Hard as she could, Kahlan fisted him on the nerve at the side of his upper arm.
He recoiled in pain. He fell to the side of his hip with a groan, covering his arm where she had clouted him.
“I told you, this is an important woman! How dare you grope her like that! I won’t have it, do you understand?”
“I wasn’t groping her,” he growled.
The heat was still in Kahlan’s voice. “Then what do you call it?”
“I was trying to determine what this dream walker has done to her. He’s greatly disturbed her auras, her energy flows, confusing her mind’s control of her body.
“She’s not in convulsions, precisely. She’s having uncontrolled muscular contractions. I was checking to make sure that he hadn’t triggered the part of her brain that controls excitement. I was making sure that he hadn’t put her in a state of continual orgasm. I have to know the extent of the blocks and triggers he’s disturbed so that I know how to reverse it.”
Nadine, eyes widening, leaned forward. “Magic can do such a thing? Make a person have… continual…”
He nodded as he flexed his sore arm. “If the practitioner knows what he’s doing.”
“Can you do such a thing?” she breathed.
“No. I don’t have the gift, or any other form of magic, but I know how to heal—if the damage isn’t too great.” The cowl turned toward Kahlan. “Now, do you wish me to continue, or do you want to watch her die?”
“Continue. But if you put your hand down there again, you are going to be a one-handed healer.”
“I’ve already learned what I needed to know.”
Nadine leaned in again. “Is she…?”
“No.” He flicked his hand irritably. “Pull off her boots.”
Nadine shuffled around and did as he had ordered. He turned a bit toward Kahlan, as if peering at her from the depths of his cowl. “Did you know to hit that particular nerve in my arm with deliberate knowledge, or did you simply get lucky?”
Kahlan studied the shadow, trying to see his eyes. She couldn’t. “I was trained to do such things: to defend myself, and others.”
“I’m impressed. With such understanding of nerves, you could learn to heal instead of hurt.” He turned his attention to Nadine. “Depress the third anterior axis of the dorsin meridian.”
Nadine made a face. “What?”
He waggled his hand, pointing. “Between the tendon at the back of her ankles and the prominent bone sticking out to the sides. Squeeze there with a thumb and one finger. Both ankles.”
Nadine did as she was told while Drefan pressed behind Cara’s ears with his little fingers and at the same time on the tops of her shoulders with his thumbs. “Harder, woman.” He put both palms, one hand atop the other, on Cara’s sternum.
“Second meridian,” he murmured.
“What?”
“Move down half an inch and do it again. Both ankles.” He moved his fingers on Cara’s skull, concentrating on what he was doing. “All right. First meridian.”
“Another half inch down?” Nadine asked.
“Yes, yes, hurry.”
He held Cara’s elbows between a thumb and finger as he lifted them a few inches.
Finally, he sat back on his heels with a sigh. “This is astounding,” he muttered to himself. “This is not good.”
“What is it?” Kahlan asked. “Are you saying that you can’t help her?”
He waved dismissively, as if too distracted to answer.
“Answer me,” Kahlan insisted.
“If I wish you to bother me, woman, I will ask.”
Nadine leaned forward, cocking her head. “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?” She pointed with her chin, indicating Kahlan.
He was feeling Cara’s earlobes. “By the looks of her, I’d say some mucker on the cleaning staff. One in need of a bath.”
“I’ve just had a bath,” Kahlan said under her breath.
Nadine’s voice lowered with import. “You’d better show some respect, Mister Healer. She’s the one who owns this palace. The whole thing. She’s the Mother Confessor herself.”
He ran a finger down the inside of Cara’s upper arms. “Is that so? Well, good for her. Now, be quiet, the both of you.”
“She’s also the betrothed of Lord Richard Rahl himself.”
Drefan’s hands froze. His whole body stiffened.
