"I can't," he said to Kahlan. "That would kill you, too."

Nicci lifted one eyebrow. "Very good, Richard. Very good."

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

"Keep still," he said in a calm voice. He looked back at Nicci. "Let's hear it."

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

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

"What else?" he demanded.

"What else?" Nicci blinked. "Nothing else."

"What if I decide to kill you?"

"Then I will die. But Kahlan will die with me-our lives are now finked."

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

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

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

If anything, Nicci looked surprised, as if such a thought had never occurred to

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her, and she found it abhorrent. "No, none of that. I intend him no harm. For now, anyway. Eventually, of course, I will most likely have to kill him."

Richard glared. "Of course."

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

"Just hold on for now," he whispered to her.

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

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

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

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

Richard had thought he understood what was going on, but he was less and less sure with everything Nicci said. "You mean, you want to take me away so that 1 can't fight against the Imperial Order?"

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

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

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

"Well, no one is to follow us, of course."

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

Nicci lifted her brows deliberately as she leaned ever so slightly toward Kahlan, the way a mother would in cautioning a child. "Then that will be the end of it unless Richard stops you from doing such a thing. That is all part of what he must decide to do. But you make a miscalculation if you think I care one way or the other. 1 don't, you see. Not at all."

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

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

"As I wish?"

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

"You would have no further use? You mean Jagang would have no further use."

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

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

"You don't need me to answer that question, Richard Rahl."

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

"Look," Richard said, feeling like they weren't even speaking the same language, "I don't know what you think-"

"Enough talk. We are leaving."

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

"This doesn't make any sense. You want me to go with you, but you aren't acting on behalf of Jagang. If that's true, then-"

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

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

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

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

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

"No."

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

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

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

"Why would I do that?"

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

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

"You expect me to believe your word?"

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

For reasons he couldn't fathom, Richard found himself believing her. She seemed dead honest and completely sure of herself, as if she had reasoned it all out a thousand times.

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

The enigma resurfaced. It was somehow linked to this.

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

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

"You're deceiving yourself, Nicci."

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

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

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

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

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

"Possibly not."

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

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

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

He wanted more than anything to fight, but he couldn't figure how. He wished it were as simple as striking down his adversary. He reminded himself that reason, not

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wishing, was his only chance. He seized the calm center within, and used it to quell the rising storm of panic.

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

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

"There is no choice to make. I'll not allow Kahlan to die."

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

The horse slowed from its trot as it approached. When the handsome dappled mare halted beside her, Nicci took ahold of the reins near the bit. Its gray mane ruffled in the cold breeze. The mare snorted and tossed her head, uneasy before strangers, and eager to be away.

"But . . . but," Richard stammered as Nicci stepped up into the stirrup. "But, what am 1 allowed to take?"

Nicci swung her leg over the horse's rump and settled into the saddle. She squirmed herself into position and adjusted her shoulders, setting them back. Her black dress and blond hair stood out in stark relief against the iron sky.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was all happening too fast. He needed to think of a way to stall. "Then what good will any of this have done you?"

"It will have told me what means more to you." She sat back up in her saddle. "When you think about it, that is quite a profound question. It is yet to be answered. By the time I get to the top of the pass, 1 will have the answer."

Nicci rocked her hips in the saddle, urging the horse ahead into a walk. "Don't

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forget-top of the pass. You have until then to say your good-byes, pack what you wish to take, and then catch up with me if you wish Kahlan to live. Or, if you choose to stay, you have until then to say your good-byes before she dies. Understand, though, when making your choice, that the first will be as final as the second."

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

"Where are you taking him?" she demanded.

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

"Why, into oblivion."

176 CHAPTER 22

As she watched Nicci turn her dappled mare toward the pass and the distant blue mountains beyond, Kahlan was still struggling to overcome her dizziness from what the woman had done to her. Off near the distant trees, a doe and her nearly grown fawn, two of the small herd of deer that frequented the meadow, stood at alert, their ears perked, watching Nicci, waiting to see if she might be a threat, Spooked by what they saw when Nicci turned their way, both deer flicked their tails straight up and bounded for the trees.

Kahlan refused to allow herself to give in to the disorientation. But for Richard's iron arms around her waist, she would have thrown herself at the Sister of the Dark. Kahlan had desperately wanted to unleash her Confessor's power. No one had ever deserved it more.

Had her senses not still been floundering in a daze, she might have been able to invoke her power through the Con Dar, the Blood Rage of an ancient ability she possessed. Such rare magic would have bridged the relatively small distance, but, reeling from the lingering force of Nicci's conjuring, the attempt had been futile. It was all Kahlan could do to keep her feet under her and her last meal in her stomach.

It was frustrating, infuriating, and humiliating, but Nicci had surprised her and with magic as swift as Kahlan's Confessor's power had taken her before she could react. Once Nicci's talons clutched her, Kahlan had been powerless.

She had grown up being trained not to be taken by surprise. Confessors were always targets; she knew better. Any number of times in similar situations she had prevailed. Lulled by months of tranquillity, Kahlan had lost her edge. She vowed never to let it happen again . . , but that would do her no good now.

She could still feel Nicci's vital magic sizzling through her, as if her soul itself had been scorched in the heat of the ordeal. Her insides roiled as waves of the onslaught had yet to settle down. The cold air rushing across the meadow, bending the brown grass, swept up to chill her burning face. The wind carried an unfamiliar scent into the valley, something that her jumbled senses perceived as vaguely portentous. The big pines behind the house bowed and twisted but stood tall as the wind broke against them with a sound not unlike waves rushing against stone cliffs.

Whatever sort of magic had been unleashed in her, Kahlan was convinced Nicci had told the truth about its consequence. Despite how much she hated the woman, because of the maternity spell Kahlan felt a connection to her, a connection that she could only interpret as . . . affection. It was a bewildering sensation. While positively disturbing, it was also, in a way, a comforting connection to the woman beyond her vile magic and twisted purpose. There seemed to be something deep within Nicci worth loving.

Regardless of Kahlan's far-fetched feelings, her perception and reasoning told

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her the truth of the matter: such impressions were illusion. If she got the opportunity, she would not again hesitate for an instant to kill Nicci.

"Cara," Richard said, glaring at Nicci's back as she walked her horse across the meadow, "I don't want you even thinking about trying to stop her."

"I'm not going to allow-"

"I mean it. I mean it more than any order I've ever given you. If you ever brought Kahlan to harm in such a way . . . well, 1 trust you'd never do such an evil thing to me. Why don't you go get dressed."

Cara growled a curse under her breath. Richard turned to Kahlan as the Mord Sith marched off into the house. Kahlan only then really noticed that Cara was naked. She must have been interrupted in her bath. The magic Nicci used had fogged Kahlan's mind, blurring her memory of recent events.

Kahlan did recall quite clearly, though, the feel of the Agiel. The shattering torture of the MordSith's weapon had spiked through Nicci's magic like a lance through straw. Even though Cara had used her Agiel on Nicci, Kahlan felt it as if it had been used directly against the side of her own neck.

Kahlan gently touched Richard's jaw in sympathy, then took hold of his upper arms instead when he gave her a look that suggested no need for sympathy. His big hands closed on her waist. She stepped into his embrace and rested her forehead against his cheek.

"This can't be," she whispered. "It just can't."

"But it is."

"I'm so sorry."

"Sorry?"

