Faith of the Fallen

Chapter 25

As Richard dismounted near one of his shelter trees at the edge of a small, slanted, open patch of grassy ground, Nicci took the reins of his horse. She could feel his smoldering glare on her back as she picketed the horses to the thick branches of an alder heavy with catkins. The horses were hungry, and promptly started cropping the wet grass. Without a word, Richard began casting about, collecting deadwood from under dense thickets of spruce trees, where, she supposed, it might be a little dryer.

She watched him, not openly, but casually, covertly, from the corner of her eye as he went about his chore. He was everything she remembered, and more. It was not so much that he was just big, physically, but he had a commanding presence that had matured since she had last seen him. Before, she had been tempted at times to think of him as little more than a boy. No more.

Now, he was a powerful wild stallion trapped in a pen of his own construction. She kept her distance, letting him kick at the walls of that pen. It would bring her no gain to taunt this wild beast. Taunting him, torturing him in his anguish, was the last thing in the world she wanted.

Nicci could understand his smoldering anger. It was to be expected. She could plainly see his feelings for the Mother Confessor, and hers for him.

The integrity of the walls of his pen consisted of nothing more than the gossamer fence rails of his feelings for her. While Nicci sympathized with his pain, she knew that she, of all people, could do nothing to alleviate it. It would take time for his hurt to heal. Over time, the rails of his fence would be replaced by others.

Someday, he would come to terms with what had to be. Someday, he would come to understand the truth of the things she intended to show him.

Someday, he would come to understand the necessity of what she was doing. It was for the best.

At the edge of the clearing, Nicci settled herself on a gray slab of granite that, by the unique angles of its broken face, had once belonged to the ledge poking out from under the deep green of balsam and spruce behind her, but over time had been moved away from it by the inexorable effort of nature, leaving a gap the shape of a jagged lightning bolt between their once-mated edges.

Nicci sat with her back straight, a habit instilled in her from a young age by her mother, and watched Richard going about unsaddling the horses. He let them both eat some oats from canvas nosebags while he collected rocks from the clearing. At first, she couldn’t imagine what he was doing. When he took them, along with the wood he had collected, in under the boughs of the shelter tree, she realized he must be going to use the rocks to ring a fire pit. He was inside a long time, so she knew he must be working on building a fire out of the wet wood. She could have used her gift to help, had her gift enough power left to light wet wood. It didn’t.

Richard seemed up to the task, though; she had watched him light a fire the night before, starting it in birch bark, shavings, and twigs. Nicci had never been one for such outdoor activities. She left him to it and set about the small chore of repairing her horse’s cinch strap. The rain had let up for the time being, leaving behind the tingle of a fine mist against her cheeks.

As she worked at knotting the loose cords of the heavy twine strap back onto its buckle, she heard little crackling sounds coming from under the tree. The sputtering and popping told her that Richard had gotten the fire going. She heard the clang of a pot on rock, so she reasoned that we was leaving water to boil when the fire got hot enough.

Sitting on the slab of granite, Nicci quietly worked a tangle out of the cinch strap as he came back out to care for the horses. Free of the nosebags, the horses drank from a pool of water in a depression in the smooth tan ledge. Though Richard wore dark clothes appropriate for the woods, they could not diminish his bearing. His gray-eyed gaze swept over her, taking in what she was doing. He left her to her knot work as he went about his chore of currying the horses. His big hands worked smoothly, with a sure touch. She was certain the horses would appreciate having all the caked mud cleaned from their legs. She would, were she they.

“You said we needed to talk,” Richard finally said to her as he stroked the curry comb over the mare’s rump, whisking away a last spatter of mud. “I presume a talk consists of you dictating the terms of my imprisonment. I imagine you have rules for your captives.”

By his icy inflection, it sounded as if he had decided to provoke her a little, to test her reaction. Nicci set the cinch strap aside. She met his challenging tone with one of genuine sympathy, instead.

