Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

Richard gave Boy a quick rub on the blaze of his forehead, hoisted his saddlebags onto his shoulder, and turned to the dumbfounded expression on the stable owner’s face. He and Richard shared a helpless look.

“I hope she’s a good wife to you,” the man finally said.

Richard wanted to say that Nicci was a Sister of the Dark, and that he was her prisoner, but in the end he decided that it could serve no purpose. Nicci had made it clear to him that he was Richard Cypher, her husband, and she was Nicci Cypher, his wife. She had told him to stick to that story—for Kahlan’s sake.

“She’s just generous,” Richard said. “That’s why I married her. She’s good to people.”

Richard heard a woman’s cry, and shouting. He bolted for the partly open door and ran out into the bright morning sunlight. He didn’t see anyone. He raced around to the side of the barn, to where he heard scuffling.

A half dozen men had Nicci down on the ground, some swinging at her with their fists as she tried to fend them off with her bare hands. Others pawed at her, searching for a money pouch. They were fighting over the unearned before it was even out of her hands. A crowd of women, children, and other men stood around the scene in a circle, vultures waiting to pick the bones.

Richard crashed through the ring of people, seized the closest man by the back of his collar, and heaved him back. He was skinny, and flew through the air, crashing into the wall of the barn. The whole building shook. Richard kicked another in the ribs, tumbling him off Nicci and through the dirt. A third man spun and took a mighty swing at Richard. Richard caught the fist and bent it down until he felt a snap as the man cried out. At that, the men all scattered in every direction.

Richard started after one of them, but Nicci suddenly flew at him, restraining him.

“Richard! No!”

In his rage to get at the men, Richard nearly smashed her face, but, when he realized it was her, lowered his fists to his sides as he glared at the crowd.

“Please, my lord, please, my lady,” one of the women wailed, “have mercy on us woeful folk. We’s just the Creator’s miserable wretches. Have mercy on us.”

“You’re a bunch of thieves!” Richard yelled. “Thieving from someone who was trying to help you!”

He made an effort to go after the lot of them, but Nicci held his wrists down. “Richard, no!”

The people vanished like mice before a hissing cat.

Nicci let Richard’s fists drop. He saw then that she had blood on her mouth.

“What’s the matter with you? Giving money to people who would rather rob you than wait for you to hand it to them willingly? Why would you give money to such vermin?”

“That’s enough. I’ll not stand here and listen to you insult the Creator’s children. Who are you to judge? Who are you, with a full belly, to say what’s right? You have no idea what those poor people have been through, and yet you are quick to judge.”

Richard took a purging breath. He reminded himself yet again of what he had to keep uppermost in his mind. It was not really Nicci he had been protecting.

He pulled a shirtsleeve from the corner of his pack, wet it with water from a waterskin hanging around his waist, and carefully wiped her bloody mouth and chin. She winced as he worked but without protest let him inspect her injury.

“It’s not bad,” he told her. “Just a cut in the corner of your mouth. Hold still, now.”

She stood quietly as he held her head in one hand while he cleaned the blood off the rest of her face with the other.

“Thank you, Richard.” She hesitated. “I was sure one of them was going to cut my throat.”

“Why didn’t you use your Han to protect yourself?”

“Have you forgotten? To do that, I would have to take power from the link keeping Kahlan alive.”

He looked into her blue eyes. “I guess I forgot. In that case, thank you for restraining yourself.”

Nicci said nothing as they walked out of the town of Ripply, carrying everything they owned on their backs. As cold as the day was, it wasn’t long before his brow was dotted with sweat.

Finally he could stand it no longer. “Do you mind telling me what that was all about?”

Her brow twitched. “Those people were needy.”

Richard pinched the bridge of his nose, pausing in an effort to remain civil to her. “And so you gave them all our money?”

“Are you so selfish that you would not share what you have? Are you so selfish that you would ask the hungry to starve, the unclothed to freeze, the sick to die? Does money mean more to you than people’s lives?”

