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“But you swore the oath.”
“We swore the oath in word only, not in our hearts.”
“But you can be free of him! You don’t need to serve Jagang!”
“Had you told us true the first time, maybe, but once we tried, and failed to hold the bond when Richard died, His Excellency punished us. We’ll not take the chance again.”
“Don’t do this,” Verna pleaded. “We’re friends. I came to save you. Don’t do this, please. Swear the bond, and you will be free!”
“Oh, darlin, I’m afraid she can’t do that.” It was not Amelia’s voice alone, but more. It was the voice Verna had heard in her own head: Jagang. She felt herself suddenly trembling, just at hearing his tone and inflection in Amelia’s voice.
“Now, my loyal and faithful plenipotentiary, hand over the book. Sister Amelia and I have more use of it.”
Nathan held it out to the side. With her other hand, the one not on the dacra in his leg, Amelia snatched back the book.
“Well,” Nathan said, “are you going to kill me, or not?”
“Oh, yes, I intend to kill you,” Amelia said in Jagang’s voice. “You betrayed our bargain, Lord Rahl. Besides, I don’t like having subordinates who won’t allow me into their minds.
“Before you die, I thought I’d let you watch how a real slave obeys orders. I thought you’d like to watch me cut your little darlin Clarissa’s throat.”
Breathe.
Kahlan expelled the sliph from her lungs, and with frantic need, sucked in the alien air. Night crashed in around her. She refused to spare the time to fear the sudden vision, the sudden sound, to give it time to settle into place in her mind, and instead seized the stone wall to hoist herself out.
A frightening sight—to match the words she had already heard—greeted her. With her vision enhanced by the sliph, she took in the whole scene at once, in one slamming jolt.
The instant she saw him, Kahlan knew this was Nathan. He looked like a Rahl, and Richard had told her about Nathan—tall, older, with long white hair to his shoulders. A woman had stabbed a dacra into his leg, and was holding it there. Kahlan had heard her name: Amelia—the one who had started the plague. Kahlan saw Verna, with a woman at her back. A young man stood frozen. Kahlan saw a beautiful young woman holding another woman by a fistful of hair done in ringlets—it could only be Clarissa. The woman’s other fist held a knife at the terrified Clarissa’s throat.
As Kahlan had emerged from the sliph, she was conscious of the last part of the conversation that had just taken place, and knew well the voice coming from the woman holding the dacra in Nathan’s leg. Kahlan knew well the word “darlin.” She remembered hearing that voice from the wizard, Marlin, who had come to assassinate Richard. It was Jagang’s voice.
The image of the amulet Richard wore came unbidden into Kahlan’s mind. It means only one thing, and everything: cut. Once committed to fight, cut. Everything else is secondary. Cut.
Her training at the hands of her warrior father had been much the same. Kill or be killed. Never yield. Never wait. Attack.
Richard was near death—near his last breath. She had no time to spare, no time to consider. She was committed. Cut.
In one fluid movement, she erupted from the sliph, dived out of the well, yanked a short sword free of the scabbard on the soldier standing right there, ducked her head, tumbled forward, and came up with the sword already whipping down.
In the span of a heartbeat, before anyone had time to flinch, Kahlan was there. She had to stop Amelia before she released her magic into the dacra in Nathan’s leg, or he would be dead. Like lightning, her sword descended, severing Sister Amelia’s arm at the crook of her elbow.
And then, everything moved in a painfully slow dance. Kahlan could see the expression on every face. The woman Kahlan had just cut, Sister Amelia, was falling back with a cry. Already, Kahlan’s sword was whirling, to reverse her handhold, as she followed her quarry down. Verna was spinning, a dacra in her own hand, toward a surprised woman behind her. The young man was diving toward the woman with the knife. Nathan’s hands were coming up toward Clarissa. His scream cut through the night.
Clarissa was reaching toward Nathan. The young woman holding her by the hair snarled with a vicious sneer, and savagely cut through Clarissa’s throat.
Kahlan saw the spray of blood for only an instant before the night exploded with lightning from both Nathan and the young man.
Her left hand now joined with her right, Kahlan slammed her sword down through Sister Amelia’s heart, pinning her to the ground before the second soldier had his sword clear of his scabbard.
Verna’s dacra expeditiously dispatched the woman behind her at the same time as the young woman with the knife took two bolts of lightning, shattering her in a red horror as Clarissa’s body still collapsed toward the ground.
