“So, do you know where Richard is, now?” Kahlan asked.
“At work, I’m sure. He usually comes home about now—unless he has to work at night, too.”
Kahlan briefly scanned the room. “What about Nicci?”
“I don’t know. She may have gone to buy bread or something. It’s a little funny—she’s usually home long before now. She almost always has dinner ready for Richard.”
Kahlan’s gaze drifted through the darkening room, from table, to basin, to cupboard. She would hate to leave, only to have him show up a minute after she left. Kamil thought it was odd that Nicci wasn’t home. That they were both gone was troubling.
“Where does he work?” Kahlan asked.
“At the site.”
“Site? What site?”
Kamil gestured into the distance. “Out at the emperor’s new palace they’re building. Tomorrow’s the big dedication.”
“The new palace is done?”
“Oh, no. It’s years and years from being done. It’s only started, really. But they are going to dedicate it to the Creator, now. A lot of people have come to Altur’Rang for the ceremony.”
“Richard is a laborer helping build the palace?”
Kamil nodded. “He’s a carver. At least, he is now. He used to work at Ishaq’s transport company, but then he got arrested—”
Kahlan seized him by the shirt. “He was arrested? They…tortured him?”
Kamil’s eyes turned away from her frantic expression.
“I gave Nicci my money so she could get in to see him. She and Ishaq and Victor the blacksmith got him out. He was hurt bad. When he got better, the officials made him take a job carving.”
Kamil’s words spun through her head. The ones that floated above all the rest were that Richard had recovered.
“He carves statues, now?”
Kamil nodded again. “He carves people in stone to decorate the walls of the palace. He helps me with my own carvings. I can show you, out back.”
Wonder of wonders. Richard carving. But all the carvings they had seen in the Old World were grotesque. Richard would not like to carve such ugliness. Obviously, he had no choice.
“Maybe later.” Kahlan rubbed her fingers across her brow as she considered what to do. “Can you take me there, now? To the site where Richard works?”
“Yes, if you’d like. But don’t you want to wait to see if he comes home, first? He may be home soon.”
“You said he works at night, sometimes.”
“For the last few months, he worked at night a lot. He’s carving some special statue for them.” Kamil’s face brightened. “He told me to go tomorrow to see it. With the dedication tomorrow, it may be he’s still finishing it. I’ve never seen where he works, but Victor, the blacksmith, may know.”
“We should go see this blacksmith, then.”
Kamil scratched his head again as his expression turned to disappointment. “But the blacksmith will be gone for the night.”
“Is there anyone else out there, now?”
“There may be a lot of people there. Crowds go out there to see the place—I’ve gone out there myself—and tonight there may be more than usual, because of tomorrow’s ceremony.”
That might be just what they needed. They wouldn’t look so out of place searching the area for Richard if there were crowds out there. It would give them an excuse to look around.
“We’ll give him an hour,” Kahlan said. “If he doesn’t return by then, then it’s most likely because he’s working. If he doesn’t come back, we’ll have to go out there and look for him.”
“What if Nicci shows up?” Cara asked.
Kamil waved his hand to dismiss their concern. “I’ll go out on the front steps and watch for Nicci. You two can wait in here, where no one will see you. I’ll come warn you if I see Nicci coming up the street. I can always take you out the back way if I see her returning home.”
Kahlan laid a hand over his shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
“That sounds good to me, Kamil. We’ll wait in here.”
Kamil hurried out to his guard post. Kahlan glanced around the tidy room.
“Why don’t you get some sleep,” Cara said. “I’ll stand guard. You stood guard last.”
Kahlan was exhausted. She glanced down at the sleeping pallet closest to Richard’s things, then nodded. She lay down on his bed. The room was getting dark. Just being where he slept was a comfort. Being so close, but so far, she couldn’t fall asleep.
Nicci’s heart sank when she saw that Richard wasn’t in their room. Kamil was nowhere to be found. She had felt so good out at the site, watching all the people come to see Richard’s statue. Throngs of people had come to see it and had been uplifted.
Some had been angered by it. She, of all people, understood that. Still, Nicci could hardly believe the hateful reaction of some people to such beauty. Some people hated life. She understood that, too. There were those who refused to see—who didn’t want to see.
Other people, though, had a reaction much like hers.
It had all come clear for her. For the first time in her life, life made sense. Richard had tried to tell her, but she hadn’t listened. She had heard the truth before, too, but others—her mother, Brother Narev, the Order—had shouted it down, and shamed her out of listening.
Her mother had trained her well, and from the first day she had seen Brother Narev, Nicci had been a soldier in the Order’s army.
When she saw the statue, she saw at last the truth she had always refused to see, suddenly and clearly standing before her. This was the valid vision of life for which she had hungered, yet which she had evaded, her entire life.
She understood, now, why life had seemed so empty, so pointless: she herself had rendered it so in refusing to think. Nicci had been a slave to everyone of need. She had given her masters their only real weapon against her; she had surrendered to their twisted lies by putting the crippling chains of guilt around her own neck for them, giving herself freely into slavery to the whims and wishes of others instead of living her life as she should have—for herself. She had never asked why it was right for her to be a slave to another’s desires, but not evil for them to enslave her. She was not contributing to the betterment of mankind, but was merely a servant to countless puling little tyrants. Evil was not one large entity, but a ceaseless torrent of small wrongs left unchallenged, until they festered into monsters.
She had lived her whole life on shifting quicksand, where reason and the intellect were not to be trusted, where only faith was valid, and blind faith was sacred. She, herself, had enforced mindless conformity to that empty evil.
She had helped bring everyone together, so they might have one collective neck around which the worst among men, in the name of good, could put their leash.
Richard had answered their tower of empty lies in one righteously beautiful statement for all to see, and had punctuated it with the simple words on the back of the bronze sundial.
Her life was hers to live by right. She belonged to no one.
Freedom exists first and foremost in the mind of the rational, thinking individual—that was what Richard’s statue had shown her. That he had carved it, proved it. A captive of her and the Order, his ideals had risen above both.
Nicci realized only now that she had always known her father held this same value—she had seen it in his eyes—even though he could never rationalize it. His values were expressed through the integrity of his work; that was why, from a young age, she had wanted to be an armorer like him. It was his vision of life she had always loved and admired, but suppressed, because of Mother and her ilk. It was that same look in Richard’s eyes, that same value for life held dear, that had drawn Nicci to him.
Nicci knew now that she had worn black ever since her mother’s death in an endless, shapeless longing to bury not just her mother’s hold over her, but, more important, her mother’s evil ideals.
She was so sorry Richard wasn’t home. She
wanted to tell him that he had given her the answer she had sought. She could never ask his forgiveness, though. What she had done to him was beyond forgiveness. She saw that now. The only thing she could do now was to reverse the wrong she had done.
As soon as she found him, they would leave. They would go back to the New World. They would find Kahlan. Then, Nicci would set things right. She had to be close to Kahlan, at least within sight, in order to undo the spell. Then Kahlan would be free. Then Richard would be free.
As much as Nicci loved Richard, she understood, now, that he should be with Kahlan, the woman he loved. Her desire for him gave her no right to do as she had done. She had no right to another’s life, as they had no right to hers.
Nicci lay down in her bed and wept at the thought of the outrage she had done to them both. She was overcome with shame. She had been so blind for so long.
She could not believe how she had thrown her entire life away fighting for evil just because it claimed to be good. She truly had been a Sister of the Dark.