CHAPTER 20

Nicci stood at the edge of the hill, hands clasped, gazing across the grounds at the white marble statue lit by torches. The people of Altur'Rang had thought that such a noble figure, a symbol of liberty for them, should never go dark and so it was always lit.

Nicci had slowly paced the gloomy hall in the inn for much of the night, dispirited about the life slipping away on the other side of the door. She had tried everything she knew to save Cara, but it had been hopeless.

Nicci didn't know Cara all that well, but she certainly knew Richard. She probably knew him better than anyone alive, except, perhaps, his grandfather Zedd. She didn't know his past so well, the stories about his childhood or that sort of thing; she knew Richard the man. She knew him down to the core of his soul. There was no one alive she knew better.

She understood the depth of his grief at losing Cara. Throughout the vigil, Nicci's gift, unbidden, had brought her the sounds of some of that open misery. It broke Nicci's heart to have Richard suffer such a loss. She would have done anything to have spared him that.

At one point she had thought to go in and comfort Richard's grief, to ease some of it by sparing him at least a bit of the loneliness of it. The door would not open.

While it was puzzling, what she could sense told her that there were only two people inside and what she could hear told her that there was nothing more than simple sorrow on the other side, so she hadn't tried to force open the stuck door. Unable to bear the pain of listening to Richard's supplications to Cara as she lay dying, Nicci had eventually gone outside, finally ending up staring out across the black chasm of night to the statue he had created.

Other than being with Richard himself, there were few things Nicci would rather do than gaze at the majestic things he had created.

Sometimes the death of someone close had a way of making people see the world in a new light, a way of making them come back to those things that were most important in life. She wondered what Richard would once Cara passed away, if it would jolt him back to reality and he would finally abandon the search for phantoms and stand with the people who? wanted to be free of the Imperial Order.

Hearing footsteps, and then her name called, Nicci turned.

It was Richard, with someone else, approaching through the shadows. Nicci's heart sank. That could only mean that Cara's ordeal had finally ended.

As Richard came close, Nicci saw who was with him.

«Dear spirits, Richard,» she whispered, her eyes going wide, «what have you done?»

In the dim light of the distant torches Cara looked perfectly alive and well.

«Lord Rahl healed me,» she said, offhandedly, as if such an accomplishment had been a minor task of no more note than if he had helped her to fetch water.

Nicci stared in shock. «How?» was all she could say.

Richard looked as weary as if he had been through a battle. She half expected to see him covered in blood.

«I couldn't stand the thought of not doing something to try to help her,» he said. «I suppose that the need was strong enough so that I was able to somehow do what I needed to do in order to heal her.»

The meaning of why that door wouldn't open suddenly became all too clear. He had indeed been through a battle, and he was, in a sense, covered in blood, just not the kind one could see.

Nicci leaned toward him. «You used your gift.» It was a charge, not a question. Nonetheless he answered it.

«I guess so.»

«You guess so.» Nicci wished she could make herself not sound like she was mocking him. «I tried everything I knew. Nothing I did was able to reach her. I couldn't heal her. What did you do? And how did you manage to touch your Han?»

Richard shrugged self-consciously. «I'm not exactly sure of it all. I held her and I could feel that she was dying. I could feel her slipping farther and farther away. I kind of let myself-my mind-sink down into her, down into the core of who she is, down to where she needed the help. Once I reached that place of union with her, I collected her pain into myself so that she would have enough strength to take the warmth of life I offered her.»

Nicci understood very well the elaborate phenomenon he was describing, but she was astounded to hear it explained in such incidental terms. It was as if she had asked him how he carved such a lifelike statue in marble and he had said of his masterwork that he just cut off all the stone that didn't belong. While accurate, such an explanation was casual to the point of absurdity.

«You took upon yourself what was killing her?»

«I had to.»

Nicci pressed her fingertips to her temples. Even she, with all the powers she had at her disposal, and she had considerable power, to say nothing of her training, experience, and knowledge, could not undertake such a deed. She had to make an effort to slow her hammering heart.

