrent through his mind. None of it told him what to do, but it did tell him what he must not do. Kahlan’s life hung in the balance.

Just then, Cara came flying out of the house. She was stark naked. It somehow didn’t look all that odd. Richard was accustomed to the shape of her body in her skintight leather outfits. Other than the color, this didn’t look all that different. She was dripping wet. Her hair was undone, which seemed more outlandishly indecent to him than her naked body. He was used to seeing her with a braid all the time.

Cara’s fist clutched the red leather rod—her Agiel—as she crouched. The muscles of her legs, arms, and shoulders strained with tension demanding release.

“Cara! No!” Richard cried out.

He was already tearing across the meadow as Cara sprang and slammed her Agiel against the side of Nicci’s neck.

Nicci shrieked in pain that dropped her to her knees. Kahlan cried out in equal pain and crumpled to her knees as well, her movement a close match to Nicci’s.

Cara seized Nicci’s hair in a fist and yanked her head back. “Time to die, witch!”

Nicci was doing nothing to stop Cara as the Agiel hung only inches from her throat.

Richard dove toward the Mord-Sith, desperately hoping he wouldn’t be too late. Cara’s Agiel just grazed Nicci’s throat as Richard tackled her around the middle, ramming her backward. The feel of her was briefly surprising—silky soft flesh over iron-hard muscle. The impact drove the wind from her when they hit the ground.

Cara was so enraged and in such a combative state that she lashed out with her Agiel at Richard, not really realizing it was him, knowing only that she was being prevented from protecting Kahlan.

The violent impact of the weapon to the side of Richard’s face felt like a blow by an iron bar followed immediately by a lightning strike. The crack of pain through his skull was momentarily blinding. His ears rang. The jolt took his breath, staggering him, and brought back in a single instant an avalanche of macabre memories.

Cara was riveted on the kill and furious at any interference. Richard regained his senses just in time to seize her wrists and pin her to the ground before she could pounce on Nicci. A Mord-Sith was formidable, to be sure, but such a woman was instilled with the ability to counter magic, not muscle. That was why she had been trying to goad Nicci into using her power; only in that way could she capture the enemy’s magic and so overpower her.

Cara’s writhing naked body under him hardly registered in Richard’s mind. He tasted blood in his mouth. His attention was focused on her Agiel and making sure she couldn’t use it on him. His head throbbed with a painful ringing, and he had to fight not only Cara, but encroaching unconsciousness.

It was all he could do to hold Cara down.

At that moment, the Mord-Sith was more of a threat to Kahlan’s life than Nicci was. If Nicci intended to kill Kahlan, he was sure she could have already done so. Richard might not have understood specifically what Nicci was doing, but by what he had already seen, he grasped the general nature of it.

Blood dripped down onto Cara’s bare chest, vivid red against the expanse of her white skin.

“Cara, stop!” His jaw worked, if painfully, so he reasoned it wasn’t broken. “It’s me. Stop. You’ll kill Kahlan.” Cara stilled under him, staring up in angry confusion. “What you do to Nicci happens to Kahlan, too.”

“You had better listen to him,” Nicci said from behind him in that velvety voice of hers.

Cara reached up when Richard released her wrists and touched the side of his mouth. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, realizing what she had done. Her tone told him she meant it. Richard nodded and then stood, pulling her up by her hand before rounding on Nicci.

Nicci stood tall, in that proud and proper posture she had. Her attention and her magic was focused on Kahlan. The calm but violent power from within him had awakened, waiting to be commanded. Richard didn’t know how to use it to stop Nicci. He held back, fearing that anything he did would only make Kahlan’s peril worse.

Kahlan was on her feet, too, but once again pinned to the wall of the house by the milky rope of light. Her green eyes were wide with the trembling torment of whatever it was Nicci was doing.

Nicci’s hands lifted. She laid her palms to her heart, over the light.

Her back was to Richard, but he could see the light through her, like fire eating through the center of a piece of paper, the incandescent hole expanding outward, appearing to consume her. The twisting flare of light was doing the same thing to Kahlan, seeming to burn through her, yet Richard could see that she was not being killed by it. She was still breathing, still moving, still alive—not reacting at all the way a person would if they were really having holes burned through them. With magic, he knew better than to believe his eyes.