"That I let her take me by surprise." Kahlan trembled with anger at herself. "I should have been alert. If I'd done as I should have, and killed her first, it would never have come to this."

Richard ran a hand gently down the back of her head, holding her to his shoulder.

"Remember how you killed me in a sword fight the other day?" She nodded against him. "We all make mistakes, get caught off guard. Don't blame yourself. No one is perfect. It could even be that she cast a web of magic to dull your awareness so she could slip up to you like . . . like some silent unseen mosquito."

Kahlan had never considered that. Caught off guard or not, though, it made her furious with herself. If only she had not been paying attention to the stupid chipmunk. If only she had looked up sooner. If only she had acted without waiting a split second to analyze the true nature of the threat to decide if it warranted the unleashing of her devastating magic.

Almost from birth, Kahlan had been instructed in the use of her power, with the mandate of unleashing it only upon being certain of the need. Much like killing, a Confessor's power was the destruction of who a person was. Afterward, the person acted exclusively on behalf of the Confessor, and at the direction of the Confessor. It was as final as death.

Kahlan looked up into Richard's gray eyes. They looked all the more gray with the gray sky behind him.

"My life is a precious and sacred thing to me," she said. "Yours is no less to you. Don't throw yours away to be a slave to mine. I couldn't stand it."

"It's not come to that yet. I'll figure something out. But for now, I have to go with her."

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"We'll follow, but stay well back." He was already shaking his head. "But, she won't even be aware-"

"No. For all we know, she could have others with her. They could be waiting to catch you if you follow. I couldn't bear the thought of knowing that at any moment she could use magic or somehow find out you were following. If that happened, you would die for nothing."

"You mean you think she could . . . hurt you to make you tell her I planned to follow."

"Let's not let our imaginations get the better of us."

"But I should be close, for when you make a move-for when you figure a way to stop her."

Richard cupped her face tenderly in his hands. He had a strange look in his eyes, a look she didn't like.

"Listen to me. I don't know what's going on, but you mustn't die just to free me."

Tears of desperation stung her eyes. She blinked them away. She fought to keep her voice from becoming a wail.

"Don't go, Richard. I don't care what it means for me, as long as you can be free. I would die happy if doing so would keep you from the enemy's cruel hands. I can't allow the Order to have you. I can't allow you to endure the slow grinding death of a slave in exchange for my life. I can't allow them to-"

She bit off the words of what she feared most; she couldn't bear the thought of him being tortured. It made her even more dizzy and sick to think of him being maimed and mutilated, of him suffering all alone and forgotten in some distant stinking dungeon with no hope of help.

But Nicci said they wouldn't. Kahlan told herself that, for her own sanity, she had to believe Nicci's word.

Kahlan realized Richard was smiling to himself, as if trying to commit to memory every detail of her face while at the same time running a thousand other things through his thoughts.

"There's no choice," he whispered. "I must do this."

She clutched his shirt in her fist. "You're doing just as Nicci wants-she knows you'll want to save me. I can't allow you to make that sacrifice!"

Richard looked up briefly, gazing out at the trees and mountains behind their house, taking it all in, like a condemned man savoring his last meal. His gaze, more earnest, settled once more on hers.

"Don't you see? I am making no sacrifice. I am making a fair trade. The reality that you exist is my basis for joy and happiness.

"I make no sacrifice," he repeated, stressing each word. "To be a slave, even if that is what happens to me, and yet know you're alive, is my choice over being free in a world in which you don't exist. I can live with the first. I can't, with the second. The first is painful, the second unbearable."

Kahlan beat a fist against his chest. "But you will be a slave or worse and I can't bear that!"

"Kahlan, listen to me. I will always have freedom in my heart because I understand what it is. Because I do, I can work toward it. I will find a way to be free.

"I cannot find a way to bring you back to life.

"The spirits know that in the past I've been willing to forfeit my life for a just

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cause and if my life would truly make a difference. In the past, I have knowingly imperiled both our lives, been willing to sacrifice both our lives-but not in return for nothing. Don't you see? This would be a fool's bargain. I'll not do it."

Kahlan pulled her breaths in small gasps, trying to told back the tears as well as her rising sense of panic. "You're the Seeker. You must find a way to freedom. Of course you will. You will, 1 know." She forced a swallow past the constriction in her throat as she tried to reassure Richard, or perhaps herself. "You'll find a way. I know you will. You'll find a way and you'll come back. You did before. You will this time."

The shadows of Richard's features seemed dark and severe, cast as they were in a mask of resignation.

"Kahlan, you must be prepared to go on."

"What do you mean?"

"You must find joy in the fact that I, too, live. You must be prepared to go on with that knowledge and nothing else."

"What do you mean, nothing else?"

He had a terrible look in his eyes-some kind of sad, grim, tragic acceptance. She didn't want to look into his eyes, but, standing there with her hand against his chest, feeling the warmth of him, the life within him, she couldn't make herself look away as he spoke.

"I think it's different this time."

Kahlan pulled her hair back when the wind dragged it over her eyes. "Different?"

"There's something very different about the feel of this. It doesn't make sense in the way things in the past have made sense. There's something deadly serious about Nicci. Something singular. She's planned this out and she's prepared to die for it. I can't lie to you to deceive you. Something tells me that, this time, I may never be able to find a way to come back."

"Don't say that." In weak fingers trembling with dread, Kahlan gathered his dark shirt into a wrinkled knot. "Please don't say that, Richard. You must try. You must find a way to come back to me."

"Don't ever think I won't be doing my best." His voice was impassioned, almost to the point of sounding angry. "I swear to you, Kahlan, that as long as there is a breath in my lungs, I'll never give up; I'll always try to find a way. But we can't ignore the possibility just because it's painful to contemplate: I may never be back.

"You must face the fact that it looks like you must go on without me, but with the knowledge that I'm alive, just as I will have that awareness of you in my heart where no one can touch it. In our hearts, we have each other and always will. That was the oath we swore when we were married-to love and honor each other for all time. This can't change it. Distance can't change it. Time can't change it."

"Richard . . ." She choked back her wail, but she couldn't keep the tears from coursing down her face. "I can't stand the thought of you being a slave because of me. Don't you see that? Don't you see what that would do to me? I'll kill myself if I must so that she can't do this to you. I must."

He shook his head, the wind ruffling his hair. "Then I would have no reason to escape her. Nothing to escape for."

"You won't need to escape, that's just it she won't be able to hold you."

"She's a Sister of the Dark." He threw open his hands. "She will simply use another means I won't know how to counter-and if you're dead, I won't care to."

"But-"

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"Don't you see?" He seized her by her shoulders. "Kahlan, you must live to give me a reason to try to escape her."

"Your own life is your reason," she said. "To be free to help people will be your reason."

"The people be cursed." He released her and gestured angrily. "Even people where I grew up turned against us. They tried to murder us. Remember? The lands that have surrendered into the union with D'Hara will likely not remain loyal, either, when they see the reality of the Imperial Order's army moving up into the Midlands. Eventually, D'Hara will stand alone.

"People don't understand or value freedom. The way it now stands, they won't fight for it. They've proven it in Anderith, and in Hartland, where I grew up. What more clear evidence could be seen? I hold out no false hope. Most of the rest of the Midlands will quail when it comes time to fight against the Imperial Order. When they see the size of the Order's army and their brutality with those who resist, they will surrender their freedom."

