Chapter 43 – Brief Respite
While listening to the musicians playing flutes and a lyre, Kahlan absently nibbled on her food as Richard spoke with Zedd. The banquet hall she had walked through earlier was filled with dignitaries and officials from throughout D'Hara, everyone eager and excited about welcoming the Lord Rahl and his Lady Rahl, the Mother Confessor. The courtiers were all kind and respectful, and many of the ladies wanted to chat about her pregnancy. Though every time they came over to speak with her, Kahlan would notice how they would all stare at Cynthia for a moment before returning their gaze to her.
"How are you doing, Kahlan?" her sister asked, leaning over from the seat next to her.
Kahlan smiled softly, turning to face her sister. "Much better," she asserted. "I was worried my stomach would get upset with the food, but I'm actually doing quite well."
"It's all so delicious… and plentiful," Cynthia nodded, her voice filled with awe and amazement. "I've never seen so much food before."
"Yes, I know," Kahlan inclined her head. She had seen this much food before, but not in exactly the same manner she was tonight. This banquet was huge, and even though she was sitting at the head table with Richard, Kahlan could still clearly see all the crowded tables in the vast banquet hall. She had seen larger banquet halls, to be sure, but nothing as extravagant or expansive of this one.
Turning back to Cynthia, she gave her sister a soft smile and a squeeze of her hand before returning to her meal. The flutes and lyre faded as the musicians took a break and Kahlan narrowed her eyes, hearing the last of Richard's sentence.
"…that this library is a private one for the Lord Rahl?" he was asking.
Kahlan tilted her head to glaned sideways and listened in on the conversation. Alright, eavesdrop was more like it, but she wanted to be kept informed on matters, even if her enlarged belly prevented her from doing any hard labor or fighting. Nathan was currently leaning out over the table, looking past Zedd, so that he may speak with Richard. The prophet's azure eyes were bright and alight with excitement.
"Nyda and some of the other Mord'Sith remember Darken Rahl opening up the wall and going inside," Nathan answered Richard. "There is clearly something behind that wall."
"Yes, but what makes you think it is a private library?" Richard inquired, basically almost repeating his question.
"Well, besides it's location," Nathan replied, "I've asked Berdine about it, since the Mord'Sith I've spoken to say that she was one of the few still alive who accompanied the previous Lord Rahl into that room."
Richard gave a nod. "Berdine's word is trustworthy, yes."
"Yes," Zedd echoed with a nod, then grabbed a large slice of cheese off his plate and began munching on it. When he next spoke, it was with a mouthful of cheese. "According to her, that library contains books deemed too important for just anyone. They are for the eyes of the Lord Rahl only."
Nathan bobbed his head, and raised a goblet of wine to take a sip before adding, "And their might be some information in their about the Chimes of Death and how to deal with them."
Kahlan perked up upon hearing that. She turned more fully and engaged in the conversation. "You must go to this library, then, Richard," she asserted, almost a little too vehemently. "I know we have the Order to worry about now, but when they are gone, there will still be the Chimes to deal with. Magic is important in the world, and without it, there could be a chain reaction that results in the destruction of all life."
Richard chuckled slightly and shook his head. "I think you're being a bit dramatic, Kahlan," he said, patting her hand. "I lived in Westland for most of my life without magic, and everything was fine."
"I'm sorry, my boy, but Kahlan is correct," Zedd pronounced, giving Richard a quick look that said the Seeker should know better, but then his eyes softened, remembering his grandson's lack of memories. "Magic is much more prevalent in the world than you may think, and without it things can turn serious very fast."
"How so?"
"Well," Zedd took a deep breath before continuing; his brow narrowing as he thought up his explanation, "for example, there is a plan up in the mountains that grows in the currents of the waters of a stream that eventually becomes a tributary of the Drun River.
"The pollen of these flowers mixes in with the water and counteracts another excretion from the poisonous flowers that exist further up into the mountains. What many do not know is that these flowers that counteract the poison, rendering the waters safe to drink, are magical in nature. With magic falling, those flowers won't be able to counteract the poison, making the waters of the Drun extremely dangerous for consumption."
"And that's not taking into account the other living beings that rely on magic for their mere existence," Kahlan added, thinking of the night wisps.
"Creatures with magic?" Richard asked, sounding puzzled.
Kahlan knitted her eyebrows together for a moment, before then raising them in understanding. Some of his memories had been restored, yes, but only things about her and his relationship with the Mord'Sith. Richard still did not remember that Zedd was his grandfather. He knew it, because Kahlan and the others had told him, and he trusted Kahlan; that was the only thing he seemed to know for sure, that he could trust Kahlan with his life. Though she knew it was a struggle for him, and that he was frustrated about not remembering things.
