As he lay on his belly, he tried desperately to push himself to his knees at least, but simply couldn’t. He looked across the battlefield scattered with fallen men at Kahlan. Even in obvious pain, she was looking back at him, worried for what was happening to him.
The Sister was still some distance off, but Richard knew that he was running out of time to do something.
“Samuel!” Richard yelled.
Samuel, trying to drag Kahlan by her arm, stopped in his tracks and looked back at Richard, his golden eyes blinking. Richard couldn’t help Kahlan. At least, not in the way he wanted to help her.
“Samuel, you idiot! Use the sword to cut the collar off her neck.”
Samuel, one hand holding Kahlan’s arm, with his other hand lifted the sword he coveted so much, frowning at it.
Richard watched as the Sister off through the darkness stalked ever closer. He remembered once, when being taken to the Palace of the Prophets, using the Sword of Truth to cut through an iron collar around Du Chaillu’s neck. He also remembered being in Tamarang with Kahlan and using the sword to slash through the prison bars. He knew the Sword of Truth could cut steel.
He also knew from when the Sisters had put the collar around his neck that the sword couldn’t cut through a Rada’Han. The collar had been locked on and held tight with the power of his own gift. It wasn’t so much the steel that the sword couldn’t cut, Richard suspected, but the binding power of the magic itself. The Rada’Han when used as intended became, in a sense, a part of the person it was locked on to. For that reason he knew that the sword wouldn’t be able to cut through Nicci’s collar.
But the collar around Kahlan’s neck was different. Her own gift wasn’t what bound it to her. It had simply been locked around her neck and used to control her. Richard also suspected that Six might have provided Samuel with a bit of extra help. It certainly wasn’t his wits that had gotten him this far. Any additional ability she’d given him might aid in this as well. Richard wasn’t sure that it would work, but he was sure that it was Kahlan’s only chance. He had to get Samuel to at least try.
“Hurry!” Richard screamed. “Slide the blade under the collar and pull! Hurry!”
Samuel frowned suspiciously at Richard for a moment. He looked down at Kahlan’s agony, then dropped to a knee and hurriedly slipped the sword under the collar.
Some of the soldiers on the ground looked like they might be starting to come around. They groaned as they held their heads in their hands.
Samuel gave the Sword of Truth a mighty pull. The night rang with the sound of steel shattering. Kahlan, free of the collar, collapsed in relief.
As she lay on the ground panting, recovering from the ordeal, Samuel ran a short distance to the big war horse that Commander Karg had ridden in on. He reached under the horse’s neck and caught the reins. After he had led the horse close, he hooked a hand under Kahlan’s arm.
Kahlan lay limp on the ground, still stunned from the pain of the collar, but she was beginning to move her legs, trying to get up. With Samuel pulling on her arm, she was finally hauled to her feet.
Richard, still unable to get up himself, looked to the side and saw the Sister, holding the tattered shawl closed, stepping over downed men as she came ever closer.
Kahlan staggered unsteadily, but then recovered enough to bend and snatch up a sword. She intended to come to Richard’s aid.
Richard couldn’t allow that.
“Run!” he yelled at her. “Run! There’s nothing you can do here! Get away while you still can!”
Samuel stuffed a boot in a stirrup and sprang up into the saddle.
Kahlan stood staring at Richard, tears in her beautiful green eyes.
“Hurry!” Samuel called down to her.
She didn’t seem to even hear Samuel. She couldn’t take her eyes off Richard. She knew she was leaving him there to die.
“Go!” Richard yelled with all his strength. “Go!”
Tears stung his own eyes. Despite how much he tried, he couldn’t even rise up on his hands and knees. The magic searing through him wouldn’t allow it.
The Sister cast a hand out at Samuel. A flare of light shot through the night.
Samuel used the sword to deflect the flash of light. It arced off into the night sky. The Sister looked surprised.
In the distance all around, the battle raged on. Closer in, the guards stunned by the initial blast of the Sister’s power still hadn’t recovered enough to get up. Apparently, the Sister didn’t want them interfering. She had plans of her own.
The big war horse tossed its head as it pawed the ground. Kahlan looked over at Nicci. She was curled up in a ball, shuddering in pain. Jillian lay on the ground beside her, stunned by the same blast of the Sister’s magic. Despite her chance to escape, Richard knew that Kahlan was going to throw that chance away to try to help them.
He knew that there was nothing Kahlan could do for Nicci. If Kahlan stayed, she would die. It was as simple as that. As much as he hated the thought, at the moment Samuel was her only salvation.
“Run!” Richard cried out, his voice choked with tears.
“But I have to help Nicci and—”
“There’s nothing you can do for her! You’ll die! Run while you still can!”
Samuel reached down and seized her arm, helping to pull her up onto the horse behind him. As soon as she was up, Samuel wasted no time in kicking his heels against the horse. The horse bounded away at a dead gallop, throwing up dirt and rocks in its wake.
As the horse disappeared into the darkness, Kahlan looked back over her shoulder.
He never took his eyes off her, knowing that it was the last time he would ever see her.
