Chainfire (Sword of Truth 9)

“You mean, heal you so you can betray me like before. No good, Tovi. You’re going to tell it all, or I’m going to sit right here and watch you suffer your way into the Keeper’s eternal embrace. I may trickle in just enough to keep you alive a little longer.” She leaned in. “So you can continue to feel the pain twisting in your guts a little longer.”

Tovi seized a fistful of Nicci’s dress. “Please, Sister, help me. It hurts so much.”

“Talk, ‘Sister.’”

She released her grip on Nicci’s dress and let her face roll to face away. “It’s the bond to Lord Rahl. We swore a bond.”

“Sister Tovi, if you think I’m that stupid, I’m going to make you suffer just to make you regret the thought until you die.”

She turned back to look at Nicci. “No, it’s true.”

“How can you swear a bond to someone you want to eliminate?”

Tovi grinned. “Sister Ulicia figured it out. We swore a bond to him, but made him let us go before he could hold us to a list of his commands.”

“This story just gets more preposterous all the time.”

Nicci withdrew her hand from Tovi’s arm, and with it the trickle of relief. As Nicci stood, Tovi groaned in agony.

“Please, Sister Nicci, it’s true.” She grasped Nicci’s hand. “In exchange for letting us go, we traded for something he wanted.”

“What could Lord Rahl possibly want that would convince him to let a clutch of Sisters of the Dark loose? That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“A woman.”

“What?”

“He wanted a woman.”

“As the Lord Rahl, he can have any woman he wants. He has but to pick her and have her sent to his bed, unless she would choose the executioner’s block instead, and none do. He hardly needs the Sisters of the Dark to cart women to his bed.”

“No, no, not that kind of woman. A woman he loved.”

“Right.” Nicci huffed a sigh. “Good-bye, Sister Tovi. Be sure to give the Keeper of the dead my regards when you get there. Sorry, but I’m afraid that meeting won’t be for a while. I think you look like you may linger for a number of days, yet. Pity.”

“Please!” Her arm rotated around, searching for the contact of the one person who could save her. “Sister Nicci, please. Please listen, and I will tell you everything.”

Nicci sat down and gripped Tovi’s arm again. “All right, Sister, but just remember, the power can go both ways.”

Tovi’s back arched as she cried out in agony. “No! Please!”

Nicci had no compunction about what she was doing. She knew that there was no moral equivalence between her inflicting torture and the Imperial Order doing what might on the surface seem like the same thing. But her purpose in using it was solely to save innocent lives. The Imperial Order used torture as a means of subjugation and conquest, as a tool to strike fear into their enemies. And, at times, as something they relished because it made them feel powerful to hold sway over not just agony but life itself.

The Imperial Order used torture because they had no regard at all for human life. Nicci was using it because she did. While at one time she would have seen no difference, since coming to embrace life she saw all the difference in the world.

Nicci reversed the suffering she was trickling into the old woman and Tovi sank back in grateful, weeping relief.

Tovi was covered in a sheen of sweat. “Please, Sister, give me some comfort instead and I will tell you everything.”

“Start with who stabbed you.”

“The Seeker.”

“Richard Rahl is the Seeker. Do you really think I will believe such a story? Richard Rahl would have taken your head off with one swing.”

Tovi’s head rolled side to side. “No, no, you don’t understand. This man had the Sword of Truth.” She pointed at her gut. “I ought to know the Sword of Truth when it runs me through. He caught me by surprise and before I knew who he was or what he wanted, the bastard stabbed me.”

Nicci pressed her fingers to her brow in confusion. “I think you better go back to the beginning.”

Tovi was already sinking into a stupor. Nicci increased the magic flowing into her, giving her some healing relief without curing her of her injury. Nicci didn’t want to cure her, she needed the woman unable to help herself. Tovi looked the kindly grandmother, but she was a viper.

Nicci crossed one leg over the other. It was going to be a long night.

The next time Tovi came around, Nicci sat up straighter. “So you swore a bond to Richard, as the Lord Rahl,” Nicci said as if there had been no gap in the conversation, “and that protected all of you from the dream walker.”

