"So you see? Magic isn't all bad. The two people you love most in the world have magic. Zedd and me. Please listen. You have the gift. It is called a gift, not a curse. It is a wonderful, rare thing. It could be something used to help others. You have already used it to help others. Maybe you should try to think of it in this way, instead of trying to fight something that can't be fought."
He stared into the fire a long time as she smoothed his pant leg. She could hardly hear him when at last he spoke.
"I won't wear a collar again."
Kahlan's gaze went to the Agiel. The red leather rod hung from a fine gold chain at his neck, swinging slightly with his breathing. She knew the Agiel was used to torture people, but she didn't know how. She only knew she didn't like him wearing it.
Kahlan swallowed. "Did the Mord-Sith make you wear a collar?"
He stared unblinking at the fire. "Her name was Denna."
She turned to him, but he didn't respond. "Did she. ...Did Denna make you wear a collar?"
"Yes." A tear ran down his cheek. "She used it to hurt me. It had a chain on it. She hooked the chain to her belt and led me around by that collar like an animal. When she would attach the chain to some resting place, I couldn't move it. She controlled the magic that gives me pain when I use the sword to kill. She could amplify the magic, the pain. It prevented me from so much as putting tension on the chain. I tried. I tried hard. You can't imagine how much it hurt. Denna made me put the collar around my own neck. She made me do a lot of things."
"But the headaches will kill you. The Sisters said the collar will stop the headaches and help you learn to control the gift."
"They said that was one of the reasons. They also said there are two more reasons for the collar. I don't know what those other two reasons are. Kahlan, I know you think I'm being foolish. I think I'm being foolish, too. My head tells me the same things you are saying. But my insides tell me something altogether different."
Kahlan reached out and took the Agiel in her fingers, rolling it back and forth. "Because of this? Because of what Denna did?" He nodded, still staring at the fire. "Richard, what does this do?"
Richard looked to her at last. He gripped the Agiel in his fist. "Touch my hand. Don't touch the Agiel, just my hand."
Kahlan reached out and put her fingers against his fist.
She jerked back with a yelp of pain. She shook her wrist, trying to ease the sting. "Why didn't it hurt before when I touched it?"
"Because it was never used to train you."
"Then why isn't it hurting you to hold it?"
Richard still had his fist around the middle of the red leather rod. "It is. It hurts whenever I hold it."
Kahlan's eyes widened. "You mean it's hurting you right now, like when I touched your hand?"
The pain of the headache was in his eyes. "No. My hand was shielding you from what it really feels like."
She reached out again. "I want to know."
He dropped the Agiel. "No. I don't want it to hurt you like that. I don't want anything to ever hurt you like that."
"Richard, please? I want to know. I want to understand."
Richard stared into her eyes, and then let out a breath. "Is there anything you ask I wouldn't do?" He took the Agiel in his fist again. "Don't grip it; you may not be able to let go quick enough. Just touch it. Hold your breath and keep your teeth together so you don't bite your tongue. Tense your stomach muscles."
Kahlan's heart was pounding as her hand went toward the Agiel. She didn't want to feel the pain. It had hurt enough just to touch his hand, but she wanted to know because it was part of who he was now. She wanted to know everything about him. Even the things that hurt.
It felt like touching a bolt of lightning.
The pain shot up her arm, exploding in her shoulder. She screamed as the shock threw her on her back. She rolled over on her face, gripping her shoulder with her other hand. She couldn't move her arm. Her hand tingled and shook. She was shocked and frightened by the sheer power of the pain. She cried into the dirt as Richard's hand touched her back in sympathy. She cried, too, because now she understood, just a little, what had been done to him.
When at last she was able to sit up, he was still watching her, still holding the Agiel in his fist. "It hurts like that for you to hold it?"
"Yes."
She hit him on the shoulder with her fist. "Let go of it!" she cried. "Stop it!"
He released the Agiel, letting it hang again. "It helps distract me from the headaches, sometimes, to touch it. Believe it or not, it helps."