“And since Lord Richard Rahl is the Master of D’Hara, and you’re from D’Hara,” Nadine went on, “I reckon that makes him the boss of you. If I were you, I’d be showing a lot more respect for Lord Richard Rahl’s future wife. He doesn’t like it when people don’t show respect for women. I’ve seen him knock out people’s teeth for being disrespectful.”
Drefan hadn’t moved a muscle.
Kahlan thought Nadine had put it very crudely, but she doubted it could have been any more effective.
“Not only that,” Nadine added, “but she’s the one who killed the assassin. With magic.”
Drefan finally cleared his throat. “Forgive me, mistress—”
“Mother Confessor,” Kahlan corrected.
“I most humbly beg your forgiveness… Mother Confessor. I had no idea. I had no intention to cause—”
Kahlan cut him off. “I understand. You were more concerned with healing Cara, here, than with formalities. So am I. Can you help her?”
“I can.”
“Please, get on with it then.”
He immediately turned back to Cara. Kahlan frowned as she watched his hands gliding in patterns over the supine woman, keeping just above her flesh. His hands paused occasionally, fingers trembling with effort at an invisible task.
From Cara’s feet, Nadine folded her arms again. “You call this healing? My herbs would have had a better effect than this piffle, and a lot sooner, too.”
He looked up. “Piffle? Is that what you think this is? Just some nonsense? Do you have the slightest idea, young lady, what we’re dealing with?”
“A paroxysm. It must be ended, not prayed over.”
He rose up on his knees. “I am the Raug'Moss High Priest. I am not given to praying for my healings.” Nadine snorted derisively. He nodded, as if deciding something. “You wish to see what we’re dealing with? You want proof your simple herb woman eyes can understand?”
Nadine scowled. “In view of the lack of results, a little proof would be a fine dish.”
He pointed. “I saw a horn of mugwort. Give it here. I presume you have a taper in that bag; bring it, too, after you light it.”
As Nadine took the candle to the torch to light it, Drefan opened his cloak and took several items from a pouch. Nadine handed him the lit candle. He dripped hot wax on the floor to the side and stuck the taper in it.
Drefan reached under his cloak and pulled out a long, thin-bladed knife. He leaned over and pressed it between Cara’s breasts. A ruby drop grew under the point. He set the knife aside and leaned over her. With a long-handled spoon, he skimmed the blood from her flesh.
He sat back, unstopped the horn Nadine had given him, and dumped some mugwort atop the blood in the spoon. “You call this mugwort! You’re only supposed to collect the fluffy underside of the leaf. You’ve got the whole leaf mixed in with it.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s all mugwort.”
“A very low grade, this way. You ought to know to use a high-grade mugwort. What sort of herb woman are you, anyway?”
Nadine squinted in indignation. “It works just fine. Are you trying to find an excuse to get out of showing us that you know what you’re doing? Are you trying to blame your failure on the grade of mugwort?”
“The grade is more than good enough for my purpose, but not for yours.” His tone turned instructional, if not polite. “Next time, purify the sample you collect, and you will find it to be of more help to those who need it.”
He hunched over, holding the spoon to the point of the candle flame until the mugwort ignited, giving off a copious amount of sm
oke and a heavy, musky odor. Drefan circled the smoking spoon over Cara’s stomach, letting the layer of smoke build.
He handed the spoon of smoking mugwort to Nadine. “Hold this between her feet.”
He put his fingers to his temples as he murmured a chant under his breath.
He took his hands from his head. “Now, watch, and you will see what I can see, what I can feel, without the smoke.”
He put his thumbs to Cara’s temples and his little fingers to the sides of her throat.
The thick layer of mugwort smoke jumped.
Kahlan gasped as she saw ropy lines of smoke coiling and snaking all over Cara. Drefan removed his hands and the smoke trails snapped into a still web of lines. Some arched from her sternum to her breasts, her shoulders, her hips, and her thighs. A tangle of lines went from the top half of her head to points all over her body.
Drefan traced one with a finger. “See this one? From her left temple to her left leg? Watch.” He pressed his fingers to the base of her skull on the left side, and the line of smoke crossed to her right leg. “There. That’s where it belongs.”
