He remembered standing alone and still in the eerie early light as the dark tide of Imperial Order soldiers flooded through the trees.
He remembered bits of their wild charge, their raised weapons. He remembered releasing himself into the fluid dance with death. He remembered, too, the hail of arrows and bolts from crossbows, and, finally, other men joining the battle. Richard lifted the front of his shirt out away from himself, looking down at it, not understanding why it was whole.
That one word rose up above all others in his mind. Cara and Kahlan. That had to be what Cara meant.
Cara would not be needling him in such a way if Kahlan were hurt or in any kind of trouble—that much he knew for certain.
An overwhelming sense of relief purged his dread and with it some of his weariness. Kahlan was safe. He couldn't help being cheered, too, by Cara's impish expression. He loved to see her with a lighthearted smile, in part because it was such a rare sight. Usually when a Mord-Sith smiled it was a menacing prelude to something wholly unpleasant. The same was true when they wore their red leather. Where is she? Such an extraordinary look was so uncommon on Cara that it not only surprised him, but spurred him into a grin.
It was not the kind of thing a woods guide growing up in far-off Westland would ever have dreamed up in his wildest imaginings. He had long ago learned that it was best not to give Cara the satisfaction of seeing her mischievous antics get to him. He didn't rise to the bait. He was becoming annoyed with Cara's game.
My, my, Lord Rahl, but when you dream you certainly do dream big. Smart, beautiful, and the Mother Confessor as well. She was really insistent about it—said that if you woke she needed to have a look at you.
How are you feeling? Her mane of blond hair hadn't been brushed out and it looked like she'd been sleeping in her black dress. Even so, the contrast of her disheveled appearance only served to highlight her exquisite beauty. With rest you will have your full strength back soon enough.
You lost a lot of blood. It will take time for your body to recover. Her smooth brow drew together in concentration. Though she appeared to be about his age, or at most only a year or two older, she had lived a very long time as a Sister of the Light at the Palace of the Prophets, where those within the walls aged differently.
Nicci's graceful manner, the keen appraisal of her blue eyes, and her singular subdued smile —always delivered with her knowing gaze locked on his—had been at first distracting and then unsettling, but was now merely familiar. Richard winced as he felt Nicci's power tingling deep into his chest, between her hands.
It was a disconcerting penetration. It made his heart flutter. A mild wave of nausea coursed through him. She looked up into his eyes then. Some of her reassuring smile returned.
But his other concerns needed to be put to rest, as well. Cara's in one of her moods this morning and won't say. Is she hurt? She's beautiful —and smart, of course. The intensity in his voice, to say nothing of his glare, gave them pause.
For a time I didn't think…" She hooked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and started over. It's only natural. I've seen it before. When you were shot with that arrow you couldn't breathe. Not getting air, like when you're drowning, causes—" "What's the matter with you two? What's going on? His heart felt as if it were galloping out of control.
Tell me! If it had, there wouldn't have been anything I could have done. I can't raise the dead. People just don't survive a wound as grave as you had. I wouldn't have been able to heal you in the conventional manner because it couldn't be done.
There was no time to even try to get the arrow out in any other way. You were bleeding inside. I had to…" She faltered as she stared up into his eyes. Richard bent down a little toward her. She had once been committed to those forces. She had once been known as Death's Mistress. Healing was not exactly her specialty.
Richard's caution flared. I had to. He didn't really know if it did or not. Having been raised in the vast woods of Westland, Richard didn't know a great deal about magic. He didn't like the sound of that. One lung had already failed. I was able to perceive that your heart was being forced out of place.
The major arteries were in danger of being ripped apart from the pressure. I needed the blood out of the way in order to heal you—so that your lungs and heart could work properly. They were failing. You were in a state of shock and delirium. You were near death. There was no one but me to help you and I was so afraid that I would fail. Even after I did everything I could to heal you, I still wasn't sure you would ever wake again. It spoke to how far she had come since she had given up her belief in the cause of the Sisters of the Dark and then the Imperial Order.
The haunted look on Cara's face confirmed for him the truth of how desperate the situation had been. For all the sleep he'd apparently gotten, neither of them appeared to have had much more than brief naps.