The violence was over before comprehension could catch up with it.
In a daze, Nathan staggered toward Clarissa’s body. Kahlan rushed past him and knelt beside Clarissa. The sight that greeted her brought a gasp.
Kahlan sprang up and put her hands against Nathan, stopping him. “It’s too late, Nathan. She’s with the spirits, now. Don’t look. Please don’t look. I saw in her eyes the love she had for you. Please don’t look at her like this. Remember her the way she was.”
Nathan nodded. “She had a good heart. She saved so many people. She had a good heart.”
Nathan lifted his arms. He held his palms out toward Clarissa’s body. Intense light flared forth, flooding the dead woman with a brilliant blaze so radiant that the body couldn’t be seen at its center.
“From the light of this fire, and into the Light. Safe journey to the spirit world,” Nathan whispered. When the light was gone, only ash remained.
Nathan slumped. “The vultures can have the rest of them.”
Verna tucked her dacra back up her sleeve. One soldier retrieved his sword from Amelia’s body as the other sheathed his.
The young man looked in shock. “Nathan, I’m so sorry. I gave Jagang the meaning of prophecy that helped him. I didn’t want to, but he made me. I’m so sorry.”
Nathan’s doleful, azure eyes turned toward the young man. “I understand, Warren. You didn’t do it out of malice; the dream walker was in your mind and you had no choice. You are free of him now.”
Nathan yanked the dacra from his leg. He turned to Verna.
“You brought traitors to me, Verna. You brought assassins to me. But I realize you had not intended it. Sometimes prophecy overwhelms our attempts to outwit it, and catches us unaware. Sometimes we think we are more clever than we are, and that we can stay the hand of fate, if we wish it hard enough.”
Verna straightened her cloak on her shoulders. “I thought I was saving them from Jagang. I never had any idea that they would give the oath to you without committing their hearts.”
“I understand,” Nathan whispered.
“I don’t know what goes through that head of yours, Nathan. Lord Rahl indeed.” Verna glanced to where Clarissa’s body had been, and where now there was only white ash. “And I see that you haven’t changed your ways, Nathan. Once again, you’ve gotten another of your little whores killed.”
The impact of Nathan’s fist lifted Verna clear off the ground. Her jawbone shattered with a loud crack. Strings of blood sailed out into the night air. Warren cried out as Verna
landed flat on her back. She didn’t move.
Warren, crouched at Verna’s side, looked up with frantic eyes. “Nathan! Dear Creator, why would you do this? You’ve broken her jaw. Why would you try to kill her?”
Nathan flexed his fist. “If I was trying to kill her, she would be dead. If you want her to live, then I would suggest you heal her. I’ve heard that you are talented at healing, and with what I have done for you tonight, you should be able to accomplish it in short order. Put some sense in her head, while you’re at it.”
Warren bent over Verna, pressing his hands to the unconscious woman’s face. Kahlan said nothing. She had seen love in Nathan’s eyes when he had looked at Clarissa. She had just seen rage, too.
Nathan bent and retrieved the inky black book lying on the ground beside Sister Amelia’s body. He straightened and turned those Rahl eyes on Kahlan. He held out the book.
“You could be none other than Kahlan. I have been expecting you. Prophecy, you know. I’m glad I was not late. You don’t have much time. Give this to Lord Rahl. I hope he knows how to destroy it.”
“He knew when he was at the Temple of the Winds, but he said he had to give up his knowledge to leave. But he wrote a message in the palms of his hands. It says, ‘Pinch of white sorcerer’s sand on third page. One grain of black sorcerer’s sand tossed on.’ And then there were three words, but I don’t know what they mean.”
Nathan laid a big hand on her shoulder. “The words are the three chimes: Reechani, Sentrosi, Vasi. I don’t have time to teach you about the three chimes, but know that they must be spoken after the white and before the black. That’s what is important.”
“Reechani, Sentrosi, Vasi,” Kahlan repeated, trying to commit the words to memory. She said them over again in her head.
“Richard does have both white and black sorcerer’s sand, does he not?”
Kahlan nodded. “Yes. He told me about it. He has both.”
Nathan shook his head, as if considering some private thought. “Both,” he muttered. Nathan squeezed her shoulder. “I know from prophecy some of what he has been through. Stand by him. Love is too precious a gift to lose.”