At the center of Nicci’s chest, under her hands, she began to become solid again, re-forming where the light had spent itself in glowing rays working out toward the edges of her.

The light cut off. Kahlan, her own hands pressed to the wall behind her, sagged in relief as it extinguished, her eyes closing as if it was too much to endure looking at the woman standing before her.

Richard was restrained fury. His muscles screamed to be released. The magic within was a coiled viper waiting to strike. He wanted almost more than anything to cut down this woman. The only thing he wanted more was for Kahlan to be safe.

Nicci smiled pleasantly at Kahlan before turning to Richard. Her calm blue eyes momentarily took in his white-knuckled fist on the hilt of his sword.

“Richard. It’s been a long time. You look well.”

“What have you done?” He growled through gritted teeth.

She smiled. It was a smile a mother gave a child—a smile of indulgence.

She took a breath, as if recovering from a difficult bit of labor, and lifted a hand to indicate Kahlan.

“I have spelled your wife, Richard.”

Richard could hear Cara’s breath close behind his left shoulder. She was staying out of the way of his sword arm.

“To what end?” he asked.

“Why, to capture you, of course.”

“What’s going to happen to her? What harm have you done?”

“Harm? Why, none. Any harm that comes to her will only be by your hand.”

Richard frowned, understanding her, but wishing he were wrong. “You mean, if I hurt you, Kahlan will suffer it, too?”

Nicci smiled with the same discerning, disarming smile she used to have when she came to give him lessons. He could hardly believe that he used to imagine that she must look like nothing so much as a good spirit in the flesh.

Richard could sense the magic crackling around this woman. He had come to know in most cases, through his own gift, when a person had the gift.

What others couldn’t see, he saw. He could see it in their eyes, and sometimes sense the aura of it around them. He had rarely met gifted women who made the very air about them sizzle with their power. Worse, though, Nicci was a Sister of the Dark.

“Yes, and more. Much more. You see, we are now linked by a maternity spell. Odd name for a spell, yes? The name, in part, is derived from the spell’s nurturing aspects. As in lifegiver—the way a mother nurtures her child and keeps it alive.

“That light you saw was an umbilical cord of sorts: an umbilical cord of magic. By bending the nature of this world, it links our lives, no matter the distance between us. Just as I am the daughter of my mother and nothing could ever change that, so neither can this magic be altered by anyone else.”

She spoke as an instructor, as she had once spoken to him at the Palace of the Prophets when she had been one of his teachers. She always spoke with a quiet economy of words that he had once thought added an air of nobility to her bearing. Back then, Richard couldn’t have imagined coarse words coming from Nicci’s mouth, but the words she spoke now were vile.

She still moved with an unmatched, slow elegance. He had always thought her movements seductive. He now saw them as the sinuous movements of a snake.

The magic of his sword thundered through him, screaming to be loosed.

The sword’s magic had been created specifically to combat what the sword’s wielder considered evil. At that moment, Nicci fit the requirement to such an extent that the magic of the sword was close to overpowering him, near to taking command in order to destroy this threat. With the pain from the Agiel still throbbing in his head, it was a struggle to maintain his control over the power of the sword. Richard could feel the raised gold letters of the word TRUTH on the hilt pressing into his palm.

This was a time, perhaps more than any other, that he knew had to be faced with truth, and not his raw wishes. Life and death hung in the balance.

“Richard,” Kahlan said in a level voice. She waited until his eyes met hers. “Kill her.” She spoke with a quiet authority that demanded obedience.

In her white Mother Confessor’s dress, her words carried the unequivocal weight of command. “Do it. Don’t wait another moment. Kill her. Don’t think about it, do it.”

Nicci calmly watched to see what he might do. What he would finally decide seemed no more than a matter of curiosity to her. Richard had no need to think or to decide.

“I can’t,” he said to Kahlan. “That would kill you, too.”

Nicci lifted one eyebrow. “Very good, Richard. Very good.”

“Do it!” Kahlan shrieked. “Do it now, while you still have the chance!”

“Keep still,” he said in a calm voice. He looked back at Nicci. “Let’s hear it.”

She clasped her hands in the way the Sisters of the Light were wont to do. Only she was not a Sister of the Light. There looked to be something deeply felt behind that blue-eyed gaze, but what those feelings could be, he didn’t know and feared to imagine. It was one of those intense gazes that held a world of emotion, everything from longing to hatred. One thing he was sure he saw was a dead serious determination that was more important to her than life itself.

