Nicci’s hands moved slowly downward, just above their bodies. By the time she reached Richard’s boots, he realized that he felt dry. He ran a hand over his shirt, then his pants, and found that both were dry.
“How is that?” Nicci asked.
Cara was scowling. “I’d rather be wet.”
Nicci arched an eyebrow. “I can arrange that, if you like.”
Cara put her hands under her arms to warm them and remained silent. Satisfied that Richard was pleased, Nicci did the same for herself, moving both hands down her dress as if slowly pressing away the water.
When she finished, she was shivering and her teeth were chattering, but she and her black dress were dry.
Concerned by the way she wavered that she might pass out, Richard sat up and gently gripped her arm. “Are you all right?”
“I’m just exhausted,” she admitted. “I’ve not had much sleep for days, on top of the effort of healing you and then the exertion of the traveling we did after the attack today. I’m afraid that it’s all caught up with me. This bit of magic took what strength and warmth I had left. I just need to get some sleep, that’s all. But even if you don’t realize it, Richard, you need it even more. Lie back and sleep, now. Please. If we all lie close we can keep each other warm.”
Dry, but weary and still cold, Richard wriggled into his bedroll. She was right; he did need rest. He couldn’t get help for Kahlan if he wasn’t rested.
Without hesitation, Cara pressed up close on his left to help get him warm. Nicci pushed in on his other side. The warmth was a relief. He hadn’t realized how cold he was until the three of them crowded in tight together. He knew by how he felt that Nicci was right, that he wasn’t fully well yet. At least he only needed rest and not magic.
“Do you think this beast could have taken Kahlan in order to get to me? he asked into the dark and quiet shelter.
Nicci was a moment in answering. “Such a creature needs no perverse method to get to you, Richard. From what the Sister said, and from what I fear I may have done, to say nothing of you having used your gift, the beast will be able to find you. From all those dead men back there, I fear it already has.”
Richard felt the weight of guilt crush down upon him. If not for him, those men would be alive.
He had difficulty swallowing past the lump in his throat. He wished there were some way to undo what was done, some way to give them their lives and their futures back.
“Lord Rahl?” Cara whispered. “I would like to make a confession, if you will swear never to repeat it.”
Richard had never heard her say such an odd thing. “All right. What is it that you wish to confess?”
Her answer was a while in coming, and then it was so soft he would not have been able to hear it were she not so close. “I’m afraid.”
Almost against his better judgment, Richard lifted his arm around her shoulders and held her close. “Don’t be. It’s coming after me, not you.”
She lifted her head and scowled at him. “That is the reason I’m afraid. After seeing what it did to those men, I’m afraid that it’s coming for you and there is nothing I can do to protect you.”
“Oh,” Richard said. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m afraid of that, too.”
Cara laid her head back down on his shoulder, content to stay under the protective comfort of his arm. The surrounding strum of the cicadas somehow made him feel more vulnerable. The seventeen-year cycle of the insects was inescapable, inexorable, unstoppable.
So was Jagang’s beast. How could he hide from such a thing?
“So,” Nicci asked, apparently trying to lighten the somber mood in the shelter, “where did you meet this woman of your dreams?”
Richard didn’t know if she was trying to soften the question with a little humor, or if she was being sarcastic. If he didn’t know better he would have thought it sounded like jealously.
He stared up in the darkness as he thought back to that day. “I was out in the woods, looking for evidence of who had killed my father—the man I grew up thinking was my father, George Cypher, the man who’d raised me. That was when I spotted Kahlan moving along a trail around Trunt Lake.
“Four men were following her. They were assassins sent by Darken Rahl to kill her. He had already killed all the other Confessors. She is the last.”
“So you rescued her?” Cara asked.
“I helped her. Together we were able to kill the assassins.
“She’d come to Westland looking for a long-lost wizard. It turned out that Zedd was the great wizard she had been sent to find—he still held the position of First Wizard, even though he had given up the Midlands and fled to Westland before I was born. The whole time I grew up I never knew that Zedd was a wizard, or my grandfather. I only knew him as my best friend in the world.”
He could sense Nicci looking at him, and feel her warm, soft breath against the side of his face. “Why did she want this great wizard?”
“Darken Rahl had put the boxes of Orden in play. It was everyone’s worst nightmare.” Richard clearly recalled his dread at hearing that news. “He had to be stopped before he opened the correct box. Kahlan had been sent to ask this long-vanished First Wizard to appoint a Seeker. After that first day when I saw her by Trunt Lake, my life was never again the same.”
Into the silence, Cara asked, “So, was it love at first sight?”
