Temple of the Winds

Chapter 8

Kahlan forced a smile. “Good, then. You’ll stay. It will be . . . nice, to have you stay for a visit. We’ll talk, you and I. About Richard. I mean, I’d like to hear your stories about him growing up.” She realized she must sound like she was babbling, and made herself stop.

Nadine beamed. “I can sleep in the bed?”

“Don’t be silly. Of course in the bed. Where else?”

“I have a blanket, and could sleep on the carpet so as not to—”

“No. I won’t have it. I’ve invited you to stay. I want you to feel at home, just like other guests who use this room.”

Nadine giggled. “Then I’d be sleeping on the floor. I sleep on a pallet on the floor in the back room above our shop.”

“Well,” Kahlan said, “here you will sleep in the bed.” Kahlan glanced at Cara before going on. “Later, I’ll show you around the palace, if you’d like, but for now, why don’t you just unpack some of your things and have a rest while Cara and I go see to some important business.”

“What business?” Cara asked.

The woman is as silent as a stone through all this, Kahlan thought, and now she has to ask questions. “Marlin business.”

“Lord Rahl told us to stay away from Marlin.”

“He’s an assassin sent to kill Richard. There are things I need to know.”

“I want to come, too, then.” Nadine said. She looked back and forth between Kahlan and Cara. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill a person, much less Richard. I want to see what such a person looks like. I want to look into his eyes.”

Kahlan emphatically shook her head. “It’s not something you want to see. We need to question him, and it isn’t likely to be pleasant.”

“Really?” Cara asked, her voice brightening.

“Why?” Nadine asked. “What do you mean?”

Kahlan held up a finger. “Enough. I say this for your own good; Marlin is dangerous and I don’t want you down there. You are a guest. Please respect my wishes while you are a guest in my home.”

Nadine studied the floor at her feet. “Of course. Forgive me.”

“I will tell the guards that you are a guest, and if you would like anything—to have some of your things washed, a bath, anything—just ask and they will see that someone from the staff helps you. I’ll be back after a while and we can have dinner. We’ll talk over dinner.”

Nadine turned to her bag on the bed. “Sure. I didn’t mean to meddle. I don’t want to be in the way.”

Kahlan hesitantly touched a hand to the back of Nadine’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to sound like I was ordering you around. This business with someone trying to hurt Richard just has me on edge, that’s all. I’m sorry I nearly bit your head off. You’re a guest. Please enjoy our home as your own.”

Nadine smiled over her shoulder. “I understand. Thanks.”

She really was a beautiful young woman: attractive figure and face, and an innocent quality, despite what truths Kahlan feared she danced around. Kahlan could easily see why Richard would have beer attracted to her.

She wondered at what random wisp of fate had matched Richard with her, instead of this one. Whatever the reason, she thanked the good spirits that it was so, and prayed fervently that it would remain so. More than anything, Kahlan wanted this perfidious gift from Shota to vanish. She wanted this tempting, beautiful, dangerous young woman away from Richard, to just send Nadine away. If only she could do so.

After telling the guards that Nadine was a guest, and once Kahlan and Cara had descended the carpeted stairs at the far end of the hall and were alone on the richly appointed landing, Cara seized Kahlan’s arm and spun her around to a halt. “Are you crazy!”

“What are you talking about?”

Cara gritted her teeth as she leaned closer. “A witch woman sends your man a wedding gift—it’s the bride, and you invite her to stay!”

Kahlan rubbed a thumb against the round, polished sphere of ironwood topping the newel post. “I had to. Isn’t it obvious?”

“What is obvious to me is that you should have done as the little strumpet suggested; you should have shaved her bald and sent her away in the back of a manure wagon.”

“She’s a victim in this, too. She is Shota’s pawn.”

“Her tongue has a distaste for the truth. She still wants your man. If you can’t see that in her eyes, then you aren’t the wise woman I thought you to be.”

“Cara, I trust Richard. I know he loves me. If there’s one thing at the core of Richard’s way of looking at things, it’s trust and loyalty. I know my heart is safe in his hands.