“What is all that?” Kahlan asked in astonishment.
“Her meridian lines: the flow of her force, her life. Her aura. It’s more than that, too, but it’s hard to put it all into a few words for you. What I have done is nothing more than the way a shaft of sunlight shows you the dust motes floating in the air.”
Nadine, her mouth hanging open, sat frozen, holding the smoking spoon. “How did you make the line move?”
“By using my life force to compel a healing energy shift where it was needed.”
“Then you have magic,” Nadine breathed.
“No, training. Squeeze her ankles, where you did the first time.”
Nadine set the spoon down and squeezed Cara’s ankles. The tangle of lines going down Cara’s legs twisted and untangled, moving from her hips to her feet in straight lines.
“There,” Drefan said. “You have just corrected her legs. See how they’ve stilled?”
“I did that?” Nadine asked incredulously.
“Yes. But that was the easy part. See here?” He indicated the web of lines coming from her head. “This is the dangerous part of what this dream walker did. It has to be undone. These lines indicate that she can’t control her muscles. She can’t speak, and she’s been blinded. Look here. This line going from her ears outward and then back to her forehead? That’s the only one that’s correct. She can hear and understand everything we say; she just can’t react to it.”
Kahlan’s jaw dropped. “She can hear us?”
“Every word. Rest assured, she knows we’re trying to help her. Now, if you please, I need to concentrate. This all has to be done in the correct order or we’ll lose her.”
Kahlan whisked her hands toward him. “Of course. Do what you need to do to help her.”
Drefan hunched to his task, working his way around Cara’s body, pressing fingers or the flats of his hands to various places on her. At times he used the knife point. He never drew more than a drop of blood as he pressed it into her flesh. At nearly each thing he did, some of the ropy lines of smoke moved, untangling, some laying down against Cara’s body and others curving outward in a smooth arch before returning to a spot he had attended.
When he compressed the flesh between her thumb and first finger, not only did the smoke lines over her arms straighten, but Cara moaned in relief as she twisted her head and rolled her shoulders. It was the first normal response of any kind Cara had given. When he pierced the tops of her ankles with his knife, she gasped and began to breathe with a steady, if rapid, rhythm. Relief and hope flooded through Kahlan.
He at last had moved all the way around her, and was working at her head, pressing his thumbs along the bridge of her nose and across her forehead. Her whole body was still, no longer shaking and quivering. Her chest rose and fell without effort.
He pressed the knife point between her eyebrows. “That should take care of it,” he murmured to himself.
Cara’s blue eyes opened. They searched about until they found Kahlan. “I heard your words,” she whispered. “Thank you, my sister.”
Kahlan smiled her relief. She knew what Cara meant. Cara had, after all, heard Kahlan tell her that she wasn’t alone.
“I got Marlin.”
Cara smiled. “You make me proud to serve with you. I regret that you have gone to all this effort healing me for nothing.”
Kahlan frowned, not knowing what she meant. Cara rolled her head back, looking up at Drefan as he hunched over her.
“How do you feel?” he asked. “Is everything feeling normal now?”
Her brow drew together with a look of foggy confusion bordering on alarm.
“Lord Rahl?” she asked incredulously.
“No, I’m Drefan.”
With both hands, he laid back his cowl. Kahlan’s eyes went wide, along with Nadine’s.
“But my father, too, was Darken Rahl. I am Lord Rahl’s half brother.”
Kahlan stared in wonder. Same size, same muscular build as Richard. Blond hair, like Darken Rahl’s, although shorter and not so straight. Richard’s hair was darker, and coarser. Drefan’s eyes, piercing blue like Darken Rahl’s, rather than gray like Richard’s, nonetheless bore the same cutting, raptor rake. His features possessed that impossibly handsome perfection of a statue that Darken Rahl’s had; Richard hadn’t inherited that cruel perfection. Drefan’s looks, somewhere in the middle, leaned more toward Darken Rahl than Richard.
