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Richard could have sworn that the lamps had been brighter, before. Now the stable was dimly lit in a mellow orange glow. The hay smelled sweeter. The air felt warmer.
Richard thought that perhaps he shouldn’t be allowing her to do whatever it was that she intended to do. In the end, though, he decided that he trusted her.
Nicci’s left hand released its grip on his shirt and slipped up and over his shoulder to the back of his neck. Her fingers glided around his neck. Her hand fisted, holding his hair at the back of his head to keep him still.
Richard’s level of alarm rose. He suddenly wasn’t so sure that he wanted her to touch him with her power. He’d felt her magic several times before and it wasn’t something he was exactly eager to experience again.
He wanted to back away, but, somehow, he didn’t.
Nicci leaned in even more and gently kissed his cheek.
It was more than a kiss.
The world around him dissolved. The stables, the humid air, the sweet aroma of hay, all seemed to cease to exist. The only thing that existed was his connection to Nicci, as if she were all that held him from evaporating as well.
He was swept into a rising realm of breathless pleasure with all of life itself. It was an overpowering, disorienting, magnificent sensation. Everything, from the feel of the connection to her, the warmth and life of her, to all the beauty of the world, felt as if it flooded through him, filling him until it saturated his mind, making him dizzy with the staggering exhilaration of it.
Every kind of pleasure he had ever known swept through him with overwhelming force, amplified beyond anything he had ever experienced, engulfing him in bliss so intense that the satisfaction of it brought a gasp and tears.
When Nicci broke the kiss on his cheek the world inside the stables swirled back in around him, and yet it seemed more intense than it had before, the sights and smells more vibrant than he remembered. It was quiet but for the hiss of a nearby lamp and the soft neigh of one of the horses. Richard’s hands trembled with the lingering sensation of her kiss.
He didn’t know if what Nicci had done had lasted for a second or an hour. It was magic completely unlike any Richard had ever felt before. It left him so breathless that he had to remind himself to breath again.
He blinked at her. “What…what did you do?”
The slightest smile blossomed in the curve of her lips and in her blindingly blue eyes. “I touched you with a small trace of my magic so that I can find you. I recognize my power. I will be able to follow it to you. Fear not, the effect will last long enough for me to be able to find you.”
“I think you did more, Nicci.”
Her smile ghosted away. Her brow tightened with her concern. It took her a moment to find the words. At last she peered at him with an intensity that told him that it was important to her that he understand.
“Always before, Richard, I have hurt you with magic—when I took you away; when I held you prisoner; even when I healed you. It was always hurtful or painful. Forgive me, but I wanted, just once, to give you a touch of magic that would not leave you being hurt by me, or hating me.”
Her gaze sank away from his. “I wanted you to have a better memory of me than of those times before when I touched you with the pain of magic. I wanted, just once, to give you a small trace of something pleasant, instead.”
He could not begin to imagine what any more than a “small trace” would have been like.
He lifted her chin, making her look up into his eyes. “I don’t hate you, Nicci. You know that. And I know that the times when you healed me you were giving me my life. That was what counted.”
Finally, he was the one who had to look away from her blue eyes. It occurred to him that Nicci was probably the most beautiful woman he had ever met.
Other than Kahlan.
“Thank you, though,” he managed, still feeling the lingering affects of the sensation.
She gently clutched his arm. “You did a good thing, tonight, Richard. I thought some pleasant magic would give you back some of your strength.”
“I’ve seen a lot of people suffer and die. I couldn’t stand the thought of the little girl dying, too.”
“I meant in saving Cara’s life.”
“Oh. Well, I couldn’t stand the thought of the big girl dying, either.”
Nicci smiled at that.
He gestured to the horses. “I need to get going.”
She nodded and he moved off to collect the horses and check their gear. Nicci went to open the stable door. After she did, Cara came back in to get her horse.
Dawn was still a couple of hours off. Richard realized that he was terribly tired, especially after the emotional strain of having used his sword, but he did feel better after what Nicci had just done. He knew, though, that they wouldn’t be getting much sleep for a quite a while. They had a very long way to travel and he fully intended to do it as swiftly as possible. By taking fresh horses with them they would be able to ride hard, change mounts, and then continue to ride just as hard in order to make good time. He intended to ride more than hard.
Nicci held his horse’s bit as he stuffed his boot into the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. The horse flicked her tail and danced about, eager to be out of the stable even if it was still night. Richard patted her shoulder to settle her down; she would have plenty of time to show him her spirit.
Cara, once in her saddle, turned to frown at him. “By the way, Lord Rahl, where is it we’re traveling to in such a hurry?”
“I need to go see Shota.”
“Shota!” Cara’s jaw dropped. “We’re going to see the witch woman? Are you out of your mind?”
Nicci, suddenly mortified, rushed to his side. “Going to the witch woman is madness—to say nothing of the Imperial Order troops all along the way back up through the New World. You can’t do this.”
“I have to. I think that Shota may be able to help me find Kahlan.”
“Richard, she’s a witch woman!” Nicci was beside herself. “She’s not going to help you!”
“She’s helped me before. She gave Kahlan and me a wedding gift. I think she may remember it.”
“A wedding gift?” Cara asked. “Are you crazy? Shota would just as soon kill you as not.”
There was more truth in that than Cara knew. His relation with Shota had always been an uneasy one.
Nicci put a hand on his leg. “What wedding gift? What are you talking about?”
“Shota wanted Kahlan to die because she feared that together we would conceive what Shota believed would be a monster child: a gifted Confessor. At our wedding, as a truce, she gave Kahlan a necklace with a small dark stone. It’s magic of some sort that prevents Kahlan from gettin
g pregnant. Kahlan and I decided that for the time being, with all that’s going on and all that we have to worry about, we would accept Shota’s truce.”
There had been a time, when the chimes had been loosed, that magic of every sort had failed. For a while they hadn’t known about the chimes, and that the necklace’s magic had failed. It was then that Kahlan had conceived a child. The men who beat her that terrible night had ended that.
It was also possible that because of that brief failure of magic, the nature of the world had undergone a fundamental, irrevocable change that would eventually lead to the end of all magic. Kahlan certainly believed that it was happening. There had been a number of strange events that were otherwise inexplicable. Zedd had called it the cascade effect. He said that once begun such a thing could not be stopped. Richard didn’t know if it was true that magic was failing or not.
“Shota will remember the necklace she gave Kahlan. She will remember her magic, just as you will remember yours so that you will be able to find me. If anyone will remember Kahlan, Shota will. I’ve had my disagreements with the witch woman, but in the past I’ve also inadvertently helped her as well. She owes me. She will help me. She has to.”
Nicci threw her hands up. “Of course such a thing has to be a necklace that Kahlan would wear, and not something that you would have. Don’t you see what you’re doing? Once again your mind has invented something that conveniently can’t be proven. Everything you come up with is somewhere else or something we can’t see. This necklace is just more of your dream.” Nicci pressed a hand to her forehead. “Richard, this witch woman is not going to remember Kahlan because Kahlan doesn’t exist.”
“Shota can help me. I know she can. I know she will. I can’t think of any better opportunity to get answers. Time is slipping away. The longer Kahlan is with whoever has her, the greater the danger to her life and the less my chance of helping get her back. I have to go to Shota.”
“And what if you’re wrong?” Nicci demanded. “What if this witch woman refuses to help you?”
