“Me too,” Kahlan said.
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Nicci was caught off guard. “You don’t trust Irena, either?”
Kahlan showed the woman a small smile. “Nicci, I don’t trust most people where Richard is concerned. I want him all to myself. But I know that he belongs to everyone, in a way, and I have to tolerate certain things.”
“Like me?”
Kahlan was a long time answering. “Nicci, at one time I wanted nothing more desperately than to kill you—over and over in every imaginable horrible manner. I wanted to scream at you as I killed you a hundred times over.
“After all, you had been a Sister of the Dark. You were also a devoted, dedicated believer in the ways of the Imperial Order and Emperor Jagang, whose forces were slaughtering my people and trying to destroy our way of life.
“But worse, you took Richard captive and took him away from me, away from everyone who needed him … for a very long time.
“I hated you.
“But Richard understood how the Imperial Order had controlled and conditioned you from a very young age. Despite that indoctrination, Richard saw something worthwhile deep down inside you. He saw that you were different, and that while you were disciplined in their ways, you were not blind. He only needed a way to encourage you to see again.
“Richard believed in you, believed in your intellect, believed that you had the spark of spirit that could see things for yourself, that you had the capacity to see the truth. Over time, as you came to know him and understand him, you finally began to think through the reasons behind your loyalties. You used your head to try to reason out the why of things and in so doing you discovered the truth for yourself.
“In that instant, when reason won out over the blind faith you had been taught, you changed. You came to embrace life instead of death. You had the courage to see your own failings. You had the courage to see the harm you had done and the inner character to want to set it right.
“You have fought on our side since then and you’ve proven yourself to me a thousand times over. You have saved both our lives on any number of occasions. You have helped bring truth to others.
“I came to understand how you were in fact also a victim of the same depraved ideology we were fighting. In a way, the Imperial Order had crushed you the same way it wanted to crush us. Because of what you did to lift yourself out of the darkness you were in, I was able to come to appreciate you for the woman you really were, underneath the things you did because of the corrupt doctrine you had been taught. I came to see your inner strength and the courage it took to face reality and step out of your darkness and into the light.
“Once that happened, I no longer had any reason to hate you. That hatred no longer served a purpose, so I was able to set it aside. That also means I have no reason to harbor bitterness or resentment against you.
“You’ve changed, and as a result, I’ve changed. We’re both better for it.
“I know that you are still in love with Richard, but I also know that because you love him, you want him to be happy. You understand him now, and know that the reality is you can’t force someone to love you.
“But you still love him. You can’t help how you feel and I understand that. Sometimes a person can’t talk their heart out of how it feels, despite how hard you try. But now you have placed that in perspective with what he wants for himself.”
Nicci swallowed. “You’re right about that. I can’t help how I feel. I wish it were otherwise—I truly do—but I can’t change my heart.
“I would do anything Richard asked of me. I would lay down my life if he asked it of me. I would do anything for him.
“But I would never again try to steal him from you because I know that would be treason against him. Because I love him, truly love him, I could never do that to him.”
Kahlan stared into Nicci’s blue eyes. “I know.”
She felt profound sorrow for Nicci. She couldn’t imagine being as in love with Richard as she was, and having him not love her back. That would be a living death. She hoped that one day Nicci could find a man worthy of her, the way Cara had, even if Cara’s joy had been all too short.
Nicci’s gaze stayed on Kahlan’s. “I had Richard down in the Old World a long time. I came to know what is in that man’s heart. It matters not who loves him. All that matters is who he loves. And he loves you, Kahlan.”
Kahlan nodded. “I know that, too, Nicci.”
Nicci let out a relieved sigh. “Good.”
“So,” Kahlan said after a moment’s silence, “you don’t think Irena can really tell a person’s gift from bones, unless, of course, she has powers you don’t know about, perhaps from living her whole life out here close to the power leaking out of that barrier to the third kingdom. And you think she should have known where the Hedge Maid lived. And, she loves Richard.”
“I don’t know that she actually loves him, now that I think about it, so much as she seems obsessed with him.”
“Even so, she has also fought beside us, fought to protect our lives. So, what do you expect me to do about her?”
“I don’t know,” Nicci grumbled. “Maybe tell me I’m crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy. I don’t trust the woman either.”
Nicci halted her pacing and looked over at Kahlan. “You alluded to that before. Mind telling me why not?”
“Well, I know it sounds a bit intolerant, but I don’t trust her because she calls him Richard, instead of Lord Rahl.”
Nicci looked puzzled. “Richard doesn’t care about titles.”
“That’s beside the point. Titles imply things. Respect, for one. Country people from remote places like this are usually terrified of people with power. I’ve grown up seeing people pale when they heard my title announced. People fear what they don’t know, and they fear power.
“A woman, even a sorceress, from a little place like Stroyza, should be more respectful—if nothing else—of the leader of the D’Haran Empire, the Lord Rahl himself.”
“And the Mother Confessor,” Nicci added.
“And the Mother Confessor,” Kahlan agreed. “It’s a little thing, but little things have reasons behind them. Little things can be a crack in a person’s carefully constructed façade that allows you to look deeper inside them.
