Faith of the Fallen

In the quiet of the wayward pine, with the rain outside falling in a gentle patter and the glowing checkered wood hissing softly, Nicci's focused, intense, resolute expression turned very cold and very still.

"But if I should decide I do, Richard, you will comply with that, too."

Nicci was a beautiful woman, the kind of woman most any man would eagerly accept. It was hardly that, though, that made him believe her. It was the look in her eyes. Never had the vague possibility of the act of sex seemed so vicious.

Her voice lost the conversational quality. It went on in a lifeless drone, a thing not human, pronouncing a sentence on his life. A sentence he himself would enforce, or Kahlan would die.

"You will act as my husband. You will provide for us as any husband would. You will care for me, and I for you, in the sense of worldly needs. I will mend your shirts and cook your meals and wash your clothes. You will provide us with a living."

Nicci's leaden words slammed into him with the deliberate methodical force of a beating delivered with an iron bar.

"You will never see Kahlan again-you must understand that-but as long as you do as I wish, you will know she lives. In that way you will be able to show your love for her. Every day she wakes, she will know you are keeping her alive. You have no other way to show her your love."

He felt sick to his stomach. He stared off into memories of another place and time.

"And if I choose to end it?" The weight of such madness was so crushing that he earnestly considered it. "Rather than be your slave?"

"Then perhaps that is the form the knowledge I seek will take. Maybe that senseless end will be what I must learn." She brought her first and second fingers together in a snipping motion, simulating the cutting of the umbilical cord of magic that sustained Kahlan's life. "One last evil convulsion to finally confirm the senselessness of existence."

It dawned on Richard that this woman could not be threatened, because she was a creature who, he was beginning to understand, welcomed any terrible outcome.

"Of all there is to me in this world," he whispered in dim agony, more to himself and to Kahlan than to his implacable captor, "there is only one thing that is irreplaceable: Kahlan. If I must be a slave in order for Kahlan to live, then I shall be a slave."

Richard realized Nicci was silently studying his face. He met her gaze briefly, then looked away, unable to bear the terrible scrutiny of her beautiful blue eyes while he held the image of Kahlan's love in his mind.

"Whatever you shared with her, whatever happiness, joy, or pleasure, will always be yours, Richard." Nicci seemed almost to be peering inside him, reading the pages of his past written in his mind. "Treasure those memories. They will have to sustain you. You will never see her again, nor she you. That chapter of your life is ended. You both have new lives, now.

You may as well get used to it because that is the reality of the situation."

The reality of what was. Not the world as he would wish it. He himself had told Kahlan that they must act according to the reality of what was, and not waste their precious lives wishing for things that could not be.

Richard ran his fingertips across his forehead as he tried to hold his voice steady. "I hope you don't expect me to learn to be pleased with you."

"I am the one, Richard, who expects to learn."

Fists at his side, Richard shot to his feet. "And what is it you wish this knowledge for?" he demanded in unrestrained, violent bitterness. "Why is it so important to you!"

"As punishment."

Richard stared in stunned disbelief. "What?"

"I wish to hurt, Richard." She smiled distantly.

Richard sank back to the ground.

"Why?" he whispered.

Nicci folded her hands in her lap. "Pain, Richard, is all that can reach that cold dead thing within me that is my life. Pain is the only thing for which I live."

He stared numbly at her. He thought about his vision. There was nothing he could do to fight the advance of the Imperial Order. He could think of nothing he could do to fight his fate with this woman.

If not for Kahlan, he would, at that moment, have thrown himself into a battle with Nicci that would have decided it once and for all. He would have willingly gone to his death fighting this cruel insanity. Except his reason denied him that.

He had to live so that Kahlan would live. For that, and that alone, he had to put one foot in front of the other and march into oblivion.

CHAPTER 27

Kahlan yawned as she rubbed her eyes. Squinting, she arched her back and stretched her sore muscles. The terrible desperate memories swooped in from the sleep-darkened corners of her mind, leaving little chance for any other thoughts to long survive.

She was beyond the realm of merciless anguish and crying; she had entered the sovereign dominion of unbridled anger.