Stone of Tears

Chapter 16

Kahlan sat naked in the circle with eight naked men. Richard was to her left, painted, as were she and the elders, with the black and white mud except in a small circle in the center of his chest. In the dim light coming from the small fire behind her, she could see the wild jumble of lines and swirls sweeping diagonally across his face. They all wore the same mask, so that the ancestors’ spirits might see them. She wondered if she looked as savage to him as he looked to her. The unfamiliar, acrid smell from the fire made her nose itch. None of the elders scratched their noses; they only stared at nothing and chanted sacred words to the spirits.

The door slammed shut by itself, making her jump.

The Bird Man’s distant eyes came up. “From now, until we are finished, near dawn, no one may go out, no one may come in. The door is barred by the spirits.”

Kahlan didn’t like the idea that, as Richard had said, this could be a trap. She squeezed his hand more tightly. He returned the squeeze. At least, she thought, she was with him. She hoped she could protect him. She hoped she could call the lightning if she had to.

The Bird Man fished out a frog and then passed the woven basket to the next elder. Kahlan stared at the skulls arranged in a circle in the center as each elder took a frog and began rubbing its back against the bare circle of skin on his chest. As they did so, each rolled his head back and chanted different words. Without looking over, Savidlin passed her the basket.

Closing her eyes, she reached inside and finally caught a squirming, kicking spirit frog. Its smooth, slimy skin was revolting. Swallowing hard, and taking a mental grip on her Confessor’s power to try to keep from releasing it unintentionally, she pressed the frog’s back to the skin between her breasts as she passed the basket to Richard.

Tingling tightness spread across her skin. She freed the frog and took up Richard’s hand once more as the walls began to waver, as if seen through heat and smoke. Her mind tried in vain to hold on to the images of the spirit house around her. They drifted away as she felt herself spinning around the skulls.

Soft sensations caressed her skin. Light danced from the skulls in the center and filled her eyes. Sounds of the boldas and drums and chanting filled her ears. The pungent smell from the fire filled her lungs. As once before, the light from the center brightened, taking them into it, into the silken void, spinning them around.

And then there were shapes around them. Kahlan remembered them, too, from before: the ancestors’ spirits. She felt a gossamer touch on her shoulder: a hand; a spirit hand.

The Bird Man’s mouth moved, but it wasn’t his voice. It was the joined voices of the ancestors’ spirits, flat, hollow, dead.

“Who calls this gathering?”

Kahlan leaned toward Richard, and whispered, “They want to know who calls this gathering.”

He nodded. “I do. I call this gathering.”

The touch left her shoulder and the spirits all floated from behind them into the center of the circle.

“Speak your name.” The echo of their voices sent ripples of pain along the skin of her arms. “Your full and true name. If you are certain that you wish this gathering, despite the danger, speak the request after your name. You get but this one warning.”

Richard stared at her translation. “Richard, please . . .”

“I have to.” He looked back to the spirits in the center and took a deep breath. “I am Richard . . .” He swallowed and closed his eyes for a moment. “I am Richard Rahl, and I request this gathering.”

“So be it,” came the empty whispers.

The door to the spirit house crashed open.

Kahlan jumped with a little shriek. She felt Richard’s hand flinch, too. The doorway stood open, a black maw in the soft light around them. The elders all looked up, their eyes no longer glazed with the distant vision. They seemed confused, dazed.

The spirit voices came again, this time not through the elders, but from the center, from the spirits themselves. The sound of it was even more painful than before.

“All but the one who calls the ancestors’ spirits may leave. Leave while you still can. Heed our warning. Those who remain behind with him risk forfeiting their souls.” They turned as one to Richard. Their voices were a hiss. “You may not leave.”

The elders’ frightened eyes flicked around to each other as she translated for Richard. Kahlan knew: this had never happened before.

“Everyone out,” Richard whispered. “Have everyone get out. I don’t want them hurt.”

Kahlan looked to the Bird Man’s worried eyes. “Please. All of you, leave now. While you can. We don’t want harm to come to any of you.”

The elders all looked to the Bird Man. He stared at her a moment, glanced at Richard, and then back to her.

