Even in his agony, unable to get up off the ground, Richard couldn’t help being joyful that Kahlan no longer had that terrible collar around her neck. She was free of Jagang.
Richard knew that even if Samuel got himself caught or killed before they could escape the camp, Kahlan was invisible to these men. She would still be able to get away on her own. Knowing Kahlan, she would probably use that advantage to annihilate half the camp on her way out. No matter what happened to Richard, now, his relief for Kahlan was what mattered most to him.
Kahlan didn’t know who she was, and she wouldn’t know where to go, but she would be alive and out of immediate danger. Richard had come to the Order’s encampment to help free her. He had succeeded in that much of it. Despite the peril he was now in, it was worth it to him to have managed to help her get away.
He looked beyond the Sister standing above him to Nicci. It was going very badly for her. He’d had one of those collars around his neck. He knew well the lonely agony she was in. Richard wished that he could help her as well, or at least
let her know that she wasn’t alone and abandoned. But he could do nothing.
He knew that Jillian was not going to fare any better. He reminded himself not to fixate on such terrible thoughts.
One problem at a time, he told himself. He had to find some way to help them both.
The pain abruptly lifted from his arms and legs. The rest of him still felt on fire. Even though he could at last begin to move, his head was still in so much pain that everything looked blurred and distorted.
“On your feet,” the Sister above him said.
She sounded like she was in a vile mood. She had professed to be pleased that catching Richard would gain her a reward from Jagang, but she certainly didn’t sound like a woman in good spirits over her unexpected luck.
She had to be a Sister of the Dark, he decided. He supposed that it didn’t really matter.
“I bet you’re not too happy to see my face again,” she said in a tone of smug satisfaction.
She probably thought she had been important, thought the whole world would know her haughty scowl, her condescending attitude, her sharp tongue. Some people thought they could gain prominence, prestige, and renown through pompous arrogance. They mistook fear for respect. Richard really didn’t remember the woman, though, and saw no point in humoring her.
“Can’t say that I really remember you. Should I, for some reason?”
“Liar! Everybody at the palace knew me!”
“That’s nice,” Richard said, trying to stall so that he could recover some of his strength.
“On your feet!”
Richard did his best to try to comply. It wasn’t easy. His limbs didn’t work as well as he would have liked.
Once he was up onto his hands and knees she kicked him in the ribs. Richard winced at the blow. Fortunately, she didn’t have the weight or power to make the kick damaging, merely painful. It was her gift that was dangerous.
“Now!” she screamed.
Richard staggered to his feet. His arms and legs were beginning to shake off the searing pain. His head wasn’t.
The men all around were still down, but some of them looked like they were beginning to regain consciousness. Bruce rolled over, groaning as he clutched his head.
The Sister’s gaze flicked across at a rise in the noise of the battle in the darkness beyond. Richard used the opportunity to take a quick glance, surveying the weapons on the ground. If she turned her back on him he had to take the chance. Once Jagang had him strapped down in the torture tents Richard knew that he would never see the light of day again.
As much as that fate terrified him, a part of him couldn’t help feeling lighthearted knowing that Kahlan had gotten away. He swallowed back his anguish at the tears he had seen in her eyes as she had made good her escape. It reminded him of how much she loved him, but she no longer remembered that.
“You don’t know how long I’ve waited for something like this, something that could gain me the emperor’s favor. At last the Creator has answered my prayers and delivered you into my grasp.”
“So,” Richard said, “your Creator is in the habit of delivering victims to you in answer to prayers? He is so giddy at the flattery of your grimy hands pressed together in supplication to him that he is only too eager to help you fill the torture tents?”
She watched him with a slow, cunning smile. “Your flippant tongue will shortly be cut out so humble servants of the Creator will not have to hear you spout your blasphemy.”
“A few people have told me that my flippant tongue is one of my shortcomings, so you will only be doing me a service by removing it.”