He looked away from her, as if regretting his flash of anger in their last moments together. His tall form, so stalwart against the sweep of mountains and sky, sagged a little, seeming to huddle closer to her as if seeking comfort.

"The only thing I have to hope for is to get away so I can come back to you." His voice had lost all traces of heat as he spoke in a near whisper. "Kahlan, please don't take that hope from me-it's all I have."

In the distance she could see the fox trotting across the meadow. Its thick, whitetipped tail followed out straight behind as the fox made its inspection for any rodents that might be about. As Kahlan's gaze tracked its movement, from the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of Spirit standing proud and free in the window. How could she lose the man who had carved that for her when she needed it most?

She could, she knew, because now he needed what only she could give him. Looking back up into his intense gray eyes, she realized she could not hope to deny him his earnest plea and only request, not at a time like this.

"All right, Richard. I won't do anything rash to free you. I'll wait for you. I'll endure it.

"I know you. I know you won't ever give up. You know I expect no less from you. When you get away-and you will-I'll be waiting for you, and then we'll be together again. We'll never be apart in our hearts. As you said, our oath of love is timeless."

Richard closed his eyes with relief. He tenderly kissed her brow. He lifted her hand from his chest and pressed soft kisses to her knuckles. She saw then how much her pledge meant to him.

Kahlan pulled her hand back and quickly removed her necklace, the one Shota had given her as a wedding gift. It was meant to prevent her from getting pregnant. She turned Richard's hand over and pushed the necklace into his palm. He frowned in confusion at the small, dark stone hanging from the gold chain draped over his fingers.

"What's this about?"

"I want you to take it." Kahlan cleared her throat to keep her voice. She could only manage a whisper. "I know what she wants of you-what she will make you do."

"No, that's not what . . ." He shook his head. He said, "I'm not taking this," as if turning it away would somehow deny the possibility.

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Kahlan put her hand to the side of his face. His face wavered before her in a watery blur.

"Please, Richard. Please take it. For me. I couldn't bear the thought of another woman having your child." Or even the thought of the attempt at its creation-but she didn't say that part of it. "Especially not after mine . . . "

He looked away from her eyes. "Kahlan . . ." Words failed him.

"Just do it for me. Take it. Please, Richard. I'm doing as you ask and will endure your captivity; please honor my request in return. I couldn't stand the thought of that bewitching blond beast having your child-the child that should be mine. Don"you see? How could I ever love something I hated? And how could I ever hate

something that was part of you? Please, Richard, don't let it come to that."

The cold wind lifted and twisted her hair. Her whole life, it seemed, was twisting out of her control. She could hardly believe that this place of such joy, peace, and redemption, a place where she had come to live again, could be a place where it would all be taken away.

Richard held the necklace out to her, as if it were a thing that might bite him. The dark stone swung under his fingers, gleaming in the gloom.

"Kahlan, I don't think that's what this is about. I really don't. But anyway, she could simply refuse to wear it and threaten your life if I didn't . . ."

Kahlan pulled the gold chain from his fingers and laid it all in a small neat mound in his palm. The dark stone glimmered from its imprisonment behind the veil of tiny gold links. She closed his fingers around the necklace and held his fist shut with both of her hands.

"You're the one who demands we not ignore those things that are painful to contemplate."

"But if she refuses . . ."

Kahlan gripped his fist tighter in her trembling fingers. "If it comes to a time when she makes that demand of you, you must convince her to wear the necklace. You must. For me. It's bad enough for me to think she might take my love, my husband, from me like that, but to also fear . . ."

His big hand felt so warm and familiar and comforting to her. Her words came choked with desperate tears. She could do no more than beg. "Please, Richard."

He pressed his lips tight, then nodded and stuffed the necklace in a pocket. "I don't believe those are her intentions, but if it should turn out to be so, you have my word: she will wear the necklace."

Kahlan sagged against him with a sob.

He took her by the arm. "Come on. Hurry. I have to get whatever I need to take. I've only got a few minutes, or all this will be for nothing. I can take the shorter trail and still catch up with her at the top of the pass, but I don't have much time."

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CHAPTER 23

Kahlan was aware of Cara, wearing her bloodred leather, standing in the doorway to their bedroom watching Richard cram his things into his pack. Kahlan nodded as she and Richard exchanged brief, stilted instructions. They had already come to terms with the life-and-death issues. It seemed they both feared to say anything of consequence for fear of disturbing the delicate, desperate, difficult agreements they had reached.

The meager light coming in the small window did little to brighten the gloom. Cara, over in the doorway, blocked some of the light. The room had the feel of a dungeon. Richard, dressed in dark clothes, looked like a shadow. So many times, as she lay in bed recovering, Kahlan had thought of it that way-as her dungeon. Now it had the palpable sense of a dungeon, but with the clean aroma of pine walls instead of the stench of a stone cell from where trembling, sweating prisoners were taken to their death.

Cara looked forlorn one moment and the next like lightning seeking ground. Kahlan knew that the Mord-Sith's emotions had to be as torn as her own, balancing on a knife's edge with despair and grief on one side and rage on the other. MordSith were not used to being in such a position, but then, Cara was now more than simply Mord-Sith.

Kahlan watched Richard pack the black trousers, black undershirt, black and gold tunic, silver wristbands, over-belt with its pouches, and golden cloak into his pack, where they took up a good portion of the available space. He was wearing his dark forest garb; he didn't have time to change. Kahlan hoped a time would soon come when he would escape and again wear the clothes of a war wizard to toad them against the Order. They all needed him to lead the D'Haran Empire against the invading horde from the Old World.

For reasons that weren't always entirely clear, Richard had become the linchpin of their struggle. Kahlan knew his feelings about that-that people must be willing to fight for themselves and not only for him-were valid. If an idea was sound, it had to have a life beyond a leader, or the leader had failed.

As he threw other clothes and small items into his pack, Richard told Kahlan that maybe she could find Zedd, that he might have some ideas. She nodded and said she would, knowing Zedd wouldn't be able to do anything. This terrible triangle was not liable to be susceptible to influence by outsidersNicci had seen to that. It was just a hope Richard was giving her, the only bouquet he could offer in the desolate void of reality.

Kahlan didn't know what to do with her hands. She stood twining her fingers together as tears dripped off her chin. There must be something to say, something important, some last words while she had the chance, but she couldn't think of them.

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She supposed he knew what she felt, what was in her heart, and words couldn't add anything to that. She pressed her fist against the aching knot of anxiety in the pit of her stomach.

A sense of doom crowded in the room like a fourth person, a grim guard waiting to take Richard away. This was the heart of terror, being controlled by what you couldn't see, couldn't reason with, couldn't persuade or battle. The doom waited, implacable, immune, indifferent.

As Cara vanished from the doorway, Richard pulled a fistful of gold and silver from an inside pocket in his leather pack. He hastily dropped roughly half back in the pack and then held out the rest.

"Take this. You might need it."

"I'm the Mother Confessor. I don't need gold."

He tossed it on the bed for her anyway, apparently not wanting to argue with her in their last moments together.

"Do you want any of the carvings?" she asked. It was a stupid question and she knew it, but she had to fill the awful silence and it was the only thing to come into her head, other than a hopeless plea.

"No. I've no need for them. When you look at them, think of me, and remember I love you." He rolled a blanket tight, wrapped it with a small patch of oiled canvas, and tied it with leather thongs to the bottom of his pack. "I guess if I were to want any, I could always carve some."

