Nicci dropped her load beside Victor’s. It seemed odd to him seeing Nicci doing such work. Even dragging balsam boughs she had a regal look about her. While Cara was a strikingly beautiful woman as well, her audacious bearing made it seem rather natural for her to be building a shelter—or a spiked flail cocked to kill intruders. Nicci, though, looked unnatural working in the woods—as if she would complain about getting her hands dirty, although she never once did. It wasn’t that she was at all unwilling to do whatever Richard needed her to do, it was just that she looked completely out of place doing it. She simply had a noble bearing that seemed too stately for the task of hauling branches for a shelter in the woods.
Now that she had brought all the balsam boughs that Richard needed, Nicci stood quietly under the dripping trees, hugging herself as she shivered. Richard’s fingers were numb with cold as he quickly wove on the remaining boughs. He saw Cara, as she worked to secure the limbs, occasionally putting her hands under her armpits. Only Victor showed no outward appearance of being cold. Richard imagined that the blacksmith’s glower was enough to warm him most of the time.
“Why don’t you three get some sleep,” Victor said as Richard placed the last of the boughs over the shelter. “I’ll take watch for now if no one objects. I’m not much sleepy.”
From the undercurrent of anger in the man’s voice, Richard imagined that Victor might not be sleepy for quite a long while. He could certainly understand Victor’s bitter sorrow. The man would no doubt spend his watch trying to think of what he would say to Ferran’s mother and the relatives of the other men.
Richard laid an understanding hand on Victor’s shoulder. “We don’t know what we’re up against. Don’t hesitate to wake us if you hear or see anything at all unusual. And don’t forget to come inside and have your share of sleep; tomorrow will be a long day of traveling. We all need to be strong.”
Victor nodded. Richard watched as the blacksmith picked up his cloak and threw it around his shoulders before seizing roots and clinging vines to help him scale the rock above the shelter to where he would watch over them. Richard wondered if perhaps the outcome might have been different had Victor been with the men. Then he thought about the aftermath of splintered trees, deep gouges in the ground carved with such force that it had overturned rocks and torn thick roots apart. He remembered the ripped leather armor, the shattered bones, the rent bodies, and was glad that Victor had not been with the men when the attack had come. Even a heavy mace wielded in anger by the powerful arms of the master blacksmith would not have stopped whatever had come into that clearing.
Nicci pressed a hand to Richard’s forehead, testing for fever. “You need rest. No watch for you tonight. The three of us will each take a turn.”
Richard wanted to argue, but he knew that she was right. This was not a battle he should take up, so he didn’t and instead nodded his agreement. Cara, obviously prepared to take Nicci’s side if he argued, turned back from watching them from out of the small opening between the boughs.
From the gathering darkness all around a grating sound had begun to build into a shrill chirr. Now that they were finished with the effort of building the shelter, the noise was hard to ignore. It made the whole forest seem alive with raucous activity. Nicci finally took notice of it and paused to look around.
She frowned. “What is that sound, anyway?”
Richard plucked an empty skin from a tree trunk. Everywhere throughout the forest the trees were covered with the pale, tannish, thumb-sized husks.
“Cicadas.” Richard smiled to himself as he let the gossamer ghost of the creature that had once lived inside roll into his palm. “This is what’s left after they molt.”
Nicci glanced at the empty skin in his hand and briefly looked at some of the others clinging to the trees. “While I spent most of my life in towns and cities, and indoors, I’ve spent a great deal of time outdoors since leaving the Palace of the Prophets. These insects must be unique to these woods; I don’t recall ever seeing them before—or hearing them.”
“You wouldn’t have. I was a boy the last time I saw them. This kind of cicada emerges from underground every seventeen years. Today is the first day they all have begun to emerge. They will only be around for a few
weeks while they mate and lay their eggs. Then we won’t see them again for another seventeen years.”
“Really?” Cara asked as she poked her head back out. “Every seventeen years?” She thought it over for a moment and then scowled up at Richard. “They better not keep us awake.”
“Because of their numbers they create quite an unforgettable sound. With countless of the cicadas all trilling together, you can sometimes hear the harmonic rise and fall of their song moving through the forest in a wave. In the quiet of night, their stridulation may seem deafening at first, but, believe it or not, it will actually lull you to sleep.”
Satisfied to know that the noisy insects would not keep her charge awake, Cara disappeared back inside.
