“It’s been a few hours,” Nicci said in a quiet, tired voice. “It’s the middle of the night.”
Richard rose expectantly to his feet. “Cara’s all right, then? You healed her?”
Nicci stared at him for what seemed an eternity. It felt to Richard, as he looked into Nicci’s timeless eyes, as if his heart were coming up in his throat.
“Richard,” she finally said in a voice so soft and compassionate that it made his breathing stop, “Cara isn’t going to make it.”
Richard blinked at the words, trying to be certain that he understood what Nicci was really saying.
“I don’t understand.” He cleared his throat. “What do you mean?”
Nicci gently laid a hand on his arm. “I think you should come in and see her while she is still with us.”
Richard seized her shoulders. “What are you talking about?”
“Richard…” Nicci’s gaze sank to the floor. “Cara isn’t going to make it. She is dying. She won’t live the night.”
Richard tried to retreat from the sorceress, but his back met the wall. “From what? What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know, exactly. She’s been touched by something that has…has brought death into her. I don’t know how to explain it because I don’t really know exactly what she is dying from. All I know is that it has overwhelmed her body’s defenses and moment by moment she is slipping away.”
“But Cara is strong. She’ll fight it. She’ll make it.”
Nicci was shaking her head. “No, Richard, she won’t. I don’t want to give you false hope. She is dying. I think she may even want to die.”
Richard came forward off the wall. “What? That’s crazy. She has no reason to want to die.”
“You can’t say that, Richard. You don’t know what she is going through. You don’t know her reasons. Maybe the suffering is too much for her. Maybe she can’t endure the pain and she only wants it to end.”
“If not for herself, Cara would do anything to stay alive in order to protect me.”
Nicci licked her lips as she gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. “Maybe you’re right, Richard.”
Richard didn’t like being humored. He looked from the door back to the sorceress. “Nicci, you can save her. You know how to do such things.”
“Look, you had better come see her before—”
“You have to do something. You have to.”
Nicci hugged her arms around herself. She looked away, her eyes brimming with tears.
“I swear, Richard, I tried everything I knew or could think of. Nothing was of any help. Death already has her spirit and I can no longer reach that far. She is breathing, but barely. Her heart is weak and nearly gone. Her whole body is shutting down as she slips away. I’m not even sure that she is really even still alive in the sense we think of as a person being alive. She is only here by a thread, and that thread will not hold for long.”
“But, can’t…” He could think of no words to hold back the weight of grief beginning to slide in on him.
“Please, Richard,” Nicci whispered, “come see her before she is gone. Say what you would to her while you have the chance. You will forever hate yourself if you don’t.”
Richard felt numb as Nicci led him into the room. This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t. This was Cara. Cara was like the sun; she couldn’t die. She was…she was his friend. She couldn’t die.
Chapter 18
The feeble glow of two lanterns failed to do much to brighten the murky room. The smaller one sat on a table in the corner, as if cowering in the presence of death itself. The other stood on a bedside table beside a glass of water and a damp cloth, struggling to hold the gathered shadows at bay. A brocade bedcover with luxuriant gold fringe was draped over Cara, her arms limp atop it, one of its corners hanging down over the side of the bed to puddle on the floor.
Cara didn’t look like Cara. She looked cadaverous. Even in the golden light of the lamp, her face looked ashen. Richard didn’t see her breathing.
He could hardly draw a breath himself. He could feel his knees trembling. The lump in his throat seemed as if it might choke him. He wanted to fall on her and beg her to wake.
Nicci leaned close, gently touching Cara’s face. Her fingers slid down to the side of her neck. Richard noticed that Cara’s terrible shuddering had finally ceased. He didn’t think that was the good news it might appear to be.
“Is she…is she…”
Nicci looked back over her shoulder. “She’s still breathing, but I’m afraid it’s coming slower.”
Richard worked his tongue, wetting the roof of his mouth so that he could form words. “You know, Cara has a man she cares about.”
“She does? Really?”
Richard nodded. “Most people don’t think that Mord-Sith can ever really care about anyone, but they can. Cara cares about a soldier. General Meiffert. Benjamin cares for her, too.”
“You know him?”
“Yes. He’s a good man.” Richard stared at the blond braid lying over Cara’s shoulder and out over the brocade bedcover. “I haven’t seen him for ages. He’s with the D’Haran army.”
Nicci looked skeptical. “And Cara admitted to you that she cares about this man?”
Richard shook his head as he stared at Cara’s familiar face. Her beautiful face was now sunken and pale and only looked like a ghost of her former self.
“No. Kahlan told me. The two of them became pretty close over the course of the year they were with the D’Haran army while you had me down here in Altur’Rang.”
Nicci looked away and fussed with the covers over Cara. As Richard stepped closer, Nicci moved over to a chair beside the table to be out of his way. He felt as if he were outside of his own body, watching from somewhere above, watching himself go to one knee, watching himself take up Cara’s cold hand, watching himself hold it to his cheek.
“Dear spirits, don’t do this to her,” he whispered. “Please,” he added with a choking sob, “don’t take her.”
He looked over at Nicci. “She wanted to die as a Mord-Sith, fighting for our cause, not in bed.”
Nicci offered the smallest of smiles. “She had her wish.”
The words, making it sound as if Cara was already dead, hit him like a blow. He couldn’t allow this to happen. He just couldn’t. Kahlan was gone, and now this. He just couldn’t let it happen.
He cupped a hand to Cara’s icy face. It felt like touching the dead. Richard swallowed back the tears.
“Nicci, you’re a sorceress. You saved me when I was near death. No one else but you would have ever been able to come up with a solution. No one but you could have saved me. Isn’t there anything at all that you can think of to do for Cara?”
Nicci slipped forward off the chair to kneel beside him. She took up his hand and held it to her lips. He felt a tear fall onto the back of the hand she
so tenderly held, as if she were a humble subject beseeching her king’s forgiveness.
“I’m so sorry, Richard, but there isn’t. I hope you know that I would do anything it took if I could save her, but I can’t. This is beyond my ability. A time comes when we all have to die. Her time has come and I can’t change it.”
Richard blinked at the watery sight of the death scene, the room barely lit by the weak light of two small flames. The bed holding Cara seemed to float by itself in that light, with darkness waiting all around her.
He nodded. “Nicci, please, could you leave me alone with her? I want to be alone with her when the times comes that…It’s nothing against you. It’s just that I think I should be alone with her.”
“I understand, Richard.” Nicci’s fingers touched his back as she stood and then, as if reluctant to break that contact with the living, trailed along his shoulder as she moved past. “I’ll be close by if you need me,” she said as her living touch ended.
The door softly shut behind her, leaving the room in silence. Even though the heavy drapes were closed over the window, Richard could hear the ceaseless chorus of the cicadas outside.
He could no longer hold back the tears. He laid his head on Cara’s middle as he sobbed, clutching her limp hand.
“Cara, I’m so sorry. It’s my fault. It was after me, not you. I’m so sorry. Please, Cara, don’t leave me. I need you so much.”
Cara was the only one who followed him because she believed in him. She might have agreed with Nicci that he was dreaming up Kahlan, but she still believed in him. With Cara, that wasn’t a contradiction. More and more lately, it seemed that her faith in him was all that was holding him together and keeping him focused on what he had to do. There were frightening moments when he no longer knew if he believed in himself. It was so hard to face an entire world that thought he was delusional. It was so hard to do what he believed in when almost no one believed in him. But Cara believed in him even if she didn’t believe in Kahlan’s existence. There was something unique about that sentiment, something unlike even Nicci or Victor’s respect for him.