«Do you have any idea at all of the danger involved in such an endeavor?»

Richard looked a little ill at ease by the heated tone of her questions. «It was the only way, Nicci,» he said in simple summary.

«It was the only way,» she repeated in astonishment. She could not believe what she was hearing. «Do you have any idea how much power it takes to embark on such a voyage of the soul, much less to ever come back from such a place? Or the peril in going there?»

He stuck his hands in his pockets as if he were a child being upbraided for misbehaving. «All I know is that it was the only way to get Cara back.»

«And he did,» Cara said, pointing a finger at Nicci not only for emphasis but to stress her defense of him. «Lord Rahl came for me.»

Nicci stared at the Mord-Sith. «Richard went to the brink of the world of the dead for you — and perhaps beyond.»

Cara stole a glance at Richard. «He did?»

Nicci slowly nodded. «Your spirit had already slipped into a twilight realm. You were beyond my reach. That was why I could not heal you.»

«Well, Lord Rahl did it.»

«Yes, he did.» Nicci reached out and with a finger lifted Cara's chin. «I hope that as long as you live you never forget what this man has just done for you. I doubt there is anyone living who could have-who would have-attempted such a thing.»

«He had to.» Cara gave Nicci a brazen smile. «Lord Rahl can't get along without me and he knows it.»

Richard turned aside as he smiled to himself.

Nicci could hardly believe such a casual attitude after such a monumental event. She took a breath in an attempt to control her voice and not give the wrong impression, an impression that she was displeased that he had healed Cara.

«You used your gift, Richard. The beast is already about and you used your gift.»

«I had to or we would have lost her.»

To Richard, it all seemed so simple and straightforward. At least he had the sense not to look as self-satisfied as Cara. Nicci planted her fists on her hips as she leaned closer to him.

«Don't you comprehend what you've done? You used your gift again. I warned you before that you must not do so. The beast is already somewhere close and by using your gift you just told it right where you are.»

«What did you expect me to do, let Cara die?»

«Yes! She is sworn to protect you with her life. That is her job-her sworn duty. Not helping you to bring the beast closer to you. We could easily have lost you in such an attempt, to say nothing of the profound menace you have just awakened. You risked all you mean to the people of D'Hara and your value to our cause just to save one person. You should have let her go. In saving her you have only allowed her to bring death to both of you because the beast will now be able to find you. What just happened will now happen again, only this time there will be no escape. You have just saved Cara's life at the price of your own, and no doubt hers in the bargain.»

Even as she spoke Nicci knew by the smoldering anger in his eyes that she was not doing a good job of making him see what she meant. Cara's eyes, on the other hand, revealed sudden alarm verging on panic. Richard placed a hand on the back of her neck and gave it a reassuring squeeze, as if to tell her to ignore such a supposition.

«That's not certain, Nicci.» The muscles in his jaw flexed as he gritted his teeth. «It may be a possibility, but it's not certain-and besides, I wasn't going to let someone I care about die just because it might make me a little safer. I'm already hunted. Letting Cara die wouldn't have changed that.»

Nicci let her hands flop down against her thighs. He was in no mood to hear anyone speak against saving the life of a woman he cared deeply for.

Nicci had no idea how she could explain it to him in a way that could make him understand the magnitude of the forces he had invoked or the grave danger he had unleashed. How could she say anything and not have him misunderstand her meaning? In the end, she knew she couldn't.

Nicci placed a hand on his shoulder. «I guess I can't blame you, Richard. I guess that in your place, I would have done the same. Someday, when we have the luxury of time we will have to talk about this. When we are able, I would like you to tell me everything you did. Maybe I can help you learn to better control what you alone were able to harness. If nothing else maybe I can at least make things you do spontaneously a little more focused and a little less dangerous.»

Richard nodded his appreciation, whether of her offer or her softer tone she wasn't sure.