Richard recalled his wonder when Zedd had walked with him through the woods, showing him the newly emerged creatures, telling him all about their seventeen-year life cycle. To Richard, as a boy, it was a memorable wonder. Zedd told him how he would be grown up when they came again, that he had first seen them as a boy, and the next time he would see them as a grown man. Richard remembered marveling at the event and promising himself that when they came again, he would be sure to spend more time watching the rare creatures when they appeared from the ground.
Richard felt a wave of profound sadness for the loss of that innocent time in life. As a boy, the emergence of the cicadas had seemed like just about the most amazing phenomenon he could imagine, and waiting seventeen years until they returned seemed like the hardest thing he would ever have to do. And now they were back.
And now he was a man. He cast the empty husk aside.
After Richard removed his wet cloak and crawled in behind Nicci, he pulled branches together to cover over the opening to the snug shelter. The thick branches toned down the high-pitched song of the cicadas. The ceaseless buzzing was making him sleepy.
He was pleased to see that the balsam boughs worked to shed the rain, leaving the cavelike refuge dry, if not warm. They had laid down a bed of boughs over the exposed ground so they would have a relatively soft and dry platform upon which to sleep. Even without rain dripping on them, though, the humidity and fog still dampened everything. Their breath came out in ephemeral clouds.
Richard was weary of being wet. Handling trees had left him covered with bark and needles and dirt. His hands were sticky from tree sap. He couldn’t remember ever being so miserable with grime and grit clinging to his wet skin and wet clothes. At least the pine and balsam pitch left the shelter smelling pleasant.
He wished he could have a hot bath. He hoped that Kahlan was warm and dry and unharmed.
Tired as he was, and as sleepy as the sound of the cicadas was making him, there were things Richard needed to know. There were matters far more important to him than sleep, or his simple boyhood wonder.
He needed to find out what Nicci knew about what had killed Victor’s men. There were too many connections to ignore. The attack had come right near where Richard, Kahlan, and Cara had been camped a few days before. More importantly, whatever had killed the men didn’t seem to have left any tracks, at least none that he been able to find in his brief search, and, other than that displaced rock, Richard couldn’t find any tracks from either Kahlan or her abductor.
Richard intended, before he slept, to find out what Nicci knew about what had killed the men.
Richard untied the leather thongs beneath his pack and opened his bedroll, spreading it out in the narrow space left between the other two.
“Nicci, back at the place where the men were killed you said that it had been a blood frenzy.” He leaned back against the rock wall underneath the overhang. “What did you mean?”
Nicci folded herself into a sitting position to his right, atop her own bedroll. “What we saw back there wasn’t simply killing. Isn’t that obvious?”
He supposed she had a point. He had never witnessed a scene so shaped by rage. He was well aware, though, that she knew far more about it.
Cara curled up to his left. “I’m telling you,” she said to Nicci, “I don’t think he knows.”
Richard cast a leery gaze at the Mord-Sith and then at the sorceress. “Knows what?”
Nicci ran her fingers back through her wet hair, pulling strands off her face. She looked a little puzzled. “You said that you got the letter I sent.”
“I did.” It had been quite a while back. He tried to remember through the daze of weariness and worry everything Nicci’s letter had said—something about Jagang creating weapons out of people. “Your letter was valuable in helping figure out what was happening at the time. And I did appreciate your warning about Jagang’s darker pursuits of creating weapons out of the gifted; Nicholas the Slide was as nasty a piece of work.”
“Nicholas.” Nicci spat the name before wrapping a blanket around her shoulders. “He is but a flea on the rump of the wolf.”
If Nicholas was the flea, Richard hoped never to run into the wolf. Nicholas the Slide had been a wizard whom the Sisters of the Dark had altered to have abilities that were well beyond any human traits. It had been thought that accomplishing such conjuring with people was not only a lost art but impossible because, among other things, such nefarious work required the use of not only Additive but Subtractive Magic. While a rare
few had learned to manipulate it, until Richard’s birth there hadn’t been anyone born with the actual gift for Subtractive Magic in thousands of years.
But there had been those who, even though they had not been born with that side of the gift, still had managed to gain the use of Subtractive Magic. Darken Rahl had been one such person. It was said that he had traded the pure souls of children to the Keeper of the underworld in exchange for dark indulgences, including the ability to use Subtractive Magic.
Richard supposed that it could also have been through morbid promises to the Keeper that the first Sisters of the Dark had contrived to obtain the knowledge of how to use Subtractive Magic, thereafter passing it on in secret to their covert disciples.
