“Mother Confessor,” Captain Harris said, “just a little while ago a Raug’Moss showed up in Petitioners’ Hall.”
“A what?”
“A Raug’Moss. From D’Hara.”
“I don’t know much about D’Hara. Who are they?”
“They’re a secret sect. I don’t know much about them myself. The Raug’Moss keep to themselves, and are rarely seen—”
“Get to the point. What’s he doing here?”
“This one is the Raug’Moss High Priest himself. The Raug'Moss are healers. He says he sensed that a new Lord Rahl had become Master of D’Hara, and he came to offer his services to his new master.”
“A healer? Well, don’t just stand there—go get him. Maybe he can help. Hurry.”
Captain Harris clapped a fist to his heart before racing up the ladder.
Kahlan pulled Cara’s shoulders and head into her lap and held her tight, trying to calm her convulsions. Kahlan didn’t know what else to do. She knew a lot about hurting people, but little about healing them. She was so sick of hurting people. She wished she knew more about helping people. Like Nadine.
“Hold on, Cara,” she whispered as she rocked the shaking woman. “Help is coming. Hold on.”
Kahlan’s eyes were drawn to the top of the opposite wall. The words incised in the stone stared back. She knew nearly every language in the Midlands, all Confessors did, but she knew nothing about High D’Haran. High D’Haran was a dead language; few people knew the ancient tongue.
Richard was learning High D’Haran. He and Berdine worked together translating the journal they had found in the Keep—Kolo’s journal, they called it—which had been written in High D’Haran, in the great war three thousand years before. Richard would be able to translate the prophecy on the wall.
She wished he couldn’t. She didn’t want to know what it said. Prophecy was never anything but trouble.
She didn’t want to believe that Jagang had unleashed some unknown festering plague of torment on them, but she couldn’t find a good reason to doubt his word.
She pressed her cheek to the top of Cara’s head and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see the prophecy. She wanted it gone.
Kahlan felt tears running down her face. She didn’t want Cara to die. She didn’t know why she should feel so much for this woman, except perhaps because no one else did. The soldiers wouldn’t even come down to see why she had stopped screaming. She could have choked to death on her own vomit. Something as simple as that, not magic, could have killed her because they were afraid, or perhaps because no one cared if she died.
“Hold on, Cara. I care.” She smoothed the Mord-Sith’s hair back from her clammy forehead. “I care. We want you to live.”
Kahlan squeezed the quaking woman, as if trying to squeeze her words, her concern, into her. It occurred to her that Cara wasn’t so different from herself; Cara was trained to hurt people.
When it all came down to it, Kahlan was much the same. She used her power to destroy a person’s mind. She knew that she was doing it to save others, but it was still hurting people. Mord-Sith hurt people, but to them, it was to help their master, to preserve his life, and that in turn was to save the lives of the D’Haran people.
Dear spirits, was she no more than this Mord-Sith she was trying to bring back from madness?
Kahlan could feel the Agiel hanging around her neck pressing against her chest as she held Cara. Was she a sister of the Agiel in more ways than one?
If Nadine had been killed in the beginning, would she have cared? Nadine helped people; she didn’t make a life of hurting them. No wonder Richard had been attracted to her.
She wiped her cheek as the tears ran more freely.
Her shoulder throbbed. She hurt all over. She wanted Richard to hold her. She knew he was going to be angry, but she needed him so badly at that moment. It was hurting her shoulder to hold the trembling woman in her lap, but she refused to let go.
“Hold on, Cari. You’re not alone; I’m with you. I won’t leave you. I promise.”
“Is she any better?” Nadine asked, as she scurried down the ladder.
“No. She’s still unconscious and shaking like before.”
As she knelt, Nadine let her bag drop to the floor beside Kahlan. Things inside banged together with muffled sounds.
“I told those men to wait up there. We don’t want to move her until we can bring her out of it, and they’ll just be in the way.”
