Temple of the Winds (10 page)

Nadine’s eyes darted between the two women watching her. Her relief reversed to alarm. “Me? A killer? But I’m a woman.”

“
So am I,” Cara said. “One who is going to have your blood all over this room until you tell us the truth.”

Nadine spun around and snatched up the chair, brandishing its legs toward Cara and Kahlan. “Stay away! I’m warning you; Tommy Lancaster and his friend Lester once thought to have their way with me, and they now have to eat all their meals without the benefit of their front teeth.”

“
Put down the chair,” Cara warned in a deadly hiss, “or you will be eating your next meal in the spirit world.”

Nadine dropped the chair as if it had caught fire. She retreated until she was up against the wall. “Leave me be! I didn’t do anything!”

Kahlan gently hooked Cara’s arm and urged her back. “Let a sister of the Agiel handle this?” She said in a whisper as she lifted an eyebrow. “I know I said ‘until she makes a threatening move,’ but a chair is hardly the kind of threat I had in mind.”

Cara’s mouth twisted in annoyance. “All right. For the moment.”

Kahlan turned to Nadine. “I need some answers. Tell the truth, and if you really have nothing to do with this assassin, you will have my sincere apology and I’ll do what I can to make up for our inhospitality. But if you lie to me, and you intend doing harm to Lord Rahl, the guards outside have orders not to allow you to leave this room alive. Do you understand?”

Nadine, her back pressed against the wall, nodded.

“
You asked to see Lord Rahl.” Nadine nodded again. “Why?”

“
I’m on my way to my love. He’s been gone since last autumn. We’re to be wed, and I’m on my way to him.” She brushed a strand of hair back from her eyes. “But I don’t know where he is, exactly. I was told to go see Lord Rahl and I would find my betrothed.” Nadine’s lower lids brimmed with tears. “That’s why I wanted to speak with this Lord Rahl—to ask if he could help.”

“
I see,” Kahlan said. “I can understand your distress over your love being missing. What is your young man’s name?”

Nadine pulled her kerchief from her sleeve and dabbed it at her eyes. “Richard.”

“
Richard. Is there more to his name?”

Nadine nodded. “Richard Cypher.”

Kahlan had to remind herself to draw a breath through her open mouth, but her mind couldn’t seem to make her tongue work.

“
Who?” Cara asked.

“
Richard Cypher. He’s a woods guide where I live, in Hartland, that’s in Westland, where we live.”

“
What do you mean, you’re to wed him?” Kahlan finally managed in a whisper. She felt her world threatening to crush in around her as a thousand things all at once whirled chaotically in her mind. “Did he tell you that?”

Nadine twisted her damp kerchief. “Well, he was courting me … it was understood … but then he disappeared. A woman came and told me that we’re to be married. She said that the sky had spoken to her—she was a mystic of some sort. She knew all about my Richard, how kind and strong and handsome he is and all. She knew all manner of things about me, too. She said that it’s my destiny to marry Richard and Richard’s destiny to be my husband.”

“
Woman?” Kahlan could get out no more than that one word.

Nadine nodded. “Shota, she said her name was.”

Kahlan’s hands balled into fists. Her voice returned with venom. “Shota. Did this woman, Shota, have anyone with her?”

“
Yes. A strange little … fellow. With yellow eyes. He kind of scared me, but she said he was harmless. Shota is the one who told me to come see Lord Rahl. She said Lord Rahl could help me find my Richard.”

Kahlan recognized the description of Shota’s companion, Samuel. This woman’s voice, calling Richard, “my Richard,” kept thundering around in the storm in Kahlan’s head. She worked at making her voice sound calm. “Nadine, please wait here.”

“
I will,” Nadine said, gathering her composure. “Is everything all right? You believe me, don’t you? Every word is true.”

Kahlan didn’t answer, but instead pulled her stunned stare from Nadine and marched from the room. Cara closed the door as she followed on Kahlan’s heels.

Kahlan staggered to a halt in the outer room, everything swimming in a watery red blur.

“
Mother Confessor,” Cara whispered, “what’s wrong? Your face is as red as my leather. Who is this Shota?”

“
Shota is a witch woman.”

Cara stiffened at that news. “And do you know this Richard Cypher?”

Kahlan twice swallowed past the painful lump in the back of her throat. “Richard was raised by his stepfather. Until Richard found out that Darken Rahl was his real father, his name was Richard Cypher.”

“
I’ll kill her,” Kahlan rasped in a hoarse voice as she stared off at nothing. “With my bare hands. I’ll strangle the life out of her!”

Cara turned toward the bedroom. “I will take care of it. Better if you let me take care of her.”

Kahlan hooked Cara’s arm. “Not her. I’m talking about Shota.” She gestured toward the bedroom door. “She doesn’t understand any of this. She doesn’t know about Shota.”

“
You know this witch woman, then?”

Kahlan bitterly huffed out a breath. “Oh yes. I know her. She’s been trying to prevent Richard and me from being together since the first.”

“
Why would she do that?”

Kahlan turned away from the bedroom door. “I don’t know. She gives a different reason every time, but I sometimes fear that it’s because she wants Richard for herself.”

Cara frowned. “How would getting Lord Rahl to marry this little strumpet gain Shota Lord Rahl?”

Kahlan flicked a hand. “I don’t know. Shota is always up to something. She’s caused us trouble at every turn.” Her fists tightened with resolve. “But it won’t work, this time. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to end her meddling. And then Richard and I are going to be married.” Her voice dropped to a whispered oath. “If I have to touch Shota with my power and send her to the underworld, I will end her meddling.”