When the Palace of the Prophets had fallen, Jagang had captured many of the Sisters, both Sisters of the Light and Sisters of the Dark, but their numbers were dwindling. From what Richard had learned, the dream walker’s ability enabled him to enter every part of a person’s mind and thereby control them. There was no private thought he did not know or intimate deed he could not witness. It was an inner violation so complete that no hidden corner of the mind was safe from the dream walker’s direct scrutiny. What was worse, the victim could not always tell if Jagang was lurking there, in their mind, witness to their most secret thoughts.
Nicci had said that the haunting possession by the dream walker had driven a few of the Sisters mad. Richard also knew that through that link Jagang could measure out excruciating pain and, if he wished it, death. With such control, the dream walker could make the Sisters do anything he wished.
Through an ancient magic created by one of Richard’s ancestors to protect his people from the dream walkers of that time, those who swore fidelity to the Lord Rahl were protected. Along with the rest of his gift, Richard had inherited that bond and, with a dream walker again born into the world, it now safeguarded those loyal to him from Jagang stealing into their minds and enslaving them. While a formal devotion was spoken by the people of D’Hara to their Lord Rahl, the protection that the bond provided was actually invoked through the conviction of the person bonded—through their doing what they thought was called for by their fidelity.
Both Ann, the Prelate of the Sisters of the Light, and Verna, the woman
Ann had named as her successor, had stolen into the Imperial Order’s camp and tried to rescue their Sisters. The captive Sisters had been offered the protection of the bond—all they had to do was accept in their hearts their loyalty to Richard—but most were so terrified of Jagang that more than once they had refused their chance at freedom. Not everyone was willing to embrace liberty; liberty required not just effort, but risk. Some people chose to delude themselves and see their chains as protective armor.
Nicci had once been in servitude to the Fellowship of Order, the Sisters of the Light, and then the Sisters of the Dark, and finally to Jagang. She no longer was; she had instead embraced Richard’s love of life. Her steadfast loyalty to him and what he believed in had freed her from the clutches of the dream walker, but far more than that, it had freed her from the yoke of servitude she had worn her whole life. Her life was now hers alone. He thought that maybe that might have something to do with the resolute nobility of her bearing.
“I didn’t read the whole letter,” Richard admitted. “Before I was able to finish it, we were attacked by men that Nicholas had sent to capture us. I told you about it before—that was when Sabar was killed. During that fight the letter fell into the fire.”
Nicci slouched back. “Dear spirits,” she murmured. “I thought you knew.”
Richard was tired and at the end of his patience. “Knew what?”
Nicci let her arms slip to her sides. She looked up at him in the dim light and let out a frazzled sigh.
“Jagang found a way for the Sisters of the Dark he holds captive to use their ability to begin creating weapons out of people, as had been done during the great war. In many ways, he is a brilliant man. He makes it his business to learn. He collects books from the places he sacks. I’ve seen some of those books. Among all sorts of tomes, he has ancient handbooks of magic from around the time of the great war.
“The problem is, while he may be a dream walker and brilliant in certain areas, he does not have the gift and so his understanding of it, of exactly what Han is and how this force of life functions, is crude at best. It’s not easy for one without magic to comprehend such things. You have the gift and yet even you don’t really understand it or know very much about how it works. But because Jagang doesn’t know how to work magic, he
blunders around demanding that things be done simply because he has dreamed them up, because he is the great emperor and he wishes his visions to be brought to life.”
Richard rubbed his fingers back and forth on his brow, rolling off the dirt. “Don’t sell him short in that regard. It’s possible that he knows more about what he’s doing than you realize.”
“What do you mean?”
“I may not know a lot about the subject of magic, but one of the things I have learned is that magic can also be thought of much like an art form. Through artistic expression—for lack of a better term—magic that has never been before can be created.”
Nicci stared in astonished disbelief. “Richard, I don’t know where you could have heard such a thing, but it just doesn’t work that way.”
“I know, I know. Kahlan thinks I’m out on a limb with this, too. Having been raised around wizards, she knows a lot about magic and in the past she has flatly insisted that I’m wrong. But I’m not. I’ve done it before. Using the gift in such a way, in new and original ways, got me out of what would otherwise have been unbreakable traps.”
Nicci was peering at him in that analytical way of hers. He suddenly realized why. It wasn’t only what he’d said about magic. He was talking about Kahlan again. The woman who did not exist, the woman he had dreamed. Cara’s expression betrayed her mute concern.
“Anyway,” Richard said, getting back to the crux of the matter, “just because Jagang doesn’t have the gift, doesn’t mean he can’t still dream up things—dream up nightmares—like Nicholas. It is through such original conceptualization that the most deadly things, for which there may be no conventional counter, are created. I suspect that this may have been the method those wizards in ancient times used for creating weapons out of people in the first place.”