Reaching under the table, she placed a hand on his thigh and gave it a squeeze to reassure him. He placed his hand over hers and interlaced their fingers together, giving her hand a squeeze in return.
Leaning over, she lowered her voice and whispered an answer to his question about magical creatures. The others remained silent, Zedd resuming eating his dinner while adding more food to his plate. Richard let out a soft sigh and squeezed her hand when she finished her explanation.
Turning, Richard looked down the table of Nathan. "The sliph, have you heard of it?"
"Oh yes," Nathan nodded. "The sliph has been around a long time. She was here before I was born. Created during the Great War three thousand years ago." He paused and frowned. "Why do you ask?"
Richard narrowed his eyes and exchanged a look with Kahlan. She gave a nod of her head, encouraging and informing him that it was okay to tell the others about this small part of their life together that had remained their little secret.
"I've—we've—" he gestured to Kahlan with a nod of his head, "have traveled with the sliph. It was the sliph that took us to where we spent our wedding night."
"I was wondering how you two escaped from the Confessor's Palace," Zedd interjected.
"Well, from what Kahlan told me, this place that the sliph took us," Richard continued, ignoring Zedd's interruption, "was a place that Alric Rahl created specifically for me."
"For you?" Nathan knitted his eyebrows together.
"Yes, for Richard," Kahlan spoke up, holding Richard's hand more firmly as she spoke, reassuring him with her touch. She could tell that he was nervous and frustrated over his lack of memories about such things. "Before Richard's memories were taken, he told me that Alric Rahl had created that place for his one true heir, and the sliph informed Richard that he was that one true heir, because, Richard is the first in the line of Rahls since Alric Rahl to possess both additive and subtractive magic."
"You mean the fact that he's a War Wizard," Nathan said with a bob of his head, completely understanding.
"Yes, just like Alric Rahl," Kahlan affirmed. She paused for a moment, collecting her thoughts before continuing. "This place that Alric created for his one true heir… it has no other way to get there other than the sliph. And it has books, a plethora of them, all for Richard."
"Obviously this place must be important," Nathan asserted. "A pity we cannot use the sliph to gain access to this place then. I am sure that some of these books, if not all, would be very helpful right now."
Richard nodded. "I just wished there was more we could do other than reading books," he groaned. "I'm so tired of reading… I… I want to do something."
Kahlan squeezed his hand gently under the table and he turned his gaze to her. Zedd stopped eating for a moment and placed a weathered hand on Richard's shoulder, giving him the comfort of a grandfather.
"There will be time for action, my boy," he assured him. "Just not now. We must first understand things before we jump headlong into them."
Richard sighed. "I know. It's just frustrating at times."
"I understand," Zedd nodded. "But knowledge is the key to understanding, and with understanding we are stronger and wiser."
There was a lull in the conversation and the musicians picked up where they had left off and the soft sounds of the flutes and lyre filled the room. Richard sighed and his shoulders slumped. He looked exhausted and Kahlan hoped that this banquet would not take much longer so she could get her husband back up to their bedroom and help relieve him of the stress he held.
XXX
Chaos reigned all around her; Debris fell from the sky, shards of glass and wood rained down, smoke and fire filled the air. Gritting her teeth, the sorceress focused all her energy on calling forth enough strength to cast out more black lightning. The hard rain had stopped two hours ago, yet the air was still damp and heavy, mixed with the awful stench of death and battle. The sound of metal against metal combined with the cacophony of cries of agony and pain as the men fought.
"Nicci!" it was General Sheldon calling her name.
Casting her eyes to the right, she saw the black haired Kelton general shoving his way through a crowd of soldiers engaged in hand to hand combat. He used a mace to crush the skull of an advancing soldier, before kicking the dead man to the ground. His steel sword was smeared with blood, and his sage green cape looked more crimson than green now. Nicci figured she must look similar, having been forced to utilize one of the daggers that had been given to her by the D'Haran soldiers assigned to protect her.
"General?" Nicci inquired as the man got closer.
"The Order is not stopping to destroy the buildings," he informed her in a hurried breath. "They are harrying our outer perimeter and pushing forward."
Nicci groaned inwardly, picturing what was happening. The Order was changing tactics, concentrating more on advancing than on destruction. It was not something she had expected from them, and she now felt like she had let everyone down by not thinking of all the possible ways that the attack would occur.