"You mean the headache hurts more that that?"
He nodded. "If it wasn't for what Denna taught me about pain, I would be unconscious right now. Denna taught me how to control pain, how to tolerate it, so she could give me more."
She tried to hold back the tears. "Richard, I..."
"What you felt was the least of what the Agiel can do." He picked it up again and touched the tip to the inside of his other forearm. Blood gushed from under the Agiel. He took it away. "It can strip the flesh right off you. It can break your bones. Denna liked to use it to crack my ribs. She would press it against me and I could hear the bone crack. They still aren't healed; it still hurts to lie down, or when you hug me tight enough. It can do a lot of other things too. It can even kill with a touch."
He stared at the fire. "Denna shackled my wrists, and later locked my arms behind me, and held me up with a rope from the ceiling. She used the Agiel on me for hours at a time. I would beg until I was hoarse, for her to stop. She never did. Not once.
"There was no way for me to fight back, nothing I could do to stop her. She trained me, she taught me, until I sometimes thought I had no blood or breath left. I begged her to kill me, to end the pain. I would have done it myself, but she used magic to prevent it. She had me kneel in front of her and beg her to use the Agiel. I would have done anything she said. She had a friend who came along sometimes, so they could share the... fun."
Kahlan sat frozen, hardly able to breathe. "Richard I..."
"Every day, she led me by the collar to a place where she could hang me up by a rope, a room where she could use the Agiel on me without distraction, where it didn't matter so much if my blood got everywhere. Sometimes she did it from the first thing in the morning until night. And then at night...
"That is what wearing a collar means to me. You can tell me about how much sense it makes, about how it will help me, and about how I have no choice, but that is what wearing a collar means to me.
"I know exactly what your shoulder feels like right now. It feels like the skin has been burned, and the muscle has been torn, and bone is splintered. That is what it feels like to wear a Mord-Sith's collar. Only everywhere on your body all at once, and all day long. Add to that the thought that you are helpless to stop it, that you can never escape, that you'll never again see the only person you will ever love.
"I would rather die than put a collar around my neck again."
Kahlan rubbed her shoulder. It felt just as he had described it. She couldn't think of anything to say. She hurt too much, inside, to say anything. So she sat and watched him look at the fire as tears ran down her face. She ached for him.
And then she heard herself ask something she had promised herself she wasn't ever going to ask. "Denna took you for her mate, didn't she." She wished she could call the words back, and at the same time, she didn't.
Richard didn't flinch. "Yes," he whispered as he stared at the fire. Another tear ran down his cheek. "How did you know?"
"Demmin Nass brought two quads to take me. He had a spell-web from Darken Rahl to protect him from Zedd's magic. From mine too. Zedd couldn't do anything; he was frozen by a web. Demmin Nass told me what had happened to you. He said you were dead. That was when I called forth the Con Dar and killed him."
Richard's eyes closed as another tear ran down. "There was no way for me to stop her. I swear, Kahlan... I tried. You can't imagine what Denna did to me for trying to
stop her. There was no way for me to fight back. She could do anything she wanted. It wasn't enough for her to hurt me just in the day. She wanted to hurt me at night, too."
"How can anyone be that evil?"
Richard stared at the Agiel as he slowly grasped it in his fist again. "She was captured when she was twelve. They trained her with this Agiel. This very one. Everything she did to me, they had done to her. Over and over. For years. They tortured her parents to death in front of her. There was no one to help her.
"She grew into a woman at the end of this Agiel, surrounded only by people who wanted her to hurt. There was no one to give her even a single word of hope, of comfort, of love.
"Can you imagine her terror? They gave her a life of endless pain. They raped her body and her spirit. They broke her. They made her one of them. Darken Rahl, personally, made her one of them.
"The whole time she used this Agiel on me, it hurt her. The same as it hurts me to hold it now. There's some magic for you.
"One day, Darken Rahl beat her, for hours, because he thought she wasn't hurting me enough. He flailed the skin right off her back."