They were humoring him, trying to take his thoughts off the men who had been slaughtered by a beast sent by Jagang to kill him, trying to take his mind off the monster now coming for him.
The thought struck him that maybe somewhere back in the woods around where they had camped, somewhere in an undiscovered place where he hadn’t looked, lay Kahlan’s torn remains.
Such a thought was so painful to contemplate that it felt like it was crushing his heart.
Richard didn’t reach up and wipe away the tear that ran down his cheek. But with a gentle touch, Nicci did. Her hand briefly, tenderly, caressed his cheek.
“I think we’d better try to get some sleep,” he said.
Nicci drew back her hand and laid her head against his arm.
In the darkness, Richard couldn’t seem to make his burning eyes close. Before long he could hear Cara’s even breathing as she surrendered to sleep. Nicci softly pressed her cheek against his shoulder as she snugged up close in their shared warmth.
“Nicci?” he whispered.
“Yes?”
“What kind of torture does Jagang use on captives?”
He could feel Nicci take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Richard, I’m not going to answer that question. I’m sure you have to know that Jagang is a man who needs killing.”
Richard had had to ask the question. He was relieved that Nicci was kind enough not to answer it.
“When Zedd first gave me the sword, I told him that I would not be an assassin. I have since come to understand the principled value of preserving life through the task of killing evil men. I wish that driving the Imperial Order out of the New World was as simple as killing Jagang.”
“I can’t tell you how many times I wished I had killed him when I had the chance, even though you are right about it not ending the war. I wish I could stop thinking about all the opportunities I missed. I wish I could stop thinking about all the things I should have done.”
Richard reached around her and held her trembling shoulders.
He felt her muscles slowly relax. Her breathing finally slowed as she slipped into sleep.
If he was to find Kahlan, Richard had to get the rest he needed. He closed his eyes as another tear leaked out. He missed her so much.
His thoughts lingered on that first day he saw Kahlan in the white, satiny smooth dress that he only much later found out distinguished her as the Mother Confessor. He remembered the way it hugged her shape, the way it made her look so noble. He remembered the way her long hair cascaded down around her shoulders, framing her in the dappled forest light. He remembered looking into her beautiful green eyes and seeing the gleam of intelligence looking back at him. He remembered feeling, from that first instant, from that first shared gaze, as if he had always known her.
He told her that there were four men following her. She asked, “Do you choose to help me?”
Before his mind could form a thought, he heard himself say, “Yes.”
He had never for an instant been sorry that he said yes.
She needed help now.
His last thoughts as he drifted into tormented sleep were of Kahlan.
Ann hurriedly hung the simple tin lantern on the hook outside the door. She focused her Han into a bud of heat and it bloomed into a small flame in the air above her upturned palm. As she stepped into the small room, she gently sent the little flame flitting onto the wick of a candle on the table. As the candle came to life she closed the door.
It had been quite a while since she had a received a message in her journey book. She was impatient to get to it.
The room was sparse. The plain plastered walls had no windows. A small table and a straight-backed, wooden chair that she had asked to have brought in almost filled the space not used by the bed. Besides its use as a bedroom, the room also made a suitable sanctuary, a place where Ann could be alone, where she could think, reflect, and pray. It also provided privacy for when she used the journey book.
A small plate of cheese and sliced fruit sat waiting for her on the table. Jennsen had probably left the plate before going off with Tom to stare at the moon.
No matter how old Ann got, it invariably brought her a sense of warm inner satisfaction when she saw that look of love in a couple’s eyes. They always seemed to think they did a fine job of hiding their feelings from others, but, as obvious as it usually was, they might as well be painted purple.
At times, Ann privately regretted that she had never had a time like that with Nathan, a time to indulge in complete, simple, extravagant attraction. Expressions of feelings, though, were deemed unbecoming for the Prelate.
Ann paused. She wondered exactly where she had come to have such a belief. When she had been a novice they didn’t exactly hold classes in which they said, “Should you ever be appointed Prelate, you must always mask your feelings.” Except disapproval, of course. A good prelate, with no more than a look, was supposed to be capable of making people’s
knees tremble uncontrollably. She didn’t know where she had learned that, either, but she had always seemed to have had the knack.
Maybe all along it had been the Creator’s plan for her to be the Prelate and He had given her the appropriate disposition for the job. How she sometimes missed it.
More than that, though, she had never allowed herself to consciously consider her feelings for Nathan. He was a prophet. When she was Prelate of the Sisters of the Light and sovereign authority at the Palace of the Prophets, he had been her prisoner—although they dressed it up in less harsh terms, trying to put a more humane face on it, but it had been no more complicated than that. It had always been believed that prophets were too dangerous to be allowed to run free in the world, among normal people.
