Into Darkness

28

He turned to Rita. “Are there more horses in the ‘queen’s’ stables?”

She nodded. “Quite a few, but they belong to the queen. She never allows anyone in Bindamoon to use them. The people here must care for them for her. The man called Iron Jack saw to it that the queen’s orders were carried out and no one from town was ever caught riding them. He was very cruel in that task, as well as others.”

“Well, no one need fear Iron Jack any longer.”

She leaned in. “Oh? I have heard rumors that say he was killed by demons. Are the stories true?”

“The man is dead, that much is true,” Richard said as he held the towel over himself. “He can never hurt any of you again.”

“This is wonderful news,” one of the other women said. Several of the others nodded their agreement.

Richard gestured with an arm. “Out. Everyone out. I need to get dressed. I must get to the Mother Confessor.”

The healers glanced at one another with renewed concern.

“I don’t know if that is such a good idea just yet,” Rita said as she held up a cautionary finger. “It would be best if you rested for a few more days in order—”

“There are vastly more critical things than me getting more rest. I’ve been sleeping for days. Believe me, I am plenty rested. Now, please, all of you, out, so I can get dressed.”

The healers grudgingly gave in and filed out, looking back over their shoulders with concerned looks as they left. They closed the wooden door behind themselves. The Mord-Sith stood at ease and showed no indication that they thought the orders included them as well.

“You too,” Richard told them with a swish of his hand. “All of you, please wait outside.”

Berdine grinned. “Lord Rahl, that is rather pointless now. I mean, after all of us helped—”

“Out!” Richard could feel his face going red again. He briefly wondered if there was a way his gift could prevent that from happening. If there was, he wanted to learn the trick.

The Mord-Sith all let out deep sighs, as if he was just being silly, but to his relief they finally left him to get dressed alone, closing the door on their way out.

Richard found all of his clothes washed and neatly folded on a chair. His sword hung off one side of the back. His pack, bow, and quiver hung off the other side. His mind raced as he hastily got dressed. He needed to get to Kahlan, but Shota and her coven had quite a head start. He knew, though, that Kahlan would be doing what she could to slow them down, hoping that he would catch up—hoping, too, no doubt, that he was still alive.

Finally dressed in his freshly cleaned clothes, his sword at his hip, and his pack and bow each hanging over a shoulder, he pulled open the door.

He was not prepared for what greeted him outside.

The healing house stood at the edge of the town on the opposite side of the pass road from the palace. The hillside before him gently descended down toward the western wall below where he stood outside the stone building. The entire hillside was packed with people, all silently staring up at him. It looked to him like the whole town was assembled there.

The healers were off to his right, keeping watch, presumably in case he succumbed to his wounds and collapsed. The six Mord-Sith were there waiting for him just outside the door. Once he stepped out, they took up places beside him, with three to either side. Vika took her place immediately to his right, signifying that she was his lead protection.

The people looking up at him stared in silence. He had no idea what was going on, but he was pretty sure that they had never seen a Lord Rahl before, so he thought that maybe that was it.

Richard recognized Toby, but not the two big men in leather vests beside him. When Toby saw that Richard was looking at him, he glanced around, then took a few steps forward. He swiped the flat hat off his head and held the hat in both hands, nervously turning it around and around.

“Toby,” Richard said, “I want to thank you and all the others who helped get me out from where I was trapped. You people saved my life. I am indebted to you all. I will never forget all you and the healers have done for me.”

Toby shook his head. “No, Lord Rahl. It is we who are indebted to you.”

“What do you mean?”

Toby gestured off across the pass road to where the towering palace had stood. Richard could see that the entire structure had collapsed. An enormous pile of rubble was all that remained of a once-elegant structure. It was a reminder of the tremendous destructive power of Subtractive Magic.

On the lower side of the mountain’s prominence, where the palace had stood, the ground had sheared away and slid down to cover a number of the stone buildings. He could tell by the way the ground had dropped away on the downhill side that it had exposed the area closer to where the massive chamber beneath the palace had been. That was where Richard had been trapped. The Mord-Sith had been down in that chamber, so they would have known where Richard was. They had undoubtedly been the ones to direct rescue efforts.

It was fortunate that the rock of the mountain itself, having been sliced through and weakened by Subtractive Magic, had slumped down and off to one side the way it had, because it made it possible for his rescuers to dig in from the side, which would have been considerably closer to him, than to try to dig down from atop the enormous pile of rubble. Had they needed to do that, he knew, by the time they reached him it would have merely ended up being an effort to recover his body.

“I’m sorry that when the palace came down it buried so many of your homes,” Richard said.

“You destroyed that terrible palace of the queen,” Toby said.

“You mean Shota, the witch woman,” Richard corrected.

People all through the crowd nodded at that. They had been afraid to say her name aloud, but now that he had, they readily acknowledged it.

“That’s right,” Toby said as he kept turning his hat in his hands. “The people in those buildings heard the powerful uproar of your magic, and the sounds of the palace coming apart, so they were able to escape before the whole place came down. Those homes can and will be rebuilt. I’m thankful that none of the people who lived there were hurt and they are all safe.”

Richard nodded with relief. “That’s good to hear.”

Toby lifted his thumb to the side. “These are my two boys. They helped dig you out, as did many of the people of Bindamoon. We have lived our lives under the cloud of that witch and her sister witches, to say nothing of Iron Jack. Whenever she was here, in Bindamoon, we feared to even come out of our houses. Everyone feared that if she saw them, she might strike them down for any reason or no reason.”

“Well, she’s gone now, and Iron Jack is dead,” Richard said. “She no longer has a palace to come back to. I intend to see to it that she never comes back here.”

At that, everyone went to their knees. They all did it together, as if they were of one mind. The six Mord-Sith came around and in front of the people on the hillside, turned toward Richard, and went to their knees as well. Everyone bent forward, putting their foreheads to the ground.

Together, in one voice, they began.

“Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us.”

Richard hadn’t expected them all to give the devotion. He stood silent and tall as they continued.

“In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

As all the voices died out, silence slowly fell over the expanse of the hillside. And then they repeated the devotion. When they were finished, they spoke it for a third time.

Richard felt a catch in his throat. This devotion was his link to people, a link forged through his gift. They were the steel against steel for him; he was the magic against magic for them.

He had used that magic to bring down the hated palace of the woman they feared to name.

More than that, the devotion was his protection for their world, linking all the magic of the world in a web of security that kept the Golden Goddess from coming unimpeded to slaughter everyone and feed on them as he had seen happen back in the lower reaches of the People’s Palace.

His magic, and Kahlan’s, was the protection for their world, and it linked them all together. The devotion was an acknowledgment of that shared bond.

The two children Kahlan carried were the continuation of that magic, that power, that bond that was the protection for their world.

Richard swallowed. “Thank you all. I can’t begin to tell you what it means to me.”

A cheer went up to let him know that it meant something to them as well.

“We’ve never been before the Lord Rahl to give the devotion,” Toby said. “The queen—I mean Shota, the witch woman—wouldn’t allow the devotion to be given.”

“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, both to dig me out of that rubble, and to heal me. I was in good hands. But now, I need to chase down those witches and put an end to what they are doing to destroy all our futures.”

One of Toby’s sons pointed. “The stables are over there.” He grinned. “Since you are going after Shota, maybe you would like to take some of her horses to her?”

Richard returned a brief smile. “That’s the idea.”