Richard's head hung as he cried. "And then at the end of all that, at the end of a life of pain and madness, I come along, turn the Sword of Truth white, and run it through her. The only thing she asked before I killed her was for me to wear her Agiel and remember her. I was the only one who understood her pain. It was the only thing she wanted: for someone who understood to remember her.
"I promised, and she hung it around my neck. And then she just sat there as I pushed my sword through her heart. She had been hoping I would be the one with the power to kill her.
"That is how someone can be that evil. If I had the power, I would bring Darken Rahl back to life so I could kill him again."
Kahlan sat stunned, motionless, caught in a vortex of conflicting emotions. She hated this Denna for hurting Richard, she was unaccountably jealous of her, and at the same time, she felt unexpected, wrenching sorrow for her. Finally, she turned away and wiped the tears from her face.
"Richard, why didn't they win? Why wasn't Denna able to break you? How did you keep your sanity?"
"Because, as the Sisters said, I partitioned my mind. I don't know how to explain it. I didn't even know exactly what it was I was doing, but that's how I saved myself. I put the core of myself away and sacrificed the rest. I let her do what she would. Darken Rahl said that I have the gift because I did that. That was when I first heard the word—partitioned."
Richard lay back, resting his arm over his eyes. Kahlan pulled out a blanket and bunched it under his head. "I'm so sorry, Richard," she whispered.
"It's over. That is what matters." He took his arm from his eyes and at last smiled up at her. "It's over and we are together. In some ways, it was good. If she wouldn't have taught me, I wouldn't be able to deal with this headache. Maybe Denna has helped me. Maybe I can use what I know to get out of this."
She winced in sympathy. "Is it really bad right now?"
He nodded a little. "But I'll die before I ever put a collar around my neck again."
She understood now, though she wished she didn't. She lay down snug against him. The fire was a watery blur.
11
The next day the sky was a cold gray and the wind icy as the two of them went out alone on the plain. Richard wanted to be away from people, away from buildings. He wanted to see the sky and the earth, he said. The brown grass bowed in the stiff gusts that flapped and tugged their cloaks as they walked along in silence. Richard wanted to shoot his bow to make the headache go away for a while. Kahlan just wanted to be with him.
It seemed that the eternity, which a few days ago she had felt belonged to them was slipping through her fingers. She wanted to fight back, but didn't know how. Everything that was so right was suddenly going wrong.
She didn't think that Richard would put on the Rada'Han, the collar, no matter what the Sisters said. He might accept learning to use the gift, but she didn't think he would wear a collar. And if he didn't, he would die. After what he had told her—and worse, the things she knew he hadn't—how could she expect him to wear it? Or ask him to?
It did feel good, though, to be away from the village, away from people and away from Chandalen's eyes following them everywhere. How could she blame him? It did seem as if the two of them kept bringing trouble, but it irritated her that he acted as if they did it on purpose. She was tired of trouble. It seemed as if it would never end. Well, she decided, for today, at least, they would be away from trouble, and just enjoy being together.
Kahlan had told him she used to shoot a bow. She couldn't draw his because it was too heavy, so Richard encouraged her to borrow one and bring it along so he could teach her how to shoot better. They found the bundled grass targets the men had set up before, standing head high like a group of scarecrows on guard over the vast, flat grassland. A few even had balled grass for heads. Each had an 'X' made of grass for a target. The targets with heads had an X there as well. Richard thought the X's were too fat, so he took them off and made ones of single grass stalks.
They stood a long way off, so far in fact, she could hardly see the bundled grass, much less the X's. Richard strapped on a simple leather bracer Savidlin had made for him along with the bow, and shot arrows until his headache was gone.
Richard was a picture of stillness, of smoothness; he was one with the bow. She smiled at how good he looked, and that he was hers. It made her heart ache with joy to see his gray eyes sparkle without the pain of the headache in them. They moved closer so she could shoot.
"Don't you want to go check where your arrows hit?"
He smiled. "I know where they hit. You shoot now."