Sending out a bolt of lightning at a brutish man bursting through the column of men, sending him falling backward and igniting in flames, Nicci shifted off the platform, an archer quickly taking her place. She made her way over to the general, who was panting by now from the exertion of pushing his way through the crush to reach her.
He placed an arm around her waist, and pulled her along with him as they fought their way through the wave of advancing soldiers, making a path back through the streets of Aydindril and towards the square before the Confessor's Palace. When he had first put his arm around her waist, Nicci had been startled. No man had done such a thing in a long while, and though Sheldon had not done it in a possessive or romantic way—more in the manner of helping him to keep her close as they both struggled to fight their way through the battle—the sorceress still felt the pull of it.
Try as she might, Nicci could not hide the smile that worked its way onto her lips at feeling a man's arm draped around her waist, no matter the circumstances or reasons behind it. She missed the physical contact of another, especially when it was done in the fashion the General Sheldon was doing it in.
Most of the times she had been touched by men during her long lifetime it had been done in a brutal and possessive manner, such as the way Darken Rahl had touched her when she had been his prisoner, or when that man had raped her so long ago when she was nothing but a young novice, taking away her innocence and naiveté of how the world truly was, which had led her on the path towards the Sisters of the Dark and the Keeper of the Underworld.
The only other man to touch her in a fashion that had nothing to do with using her for his own purposes—besides her father, long ago—was Richard. And it was that, along with a whole hosts of reasons, why she loved him, was in love with him. But he was taken. His heart belonged to Kahlan, just as the Mother Confessor's heart belonged to the Seeker. Despite the hurt it caused in her chest, Nicci was happy for them… for both of them. They were perfect for each other, and nothing seemed capable of standing in the way of their love. A love that almost seemed destined.
Having her thoughts elsewhere, Nicci did not realize that they were approaching the makeshift barricade of upturned carts that led into the large square before the steps of the Confessor's Palace. General Sheldon was holding her tight to him, using his broadsword to block a strike by an enemy soldier. Nicci snapped back to reality and quickly summoned up some black lightning to vanquish their attacker. The man's strength weakened and Sheldon's blade skidded along the steel of the other man's sword, eventually embedding in the joint between the man's neck and shoulder.
Sheldon hissed as blood squirted out. He drew his broadsword back, and the sharp edge cut into the man's neck, effectively severing his head. Nicci was numb to how gruesome the whole ordeal was, having seen—and done—much worse as a Sister of the Dark. Sidestepping over the headless corpse, they approached the barricade. The general loosened his grip around her waist, and Nicci shimmied up over the barricade with his help, his hands on her hips as he boosted her up.
He clambered over after her and let out a long breath as a soldier rushed over with a canteen of water. He took a deep draft of the cool liquid and then offered it to her. Nicci smiled and accepted it with a grateful nod, firstly taking a delicate sip before gulping down a larger swallow. Handing the canteen back to the soldier, Nicci let out a sigh of relief at the replenishing effects of the cool water. As the soldier rushed back to his station, she followed Sheldon over to the small table that held the map of the city on it.
It was dusk, and night was falling quickly. They both concurred that the city would most likely fall soon, despite their earlier successful efforts at pushing back the Order and holding them around the meat venders' marketplace. It would only be a matter of an hour or two until those defenses broke down and the horde that was the army of the Imperial Order would swarm towards them like a sudden crash of water rushing down river when the dam upstream had burst.
Nicci glanced up at the general and studied him, seeing his brow crease as he thought. He was much younger than she had originally thought. When she had first met him, Nicci had assumed him to be around the same age as the now deceased General Reibisch, but in reality he was in his late thirties, where the former had been in his early fifties.
She guessed it was the peppery grey that sprinkled the side of his jet-black mane that had made her misjudge his age. The stress of years of bloody and unending war had probably also taken a toll on him, no doubt assisting in him going grey early, which was quite understandable, considering everything that had happened in the last two years.
It amazed Nicci how the same events seemed to have had little effect on Richard and his physical appearance. Granted, he looked a lot more mature than when she had first seen him, but he still somehow held that youthful energetic spark despite all he had been through. With everything that had happened to him, Richard should look much older, but he did not. It made her wonder how the ageing spell had affected him when he had spent his short time in the Palace of the Prophets.
"Nicci, I think we should select the location to make our stand," Sheldon was saying, calling her out of her thoughts and back to the present.
She blinked and looked up into his green eyes, for a moment catching him staring at her in a way that appeared to make him embarrassed. The second her eyes had locked with his, he had averted his gaze back down to the map. Nicci smiled softly, feeling a slight flutter in her chest from having a man look at her like that. It was not a lecherous leer or a lustful stare, but the look of a man who held genuine feelings, something she was not used to receiving from any man—anyone, to be precise—besides Richard.