“Just because something has happened to you before, Richard, don’t assume that means it will again. Fate does not give birth to the same child over and over. Each is different. This is not like the two times before.”

Her response, as well as the compassion in her eyes, appeared to have caught him off guard. He stared at her a moment before crouching to replace the curry comb in a pocket in the saddlebag and take out a pick.

“Two times before?” There was no way he could miss her meaning. His blank expression didn’t betray what he might be thinking as he lifted the stallion’s right forefoot to pick its hoof clean. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Just as he probed the hoof with his pick, she knew he was probing her as well, wanting to know just how much she knew of those two times, and what she thought was different, this time. He would surely want to know how she intended to avoid the mistakes of his past captors. Any warrior would.

He was not yet ready to accept how fundamentally different this was.

Richard worked his way around the big black horse, cleaning its hooves, until he ended at the left forefoot, close to her. As he finished and let the stallion’s leg down, Nicci stood. When he turned around, she was close enough to feel his warm breath on her cheek. He fixed her with his glare, a look that was no longer as unsettling to her as it had been at first.

She found herself, instead of shrinking back, staring into that penetrating gaze of his, marveling that she had him. She finally had him. It could have been no more wondrous to her had she somehow managed to bottle the moon and stars.

“You are a prisoner,” Nicci said. “Your anger and resentment are entirely understandable. I would never have expected you to be pleased about this, Richard. But it is not the same as those times before.” She gently gripped his throat. He was surprised, but sensed he was in no immediate danger.

“Before,” she said in quiet solace, “you had a collar around your neck. Both times.”

“You were at the Palace of the Prophets, where I was taken.” She felt him swallow. “But the other . . .”

She released his throat. “I do not use a collar, as did the Sisters of the Light, to control you, to give you pain in order to make you obey, or to put you through their ridiculous tests. My purpose is nothing like that.”

She pulled her cloak forward over her shoulders as she smiled distantly. “Remember when you first came to the Palace of the Prophets? Remember the speech you gave?”

Richard’s words were brittle with caution. “Not . . . exactly.”

She was still staring off into the memories. “I do. It was the first time I saw you. I remember every word.”

Richard said nothing, but in his eyes she could see the shadows of his mind working.

“You were in a rage—not unlike now. You held out a red leather rod hanging around your neck. Remember, Richard?”

“I guess I did.” His suspicious glare broke. “A lot has happened since then. I guess I’d put it out of my mind.”

“You said that you had been collared before. You said that the person who had once put that collar around your neck had brought you pain to punish you, to teach you.”

His posture shifted to stiff wariness. “What of it?”

She focused once more on his gray eyes, eyes that watched her every blink, her every breath, as he weighed her every word. It was all going into some inner calculation, she knew—some inner master analysis of how high was his fence, and if he could jump it. He could not.

“I always wondered about that,” she said. “About what you had said about having been in a collar before. Some months back, we captured a woman in red leather. A Mord-Sith.” His color paled just a little. “She said she was searching for Lord Rahl, to protect him. I persuaded her to tell me everything she knew about you.”

“I’m not from D’Hara.” His voice sounded confident, nevertheless, she sensed a subterranean torrent of dread. “A Mord-Sith would know next to nothing about me.”

Nicci reached inside her cloak for the thing she had brought with her.

She let the small red leather rod roll from her fingers to fall to the ground at his feet. He stiffened.

“Oh, but she did, Richard. She knew a great deal.” She smiled a small smile, not pleasure, nor mockery, but in distant sadness at the memory of that brave woman. “She knew Denna. She had been at the People’s Palace in D’Hara, where you were taken after Denna captured you. She knew all about it.”

Richard’s gaze fell away. On bended knee he reverently picked the red leather rod off the wet ground. He wiped the thing clean on his pant leg as if it were priceless.

“A Mord-Sith would not tell you anything.” He stood and boldly met her gaze. “A Mord-Sith is a product of torture. She would say only enough to make you believe she was cooperating. She would feed you a clever lie to deceive you. She would die before speaking any words to harm her Lord Rahl.”