“It’s like this, Richard. You are to come with me. As long as I live, Kahlan will live. If I die, she dies. It’s as simple as that.”

“What else?” he demanded.

“What else?” Nicci blinked. “Nothing else.”

“What if I decide to kill you?”

“Then I will die. But Kahlan will die with me—our lives are now finked.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean, you must have some purpose. What else will it mean if I decide to kill you.”

Nicci shrugged. “Nothing. It’s up to you to decide. Our lives are in your hands. Should you choose to preserve her life, you will have to come with me.”

“And what do you intend to do with him?” Kahlan asked as she edged her way over to Richard’s side. “Torture a sham confession out of him, so that Jagang can put him on some kind of show trial followed by a very public execution?”

If anything, Nicci looked surprised, as if such a thought had never occurred to her, and she found it abhorrent. “No, none of that. I intend him no harm. For now, anyway. Eventually, of course, I will most likely have to kill him.”

Richard glared. “Of course.”

When Kahlan made a move forward, he caught her arm and restrained her.

He knew what she intended. He didn’t know exactly what would happen if Kahlan unleased her Confessor’s power on Nicci while they were both linked by the spell, but he had no intention of finding out, since he was sure it could come to no good end. Kahlan was far too ready, as far as he was concerned, to forfeit her life to save his.

“Just hold on for now,” he whispered to her.

Kahlan threw her arm out, pointing. “She just admitted she intends to kill you!”

Nicci smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry about that for now. If it comes to that, it will not likely be for a long time. Perhaps even a lifetime.”

“And in the meantime?” Kahlan asked. “What plans do you have for him before you discard his life as if it were insignificant?”

“Insignificant . . . ?” Nicci opened her hands in an innocent gesture. “I have no plans. I expect only to take him away.”

Richard had thought he understood what was going on, but he was less and less sure with everything Nicci said. “You mean, you want to take me away so that I can’t fight against the Imperial Order?”

Her brow twitched. “If you wish to think of it in those terms, I admit it is true that your time as the leader of the D’Haran Empire is over. But that is not the point. The point is that everything about your life up until now”—Nicci glanced pointedly at Kahlan—“is over.”

Her words seemed to chill the air. They surely chilled Richard.

“What’s the rest of it?” He knew there had to be more, something that would make sense of it all. “What other terms are there if I want to keep Kahlan alive?”

“Well, no one is to follow us, of course.”

“And if we do?” Kahlan snapped. “I might follow you and kill you myself, even if it means the end of my own life.” Kahlan’s green eyes shone with icy resolve as she cast a threatening glare on the woman.

Nicci lifted her brows deliberately as she leaned ever so slightly toward Kahlan, the way a mother would in cautioning a child. “Then that will be the end of it unless Richard stops you from doing such a thing. That is all part of what he must decide to do. But you make a miscalculation if you think I care one way or the other. I don’t, you see. Not at all.”

“What is it you intend me to do?” Richard said, pulling Nicci, s unsettlingly calm gaze from Kahlan. “What if I get where you’re taking me, and I don’t do as you wish?”

“You misunderstand, Richard, if you believe that I have some preconceived notion of what it is I wish you to do. I don’t. You will do as you wish, I imagine.”

“As I wish?”

“Well, naturally you won’t be allowed to return to your people.” She tossed her head, flicking back strands of her long blond hair that the wind had pulled across in front of her blue eyes. Her gaze never left his. “And I suppose if you were to be in some way impossibly and defiantly contrary, then in that case, such would obviously be an answer in and of itself. It would be a shame, of course, but I would then have no use for you. I would kill you.”

“You would have no further use? You mean Jagang would have no further use.”

“No.” Once again, Nicci looked surprised. “I do not act on behalf of His Excellency.” She tapped her lower lip. “You see? I removed the ring he put through my lip marking me as his slave. I do this on behalf of myself.”

A yet more disturbing thought surfaced. “How is it that he can’t enter your mind? That he can’t control you?”

“You don’t need me to answer that question, Richard Rahl.”