Her cunning smile curdled with bile. She turned to the side, gesturing expansively out at the camp. “You think that you—”
Richard slammed a kick to the side of her face with all the force he could muster. The powerful blow completely caught her off guard, lifting her feet clear of the ground as it smashed into her. Teeth and blood flew off into the darkness. She landed on her side with a hard thud. The stunning impact of his boot looked to have shattered her jaw.
Richard dove for a sword. He knew that he dared not underestimate such a woman. Until she was dead, she could kill him—or make him wish that he was dead. His fingers seized the hilt of a sword. He spun around to plunge it into her.
The air exploded with light. Richard landed on his back so hard that it drove the air from his lungs.
She was up, blood streaming from the bottom of her face in long strings that whipped around as she lifted both hands. Richard could hardly believe that she was able to stand. She looked like the freshly dead come back to life. He knew that she couldn’t last for long, but she could very well last long enough to kill him.
The shock of the blow had obviously done horrific damage, yet that sudden shock in the heat of battle also kept her from feeling the pain right then. While for all he knew she might shortly begin to feel it and collapse screaming in agony, at the moment she wasn’t feeling it and a moment was all she was going to need.
Murder filled her eyes.
Richard tried to scramble to his feet to finish her, but it felt like a bull had lain down on his chest. The air was being squeezed out of him.
She took a step toward him, then paused, looking confused. Her eyes went out of focus. She abruptly clutched her chest.
Richard blinked in surprise as he watched her stumble forward another step and topple face-first, slamming hard onto the ground without even trying to break her fall. He stared for an instant, not sure if it was a trick of some kind. She didn’t move. The weight had lifted from his chest.
Not wanting to waste the opportunity, he grabbed the sword he’d dropped.
Something caught Richard’s attention. He looked up and could not believe who he thought he saw standing in the darkness behind where the Sister had been only a moment before.
“Adie?”
The old woman smiled.
“Adie—am I ever glad to see you,” Richard said as he scrambled to his feet.
“True,” she said, nodding.
“What are you doing here?”
“I be headed out to go to the Keep when I saw the strangest Ja’La game with players all painted with very, very dangerous things. That be when I knew it could only be you. Since then, I tried to reach you. It be a bit of trouble.”
He could only imagine.
Richard didn’t take the time to consider the whole thing or question the old sorceress. He ran to where Nicci lay on the ground convulsing in pain. Her eyes stared up at him in terror, as if pleading for help. She was lost in a world of agony. It was the collar, he knew, that was inflicting the torture. He didn’t know what to do.
“Can you help her?” Richard asked over his shoulder.
Adie knelt next to him. She shook her head. “It be the Rada’Han. That not be something I can get off.”
“Do you have any idea who can?”
“Nathan, maybe.”
“Lord Rahl, we need to hurry,” an approaching voice said. “These men are waking up.”
Richard frowned up at the man appearing out of the darkness, sword in hand. It was Benjamin Meiffert. He was dressed like one of Jagang’s more trusted guards.
“General, what in the world are you doing here?” The recent supply convoy came to Richard’s mind. “You’re supposed to be down in the Old World laying waste to the Order’s ability to keep this army alive.”
He was nodding. “I know. I needed to come back to give you a report. We’ve run into a problem. A big problem.”
Richard knew the man well enough to know that the trouble would have to be more than merely serious for him to abandon his mission to return to report to Richard what was going wrong. This was hardly the place to discuss it, though.
“I wasn’t sure where I could find you,” the general said, “but I figured that the last time I saw you it was near here, so I thought this would be my best bet. I reasoned that if you weren’t here, they at least might know where you were. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get up into the palace.
“A little while ago Adie and I came across each other. She told me that you were down here in the middle of this mess. I wasn’t sure I believed her—believed it was possible. Turns out she was right.”
Richard didn’t take the time to ask how he’d managed to come up with the uniform of one of Jagang’s guards. That uniform was obviously how he had been able to move around in the camp without getting himself captured or killed.
“How did you get down here?” the general asked Adie. “Maybe we can get back in the palace that way.”
Adie was shaking her head. “I came down the road. It be dark and I be alone. I used my ability to help hide my
presence as I reached the army guarding at the bottom of the road.