In a moment, still looking back at Richard, she vanished into the dark confusion of the camp and was gone.
Richard sagged against the cold, hard ground, tears dripping from his face.
Out of the darkness, the Sister, making her way among the hundreds of stunned royal guards rolling on the ground, finally arrived to stand over him. He felt the level of pain increase, making it difficult to pull each breath. She wanted to make absolutely certain that he wasn’t able to lift so much as a finger against her.
She peered down at him in surprised wonder. “Well, well, as I live and breathe, if it isn’t Richard Rahl himself.”
Richard didn’t remember the Sister. She looked haggard. Her graying hair was unkempt. Her clothes were little more than rags. She looked more like a beggar than a Sister of the Light—or a Sister of the Dark, he didn’t know which.
“His Excellency is going to be very pleased with me for bringing him such a prize. I think he will be more than pleased, as well, to have a chance at last to extract vengeance on you, my boy. I imagine that before the night is finished you will be just beginning a very long ordeal in the torture tents.”
Memories of Denna flashed through Richard’s mind.
CHAPTER 38
Even in his agony, unable to get up off the ground, Richard couldn’t help being joyful that Kahlan no longer had that terrible collar around her neck. She was free of Jagang.
Richard knew that even if Samuel got himself caught or killed before they could escape the camp, Kahlan was invisible to these men. She would still be able to get away on her own. Knowing Kahlan, she would probably use that advantage to annihilate half the camp on her way out. No matter what happened to Richard, now, his relief for Kahlan was what mattered most to him.
Kahlan didn’t know who she was, and she wouldn’t know where to go, but she would be alive and out of immediate danger. Richard had come to the Order’s encampment to help free her. He had succeeded in that much of it. Despite the peril he was now in, it was worth it to him to have managed to help her get away.
He looked beyond the Sister standing above him to Nicci. It was going very badly for her. He’d had one of those collars around his neck. He knew well the lonely agony she was in. Richard wished that he could help her as well, or at least let her know that she was
n’t alone and abandoned. But he could do nothing.
He knew that Jillian was not going to fare any better. He reminded himself not to fixate on such terrible thoughts.
One problem at a time, he told himself. He had to find some way to help them both.
The pain abruptly lifted from his arms and legs. The rest of him still felt on fire. Even though he could at last begin to move, his head was still in so much pain that everything looked blurred and distorted.
“On your feet,” the Sister above him said.
She sounded like she was in a vile mood. She had professed to be pleased that catching Richard would gain her a reward from Jagang, but she certainly didn’t sound like a woman in good spirits over her unexpected luck.
She had to be a Sister of the Dark, he decided. He supposed that it didn’t really matter.
“I bet you’re not too happy to see my face again,” she said in a tone of smug satisfaction.
She probably thought she had been important, thought the whole world would know her haughty scowl, her condescending attitude, her sharp tongue. Some people thought they could gain prominence, prestige, and renown through pompous arrogance. They mistook fear for respect. Richard really didn’t remember the woman, though, and saw no point in humoring her.
“Can’t say that I really remember you. Should I, for some reason?”
“Liar! Everybody at the palace knew me!”
“That’s nice,” Richard said, trying to stall so that he could recover some of his strength.
“On your feet!”
Richard did his best to try to comply. It wasn’t easy. His limbs didn’t work as well as he would have liked.
Once he was up onto his hands and knees she kicked him in the ribs. Richard winced at the blow. Fortunately, she didn’t have the weight or power to make the kick damaging, merely painful. It was her gift that was dangerous.
“Now!” she screamed.
Richard staggered to his feet. His arms and legs were beginning to shake off the searing pain. His head wasn’t.
The men all around were still down, but some of them looked like they were beginning to regain consciousness. Bruce rolled over, groaning as he clutched his head.
The Sister’s gaze flicked across at a rise in the noise of the battle in the darkness beyond. Richard used the opportunity to take a quick glance, surveying the weapons on the ground. If she turned her back on him he had to take the chance. Once Jagang had him strapped down in the torture tents Richard knew that he would never see the light of day again.
As much as that fate terrified him, a part of him couldn’t help feeling lighthearted knowing that Kahlan had gotten away. He swallowed back his anguish at the tears he had seen in her eyes as she had made good her escape. It reminded him of how much she loved him, but she no longer remembered that.
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited for something like this, something that could gain me the emperor’s favor. At last the Creator has answered my prayers and delivered you into my grasp.”
“So,” Richard said, “your Creator is in the habit of delivering victims to you in answer to prayers? He is so giddy at the flattery of your grimy hands pressed together in supplication to him that he is only too eager to help you fill the torture tents?”
She watched him with a slow, cunning smile. “Your flippant tongue will shortly be cut out so humble servants of the Creator will not have to hear you spout your blasphemy.”
“A few people have told me that my flippant tongue is one of my shortcomings, so you will only be doing me a service by removing it.”
Her cunning smile curdled with bile. She turned to the side, gesturing expansively out at the camp. “You think that you—”
Richard slammed a kick to the side of her face with all the force he could muster. The powerful blow completely caught her off guard, lifting her feet clear of the ground as it smashed into her. Teeth and blood flew off into the darkness. She landed on her side with a hard thud. The stunning impact of his boot looked to have shattered her jaw.