It made no sense to him; the bond to the Lord Rahl worked for those loyal to him. He could see no way that this could be construed as an act of loyalty. This was unequivocally an act of aggression and against his will; the bond shouldn’t work for her. He reasoned that perhaps Jagang was in her mind and she unaware of it. The thought occurred to him that maybe Jagang was in her mind, and it had driven her insane.

“Look,” Richard said, feeling like they weren’t even speaking the same language, “I don’t know what you think—”

“Enough talk. We are leaving.”

Her blue eyes watched him without anger. It almost seemed to Richard that for Nicci, Kahlan anal Cara were not there.

“This doesn’t make any sense. You want me to go with you, but you aren’t acting on behalf of Jagang. If that’s true, then—”

“I believe I’ve made it as clear as possible and quite simple, besides. If you wish to be free, you may kill me at any opportunity. If you do, Kahlan will also die. Those are your only two choices. Although I believe I know what you will do, I am in no way certain. Two paths now lie before you. You must take one.”

Richard could hear Cara’s angry breath behind him. She was a coiled spring ready to strike. Fearing she might do something of irredeemable harm, he lifted his hand just to be sure she knew he meant for her to stay behind him.

“Oh, and one additional matter, should you think to resort to some plot or treachery, or, for that matter, refuse to do the simple things I ask of you: through the spell that joins us, I can at any time end Kahlan’s life. I have but to will it. It is not necessary for me to die. She lives every day from now on only by my grace, and thus yours.

“I wish her no harm, and have no feelings one way or the other about her life. In fact, if anything, I wish it to be long. She has brought you a measure of happiness, and in return for that, I hope she will not have to forfeit her life. But then, you have some influence over that by your behavior.”

Nicci cast a deliberate glare over Richard’s shoulder, to Cara. She then reached out and with her fingers gently wiped blood from his mouth. She finished cleaning his chin with her thumb. “Your Mord-Sith has hurt you. I can help you if you wish.”

“No.”

“Very well.” She wiped her bloody fingers clean on the skirt of her black dress. “Unless you want to risk other people causing Kahlan’s death without your intending it, I suggest you insure that others don’t act without your consent. Mord-Sith are resourceful and determined women. I respect their devotion to duty. However, if your Mord-Sith follows us—and my magic will tell me if she does—Kahlan will die.”

“And just how will I know Kahlan is all right? We could get a mile away from here, and you could use that magic link to kill her. I would never know.”

Nicci’s brow creased together. She looked genuinely puzzled.

“Why would I do that?”

A storm of rage and panic pushed his emotions first one way, and then the other. “Why are you doing any of this!”

She regarded him in silent curiosity for a moment. “I have my reasons. I’m sorry, Richard, that you must suffer in this. Making you suffer is not my purpose. I give you my word that I will not harm Kahlan without informing you.”

“You expect me to believe your word?”

“I’ve told you the truth. I have no reason to lie to you. In time, you will come to understand everything better. Kahlan will come to no harm from me as long as I am safe, and you come with me.”

For reasons he couldn’t fathom, Richard found himself believing her.

She seemed dead honest and completely sure of herself, as if she had reasoned it all out a thousand times.

He didn’t believe that Nicci was telling him everything. She was making it simple so that he could grasp the important elements and have an easier time deciding what to do. Whatever the rest of it was, it couldn’t be as devastating as this much of it. The thought of being taken from Kahlan was agony, but he would do almost anything to save her life. Nicci knew that.

The enigma resurfaced. It was somehow linked to this.

“The spell that protects a person’s mind from the dream walker works only for those loyal to me. You can’t expect to be safe from Jagang if you do this. It’s an act of treachery.”

“Jagang does not frighten me. Don’t fear for my mind, Richard. I’m quite safe from His Excellency. In time, perhaps you will come to see how wrong you have been in so many things.”

“You’re deceiving yourself, Nicci.”

“You only see part of it, Richard.” She lifted an eyebrow in a cryptic manner. “At heart, your cause is the cause of the Order. You are too noble a person for it to be otherwise.”

“I may die at your hands, but I will die hating everything you and the Order stand for.” Richard’s fists tightened. “You’ll not get what you want, Nicci. Whatever it is, you’ll not get it.”

She regarded him with great compassion. “This is all for the best, Richard.”

Nothing he said seemed to hold any sway with her, and he could make no sense of the things she said. The fury inside boiled up. The magic of the sword fought him for control. He could barely contain it. “Do you really expect me to ever come to believe that?”

