Temple of the Winds (Sword of Truth 4)

Kahlan smiled. “I understand. May the good spirits bring it to your heart, Nathan. I can’t thank you enough for helping Richard, for helping me.” Her voice broke. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. I only knew I had to come here.”

Nathan hugged her, she thought more for his own need than hers. “You did the right thing. Maybe the good spirits guided you. Get back to him, now, or we will lose our Lord Rahl.”

Kahlan nodded. “The killing is over.”

“The killing is just about to begin.”

Nathan turned and held both fists skyward. An awesome flare of light ignited at his fists and shot into the night sky. Kahlan watched as it streaked northwest, so bright that the stars vanished in the glare.

Kahlan saw Verna sitting up, with Warren’s help. He was wiping the blood away from her newly healed jaw.

“What have you done?” Kahlan asked Nathan.

He looked down at her a long moment, and then a sly smile spread on his lips. “I have just given Jagang a nasty surprise. I have just given General Reibisch the signal to attack.”

“Attack? Attack who?”

“Jagang’s expeditionary force. They destroyed Renwold. They are up to other trouble in the New World, too, but are unaware of who shadows them. It will be a short battle. The prophecy says that the D’Harans will fight as fiercely as they have ever fought, and will, before this night is over, destroy the enemy in the traditional D’Haran fashion: without mercy.”

Verna was coming to her feet. Kahlan had never seen Verna looking so meek. “Nathan, I beg your forgiveness.”

“I’m not interested—”

Kahlan laid a hand on Nathan’s arm and whispered up at him. “Nathan, please, for your own sake, listen to her.”

Nathan gazed into Kahlan’s eyes a moment before he turned his glare on Verna. “I’m listening.”

“Nathan, I’ve known you a long time. My whole life. I’ve seen things before that… perhaps I didn’t understand. I thought you were doing this to seize power for yourself. Please forgive me for lashing out at you for my own guilt at my friends turning against me—against us. I sometimes… jump to judgment. I can see that I have mistaken what was truly going on with you and Clarissa. She adored you, and I thought—I beg you to forgive me, Nathan.”

Nathan let out a grunt. “Knowing you, Verna, that must have been the hardest thing you have ever had to say. Forgiveness granted.”

“Thank you, Nathan,” she sighed.

Nathan bent and kissed Kahlan’s cheek. “May the good spirits be with you, Mother Confessor. Tell Richard I give him back his title. Maybe I will see him again someday.”

With his hands on her waist, he boosted Kahlan up onto the sliph’s wall.

“Thank you, Nathan. I can see why Richard liked you. Clarissa, too. I think she saw the real Nathan.”

Nathan smiled, but then turned serious. “When you get back, you must offer Richard’s brother what he truly wants, if you are to save Richard.”

“You wish to travel?” the sliph asked.

Kahlan’s stomach roiled. “Yes, back to Aydindril.”

“Is Richard truly alive?” Verna asked.

“Yes,” Kahlan said with revived panic. “He’s sick, but he will be fine once I get this book back to him and it’s destroyed.”

“Walsh, Bollesdun.” Nathan gestured as he started away. “My coach awaits. Let’s be off.”

“But, Nathan,” Warren said, “I want to learn about prophecy. I would like to study with you.”

“A true prophet is born, Warren, not made.”

“Where are you going?” Verna called after him. “You can’t leave. You’re a prophet. You can’t be left to run… I mean, we must know where you will be—in case we need you.”

Without looking back, Nathan pointed. “Your Sisters are that way, Prelate. To the northwest. Go to them, and save yourself the trouble of trying to follow me. You won’t succeed. Your Sisters are safe from the dream walker; I had them transfer their bond to me while Richard went to the world of the dead. If Richard lives, you all can transfer it back to him. Good-bye, Verna. Warren.”

Kahlan pressed a fist to her stomach. If he lives? If? “Hurry,” she said to the sliph. “Hurry!”

A silver arm swept her from the wall and down into the quicksilver froth.

66

He smiled at the way she struggled. He liked the way she had fought him. He enjoyed teaching her how useless it was to fight a person of his superior strength, superior intellect. He watched in fascination as blood ran from her mouth and nose. The gash on her jaw oozed.