“How would it look if I acted like a jealous woman and sent Nadine away? If I don’t show my trust in him, then I’m not honoring his loyalty to me. I can’t afford to even appear to betray his trust in me.”

Cara’s scowl didn’t so much as soften. “That bucket won’t carry water for me. All that may be true, but that isn’t why you asked Nadine to stay. You want to strangle her as much as I do, I can see it in your green eyes.”

Kahlan smiled, trying to see herself in the dark, polished ironwood. She could only see a blur of a reflection. “Hard to fool a sister of the Agiel. You’re right. I had to ask Nadine to stay because there’s something going on, something dangerous. The danger won’t simply go away if I make Nadine leave.”

With a gloved hand, Cara wiped a strand of blond hair back from her face. “Dangerous? Like what?”

“Therein lies the problem: I don’t know. And don’t you dare even think of hurting her. I have to find out what’s really going on, and in order to do that I may need Nadine. I don’t want to have to go hunting her when I could have kept her at hand and in sight in the beginning.

“Look at it this way. Would it have been the right thing to do to simply send Marlin away when he arrived and announced he wanted to kill Richard? Would that have solved the problem? Why are we keeping him around? To find out what’s going on, that’s why.”

Cara wiped at the unguent on her check as if it were a smudge of dirt. “I think you are inviting trouble to your bed.”

Kahlan had to blink at the burning sensation in her eye. “I know. Me, too. The obvious thing to do, the thing I ache to do, is to send Nadine away on the fastest horse I can find. But no problem is that easily solved, especially one sent by Shota.”

“You mean what Shota told Nadine, about the wind hunting Lord Rahl?”

“That’s part of it. I don’t know what it means, but it doesn’t sound to me like it’s something Shota dreamed up.

“Worse, though, is Shota’s prayer: ‘May the spirits have mercy on his soul.’ I don’t know what she meant by that, but it terrifies me. That, and that I might be making the biggest mistake of my life.

“But what choice do I have? Two people show up on the same day, one sent to kill him and the other sent to marry him. I don’t know which is more dangerous, but I do know that neither can be simple dismissed. If someone is trying to stick a knife in your back, closing your eyes doesn’t make you safe.”

Cara’s face eased from that of a Mord-Sith to the softer features of a woman who understood another woman’s fears. “I will watch your back. If she crawls into Lord Rahl’s bed, I will throw her out before he ever finds her there.”

Kahlan squeezed Cara’s arm. “Thanks. Now, let’s get down to the pit.”

Cara didn’t budge. “Lord Rahl said he does not want you down there.”

“And since when have you started following orders?”

“I always follow his orders. Especially the ones I know he means. He means this one.”

“Fine. You can watch over Nadine while I go down there.”

Cara snatched Kahlan’s elbow as she started to turn away. “Lord Rahl does not want you in danger.”

“And I don’t want him in danger. Cara, I felt a fool when Richard asked me all those questions that we failed to ask Marlin. I want the answers to those questions.”

“Lord Rahl said he would ask them.”

“And he’s not going to be back until tomorrow night. What happens in the meantime? What if something is going on and it’s too late to stop it by then? What if Richard is killed because we sat on our hands following his orders?

“Richard is afraid for me, and that’s keeping him from thinking clearly. Marlin has information about what’s going on, and it’s foolhardy to let time pass while the danger grows.

“What was it that you said to me, before? Something about hesitation being the end of you? Or the end of those you care about?”

Cara’s face went slack, but she didn’t answer.

“I care about Richard, and I’m not going to risk his life by hesitating. I’m going to get the answers to those questions.”

Cara smiled at last. “I like your thinking, Mother Confessor. But then, you are a sister of the Agiel. The orders were ill-advised, if not foolish. Mord-Sith only follow Lord Rahl’s foolish orders when his male pride is at stake, not his life.

