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He put his fingers to his temples as he murmured a chant under his breath.
He took his hands from his head. “Now, watch, and you will see what I can see, what I can feel, without the smoke.”
He put his thumbs to Cara’s temples and his little fingers to the sides of her throat.
The thick layer of mugwort smoke jumped.
Kahlan gasped as she saw ropy lines of smoke coiling and snaking all over Cara. Drefan removed his hands and the smoke trails snapped into a still web of lines. Some arched from her sternum to her breasts, her shoulders, her hips, and her thighs. A tangle of lines went from the top half of her head to points all over her body.
Drefan traced one with a finger. “See this one? From her left temple to her left leg? Watch.” He pressed his fingers to the base of her skull on the left side, and the line of smoke crossed to her right leg. “There. That’s where it belongs.”
“What is all that?” Kahlan asked in astonishment.
“Her meridian lines: the flow of her force, her life. Her aura. It’s more than that, too, but it’s hard to put it all into a few words for you. What I have done is nothing more than the way a shaft of sunlight shows you the dust motes floating in the air.”
Nadine, her mouth hanging open, sat frozen, holding the smoking spoon. “How did you make the line move?”
“By using my life force to compel a healing energy shift where it was needed.”
“Then you have magic,” Nadine breathed.
“No, training. Squeeze her ankles, where you did the first time.”
Nadine set the spoon down and squeezed Cara’s ankles. The tangle of lines going down Cara’s legs twisted and untangled, moving from her hips to her feet in straight lines.
“There,” Drefan said. “You have just corrected her legs. See how they’ve stilled?”
“I did that?” Nadine asked incredulously.
“Yes. But that was the easy part. See here?” He indicated the web of lines coming from her head. “This is the dangerous part of what this dream walker did. It has to be undone. These lines indicate that she can’t control her muscles. She can’t speak, and she’s been blinded. Look here. This line going from her ears outward and then back to her forehead? That’s the only one that’s correct. She can hear and understand everything we say; she just can’t react to it.”
Kahlan’s jaw dropped. “She can hear us?”
“Every word. Rest assured, she knows we’re trying to help her. Now, if you please, I need to concentrate. This all has to be done in the correct order or we’ll lose her.”
Kahlan whisked her hands toward him. “Of course. Do what you need to do to help her.”
Drefan hunched to his task, working his way around Cara’s body, pressing fingers or the flats of his hands to various places on her. At times he used the knife point. He never drew more than a drop of blood as he pressed it into her flesh. At nearly each thing he did, some of the ropy lines of smoke moved, untangling, some laying down against Cara’s body and others curving outward in a smooth arch before returning to a spot he had attended.
When he compressed the flesh between her thumb and first finger, not only did the smoke lines over her arms straighten, but Cara moaned in relief as she twisted her head and rolled her shoulders. It was the first normal response of any kind Cara had given. When he pierced the tops of her ankles with his knife, she gasped and began to breathe with a steady, if rapid, rhythm. Relief and hope flooded through Kahlan.
He at last had moved all the way around her, and was working at her head, pressing his thumbs along the bridge of her nose and across her forehead. Her whole body was still, no longer shaking and quivering. Her chest rose and fell without effort.
He pressed the knife point between her eyebrows. “That should take care of it,” he murmured to himself.
Cara’s blue eyes opened. They searched about until they found Kahlan. “I heard your words,” she whispered. “Thank you, my sister.”
Kahlan smiled her relief. She knew what Cara meant. Cara had, after all, heard Kahlan tell her that she wasn’t alone.
“I got Marlin.”
Cara smiled. “You make me proud to serve with you. I regret that you have gone to all this effort healing me for nothing.”
Kahlan frowned, not knowing what she meant. Cara rolled her head back, looking up at Drefan as he hunched over her.
“How do you feel?” he asked. “Is everything feeling normal now?”
Her brow drew together with a look of foggy confusion bordering on alarm.
“Lord Rahl?” she asked incredulously.
“No, I’m Drefan.”
With both hands, he laid back his cowl. Kahlan’s eyes went wide, along with Nadine’s.
“But my father, too, was Darken Rahl. I am Lord Rahl’s half brother.”