“You are only succeeding at making your wrists bleed,” he taunted. “You can’t break the ropes, but keep at it, if you wish.”

She spat at him. He smacked her again. He dug his thumb across the cut on her jaw, spellbound by the pattern of blood flooding down the side of her neck.

He knew her auras. He’d felt them before. He knew just which ones to touch to cripple her. It hadn’t taken long to overpower her. Not long at all.

Her teeth gritted as she growled with effort, straining against the ropes. She was strong, but she was not strong enough. Without her power and her weapon, she was a mere woman. No mere woman was a match for him. Not in any way.

When his fingers began unbuttoning the row of buttons along the side of her ribs, she tugged violently at the ropes holding her wrists and ankles. He liked that. He like to watch her struggle. To watch her bleed. He punched her face again.

He was intrigued that she didn’t cry out, that she didn’t beg for mercy. That she didn’t scream. She would. Oh, how she would scream.

His punch had stunned her for the moment. Her eyes rolled as she fought to remain conscious. He threw back the front of her outfit, exposing her breasts and the upper half of her torso.

He hooked his fingers under the tight waist of her red leather pants and, with a quick pull, yanked them down enough for what he was going to do to her.

Her entire belly was exposed. He felt it. Tight. Hard. There were scars on her. They riveted him. He tried to imagine what had caused such scars. As jagged and white as they were, it would have been bloody.

“I’ve been raped before,” she sneered. “More times than I can remember. I can tell you from experience that you’re not very good at it. You haven’t even gotten my pants down enough, you stupid pig. Get on with it, if you even can. I’m waiting.”

“Oh, Cara, I’m not going to rape you. That would be wrong. I have never raped a woman. I only have women who want it.”

She laughed at him. Laughed. “You are one twisted bastard.”

He resisted his urge to smash her face. He wanted her awake for this. Alive for this.

But he shook with rage.

“Bastard?” His fist tightened. “Because of women like you!”

He hammered a fist down on her breast. Her eyes squeezed shut and her teeth clenched as she winced in pain, trying to curl up in a ball, but unable to, stretched out in the ropes as she was.

He took a settling breath, regaining his control. He wouldn’t let her divert him with her filthy mouth.

“Now, I’m going to give you one last chance. Where is Richard? The soldiers are going wild with talk of Richard being back, of the bond being back. Where are you whores hiding him?”

The voices from the ether had told him, too, that Richard was back. The voices had told him that if he wished to assume his rightful place, he must eliminate Richard.

“And where is my loving wife? Where has she gone to?”

The voices told him that she was in the sliph, but the sliph wouldn’t tell him where she had gone.

Cara spat at him again. “I am Mord-Sith. You are too stupid to even imagine what has been done to me before. You couldn’t fill the boots of the meekest trainer of Mord-Sith. Your puny torture will pry nothing from me.”

“Oh, Cara, you have never encountered one of my talents.”

“Do what you want with me, Drefan, but Lord Rahl?

??the real Lord Rahl—is going to cut you up into little pieces.”

“And just how would he be able to do that?” He lifted the hilt of the Sword of Truth clear of its scabbard, so she could see the gold lettering that spelled out the word TRUTH. “I’m the one who is going to be doing the cutting into little pieces. Little tiny Richard pieces. Where is he!”

When she spat at him again, he couldn’t resist fisting her across her cut and swollen lip. The blood gushed anew.

He turned and retrieved one of the items he had brought: an iron pot. He put it on her belly, upside down.

“I’m too big to cook in that pot, you stupid pig. You will have to cut me up. Do I have to explain everything to you?”

He liked the way she tried to antagonize him, to make him lose his temper. She wanted him to kill her. He would, but she would talk, first.

“Cook you? Oh, no, Cara. You have the wrong idea. The wrong idea entirely. You think me some maniacal murderer. No murderer, I. I am the hand of justice. I am the hand of mercy. Come to bring eternal virtue to those who have none.

“This pot isn’t to cook you.

“It’s to cook the rats.”