“We will go have a little discussion with Marlin, and get the answer to every one of those questions, and more. When Lord Rahl comes back, we will be able to give him the information he needs—if we haven’t already ended the threat.”

Kahlan popped the palm of her hand against the round newel post. “That’s the Cara I know.”

As they went lower in the palace, below the levels with carpets and paneling, down to the narrow, low-ceilinged halls where light came only from lamps, and even lower, where only torches lit the way, the air went from light and spring-fresh to stale, and then to rank with the heavy smell of damp, moldy stone.

Kahlan had walked those confining halls more times than she wished to recall. The pit was where they took confessions of the condemned. She had taken her first there, from a man who had killed his neighbor’s daughters after committing unspeakable acts on them. Of course, each of those times she had been accompanied by a wizard. Now, she was going to see a wizard being held there.

When they had passed out of earshot of a squad of soldiers guarding an intersection with two stairwells, and before they reached the turn that would take them to the pit hall that would be crowded with all the soldiers she had stationed there, Kahlan glanced over. Cara was an attractive woman, but a woman with an air of menace about her as she swept the empty hall with vigilant gazes. “Cara, can I ask you a personal question?”

Cara clasped her hands behind her back as she strode along. “You are a sister of the Agiel. Ask.”

“Before, you told me that hesitation can be the end of you, or those you care about. You were talking about yourself, weren’t you?”

Cara slowed to a stop. Even in the hissing torchlight, Kahlan could see that her face had paled.

“Now that is truly a personal question.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I don’t mean it to sound like an order, or anything. I was just wondering, woman to woman. You know so much about me, and I hardly know anything about you, except that you are Mord-Sith.”

“I wasn’t always Mord-Sith,” Cara whispered. Her eyes had lost the menace, and she looked like nothing so much as a frightened little girl. Kahlan could tell that Cara was no longer seeing the empty stone hall.

“I guess that there is no reason not to tell you. As you said, I am not to blame for what was done to me. Others were responsible.

“Every year, in D’Hara, they would select a few girls to be trained as Mord-Sith. It is said that the greatest cruelty is drawn from those with the kindest hearts. Rewards were paid for the names of girls who fit the requirements. I was an only child, one of the requirements, and of the right age. The girl, and her parents, are taken, the parents to be murdered in the training of a Mord-Sith. My parents didn’t know that our names had been sold to the hunters.”

Cara’s face and tone had lost their emotion. She had gone blank, as if she were telling of last year’s beet harvest. But her words, if not her tone, carried more than enough emotion.

“My father and I were out back of the house, butchering chickens. When they came, I had no idea what it meant. My father did. He saw them coming down the hill, through the trees. He surprised them. But there were more than he had seen, or could handle, and he had the advantage for only a few moments.

“He screamed at me, ‘Cari, the knife! Cari, get the knife!’ I snatched it up because he said to. He was holding three of the men. My father was big. “He screamed again. ‘Cari, stab them! Stab them! Hurry!’ ” Cara looked into Kahlan’s eyes. “I just stood there. I hesitated. I didn’t want to stab someone. To hurt someone. I just stood there. I couldn’t even kill the chickens. He did that part.”

Kahlan didn’t know if Cara was going to go on. In the dead silence, she decided that if she didn’t, the questions would end there. Cara looked away from Kahlan’s eyes, staring off into the visions, and then she did go on.

“Someone walked up beside me. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I looked up, and there was this woman, this beautiful woman, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, with blue eyes and blond hair in a long braid. The sunlight coming through the leaves danced in little patches across her red leather outfit.

“She smiled down at me as she took the knife out of my hand. Not a pretty smile, but a smile like a snake. That’s what I always called her, in my mind, after that—Snake. When she straightened, she said, ‘Isn’t that sweet? Little Cari doesn’t want to hurt anyone with her knife. That hesitation just made you a Mord-Sith, Cara. It begins.’ ”

Cara stood rigid, as if turned to stone. “They kept me in a little room, with little grates in the bottom of the door. I couldn’t get out. But the rats could get in. At night, when I finally could stay awake no longer, and fell asleep, the rats would sneak into my empty little room and bite my fingertips, and my toes. Snake beat me nearly to death for blocking the grate. Rats like blood. It excites them.