“I can offer you no guidance, child. This has never happened before. I don’t know what it means.”

Kahlan nodded. “I understand. Go now, before it is too late.”

Savidlin touched her shoulder, and then the elders vanished as they walked through the black void of the doorway. She sat in the quiet with Richard; with the spirits.

“Kahlan, I want you out of here, too. Go. Now.” His voice was calm, almost cold. Fear danced in his eyes. And magic.

She watched his face as he stared at the spirits.

“No,” she whispered. She turned once more to the center. “I will not leave you. Not for any reason. Though no words have been spoken over us, we are joined in our hearts, by my magic. We are one. What happens to one, happens to both. I am staying.”

Richard didn’t look over. He continued to stare at the spirits as they floated in the center of the room, above the skulls. She thought he would yell at her to leave. He didn’t. His voice came soft and gentle.

“Thank you. I love you, Kahlan Amnell. Together, then.”

The door banged closed.

Kahlan jumped, and a little sound escaped from her throat before she could catch it. Her heart pounded in her ears. She tried to slow her breathing, but couldn’t. She swallowed instead.

The image of the spirits dimmed. “What you have called forth, Richard Rahl, we cannot stay to witness. We are sorry.”

Their forms seemed to evaporate as she watched. As they vanished, the light went with them, until the two of them were left in total blackness. She could hear the slow crackle of the fire off beyond that blackness, Richard’s quick breathing, her own breathing, and nothing else. Richard’s hand found hers. In the darkness, they sat together, alone, naked.

As Kahlan began to think, to hope, that nothing was going to happen, she became aware of a slight brightening in front of her. There was light beginning to glow.

Green light.

A shade of green light she had seen from only one place.

The underworld.

Her breaths came in ragged pulls. The green light brightened, and with it, distant wails.

From the air all about came an earsplitting crack, like a clap of thunder, sudden, hard, painful. The ground shook with the impact of it.

From the center of the green light, a white brilliance oozed through, to coalesce into a form and stand before them. Her breath caught in her throat. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood out stiffly.

The white form took a step closer. She only dimly realized Richard’s grip on her hand was hurting her. Kahlan knew the white robes, the long blond hair, the painfully handsome face that stood before them, smiling that small, gruesome smile.

“Dear spirits protect us,” she whispered.

It was Darken Rahl.

As one, she and Richard came slowly to their feet. The glowing blue eyes watched them rise. Relaxed, unhurried, Darken Rahl brought a hand up and licked his fingertips.

“Thank you, Richard, for calling me back.” His cruel smile widened. “How thoughtful of you.”

“I . . . didn’t call you back,” Richard whispered.

Darken Rahl laughed a quiet laugh. “Once again, you make a mistake. Call me back you did. You called a gathering. A gathering of ancestors’ spirits. I am your ancestor. Only you could have brought me back, through the veil. Only you.”

“I denounce you.”

“Denounce me all you will.” He held his arms out, out in the white light around him. “I am still here.”

“But I killed you.”

The glowing, shimmering, white robed form laughed again. “Killed me? So you did. And, you used magic to send me to a different place. A place where I am known. A place where I have . . . friends. And now you have called me back. Again with magic. Not simply called me back, Richard, but torn the veil further to do so.” He slowly shook his head. “Is there no end to your stupidity?”

Darken Rahl seemed to float, and at the same time walk, toward Richard. Richard let go of Kahlan’s hand as he backed away. She couldn’t make her legs move to go with him.

Richard’s eyes were wide. “I killed you. I defeated you. I won. You lost.”

The blond head nodded slowly. “You won a small battle, in a timeless war, by using the gift, and the Wizard’s First Rule. But in your ignorance, you violated the Wizard’s Second Rule, and in so doing, you have lost it all.” His slow, wicked smile came back. “Such a shame. Didn’t anyone ever tell you? Magic is dangerous. I could have taught you. Could have shared it all with you.” He shrugged. “But it doesn’t matter. You have helped me win even without being taught. I couldn’t be more proud of you.”

“What is the Wizard’s Second Rule? What did I do!”

