Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

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.

"After all that you've both shared with her, how can you two possibly say that Kahlan is just a dream?"

"How indeed," Nicci asked, "if what you're saying were true?"

"Lord Rahl, we would never be so cruel as to try to deceive you about something so important to you."

Richard blinked at them. Could it be? He frantically tried to imagine if there was any possibility that what they were saying could be true.

His fists tightened. "Stop it-both of you!"

It was a plea for a return of sanity. 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 my dreams." He looked at each of them in turn. "Not since I was little. I don't remember any dreams while I was hurt, or while I slept. None. 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."

That had to be it. 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. "Where is Kahlan?"

Nicci cautiously dipped her head, as if beseeching his forgiveness. "Richard, she is just in your mind. I know that such things can seem very real, but it's not. You dreamed her up while you were hurt — nothing more."

"I did not dream up Kahlan." He again turned his plea to the Mord-Sith. "Cara, you've been with us for more than two years. 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."

He gestured to her Agiel, the weapon that looked like nothing more than a short, thin red leather rod hanging by a thin gold chain from her right wrist.

"You even named Kahlan a sister of the Agiel."

Cara stood stiff and mute.

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.

"Cara, you may have started out as a protector to the Lord Rahl, but you've become more than that to Kahlan and me. You've become like family."

Cara would willingly and without hesitation sacrifice her life to protect Richard. 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.

"Thank you, Lord Rahl," she finally said in a meek voice, "for including me in your wonderful dream."

Richard's flesh prickled as a wave of cold dread washed up through him. 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. Maybe it wasn't too late.

CHAPTER 3

Richard knelt beside his bedroll and started jamming clothes into his pack. 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.

"What do you think you're doing?" Nicci asked.

He spotted a cake of soap lying nearby and snatched it up. "What does it look like I'm doing?"

He had already lost far too much time; he'd lost days. 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.