Kahlan handed him a cake of soap.

"I don't need your carving to remind me of your love. I'll remember. Carve something to make Nicci see that you should be free."

Richard glanced up with a grim smile. "I plan on seeing to it that she knows I won't ever give in to her and the Order. Carvings won't be necessary. She thinks she has this all planned out, but she's going to find out I'm bad company." Richard jammed a fist in his pack, making more room. "Very bad company."

Cara rushed back in, carrying small bundles with the corners tied in knots at the top. She plopped them down one at a time onto the bed.

"I put together some food for you, Lord Rahl. Things that will keep for traveling--dried meat and fish and such. Some rice and beans. I . . . I put a loaf of bread that I made on top, so eat it first, while it's still good."

He thanked her as he put the small bundles into his pack. He put the bread to his nose for a deep whiff before packing it away. He gave Cara a smile of appreciation.

Richard straightened. His smile evaporated in a way that for some reason made Kahlan's blood go cold. Looking like he was in the throes of committing himself to some last, grim deed, Richard pulled the baldric off over his head. He held the goldand-silver wrought scabbard in his left hand and drew the Sword of Truth in his white-knuckled right fist.

The blade rang out with its unique metallic sound, announcing its freedom.

Richard drew his sleeve up his arm and wiped the sword across his forearm. Kahlan winced as she watched. She didn't know if he cut deeply accidentally, or on purpose. With an icy sensation she recalled that Richard cut very precisely with any sharp steel edge.

He turned the blade and wiped both sides in gouts of vivid red blood. He bathed the blade in it, giving it a voluptuous taste, wetting its appetite for more. Kahlan didn't know what he was doing or why he was doing it now, but it was a frightening

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ritual to witness. She wished he had drawn it before and cut down Nicci. Her blood, Kahlan would not fear seeing.

Richard picked up the scabbard and slammed the Sword of Truth home. Blood running over his hand left greasy red smears across the scabbard as he slid his hand down the length of it, to the tip, and then seized the sheathed weapon at its center point in his fist. His head bowed, his eyes on the dull silver and gold reflections lustrous even through his own blood, he loomed closer to her.

Richard looked up, and Kahlan saw the lethal rage of magic dancing in his eyes. He had invoked the sword's terrible wrath, called it forth, and then put it away. She'd never seen him do such a thing before.

He lifted the sword in its scabbard to her. The tendons in the back of his fist stood out in the strain. The white of his knuckles showed through the blood.

"Take it," he said in a hoarse voice that betrayed the struggle within.

Spellbound, Kahlan lifted the scabbard in her palms. For that instant, until he pulled away his bloody hand, she felt a jolting shock as if she were suddenly welded to the weapon by hot fury unlike anything she had ever experienced. She half expected to see a burst of sparks. She could feel such rage emanating from the cold steel that it nearly dropped her to her knees. She might have dropped the weapon itself in that first instant, had she been able to let go of it. She could not.

Once Richard removed his hand, the sheathed sword lost the passionate rage and felt no different from any other weapon.

Richard lifted a finger in caution. The dangerous magic still glazed his eyes. The muscles of his jaw tightened until she could see it standing out all the way up through his temples.

"Don't draw this sword," he warned in that awful hoarse whisper, "unless it's a matter of your life. You know the ghastly things this weapon can do to a parson. Not only the one under the power of the blade, but the one under the power of the hilt."

Kahlan, arrested by the intensity of his gaze, could only nod. She clearly recalled the first time Richard had used the sword to kill a man. The first time he came to learn the horror of killing had been to protect her.

Using the weapon that first time, unleashing the magic the first time, had nearly killed Richard as well. It had been a struggle for him to learn how to control such a storm of magic as the Sword of Truth freed.

Without the rage of the sword's magic, Richard's eyes were capable of conveying menace. Kahlan could recall several times when his raptor's glare, by itself, had brought a roomful of people to silence. There were few things worse than the need to escape the look in those eyes. Now, those eyes hungered to deliver death.

"Be angry if you must use this," he growled. "Be very angry. That will be your only salvation."

Kahlan swallowed. "1 understand." She nodded. "I remember."

Righteous rage was the only defense against the crippling pain the sword exacted as payment for its service.

"Life or death. No other reason. I don't know what will happen, and I'd just as soon you not find out. But I'd prefer that, to you being without this terrible defense if you need it. I've given it a taste of blood, it will come out voracious. When it comes out, it will be in a blood rage."

"I understand."

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His eyes cooled at last. "I'm sorry to give you the terrible responsibility of this weapon, especially in this way, but it's the only protection I can offer."

With a hand on his arm to gently reassure him, Kahlan said, "I won't have to use it."

"Dear spirits, I hope not." He glanced over his shoulder, taking a last look at their room, and then at Cara. "I have to get going."

She ignored his words. "Give me your arm, first."

He saw she had bandages left over from when Kahlan was still recovering. Without objection, he held out his blood-soaked arm. Cara used a wet cloth to quickly swab his arm before she wound it in clean bandages.

Richard thanked her as she was finishing. Cara split the end, put the tails around his wrists, and tied a quick knot. "We will come part of the way with you."

"No. You will stay here." Richard pulled down his sleeve. "I don't want to risk it."

"But-"

"Cara, I want you to protect Kahlan. I'm leaving her in your hands. I know you won't let me down."

Cara's big beautiful blue eyes, glistening with tears, reflected the kind of pain Kahlan was sure Cara never allowed anyone to see.

"I swear to protect her as I would protect you, Lord Rahl, if you swear to get away and return."

Richard flashed her a brief smile, trying to ease her misery. "I'm Lord Rahl-I don't need to remind you that I've wiggled out of tighter spots than this." He kissed her cheek. "Cara, I swear I'll never give up trying to get away-you have my word."

Kahlan realized he hadn't really sworn to Cara's words. He wouldn't, she knew, want to make a promise he might not be able to keep.

Bending to the bed, he pulled his pack close. "I have to go." He held the strap in a stranglehold. "I can't be late."

Kahlan's fingers tightened on his arm, Cara laid a hand on his shoulder. Richard turned back and gripped Kahlan's shoulders.

"Listen to me, now. I wish you would stay here, in this house in these mountains where it's safe for you, but I don't think anything short of my dying request could convince you to do that. At least stay for four or five days, in case I'm able to figure out what's going on and can escape Nicci. She may be a Sister of the Dark, but I'm no longer exactly a stranger to magic. I've escaped powerful people before. I've sent Darken Rahl back to the underworld. I've gone to the Temple of the Winds in another world in order to stop the plague. I've escaped worse than this. Who knows-this might be simpler than it seems. If I do escape her, I'll come back here, so wait for a while, at least.

"If I can't get away from Nicci for now, try to find Zedd. He might have some idea of what to do. Ann was with him the last time we saw him. She's the Prelate of the Sisters of the Light and knew Nicci for a very long time. Perhaps she knows something that, along with what Zedd might be able to come up with, could help."

"Richard, don't worry about me. Just take care of yourself. I'll be waiting for you when you get away, so just be at ease about that much of it and put all your effort into escaping from her. We'll wait here for a while-I promise."

"I will watch over her, Lord Rahl. Don't worry about the Mother Confessor."

Richard nodded. He turned back to Kahlan. His fingers on her arms tightened. His brow drew down.