Nicci could see in Richard and Cara's eyes that the experience had brought the two of them closer. When she realized that he would soon be leaving, Nicci's brief bout of joy at seeing Cara alive and well faded.

«Besides,» Richard said as he scanned the darkness, «we don't even know if this had anything to do with the thing back in the woods.»

«Well of course it did,» Nicci said.

His gaze returned to her. «How do you know? That thing tore all those men apart. This was a different kind of attack. For that matter, we don't even know for certain that either attack was the beast that Jagang ordered to be created.»

«What are you talking about? What else could it be? It has to be the weapon that Jagang directed the Sisters to conjure.»

«I'm not saying that it isn't-it very well could be-but a lot of it doesn't make any sense to me.»

«Like what?»

Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. «The thing in the forest attacked the men-it didn't attack me even though I wasn't far away. Here, it didn't bother to tear Cara apart like it did the men. If it was the same thing, then we know it could have easily killed me. So when it was right here and had the chance, why didn't it use the opportunity?»

«Maybe because I tried to capture its power,» Cara offered. «Maybe it just passed me by because I was a threat or maybe I distracted it enough that it decided to flee.»

Richard shook his head. «You were no threat. It went right through you, and besides, its touch was enough to eliminate your interference. Then, it came through the wall for me, but as it reached my room it didn't flee, it simply disappeared.»

Nicci abruptly turned suspicious. She never had heard the whole story.

«You were in the room and it just vanished?»

«Not exactly. I jumped out the window to escape it as it came through the wall into my room. As I hung there some kind of dark thing, like a moving shadow, came out the window and as it did it seemed to evaporate into the night.»

Nicci idly drew the end of the cord of her bodice through her fingers as she considered what he'd said. She tried to fit the pieces into everything else she knew, but none of it would match. Nothing that the beast did seemed to make sense-if it really was the same beast. Richard was right in that it all seemed to defy logic.

«Maybe it didn't see you,» she murmured half to herself as she considered the puzzle.

Richard flashed her a skeptical expression. «So you're saying that it could find me, at night, inside the inn, and it then crashed right through a succession of walls as it was coming for me, but then when I just barely managed to jump through the only window, it became confused and so it wandered off?»

Nicci appraised his eyes a moment. «Both attacks have something important in common. They both displayed incredible power-shattering trees like they were twigs and going through walls as if they were no more than paper.»

Richard sighed unhappily. «I suppose that's true.»

«What I'd like to know,» Nicci added as she folded her arms, «is why it didn't kill Cara.»

She caught the slight flicker in his eyes and she knew then that he knew something more than he had said. Nicci cocked her head as she watched him while she waited.

«When I was there in Cara's mind, taking up the pain of the touch of that vile thing, there was something more that it left behind,» he admitted in a quiet voice. «I think it wanted to leave a message for me to find, a message that it's coming for me, that it will find me, and that for all eternity it will make my death a luxury beyond reach.»

Nicci's gaze slid to Cara.

«I didn't choose for him to come after me to that twilight place, as you called it. I didn't ask him to and I didn't want him to.» The Mord-Sith's hands fisted at her sides. «But I can't lie and say that I'd rather be dead.»

Nicci couldn't help but to smile at such simple honesty.

«Cara, I'm joyful that you're not dead-I truly am. What kind of man would we be following if he easily let a friend die without trying his best to save her?»

Cara's expression cooled as Nicci looked again at Richard.

«I'm still perplexed as to why it didn't kill Cara. After all, a message like that could have just as easily been given directly to you once it had you in its clutches. If the threat is credible-and I certainly don't doubt that it is-then the beast would have all the time it wished to make you suffer if it would have snatched you right then. Such a message serves no real purpose. What's more, it makes no sense for the beast to be right there and then vanish.»

Richard drummed his fingers on the cross guard of his sword as he thought it over. «All good questions, Nicci, but I just don't have good answers.»

