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“Can you help him? Can you save him?”
“The Keeper’s mark has been placed upon him. The mark will take the holder to the Keeper. If another’s hand is placed over the mark, it will transfer to them, and take them instead, in his place. Richard will not then be pulled to the Keeper. He will live.”
Kahlan knew in that instant what she must do. Without hesitation, she leaned over Richard, stretching her hand out. Then I will take the mark. I will go in his place so that he will live.” She spread her fingers to match the black mark. Her hand was only a scant inch above it.
“Kahlan, don’t do that.”
She looked over her shoulder. “Why? If it will save him, then I am willing to go in his place.”
“I know you are, but it is not that simple. We must talk first. It will not be easy, for either of us. It will hurt both of us to really help him.”
Kahlan reluctantly sat back down and nodded. She would have agreed to anything, paid any price, even talking to this… woman. She put a hand protectively on Richard as she sat facing De
De
“He told you about me?”
De
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I am going to ask you to help him, and I want you to understand exactly how much you will be hurting him before you agree to it. You must understand what it is you will have to do in order to save him. I won’t trick you into doing it. It must be with your full knowledge. Only in that way will you know how to save him. If you don’t understand, you could fail.
“He is in danger from more than this mark. He is sick with a madness, madness I put there. It will kill him as surely as will the Keeper’s mark.”
“Richard is probably the most sane person I know. He has no madness. It is the mark we must remove.”
“He is marked in other ways: he has the gift. I knew from the moment he came to kill me. I can see it in him now, the aura of it. I know it is killing him, and I know his time is very short. I don’t know how long, only that there is not much time left. We can’t save him from the Keeper just to have him die anyway from the gift.”
Kahlan nodded as she wiped her nose on the back of her hand. The Sisters of the Light say they can save him. They say he must put a collar on to save himself. Richard will not put it on. He told me what you did to him, why he won’t wear a collar. But Richard is not crazy. He will see in the end what must be done, and do it. That is the way he is. He will see the truth.”
De
Kahlan’s anger boiled. “I don’t think it would be wise for you to tell me. If he doesn’t want to tell me, then I don’t think I should know it.”
“You must. You must understand him if you are to help him. In some ways, I understand him better than you. I have taken him to the edge of madness, and beyond. I have seen him in a wasteland of insanity.
“I have stood over him and held him there.”
Kahlan glared. She recognized the look in De
De
“I had to sit for hours, sometimes, and wait, knowing that if I touched him just once more with the Agiel, it would be one touch too many; it would kill him. As I sat, waiting for him to recover enough so that I might hurt him more, he would whisper your name, over and over, for hours. He wasn’t even aware he was doing it.
“You were the thread that kept him alive. It was the one thread that allowed me to give him that extra pain. Allowed me to take him further toward death, deeper into madness. I used his love for you to punish him beyond anything otherwise possible.
“As I would sit there, listening to him whisper your name, I wished it would once, just once, have been my name he called out. It never was. I hurt him more for that than for anything else.”
Tears ran down Kahlan’s cheeks, falling from her face. “Please, De
“You must. I have not yet even begun to tell you what you must hear if you want to help him. You must understand how I used magic against him; why he hates the magic within himself. I understand, because what I did to him was also done to me, by Darken Rahl.”
As Kahlan sat shaking, staring blankly at nothing, almost in a trance, De
Kahlan remembered all too well what its touch felt like, the maddening pain. She learned that what she had felt was the least of it.
She cried as De
She clutched her stomach and held a trembling hand to her mouth to keep from vomiting as De
As she listened, she prayed to the good spirits that De
But then De
With a wail, Kahlan turned away, crawled a short distance, and started throwing up. With one hand holding herself up, and the other across her abdomen, she cried and heaved and gagged. De
She felt De
Between gagging, and panting, and crying, Kahlan managed to get the words out. “Take… your hands… off me.” The hand holding her hair slipped away. The one on her back lifted. Her stomach heaved again in a dry convulsion. “How many times did you do that to him?”
“Enough. It does not matter.”
Kahlan turned in a rage, clenching her fists as she screamed. “How many times!”