Rahl’s eyebrows lifted as he took another step closer.

“Why, Richard, don’t you know? You should,” he whispered. “You have broken it a second time, today. And in violating it a second time, you have torn the veil once more, a second time, and brought me here, so that I might tear it the rest of the way and free the Keeper.” His mocking smile returned. “All by yourself.” He gave a taunting laugh. “My son. You should never have meddled in things you don’t understand.”

“What do you want!”

Rahl drifted closer. “You, my son. You.” His hand began to rise toward Richard. “You sent me to another world, and now, in turn, I am going to send you there. You are for the Keeper. He wants you. You are his.”

Without even realizing it, Kahlan’s fist was up, the Con Dar igniting in the depths of her being. Rage exploded through her, and blue lightning erupted from her fist. The dark void around them was ripped away in a fury of light and sound that shook the ground under her feet. The spirit house was back, lit by the blue bolt as it arced toward Darken Rahl.

Effortlessly, his hand came up, deflecting the strike. The bolt of lightning split. One shaft blasted through the roof, into the black sky, sending a shower of tile fragments raining down. The other fork struck the ground, throwing dirt hurtling everywhere.

Darken Rahl’s eyes met hers. His gaze seared her very soul. He smiled the most wicked smile she had ever seen. It seemed to make every fiber of her being ache. She tried to call forth the power again, but nothing happened. He had done something. Kahlan tried, but she couldn’t move a muscle. Richard seemed as paralyzed as she.

Her world was collapsing in a frightening rush. Richard, she wailed in her mind. My Richard. Oh, dear spirits, don’t let this happen.

His eyes burning with rage, Richard managed to take a step forward, but Darken Rahl put his hand to the left side of his chest, above his heart, stopping him stone still.

“I mark you, Richard. For the Keeper. With the Keeper’s mark. You are his.”

Richard threw his head back. His scream seemed to rend the very fabric of the air, and tear her heart and soul with its despair. Kahlan felt as if she died a thousand deaths in that instant.

As Darken Rahl held his hand to Richard’s chest, wisps of smoke curled away. Kahlan’s nostrils filled with the stench of burning flesh.

Darken Rahl pulled his hand back. “The price of ignorance, Richard. You are marked. You are the Keeper’s, now. Now, and forever. The journey begins.”

Richard collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been out. Kahlan didn’t know if he was unconscious, or dead. Something held her up, but it wasn’t her legs. It was the strings held by Darken Rahl.

He glided closer to her. He loomed over her, crushing her in blinding brilliance. Kahlan wanted to shrink away, to close her eyes, but she could not.

Finally, she regained her voice. “Kill me too,” she whispered. “Send me where you have sent him. Please.”

His glowing hand reached toward her. The agony in her heart tore her mind senseless. His fingers fanned open. His touch on her flesh sent fire and ice through her in a wave of shock.

The hand pulled back.

“No.” Darken Rahl’s pitiless smile spread anew. “No. That would be too easy. Better to let him see what happens to you. Better to let him watch, helpless.” The smile showed teeth for the first time. “Better to let him suffer it.” His eyes had an intensity that seemed to impale her. It was the same frightening glare Richard had inherited.

“You live, for now. Soon enough, you will twist in a different pain, living, and dead,” he whispered in a measured, merciless tone. “He will watch. Forever. I will watch. Forever. The Keeper will watch. Forever.”

“Please,” she cried, “Send me with him.”

A finger reached out and touched a tear. The pain of the touch made her flinch. “Since you love him so much, I will give you a gift.” He turned and drew his arm smoothly through the air in Richard’s direction. His frightening blue eyes returned to her. “I will let him live a short time longer. Long enough for you to watch as the Keeper’s mark bleeds the life from him. Bleeds his soul from him. Time is nothing. The Keeper will have him. I give you this spark of time in forever to watch the one you love die.”

He leaned toward her. She struggled to back away, but couldn’t. His lips left a kiss on her cheek. The pain of it sent a silent shriek through her and filled her mind with a vision of being raped. Luminous fingers lifted her hair from her neck. His mouth was by her ear.