“That’s right.”

“And then what?”

“We were able to escape. We kept track of Richard as we went about our work for our master. We needed to find a hook.”

Nicci knew very well who their master was.

“What do you mean, a hook?”

“In order to do what we need to do to satisfy the Keeper, we needed a way to make sure Richard Rahl could not interfere. We found it.”

“Found what?”

“Something that keeps us bonded to him no matter what we do. It was brilliant.”

“So what is it?”

“Life.”

Nicci frowned, not knowing if she had heard right. She laid a hand on Tovi’s wound and gave some focused comfort.

After Tovi had calmed from the wave of pain, Nicci asked in a quiet voice, “What do you mean?”

“Life,” Tovi said at last. “It is his highest value.”

“So?”

“Sister, think. In order to stay out of the dream walker’s grasp, we must be bonded to Richard Rahl all the time. We dare not waver for a moment. And yet, who is our ultimate master?”

“The Keeper of the dead. We have sworn oaths.”

“That’s right. And if we were to do something that would harm Richard’s life, such as loose the Keeper into the world of life, then we would be going against our bond to Richard. That would mean that before we could free the Keeper from his bounds in the world of the dead, Jagang, in this world, would be able to pounce on us.”

“Sister Tovi, you had better start making sense, or I will lose my patience, and I assure you, you would not like that. You would not like it one bit. I want to know what’s going on so that I can be let in. I want my place back.”

“Of course. Of course. You see, Richard’s highest value is life. In fact, he created a statue to it. We were in the Old World. We saw his statue dedicated to life.”

“I got that much out of what you said.”

Her head rolled back so she could again look at Nicci. “Well, my dear, what is it we are pledged to do in the Oaths we have given?”

“Free the Keeper.”

“And what is our reward for performing our task?”

Nicci stared at the woman’s cold eyes. “Immortality.”

Tovi grinned. “Exactly.”

“Richard’s highest value is life. You are saying that you plan to grant him immortality?”

“We are. We are working toward his most noble ideal: life.”

“But he may not want immortality.”

Tovi managed a shrug. “Maybe. But we don’t intend to ask him. Don’t you see the brilliance of Sister Ulicia’s plan? We know that his highest value is life. No matter what else we may do agai

nst his wishes, those things do not rise to the level of his most important value. Thus, we are honoring our bond to the Lord Rahl in the most grand way possible, while maintaining the bond—keeping the dream walker out of our minds—and at the same time working to bring the Keeper into the world. See how it goes round and round. Each element locks the others in tighter.”

“But it is the Keeper who promises you immortality. You cannot grant it.”

“No, not if we seek it through the Keeper.”

“Then how can you possibly grant immortality? You don’t have any such power.”

“Oh, but we will, we will.”

“How?”

Tovi fell to coughing and Nicci had to do some swift work on the wound just to keep the woman alive. It was nearly two hours before she again had her conscious and calm.

“Sister Tovi,” she said once the woman had opened her eyes and looked like she was seeing again. “I’ve had to repair some of your injury. Now, before I can repair the rest of your wound and fully heal you—so that you can have your reward of life—I need to know the rest of it. How can you think that you can grant immortality? You don’t have that power.”

“We stole the boxes of Orden. We intend to use them to destroy all life…except that which we wish to have around, of course. With the power of Orden, we will hold sway over life and death. We will have the power to grant Richard Rahl immortality. See? Bond fulfilled.”

Nicci’s head was spinning. “Tovi, your story is too impossible. It’s more complicated than you make it.”

“Well, there are other parts to the plan. We found catacombs under the Palace of the Prophets.”

Nicci had had no idea that such catacombs existed, but she wanted the woman to go on with her story, so she just let her talk.

“That’s when it all started. When we got the idea. You see, we had been wandering the lands, looking for ways to satisfy the Keeper—” She clutched Nicci’s arm so hard it hurt. “He comes in our dreams. You know that. He comes to you as well. He comes and torments us, forcing us to do his bidding, to work to free him.”