Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Richard stood on trembling legs. He realized then that he was still wearing his sword. He was glad to have it at hand. "If Jagang's beast is around, then it might have sensed that I used my gift. I don't know where it might be, but I'd not like to be lying here when it returns."

"Nor would I. Once was enough for a lifetime."

He held out an arm and helped her stand. She balanced in a stiff posture for a moment before gathering her senses and loosening her pose. It somehow seemed startling to him to see that she was dressed in her red leather. After having been so close to her, after having been within her, in a sense, clothes seemed somehow alien.

In some inexplicable manner, Cara drew the aura of Mord-Sith around herself.

She smiled. The composed confidence in that smile lifting his heart. "I'm all right," she said as if to tell him to stop worrying. "I'm back with you."

The steel was back in her eyes. Cara was indeed back.

Richard nodded. "Me too. I'm feeling better now that I'm waking up." He gestured to her pack. "Let's get our things and get moving."

CHAPTER 20

Nicci stood at the edge of the hill, hands clasped, gazing across the grounds at the white marble statue lit by torches. The people of Altur'Rang had thought that such a noble figure, a symbol of liberty for them, should never go dark and so it was always lit.

Nicci had slowly paced the gloomy hall in the inn for much of the night, dispirited about the life slipping away on the other side of the door. She had tried everything she knew to save Cara, but it had been hopeless.

Nicci didn't know Cara all that well, but she certainly knew Richard. She probably knew him better than anyone alive, except, perhaps, his grandfather Zedd. She didn't know his past so well, the stories about his childhood or that sort of thing; she knew Richard the man. She knew him down to the core of his soul. There was no one alive she knew better.

She understood the depth of his grief at losing Cara. Throughout the vigil, Nicci's gift, unbidden, had brought her the sounds of some of that open misery. It broke Nicci's heart to have Richard suffer such a loss. She would have done anything to have spared him that.

At one point she had thought to go in and comfort Richard's grief, to ease some of it by sparing him at least a bit of the loneliness of it. The door would not open.

While it was puzzling, what she could sense told her that there were only two people inside and what she could hear told her that there was nothing more than simple sorrow on the other side, so she hadn't tried to force open the stuck door. Unable to bear the pain of listening to Richard's supplications to Cara as she lay dying, Nicci had eventually gone outside, finally ending up staring out across the black chasm of night to the statue he had created.

Other than being with Richard himself, there were few things Nicci would rather do than gaze at the majestic things he had created.

Sometimes the death of someone close had a way of making people see the world in a new light, a way of making them come back to those things that were most important in life. She wondered what Richard would once Cara passed away, if it would jolt him back to reality and he would finally abandon the search for phantoms and stand with the people who? wanted to be free of the Imperial Order.

Hearing footsteps, and then her name called, Nicci turned.

It was Richard, with someone else, approaching through the shadows. Nicci's heart sank. That could only mean that Cara's ordeal had finally ended.

As Richard came close, Nicci saw who was with him.

"Dear spirits, Richard," she whispered, her eyes going wide, "what have you done?"

In the dim light of the distant torches Cara looked perfectly alive and well.

"Lord Rahl healed me," she said, offhandedly, as if such an accomplishment had been a minor task of no more note than if he had helped her to fetch water.

Nicci stared in shock. "How?" was all she could say.

Richard looked as weary as if he had been through a battle. She half expected to see him covered in blood.

"I couldn't stand the thought of not doing something to try to help her," he said. "I suppose that the need was strong enough so that I was able to somehow do what I needed to do in order to heal her."

The meaning of why that door wouldn't open suddenly became all too clear. He had indeed been through a battle, and he was, in a sense, covered in blood, just not the kind one could see.

Nicci leaned toward him. "You used your gift." It was a charge, not a question. Nonetheless he answered it.

"I guess so."

"You guess so." Nicci wished she could make herself not sound like she was mocking him. "I tried everything I knew. Nothing I did was able to reach her. I couldn't heal her. What did you do? And how did you manage to touch your Han?"