“Enjoy my gift,” he whispered intimately. “In time, I will have you, too. Forever. Between life and death. Forever. I would like to tell you how much you will suffer, but I am afraid you would not be able to comprehend it. Soon enough, I will show you.” He gave a whispering laugh in her ear. “After I have torn the veil the rest of the way, and freed the Keeper.”

As she stood helpless, he left another kiss on her neck. The horror of the visions it seared through her mind left her feeling defiled beyond anything she had thought possible. “Just a tiny taste. Good-bye, for now, Mother Confessor.”

As he turned from her, she was able to move again. She snatched desperately for the power. It wouldn’t come. She cried and shook as she watched him glide through the doorway of the spirit house and disappear.

And then she collapsed to the ground with a wail of agony. Convulsing in ragged sobs, she clawed across the dirt to Richard.

He lay on his side, away from her. She pulled him over on his back. His arm flopped to his side, limp. His head rolled toward her. He looked ashen, dead. On his chest was a burned handprint—the Keeper’s mark. The blackened skin was cracked and bleeding. His life, his soul, was bleeding away.

She fell on him, clutched at him, as she wept and shook uncontrollably.

Kahlan gripped her fingers into a fist in his hair and pressed her face against his cold cheek. “Please, Richard,” she cried in choking sobs, “please don’t leave me. I would do anything for you. I would die in your place. Don’t die. Don’t leave me. Please, Richard. Don’t die.”

She crouched against him, her world ending. Dying. She could think of nothing to do, other than cry that she loved him. He was dying, and she could do nothing to stop it. She could feel his breathing slow.

She willed herself to die with him, but death wouldn’t come. She lost all sense of time. She didn’t know if she had been there a few minutes, or a few hours. She didn’t know what was real anymore. It all felt like a nightmare. With trembling fingers, she stroked his face. His skin was dead cold.

“You would be Kahlan.”

She spun around, sitting up, at the sound of the woman’s voice coming from behind her. The door to the spirit house was closed again. In the darkness, a white, spiritlike glow towered over her. It appeared to be a spirit, a woman, her hands clasped in front of her. She watched with a pleasant smile. Her hair, as best as Kahlan could make of it, was plaited in a single braid.

“Who are you?”

The figure sank down to sit in front of her. The spirit had no clothes Kahlan could make out, but didn’t appear to be naked either. The woman looked at Richard. A glaze of both longing and anguish came over her fair features. The spirit turned to Kahlan.

“I am Denna.”

The shock of the name, and her proximity to Richard, brought Kahlan’s fist up in a jerk. Lightning screamed to be released. Before Kahlan could let it go, Denna spoke again.

“He is dying. He needs us. Both of us.”

Kahlan hesitated. “You can help him?”

“We both can, maybe. If you love him enough.”

Kahlan’s hopes flared. “I would do anything. Anything.”

Denna nodded. “I hope so.”

Denna looked back to Richard and tenderly stroked his chest. Kahlan was a blink away from releasing the power. She didn’t know if Denna was trying to hurt him, or help him. She hoped against hope. This was her only chance to save Richard. Richard took a deep breath. Kahlan’s heart leapt.

Denna withdrew her hand and smiled. “He is still with you.”

Kahlan lowered her fist a little, and wiped tears from her cheek with the fingers of her other hand. She didn’t like the look of longing Denna had as she watched Richard. Not one bit. “How did you get here? Richard couldn’t have called you; you are not his ancestor.”

Denna turned, her small, dreamy smile fading. “It would be impossible to relate it to you accurately, but perhaps I could explain it enough that it would help you to understand. I was in a place of darkness and peace. It was disturbed as Darken Rahl passed through. His passing through is something that is not supposed to happen. As he neared, I sensed that Richard had somehow called him, and enabled him to pass from where he was, held by a veil, and to come here.

“I know Darken Rahl all too well, so I followed him. I would never have been able to pass through my own veil, but by latching on to him, I was able to come through, too, to follow in his wake. I came because I knew what Darken Rahl would do to Richard. I don’t know how to explain it better.”