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"I know you and I know the way you feel, but you have to listen to me. The time has not yet come. It may never come. You may think I'm wrong in this, but if you close your eyes to the reality of what is, in favor of what you would wish just because you're the Mother Confessor and feel responsible for the people of the Midlands, then there is no reason for us to bother hoping we'll be together again because we won't. We will be dead, and the cause of freedom will be dead."

His face loomed closer. "Above all else, our forces must not attack the heart of the Order's army. It's too soon. If they-if you-carry an assault directly into the heart of the Order thinking you can win, it will be the end of our forces, and the end of our chances. All hope for the cause of freedom, and all hope to defeat the Order, will be lost for generations to come.

"It's the same way we must use our heads with Nicci, and not fight her in a direct attack, or we will both die. You promised you would not kill yourself to free me. Don't throw that promise away by going against what I'm telling you now."

It all seemed so unimportant at the moment. The only thing that mattered was that she was losing him. She would have cast the rest of the world to the wolves if she could just keep him.

"All right, Richard."

"Promise me." His fingers were hurting her arms. He shook her. "I mean it. You could throw it all away if you don't heed my warning. You could destroy the hope of people for the next fifty generations. You could be the one who destroys freedom and brings a dark age upon the world. Promise me you won't."

A thousand thoughts swirled in chaotic turmoil through her mind. Kahlan stared up into his eyes. She heard herself say, "I promise, Richard. Until you say so, we'll make no direct attack."

He looked like a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. A smile spread on his face as he pulled her into an embrace. His fingers combed into her hair and cradled her head as she rose to his kiss. Her hands slipped up the backs of his shoulders as she held him. It only lasted a moment, but in that moment of stolen bliss, they shared a world of emotions.

All too soon the kiss, the embrace, was over. His warm presence swirled away from her, allowing the awful weight of doom to settle firmly down atop her. Richard briefly hugged Cara before he hefted his pack onto a shoulder. He turned back at the bedroom doorway.

"I love you, Kahlan. Never anyone before you, nor ever after. Only you." His eyes said it even better.

"You're everything to me, Richard. You know that."

"I love you, too, Cara." He winked at her. "Take good care of the both of you until I'm back."

"I will, Lord Rahl. You have my word as Mord-Sith."

He gave her a crooked smile. "I have your word as Cara."

And then he was gone.

"I love you, too, Lord Rahl," Cara whispered to the empty doorway.

Kahlan and Cara ran into the main room and stood in the doorway watching him running across the meadow.

Cara cupped her hands around her mouth. "I love you too, Lord Rahl," she shouted.

Richard turned as he ran and acknowledged her words with a wave.

Together, they watched Richard's dark figure flying through the dead brown

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grass, his fluid gait swiftly carrying him away. Just before he disappeared into the trees, he stopped and turned. Kahlan shared a last look with him, a look that said everything. He turned and vanished into the woods, his clothes making him impossible to distinguish from the trees and undergrowth.

Kahlan collapsed to her knees, sitting back on her heels as she lost control of her emotions. She wept helplessly, her head in her hands, at what seemed the end of the world.

Cara squatted beside her to put an arm around her shoulders. Kahlan hated to have Cara see her cry that way, cry in such weakness. She felt a distant gratitude when Cara held her head to her shoulder and didn't say anything.

Kahlan didn't know how long she sat on the dirt floor in her white Confessor's dress, sobbing, but after a time, she was able to make herself stop. Her heart continued to spiral down into hopeless gloom. Each passing moment seemed unendurable. The bleak future stretched out before her, a wasteland of agony.

She finally looked up and gazed about at the house. Without Richard it was empty. He had given it life. Now it was a dead place.

"What do you wish to do, Mother Confessor?"

It was getting dark. Whether it was the sunset, or the clouds getting thicker, Kahlan didn't know. She wiped at her eyes.

"Let's begin to get our things together. We'll stay here a few days, like Richard asked. After that, anything the horses can't carry that will spoil, we'd better bury. We should board up the windows. We'll close up the house good and tight."

"For when we return to paradise, someday?"

Kahlan nodded as she looked about, trying desperately to focus her mind on a task and not on that which would crush her. The worst part, she knew, was going to be night. When she was alone in bed. When he wasn't with her.

Now, the valley seemed more like paradise lost. She had trouble believing that Richard was really gone. It seemed as if he were just off to catch some fish, or hunt berries, or scout the hills. It seemed as if, surely, he would be coming back soon.

"Yes, for when we return. Then it will be paradise again. I guess when Richard returns, wherever we are will be paradise."

Kahlan noticed that Cara didn't hear her answer. The Mord-Sith was staring out through the doorway.

"Cara, what is it?"

"Lord Rahl is gone."

Kahlan rested a comforting hand on Cara's shoulder. "I know it hurts, but we must put our minds to-"

"No." Cara turned back. Her blue eyes were strangely troubled. "No, that's not what I mean. I mean that I can't sense him. I can't feel the bond to Lord Rahl. I know where he is-he's going up the trail up to that pass-but I can't feel it." She looked panicked. "Dear spirits, it's like going blind. I don't know how to find him. I can't find Lord Rahl."

Kahlan's first flash of fear was that he fell and was killed, or that Nicci had executed him. She used reason to force the fear aside.

"Nicci knows about the bond. She probably used her magic to cloak it, or to sever it."

"Cloaked it, somehow." Cara rolled her Agiel in her fingers. "That's what it has to be. I can still feel my Agiel, so I know that Lord Rahl has to be alive. The bond is still there . . . but I cannot feel it to sense where he is."

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Kahlan sighed with relief. "That has to be it, then. Nicci doesn't want to be followed, so she cloaked his bond with magic."

Kahlan realized that to be protected from the dream walker by the bond to Richard, people would now have to believe in him without the reassurance of feeling the bond. Their link would have to remain true in their hearts if they were to survive.

Could they do that? Could they believe in that way?

Cara stared out the doorway, across the meadow to the mountains where Richard had disappeared. The blue-violet sky behind the blue-gray mountains was slashed with blazing orange gashes. The snowcaps were lower than they had been. Winter was racing toward them. If Richard didn't soon escape and return, Kahlan and Cara would have to be gone before it arrived.

Bouts of dizzying grief threatened to drown her in a flood of tears. Needing to do something, she went to her room to take off her Confessor's dress. She would set to work with the task of closing up the house and preparing to leave.

As Kahlan pulled her dress off, Cara appeared in the doorway.

"Where are we going to go, Mother Confessor? You said we were going to leave, but you never said where we were going to go."

Kahlan saw Spirit standing in the window, fists at her sides as she looked out at the world. She lifted the carving off the sill and trailed her fingers over the flowing form.

Seeing the statue, touching it, feeling the power of it, made Kahlan want to reach deep inside for resolve. Once before, she had been hopeless, and Richard carved this for her. Her other hand fell to her side, and her fingers found Richard's sword lying across their bed. Kahlan focused her mind, ordering the turbulent swirl of despair thickening into wrath.

"To destroy the Order."

"Destroy the Order?"

"Those beasts took my unborn child, and now they've taken Richard. I will make them regret it a thousand times over and then another thousand. I once swore an oath of death without mercy to the Order. The time has come. If killing every last one of them is the only way to get Richard back, then that's what I will do."

"You swore an oath to Lord Rahl."

"Richard said nothing about not killing them, just about how. My oath was not to try to drive a sword through their heart. He said nothing about bleeding them to death with a thousand cuts. I won't break my oath, but I intend to kill every last one of them."