Richard bit the inside of his cheek to check his temper. “And the horses? You virtually gave them away.”

“It was all we could get. Those people were in need. Under the circumstances, it was the best we could do. We acted with the most noble of intentions. It was our duty to not be selfish and to joyfully give these people what they needed.”

There was no road going their way as they walked on into what had not long ago been the wasteland from which no one returned.

“We needed what we had,” he said.

Nicci glanced up into his eyes. “There are things you need to learn, Richard.”

“Is that right.”

“You have been lucky in life. You have had opportunities ordinary people never have. I want you to see how ordinary people must live, how they must struggle just to survive. When you live like them, you will understand why the Order is so necessary, why the Order is the only hope for mankind.

“When we get to where we’re going, we will have nothing. We will be just like all the other miserable people of this wretched world—with little chance to make it on our own. You don’t have any idea what that’s like. I want you to learn how the compassion of the Order helps ordinary people live with the dignity they are entitled to.”

Richard returned his gaze to the empty land stretching out before them. A Sister of the Dark who couldn’t use her power, and a wizard who was forbidden from using his. He guessed they couldn’t get any more ordinary than that.

“I thought it was you who wanted to learn,” he said.

“I am also your teacher. Teachers sometimes learn more than their students.”

Chapter 31

Zedd lifted his head when he heard the distant horns. He struggled to regain his senses. He was well past dread, into a world of little more than numb awareness. The horns were those meant to signal the approach of friendly forces. Probably some of the scouting patrols, or perhaps yet more wounded being brought in.

Zedd realized he was slumped on the ground, his legs sprawled out to the side. He saw that he had been sleeping with his head on the burly chest of a cold corpse. In despair, he recalled that he had been trying everything he knew to heal the horribly wounded man. In mournful revulsion, he pushed away from the cold body and sat up.

He rubbed his eyes against the darkness from within, as well as the night. He was beyond aching. Acrid smoke hung thick as fog. The air reeked with the heavy, throat-clenching stink of blood. From various places around him, he could see the drifting haze illuminated around glowing orange fists of firelight. The moans of the wounded lifted from the blood-soaked ground to drift through the frigid night air. In the

distance, men cried out in pain. When Zedd wiped a hand across his brow, he realized he wore gloves of crusted blood from those he had been trying to heal. It was an endless task.

Not far away, the ground was littered with shattered tree trunks, blasted asunder by the enemy gifted. Men lay sprawled, torn apart or impaled by huge splintered sections of those trees. It had been two of Jagang’s Sisters who had done it, just before dark, as the D’Haran forces were all collecting into the valley, thinking the battle had ended. Zedd and Warren had ended it by taking those two Sisters down with wizard’s fire.

By the dull ache in his head, Zedd knew he hadn’t been asleep for more than a couple of hours, at most. It had to be the middle of the night. People passing by had let him sleep—or maybe they thought him one of the dead.

The first day had gone as well as could be expected. The battle had dragged on sporadically throughout the first night with relatively minor skirmishes, and then had erupted with full force at dawn of the second day. As night had fallen on the second day, the fighting had finally ended. Looking around, Zedd thought it seemed to be over—at least for the time being.

They had made the valley and succeeded in drawing the Order after them, away from other gateways up into the Midlands, but at a terrible price. They had little choice, if they were to engage the enemy with any chance of success, rather than allow them unhindered access into the Midlands. For the moment, anyway, the Order was stalled. Zedd didn’t know how long that would last.

Unfortunately, the Order had gotten the better of the battle, by far.

Zedd peered about. It was not so much a camp as simply a place where everyone had dropped in exhaustion. Here and there, arrows and spears stuck up from the ground. They had fallen like rain as Zedd had worked throughout the night, the night before, trying to heal wounded soldiers. During the day, in the battles, he had unleashed everything he had. What had started out as skillful, calculated, focused use of his ability had in the end degenerated into the magic equivalent of a brawl.