In confining him from a young age they had denied the existence of free will, preordaining that he would cause harm even though he would never been given the chance to make a conscious choice in his own actions. They had pronounced him guilty without benefit of a crime. It had been an archaic and irrational belief that Ann had unthinkingly adhered to for most of her life. At times, she didn’t like considering what that said about her.
Now that she and Nathan were both old and found themselves together—however improbable that might have seemed at one time—their relationship could not be described as extravagant attraction. Indeed, she had spent the vast majority of her life enduring her displeasure with the man’s antics and seeing to it that he never escaped either his collar or his confinement in the palace, thereby insuring his intractable behavior, thereby incurring the ire of the Sisters, which made him more unruly yet, round and round in a circle.
No matter the uproar he had been able to ignite, seemingly at will, there had always been something about the man that made Ann smile, inwardly. At times he was like child. A child who was nearly a thousand years old. A child who was a wizard. A child who carried the gift for prophecy. A prophet had but to open his mouth, but to utter prophecy to the uneducated masses, and it would ignite riots at the least, war at the worst. At least, that had always been the fear.
Although she was hungry, Ann pushed the plate of cheese and fruit aside. It could wait. Her heart fluttered with the anticipation of what news the message from Verna might bring.
Ann sat and scooted her chair close to the simple wooden table. She
pulled out the little leather-covered journey book and thumbed through the pages until she again spotted the writing. The room was small and dark. She squinted to help her better make out the words. She finally had to pull the fat candle a little closer.
My dearest Ann,
began the message from Verna written in the book,
I hope this finds you and the prophet well. I know you said that Nathan was proving to be a valuable contribution to our cause, but I still worry about you being with that man. I hope his cooperation hasn’t soured since last I heard from you. I admit to having difficulty imagining him being cooperative without a collar around his neck. I hope you are being cautious. I’ve never known the prophet to be entirely sincere—especially when he smiles!
Ann had to smile herself. She understood all too well, but Verna didn’t know Nathan the way Ann did. He could sometimes get them into trouble faster than ten boys bringing frogs to dinner, and yet, after all was said and done, after so many centuries knowing the prophet, there really wasn’t anyone with whom she had more in common.
Ann sighed and turned her attention back to the message in the journey book.
We have been kept quite busy warding off Jagang’s siege of the passes into D’Hara,
Verna wrote,
but at least we have been successful. Perhaps too successful. If you are there, Prelate, please answer.
Ann frowned. How could one be too successful in keeping marauding hordes from overrunning your defenses, slaughtering your defenders, and enslaving a free people? She impatiently pulled the candle closer still. In truth she was quite jumpy over what Jagang was up to, now that winter had ended and the spring mud was past.
The dream walker was a patient foe. His men were from far to the south, in the Old World, and weren’t used to the winters up north in the New World. While many had fallen victim to the harsh conditions, vast numbers died of the diseases that swept through his winter encampment. Despite losing men in battles, to sickness, and by a variety of other causes, more of the invaders poured north all the time so that, despite everything, Jagang’s army inexorably continued to grow. Even so, the man did not waste any of his vast numbers in pointless and futile winter campaigns. He didn’t care about the lives of his soldiers, but he did care about conquering the New World, so he only moved when the weather was not a factor. Jagang did not take risks he didn’t need to. He simply,
steadily, resolutely ground his enemies to dust. Bringing the world to heel was all that mattered to him, not how long it took. He viewed the world of life through the prism of the beliefs of the Fellowship of Order. Individual life, including his, was of no importance; only the contribution that a person’s life could make to the Order was meaningful.
With such a vast army in the New World, the forces of the D’Haran Empire were now at the mercy of what the dream walker did next. To be sure, the D’Haran forces were formidable, but they certainly weren’t enough to withstand, much less turn back, the full weight of the seemingly endless numbers of Imperial Order troops. At least, not until Richard did whatever he could to effect some change in the tide of war.
Prophecy said that Richard was the “pebble in the pond,” meaning that he caused ripples that spread through everything, affected everything. Prophecy also said, in many different ways and in many different texts, that only if Richard led them in the final battle did they have a chance to triumph.
If he didn’t guide them in that final battle, prophecy was clear and unambiguous; it said that all would be lost.
Ann pressed her fist against the queazy pain in the pit of her stomach and then pulled the stylus from the spine of the book that was the twin to the one Verna had.
I am here, Verna,
she wrote,
but you are the Prelate now. The prophet and I are long dead and buried.