Nadine started pulling things out of her bag, little folded cloth packages, leather pouches with markings scratched on them, and stoppered horn containers, likewise scratched with symbols. She briefly inspected the markings before setting each item aside.
“Blue cohosh,” she mumbled to herself as she squinted at the cryptic marks on one of the leather pouches. “No, I don’t think it would do, and she’d have to drink cups of it.” She took out several more leather pouches, before pausing at another. “Pearly everlasting. Might work, but we’d have to get her to smoke it, somehow.” She sighed irritably. “That won’t do.” She considered a horn. “Mugwort,” she muttered as she set it aside. “Feverfew?” She put that horn in the damp sling of her dress in her lap. “Yes, betony might be of some good, too,” she said as she considered another. She added the horn to her lap.
Kahlan picked up one of the horns Nadine had set aside and pulled its cork. The pungent smell of anise made her pull back. She pushed the cork back in and set it down.
She picked up another. Two circles were deeply scratched into the patina of the horn. A horizontal line ran through both circles. Kahlan wiggled the carefully carved wooden stopper, trying to pull it free.
Nadine slapped the horn out of Kahlan’s hands. “Don’t!”
Kahlan looked up in surprise. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snoop in your things. I was—”
“No, it’s not that.” She picked up the horn with the two circles struck through with a line and held it up. “This is powdered canin pepper. If you aren’t careful when you open it, you could get it on your hands, or worse, in your face. It’s a powerful substance that will immobilize a person for a time. If you had opened it carelessly, you would have been on the floor, blind and gasping for air, convinced you were about to die.
“I thought about using it on Cara, to stop her shaking by paralyzing her, but I decided it best not to. It immobilizes a person partly by interfering with their breathing. It feels like it’s burning your eyes out of your head; it blinds you. Your nose feels on fire, you’re sure your heart is going to burst, and you can’t get your breath. You’re helpless. Trying to wash it off only makes it worse, because the powder is oily and just spreads.
“It doesn’t cause any real harm, and you’d recover completely in a short time, but until then, you’re disabled and totally helpless. I don’t think immobilizing Cara in that fashion would be good, since she’s already having trouble breathing. In her state, it might make her worse, instead of helping her.”
“Do you know what to do, to help her? You do know what to do, don’t you?” Kahlan asked, trying not to sound critical.
Nadine’s hand paused on the edge of her bag. “Well, I… I think I do. It’s not so common a problem that I’m sure, but I’ve heard of it. My father has mentioned it in passing.”
Kahlan wasn’t reassured. Nadine found a small bottle in her bag and held it up in the torchlight. She pulled the cork and turned the bottle upside down on a finger.
“Hold her head up.”
“What is it?” Kahlan asked as she turned Cara over. She watched Nadine rub the substance on Cara’s temples.
“Oil of lavender. It helps with headaches.”
“I think she has more than a simple headache.”
“I know, but until I find something else, it might help ease the pain, and that might help calm her. I don’t think I have any one thing that by itself will do it. I’ll need to try to add things together.
“The problem is that with the convulsions we can’t
get her to drink decoctions or teas. Motherwort and linden help calm people, but we can’t get her to drink a whole cup of it in water. Black horehound would help stop the vomiting, but she’d have to drink five cups a day. I don’t see how we can get her to drink the first until we stop the convulsions. Maybe we could get her to swallow some feverfew. But there is one thing I’m hoping…”
Nadine’s long, damp hair hung around her face as she pawed through her bag. She came up with another small, brown bottle.
“Yes! I did bring it.”
“What is it?”
“Tincture of maypop. It’s a strong sedative and also a painkiller. I’ve heard my pa say that it settles people who are in a state of nervous shakes. I think he may have meant shakes like convulsions. Since it’s a tincture, we can put some on the back of her tongue; she’ll swallow it, that way.”
Cara shuddered violently in Kahlan’s arms. Kahlan embraced her tighter until she settled a bit. She didn’t know if she liked the idea of having to rely on Nadine’s “I think,” but Kahlan had no better solution. Something had to be done.