“Richard wouldn’t care that she doesn’t call him Lord Rahl, but I do—because it tells me that something deeper is going on, that there is something there that is not what it seems.
“Samantha is infatuated with him, as you say, but she still calls him Lord Rahl. That is consistent with how people typically behave.”
Nicci was frowning with concern. “What do you think we should do about it?”
“Be aware. Be vigilant.”
“Always.” Nicci looked off toward the camp. “Richard is coming back. You had best go be with him and get some sleep.” She smiled as she watched him walking silently among the sleeping men. “Give him a hug. I think you could both use one. And I don’t want you to worry. We should soon be to the citadel and that containment field and then we will finally rid you of Jit’s poison.”
Kahlan stood and gave Nicci a hug. “I think you could use one as well.”
Nicci hugged her back. “You do know, don’t you, that I also love you?”
Kahlan smiled. “I know.”
Kahlan knew that loving someone and being in love with someone were two very different things. Still, she trusted Nicci. After Nicci had taken Richard away, she had learned that she couldn’t win his heart, and she eventually came around and did the most loving thing she could do. She brought him back to where his heart lay, brought him back to Kahlan.
No one had hurt Kahlan more than Nicci. But she had set things right.
Now, there was probably no one in camp Kahlan trusted more.
Now, because she trusted her, she had to ask her a difficult question.
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“Nicci, can I a
sk you a hard question and get an honest answer?”
“Of course.”
Kahlan stared off at the encampment for a moment without seeing it, trying to think of how to put such a thing into words, how to say it out loud. Saying it out loud somehow made it irrevocable. Finally she asked as plainly as she could.
“How long do Richard and I have to live if we aren’t cured?”
“Well,” Nicci said, thinking it over for a moment, “that is a hard question to answer.”
“And I don’t want to hear things like we have ‘a while yet,’ before we die, or ‘not a terribly long time,’ or other wiggle words like that. I want the truth. I want to know. If we don’t get this poison out of us, how much time do Richard and I have before we die?”
When Kahlan turned and looked back at her, Nicci was staring at her. Her blue eyes seemed filled with grim awareness of the death sentence she would pronounce.
“The call of death in both of you is growing exponentially. I can’t give you an exact number, but the simple truth is that for both of you it’s at most only a matter of a handful of days.”
Kahlan swallowed. “Days.” It sounded too final. “That’s all?”
“It’s difficult to gauge your remaining time exactly. I must confess to you that when I was working to bring Richard back to consciousness, I could tell that you’ve both passed a critical point and while you still may have days, death could now come at any moment.”
“But there is a limit,” Kahlan guessed. “Even if we manage to avoid it for a time. Even if we’re lucky, even if we fight it, there is still a limit.”
Nicci nodded. “I was a Sister of the Dark, and I dealt in such wicked things as have touched you both, so I know more about this than even Zedd. He had an understanding of the seriousness of it, but feared to ask me anything more specific because he knew that I recognize such forces and their full meaning in a way that he could not. Because of my unique knowledge and experience, I can tell you that the way this poisonous call of death works, the way it kills, is unlike anything else.”
“What do you mean? What is it doing that is different?”
“It’s severing your souls.”
Kahlan hadn’t thought it could be any worse. She was wrong.
“You mean like the half people? You mean we will become like them? Soulless bodies, living on in a kind of meaningless, dead existence?”
Nicci shook her head. “No. You’re thinking of it in the wrong way. This is entirely different. In you and Richard, the call of death is slowly severing your link to your souls, much as if you were hanging by a thread over a deep abyss. What Jit unleashed is progressively severing the lifeline to your souls.
“It is the line of the gift that you were born with that in the Grace flows from Creation, through life, and then continues on with you into the world of the dead. Jit’s poisonous call crossed the boundary between worlds. It is severing that line connecting your souls to who you are.”
“So, you mean,” Kahlan asked, repressing her panic, “that when our souls are severed, that’s it? That’s the end of us? We die?”
Nicci searched for words. “It’s kind of difficult to explain, but it’s more than being the end of you, more all-encompassing than merely dying. If we don’t put a stop to it, pull it out of you, then you both will die, which is bad enough, but also your souls will be severed from everything, meaning not simply from the world of life, but from their connection to the gift that flows through our souls into the world beyond the veil. Once severed, your souls can never find their way to the good spirits beyond.
“So, in a way, by severing your souls in this way, this poison is not only killing your bodies, it is extinguishing your souls’ existence.
“At this point, how long you last, I think, is only a matter of your will to hold on to life, how hard your spirits—your souls—fight. Even so, you won’t be able to hold on for more than a few days longer, and then the struggle will end. Your souls will be severed from you. Your bodies will die, and your souls themselves will wink out of existence like a dying ember.”
Kahlan realized that she had been holding her breath. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes.
“Will we even be remembered?” She thought it was a rather meaningless question as soon as she asked it, but it seemed important to her.