It was a deception that had enabled the two of them to save a great many lives. There were times when Ann missed being Prelate and missed her flock of Sisters. She had dearly loved many of them, at least the ones who hadn’t ended up being in truth Sisters of the Dark. The burning pain of that betrayal, not just of her but of the Creator, never eased.
Still, being free of such towering responsibility left her better able to put her mind to other, more important work. While she hated having lost her old way of life, of being Prelate and running the Palace of the Prophets, her calling was to a higher purpose, not to stone walls and the administration of an entire palace of Sisters, novices, and young wizards in training. Her true calling was helping to preserve the world of life. In order for her to do that, it was better that the Sisters of the Light and everyone else believed her and Nathan dead.
Ann sat up straighter when Verna’s writing began appearing across the page.
Ann, I am comforted to have you back with me, if only in the journey book. There are so few of us left. I confess that sometimes I long for the days of peace back at the palace, the times when everything seemed to be so much easier and to make so much more sense and I only thought it was all so difficult. The world certainly has changed since Richard was born.
Ann couldn’t argue with that. She popped a piece of cheese in her mouth and then leaned in and began writing.
I pray every day that such order and peace can again settle over the world and we can go back to complaining about the weather.
Verna, I am confused. What did you mean when you said that perhaps you were too successful in defending the passes? Please explain. I await your reply.
Ann leaned back in her straight-backed chair and chewed a slice of pear as she waited. Since her journey book was twinned with the one Verna had, anything written in one appeared at the same time in the other. It was one of the few ancient items of magic left from the Palace of the Prophets.
Verna’s words again began moving across the blank page.
Our scouts and trackers report that Jagang has begun his move. Because he has not been able to break through the passes, the emperor has split his forces and is taking an army south. General Meiffert had been fearing that he would do something like this.
It’s not hard to guess his strategy. Jagang undoubtedly plans to take a large force of his troops down through the Kern Valley and then south around the mountains. Once he finally is clear of all the barriers he will swing around into the southern reaches of D’Hara and then head north.
This is the worst possible news for us. We can’t abandon the protection of the passes, not while part of his army lies in wait on the other side. And yet, we cannot allow Jagang’s forces to sweep up on us from the south. General Meiffert says we will have to leave sufficient forces here to guard the passes while the bulk of our army heads south to meet the invaders.
We have no choice. With half of Jagang’s force to the north, on the other side of the passes, and half heading down to go around the mountains and come up from the south, that leaves the People’s Palace right in the middle. Jagang is no doubt licking his chops over such a prospect.
Ann, I’m afraid I don’t have much time. The entire camp is in an uproar.
We only just learned the news that Jagang has split his army and we are rushing to strike camp and start south.
I must also divide up the Sisters. So many have been lost that there are not many left to divide. At times I feel as if we are in a contest with Jagang to see who will be the last one with a Sister left. I fear what will happen to all these good people if none of us survive. If not for that, I would be satisfied to leave this world behind and join Warren in the spirit world.
General Meiffert says that we can’t spare a moment and must be on our way at first light. I will be up the entire night with the arrangements, seeing to it that we have sufficient men and Sisters here to defend each of the passes, and inspecting the shields to make sure they are sound. If the Order’s northern army were to break through up here, it would be a much quicker death for us.
Unless you have something important that must be discussed right now, I’m afraid that I must go.
Ann covered her mouth with a hand as she read. The news certainly was disheartening. She wrote an immediate reply, so as not to inconvenience Verna.
No, my dear, nothing important just now. You know that you are in my heart always.
A message came back almost immediately.
The passes are narrow so we have been successful at defending them. The Imperial Order can’t use their overwhelming power in such narrow places. I feel confident the passes will hold. Since Jagang is stymied by not having been able to cross the mountains, this buys us time while he is forced to take an army all the way south and then back up into D’Hara, now that he has the weather to his advantage. Since this is the greatest danger and threat, I will be heading south with the army.
Pray for us. We will eventually be forced to meet Jagang’s horde in the open plains where he has the room to throw the full weight of his forces against us. I am afraid that, unless something changes, we will have no chance to survive such a battle.
I can only hope that Richard fulfills prophecy before we are all dead.
Ann swallowed before answering.
Verna, you have my word that I will do what I must to see to it. Know that Nathan and I will be dedicated to the task of seeing prophecy fulfilled. Perhaps no one but you would truly un
derstand that this is what I have devoted myself to for over half a millennium. I will not abandon my cause; I will do whatever I can to see that Richard does what only he can. May the Creator be with you and all our brave defenders. You will all be in my prayers every day. Have faith in the Creator, Verna. You are prelate, now. Give that faith to all of those with you.