Kahlan nodded. She wasn’t seeing a spirit; she was seeing a woman who had taken Richard as her mate. The power boiled angrily inside her. She struggled to put it down, telling herself that this was to save Richard. She didn’t know any other way; she had to let Denna help, if she could. Kahlan had said she would do anything, and she meant it. Even if it was not to try to kill someone who was already dead. Someone she wanted to kill a thousand times and then another thousand.

“Can you help him? Can you save him?”

“The Keeper’s mark has been placed upon him. The mark will take the holder to the Keeper. If another’s hand is placed over the mark, it will transfer to them, and take them instead, in his place. Richard will not then be pulled to the Keeper. He will live.”

Kahlan knew in that instant what she must do. Without hesitation, she leaned over Richard, stretching her hand out. “Then I will take the mark. I will go in his place so that he will live.” She spread her fingers to match the black mark. Her hand was only a scant inch above it.

“Kahlan, don’t do that.”

She looked over her shoulder. “Why? If it will save him, then I am willing to go in his place.”

“I know you are, but it is not that simple. We must talk first. It will not be easy, for either of us. It will hurt both of us to really help him.”

Kahlan reluctantly sat back down and nodded. She would have agreed to anything, paid any price, even talking to this . . . woman. She put a hand protectively on Richard as she sat facing Denna. “How do you know who I am?”

Denna grinned, almost laughed. “To know Richard is to know who Kahlan is.”

“He told you about me?”

Denna’s smile faded. “In a way. I heard your name countless times. When I hurt him until he was delirious, he cried your name. Never another. Not his mother’s, nor his father’s. Only yours. I hurt him until he didn’t know his own name, but he always knew yours. I knew he would find a way to be with you despite your Confessor’s power.” A little of her smile came back. “I think Richard could find a way to make the sun rise at midnight.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I am going to ask you to help him, and I want you to understand exactly how much you will be hurting him before you agree to it. You must understand what it is you will have to do in order to save him. I won’t trick you into doing it. It must be with your full knowledge. Only in that way will you know how to save him. If you don’t understand, you could fail.

“He is in danger from more than this mark. He is sick with a madness, madness I put there. It will kill him as surely as will the Keeper’s mark.”

“Richard is probably the most sane person I know. He has no madness. It is the mark we must remove.”

“He is marked in other ways: he has the gift. I knew from the moment he came to kill me. I can see it in him now, the aura of it. I know it is killing him, and I know his time is very short. I don’t know how long, only that there is not much time left. We can’t save him from the Keeper just to have him die anyway from the gift.”

Kahlan nodded as she wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “The Sisters of the Light say they can save him. They say he must put a collar on to save himself. Richard will not put it on. He told me what you did to him, why he won’t wear a collar. But Richard is not crazy. He will see in the end what must be done, and do it. That is the way he is. He will see the truth.”

Denna shook her head. “What he told you does not scratch the surface of it. You cannot imagine what he has not told you. I know his madness. He will not tell you the rest of it. I must.”

Kahlan’s anger boiled. “I don’t think it would be wise for you to tell me. If he doesn’t want to tell me, then I don’t think I should know it.”

“You must. You must understand him if you are to help him. In some ways, I understand him better than you. I have taken him to the edge of madness, and beyond. I have seen him in a wasteland of insanity.

“I have stood over him and held him there.”

Kahlan glared. She recognized the look in Denna’s eyes when she looked at Richard. She didn’t trust her. “You love him.”

Denna stared at her. “He loves you. I used that love to hurt him. I took him to the brink of death and held him there, on the cusp. Others would bring a man to the edge faster, but they couldn’t hold him there. They always went one step too far, too quickly, and killed them, ending it before they could extract the most exquisite pain, inflict the crudest of the insanity. Darken Rahl chose me because I had a talent for keeping them alive and giving them that pain, and then more, and then even more. Darken Rahl himself taught me.

“I had to sit for hours, sometimes, and wait, knowing that if I touched him just once more with the Agiel, it would be one touch too many; it would kill him. As I sat, waiting for him to recover enough so that I might hurt him more, he would whisper your name, over and over, for hours. He wasn’t even aware he was doing it.