“We cannot go back that way. There be too many guards. They have gifted there with webs in place to detect those who try to slip through. Those shields not be powerful, but they be enough to snare us.”
“But with your power—”
“No,” she said, cutting off the general. “My power be weak in the palace. Even near the plateau it still not be as it should. All those with the gift be weaker there, but they use their ability together to make it stronger. I have no other gifted to help me. I could help hide myself from them when I came through, but I not be strong enough to help all of us, especially not with the burden of Nicci in such grave condition. If we try to go back that way, we will die.”
“The great inner doors are closed,” the man said, thinking out loud as he considered. “They’re heavily guarded as well. Even if we could get through we certainly couldn’t get those doors opened.”
“Nicci said she knew a way to get up into the palace,” Richard told them. “She told me that we have to get to the ramp. I don’t know what she was talking about, but we need to find a fast way out of this camp before we get caught. I don’t think Nicci has much time, either.”
Adie, leaning close, touched her slender fingers to Nicci’s forehead. “True.”
Richard scooped Nicci up in his arms. “Let’s go.”
General Meiffert stepped forward. “I can carry her, Lord Rahl.”
“I’ve got her.” Richard tilted his head. “Get Jillian.”
The man hurriedly lifted the groggy girl.
“What I don’t understand,” Adie said as she smoothed a hand across Nicci’s brow, trying to give her some comfort, “is how she was captured in the first place. She be up in the palace, the last we all saw her.”
Richard felt the weight of responsibility. “Knowing Nicci, she was probably trying to find me.”
“Ann be missing as well,” Adie said as she touched the first two fingers of her right hand to the underside of Nicci’s chin.
“I haven’t seen Ann,” Richard said.
What ever Adie was doing for Nicci didn’t look to be helping. Richard didn’t think that Nicci could last much longer unless they found a way to get the collar off her neck. Nathan was the closest hope.
“Adie,” Richard said, pointing with his chin back to where he had been on the ground when the Sister had first appeared. “That man over there, with the red paint on him. Can you help him?”
Adie peered over at the man on the ground. “Perhaps.”
Adie hurried to Bruce and knelt beside him. He was only partially conscious, the same as all the other men the Sister had blasted down. Adie’s straight gray and black hair hung down around her face as she bent forward, pressing her fingers to the red symbols painted across the man’s temples. Bruce gasped. His eyes opened wide. He pulled a few more deep breaths as Adie removed her hand from one side.
In a moment Bruce sat up, twisting his head, trying to stretch cramped and obviously sore muscles in his neck. “What’s going on?”
“Bruce, hurry up,” Richard said. “We need to get out of here.”
Richard’s left wing man peered around at the men on the ground, at Benjamin, holding Jillian and dressed as one of Jagang’s royal guards, at Adie, and finally at Richard standing a few paces away with Nicci draped in his arms.
Bruce snatched up a sword. “Ruben, what’s going on?”
“It’s a long story. You came to help me. You saved my life. It’s time for you to decide whose side you’re on.”
Bruce frowned at the question. “I’m your wing man. I’m with you. Don’t you know that?”
Richard looked the man in the eye. “My name’s Richard.”
“Well, I knew it wasn’t Ruben. That’s a silly name for a point man.”
“Richard Rahl,” Richard said.
“Lord Rahl,” General Meiffert corrected, looking ready for trouble even as he held Jillian in his arms.
Bruce glanced from face to face. “Well, if you all want to die, then you can stand around here until these fellows wake up. If that’s the case, then I’m not with you. If you’re of a mind to live, then I’m with you.”
“Ramp,” Nicci said in a gasp.
Richard pulled her a little tighter. “Are you sure, Nicci? We could try for the road up the plateau.” He was reluctant to trade a way he knew for the vague possibility of another route. “I know it’s heavily guarded but maybe we could fight our way through. Adie could help some. We might be able to make it.”
Nicci clutched his neck, pulling his head down toward her. Her blue eyes focused intently on his face. “Ramp,” she whispered with all her strength.