Nicci slowly shook her head. “Once your souls are severed, existence itself is dissolved. It will be as if you never existed.”
Somehow, that made it even worse. She looked up at Nicci, resisting the pronouncement. “But that didn’t happen to Jit. Her existence wasn’t dissolved away by the sound of that scream, that call of death. We remember her.”
“Jit was a different kind of creature. The poison she carried inside was intrinsic to her kind. That sound was never meant to be heard by humans. She had no soul to sever.”
Nicci wiped a tear from Kahlan’s cheek. “You do.”
Kahlan could hear the whispers and the screams in the back of her mind, the sound of death hungering to have her. She could feel those whispers getting closer. She knew, from Richard’s experience the night before, that if either of them went unconscious again, they most likely would never wake.
In the end, she didn’t know which fate was worse, eventually falling into the clutches of what Sulachan had waiting for them in the underworld, or the haunting dread of soulless oblivion.
“Then I guess we had best get an early start so we can get to Saavedra as soon as possible,” Kahlan said.
Nicci nodded. “I agree. But try to not lose sight of the fact that I’m not going to let that happen to either of you.” She took Kahlan’s arm and started back. “I will get it out of you.”
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The next day took them over a high pass with towering peaks soaring high all around and then, from among the tall pines, lower through the mountains, down into more heavily wooded terrain. The lower forest was wetter, with frequent brooks draining the higher ground. They sometimes had to make their way through muddy areas to get around standing water. Some of the men scouted the way out ahead of the main group to make sure of the quickest route, while yet others protected them from a rear attack.
Any Shun-tuk who might still be alive were a constant worry. After what she had seen, Kahlan was sure they were all dead, but there was no way to be absolutely positive. Worse, though, there was always the possibility that Sulachan could have sent others, or that other tribes of half people who had escaped through the gates of the third kingdom could be hunting the forests. After all, they weren’t all that far from that dreaded, broken barrier.
Ned had left at first light, taking their only horse and Richard’s orders on the hard ride back to the People’s Palace. It was somewhat disconcerting being without a horse because it was their fastest means of travel, but having only one did them little good. It was more important to get word to the palace and all the people there, letting them know what was coming so they could prepare.
Kahlan shuddered to think of Hannis Arc, Emperor Sulachan, and all the Shun-tuk having free run of the palace and all the artifacts kept there. In a way, that palace was the heart of hope for civilization. To have it fall to such evil made her blood run cold. They had to hold it until Richard was healed and could get back there.
While a horse wouldn’t get them to Saavedra any faster, should Richard or Kahlan begin to lose strength, the horse could carry them easier than any other method. As much as Kahlan worried about not having the horse with them any longer, the farther they went it was becoming apparent that the mountains they were crossing were too rugged in places for a horse. They could have gone around in certain areas so a horse could make it, but that would have meant more travel time and they didn’t have the time to spare.
Every moment of delay meant that she and Richard were a moment closer to dying. Kahlan’s thoughts kept drifting back to the dark ones Sulachan had waiting for them on the other side of that veil. There would be no peaceful et
ernity for the two of them. The spirit king had seen to that.
As they made their way down the mountain the terrain was so difficult in places that the men had to fell small trees and stake them along the steep walls of crumbling rock to give them some kind of sure footing that wouldn’t give way. It was a quick, flimsy, very temporary way to make it across otherwise impassable areas, but it was enough for them to keep moving forward without losing their footing or much time. Some of the places they had to traverse were quite steep, slippery, and had loose rock that slid and tumbled down when disturbed. In those places a rope tied to trees gave them a useful handhold.
There was no easy way through the uncharted wilderness. They knew the direction of Saavedra, and if they wanted to get there, the quickest way was a direct route across the mountains. Fortunately, there were passes. Going around would add many days of travel and they had no extra days to waste.
After they had made their way down narrow, rocky trails, the terrain leveled out somewhat. Irena and Samantha used the opportunity to move in close to each side of Richard to protect him as they went through more open birch groves. Nicci stayed behind them where she could keep an eye on Irena. Irena, for her part, always managed to be right there near Richard, sometimes even stepping in front of Kahlan and Nicci to do so.
Kahlan wasn’t in the mood to start an argument with the woman. The wise thing to do was to ignore it and get to Saavedra. Besides, for all she knew they might need Irena’s extra abilities to cure them.
When the trail narrowed again as they had to go down a narrow pass between steep, gray, rocky slopes to each side, and she had the chance, Kahlan took up Richard’s hand and made it clear to the others, in a gentle manner, that she wanted to be with her husband. Irena, surprisingly enough, got the message. Kahlan wondered if perhaps the woman wasn’t as inconsiderate as she had believed.
At first, Samantha didn’t get the idea, instead staying close to Richard as the way through began to widen so she could pepper him with trivial questions about how the trees could ever come to cling to such stony slopes overhead and how it compared to places he had been to and things he had seen before. She seemed to have an endless supply of questions and looked genuinely interested in every word of his answers. Richard seemed distracted and wasn’t in a chatty mood, but he was nice enough as he answered her questions, if briefly.
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