"Mother Confessor, you must not do that."

"Why?"

Cara's blue eyes gleamed with menace. "You must leave half for me."

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Chapter 24


Richard had stopped to turn back and look at her only once as he ran, just before he went into the trees. She was standing in the doorway in her white Confessor's dress, her long thick hair tumbling down, her form the embodiment of feminine grace, looking as beautiful as the first time he saw her. They held each other's gaze for a brief moment. He was too far away to see the green of her eyes, a color he'd never beheld on anyone else, a color of such heart-piercing perfection that it sometimes would stop his breathing, and at other times quicken it.

But it was the mind of the woman behind those eyes that in reality captivated him. Richard had never met her equal.

He knew he was cutting the time close. As much as he hated the idea of turning his gaze away from Kahlan, her life hung in the balance. His purpose was clear. Richard had plunged into the woods.

He had traveled the trail often enough; he knew where he could run, and where he had to be careful. Now, with little time left, he couldn't afford to be too careful. He didn't try for a glimpse of the house.

He was alone in the woods as he ran, his thoughts but salt in a raw wound. For once he felt out of place in the woods-powerless, insignificant, hopeless. Bare branches clattered together in the wind, while others creaked and moaned, as if in mock sorrow to see him leaving. He tried not to think as he ran.

Fir and spruce trees took over as the ground rose out of the valley. His breath came in rapid pulls. In the cold shadows of the forest floor, the wind was a distant pursuer far overhead, chasing after him, shooing him along, hounding him away from the happiest place he had ever been. Spongy mounds of verdant moss lay dotting the forest floor in the low places where mostly cedars grew, looking like wedding cakes done up in an intense green, sprinkled over with tiny, chocolate brown, scale-like cedar needles.

Richard tiptoed on rocks sticking up above the water as he crossed a small stream. As the little brook tumbled down the slope, it went under rocks and boulders in places, making an echoing drumming sound, announcing him to the stalwart oaks along his march into imprisonment. In the flat gray light, he failed to see a reddish loop of cedar root. It caught his foot and sent him sprawling facedown in the trail, a final humiliation on his judgment and sentence of banishment.

As Richard lay in the cold, damp, discarded leaves, dead branches, and other refuse of the forest, he considered not getting up ever again. He could just lie there and let it all end, let the indifferent wind freeze his limbs stiff, let the sneaky spiders and snakes and wolves come to bite him and bleed him to death, and then finally the uncaring trees would cover him over, never to be missed except by a few, his vanishing a good riddance to most.

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A messenger with a message no one wanted to heed.

A leader come too soon.

Why not just let it end, let silent death take them both to their peace and be done with it?

The scornful trees all watched to see what this unworthy man might do, to see if he had the courage to get to his feet and face what was ahead. He didn't know himself if he did.

Death was easier, and in that bottomless moment, less painful to consider.

Even Kahlan, as much as he loved her, wanted something from him he could not give her: a lie. She wanted him to tell her that something he knew to be so, was not. He would do anything for her, but he couldn't change what was. At least she had enough faith in him to let him lead her away from the shadows of tyranny darkening the world. Even if she didn't believe him, she was probably the only one willing, of her own free will, to follow him.

In truth, he lay on the ground for only seconds, regaining his senses from the fall and catching his breath as the thoughts flooded through his mind-brief seconds in which he allowed himself to be weak, in exchange for how hard he knew everything to come would be.

Weakness, to balance the strength he would need. Doubt, to balance his certainty of purpose. Fear, to balance the courage he would have to call upon.

Even as he wondered if he could get up, he knew he would. His convulsion of self-pity ended abruptly. He would do anything for her. Even this. A thousand times over, even this.

With renewed resolve, Richard forced his mind away from the dominion of dark thoughts. It wasn't so hopeless; he knew better. After all, he had faced trials much more difficult than this one Sister of the Dark. He had once gotten Kahlan out of the clutches of five Sisters of the Dark. This was but one. He would defeat her, too. Anger welled up at the thought of Nicci thinking she could make them dance at the end of her selfish strings.

Despair extinguished, rage flooded in.

And then he was running again, dodging trees as he cut corners off the trail. He hurdled fallen trees and leaped over gaps in the rock shelves, rather than taking the safe route down and up. Each shortcut or leap saved him a few precious seconds.

A broken tree limb snagged his pack, yanking it from his shoulder. He tried to hang on to it as he flew past, but it slipped from his grasp and spilled across the ground.

Richard exploded in fury, as if the tree had done it on purpose just to taunt him in his rush. He kicked the offending branch, snapping it out of its dry socket. He fell to his knees and scooped his things back into the pack, clawing up moss along with gold and silver coins, and a pine seedling along with the soap Kahlan had given him. He didn't have time to care as he shoved it all back in. This time, he put the pack onto his back, rather than letting it hang from one shoulder. He had been trying to save time before, and it had cost him instead.

The path, which in places was no more than sections of animal trails, began to rise sharply, occasionally requiring that he use both hands to hold on to rocks or roots as he climbed. He'd been up it enough times to know the sound handholds. As cold as the day was, Richard had to wipe sweat from his eyes. He skinned his knuckles on rough granite as he jammed his fingers into cracks for handholds.

1n his mind's eye, Nicci was riding too swiftly, covering too much ground, get 191

ting too far ahead. He knew it had been foolhardy to take so much time before leaving, thinking he could make up for it on the trail. He wished he could have taken more time, though, to hold Kahlan.

His insides were in agony at the thought of how heartbroken Kahlan was. He felt, somehow, that it was worse for her. Even if she was free, and he was not, that made it worse for her because, in her freedom, she had to restrain herself when she wanted nothing more than to come after him. In bondage to a master, Richard had it easy; he had only to follow orders.

He burst out of the trees onto the wider trail at the top of the pass. Nicci was nowhere to be seen. He held his breath as he looked to the east, fearing to spot her going down the back side of the pass. Beyond the high place where he stood, he could see forests spread out before him with mountains to each side lifting the carpet of trees. In the distance, greater mountains yet soared to dizzying heights, their peaks and much of their slopes stark white against the gloom of heavy gray sky.

Richard didn't see any horse and rider, but since the trail twisted down into the trees not tar beyond where he stood, that didn't really prove anything. The top of the pass was a bald bit of open ledge, with most of the rest of the horse trail winding through deep woods. He quickly inspected the ground, casting about for tracks, hoping she wouldn't be too far ahead of him and he could catch her before she did something terrible. His sense of doom eased when he found no tracks.

He peered out at the valley far below, across the straw-brown meadow, to their house. It was too far away to see anyone. He hoped Kahlan would stay there for a few days, as he had asked. He didn't want her going to the army, going to fight a losing war, endangering her life for nothing.

Richard understood Kahlan's desire to be with her people and to defend her homeland. She believed she could make a difference. She could not. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Richard's vision was really nothing more than the acceptance of that reality. Shaking your sword at the sky didn't keep the sun from setting.

Richard cast an appraising squint at the clouds. For the last two days, he had thought that the signs pointed to the first snow of the season soon rolling down onto their valley home. By the look of the sky and the scent in the wind, he judged he was right.