It must have been a frightening vigil. The rain drummed without letup against the roof. Other than that, the dank husk of a house was dead quiet.
Life seemed all the more fleeting in the abandoned home. The forsaken place gave Richard the chills. I remember being afraid I was going to die. But you saved my life. I wish there was a better way to say it, a better way to tell you how much I appreciate what you did, but I can't think of any. Another thought struck him. I've never even heard of it being done.
Dear spirits, I didn't even know that it could be done. As I'm sure you can imagine, using Subtractive Magic in such a way is risky, to put it mildly.
Anything living touched by it would also be destroyed. I had to use the core of the arrow itself as a pathway into you. I was as careful as I could possibly be that I only eliminated the arrow… and the spent blood.
Such a terrible crisis can cause unexpected things to happen. I had no choice but to use extreme methods. You were beyond what I thought were all limits. You have to try to understand that you were not yourself there for a while. You weren't yourself. You were fighting us. I had to hold you down just so she could help you. Strange things happen when they're in that place. Believe me, you were there a long time into that first night. The profession of Mord-Sith had been torture —at least it had been until he changed all that.
He carried the Agiel of Denna, the Mord-Sith who had once stood over him in that ca-pacity. She had given him her Agiel as a solemn gift in gratitude for freeing her from the madness of her terrible duty… even though she had known that the price of that freedom was to be his sword through her heart.
Right then Richard felt a very long way from the peaceful woods where he'd grown up. Nicci spread her hands as if imploring him to try harder to understand.
I had to revive you enough to get you to drink water and a broth, but I needed you to stay in a deep sleep so that you could begin to recover your strength. I had to use a spell to keep you in that state. You'd lost a lot of blood; had I allowed you to awake too soon it would have sapped your tenuous strength and you still could have slipped away from us.
He could have died. Richard took a deep breath. He'd had no idea of everything that had gone on over the last three days. He basically recalled the battle and then waking when he heard the wolf howl.
Please believe me when I say that it's understandable. But you're awake now and must face the truth. She was figment born of your dire condition.
He turned to Cara, imploring her to come to her senses, if not his rescue. How could you believe it? Don't you remember how much you wanted to cling to that feeling? Don't vou remember how desperately you wanted it to be real? You carried these desperate illusions forward with you. You dreamed about them, added to them, lived with them longer than any ordinary sleep. This prolonged dream, this comforting illusion, this divine longing, had time to seep into every corner of your thoughts, saturate every part of your mind, and became real to you, just as Cara says, but, because of the length of time you were asleep, it gained even more power.
Now that you've only just come awake from that protracted sleep you are merely having a little trouble filtering out what part of your ordeal was a dream and what was real.
It sounds like a nice dream—this woman you dreamed you married—but that's all it is: a dream. The concept of Kahlan being nothing more than a dream, a figment of his imagination born in his delirium, was, at its core, terrifying. That terror stormed unchecked through him. If what they were saying was true, then he didn't want to be awake. If it was true, then he wished that Nicci had never healed him. He didn't want to live in a world where Kahlan wasn't real.
He felt confused by his ordeal and that he didn't remember much of it. His certainty in what he regarded as truth began to crumble. He caught himself. He knew better than to believe a fear and thus give it life. While he could not fathom how they'd latched on to such a monstrous idea, he knew that Kahlan wasn't a dream. Could it be? He frantically tried to imagine if there was any possibility that what they were saying could be true.
His fists tightened. He hadn't meant for it to come out as threatening, but it did. Nicci took half a step back. Cara's face lost a little of its color. Richard couldn't slow his breathing, his racing heart. I don't remember any dreams while I was hurt, or while I slept. Dreams are meaningless. Kahlan is not. Don't do this to me— please. This isn't helping anything, it's only making it worse. Please, if something has happened to Kahlan, I need to know. Something had happened to her and they just didn't think he was strong enough yet to handle the news.
A worse fear by far welled up when he recalled Nicci saying that she couldn't raise the dead. Could they be trying to shield him from that?
