Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

The rain outside had increased to a dull roar. They’d made camp just in time. Richard couldn’t help but remember the cozy times he’d had in wayward pines huddled beside Kahlan. At the thought of Kahlan, his heart sank.

“I don’t know,” Nicci finally said. “I honestly don’t, Richard. I seek something, but I will only know it when I find it. After nearly all my one hundred and eighty-one years without knowing it existed, I finally saw the first hint of it not long ago….” She seemed to be looking through him again, to some point beyond. Her voice, too, seemed to be addressed to that distant place her vision beheld. “That was when you stood in a collar before all those Sisters, and defied them. Perhaps I will find the answer when I understand what it was I saw that day, in that room. It was not just you, but you were its center….”

Her eyes focused once more on his face. She spoke with gentle assurance. “Until then, you will live. I have no intention of harming you. You need fear no torture from me. I’m not like them—that woman, Denna, or like the Sisters of the Light, using you for their games.”

“Don’t patronize me. You are using me for your own game, no less than they used me for theirs.”

She shook her head. “I want you to know, Richard, that I have nothing but respect for you. I probably have more respect for you than any person you have ever met. That’s why I took you. You are a rare person, Richard.”

“I’m a war wizard. You’ve just never seen one of those before.”

She spurned the notion with a dismissive flick of her hand. “Please don’t try to impress me with your ‘power.’ I’m not in the mood for such silliness.”

Richard knew it was no idle boast on her part. She was a sorceress of remarkable ability. He doubted he had any hope of outsmarting her knowledge of magic.

She was not acting the way he had expected a Sister of the Dark would act, though. Richard put his anger, hurt, and heartache aside for the moment, knowing he had to face what was, rather than putting his hope in wishes, and spoke to Nicci in the same gentle fashion she used with him.

“I don’t understand what it is you want of me, Nicci.”

She shrugged in an involuntary gesture of frustration. “Neither do I. Until I do, you will do as I ask and everything will be fine. I will not harm you.”

“Considering the circumstances, do you really expect me to take your word?”

“I’m telling you the truth, Richard. If you were to twist your ankle, I would, like a good wife, put my shoulder under your arm and help you to walk. From now on, I am devoted to you, and you to me.”

He could only blink at how crazy this was. He almost thought she might be mad. Almost. He knew that would be too easy an answer. As Zedd always said, nothing was ever easy.

“And if I choose not to go along with your wishes?”

Again, she shrugged. “Then Kahlan dies.”

“I understand that, but if she dies, then you lose the collar around my heart.”

She fixed him with cold blue eyes. “Your point?”

“Then you couldn’t get what you wanted from me. You would have no leverage.”

“I don’t have what I want now, so I would be losing nothing. Besides, if you were to do that, then Emperor Jagang would welcome your head as a gift. I would no doubt be showered with gifts and riches.”

Richard didn’t think Nicci wanted gifts or riches showered on her. She was a Sister of the Dark, after all, and he supposed she could manage to be so showered if she really wished it.

Even so, he was sure his head would have a price, and she could salvage that much out of it if he proved ungovernable. She might not care for gifts and riches, but if there was one thing she did want, it had to be power. He was pretty sure she could gain a good measure of that, should she slay the enemy of the Imperial Order.

He bent over the pot between his legs and went back to his dinner, and his dark thoughts. Talking to her was useless. They just went around in circles.

“Richard,” she said in a quiet tone, drawing his eyes to her gaze, “you think I’m doing this to hurt you, or to defeat you because you are the enemy of the Order. I am not. I told you my true reasons.”

“So, when you finally find this answer you seek, in return for my ‘help,’ then you will let me go?” It was not really meant as a question, but as trenchant incrimination.

“Go?” She stared down into her bowl of rice and sausage, stirring it around as if it might reveal a secret. She looked up. “No, Richard, then I will kill you.”

“I see.” He hardly thought that was a way to encourage his cooperation in her search, but he didn’t say so. “And Kahlan? After you kill me, I mean.”

“You have my word that if I decide I must kill you, as long as I live, she will, too. I have no ill will toward her.”

He tried to find solace in that much of it. For some reason, he believed Nicci. Knowing that Kahlan would be all right gave him courage. He could endure what was to happen to him, if only she would be all right. It was a price he was willing to pay.

“So, ‘wife,’ where are we going? Where is it you’re taking me?”

Nicci didn’t look at him but instead used her bread to sop up some of her dinner. She considered his question as she nibbled.

“Who are you fighting, Richard? Who is your enemy?” She took another small bite of her bread.

“Jagang. Jagang and his Imperial Order.”

Like an instructor correcting him, Nicci slowly shook her head. “No. You are wrong. I think perhaps you are in need of answers, too.”

Games. She was playing foolish games with him. Richard ground his teeth, but held his temper in check.

“Then who, Nicci? Who, or what, am I fighting if it is not Jagang.”

“That is what I hope to show you.” She watched his eyes in a way he found unsettling. “I am going to take you to the Old World, to the heart of the Order, to show you what you are fighting—the true nature of what you believe to be your enemy.”

Richard frowned. “Why?”

Nicci smiled. “Let’s j

ust say it amuses me.”

“You mean we’re going back to Tanimura? Back to where you lived all that time as a Sister?”

“No. We are going to the heart and soul of the Old World: Altur’Rang. Jagang’s homeland. The name means, roughly, ‘the Creator’s chosen.’”

Richard felt a chill run up his spine. “You expect to take me, Richard Rahl, there, into the heart of enemy territory? I hardly doubt we will be living as ‘husband and wife’ for long.”

“Besides not using your magic, you will not use the name associated with that magic—Rahl—but instead the name you grew up with: Richard Cypher. Without your magic, or your name, no one will know you are anyone but a humble man with his wife. That is exactly what you shall be—what we both shall be.”

Richard sighed. “Well, if the enemy should find I’m more, I guess a Sister of the Dark can…exert her influence.”

“No, I can’t.”

Richard’s eyes turned up. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t use my power.”

Gooseflesh prickled his arms. “What?”

“It’s devoted to the link with Kahlan, to keeping her alive. That is how a maternity spell works. It requires a prodigious amount of power to even establish such a complex spell, much less maintain it. My power must be invested into the labor of preserving the living link. A maternity spell leaves nothing to spare; I doubt I could make a spark.

“If we have any trouble, you will have to handle it. Of course, I can at any time call upon my ability as a sorceress, but to do so I would have to draw the power from our link. If I do that without her near… Kahlan dies.”

Alarm raced through him. “But what if you accidentally—”

“I won’t. As long as you take good care of me, Kahlan will be safe enough. If, however, I should fall off my horse and break my neck, her neck snaps, too. As long as you take good care of me, you are taking good care of her. This is why it’s important that we live as husband and wife—so that you can be close at hand, and so that I can guide and help you, too. It will be a difficult life with both of us living without our power, just as any other married couple, but I believe this to be necessary if I am to find what I seek from you. Do you understand?”