But while no one would mistake Drefan for Richard, they would have no trouble telling that they were brothers.
She wondered why Cara had made that mistake. Then she saw the Agiel in Cara’s fist. That wasn’t what Cara had meant by “Lord Rahl.” In a confused state, looking at him upside down as she regained consciousness, she hadn’t thought he was Richard.
She had thought he was Darken Rahl.
14
The only sound in the otherwise dead silence was the click, click, click of Richard’s thumbnail on one of the points of the recurved cross guard on his sword. The elbow of his other arm rested on the polished tabletop while he cradled his head between a thumb under his chin and his first finger along his temple. With a calm face, he did his best to control his anger. He was furious. This time, they had crossed the line, and they knew it.
In his mind he had gone over a whole list of possible punishments, but had rejected them all, not because they were too harsh, but because he knew they wouldn’t work. In the end, he settled on the truth. There was nothing harsher than the truth, and nothing else as likely to get through to them.
Before him, in a row, stood Berdine, Raina, Ulic, and Egan. They stood stiffly, their eyes focused at some point over his head and behind him as he sat at the table in the small room he used for meeting with people, reading, and various other work.
To the side of the table hung small landscape paintings of idyllic country scenes, but from the window behind, from which streamed the low-angled rays of morning sunlight, the massive, baleful stone face of the Wizard's Keep glared down on him.
He had been back in Aydindril for only an hour—long enough to discover what had happened after he had left the evening before. All four of his guards had been back since before dawn; he had ordered them to return to Aydindril after Raina and Egan had sauntered into camp the night before. They had thought he wouldn’t make them return in the dead of night. They had been wrong. As brazen as they ordinarily were, the look in his eyes had insured that none of the four dared disobey that order.
Richard had also returned much earlier than he had planned. He had pointed out the quench oak to the soldiers, told them what to collect, and then, instead of overseeing the task, had started back alone for Aydindril before the sun was up. After what he had seen in the night, he’d been too troubled to get any sleep, and had wanted to be back in Aydindril as soon as possible.
Drumming his finger on the tabletop, Richard watched his
guards sweating. Berdine and Raina wore their brown leather outfits, their long, braided hair disheveled from their hard ride.
The two great, blond-headed men, Ulic and Egan, wore uniforms of dark leather straps, plates, and belts. The thick leather plates were molded to fit like a second skin over the conspicuous contours of their muscles. Incised in the leather at the center of their chests was an ornate letter “R,” for the House of Rahl, and beneath that, two crossed swords. Around their arms, just above their elbows, they wore golden bands brandishing razor-sharp projections—weapons for close combat.
No D’Haran but the Lord Rahl’s personal bodyguards wore such weapons. They were more than simply weapons; they were the rarest, the highest badges of honor, earned he knew not how.
Richard had inherited the rule of a people he didn’t know, with customs that were mostly a mystery to him, and expectations he only partly fathomed.
Since they had returned, these four, too, had discovered what had happened with Marlin the night before. They knew why they had been summoned, but he hadn’t said anything to them, yet. He was trying to get a grip on his rage, first.
“Lord Rahl?”
“Yes, Raina?”
“Are you angry with us? For disobeying your orders and coming out to you with the Mother Confessor’s message?”
The message had been a pretense, and they knew it as well as he.
Click, click, click, went his thumbnail. “That will be all. You may go. All of you.”
Their postures relaxed, but none made a move to leave.
“Leave?” Raina asked. “Aren’t you going to punish us?” A smirk spread on her face. “Maybe clean out the stables for a week, or something?”
Richard pushed back from the table as he ground his teeth. He was not in the mood for their impish humor. He rose behind the table.
“No, Raina, no punishment. You may go.”
The two Mord-Sith smiled. Berdine leaned toward Raina, speaking in a whisper, but loud enough for him to hear.
“He realizes that we know best how to protect him.”
They all started for the door.
“Before you go,” Richard said, as he strolled around the table, “I just want you to know one thing.”