Cara folded her arms as she considered the problem. “What do you wish done with Nadine?” Her blue eyes turned toward the bedroom. “It still might be best to … get rid of her.”

Kahlan squeezed the bridge of her nose between a finger and thumb. “This isn’t Nadine’s doing. She’s simply a pawn in Shota’s plotting.”

“
One foot soldier can sometimes cause you more trouble than a general’s battle plan if he …”

Cara’s words trailed off as her arms came unfolded. She cocked her head, as if listening to a wind in the halls.

“
Lord Rahl is coming.”

The ability of the Mord-Sith to sense Richard through their bond to him was uncanny, if not unnerving. The door opened. Berdine and Raina, wearing leather of the same cut and skintight style as Cara’s, but brown rather than red, strutted into the room.

Both were a bit shorter than Cara, but no less attractive. Where Cara was leggy, muscular, and without a spare ounce of fat, blue-eyed Berdine had a more curvaceous shape. Berdine’s wavy brown hair was plaited in the characteristic long braid of a Mord-Sith, as was graceful Raina’s fine, dark hair. All three shared the same ruthless confidence.

Raina’s incisive, dark-eyed gaze took in Cara’s red leather, but she made no comment. Both she and Berdine wore grim, forbidding expressions. The two Mord-Sith turned to face one another from either side of the door.

“
We present Lord Rahl,” Berdine said in an officious tone, “the Seeker of Truth and wielder of the Sword of Truth, the bringer of death, the Master of D’Hara, the ruler of the Midlands, the commander of the gar nation, the champion of free people and bane of the wicked”—her penetrating blue eyes turned to Kahlan—“and the betrothed of the Mother Confessor.” She lifted an introductory arm toward the door.

Kahlan couldn’t imagine what was going on. She had seen the Mord-Sith display a variety of temperaments, from imperious to mischievous, but she had never seen them acting ceremonial.

Richard strode into the room. His raptor gaze locked on Kahlan. For an instant, the world stopped. There was nothing else but the two of them, joined in a silent link.

A smile widened on his lips and gleamed in his eyes. A smile of unbounded love.

There was only her and Richard. Only his eyes.

But the rest of him …

She felt her mouth drop open. In astonishment, Kahlan put a hand over her heart. As long as she had known him, he had worn only his simple woods clothes. But now …

His black boots were all she recognized. The tops of the boots were wrapped with leather thongs pinned with silver emblems embossed with geometric designs, and covered new, black wool trousers. Over a black shirt was a black, open-sided tunic, decorated with symbols snaking along a wide gold band running all the way around its squared edges. A wide, multilayered leather belt bearing several more of the silver emblems and a gold-worked pouch to each side cinched the magnificent tunic at his waist. Hooked on the belt was a small, leather purse. The ancient, tooled-leather baldric holding the gold and silver wrought scabbard for the Sword of Truth crossed over his right shoulder. At each wrist was a wide, leather-padded silver band bearing linked rings encompassing more of the strange symbols. His broad shoulders bore a cape that appeared to be made of spun gold.

He looked at once noble and sinister. Regal, and deadly. He looked like a commander of kings. And like a vision of what the prophecies had named him: the bringer of death.

Kahlan would never have thought he could look more handsome than he always did. More commanding. More imposing. She was wrong.

As her jaw worked, trying to bring forth words that weren’t there, he crossed the room. He bent and kissed her temple.

“
Good,” Cara announced. “She needed that; she had a headache.” She lifted an eyebrow to Kahlan. “All better now?”

Kahlan, hardly able to get her breath, hardly hearing Cara, touched her fingers to him, as if to test if this was a vision, or real.

“
Like it?” he asked.

“
Like it? Dear spirits …” she breathed.

He chuckled. “I’ll take that for a yes.”

Kahlan wished everyone was gone. “But, Richard, what is this? Where did you get all this?”

She couldn’t take her hand from his chest. She liked the feel of his breathing. She could feel his heart beating, too. And she could feel her own heart pounding.

“
Well,” he said, “I knew you wanted me to get some new clothes—”

She pulled her gaze from his body and looked up into his gray eyes. “What? I never said that.”

He laughed. “Your beautiful green eyes said it for you. When you looked at my old woods outfit, your eyes spoke quite clearly.”

She took a step back and gestured to the new clothes. “Where did you get all this?”

He clasped one of her hands and with the fingers of his other lifted her chin to gaze into her eyes. “You’re so beautiful. You’re going to look magnificent in your blue wedding dress. I wanted to look worthy of the Mother Confessor herself when we’re married. I had it made in a hurry so as not to delay our wedding.”

“
He had the seamstresses make it for him. It was a surprise,” Cara said. “I never told her your secret, Lord Rahl. She tried her best to get it out of me, but I didn’t tell her.”

“
Thank you, Cara.” Richard laughed. “I bet it wasn’t easy.”

Kahlan laughed with him. “But this is wonderful. Mistress Wellington made all this for you?”

“
Well, not all of it. I told her what I wanted, and she and the other seamstresses went to work. I think she did a fine job.”

“
I will give her my compliments. If not a hug.” Kahlan tested the cape between a finger and thumb. “She made this? I’ve never seen anything like it. I can’t believe she made this.”

“
Well, no,” Richard admitted. “That, and some of the other things came from the Wizard’s Keep.”

“
The Keep! What were you doing up there?”

“
When I was there before, I came across these rooms where the wizards used to stay. I went back and had a better look at some of the things that belonged to them.”

“
When did you do this?”

“
A few days ago. When you were busy meeting with some of the officials from our new allies.”