Chainfire (22 page)

He understood, then, that Cara felt she had failed him before, with Nicci, and this time she had been determined to die to prove her oath. Madness still dwelt within her.

She believed that death falling in upon her would be her redemption in his eyes and so she refused to shrink before it.

She wanted to die for him to prove herself to him.

As it had come through the wall and through her room, Cara had tried to steal the power from death itself.

Richard felt that torturous touch envelope him in its all-consuming agony. It was a touch so cold it began to freeze his heart.

The world began slipping away from him, as it had begun to slip away from her.

He was lost in the crushing pain of that deadly touch.

It felt to Richard as if he were trapped beneath the ice in the swift, raven waters of a frozen river. The shadow of panic swirled ever closer around him.

He was exhausted and didn’t have any reserve of strength left.

As the specter of failure loomed, and the full realization of what such a failure would mean came to him, he rallied his will and exerted greater effort to fight his way toward the remote light of consciousness. Even though he was aware that he had managed to come partially awake, he was still in some distant, deep place and having difficulty completing the journey. He struggled to rise up, struggled for the life above, but couldn’t break through.

Even as Richard tried to press himself harder, it seemed too difficult, too far. For the first time, he considered the peace of surrender…truly considered it, as had she before it had dragged her under.

The deadly fangs of failure hovered closer.

Driven by the fright of the full realization of everything that such a defeat would mean, he drew together his strength, focused his will, and with desperate passion reached toward the world of life.

With a gasp, his eyes opened.

The pain had been crushing. He felt dizzy and sick from the encounter with such malevolence. He still trembled with the power of it. After such raw inner violence, he feared that every hammer beat of his heart might be the last. The slick touch of depravity had bequeathed him a repugnant memory of the gagging stench of rotting corpses, making it nearly impossible to draw the full breath he needed.

He had reached into Cara’s soul and he had felt an alien evil lurking there, within her, sucking the life from her, pulling her into the dark eternity of death. It had been a debilitating dread beyond anything he had ever felt before, beyond the mere fear of the black abyss of eternity.

It had been the grinning, naked vow of unimaginable terrors that were coming for him.

At first it had seemed that he had touched the icy face of death itself, but he now knew that he hadn’t. Despite his revulsion, he knew that it was something other than simply death.

Death was merely a part of its poisonous architecture.

Death was inanimate. This was not.

He hurt so much that he was unsure at that moment if he would have the strength to ever stand again, the strength required to live. His bones ached. The marrow of his bones ached. He couldn’t seem to stop trembling. Yet the pain was more than mere physical agony; it was an abhorrent misery that had seeped through his soul and touched every aspect of his existence.

The quiet room at last began to float into focus around him. The lamps still held back the veil of darkness. Beyond the heavy drapes the cicadas still sang their song of life.

Lying on the bed, still embracing Cara protectively in his arms, Richard was at last able to draw the full breath he so desperately needed. As he did, he relished the fragrance of her hair, savored the scent of the warm, moist skin along the curve of her neck, and in so doing the agony began to recede.

He felt Cara’s arms tightly embracing him. Downy soft hair behind her ear caressed the side of his face.

“Cara?” he whispered.

She reached up and ran a hand tenderly down the back of his head as she unashamedly held him against her. “Shh,” she soothed in his ear. “It’s all right.”

He was having trouble making sense of things.

He was somewhat disoriented to find himself holding Cara in his arms, to find her holding him so tenderly in hers, to realize they were locked in such an intimate embrace. He could feel the entire length of her pressed against him. But then, nothing could be more intimate than what they had shared in that dark place as they together faced the evil that had taken her.

He ran his tongue across his cracked lips and tasted salty tears.

“Cara…”

She nodded against the side of his face. “Shh,” she soothed again. “It’s all right. I’m with you. I won’t leave you.”

He drew away just enough to look into her eyes. They were blue and clear, revealing a depth he had never seen before. She studied his face with a kind of caring, knowing sympathy.

At that moment, he clearly saw in her eyes that this was Cara and no more. In that moment, he saw that the appellation of Mord-Sith had been stripped away down to her soul. In that moment, it was Cara, the woman, the individual, and nothing else.

It was as revealing and profound a view of her as he had ever had. It was startlingly beautiful.

“You are a very rare person, Richard Rahl.”

The soft breath of her words against his face soothed some of the lingering pain as seductively as did her arms, as did her eyes, as did her words, as did the living, breathing warmth of her.

Even so, the agony he had lifted from her still coursed through him, seeking to pull him back toward darkness and death. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he fought it with his love of life, and with his joy that Cara was alive.

“I am a wizard,” he whispered back.

She stared up into his eyes as she slowly shook her head in wonder.

“There has never been a Lord Rahl like you before. I swear, there never has.”

With her arms around his neck, she pulled his head closer and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Lord Rahl, for bringing me back. Thank you for saving me. You made me see again that I want to live. It is I who is supposed to be protecting your life, and you are the one to risk yours to save me.”