He knew he wasn't going to be able to escape Nicci so easily as to be able to get back to Kahlan within a few days. He had invented that story for another reason. Once the weather shitted and the snow arrived up in these mountain highlands, it tended to come in an onslaught. If the storm was as big as he estimated by the signs it could be, Kahlan and Cara would end up being stuck in their house until spring. With all the food they'd put up, as well as the supplies he'd brought in, they had plenty to last the two of them. The firewood he'd cut would keep them warm.

There, she would be safe. With the army, she would be in constant danger.

The dappled mare walked out of the trees, coming around a bend not far away. Nicci's blue eyes were on Richard from the first instant she appeared.

At the time the Sisters of the Light had taken him to the Palace of the Prophets in the Old World, Richard had mistakenly believed Kahlan wanted him taken away. He didn't know or understand she had sent him away to save his life. Richard thought she didn't ever want to see him again.

While in captivity at the palace, Richard thought Nicci was the personification of lust. He was hardly able to find his voice when around her. He had hardly been

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able to believe a creature of such physical perfection existed, other than in daydreams.

Now, as he watched her swaying gently in her saddle as she walked her horse up the trail, her intense blue eyes locked on his, it seemed to him she wore her beauty with a kind of grim acceptance. She had so completely lost her stunning presence that he couldn't even envision any reason for his onetime sentiment about her.

Richard had since learned the true depths of what a real woman was, what real love was, and what real fulfillment was. In that light, Nicci paled into insignificance.

As he watched her coming closer, he was surprised to realize she looked sad. She seemed almost to be sorry to find him there, but more than that, there seemed to be a shadow of relief passing across her countenance.

"Richard, you lived up to my faith." Her voice suggested that it had been tenuous as best. "You're in a sweat; would you like to rest?"

Her feigned kindness drove hot blood all the way up to his scalp. He pulled his glare from her gentle smile and turned to the trail, walking ahead of her horse. He thought it best if he not say anything until he could get a grip on his rage.

Not far down the trail they came to a black stallion with a white blaze on its face. The big horse was picketed in a small grassy patch of open ground among towering pines.

"Your horse, as I promised," she said. "I hope you find him to your liking. I judged him to be big and strong enough to carry you comfortably."

Richard checked and found the smooth snaffle bit to his approval; she wasn't abusing the animals with cruel bits used to dominate, as he knew some of the Sisters did. The rest of the tack appeared sound. The horse looked healthy.

Richard took a few moments to introduce himself to the stallion. He reminded himself that the horse was not the cause of his problems, and he shouldn't let his attitude toward Nicci affect how he treated this handsome animal. He didn't ask the horse's name. He let it sniff his hand beneath its curled muzzle, then stroked the stallion's sleek black neck. He patted its shoulder, conveying a gentle introduction without words. The powerful black stallion stamped his front hooves. He was not yet all that pleased to meet Richard.

For the time being, there was no choice of routes; there was only the one trail and it ran from the direction of the house where Kahlan was back to the east. Richard took the lead so that he wouldn't have to look at Nicci.

He didn't want to jump right on the stallion at first sight and make a bad impression that would take a lot of work to overcome. Better to let the horse get to know him, first, if just for a mile or so. He held the reins slack under the stallion's jaw and walked in front of him, letting him get comfortable with following this strange new man. Putting his mind to the task of working with the horse helped divert him from thoughts that threatened to drag him under a sea of sorrow. After a time, the stallion seemed at ease with his new master and Richard mounted without any ado.

The narrow trail precluded Nicci walking her horse beside his. Her dappled mare snorted its displeasure at having to follow the stallion. Richard was pleased to know that he had already upset the order of things.

Nicci offered no conversation, sensing, he supposed, his mood. He was going with her, but there was no way she could hope to make him happy about it.

When it started getting dark, Richard simply dismounted beside a small brook where the horses could have a drink, and tossed his things on the ground. Nicci

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wordlessly accepted his choice of campsite, and unstrapped her bedroll from her saddle after she'd taken it down off her horse. She sat on her bedroll, looking a little downcast, more than anything else, and ate some sausage along with a hard biscuit washed down with water. After her first bite, she lifted the sausage to him, meeting his gaze in a questioning manner. He didn't acknowledge the offer. Nicci assumed he declined, and went back to eating.

When she was finished and had washed in the brook, she went behind the thick undergrowth for a time. When she came back, she crawled into her bedroll without a word, turned away from him, and went to sleep.

Richard sat on the mossy ground, arms folded, leaning the small of his back against his saddle. He didn't sleep the entire night. He sat watching Nicci sleep in the light of the overcast sky lit from the other side by a nearly full moon, watching her slow even breathing, her slightly parted lips, the slow pulse in the vein at the side of her throat, thinking the whole time how he might overcome what she had done to them. He thought about strangling her, but he knew better.

He had used magic before. He had in the past not only felt but unleashed incredible power through his gift. He had faced situations of enormous danger involving a wide variety of magic. Richard had called upon his gift to conjure such power as no one living had ever seen, and he had watched as it was brought to life at his conscious direction.

His gift was invoked mostly through anger and need. He had an abundant supply of both. He just didn't know how it could help him. He didn't understand well enough what Nicci had done to begin to think of what he might do to counter it. With Kahlan's life at the other end of Nicci's invisible cord of magic, he dared not do anything until he was sure of it. He would be, though; he just had to figure it out. Experience told him that it was a reasonable supposition. He told himself it was only a matter of time. If he wanted to keep his sanity, he knew he had to believe that.

The next morning, without speaking a word to Nicci, he saddled the horses. She sat watching him tighten the cinch straps, making sure they weren't pinching the horses, as she sipped from a waterskin. She took bread from her saddlebag lying beside her and asked if he would like a piece. Richard ignored her.

He would have been tired from not sleeping the whole cold night, but his anger kept him wide awake. Under a leaden sky, they rode at an easy but steady pace all that day through forests that seemed endless. It felt good to have a warm horse under him. Throughout the day, they continued their gradual descent from the higher country, where the house was, down into the lowlands.

Toward dark, the snow arrived.

At first, it was just a few furtive flakes swirling through the air. As it steadily increased, it seemed to leach the color from trees and ground alike, until the world turned white. Visibility steadily diminished as the snow thickened into a disorienting, drifting, solid wall. He had to keep blinking the fat flakes from his eyes.

For the first time since leaving with Nicci, Richard felt a sense of relief.

Kahlan and Cara, up higher in the mountains, would wake in the morning to several feet of snow. They would decide that it was foolish to try to leave when, they would believe, it was only an early snow that would melt down enough in a few days for them to have an easier time of traveling. Up in those mountains, that would be a mistake. It would stay cold. A storm would follow on the heels of this

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one, and they would soon have snow up to the shutters. They would be nervous about waiting, but would probably decide that it was now more important for them to delay until a break in the weather-after all, there was no urgency.

In all likelihood, they would end up safely stuck in the house for the winter. When he eventually escaped from Nicci's talons, Richard would find Kahlan snug in their home.

He decided that it would be foolish to let his anger dictate that they sleep on the open ground. They could freeze to death. He recalled all too well that if Nicci died, Kahlan died. When he spotted a big wayward pine, he walked his horse off the trail. Brushing against branches dumped wet snow on him. Richard flicked it off his shoulders and shook it from his hair.

Nicci glanced around, confused, but didn't object. She dismounted as she waited to see what he was doing. When he held a heavy bough to the side for her, she frowned at him before poking her head inside for a look. She straightened with an expression of childlike delight. Richard didn't return her wide grin.