Nadine was working her thumbnail at the wax seal on the little brown bottle of tincture of maypop when the shaft of light coming from the doorway above darkened. Nadine’s hands stilled.
A motionless, silhouetted figure filled the doorway, seeming to consider them at length. With nary a flutter of his long cloak, he wheeled and started down the ladder.
In the silence, but for the hissing torch, Kahlan absently stroked a protective hand over Cara’s brow as she watched the man in a hooded cloak descend the ladder.
13
Nadine paused at her work on the wax seal.
“Who…?”
“He’s some kind of healer,” Kahlan whispered as she watched the man’s methodical descent. “From D’Hara. I was told he came to offer his services to Richard. I think he’s an important person.”
Nadine grunted dismissively. “What’s he going to do without any herbs or things?” She leaned closer while watching him. “He doesn’t seem have anything with him.”
Kahlan shushed her. Stone dust crunched under his boots as he turned, the sound echoing in the hush of the pit. He approached in measured strides. The torch was on the wall behind him, so Kahlan couldn’t see his features in the deeply cowled hood of the voluminous, coarse flaxen cloak that hung to the floor.
He was as tall as Richard, with shoulders just as wide.
“Mord-Sith,” he observed in a voice that was smooth and authoritative, something like Richard’s, too.
He brought a hand out of his cloak and gestured. Kahlan complied, laying Cara on her back on the stone floor. With the way he seemed to study Cara’s shivering, Kahlan didn’t want to interrupt for introductions. She just wanted someone to help Cara.
“What happened to her?” he asked from the shadow of the cowl, in a voice just as deep and dark.
“She had control of a man who—”
“He had the gift? She was linked with him?”
“Yes,” Kahlan said. “That’s what she called it.” He made a sound in his throat, as if mentally assimilating the information. “It turned out that the man was possessed by a dream walker and—”
“What’s a dream walker?”
“A person, as I understand it, who can invade another person’s mind by slipping into the spaces between their thoughts. He gains control of them in this way. He was covertly possessing this man that she linked with.”
He considered a moment. “I see. Go on.”
“We came down here to question the man—”
“To torture him.”
Kahlan pulled an irritated breath. “No. I told Cara that we were simply going to question him to get answers, if we could. The man was an assassin sent to kill Lord Rahl, and if he didn’t answer the questions, then Cara was prepared to do what she must to get those answers—to protect Lord Rahl.
“But it never got that far. We discovered that this dream walker had control of him, control of his gift. The dream walker used the man’s gift to write a prophecy in the stone behind you.”
The healer didn’t turn to look. “Then what?”
“Then he was going to escape and start killing people. Cara tried to stop him—”
“With her link?”
“Yes. She let out a scream like I’ve never heard before and fell to the ground holding her ears.” Kahlan inclined her head. “Nadine here, and I, went after the man when he tried to escape. Fortunately, he was killed. When we got back, we found Cara on the floor, in convulsions.”
“You shouldn’t have left her alone. She could have choked to death on her own vomit.”
Kahlan pressed her lips together and remained silent. The man just stood there, watching Cara shudder.
Finally, Kahlan could bear it no longer. “This is one of Lord Rahl’s personal guards. She’s important. Do you intend to help her, or you just going to stand there?”
“Quiet,” he commanded in a distracted tone. “One must observe before one acts, or more harm than help can be the result.”
Kahlan glowered at the shadowed form. At last he sank to his knees and sat back on his heels. He lifted Cara’s wrist in one of his big hands, working a finger between her glove and sleeve. He flicked his other hand out over the items on the floor.
“What’s all this?”
“They’re my things,” Nadine said. Her chin rose. “I’m a healer.”
Still holding Cara’s wrist, the man picked up a leather pouch with his other hand, looking at its markings. He set it down and then scooped the two horns from Nadine’s lap.
