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“Not exactly. You wanted her dead.”
The smile widened. She returned her wrists to his shoulders. “Now, Richard, that’s awfully harsh, don’t you think?”
Richard grasped her by the waist and gently moved her back. He knew that if he didn’t stop her she would soon hamper his ability to think.
“I certainly thought so,” he said. “Among other things, you didn’t want us to wed.”
Shota ran a red lacquered nail down his chest. She looked up at him from under her brow.
“Well, maybe I had my reasons.”
“Yes—you didn’t want us to bring a child into the world. You said we would be creating a monster because from me it would have the gift and from Kahlan it would be a Confessor.”
“Confessor!” Shota took a step back as if he had turned poisonous. “A Confessor? Are you out of your mind?”
“Shota—”
“There aren’t any more Confessors. They’re all dead.”
“That’s not quite accurate. All of them are dead except Kahlan.”
She turned to Cara. “Has he had a fever or something?”
“Well…he was shot with an arrow. He nearly died. Nicci healed him but he was still unconscious for days.”
Shota suspiciously held up a finger as if she had uncovered a devious plot. “Don’t tell me—she used Subtractive Magic.”
“Yes, she did,” Richard answered in Cara’s place. “And because she did she was able to save my life.”
Shota took back the step she had put between them when she had retreated. “Used Subtractive Magic…” Shota muttered to herself. She looked up at him again. “How did she use it—for what purpose?”
“She used it to eliminate the barbed arrow embedded in me.”
Shota rolled a hand, wanting him to continue. “She must have done something more.”
“She used Subtractive Magic to purge all the blood pooling in my chest. She said that there was no other way to get either the arrow or the blood out of me and either would kill me if left in.”
Shota turned her back to them and, one hand on a hip, walked off a few paces as she considered the brief account.
“That explains a great many things,” she said unhappily under her breath.
“You gave Kahlan a necklace,” Richard said.
Shota frowned back over her shoulder. “A necklace? What sort of necklace would I give her? And why, my dear boy, do you imagine I would ever do such a thing for your…lover?”
“Wife,” Richard corrected. “You and Kahlan had spent time together—by yourselves—and had come to an understanding of sorts. You gave the necklace to Kahlan as a gift so that she and I could…well, be together. It had some kind of power so that we wouldn’t conceive children. While I don’t agree with your view of future events, right now, what with the war and all, we decided to accept your gift and the truce that went with it.”
“I can’t imagine how you could possibly imagine that I would do any of those things.” Shota looked to Cara again. “Did he have a bad fever on top of the injury?”
Richard might have thought that Shota was being sarcastic, but he could see by the look on her face that she was asking a serious question.
“Not exactly a bad fever,” Cara said, hesitantly. “It was a slight fever. Nicci said, though, that his problem was partly with how close he came to death but mostly had to do with the extended time that he was unconscious.” Cara sounded rather reluctant to speak about it to a person she considered a potential threat, but she at last finished her answer. “She said that he was suffering from delirium.”
Shota folded her arms as she heaved a sigh while taking him in with her almond eyes. “What am I to do with you,” she murmured half to herself.
“The last time I was here,” Richard said, “you told me that if I ever came back into Agaden Reach you would kill me.”
She showed no reaction. “Did I, now. And why would I say such a thing?”
“I guess you were rather angry with me for refusing to kill Kahlan and for refusing to allow you to do it.” He pointed with his chin back up toward the mountain pass. “I thought you might have meant to keep your word and so you sent Samuel to fulfill your threat.”
Shota glanced to her companion off through the trees. He looked suddenly alarmed.
“What are you talking about?” She asked with a frown as she looked back at Richard.
“Are you now claiming you didn’t know?”
“Know what?”
Richard briefly considered the angry yellow eyes glaring at him.
“Samuel hid up in the pass and jumped me from out of the storm. He snatched my sword and kicked me over a cliff. I just managed to catch the edge. If Cara wouldn’t have been there, Samuel would have used the sword to see to it that I fell from the cliff. He very nearly killed me. That he didn’t wasn’t because he didn’t intend to or try his best.”
Shota’s glare glided to the dark figure crouched off in the trees. “Is that true?”
Samuel could not bear her scrutiny. Puling with self-pity, his gaze sank to the ground. That was answer enough.
“We will discuss this later,” she told him in a low voice that carried unequivocally through the trees and gave Richard goose bumps.
“That was not my intention, Richard, nor my orders, I can assure you. I told Samuel only to invite your devious little guardian to come along.”
“You know what, Shota? I’m getting pretty tired of Samuel trying to kill me and you then claiming that you never gave him any such instructions. Once might have been credible, but it’s growing too routine. Your innocent surprise every time it happens is beginning to strike me as rather convenient. It appears to me that you find deniability quite useful and so you stick to it.”
“That isn’t true, Richard,” Shota said in a measured tone. She unfolded her arms and clasped her hands as she looked at the ground at her feet. “You carry his sword. Samuel is a little touchy about that. Since it was taken from him, not given freely, that means it still belongs to him.”
Richard nearly objected, but then reminded himself that he wasn’t there to argue the point.
Shota’s gaze rose to meet his. It came up angry.
“And how dare you complain to me about what Samuel does without my knowledge when you knowingly bring a deadly menace into the peace of my home?”
Richard was taken aback. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play stupid, Richard, it doesn’t fit you. You are hunted by a wildly dangerous threat. How many people have already died because they were unfortunate enough to be near you when the beast came looking for you. What if it decides to come here to kill you? You come here and in so doing cavalierly risk my life, without my permission, simply because you happen to want something?
“Do you think it’s right that I’m put at risk of death because of your wants? Does the fact that you think I have something you need put my life at your disposal and therefore at great risk?”
“Of course not.” Richard swallowed. “I never looked at it that way.”
Shota threw her hands up. “Ah, so your excuse is that I am to be put in peril because you didn’t think.”
“I need your help.”
“You mean you have come as a helpless beggar, begging for help, without regard to the danger it puts me in, simply because you want something.”
Richard rubbed a fingertips across his forehead. “Look, I don’t have all the answers, but I can tell you that I have good reason to believe that I’m right, that Kahlan exists and she has disappeared.”
“Like I said, you want something and you don’t bother to consider the risk to anyone else.”
Richard took a step closer to her. “That isn’t true. Don’t you see? You don’t remember Kahlan. No one but me does. Think, Shota, think of what it means if I’m right.”
Her brow twitched as she puzzled at him. “What are you talking about?”
“If I’m right, then there is something gravely wrong in the world that’s making everyone—including you—forget her. She has been wiped from your mind. But it’s more serious than that. It’s not just Kahlan that is missing from everyone’s mind. Everything that you or anyone else ever did with her is also missing. Some of those missing bits may be trivial, but other parts of it very well could be vital.
“You don’t remember that you said you would kill me if I ever came back here. That means that when you said that, in your mind that threat had to be somehow connected to Kahlan. She contributed to your choice to make that threat. Now, since you don’t remember Kahlan, you also don’t recall saying that to me.
“What if there’s something vastly important that you’ve likewise forgotten. Because you’ve forgotten Kahlan, you’ve lost part of what you’ve done in your own life—lost some of the decisions you’ve made. How many ways do you have a connection with Kahlan that you are completely unaware of that are now wiped away? How important are those missing bits? How much of your life has been altered because you now don’t recall the changes in your thinking that you made because of her influence?