With the palm of his left hand resting on the hilt of his sword, he scanned the darkness again, checking for any threat. «I think Cara and I had better be on our way. Considering what happened to Victor's men, I'm concerned about what will happen if that thing comes back here after me. I'd not like that kind of beast rampaging through the city in a blood frenzy. I don't want any more people to be needlessly hurt or killed. Whatever that thing is-the beast Jagang had his Sisters conjure, or something we don't even know about-it seems to me that I'll have a better chance to stay alive if I keep moving. Sitting in one place feels too much like waiting for the executioner to arrive.»

«I don't think that you are necessarily making logical assumptions,» Nicci said.

«Nonetheless I need to be going anyway and I'd feel better if it was sooner rather than later-for a variety of reasons.» He hoisted his pack higher on his back. «I have to find Victor and Ishaq.»

Resigned, Nicci gestured behind her. «After the attack I went and got them. They are both over at the stables, back there. Ishaq has the horses you requested. Some of the men helped him gather supplies for you.» She put a hand on his arm. «Some of the relatives of Victor's men, the ones who were killed, are there, too. They want to hear from you.»

Richard nodded as he let out a deep breath. «I hope I can offer them some comfort. Grief is fresh in my mind.» He gave Cara a quick squeeze on her shoulder. «But mine has been lifted.»

Richard hitched his bow higher up onto his shoulder as he started away. In little more than a blink he dissolved into the darkness.

CHAPTER 21

As Cara went past, following in Richard's wake, Nicci caught the Mord-Sith's arm, holding her back until she could speak without Richard hearing.

«How are you, Cara? Really?»

Cara met Nicci's direct gaze with a steady look of her own. «I'm tired, but I'm fine, now. Lord Rahl made it right.»

Nicci nodded her satisfaction. «Cara, may I ask you a personal question?»

«As long as I don't have to promise I'll answer it.»

«Do you have a man for whom you care greatly named Benjamin Meiffert?»

Even in the dim light, Nicci could see Cara's face go as scarlet as her red leather outfit. «Who told you such a thing?»

«Do you mean to say, then, that it's a secret and no one knows?»

«Well, that's not what I'm saying, exactly,» Cara stammered. «I mean — you're trying to trip me into saying something I don't intend.»

«I'm not trying to trip you into saying anything, especially something that isn't true. I only asked about Benjamin Meiffert.»

Cara's brow drew tight. «Who told you such a thing?»

«Richard.» Nicci arched an eyebrow. «Is it true?»

Cara pressed her lips tight. At last she looked away from Nicci to glare off into the night. «Yes.»

«So you told Richard all about how you care a great deal for this soldier?»

«Are you crazy? I would never have told such a thing to Lord Rahl. Where could he have heard it?»

For a moment, Nicci listened to the cicadas singing their incessant mating songs as she considered the Mord-Sith.

«Richard said that Kahlan told him all about it.»

Cara stood with her mouth agape. She at last touched her fingers to her forehead as she worked to gather her senses.

«Well that's just crazy — I, I must have told him myself. I guess I just forgot. We talk about so much. It's hard to recall everything I told him —but now that you bring it up, I think I do recall mentioning it one night when we were both talking about such sentimental things. I think that must have been when I told him about Benjamin Meiffert. I guess I pushed such a personal discussions to the back of my mind. I guess he didn't. I ought to learn to keep my mouth shut.»

«You have no need to fear anything you tell Richard. You have no better friend in the world. And you have no need to fear me knowing such things, either. He told me about it in the depth of his grief for you because he wanted me to know that you are more than just Mord-Sith, that you're a person with a life and desires of your own and you had come to value a good man. He was honoring you by telling me. But I will keep it to myself. Your feelings are safe with me, Cara.»

Cara idly tugged at strands of hair at the end of her single braid. «I guess I never looked at it quite that way-I mean about him honoring me by telling you. That's kind of — nice.»