With one long finger, Nicci pulled a sodden strand of blond hair off her cheek. “You underestimate me, Richard. That woman was very brave. I felt great sorrow for her, but there were things I wanted to know. She told it all. She told me everything I wanted to know.”

Nicci could see the rage rising in him, bringing a flush to his cheeks.

That was not what she had intended, or wanted. She was telling him the truth, but he rejected it, trying to overlay it instead with his own false assumptions.

A moment passed, and that truth finally found its way into his eyes.

The rage departed reluctantly, replaced by the weight of sadness that made him swallow at his grief for this woman. Nicci had expected no less from him.

“Apparently,” Nicci whispered, “Denna was very talented at torture—”

“I neither need nor want your sympathy.”

“But I did feel sympathy, Richard, for what that woman put you through for no purpose but to give pain. That’s the worst kind of pain, isn’t it? — pain to no benefit, no confession? The pointlessness of it only adds to its torture. That was what you suffered.”

Nicci gestured to the red leather weapon in his fist. “This woman did not suffer that kind of pain. I want you to know that.”

He pressed his lips tight in mistrust as he looked away from her eyes, gazing out at the gathering darkness.

“You killed her, this Mord-Sith named Denna, but not before she did unspeakable things to you.”

“So I did.” Richard’s expression hardened with the implied menace of his words.

“You threatened the Sisters of the Light because they, too, collared you. You told them they were not good enough to lick the boots of that woman, Denna, and so they were not. You told the Sisters that they thought they held the leash to your collar, but you promised them that they would find that what they held was a bolt of lightning. Don’t think for one moment that I don’t understand your feelings in this, or your resolve.”

Nicci reached out and tapped the center of his chest.

“But this time, Richard, the collar is around your heart and it is Kahlan who will be forfeit, should you make a mistake.”

His fists, at the ends of his rigid arms, tightened. “Kahlan would rather die than have me be a slave at her expense. She begged me to forfeit her life for my freedom. A day may dawn when it becomes necessary for me to honor her request.”

Nicci felt a weary boredom at his threats. People so often resorted to threatening her.

“That is entirely up to you, Richard. But you make a great mistake if you think I care.”

She couldn’t begin to recall how many times Jagang had made solemn threats on her life, or how many of those times his hands had tightened around her throat choking the life out of her after he had beaten her senseless. Kadar Kardeef had at times been no less brutal. She’d lost count of the times she fully expected to die, starting with the time when she was little and the man pulled her into the alley to rob her.

But such men were not the only ones who promised her suffering.

“I cannot tell you the promises the Keeper of the underworld has made to me in my dreams, promises of unending suffering. That is my fate.

“So, please, Richard, do not think to frighten me with your petty threats. More savage men than you have made credible promises as to my doom. I long ago accepted my fate and ceased to care.”

Her arms felt heavy at her sides. She felt empty of feeling. Thoughts of Jagang, of the Keeper, reminded her that her life was meaningless. Only what she had seen in Richard’s eyes gave her a hint that there might be something more, something she had yet to discover or understand.

“What is it you want?” Richard demanded.

Nicci returned her mind to the here and now. “I told you. Your part in life now is as my husband. That is the way it is going to be—if you wish Kahlan to live. I’ve told you the truth about all of it. If you come with me and do the simple things I ask, such as assuming the role of my husband, then Kahlan will live a long life. I can’t say it will be entirely happy, of course, for I know she loves you.”

“How long do you think you can hold me, Nicci?” In frustration, Richard ran his fingers back through his wet hair. “It isn’t going to work, whatever it is you want. How long until you tire of this absurd sham?”

Her eyes narrowed, studying his profound innocence, if not ignorance.