Nicci’s blue eyes seemed to be focused somewhere beyond him.

“Possibly not.”

Her gaze fixed on him once more. She put two fingers between her lips as she turned and whistled. In the distance, a horse whinnied and trotted out of the woods.

“I have another horse for you, waiting up on the other side of the pass.”

Terror clawed at his bones. Kahlan’s fingers tightened on his arm.

Cara’s hand touched his back. Memories of being captured before and all it meant, all the things he had endured, made his pulse race and his breath come in rapid pulls. He felt trapped. Everything was slipping through his fingers and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it.

He wanted more than anything to fight, but he couldn’t figure how. He wished it were as simple as striking down his adversary. He reminded himself that reason, not wishing, was his only chance. He seized the calm center within, and used it to quell the rising storm of panic.

Nicci stood tall, her shoulders square, her chin up. She looked like someone facing an execution with courage. He realized then that she truly was prepared for whichever way it was to go.

“I have given you your choice, Richard. You have no other options. Choose.”

“There is no choice to make. I’ll not allow Kahlan to die.”

“Of course not.” Nicci’s posture eased almost imperceptibly. A small smile of reassurance warmed her eyes. “She will be fine.”

The horse slowed from its trot as it approached. When the handsome dappled mare halted beside her, Nicci took ahold of the reins near the bit.

Its gray mane ruffled in the cold breeze. The mare snorted and tossed her head, uneasy before strangers, and eager to be away.

“But . . . but,” Richard stammered as Nicci stepped up into the stirrup. “But, what am I allowed to take?”

Nicci swung her leg over the horse’s rump and settled into the saddle.

She squirmed herself into position and adjusted her shoulders, setting them back. Her black dress and blond hair stood out in stark relief against the iron sky.

“You may bring anything you like, as long as it isn’t a person.” She clicked her tongue, urging her horse around to face him. “I suggest you take clothes and such. Whatever you wish to have with you. Take all you can carry, if you want.”

Her voice took on an edge. “Leave that sword of yours, though. You won’t be needing it.” She leaned down, her expression for the first time turning cold and threatening. “You are no longer the Seeker, or Lord Rahl, leader of the D’Haran empire, or for that matter, you are no longer the husband of the Mother Confessor. From now on, you are nobody but Richard.”

Cara stepped out beside him, a thunderhead of dark fury. “I am Mord-Sith. If you think I’m going to allow you to take Lord Rahl, you’re crazy. The Mother Confessor has already stated her wishes. My duty, above all else, is to kill you.”

Nicci curled three fingers around the reins, her thumbs holding them tight. “Do as you must. You know the consequences.”

Richard held out a restraining arm to prevent Cara from going up after Nicci and dragging her off the horse. “Take it easy,” he whispered. “Time is on our side. As long as we’re all still alive, we have the chance to think of something.”

The strain of Cara’s weight against his arm eased. She reluctantly backed a step.

“I have to get some things,” Richard said to Nicci, trying to buy that time. “Wait, at least, until I can get my pack together.”

Nicci laid the reins over and stepped her horse back toward him. She rested her left wrist across the saddle’s pommel.

“I’m leaving.” With a long graceful finger of her other hand, she pointed. “You see that pass up there? You be with me by the time I’m at the top, and Kahlan will live. If I cross over and you aren’t with me, Kahlan will die. You have my word.”

It was all happening too fast. He needed to think of a way to stall.

“Then what good will any of this have done you?”

“It will have told me what means more to you.” She sat back up in her saddle. “When you think about it, that is quite a profound question. It is yet to be answered. By the time I get to the top of the pass, I will have the answer.”

Nicci rocked her hips in the saddle, urging the horse ahead into a walk. “Don’t forget—top of the pass. You have until then to say your good-byes, pack what you wish to take, and then catch up with me if you wish Kahlan to live. Or, if you choose to stay, you have until then to say your good-byes before she dies. Understand, though, when making your choice, that the first will be as final as the second.”

Kahlan struggled to run toward the horse, but Richard clutched her around her waist.

“Where are you taking him?” she demanded.

Nicci stopped her horse momentarily and gazed down at Kahlan with a look of frightening finality.

“Why, into oblivion.”