Chainfire (Sword of Truth 9)

He held Cara’s face in both hands as he kissed her forehead.

He hoped she wasn’t suffering. He hoped it was a peaceful end to a life that had been anything but peaceful.

She was so pale, her breathing so shallow.

Her flesh felt as cold as death.

Hating that she was so cold, Richard pulled the bedcover aside as he leaned over and slipped his arms around her, hoping that his warmth would help her.

“Take my warmth,” he whispered in her ear. “Take all you need. Please, Cara, take warmth from me.”

Lying there holding her, Richard descended into a fog of agony. He knew how much this woman had suffered. He knew what her life had been like. He knew how much she had been hurt. He had endured some of the things she had endured under the mad rule of his father, Darken Rahl. He had suffered some of the same pain and hopelessness. Perhaps more than anyone else, he could truly empathize with her. He knew how strangers had taken her into a world of pain and madness. Richard knew because he had been there, too. He had so wanted to bring her back from that dark and terrible place.

“Take my warmth, Cara. I’m here for you.”

He opened himself to her, opened his need to her, opened himself to her need.

He clutched her tightly in his arms as he wept against her shoulder. He almost felt that if he were to hold her tight enough, she couldn’t slip away into death.

Richard could feel as he held her in his arms that she was still alive and he couldn’t bear for that to end. He wished so much that Nicci could have done something. If anyone deserved to be healed, it was Cara. At that moment, more than anything, he wanted her to be healed.

Richard opened himself, his very soul, to that purpose.

He released himself into his empathy for this woman who had given him so much. More than once she had risked her life to follow his orders. She had often risked her life for him in open defiance of his orders. She had followed him across the world. Countless times she had placed herself between danger and his and Kahlan’s lives. Cara deserved life, deserved all the goodness in life. He wanted nothing but to make her whole again. He gave all of himself over to that desire. He held back nothing in his focused need to have Cara stay among the living.

To that end, to that desperate desire, he consciously sought the life within her as he descended into the swirling current of her agony. As fast as that thought, he found his mind with hers, with her agonizing pain. He held her tight in his arms as he wept with her desolate suffering.

He gritted his teeth, held his breath, and pulled her pain into himself. He wanted nothing more than to draw that pain away from her. He spared nothing to protect himself from the onslaught that suddenly inundated him. He felt everything she felt. He suffered everything she suffered. He pressed his open mouth against her shoulder, muffling his scream as the pain lanced through him.

They were in an empty, dark, and hopeless place…a lifeless place.

He shook with her suffering as he lifted some of her burden. She held tight to the pain, loath to release it, especially to him. But as weak as she was, he was able to draw it anyway, and then he drew yet more.

Lifting and uncovering the layers of suffering, he felt the icy touch of death within her.

The raw fear at such an encounter was as arresting as anything he had ever confronted. Cara was saturated in that dark and icy sensation. He shook with the suffering he shared with her, with the dread they together felt. His mind twisted with the wrenching pain until it was a terrible and seemingly insurmountable struggle just to maintain his own will to go on.

Richard was swept into a coursing, cold current of hopeless misery that consumed him. It seemed more than he could bear, and yet he endured it and took on more. He wanted her to take on his strength, his living warmth. But to do that, he would first have to survive pulling that dark poison into himself while at the same time giving over to her his strength.

Time lost all meaning. The pain itself was the embodiment of forever.

“Death will come often, offering to take you…wanting to take you,” he whispered against her ear. “Don’t accept the offer, Cara. Stay. Don’t accept death.”

I want to die.

That single thought came spiraling up through the agonizing desolation. It shocked and terrified him. What if trying to hold on to life was more than she could endure? What if it was more than he could endure? What if he was asking more of her than she could abide?…more than he had had a right to ask?

“Cara,” he whispered into her ear, “I need you to live. Please, I need you to live.”

I can’t.

“Cara, you are not alone. I’m here with you. Hold on. For me, hold on and let me help you.”

Please, let me go. Let me die. I’m begging you, if you care for me, then leave me…let me die.

She began to slip away. He clutched her tighter. He pulled more of her suffering into himself. Her inner self wailed in agony as she fought him.

“Cara, please”—he gasped against the torrent of pain flooding through him—“let me help you. Please don’t leave me.”

I don’t want to live. I have failed you. I should have saved you when Nicci came to capture you. I know that now—you made me see it. I would die for you, but I failed in my duty, in my promises to myself. There is no reason for me to live. I am not worthy to be your protector. Please, let me go.

Richard was stunned to grasp the despair in her longing, but more than that, he was horrified by it.

He gathered that pain, too, and lifted it from her. He took it even as she tried to hold on to it, to slip away from him.

“Cara, I love you. Please don’t leave me. I need you.”

He fought to draw more of her agony into himself. He overpowered her resistance and took more yet. She was unable to stop him. He lifted the ashen robes of death dragging her down. Richard held her tight in his arms as he opened his heart, his need, his soul.

She wailed in heartbreak. He understood the crushing loneliness.

“I’m with you, Cara. You aren’t alone.”

Richard soothed her even as he struggled to endure the stunning agony of the evil that had touched her. It was not simply the pain of it, but the bleak horror of it that was killing her, and now that same cold desolation was slowly crushing him—and at the same time her blinding suffering blocked his healing power from flowing into her.

He suddenly felt as if he had swum out to save a drowning person and now they were both caught up in the same savage torrent and they were both drowning together in the black waters of death.

If he was to have a chance—if she was—he first had to lift enough of her suffering. He had to hold the weight of it for her. He pulled the pain onward, heedless of it, welcoming it, drawing it with all his might.

When he felt that full weight of misery and anguish gathered into the core of himself, he had to struggle mightily to hold on to his own life at the same time as he let flow his power, his healing strength, his healing heart. Richard had never been taught how to heal, how to direct his power, he could only let the warmth of it flow into her.

I don’t want to live. I have failed you. Please, let me die.

“Why do you want to leave me? Why?

Because only in that way can I serve you, because then you can have another who will not fail you.

“Cara, that isn’t true. Something is wrong. Something neither of us understands.” Through the pain, Richard fought to get the words out. “You didn’t fail me. You have to believe me. You must believe in me. That is what I need more than anything—for you to be with me and believe in me. It is you I need, not your service. Please, I need you. I need you to live. That is the service—your life makes mine better.”

He fought with all his might to hold on—to hold Cara with him—but the weight of the darkness within seemed bottomless. As the barriers of his restraint collapsed, he felt as if he were plunging into a molten void, spiraling ever downward into that dark shadow that had come

through the wall for him. He saw flashes of it as she had seen it, saw the heart-stopping terror of it crashing in on her.

That was the core of her dread, that vile thing, that death incarnate, coming for him, right through her. This was not the gentle dissolution of consciousness into the void of nonexistence. This was every nightmare come to life, come to rip the life out of the living. This was dark death descending upon her, all alone and defenseless, that merciless reaper of souls come to rip hers out while she screamed her life away.

As she’d stood before it, blocking its way, she had taken its deadly touch.