“My dear boy, I was born into this wretched world one hundred and eighty-one years past. You know that. Do you suppose I have not learned a great deal of patience, in all that time? Though our bodies may look about the same age, and in many ways I am no older than you, I have lived near to seven of your lifetimes. Do you honestly believe that you would have patience to exceed mine? Do you think me some young foolish girl for you to outwit or outwait?”

His demeanor cooled. “Nicci, I—”

“And don’t think to make friends with me, or win me over. I am not Denna, or Verna, or Warren, or even Pasha, for that matter. I’m not interested in friends.”

He turned a little and ran a hand over the stallion’s shoulder when the horse snorted and stamped a hoof at the smell of the woodsmoke curling out from the upper limbs of the shelter tree.

“I want to know what vile thing you did to that poor woman to make her tell you about Denna.”

“The Mord-Sith told me in return for a favor.”

Frowning his incredulity, he turned to her once more. “What favor could you possibly do for a Mord-Sith?”

“I cut her throat.”

Richard closed his eyes as his head sank with grief for this unknown woman who had died because of him. He clenched her weapon in his fist to his heart.

His voice lost its fire. “I don’t suppose you know her name?”

It was this, his empathy for others, even others he didn’t know, that not only made him the man he was, but shackled him. His concern for others would also be the thing that eventually brought him to understand the virtue in what she was doing. He, too, would then willingly work for the righteous cause of the Order.

“I do.” Nicci said. “Hania.”

“Hania.” He looked heartsick. “I didn’t even know her.”

“Richard.” With a finger under his chin, Nicci gently brought his face up. “I want you to know that I did not torture her. I found her being tortured. I was not happy about what I saw. I killed the man who did it. Hania was beyond any help. I offered her release from her pain, a quick end, if she would tell me about you. I never asked her to betray you in any way that the Order would want. I asked only about your past, about your first captivity. I wanted to understand what you said that first day at the Palace of the Prophets, that’s all.”

Richard didn’t look relieved, as she had intended.

“You withheld that quick release, as you call it, until she had given you what you wanted. That makes you a party to her torture.”

In the gloom, Nicci looked away in pain and anguish at the memory of that bloody deed. It had long since lost its ability to make her feel anything more than a ghost of emotions.

There were so many needing release from their suffering—so many old and sick, so many wailing children, so many destitute and hopeless and poor.

This woman had merely been another of life’s victims needing release. It was for the best.

Nicci had renounced the Creator in order to do His work, and sworn her soul to the Keeper of the underworld. She had to; only one as evil as she would fail to feel any fitting feelings, any proper compassion, for all the suffering and desperate need. It was grim irony—faithfully serving the needy in such a way.

“Perhaps you see it that way, Richard,” Nicci said in a hoarse voice as she stared into the numb nightmare of memories. “I did not. Neither did Hania. Before I cut her throat for her, she thanked me for what I was about to do.”

Richard’s eyes offered no mercy. “And why did you make her tell you about me—about Denna?”

Nicci snagged her cloak tighter on her shoulders. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“You couldn’t possibly make the same mistake Denna made. You aren’t the woman she was, Nicci.”

She was tired. The first night, he had not slept, she knew. She had felt his eyes on her back. She knew how much he hurt. Turned away from him, she had wept silently at the hate his eyes held, at the burden of being the one to have to do what was best. The world was such an evil place.

“Perhaps, Richard,” she said in a soft voice, “you will someday teach me the difference.”

She was so very tired. The night before, when he had succumbed to his weariness, and turned away from her to sleep, Nicci had in turn stayed awake all night, watching him in his sound sleep as she felt the connection of magic to the Mother Confessor. The connection brought Nicci great empathy for her, as well.

It was all for the best.

“For now,” Nicci said, “let’s get inside out of this foul weather. I’m cold and I’m hungry. We need to get some rest, too. And as I’ve told you, we have things to discuss, first.”

She couldn’t lie to him, she knew. She couldn’t tell him everything, of course, but she dared not lie to him in the things she did tell him.

The dance had begun.