She shot a few arrows, getting the feel again. He set one end of his bow on the ground, rested both hands over the other end, and watched her. She had been a girl the last time she used a bow. Richard watched her shoot a few more times, and then came and stood behind her. His arms came around her, and he adjusted her hand on the bow and put his fingers on the string.
"Here. Do this. You can't get any power or be steady enough holding the arrow with your thumb and the knuckle of your first finger that way. Hold the bowstring back with your first three fingers, like this, nesting the arrow between the first two. And pull with your shoulder too. You don't need to pull on the arrow, just concentrate on holding back the string. The arrow will take care of itself. See? Isn't that better?"
She grinned. "It is with your arms around me."
"Pay attention to what you're doing," he scolded.
Kahlan took aim and shot. He said it was better and told her to try again. She shot a few more arrows, and thought she might have even hit the bundled grass once. She drew the bowstring again, trying to hold the bow steady. Suddenly, he tickled her stomach. She doubled over squealing and laughing, trying to get his fingers off her.
"Stop it!" She laughed breathlessly, trying to twist away from him. "Stop it! Richard! I can't shoot when you're doing that!"
He put his fists on his hips. "You have to be able to."
She frowned up at him as she panted. "What do you mean?"
"Besides being able to hit what you want, you have to be able to shoot no matter what is happening. If you can't shoot when you're laughing, how can you shoot when you're afraid? Just you and the target, that's all there is. Nothing else matters. You have to be able to block everything else out.
"If a wild boar is charging you, you can't think about how afraid you are, or what will happen if you miss. You have to be able to make the shot under pressure. Or else have a tree close by you can climb."
"But, Richard, you can do it because you have the gift. I can't do that."
"Nonsense. The gift has nothing to do with it. It's simple concentration. Here, I'll talk you through it. Nock an arrow."
He stood behind her again, pulling her hair off her neck, leaning close, looking over her shoulder, and whispering in her ear as she drew the bowstring back.
He whispered what she should feel, how she should breathe, where she should look, what she should see. He talked in a way that made the words melt into nothingness, and instead made images form in her head. Only three things existed: the arrow, the target, and his words. She was in a world of silence.
When everything else winked out, the target seemed to grow larger in her vision, drawing the arrow to it. His words made her feel it, made her do things without understanding them. She relaxed and exhaled, holding herself still without taking another breath. She could feel it, feel the target. She knew when it was time, when it was right.
Lightly, like a breath of air, the arrow left of its own accord, as if it had decided to go on its own. In the quiet, she could see the feathers clear the bow, feel the string hit the bracer; she could see the target pulling the arrow, she could hear the arrow hit the X. She felt air rush back into her lungs.
It was almost like when she released her Confessor's power. It was magic, Richard's magic. His words were magic. It was like having a new vision.
She felt as if she were coming awake from a dream. The world came back. She almost fell against him.
Kahlan turned and threw her arms around his neck, still gripping the bow in one hand. "Richard, that was wonderful. The target came to me!"
"See? I told you you could do it."
She kissed his nose. "I didn't do it, you did it. I was just holding the bow instead of you."
He smiled. "No. You did it. I just showed your mind how. That's what teaching is. I was simply teaching you. Do it again."
Kahlan had lived around wizards all her life. She knew the way wizards did things. That was the way Richard had done it. He spoke to her the way wizards spoke. It was the gift speaking, she knew, even if he wouldn't admit it.
As she shot more arrows, he talked less. Without his words guiding her, it was harder to get the feel, but now and again she did. She could tell when she was doing it herself, without him. It seemed to be as he said, like intense concentration.
As she started to learn to block the world out as she aimed, he began to do things to try to distract her. At first he just rubbed her stomach. It made her smile until he told her to stop thinking about what he was doing and think only about what she must do. After a few hours, she could shoot while he tickled her. Sometimes. It was an exhilarating feeling to be able to feel where the arrow needed to be. She couldn't do it very often, but when it happened it felt wonderful. Addictive.