“You were the thread that kept him alive. It was the one thread that allowed me to give him that extra pain. Allowed me to take him further toward death, deeper into madness. I used his love for you to punish him beyond anything otherwise possible.

“As I would sit there, listening to him whisper your name, I wished it would once, just once, have been my name he called out. It never was. I hurt him more for that than for anything else.”

Tears ran down Kahlan’s cheeks, falling from her face. “Please, Denna, I don’t want to hear any more. I can’t bear to hear any more—to know I made it possible for you to do what you did.”

“You must. I have not yet even begun to tell you what you must hear if you want to help him. You must understand how I used magic against him; why he hates the magic within himself. I understand, because what I did to him was also done to me, by Darken Rahl.”

As Kahlan sat shaking, staring blankly at nothing, almost in a trance, Denna began telling her what she had done to Richard. How she used the Agiel. She flinched at the description of every kind of touch, at everything it could do.

Kahlan remembered all too well what its touch felt like, the maddening pain. She learned that what she had felt was the least of it.

She cried as Denna told her how Richard had hung in shackles as she pulled his head back by his hair and made him stay perfectly still while she pushed the Agiel in his ear, or risk damage inside his head. And how he had been able to do it because of his love for Kahlan. She shook, when she heard the horrifying description of what it did to him, what the magic did to him; what his own magic did to him. She couldn’t look at Denna as the other spoke. Couldn’t meet her eyes. And that was only the beginning.

She clutched her stomach and held a trembling hand to her mouth to keep from vomiting as Denna described one unspeakable act after another. Kahlan couldn’t make herself stop crying. She gagged as she closed her eyes tight.

As she listened, she prayed to the good spirits that Denna wouldn’t tell her the one thing she knew she couldn’t bear to hear.

But then Denna told her. Told her what a Mord-Sith did to her mate, why their mates didn’t live long. Every intimate detail. And what she had done to Richard that she had done to no other mate.

With a wail, Kahlan turned away, crawled a short distance, and started throwing up. With one hand holding herself up, and the other across her abdomen, she cried and heaved and gagged. Denna’s hands were there, holding her hair back as Kahlan emptied the contents of her stomach onto the dirt. She vomited until her insides were heaved dry.

She felt Denna’s warm tingling touch on her back. She wanted to call forth the lightning, but was too sick to find the power. She was torn between wanting to throw herself on Richard and comfort him, and ripping this woman apart with the magic of the Con Dar, the Blood Rage.

Between gagging, and panting, and crying, Kahlan managed to get the words out. “Take . . . your hands . . . off me.” The hand holding her hair slipped away. The one on her back lifted. Her stomach heaved again in a dry convulsion. “How many times did you do that to him?”

“Enough. It does not matter.”

Kahlan turned in a rage, clenching her fists as she screamed. “How many times!”

Denna’s voice was soft and calm. “I’m sorry, Kahlan, I don’t know. I didn’t keep a tally. But he was with me a long time. Longer than any other mate. I did it almost every night. The things I did, I did to no other, because none had the strength Richard did, the strength of his love for you. The others would have died the first time. He fought me, for a long time. I did it enough, that’s all. Enough.”

“Enough! Enough for what!”

“Enough to drive a part of him mad.”

“He’s not mad! He’s not! He’s not!”

Denna watched as Kahlan shook with pain and rage. “Kahlan, listen to me. Anyone else would have been broken by what I did. Richard saved himself by partitioning his mind. He locked the core of himself away where I couldn’t get to it, where the magic couldn’t get to it. He used the gift to do that. It saved the core of himself from the insanity. But in the darkest corners of his mind lurks madness. I used his magic against him, to drive him insane. He couldn’t protect all of himself from the things I did.

“I told you what I did so you could see the truth of his madness. He had to sacrifice that part to save the rest. To save the rest for you. I wish I could have done the same when it was done to me.”

Kahlan lifted Richard’s hand in hers, holding the back of it to her heart. “How could you do those things?” she cried. “Oh, my poor Richard. How could you? How could you do that to anyone?”

“We all have our own little bits of insanity. Some more than others. My life was a darkness of it.”

