Confessor (Sword of Truth 11)

As she smiled at him, Richard felt her hand tighten just a little. “I not be so sure, Richard. She need help only you can give.”

Richard didn’t know what he could do that Nathan couldn’t. Even if he knew how to use his gift, Richard had long ago lost his connection to it. When Adie’s eyes slipped closed and Jillian started to cry with worry, General Meiffert put an arm around her shoulders.

“Lord Rahl!” Cara called.

Both Richard and Nathan looked back at the Mord-Sith hunched over Nicci.

“Hurry!”

“Hold on,” Nathan whispered to Adie.

He touched a finger to her forehead. Adie sighed, her muscles slackening.

“That will comfort her for the moment,” Nathan said in a confidential tone to Richard. “Maybe with the help of some Sisters I can do something more for her.”

Richard nodded, then seized Nathan under the arm and helped pull the man to his feet. On their way to Nicci’s side they rushed past tangled figures of the dead. Most of the slain were Imperial Order soldiers, but there were also men of the First File scattered throughout the corridor.

Nicci, if it was possible, looked worse. She shook from the unseen power trying to crush the life out of her.

“You have to get the collar off her,” Richard told Nathan. “Jagang has been using the Rada’Han to control her. Now I think he’s trying to kill her with it.”

Nathan, nodding as he lifted Nicci’s eyelid, swiftly evaluated her condition. He reached out, then, and placed both hands on the smooth metal collar around her neck. He closed his eyes for a moment, his brow drawing down with the effort of using unseen powers. The air all around seemed to hum with a soft vibration. After a moment the discordant sensation died away.

“I’m sorry, Richard,” he said in a quiet voice as he finally straightened.

“What do you mean, you’re sorry? It’s still locked on her. You have to get this thing off before it kills her.”

Nathan glanced around at all the dead, his azure eyes looking a little wetter than they had a moment before. His sorrowful gaze finally returned to Richard.

“I’m sorry, my boy, but there’s nothing I can do.”

“Yes there is,” Cara said. “You can get the collar off her!”

“I would if I could”—with a dejected look he shook his head—“but I can’t. It’s held on with both sides of her gift. I have only Additive.”

Richard couldn’t accept it. “The palace amplifies your ability. You’re a Rahl. Your power is greater in this place. You have more power here. Use it!”

“My Additive side is strengthened here…but I have no Subtractive ability to amplify. Without the Subtractive side to counter the lock, I can do nothing.”

“You can try!”

Nathan rested a hand on Richard’s shoulder. “I already tried. My ability is not enough. I’m sorry, my boy. I’m afraid that I can do nothing.”

“But if you don’t, she’ll die.”

Looking into Richard’s eyes, Nathan slowly nodded. “I know.”

General Meiffert appeared behind Nathan. “Lord Rahl.”

Both Nathan and Richard looked up.

He hesitated for an instant, looking between them both. “We have to do something before they can send more men through those tunnels. There’s no telling how many soldiers are still down there in the other halls and rooms, waiting to come up and renew the attack. We must act now.”

“Purge the tunnels,” Richard said, his own voice sounding hollow to him.

“What?” Nathan asked.

“Clear the corridors first—make sure there are no more Order soldiers up here. Then use wizard’s fire. Send it down through the catacombs. The catacombs are places of the dead. Purge them of the living.”

Nathan nodded. “I’ll see to it at once.”

As he stood, Richard, tightly gripping Nicci’s hand, looked up at the tall wizard. “Nathan, there has to be something you can do.”

“I can keep any more of them from getting through.”

“I mean for Nicci. What can we do to help her?”

From the desolate depths of his own inner torment, Nathan gazed down at Richard. “Stay with her, Richard. Be with her until she’s gone. Don’t let her be alone in the last moments. That’s all you can do now.”

With a flourish of his cape he turned and rushed after General Meiffert.

CHAPTER 44

Cara, sitting on her heels beside him, laid a hand compassionately on Richard’s shoulder as he bent over Nicci.

He felt dead himself.

He wrapped Nicci protectively in his arms, unable to offer her any real protection, any salvation—unable to offer her redemption from Jagang’s claim on her life.

The totality of the events that had carried him to that point in his life seemed to overwhelm him. No matter what he did, the believers in the Imperial Order advanced their cause steadily onward. In their fanaticism, they were determined to wipe all joy from life, to squeeze any meaning from it, to curdle existence itself into unbearable misery.

Devoted to their mindless faith in a perfect, eternal afterlife gained through sacrifice of this life, the followers of the Order lusted to see to it that everyone who dared to want to exist for the sake of this life alone was made to suffer immeasurably for that singular, intolerable, sinful desire.

Richard hated them. He hated them passionately for all the harm they inflicted on others.

He wished he could wipe them all from the world of life.

Nicci, despite being largely unresponsive, tightened an arm around his neck as if to comfort him in his grief, as if to tell him that it was all right, that she too, like so many all around who had fought and died to defend their way of life, the right of their loved ones to live safe from violence brought against them for simply desiring to live free, would soon be at eternal peace beyond the reach of pain. Even though he knew that she would at last be free of terrible suffering, and out of Jagang’s reach, Richard couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving the world of life.

At that moment, everything seemed futile to Richard. Everything good in life was being methodically destroyed by people who fervently believed that their pious purpose in life was to murder those who would not bow down and submit to the Order’s beliefs.

The world was in the grip of utter madness.

So many had already died, so many more would die. Richard felt as if he were caught in a whirl pool, forever being sucked down into the depths of despair. There seemed no end to the senseless slaughter, no escape from it but death.

And now Nicci was taking that final journey.

He had just wanted to live his life with the woman he loved, the same as so many others. Instead, Kahlan’s mind had been stolen from her, leaving her a tool of those with a burning desire to either impose their beliefs on everyone or to destroy them all. While he might have helped Kahlan get away for the moment, Jagang’s minions would be hunting her. None of them would ever give up. Unless they were stopped, the Order would have Kahlan just as it would have everyone.

Now Nicci was being slowly drained of her life as well.

As Richard turned inward, turned away from everyone and everything, he felt a sudden, violent, wrenching jolt within. For a moment it held him gripped in a strange and silent netherworld before tumbling him once again into an inner storm.

He didn’t know the source of the inner disorientation, but it suddenly felt as if he had become lost among a million meteors. And then they all exploded outward from somewhere within the unfathomable depths of his being.

Cara grabbed his arm and shook him. “Lord Rahl! What’s wrong? Lord Rahl!”

He realized that he was screaming. He couldn’t stop himself.

Amid the incandescence, understanding overcame him.

He suddenly knew without a doubt the cause of the sensation.

It was an awakening.

The glorious power of that rebirth was staggering. Every fiber of his being was s

uddenly on fire with the life of it. At the same time, the marrow of every bone rang out in pain so monumental that it nearly rendered him senseless.

He could feel his birthright burning again within, feel himself whole again for the first time in what seemed forever. It was almost as if he had forgotten who he was, what he was, as if he’d lost his way and it had all suddenly returned in one blinding instant.