Faith of the Fallen

His posture shifted to stiff wariness. "What of it?"

She focused once more on his gray eyes, eyes that watched her every blink, her every breath, as he weighed her every word. It was all going into some inner calculation, she knew-some inner master analysis of how high was his fence, and if he could jump it. He could not.

"I always wondered about that," she said. "About what you had said about having been in a collar before. Some months back, we captured a woman in red leather. A Mord-Sith." His color paled just a little. "She said she was searching for Lord Rahl, to protect him. I persuaded her to tell me everything she knew about you."

"I'm not from D'Hara." His voice sounded confident, nevertheless, she sensed a subterranean torrent of dread. "A Mord-Sith would know next to nothing about me."

Nicci reached inside her cloak for the thing she had brought with her.

She let the small red leather rod roll from her fingers to fall to the ground at his feet. He stiffened.

"Oh, but she did, Richard. She knew a great deal." She smiled a small smile, not pleasure, nor mockery, but in distant sadness at the memory of that brave woman. "She knew Derma. She had been at the People's Palace in D'Hara, where you were taken after Derma captured you. She knew all about it."

Richard's gaze fell away. On bended knee he reverently picked the red leather rod off the wet ground. He wiped the thing clean on his pant leg as if it were priceless.

"A Mord-Sith would not tell you anything." He stood and boldly met her gaze. "A Mord-Sith is a product of torture. She would say only enough to make you believe she was cooperating. She would feed you a clever lie to deceive you. She would die before speaking any words to harm her Lord Rahl."

With one long finger, Nicci pulled a sodden strand of blond hair off her cheek. "You underestimate me, Richard. That woman was very brave. I felt great sorrow for her, but there were things I wanted to know. She told it all. She told me everything I wanted to know."

Nicci could see the rage rising in him, bringing a flush to his cheeks.

That was not what she had intended, or wanted. She was telling him the truth, but he rejected it, trying to overlay it instead with his own false assumptions.

A moment passed, and that truth finally found its way into his eyes.

The rage departed reluctantly, replaced by the weight of sadness that made him swallow at his grief for this woman. Nicci had expected no less from him.

"Apparently," Nicci whispered, "Derma was very talented at torture-"

"I neither need nor want your sympathy."

"But I did feel sympathy, Richard, for what that woman put you through for no purpose but to give pain. That's the worst kind of pain, isn't it? — pain to no benefit, no confession? The pointlessness of it only adds to its torture. That was what you suffered."

Nicci gestured to the red leather weapon in his fist. "This woman did not suffer that kind of pain. I want you to know that."

He pressed his lips tight in mistrust as he looked away from her eyes, gazing out at the gathering darkness.

"You killed her, this Mord-Sith named Denna, but not before she did unspeakable things to you."

"So I did." Richard's expression hardened with the implied menace of his words.

"You threatened the Sisters of the Light because they, too, collared you. You told them they were not good enough to lick the boots of that woman, Denna, and so they were not. You told the Sisters that they thought they held the leash to your collar, but you promised them that they would find that what they held was a bolt of lightning. Don't think for one moment that I don't understand your feelings in this, or your resolve."

Nicci reached out and tapped the center of his chest.

"But this time, Richard, the collar is around your heart and it is Kahlan who will be forfeit, should you make a mistake."

His fists, at the ends of his rigid arms, tightened. "Kahlan would rather die than have me be a slave at her expense. She begged me to forfeit her life for my freedom. A day may dawn when it becomes necessary for me to honor her request."

Nicci felt a weary boredom at his threats. People so often resorted to threatening her.

"That is entirely up to you, Richard. But you make a great mistake if you think I care."

She couldn't begin to recall how many times Jagang had made solemn threats on her life, or how many of those times his hands had tightened around her throat choking the life out of her after he had beaten her senseless. Kadar Kardeef had at times been no less brutal. She'd lost count of the times she fully expected to die, starting with the time when she was little and the man pulled her into the alley to rob her.

But such men were not the only ones who promised her suffering.

"I cannot tell you the promises the Keeper of the underworld has made to me in my dreams, promises of unending suffering. That is my fate.