“Feverfew,” he said as he tossed it back in Nadine’s lap. He looked at the symbols on the other. “Betony.” He tossed it back in her lap with the first.
“You’re not a healer,” he said. “You’re an herb woman.”
“How dare you—”
“Did you give her any of your medicines, besides the oil of lavender?”
“How did… I’ve not had time to give her anything else.”
“Good,” he proclaimed. “The oil of lavender won’t help her, but at least it won’t harm her.”
“Well, of course I know it’s not going to stop the convulsions. It was just to help ease some of her pain. I was going to give her tincture of maypop for that.”
“Were you now? Fortunate that I arrived in time, then.”
Nadine folded her arms across her breasts. “Why’s that?”
“Because tincture of maypop would likely have killed her.”
Nadine scowled as she unfolded her arms and planted fists on her hips. “Maypop is a powerful sedative. It would likely have halted her convulsions. If you hadn’t interfered, I’d have her recovered by now.”
“Is that so? Did you feel her pulse?”
“No.” Nadine paused warily. “Why? What difference could that possibly make?”
“Her pulse is weak, staggering, and labored. This woman is struggling with all her strength to keep her heart beating. Had you given her your maypop, it would have done as you said: sedated her. Her heart would have stopped.”
“I… I can’t see how…”
“Even a simple herb woman should know to use more caution when dealing with magic.”
“Magic.” Nadine wilted. “I’m from Westland. I’ve never seen magic before. I didn’t know magic had any effect on healing herbs. I’m sorry.”
He ignored the apology and pointed. “Undo the buttons and open the top of her outfit.”
“Why?” Nadine asked.
“Do it! Or do you favor watching her die? She can’t hold on much longer.”
Nadine leaned forward and began undoing the row of little red leather buttons along the side of Cara’s ribs. When she finished, he gestured for her to open it. Nadine glanced up at Kahlan. Kahlan gave her a nod, and she pulled back the supple leather, exposing Cara’s chest.
“May I ask your name?” Kahlan asked him.
“Drefan.” Instead of asking hers, he
put an ear to the center of Cara’s chest, listening.
He shifted around, forcing Kahlan to scoot out of the way, until he was at Cara’s head. He briefly inspected the bloody wound above her left ear, and then, seeming to dismiss it as unimportant, went on to systematically probe the base of her neck.
Kahlan could only see the side of his deep cowl, and nothing of his face. The single torch didn’t provide much light, anyway.
Drefan leaned forward and gripped Cara’s breasts in his big hands.
Kahlan sat up straighter. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Examining her.”
“Is that what you call it.”
He sat back on his heels. “Feel her breasts.”
“Why?”
“To see what I discovered.”
Kahlan finally turned from the shadow of his cowl and, rather than grabbing her as he had, put the back of her fingers against the side of Cara’s left breast. It was hot—burning with a fever. She felt the other. It was ice cold.
When Drefan gestured, Nadine followed suit. “What does it mean?” she asked.
“I’d like to reserve judgment until I’ve finished examining her, but it’s not good.”
He put his fingers to the side of her neck, feeling her pulse again. He ran his thumbs outward along her forehead. He bent and put his ear to each of hers. He smelled her breath. He carefully lifted her head and rotated it. He spread her arms out to the sides, pulled the red leather outfit open further so that Cara’s torso was naked to her waist, and then bent over her and palpated her abdomen and up under her ribs.
With his head bent as if in concentration, he touched his fingers to the front of her shoulders for a moment, the sides of her neck, the base of her skull, her temples, several places on her ribs, and lastly to the palms of her hands.
Kahlan was getting impatient. She was seeing a lot of probing and prodding, but very little healing. “Well?”
“Her aura is seriously snarled,” he said, as he brazenly thrust a big hand under the red leather at Cara’s waist.
Kahlan watched in stunned disbelief as his hand slid down to her crotch. She could see his fingers under the tight leather as he worked them into her sex.