"Just because something has happened to you before, Richard, don't assume that means it will again. Fate does not give birth to the same child over and over. Each is different. This is not like the two times before."

Her response, as well as the compassion in her eyes, appeared to have caught him off guard. He stared at her a moment before crouching to replace the curry comb in a pocket in the saddlebag and take out a pick.

"Two times before?" There was no way he could miss her meaning. His blank expression didn't betray what he might be thinking as he lifted the stallion's right forefoot to pick its hoof clean. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Just as he probed the hoof with his pick, she knew he was probing her as well, wanting to know just how much she knew of those two times, and what she thought was different, this time. He would surely want to know how she intended to avoid the mistakes of his past captors. Any warrior would.

He was not yet ready to accept how fundamentally different this was.

Richard worked his way around the big black horse, cleaning its hooves, until he ended at the left forefoot, close to her. As he finished and let the stallion's leg down, Nicci stood. When he turned around, she was close enough to feel his warm breath on her cheek. He fixed her with his glare, a look that was no longer as unsettling to her as it had been at first.

She found herself, instead of shrinking back, staring into that penetrating gaze of his, marveling that she had him. She finally had him. It could have been no more wondrous to her had she somehow managed to bottle the moon and stars.

"You are a prisoner," Nicci said. "Your anger and resentment are entirely understandable. 1 would never have expected you to be pleased about this, Richard. But it is not the same as those times before." She gently gripped his throat. He was surprised, but sensed he was in no immediate danger.

"Before," she said in quiet solace, "you had a collar around your neck. Both times."

"You were at the Palace of the Prophets, where I was taken." She felt him swallow. "But the other. ."

She released his throat. "I do not use a collar, as did the Sisters of the Light, to control you, to give you pain in order to make you obey, or to put you through their ridiculous tests. My purpose is nothing like that."

She pulled her cloak forward over her shoulders as she smiled distantly. "Remember when you first came to the Palace of the Prophets?

Remember the speech you gave?"

Richard's words were brittle with caution. "Not. . exactly."

She was still staring off into the memories. "I do. It was the first time I saw you. I remember every word."

Richard said nothing, but in his eyes she could see the shadows of his mind working.

"You were in a rage-not unlike now. You held out a red leather rod hanging around your neck. Remember, Richard?"

"I guess I did." His suspicious glare broke. "A lot has happened since then. I guess I'd put it out of my mind."

"You said that you had been collared before. You said that the person who had once put that collar around your neck had brought you pain to punish you, to teach you."

His posture shifted to stiff wariness. "What of it?"

She focused once more on his gray eyes, eyes that watched her every blink, her every breath, as he weighed her every word. It was all going into some inner calculation, she knew-some inner master analysis of how high was his fence, and if he could jump it. He could not.

"I always wondered about that," she said. "About what you had said about having been in a collar before. Some months back, we captured a woman in red leather. A Mord-Sith." His color paled just a little. "She said she was searching for Lord Rahl, to protect him. I persuaded her to tell me everything she knew about you."

"I'm not from D'Hara." His voice sounded confident, nevertheless, she sensed a subterranean torrent of dread. "A Mord-Sith would know next to nothing about me."

Nicci reached inside her cloak for the thing she had brought with her.

She let the small red leather rod roll from her fingers to fall to the ground at his feet. He stiffened.

"Oh, but she did, Richard. She knew a great deal." She smiled a small smile, not pleasure, nor mockery, but in distant sadness at the memory of that brave woman. "She knew Derma. She had been at the People's Palace in D'Hara, where you were taken after Derma captured you. She knew all about it."

Richard's gaze fell away. On bended knee he reverently picked the red leather rod off the wet ground. He wiped the thing clean on his pant leg as if it were priceless.

"A Mord-Sith would not tell you anything." He stood and boldly met her gaze. "A Mord-Sith is a product of torture. She would say only enough to make you believe she was cooperating. She would feed you a clever lie to deceive you. She would die before speaking any words to harm her Lord Rahl."

With one long finger, Nicci pulled a sodden strand of blond hair off her cheek. "You underestimate me, Richard. That woman was very brave. I felt great sorrow for her, but there were things I wanted to know. She told it all. She told me everything I wanted to know."

Nicci could see the rage rising in him, bringing a flush to his cheeks.

That was not what she had intended, or wanted. She was telling him the truth, but he rejected it, trying to overlay it instead with his own false assumptions.

A moment passed, and that truth finally found its way into his eyes.

The rage departed reluctantly, replaced by the weight of sadness that made him swallow at his grief for this woman. Nicci had expected no less from him.

"Apparently," Nicci whispered, "Derma was very talented at torture-"

"I neither need nor want your sympathy."

"But I did feel sympathy, Richard, for what that woman put you through for no purpose but to give pain. That's the worst kind of pain, isn't it? — pain to no benefit, no confession? The pointlessness of it only adds to its torture. That was what you suffered."

Nicci gestured to the red leather weapon in his fist. "This woman did not suffer that kind of pain. I want you to know that."

He pressed his lips tight in mistrust as he looked away from her eyes, gazing out at the gathering darkness.

"You killed her, this Mord-Sith named Denna, but not before she did unspeakable things to you."

"So I did." Richard's expression hardened with the implied menace of his words.

"You threatened the Sisters of the Light because they, too, collared you. You told them they were not good enough to lick the boots of that woman, Denna, and so they were not. You told the Sisters that they thought they held the leash to your collar, but you promised them that they would find that what they held was a bolt of lightning. Don't think for one moment that I don't understand your feelings in this, or your resolve."

Nicci reached out and tapped the center of his chest.

"But this time, Richard, the collar is around your heart and it is Kahlan who will be forfeit, should you make a mistake."

His fists, at the ends of his rigid arms, tightened. "Kahlan would rather die than have me be a slave at her expense. She begged me to forfeit her life for my freedom. A day may dawn when it becomes necessary for me to honor her request."

Nicci felt a weary boredom at his threats. People so often resorted to threatening her.

"That is entirely up to you, Richard. But you make a great mistake if you think I care."

She couldn't begin to recall how many times Jagang had made solemn threats on her life, or how many of those times his hands had tightened around her throat choking the life out of her after he had beaten her senseless. Kadar Kardeef had at times been no less brutal. She'd lost count of the times she fully expected to die, starting with the time when she was little and the man pulled her into the alley to rob her.