Inside, under the thick boughs caked with snow, was a still, frigid world. With the snow crusting the tree, it was dark inside. In the dim light, Richard dug a small fire pit and soon caught fire to the deadwood he'd carefully stacked over shavings.

When the crackling flames built into a warm glow, Nicci gazed around in wonder at the inside of the wayward pine. The spoke-like branches over their heads were cast in a soft orange blush by the flickering light. The lower trunk was bare of limbs, leaving the inside of the tree a hollow cone with ample open space at the bottom for them.

Nicci quietly warmed her hands by the fire, looking contented-not like she was gloating that he'd given in and found shelter and built a fire, but contented. She looked as if she had been through a great ordeal, and now she could be at peace. She looked like a woman expecting nothing, but grateful for what she had.

Richard hadn't had breakfast with her, or anything the day before. His bitter resolve gave way to his hunger, so he boiled water from melted snow and cooked rice and beans. Starving wouldn't do him or Kahlan any good. Without words, he offered Nicci half the rice and beans poured into the crust of one end of his loaf of bread. She took the bread bowl and thanked him.

She offered him a sun-dried slice of meat. Richard stared at her thin, delicate fingers holding out the piece of meat. It reminded him of someone feeding a chipmunk. He snatched the meat from her hand and tore off a chunk with his teeth. To avoid her gaze, he watched the fire as he ate his rice and beans out of the heel of bread. Other than the crackle of the fire, the only sound was the thump of snow falling in clumps from limbs not stout enough to hold the load. Snowfalls often turned a forest to a place of eerie stillness.

Sitting by the low fire after he'd finished his meal, feeling the warmth of the flames on his face, the exhaustion from the long ride on top of his vigil the night before finally caught up with him. Richard stacked thicker wood on the dwindling fire and banked the coals around it. He unrolled his bedroll on the opposite side of the fire from Nicci as she silently watched him, climbed in, and, as he thought about Kahlan safe in their house, fell soundly asleep.

The next day they were up early. Nicci said nothing, but, once they were mounted, decisively cut her dappled mare in front of the black stallion and took the lead. The snow had changed to a cold drizzling mist. What snow was left on the

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ground had melted down to gray slush. The lowlands were not quite ready to relinquish themselves to winter's grip. Up higher, where Kahlan was, it was colder and would be snowing in earnest.

As they rode carefully along a narrow road at the side of a mountain, Richard tried to watch the woods to keep his mind on other things, but he couldn't help occasionally looking at Nicci riding right in front of him. It was cold and damp; she wore a heavy black cloak over her black dress. With her back straight, her head held high, and her blond hair fanned out over her cloak, she looked regal. He wore his dark forest clothes and hadn't shaved.

Nicci's dappled mare was dark gray, almost black, with lighter gray rings over its body. Its mane was dark gray, as were the lightly feathered legs, and the tail was a milky white. It was one of the most handsome horses Richard had ever seen. He hated it. It was hers.

By afternoon, they intersected a trail running to the south. Nicci, leading the way, continued to the east. Before the day was out they would encounter a few more paths, used mainly by an occasional hunter or trapper. The mountains were inhospitable. Even if you cleared the ground of trees, the soil was thin and rocky. In a few places closer to Hartland or other population centers to the north or south, there were grassy slopes that were able to support thin flocks of sheep or goats.

As he felt the stallion's muscles moving beneath him, Richard looked out at land he knew and loved. He didn't know how long it would be until he was home again-if ever. He hadn't asked where they were going, figuring Nicci wouldn't likely tell him this soon. That they were headed east didn't mean much just yet because their choice of routes was limited.

In the passive rhythm of the ride, Richard's mind kept returning to his sword, and how he had given it to Kahlan. At the time it had seemed the only thing to do. He hated that he had given it to her the way he had, yet he could think of no other way to afford her any protection. He prayed she would never have to use the sword. If she did, he'd given it a measure of his rage, too.

At his belt he wore a fine knife, but he felt naked without his sword. He hated the ancient weapon, the way it pulled dark things from within him, and at the same time he missed it. He often reminded himself of Zedd's words, that it was merely a tool.

It was more, too. The sword was a mirror, albeit one bound in magic capable of raining terrible destruction. The Sword of Truth would annihilate anything before it-flesh or steel-as long as what stood before it was the enemy, yet it could not harm a friend. Therein lay the paradox of its magic: evil was defined solely by the perceptions of the person holding the sword, by what he believed to be true.

Richard was the true Seeker and heir to the power of the sword created by the wizards in the great war. It should be with him. He should be protecting the sword.

A lot of things "should be," he told himself.

Late in the afternoon they left the eastern path they were on and took one tending east and south. Richard knew the trail; it would pass through a village in another day, and then become a narrow road. Since Nicci had deliberately taken the new route, she must have known that, too.

Near dark they skirted the north shore of a good-sized lake. A small raft of seagulls floated out near the middle of the rain-swept water. Seagulls weren't common in these parts, but they were not unheard of, either. He recalled all the seabirds he had seen when he had been in the Old World. The sea had fascinated him.

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In a cove on the far shore Richard could just make out two men fishing. On that side of the lake there was a trail worn to a deep rut over many generations by people coming up to fish from a hamlet to the south.

The two men, sitting on a broad flat rock jutting out into the lake, waved in greeting. It wasn't often one encountered riders out here. Richard and Nicci were too far away for the men to make them out. The men probably assumed they were trappers.

Nicci returned the wave in a casual manner, as if to say, "Good luck with the fishing. Wish we could join you."

They rounded a bend and finally disappeared from the men. Richard wiped his wet hair off his forehead as they rode along beside the lake, listening to the small waves lapping at the muddy shore. Leaving the lake behind, they cut into the forest as the trail rose on its way across a gentle slope. Nicci had put her hood up against the intermittent rain and drizzle purring through the trees. A darkening gloom descended on the woods.

Richard didn't want to do anything that would get Kahlan killed; the time had finally come when he had to speak.

"When we come upon someone, what am I to say? I don't suppose you want me telling people you're a Sister of the Dark out snatching victims. Or do you wish me to play the part of a mute?"

Nicci gave him a sidelong glance.

"You will be my husband, as far as everyone is concerned," she said without hesitation. "I expect you to adhere to that story under all circumstances. For all practical purposes, from now on, you are my husband. I am your wife."

Richard's fists tightened on the reins. "I have a wife. You are not she. I'm not going to pretend you are."

Swaying gently in her saddle, Nicci seemed indifferent to his words or the emotion behind them. She gazed skyward, taking in the darkening sky.

It was too warm down in the lowlands for snow. Through occasional breaks in the low clouds, though, Richard had caught glimpses of windswept mountain slopes behind them cloaked in thick white drifts. Kahlan was sure to be dry, warm, and stuck.

"Do you think you could find us another of those shelter trees?" Nicci asked. "Where it would be dry, like last night? I'd dearly love to get dry and warm."

Between sporadic gaps in the pine trees, and through the scramble of bare branches of the alder and ash, Richard surveyed the hillside descending before them.

"Yes."

"Good. We need to have a talk."

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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.

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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. 1 would never have expected you to be pleased about this, Richard. But

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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 Derma. She had been at the People's Palace in D'Hara, where you were taken after Derma 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."

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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, "Derma 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

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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 fife 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 fife 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, 1

"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 MordSith?"

"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.