Richard dove for a sword. He knew that he dared not underestimate such a woman. Until she was dead, she could kill him—or make him wish that he was dead. His fingers seized the hilt of a sword. He spun around to plunge it into her.
The air exploded with light. Richard landed on his back so hard that it drove the air from his lungs.
She was up, blood streaming from the bottom of her face in long strings that whipped around as she lifted both hands. Richard could hardly believe that she was able to stand. She looked like the freshly dead come back to life. He knew that she couldn’t last for long, but she could very well last long enough to kill him.
The shock of the blow had obviously done horrific damage, yet that sudden shock in the heat of battle also kept her from feeling the pain right then. While for all he knew she might shortly begin to feel it and collapse screaming in agony, at the moment she wasn’t feeling it and a moment was all she was going to need.
Murder filled her eyes.
Richard tried to scramble to his feet to finish her, but it felt like a bull had lain down on his chest. The air was being squeezed out of him.
She took a step toward him, then paused, looking confused. Her eyes went out of focus. She abruptly clutched her chest.
Richard blinked in surprise as he watched her stumble forward another step and topple face-first, slamming hard onto the ground without even trying to break her fall. He stared for an instant, not sure if it was a trick of some kind. She didn’t move. The weight had lifted from his chest.
Not wanting to waste the opportunity, he grabbed the sword he’d dropped.
Something caught Richard’s attention. He looked up and could not believe who he thought he saw standing in the darkness behind where the Sister had been only a moment before.
“Adie?”
The old woman smiled.
“Adie—am I ever glad to see you,” Richard said as he scrambled to his feet.
“True,” she said, nodding.
“What are you doing here?”
“I be headed out to go to the Keep when I saw the strangest Ja’La game with players all painted with very, very dangerous things. That be when I knew it could only be you. Since then, I tried to reach you. It be a bit of trouble.”
He could only imagine.
Richard didn’t take the time to consider the whole thing or question the old sorceress. He ran to where Nicci lay on the ground convulsing in pain. Her eyes stared up at him in terror, as if pleading for help. She was lost in a world of agony. It was the collar, he knew, that was inflicting the torture. He didn’t know what to do.
“Can you help her?” Richard asked over his shoulder.
Adie knelt next to him. She shook her head. “It be the Rada’Han. That not be something I can get off.”
“Do you have any idea who can?”
“Nathan, maybe.”
“Lord Rahl, we need to hurry,” an approaching voice said. “These men are waking up.”
Richard frowned up at the man appearing out of the darkness, sword in hand. It was Benjamin Meiffert. He was dressed like one of Jagang’s more trusted guards.
“General, what in the world are you doing here?” The recent supply convoy came to Richard’s mind. “You’re supposed to be down in the Old World laying waste to the Order’s ability to keep this army alive.”
He was nodding. “I know. I needed to come back to give you a report. We’ve run into a problem. A big problem.”
Richard knew the man well enough to know that the trouble would have to be more than merely serious for him to abandon his mission to return to report to Richard what was going wrong. This was hardly the place to discuss it, though.
“I wasn’t sure where I could find you,” the general said, “but I figured that the last time I saw you it was near here, so I thought this would be my best bet. I reasoned that if you weren’t here, they at least might know where you were. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get
up into the palace.
“A little while ago Adie and I came across each other. She told me that you were down here in the middle of this mess. I wasn’t sure I believed her—believed it was possible. Turns out she was right.”
Richard didn’t take the time to ask how he’d managed to come up with the uniform of one of Jagang’s guards. That uniform was obviously how he had been able to move around in the camp without getting himself captured or killed.
“How did you get down here?” the general asked Adie. “Maybe we can get back in the palace that way.”
Adie was shaking her head. “I came down the road. It be dark and I be alone. I used my ability to help hide my presence as I reached the army guarding at the bottom of the road.
“We cannot go back that way. There be too many guards. They have gifted there with webs in place to detect those who try to slip through. Those shields not be powerful, but they be enough to snare us.”
“But with your power—”
“No,” she said, cutting off the general. “My power be weak in the palace. Even near the plateau it still not be as it should. All those with the gift be weaker there, but they use their ability together to make it stronger. I have no other gifted to help me. I could help hide myself from them when I came through, but I not be strong enough to help all of us, especially not with the burden of Nicci in such grave condition. If we try to go back that way, we will die.”
“The great inner doors are closed,” the man said, thinking out loud as he considered. “They’re heavily guarded as well. Even if we could get through we certainly couldn’t get those doors opened.”
“Nicci said she knew a way to get up into the palace,” Richard told them. “She told me that we have to get to the ramp. I don’t know what she was talking about, but we need to find a fast way out of this camp before we get caught. I don’t think Nicci has much time, either.”
Adie, leaning close, touched her slender fingers to Nicci’s forehead. “True.”
Richard scooped Nicci up in his arms. “Let’s go.”
General Meiffert stepped forward. “I can carry her, Lord Rahl.”