“I learned to sleep in a ball, with my hands in fists and tucked in against my belly, where they couldn’t get at my fingers. But they could usually get at my toes. I tried taking my shirt off and wrapping it around my bare feet, but then if I didn’t sleep on my stomach, they would bite my nipples. Laying bare-chested on the cold stone, with my hands under my stomach, was a torture in itself, but it usually kept me awake longer. If the rats couldn’t get at my toes, they would bite me somewhere else—my ears, or nose, or legs—until I woke with a start and scared them away.

“In the night, I could hear the other girls cry out when a rat bit them awake. I could always hear one of them weeping in the night, calling for her mother. Sometimes, I realized it was my own voice I heard.

“Sometimes, I would wake when rats scratched my face with their little claws, their whiskers brushing my cheeks as their cold little noses pressed against my lips, sniffing for a crumb. I thought to stop eating what they brought me, and left the bowl of gruel and slab of bread on the floor, hoping the rats would eat my dinner and leave me alone.

“It didn’t work. The food only brought hordes of rats, and then, when it was gone . . . I always ate every scrap of dinner, after that, when Snake brought it.

“Sometimes she would taunt me when she brought my dinner. She would say, ‘Don’t hesitate, Cara, or the rats will get your dinner.’ I knew what she meant by saying, ‘Don’t hesitate.’ It was her way of reminding me what my hesitation had cost me and my parents. When they tortured my mother to death in front of me, Snake said, ‘See what happens, Cara, because you hesitated? Because you were too timid?’

“We were taught that Darken Rahl was ‘Father Rahl.’ We had no father but he. At my third breaking, when they told me to torture my real father to death, Snake told me not to hesitate. I didn’t. My father begged for mercy. ‘Cari, please,’ he wept. ‘Cari, spare yourself becoming what they want.’ But I never hesitated. After that, my only father was Father Rahl.”

Cara brought her Agiel up and stared at it as she rolled it in her fingers. “I earned my Agiel for that. The very same Agiel they trained me with. I earned the appellation Mord-Sith.”

Cara looked back into Kahlan’s eyes, as if from a great distance, not merely the two steps that separated them. From the other side of madness. A madness others had put there. Kahlan felt as if she, too, was turned to stone by what she saw in the depths of those blue eyes.

“I have been Snake. I have stood in the dappled sunlight, over young girls, and taken the knife from their hands when they hesitated, not wanting to hurt anyone.”

Kahlan had always hated snakes. She hated them more now. Tears tickled her face as they ran down her cheeks leaving wet tracks. “I’m sorry, Cara,” she whispered. Her stomach roiled. She wanted nothing more than to put her arms around the woman in red leather before her, but she couldn’t make herself move so much as a finger.

Torches hissed. In the distance, she heard muffled snippets of conversation from the guards. A soft ripple of laughter floated up the hall. Water weeping from the stone ceiling echoed as it splashed in a little green puddle not far away. Kahlan could hear her own heart pounding in her ears.

“Lord Rahl freed us from that.”

Kahlan remembered Richard telling her that he had almost wept at the sight of the other two Mord-Sith giggling like little girls as they fed seeds to chipmunks. Kahlan understood the leap that was a simple giggle. Richard understood the madness. Kahlan didn’t know if these women could ever return from it, but if they were to have a chance, it was only because of Richard.

The iron returned to Cara’s grim expression. “Let’s go find out how Marlin planned to harm Lord Rahl. But don’t expect me to be gentle if he hesitates in confessing every detail.”

Under Sergeant Collins’s watchful eye, a D’Haran soldier unlocked the iron door and backed away, as if the rusty lock was the only thing protecting everyone in the palace from the sinister magic below, in the pit. Two more big soldiers effortlessly dragged the heavy ladder closer.