«Love is a passion for life shared with another person. You fall in love with a person who you think is wonderful. It's your deepest appreciation of the value of that individual, and that individual is a reflection of what you value most in life. Love, for sound reasons, can be one of life's greatest rewards. You shouldn't be ashamed or embarrassed about being in love. I mean, if you really do love Benjamin, that is.»

Cara thought it over a moment. «I'm not ashamed of it; I am Mord-Sith.» Some of the tension went out of her shoulders. «But I don't know if I'm in love with him, either. I don't know for certain what I think about it. I know I care greatly for him. I'm not sure it's love, though. Maybe it's only the first step along the path to love. It's kind of hard for me to tell about such things. I'm not used to it mattering what I think or how I feel.»

Nicci nodded as she began walking slowly through the shadows. «For a lot of my life I didn't understand what love was either. Jagang used to sometimes think that he was in love with me.»

«Jagang? Seriously? He's in love with you?»

«No, he's not really in love with me; he just thinks he is. Even back then I knew that it wasn't love, even if I didn't understand why. Jagang's measure of worth runs from hate to lust. He scorns and defiles anything that's good about life, so he couldn't possibly experience true love. He can only discern it as the faint fragrance of something tantalizing and mysterious beyond his reach and he longs to possess it.

«He imagined that he could experience love by grabbing me by my hair and forcing me down on him. He interpreted his enjoyment as he watched as feelings of love. He thought that I should be grateful that he had such powerful feelings for me that he would be overcome with desire for me to the exclusion of everything else. Since he believed that forcing himself on me was an expression of his love, he thought I should accept it as an honor.»

«He would have liked Darken Rahl,» Cara muttered. «They would have gotten along splendidly.» She looked over, suddenly puzzled. «You're a sorceress. Why didn't you use your power to incinerate the bastard?»

Nicci let out a deep breath. How could she simply explain a lifetime of indoctrination?

«I don't think that a day goes by that I don't wish I would have killed that vile man. But, brought up as I was under the teachings of the Fellowship of Order, the same as he, I believed that moral virtue was only realized through self-sacrifice. Under their tenets, your duty is to those in need. Such dictates are imposed under the banner of the common good, or the betterment of mankind, or dutiful obedience to the Creator.

«By the ideology of the Order we were to devote ourselves not to those we regarded as the best among mankind, but to those who we ourselves regarded as the worst among men-not because they had earned it, but precisely because they hadn't. This, the Order claims, is the heart of morality and the only means by which we earn our entry into the everlasting light of the Creator in the afterlife. It's the sacrifice of the virtuous into servitude to the vile. It is never done under the banner of what it really is: naked greed for the unearned.

«Jagang's worldly needs revolved around his crotch. I had what he believed he needed, so I was morally required to sacrifice myself to his need. Especially since he is the leader bringing the Order's moral teachings to the heathens of the world.

«When Jagang would beat me until I was only half conscious and then throw me on his bed to have his way with me, I was doing what I had been taught was not only right, but my selfless moral duty. I thought I was evil for hating it.

«Since I believed that I was evil for such self-interest, I felt that I deserved all the pain I got in this world and eternal punishment in the next. I couldn't kill a man who was, under the creed taught to me by the Fellowship of Order, morally superior to me by virtue of his need. How could I possibly harm someone who I had been taught to serve? How could I possibly object to the harm done to me when I so deserved all I got and more? What could I object to? Justice? That's the endless, miserable trap of teachings about your duty to the greater good.»

They strolled in silence as Nicci endured an array of ghastly memories.

«What changed?» Cara finally asked.

«Richard,» Nicci said softly. Right then, she was glad for the darkness. Despite her tears, she lifted her head with pride. «The Imperial Order's teachings can only endure through brutality. Richard showed me that no one has a right to my life, not the whole of it, nor pieces of it. He showed me that my life is mine to live for myself, for my own purpose, and does not belong to others.»