He gritted his teeth with the effort not to scream at them, to keep his voice level and in control. I know that such things can seem very real, but it's not. You dreamed her up while you were hurt… nothing more. You've fought with us, fought for us. Back when Nicci was a Sister of the Dark and she brought me down here to the Old World, you stood in for me and protected Kahlan.
She has protected you. You've shared and endured things that most people could never even imagine. You've become friends. Cara's conferring on Kahlan the title of sister of the Agiel had been an informal but deeply solemn accolade from a former mortal enemy to a woman she had come to respect and trust. You've become like family. She was not only ruthless but fearless in her defense of him. The one thing Cara did fear was disappointing him. That fear was clearly evident in her eyes.
Overwhelmed, he pressed his hand to his forehead, pushing back his hair. These two women were not inventing some story for fear of telling him bad news. They were telling him the truth. The truth as they saw it, anyway. The truth somehow twisted into a nightmare. He couldn't make any of it work in his mind, couldn't make any sense of it.
After all they had shared with Kahlan, all they had been through with her, all their time together, it was impossible for him to understand how these two women could be saying this to him. And yet, they were. Although he couldn't conceive of the cause, something was obviously and dreadfully wrong. A suffocating sense of foreboding settled over him.
It felt as if the whole world had been turned upside down and now he couldn't make the pieces fit back together. He had to do something—what he had been about to do just before the soldiers had attacked them.
The cold drizzle he could see through the small window didn't look like it would be ending anytime soon, so he left his cloak out. He spotted a cake of soap lying nearby and snatched it up. There was no time to waste. He shoved the cake of soap, packets of dried herbs and spices, and a pouch of dried apricots down into the pack before quickly furling his bedroll.
Cara abandoned questioning or objecting and instead set about packing her own things. You need to rest. I told you, you lost a lot of blood. You aren't strong enough yet to go running off chasing phantoms.
Nicci had just spent days of intense effort saving his life. Besides being worried for him, she was exhausted and probably wasn't thinking clearly. All of those things likely contributed to her believing he was acting irresponsibly. Still, he bristled that she didn't give him more credit. Nicci insistently gripped a fistful of his shirt as he cinched the second thong tight. You're jeopardizing your life. You need to rest in order for your body to be able to recover. You haven't had nearly enough time to build your strength.
You don't realize it, Cara doesn't realize it, but I do. Do you think I can just lie around here when the person I love more than anything in the world is in peril? Wouldn't you want me to try? I don't know what's gone wrong, but something has. If I'm right—and I am—then I can't even begin to guess at the implications or imagine the consequences.
You get all your answers in a nice little bow but you do not actually get to see the problem resolved. If she was ever even real. Chainfirre and Ann also journey to the Keep after they discover the blank pages in the various books of prophecy to see if yerry ancient books at the Keep have escaped that fate.
So, the whole Richard being the only one to remember Kahlan thing. In all of the other books in this series, the conflict for that book is resolved by the end even though the overarching battle against the Imperial Order continues to thread through each one.
But the weirdest thing is that I kept buying these 1 star books! Customers who viewed this item also viewed. After being gravely injured in battle, Richard awakes to discover Kahlan missing.
We are TOLD that these events happened by the character. He is immediately taken to Nicci who sets out trying to heal him. This is a nice mystery, and it sets the tone for the entire book.
But in these books I feel like I care about Richard and Kahlan way more than those other characters. You get all your answers in a nice little bow but you do not actually get to see the problem resolved. If she was ever even real.
Chainfirre and Ann also journey to the Keep after they discover the blank pages in the various books of prophecy to see if yerry ancient books at the Keep have escaped that fate. So, the whole Richard being the only one to remember Kahlan thing.
In all of the other books in this series, the conflict for that book is resolved by the end even though the overarching battle against the Imperial Order continues to thread through each one. Immunoassay and Other Bioanalytical Techniques. Imprisoned with the Pharaohs. Industrial Strength Parallel Computing. Introducing Microsoft. Net, Second Edition Pro-Developer.
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I will definitely recommend this book to fantasy, fiction lovers. Your Rating:. Your Comment:.
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