Before Kahlan could pull open the door, she heard approaching voices and footsteps. Everyone turned to look up the hall. It was Nadine, with four soldiers escorting her.

Nadine rubbed her hands together, as if to warm them, as she stepped through the ring of hulking, leather-clad guards. Kahlan didn’t return the woman’s bright smile. “What are you doing down here?”

“Well, you said I was a guest. As pretty as your rooms are, I wanted to go for a walk. I asked the guards to show me the way down here. I want to see this killer.”

“I told you to wait upstairs in your room. I told you that I didn’t want you coming down here.”

Nadine’s dainty brow drew together. “I’m getting just a little tired of being treated like a backwater bumpkin.” She lifted her delicate nose. “I’m a healer. I’m respected, where I come from. People listen when I speak. When I tell someone to do something, they do it. If I tell a councilman to take a potion three times a day and to stay in bed, he very well drinks his medicine three times a day from his bed until I tell him he can leave it.”

“I don’t care who jumps when you speak,” Kahlan said. “Here, you jump when I speak. Do you understand?”

Nadine pressed her lips together as she slanted her fists on her hips. “Now, you look here. I’ve been cold and hungry and scared. I’ve been played for a fool by people I don’t even know. I was minding my own business, going about my life, when I was sent on this pointless journey only to arrive at a place where people treat me like a leper as my thanks for coming to help. I’ve been yelled at by people I don’t know and humiliated by a boy I grew up with.

“I thought I was going to marry the man I wanted, but I had that rug yanked out from under my feet. He doesn’t want me, he wants you. Well, so be it. Now someone is trying to kill the man I traveled all this way to see, and you tell me it isn’t any of my business!”

She shook a finger at Kahlan. “Richard Cypher saved me from Tommy Lancaster laying claim to me. If it wasn’t for Richard, I’d be married to Tommy, now. Instead, Tommy had to marry Rita Wellington. If it wasn’t for Richard, I’d be the one with black eyes all the time. I’d be barefoot buck at his shack and pregnant with the offspring of that pig-faced bully.

“Tommy ridiculed me for fixing herbs to help people. He said it was stupid for a girl to mix herbs. He said my father should have had a boy, if he wanted someone to work in his shop touching herbs that sick people needed. I’d never have any hope of being a healer if it wasn’t for Richard.

“Just because I’m not the one to be his wife, that doesn’t mean that I don’t care about him. I grew up with him. He’s still a boy from my home. We take care of our own, like they’re family, even if they aren’t. I’ve a right to know what danger he’s in! I’ve a right to see what sort of man from your world would want to kill a boy from my home who’s helped me!”

Kahlan was in no mood to argue. She was also in no mood to spare the woman what she might see.

She studied Nadine’s brown eyes, trying: to tell if what Cara had said, that Nadine still wanted Richard, was true. If it was, Kahlan couldn’t tell simply by looking into her eyes.

“You want to see a man who wants to kill us, Richard and me?” Kahlan gripped the lever and threw open the door. “Fine. You shall have your wish.”

She gestured to the men with the ladder. They pushed it through the opening and down into the darkness until it thudded in place. Kahlan yanked a torch from a bracket and thrust it in Cara’s hand. “Let’s show Nadine what she wishes to see.”

Cara checked Kahlan’s resolve, found it rock solid, and then started down the ladder. Kahlan held her arm out in invitation. “Welcome to my world, Nadine. Welcome to Richard’s world.”

Nadine’s determination faltered for only an instant before she huffed and started down the ladder after Cara.

Kahlan glanced around at the guards. “Sergeant Collins, if he comes up through this door before us, he had better not get out of this hall alive. He wants to kill Richard.”

“On my word as a D’Haran soldier, Mother Confessor, harm won’t get a glimpse of Lord Rahl.”

With a hand signal from Sergeant Collins, soldiers drew steel. Archers nocked arrows. Big hands unhooked crescent-bladed axes from weapons belts.

Kahlan gave the sergeant a nod of approval, took another torch, and started down the ladder.