Nicci did not know what sort of feelings the general held, but it was almost painfully obvious to her that his gaze had nothing to do with her physical beauty. It might not necessarily entirely be the look she yearned to receive from a man, but it was a start. Both Kahlan and Cara had earned that look from the men they loved, and Nicci had started to question if she would ever have such a thing… if she were even deserving of it. But now, with how Sheldon had looked at her, even if it was just the platonic kind of caring, it made her begin to ponder the possibilities.
It was hard to tell, really, since she had fallen so hard for Richard. No man could be Richard, yet Nicci had seen Cara fall in love with a man that was not the Seeker. The Mord'Sith's love for the D'Haran captain may not be the same as her love for the Seeker—her Lord Rahl—but it was obviously real and genuine, and was a true kind of love. Cara was not settling for Benjamin Meiffert, she had honestly chosen him over Richard.
And having witnessed that devotion and love assert itself when the Mord'Sith had decided to stay with the captain, instead of accompanying the Seeker and Mother Confessor back to the People's Palace in D'Hara, made Nicci wonder if her love for Richard was really that true, since she had done some terrible things in the name of that love. Yet, at the same time, she had done some good things, as well, and was willing to watch him be with Kahlan, even when she could have taken advantage of his memory loss, but had not.
Nicci looked at General Sheldon again, and thought. They had worked closely for the past six months, ever since she had returned with Kahlan, after finding the Mother Confessor in the clutches of Sister Bree. And since then, Sheldon had always been of great help in assisting her when asked. Now, with the quick glance she had caught and the look in his eyes, Nicci was beginning to wonder if all the time spent close to her had manifested some feelings in the man's heart—feelings that she knew she would never get from Richard, who, even devoid of the vast majority of his memories, was still hopelessly in love and devoted to the Mother Confessor.
"Our last stand should be at the Wizard's Keep," she said, shaking her head and returning to the present, though when she gazed up to look upon the general, Nicci could not help but look at him in an entirely different light than she had mere minutes prior. "In fact, we should probably head up there right now, so that I can apply some subtractive spells to it… strong ones that will be more difficult to break than those I had cast on the city's walls."
"They have a sorceress with them, don't they?" Sheldon asked, his eyes glancing up at her quickly. "One like you… with subtractive magic."
"Yes," Nicci confirmed. "Bree… she was one of the Sisters of the Dark, as well. However, her powers were never as strong as mine. Speaking of which, I should probably hold back on using my powers until we reach the Keep. I'm going to need all my strength to conjure spells that cannot be broken."
Sheldon gave a nod. "I'll come with you," he said. "It is dangerous, and I do not like the idea of you being alone up there."
"I will not be alone," Nicci objected. "I shall have the soldiers the Lord Rahl assigned to protect me. Not to mention the fact that I am quite capable of defending myself."
"I know," Sheldon sighed, relenting with a nod. "However, we need you to be kept safe, Nicci. I am not just saying this as a general who values your skills—as tremendous and useful as they are—but as a friend." He paused and let his words sink in.
Nicci took a deep breath and looked at him, prepared to make another protest, but he shook his head and touched her lightly on the shoulder. And just as before, when he had wrapped his arm around her waist during the battle, Nicci felt a strange feeling. Yet now, unlike before, she was able to place it. She was feeling acceptance and genuine caring for another. She was overwhelmed with how such a simple touch could convey so much, despite how brief or transient.
"Thank you, General Sheldon," she replied, touched by his concern for her. She was not used to people caring so much about her.
Sheldon smiled back and gave a nod, removing his hand. He stiffened, and there was an awkward moment between them. She could tell that there was much more below the surface than what he was saying, but she let it slide, knowing that now was not the time or place. And besides, his feelings might simply be platonic. But now knowing that there was the possibility of a man seeing past the book cover and into the pages, and still care about her, made Nicci's heart swell with hope. General Sheldon probably had no idea what he had just done for her, no matter what his feelings truly were, but she would forever be grateful to him for it.
Running a hand through his black mane, Sheldon broke the silence. "The city is all but lost… we lost it long ago," he asserted as she met his eyes. "What we need to do now is ensure we keep the world safe from the likes of the Order getting their hands on the weapons that can be found in the Wizard's Keep."
Nicci inclined her head in agreement. "I concur."
"Then we make our stand there," Sheldon spoke, his voice having a touch of finality to it.
"Yes," Nicci nodded gravely, contemplating it all. "We shall at that."