“Then how could you! How could you, knowing what it was like!”

Denna watched her from under her eyebrows. “You have done terrible things too. You have used your power to hurt people.”

“But they were people guilty of horrible crimes!”

“All of them?” she asked quietly. “Every one?”

Kahlan’s breath caught with the memory of using her power against Brophy.

“No,” she whispered. “But I didn’t do it because I wanted to. I had to. It is my job. Who I am. What I am.”

“But you did it. And what of Demmin Nass?”

The words cut through her. Her mind flooded with the memory, the sweet memory, of castrating that beast of a man. She sank forward with a wail. “Oh, dear spirits, am I no better than you?”

“We all do what we must, whatever the reasons.” Her glowing, diaphanous fingers lifted Kahlan’s chin. “I do not tell you these things to hurt you, Kahlan. The telling of them wounds me more than you can know. I tell you because I want to save Richard, so that he doesn’t die before his rightful time, and so that the Keeper does not escape.”

Kahlan clutched Richard’s hand tighter to her breast as she wept. “I’m sorry, Denna . . . but I don’t have it in me to forgive you. I know Richard does . . . but I do not. I hate you.”

“I would not expect you to forgive me. I only wish you to understand the truth of what I am telling you, the truth of Richard’s madness.”

“Why! To what purpose!”

“So that you will understand what you must do. Wearing a collar is the core of that insanity. It symbolizes everything I did to him. In his mind, magic is madness, torture. A collar is madness, torture. Insanity.

“The thought of having a collar around his neck brings that madness out of the darkest corners of his being, brings out his deepest fears. He is not exaggerating when he says he would rather die than put a collar around his neck. He will not do it to save himself. If he doesn’t, he will die. There is only one thing in the world that will make him put on the collar.”

Kahlan’s head snapped up. Her eyes were wide. “You want me to ask him to put a collar around his neck.” She went weak with dread. “You would have me do that to him? After what you have told me?”

Denna nodded. “He will do it if you tell him to. He will not do it for any other reason. None.”

Richard’s limp arm slipped from Kahlan’s shaking hands. Her fingers covered her mouth. Denna was right. After what she knew now, what she had heard, she knew Denna was right.

She knew now what it had been that she had seen in Richard’s eyes when he looked at the collar the Sisters held out to him. It had been madness. Richard would never put a collar around his neck of his own accord. Never. She knew that now. Really knew it.

A small cry escaped her throat. “If I make him put on the collar, he will think I have betrayed him. In his madness, he will think I want to hurt him.” Pain welled up inside her, and she started to cry all over again. “He will hate me.”

Denna’s voice came in a soft whisper. “I am sorry, Kahlan. That could be the truth of it. We can’t know for sure, but he may very well see it that way. I don’t know how much the madness will take over when he knows he must put on the collar, when you tell him he must. But he loves you more than life itself, and will put it on for no other reason.”

“Denna, I don’t know if I could do that to him. Not after what you have told me.”

“You must, or he will die. If you love him enough, you must do this. You must be strong enough in your love for him to force him to do it, knowing the pain it will bring him. You may have to act as I would have acted, to frighten him enough to do as you say. You may have to bring the madness to full flower, make him think the way he did when he was with me, when he would have done anything he was told.

“You may lose his love. He may hate you forever. But if you really love him, you will see that you are the only one who can help him; the only one who can save him.”

Kahlan snatched desperately for a way out. “But in the morning, we were going to go to Zedd, a wizard, who might be able to help him control the gift. Richard thinks Zedd will know what to do; that he will be able to help him.”

“That may be true. I’m sorry, Kahlan, I don’t know the answer to that. It may work. But I do know that the Sisters of the Light have the power to save him. If they come, and he turns them down for the third time, he will forever lose the opportunity to get their help. If it turns out that this wizard can’t help Richard, then he will die. His time is short, days at most.

“Do you understand what that means, Kahlan? He won’t just die; the Keeper will have him, have everyone. Richard is the only one who can close the veil.”