She again searched his eyes with leisurely satisfaction. It was completely unlike the way a Mord-Sith had of gazing through a person, of seeing all the way into their soul. This was an emotion of regard born of her appreciation for his value to her. In the purest sense, it was love. She showed absolutely no reticence in him seeing her feelings laid bare.

He supposed that, after what they had just shared, any such modesty would be pointless. He knew, though, that this was more, that this was Cara; sincere, unafraid, and unashamed.

“There has never been a Lord Rahl like you.”

“Cara, you don’t know how glad I am to have you back with me.”

She held his head in both her hands and kissed his forehead. “Oh, but I
do know. I know what you suffered for me this night. I know very well how much you wanted me back. I know very well what you did for me.” She slipped her arms around his neck again and hugged him tight. “I have never been afraid like that, not even when I was first—”

He touched his fingers to her lips to silence what she had been about to say for fear that it would break the spell, that it would too soon bring the armor of Mord-Sith back into her beautiful blue eyes. He knew what she had been about to say. He knew that madness.

“Thank you, Lord Rahl,” she whispered in wonder when he took his fingers away. “Thank you for everything, and for not letting me say what I had been about to say.” With a twitch of her brow, pain ghosted across her face. “That is why there has never been a Lord Rahl like you before. They all created Mord-Sith. They all brought the pain. You ended it.”

Richard couldn’t force any words past the lump in his throat, so he simply brushed her blond hair from her forehead and smiled at her. He was so happy to have her back that he couldn’t put it into words.

He gazed around the room, then, trying to judge how late it was.

“I don’t know how long it took you to heal me,” she said as she watched him surveying the curtains for any sign of the approach of dawn. “But after you did, you were so exhausted that you seemed to collapse into sleep. I couldn’t wake you…. I didn’t want to wake you.” Her arms still loosely around his neck, she gazed up at him with a blissful smile, looking as if she never wanted to move. “I was so weak that I fell asleep as well.”

“Cara, we have to get out of here.”

“What do you mean?”

Richard pushed himself up, the urgency of the situation becoming all too clear. His head spun sickeningly. “I used magic to heal you.”

She nodded, looking uncharacteristically content at the mention of magic and her in the same breath. This had been magic that had shown her the wonder of life.

What he was getting at abruptly became clear to her. She sat up in a rush, but had to put a hand back to steady herself.

Richard stood on trembling legs. He realized then that he was still wearing his sword. He was glad to have it at hand. “If Jagang’s beast is around, then it might have sensed that I used my gift. I don’t know where it might be, but I’d not like to be lying here when it returns.”

“Nor would I. Once was enough for a lifetime.”

He held out an arm and helped her stand. She balanced in a stiff posture for a moment before gathering her senses and loosening her pose. It somehow seemed startling to him to see that she was dressed in her red leather. After having been so close to her, after having been within her, in a sense, clothes seemed somehow alien.

In some inexplicable manner, Cara drew the aura of Mord-Sith around herself.

She smiled. The composed confidence in that smile lifting his heart. “I’m all right,” she said as if to tell him to stop worrying. “I’m back with you.”

The steel was back in her eyes. Cara was indeed back.

Richard nodded. “Me too. I’m feeling better now that I’m waking up.” He gestured to her pack. “Let’s get our things and get moving.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dear spirits, Richard,” she whispered, her eyes going wide, “what have you done?”

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

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

Nicci stared in shock. “How?” was all she could say.

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

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

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

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

“I guess so.”

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

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

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

“You took upon yourself what was killing her?”

“I had to.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nicci stared at the Mord-Sith. “Richard went to the brink of the world of the dead for you…and perhaps beyond.”

Cara stole a glance at Richard. “He did?”

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

“Well, Lord Rahl did it.”

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

“He had to.” Cara gave Nicci a brazen smile. “Lord Rahl can’t get along without me and he knows it.”

Richard turned aside as he smiled to himself.

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

“You used your gift, Richard. The beast is already about and you used your gift.”

“I had to or we would have lost her.”

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

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

“What did you expect me to do, let Cara die?”

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

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

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

Nicci let her hands flop down against her thighs. He was in no mood to hear anyone speak against saving the life of a woman he cared deeply for.
Nicci had no idea how she could explain it to him in a way that could make him understand the magnitude of the forces he had invoked or the grave danger he had unleashed. How could she say anything and not have him misunderstand her meaning? In the end, she knew she couldn’t.

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

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

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

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

“Well of course it did,” Nicci said.

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

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

“I’m not saying that it isn’t—it very well could be—but a lot of it doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Like what?”

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

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

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

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

“You were in the room and it just vanished?”

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

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

“Maybe it didn’t see you,” she murmured half to herself as she considered the puzzle.

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

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

Richard sighed unhappily. “I suppose that’s true.”

“What I’d like to know,” Nicci added as she folded her arms, “is why it didn’t kill Cara.”

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

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

Nicci’s gaze slid to Cara.

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

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

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

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

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

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