“What about the Mother Confessor?” Samantha asked. “I can’t see her.”
“On the other side of me,” Richard told her.
He bent his knees, sagging a little, but that was the limit of how much he could move. He was exhausted. He felt like he had been beaten with a club. He hurt everywhere.
“Lord Rahl, what are we going to do?” The young woman sounded desperate and on the verge of panic.
“I don’t know yet, Samantha.”
“Well, who did this to us? Everyone seemed like they were cooperating.”
“I don’t know, Samantha. Try to save your strength.”
He looked over at Kahlan again. She was still hanging unconscious by the iron bands at the ends of taut chains. Her head hung forward, her arms spread wide and stretched back a little toward the wall. Blood from where the iron collar cut her neck dripped off her chin.
The sight ignited Richard’s anger. He tried to talk his anger back down. It could do him no good at the moment, and only wasted what little strength he had left. He needed to save that strength in case he had a chance to use it.
He heard Samantha crying softly over on the other side of Nicci. He couldn’t think of anything to say to comfort her.
At that moment, his only hope was that they would be killed quickly, rather than endure a long, agonizing path toward the inevitable end.
CHAPTER
75
Richard’s head jerked up. He realized that he must have nodded off briefly. Blood had puddled on the floor in front of him from the iron collar cutting into his neck. The way the rough iron ring dug into the fresh wound stung.
He was exhausted from the grueling effort of trekking through trackless wilderness to reach the citadel, from whatever sort of power had been used to render them unconscious, and also from the relentless weight of darkness within trying to pull him into the forever of death.
Trying to think clearly, trying to come up with some solution, was also sapping his strength. He could barely form a thought, and what thoughts he could form weren’t helping.
He looked over and saw that Kahlan hadn’t moved. She still hung unconscious. He remembered Nicci telling him that if either of them lost consciousness again from the poison inside them, it would be the last time and they wouldn’t wake again. He didn’t know why she was unconscious, but if it was from the sickness she carried, then it was possible she had already slipped away and would never wake again. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, but he would rather she died that way, than from a long ordeal of torture.
The thought of her dying made him want to scream. He couldn’t endure to contemplate Kahlan being dead. He couldn’t stand the thought of life without her. He would do anything to save her life. Anything.
But it didn’t seem likely that either of them had any life to look forward to.
He had been so confident that they had been close to the resolution to their sickness, that Nicci would be able to heal them, and that they would then be able to collect the horses they needed to make it back to the palace in time. Not only that, but he had been positive that once Kahlan was herself again, she would also recover her strength of spirit and the commitment to what they were fighting for. That dedication to truth and the well-being of good people was so much a part of her, a part of her that he loved. It was her.
Now, those hopes had been crushed.
It had seemed within their grasp. They had worked so hard to get there, only to discover that there was no containment field. He felt cheated. It seemed so unfair.
Richard’s head came up when he heard something out beyond the door. Nicci’s head rose as well. They shared a look.
“Be strong, Richard. Be strong.”
“You too,” he told her.
“Always. We’ve both faced worse than this and survived.”
She actually gave him a smile, then. He actually found himself returning it. She was a rare woman.
He felt a great sadness, then, at the thought of Nicci dying in this miserable dungeon out in the middle of the Dark Lands. Samantha, too, was going to have her life snuffed out before she could live it. It didn’t seem fair.
He knew, though, that there was no such thing as fair in life. Existence had no agenda. Life simply existed. It was up to them to fight for life to be worthwhile and good if that was what they wanted. If they didn’t, evil would flourish unopposed and have its way. And now, that evil was going to win.
The door squealed in protest when it was pulled open.
Richard stared in disbelief when Ludwig Dreier strolled in. The man wore a smirk that widened as his gaze met Richard’s. Rather than the black clothes Richard was used to seeing the man wear, he now had on rather royal-looking purple-and-gold robes that swished around his legs as he walked.