Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

“What have you done?” He growled through gritted teeth.

She smiled. It was a smile a mother gave a child—a smile of indulgence. She took a breath, as if recovering from a difficult bit of labor, and lifted a hand to indicate Kahlan.

“I have spelled your wife, Richard.”

Richard could hear Cara’s breath close behind his left shoulder. She was staying out of the way of his sword arm.

“To what end?” he asked.

“Why, to capture you, of course.”

“What’s going to happen to her? What harm have you done?”

“Harm? Why, none. Any harm that comes to her will only be by your hand.”

Richard frowned, understanding her, but wishing he were wrong. “You mean, if I hurt you, Kahlan will suffer it, too?”

Nicci smiled with the same discerning, disarming smile she used to have when she came to give him lessons. He could hardly believe that he used to imagine that she must look like nothing so much as a good spirit in the flesh.

Richard could sense the magic crackling around this woman. He had come to know in most cases, through his own gift, when a person had the gift. What others couldn’t see, he saw. He could see it in their eyes, and sometimes sense the aura of it around them. He had rarely met gifted women who made the very air about them sizzle with their power. Worse, though, Nicci was a Sister of the Dark.

“Yes, and more. Much more. You see, we are now linked by a maternity spell. Odd name for a spell, yes? The name, in part, is derived from the spell’s nurturing aspects. As in lifegiver—the way a mother nurtures her child and keeps it alive.

“That light you saw was an umbilical cord of sorts: an umbilical cord of magic. By bending the nature of this world, it links our lives, no matter the distance between us. Just as I am the daughter of my mother and nothing could ever change that, so neither can this magic be altered by anyone else.”

She spoke as an instructor, as she had once spoken to him at the Palace of the Prophets when she had been one of his teachers. She always spoke with a quiet economy of words that he had once thought added an air of nobility to her bearing. Back then, Richard couldn’t have imagined coarse words coming from Nicci’s mouth, but the words she spoke now were vile.

She still moved with an unmatched, slow elegance. He had always thought her movements seductive. He now saw them as the sinuous movements of a snake.

The magic of his sword thundered through him, screaming to be loosed. The sword’s magic had been created specifically to combat what the sword’s wielder considered evil. At that moment, Nicci fit the requirement to such an extent that the magic of the sword was close to overpowering him, near to taking command in order to destroy this threat. With the pain from the Agiel still throbbing in his head, it was a struggle to maintain his control over the power of the sword. Richard could feel the raised gold letters of the word TRUTH on the hilt pressing into his palm.

This was a time, perhaps more than any other, that he knew had to be faced with truth, and not his raw wishes. Life and death hung in the balance.

“Richard,” Kahlan said in a level voice. She waited until his eyes met hers. “Kill her.” She spoke with a quiet authority that demanded obedience. In her white Mother Confessor’s dress, her words carried the unequivocal weight of command. “Do it. Don’t wait another moment. Kill her. Don’t think about it, do it.”

Nicci calmly watched to see what he might do. What he would finally decide seemed no more than a matter of curiosity to her. Richard had no need to think or to decide.

“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 linked.”

“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 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 I 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. I don’t, you see. Not at all.”