Kahlan stared in wonder. Same size, same muscular build as Richard. Blond hair, like Darken Rahl’s, although shorter and not so straight. Richard’s hair was darker, and coarser. Drefan’s eyes, piercing blue like Darken Rahl’s, rather than gray like Richard’s, nonetheless bore the same cutting, raptor rake. His features possessed that impossibly handsome perfection of a statue that Darken Rahl’s had; Richard hadn’t inherited that cruel perfection. Drefan’s looks, somewhere in the middle, leaned more toward Darken Rahl than Richard.
But while no one would mistake Drefan for Richard, they would have no trouble telling that they were brothers.
She wondered why Cara had made that mistake. Then she saw the Agiel in Cara’s fist. That wasn’t what Cara had meant by “Lord Rahl.” In a confused state, looking at him upside down as she regained consciousness, she hadn’t thought he was Richard.
She had thought he was Darken Rahl.
14
The only sound in the otherwise dead silence was the click, click, click of Richard’s thumbnail on one of the points of the recurved cross guard on his sword. The elbow of his other arm rested on the polished tabletop while he cradled his head between a thumb under his chin and his first finger along his temple. With a calm face, he did his best to control his anger. He was furious. This time, they had crossed the line, and they knew it.
In his mind he had gone over a whole list of possible punishments, but had rejected them all, not because they were too harsh, but because he knew they wouldn’t work. In the end, he settled on the truth. There was nothing harsher than the truth, and nothing else as likely to get through to them.
Before him, in a row, stood Berdine, Raina, Ulic, and Egan. They stood stiffly, their eyes focused at some point over his head and behind him as he sat at the table in the small room he used for meeting with people, reading, and various other work.
To the side of the table hung small landscape paintings of idyllic country scenes, but from the window behind, from which streamed the low-angled rays of morning sunlight, the massive, baleful stone face of the Wizard's Keep glared down on him.
He had been back in Aydindril for only an hour—long enough to discover what had happened after he had left the evening before. All four of his guards had been back since before dawn; he had ordered them to return to Aydindril after Raina and Egan had sauntered into camp the night before. They had thought he wouldn’t make them return in the dead of night. They had been wrong. As brazen as they ordinarily were, the look in his eyes had insured that none of the four dared disobey that order.
Richard had also returned much earlier than he had planned. He had pointed out the quench oak to the soldiers, told them what to collect, and then, instead of overseeing the task, had started back alone for Aydindril before the sun was up. After what he had seen in the night, he’d been too troubled to get any sleep, and had wanted to be back in Aydindril as soon as possible.
Drumming his finger on the tabletop, Richard watched his
guards sweating. Berdine and Raina wore their brown leather outfits, their long, braided hair disheveled from their hard ride.
The two great, blond-headed men, Ulic and Egan, wore uniforms of dark leather straps, plates, and belts. The thick leather plates were molded to fit like a second skin over the conspicuous contours of their muscles. Incised in the leather at the center of their chests was an ornate letter “R,” for the House of Rahl, and beneath that, two crossed swords. Around their arms, just above their elbows, they wore golden bands brandishing razor-sharp projections—weapons for close combat.
No D’Haran but the Lord Rahl’s personal bodyguards wore such weapons. They were more than simply weapons; they were the rarest, the highest badges of honor, earned he knew not how.
Richard had inherited the rule of a people he didn’t know, with customs that were mostly a mystery to him, and expectations he only partly fathomed.
Since they had returned, these four, too, had discovered what had happened with Marlin the night before. They knew why they had been summoned, but he hadn’t said anything to them, yet. He was trying to get a grip on his rage, first.
“Lord Rahl?”
“Yes, Raina?”
“Are you angry with us? For disobeying your orders and coming out to you with the Mother Confessor’s message?”
The message had been a pretense, and they knew it as well as he.
Click, click, click, went his thumbnail. “That will be all. You may go. All of you.”
Their postures relaxed, but none made a move to leave.
“Leave?” Raina asked. “Aren’t you going to punish us?” A smirk spread on her face. “Maybe clean out the stables for a week, or something?”
Richard pushed back from the table as he ground his teeth. He was not in the mood for their impish humor. He rose behind the table.
“No, Raina, no punishment. You may go.”
The two Mord-Sith smiled. Berdine leaned toward Raina, speaking in a whisper, but loud enough for him to hear.
“He realizes that we know best how to protect him.”
They all started for the door.
“Before you go,” Richard said, as he strolled around the table, “I just want you to know one thing.”
