Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Richard wondered just what it was she had started, what it was she had in mind, but he was in a hurry to leave. While he was concerned for Nicci's safety, he was vastly more worried about Kahlan. He wanted to get going.

"But I still.»

"When you're done helping these people end the immediate threat from the soldiers who are on their way here, you can catch up with me," Richard told her. "With this wizard, Kronos, leading them, the people here are certainly going to need your help."

"I know." She was nodding, having already been over all of this ground already. "Believe me, I intend to eliminate the threat descending upon Altur'Rang. I don't intend to allow it to waste a lot of my time and then I can leave to catch up with you."

A wave of cold dread washed through him as he suddenly grasped the core of her plan. He wanted to tell her to forget what she was thinking, but he made himself keep silent. He had important and perilous work of his own that he needed to get to. He wouldn't want her telling him that he couldn't do what he had planned.

Besides, she was a sorceress who knew very well what she was doing. She had been a Sister of the Dark-one of six such women who had managed to become his teachers at the Palace of the Prophets. When one of them had tried to kill him to steal his gift, Richard had killed her instead. That had been the beginning of the battle that had brought down the palace. Jagang eventually captured the rest, including Sister Ulicia, their leader. In order to save Kahlan's life, Richard had once allowed five of them to swear a bond to him so that they could escape the dream walker's hold on them. Nicci hadn't been with them at the time. Another later died in the sliph, leaving only those four Sisters of the Dark, besides Nicci, not in Jagang's clutches.

Nicci was certainly a formidable threat to any who opposed her. He just hoped she wasn't taking a foolish chance just to be able to more quickly get back to protect him.

Richard hooked his thumbs behind his belt, not quite knowing what it was she wanted. "You will be welcomed to join me whenever you can manage it. I told you that."

"I know."

"A piece of advice." He waited until her gaze turned up to his. "No matter how powerful you think you are, something as simple as an arrow can still kill you."

A brief smile visited her face. "That advice goes both ways, wizard."

A thought occurred to him. "How will you find me?"

She reached up and gripped his shirt at the collar as she leaned against him. "That's why I wanted to be alone with you. I will need to touch you with magic so that I can find you."

Richard's suspicion flared. "What kind of magic?"

"I guess you could say that it's a little like your bond to the D'Haran people which allows them to find you. Now is not the time to go into an explanation of it."

Richard began to worry about why she would need to be alone with him to do such a thing. Still gripping his shirt, she pressed against him, her eyes sliding half closed.

"Just stay still," she whispered.

She looked rather hesitant and reluctant about whatever it was she had planned. She looked and sounded as if she were slipping into a trance.

Richard could have sworn that the lamps had been brighter, before. Now the stable was dimly lit in a mellow orange glow. The hay smelled sweeter. The air felt warmer.

Richard thought that perhaps he shouldn't be allowing her to do whatever it was that she intended to do. In the end, though, he decided that he trusted her.

Nicci's left hand released its grip on his shirt and slipped up and over his shoulder to the back of his neck. Her fingers glided around his neck. Her hand fisted, holding his hair at the back of his head to keep him still.

Richard's level of alarm rose. He suddenly wasn't so sure that he wanted her to touch him with her power. He'd felt her magic several times before and it wasn't something he was exactly eager to experience again.

He wanted to back away, but, somehow, he didn't.

Nicci leaned in even more and gently kissed his cheek.

It was more than a kiss.

The world around him dissolved. The stables, the humid air, the sweet aroma of hay, all seemed to cease to exist. The only thing that existed was his connection to Nicci, as if she were all that held him from evaporating as well.

He was swept into a rising realm of breathless pleasure with all of life itself. It was an overpowering, disorienting, magnificent sensation. Everything, from the feel of the connection to her, the warmth and life of her, to all the beauty of the world, felt as if it flooded through him, filling him until it saturated his mind, making him dizzy with the staggering exhilaration of it.

Every kind of pleasure he had ever known swept through him with overwhelming force, amplified beyond anything he had ever experienced, engulfing him in bliss so intense that the satisfaction of it brought a gasp and tears.