Cara watched with a kind of knowing sympathy. «I guess that you had a great deal in common with Mord-Sith under the rule of Darken Rahl. D'Hara was once a place of darkness, as life is now under the Imperial Order. Richard didn't just kill Darken Rahl, he ended that kind of sick doctrine for D'Hara. He gave us the same thing he gave you; he gave us back our lives.

«I guess Lord Rahl could understand us because he was treated much the same.»

Nicci wasn't sure what Cara meant. «The same?»

«He was once a captive of a Mord-Sith named Denna. At the time it was our duty to torture Darken Rahl's enemies to death. Denna was the best of the best. Darken Rahl had personally selected her to capture Richard and be in charge of his training. Darken Rahl had been hunting Richard for quite a while because he knew something important about the boxes of Orden. Darken Rahl wanted that information. It was Denna's job to torture Richard into being eager to answer any question Darken Rahl asked.»

Nicci glanced over and saw tears glistening in Cara's eyes as she slowed to a halt. She lifted her Agiel, staring at it as she rolled it in her fingers. Nicci knew all about Denna and what she had done to Richard, but she decided that right then it might be best to remain silent and simply listen. Sometimes people needed to say things for themselves more than they needed to say them for others. Nicci thought that perhaps after coming so close to dying, this was one of those times for Cara.

«I was there,» Cara said in a near whisper as she stared at her Agiel. «He doesn't remember because Denna had tortured him until he was delirious and only partially conscious, but I saw him there, at the People's Palace, and I saw some of what she did to him — of what we all did.»

Nicci's breath paused. She cautiously glanced over at Cara. «Of what you all did? What do you mean?»

«It was standard practice for Mord-Sith to pass their captives around. It made it more difficult for them to learn to endure any particular pattern of torture from one individual. It helped to keep them confused and afraid. Fear is an integral part of torture. That's something a Mord-Sith learns from the first moment she is taken to be trained to become Mord-Sith —that fear and the unknown makes any pain infinitely worse. Most of the time Denna let a Mord-Sith named Constance share in training Richard. But sometimes Denna wanted to use others, besides Constance.»

Cara stood stock-still as she stared at her Agiel. «It was not long after he arrived at the People's Palace. Richard doesn't remember-I don't think he even knew his own name at the time because Denna had him in a fog of delirium, in a state of madness from the things she had done to him — but he spent a day with me.»

This, Nicci hadn't known. She stood frozen, afraid to say anything. She had no idea what she could say.

«Denna took Richard as her mate,» Cara said. «I don't think she understood love any better than Jagang or Darken Rahl. At the end, though, she came to have a deep and genuine love for Richard. I saw the change coming over her. As you described it, she came to value him as an individual. She came to have sincere passion for him. She loved him so much that in the end she let him kill her so that he could escape.

«But before then, when Denna was still torturing him, I saw him there more than once, hanging helpless, covered in blood and begging for the release of death.» A tear ran down Cara's cheek. «Dear spirits, I too made him beg for death as I stood over him.»

Cara seemed to suddenly realize what she had just said aloud. Panic flooded her eyes. «Please don't say anything to him. It was so long ago-it's over and everything has changed, now. I don't want him to know — about me there with him like that.» Tears ran down her face. «Please.»

Nicci took up one of Cara's hands in both of hers. «Of course I wouldn't say anything about it. I, of all people, understand the way you feel; I too, once did terrible things to him, only for a great deal longer than anyone else. As you say, that's over.» Nicci let out a deep sigh. «I guess we all three know a little about what love is, and what it isn't.»

Cara nodded not just her relief, but her sincere appreciation that Nicci understood. «We'd better catch up with Lord Rahl.»

Nicci gestured casually toward the stables. «Richard is talking to the relatives of Victor's men who were killed.» She tapped the side of her forehead. «I can just barely hear him with my gift.» She reached out and gently wiped a tear from Cara's cheek. «We have the time to gather our senses before we get there.»