Nicci looked to be at a loss. "Who?"

Richard took hold of her wrist and removed her hand from his chest. "What's wrong? Is she hurt? Where is she?"

Cara tilted her head toward Nicci. "While he slept, Lord Rahl dreamed himself up a wife."

Nicci turned an astonished frown on Cara. "A wife!"

"Remember the name he called out when he was delirious?" Cara flashed a conspiratorial smile. "That's the one he married in his dream. She's beautiful-and smart, of course."

"Beautiful." Nicci blinked at the woman. "And smart."

Cara cocked an eyebrow. "And she's the Mother Confessor."

Nicci looked incredulous. "The Mother Confessor."

"Enough," Richard said as he released Nicci's wrist. "I mean it, now.

Where is she?"

It was immediately apparent to both women that his indulgent sense of humor had evaporated. The intensity in his voice, to say nothing of his glare, gave them pause.

"Richard," Nicci said in a cautious tone, "you were hurt pretty bad. For a time I didn't think.» She hooked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and started over. "Look, when a person is hurt as seriously as you were, it can play tricks with their mind. It's only natural. I've seen it before. When you were shot with that arrow you couldn't breathe. Not getting air, like when you're drowning, causes.»

"What's the matter with you two? What's going on?" Richard couldn't understand why they were stalling. His heart felt as if it were galloping out of control. "Is she hurt? Tell me!"

"Richard," Nicci said in a calm voice obviously meant to settle him down, "the bolt from that crossbow came perilously close to going right through your heart. If it had, there wouldn't have been anything I could have done. I can't raise the dead.

"Even though it missed your heart, the arrow still did serious damage. People just don't survive a wound as grave as you had. I wouldn't have been able to heal you in the conventional manner because it couldn't be done. There was no time to even try to get the arrow out in any other way. You were bleeding inside. I had to.»

She faltered as she stared up into his eyes. Richard bent down a little toward her. "You had to what?"

Nicci shrugged one shoulder self-consciously. "I had to use Subtractive Magic."

Nicci was a powerful sorceress in her own right, but she was infinitely more exceptional in that she was able to wield underworld forces as well. She had once been committed to those forces. She had once been known as Death's Mistress. Healing was not exactly her specialty.

Richard's caution flared. "Why?"

"To get the arrow out of you."

"You eliminated the arrow with Subtractive Magic?"

"There was no time and no other way." She again clasped his shoulders, although more compassionately this time. "If I hadn't done something you would have been dead in mere moments. I had to."

Richard glanced to Cara's grim expression and then back to Nicci. "Well, I guess that makes sense."

At least, it sounded like it made sense. He didn't really know if it did or not. Having been raised in the vast woods of Westland, Richard didn't know a great deal about magic.

"And some of your blood," Nicci added in a low voice.

He didn't like the sound of that. "What?"

"You were bleeding into your chest. One lung had already failed. I was able to perceive that your heart was being forced out of place. The major arteries were in danger of being ripped apart from the pressure. I needed the blood out of the way in order to heal you-so that your lungs and heart could work properly. They were failing. You were in a state of shock and delirium. You were near death."

Nicci's blue eyes brimmed with tears. "I was so afraid, Richard. There was no one but me to help you and I was so afraid that I would fail. Even after I did everything I could to heal you, I still wasn't sure you would ever wake again."

Richard could see the toll of that fear in her expression and feel it in the way her fingers trembled on his arms. It spoke to how far she had come since she had given up her belief in the cause of the Sisters of the Dark and then the Imperial Order.

The haunted look on Cara's face confirmed for him the truth of how desperate the situation had been. For all the sleep he'd apparently gotten, neither of them appeared to have had much more than brief naps. It must have been a frightening vigil.

The rain drummed without letup against the roof. Other than that, the dank husk of a house was dead quiet. Life seemed all the more fleeting in the abandoned home. The forsaken place gave Richard the chills.

"You saved my life, Nicci. I remember being afraid I was going to die. But you saved my life." He touched his fingertips to her cheek. "Thank you. I wish there was a better way to say it, a better way to tell you how much I appreciate what you did, but I can't think of any."

Nicci's small smile and simple nod told him that she grasped the depth of his sincerity.

Another thought struck him. "Do you mean to say that using Subtractive Magic caused some kind of — problem?"

"No, no, Richard." Nicci squeezed his arms as if to allay his fears. "No, I don't think that it caused any harm."

"What do you mean, you don't think it did?"

She hesitated a moment before explaining. "I've never done anything like that before. I've never even heard of it being done. Dear spirits, I didn't even know that it could be done. As I'm sure you can imagine, using Subtractive Magic in such a way is risky, to put it mildly. Anything living touched by it would also be destroyed. I had to use the core of the arrow itself as a pathway into you. I was as careful as I could possibly be that I only eliminated the arrow — and the spent blood."

Richard wondered what happened to things when Subtractive Magic was used-what would have happened to his blood-but his head was already spinning with the story and he most wanted her to get to the point.

"But between all that," Nicci added, "between the massive loss of blood, the injury, the dire condition of not being able to get enough air, the stress you underwent while I used regular Additive Magic to heal you-to say nothing of the unknown element that Subtractive Magic added into the mix-you were going through an experience that can only be described as unpredictable. Such a terrible crisis can cause unexpected things to happen."

Richard didn't know what she was getting at. "What unexpected things?"

"There's no telling. I had no choice but to use extreme methods. You were beyond what I thought were all limits. You have to try to understand that you were not yourself there for a while."

Cara hooked a thumb behind her red leather belt. "Nicci is right, Lord Rahl. You weren't yourself. You were fighting us. I had to hold you down just so she could help you.

"I've stood over men at the cusp of death. Strange things happen when they're in that place. Believe me, you were there a long time into that first night."

Richard knew very well what she meant when she said that she had stood over men on the cusp of death. The profession of Mord-Sith had been torture-at least it had been until he changed all that. He carried the Agiel of Denna, the Mord-Sith who had once stood over him in that capacity. She had given him her Agiel as a solemn gift in gratitude for freeing her from the madness of her terrible duty — even though she had known that the price of that freedom was to be his sword through her heart.

Right then Richard felt a very long way from the peaceful woods where he'd grown up.

Nicci spread her hands as if imploring him to try harder to understand. "You were unconscious and then asleep for quite a time. I had to revive you enough to get you to drink water and a broth, but I needed you to stay in a deep sleep so that you could begin to recover your strength. I had to use a spell to keep you in that state. You'd lost a lot of blood; had I allowed you to awake too soon it would have sapped your tenuous strength and you still could have slipped away from us."