“How? Do you know how he can close it?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t. I know only that it must be torn the rest of the way from this side. That is why the Keeper has agents on this side. That is why Darken Rahl came here. Somehow, Richard is the only one who can stop them, and also the only one with the power to repair what has been rent.

“If he turns the Sisters down, and this wizard can’t help him, then he dies, soon, and it will be as if the mark itself took him to the Keeper. If he can get to this wizard before he turns the Sisters down for the third time, he can learn whether he can be helped without them . . . without the collar. But if they come before he can get to Zedd, I must have your promise you will do what must be done to save him.”

“There is time. The Sisters won’t be back for at least a few days. We can get to Zedd first. There is time!”

“I hope you are right, I really do. I’m sure you won’t believe me, but I don’t want Richard to ever have to wear a collar, to ever face that madness again. But if you can’t get to Zedd, then you must promise me you won’t allow him to miss the chance at life the Sisters offer.”

Tears streamed from Kahlan’s burning eyes. Richard would hate her if she made him put on the collar; she knew he would. He would think she had betrayed him.

“But what of the mark? He still has the mark on him.”

Denna watched her a long time. Her voice came so softly Kahlan could scarcely hear it. “I will take the mark. I will go to the Keeper in his place.” A shimmering tear ran down her cheek. “But I will only do it, I will only give up my soul, if I know it gives him a chance.”

Kahlan stared incredulously. “You would do that for him?” she whispered. “Why?”

“Because after all I had done to him, he cared about my pain. He is the only one who ever did anything to stop my pain. When Darken Rahl beat me, he cried, and he made a potion to take away my pain, though I had never once stopped torturing him no matter how much he begged. Not once.

“And after all the things I have told you I did to him, he forgave me. He understood what I had suffered. He took my Agiel to wear around his neck and promised to remember me, to remember that I was more than a Mord-Sith; to remember that I was once just Denna.”

Another shimmering tear ran down. “And because I love him. Even in death, I love him. Though I know my love will never be requited, I still love him.”

Kahlan looked at Richard as he lay on his back, unconscious, helpless, with the Keeper’s mark, black and bleeding, on his chest. The black and white mud painted everywhere on him made him look wild, savage, but he wasn’t; he was the gentlest person she had ever known. She realized then that she would do anything to save him. Anything.

“I will do it,” she whispered. “I promise. If we can’t find Zedd before the Sisters come back for the third time, I will make him put on the collar, no matter what it takes. Even if it makes him hate me. Even if it kills me.”

Denna’s hand reached out to her. “An oath then, between the living and the dead, to do what must be done to save him.”

Kahlan stared at the hand before her. “I still can’t forgive you. I won’t forgive you.”

The hand stayed where it was, waiting. “The only forgiveness I need has already been granted.”

Kahlan stared at the hand, and then reached out and took it. “An oath then, to save the one we love.”

They clasped hands, and shared a silent joining.

Denna took away her hand. “Time is short for him. It must be now.” Kahlan nodded. “When it is done, get help for him. Though the pull of the mark will be removed, the wound will still be there, and it is a serious one.”

Kahlan nodded. “There is a healer here. She will help him.”

Denna’s eyes were filled with compassion. “Thank you, Kahlan, for loving him enough to help him. May the good spirits be with you both.” She gave a small, frightened smile. “Where I am going, I will never see any of them, or I would send them to help you.”

Kahlan touched the back of the other’s hand, offering a silent prayer for strength.

Denna returned the touch to Kahlan’s cheek, and then knelt next to Richard. Her hand went to the mark, covering it, dissolving into it. Richard’s chest heaved.

Denna’s features twisted in pain. She threw her head back with a piercing scream that shot through Kahlan.

And then she was just gone.

Richard groaned. Kahlan bent over him, caressing him. Crying.

“Kahlan?” he moaned. “Kahlan, what happened? It hurts. It hurts so . . .”

“Lie still, my love. Everything is all right. You are safe, with me. I’ll get help.”

He nodded and she ran to the door, throwing it open. The elders were sitting in a small circle in the dark, just outside the door. They looked up expectantly.

“Help me!” she screamed. “Carry him to Nissel! There’s no time to get her!”