Nicci was beside herself with bottled agitation.
“Richard, magic just doesn’t work like that. You can’t dream up whatever you’d like to have, wish for what you want. Magic functions by the laws of its nature, just like all other things in the world. Whim will not make boards out of trees; you must cut the tree to the desired form. If you want a house, you can’t wish up bricks and boards to stack themselves into a dwelling; you must use your hands to craft the structure.”
Richard leaned toward the sorceress. “Yes, but it’s the human imagina
tion that makes those concrete actions not just possible, but effective. Most builders think in terms of houses or barns; they do what’s been done before simply because that was what was done before. Much of the time they don’t want to think, so they never envision anything more. They limit themselves to repetition and as an excuse they insist that it must be done that way because it has always been done that way. Most magic is like that—the gifted simply repeating what has already been done before, believing that it must be done that way with no more justification than that it has always been done that way.
“Before a grand palace can be built, it first has to be imagined by someone bold enough to have a vision of what could be. A palace will not spontaneously spring forth to the surprise of all while men are attempting to build a barn. Only the conscious act of conceptualization can bring about the reality.
“For that act of creative imagination to bring about the existence of a palace, it cannot violate any of the laws of the nature of the things that are used. On the contrary, the person who imagines a grand palace with the goal of seeing it built must be intimately aware of the nature of all the things he will use in the construction. If he isn’t, the palace will fall down. He must know the nature of the materials better than the man who uses them to build a simple barn. It’s not a matter of wishing for something that transcends the laws of nature, but a matter of original thinking based on those laws of nature.
“I grew up in the woods around Hartland, never having seen a palace.” Richard spread his arms, as if to show her the things he had seen since leaving his homeland. “Until I saw the castle at Tamarang, the Wizard’s Keep and the Confessors’ Palace in Aydindril, or the People’s Palace in D’Hara, I never imagined that such places existed—or even that they could exist. They were beyond the scope of my thinking at the time.
“And yet, even though I never imagined that such places could be built, other men thought them up, and they were built. I think that one of the important functions of grand creations is that they inspire people.”
Nicci appeared not only to be swept up in his explanation, but to be considering his words with serious interest. “Do you mean to say, then, that you think an art form can also shape such important things as the function of magic?”
Richard smiled. “Nicci, you could not grasp the importance of life un
til I carved the statue back in Altur’Rang. When you saw the concept in tangible form you were able at last to put together all the things you had learned throughout your life and finally grasp its meaning. An artistic creation touched your soul. That’s what I mean about an important function of great works is that they inspire people.
“Because it inspired you with the beauty of life, with the nobility of man, you acted to become free—something you had never thought was possible. Because the people of Altur’Rang as well could see in that statue what could and should be, they were stirred to stand up to the tyranny crushing their lives. It was not accomplished by copying other statues, by doing what was the accepted norm for statues in the Old World of showing man as weak and ineffective, but by an idea of beauty, a vision of nobility, that shaped what I carved.
“I didn’t violate the nature of the marble I used, but rather I used the nature of the stone to accomplish something different than what others routinely did with it. I studied the properties of stone, I learned how to work it, and I sought to understand what more I could do with it in order to bring about my objective. I had Victor make me the finest tools that would enable me to do the work in the way it needed to be done. In that way I brought to reality what I wanted to create, what had never been before.
“I think that magic can work this way as well. I believe that such original ideas played a part in how weapons were once created out of people. After all, when such weapons were made, they were effective in large part because they were original, because they had never been thought of or seen before. In many instances, the other side in the war then had to work to create entirely new things out of magic that were able to counter those weapons. In many cases they were able to render the weapon obsolete by creating a countermagic, and then someone on the other side immediately went to work thinking up some new horror. If using magic creatively was not possible, then how did the wizards of old create weapons with it? You can’t say they simply got the knowledge from a book, or from past experience; where and how would the first such weapons have originated if not with an original idea? Someone had to have used magic creatively in the first place.
“I think that Jagang is again doing this very thing with magic. He has studied some of what was done in the great war, what weapons were created, and learned from that. He sometimes may direct that what was once
created to be created again, such as with Nicholas, but in other instances I think he imagines what has never been, what goes beyond what has been done before, and has it brought to reality by those who know how to use magic to build what he wants.
“In these acts of creation it isn’t the work that is the most remarkable aspect, but the idea and vision that makes the labor effective, just as carpenters and bricklayers who built houses and barns can be employed to construct a palace. It wasn’t so much their labor that was remarkable in the creation of palaces, but the act of insight and creation that gave it direction.”