Wizard's First Rule (103 page)

It was long since dark out the window, but thankfully the lamps were lit and at least he didn’t have to stand in the dark. The two bells announced the end of evening devotion. Still Denna was not back. His training time came and went. Still no Denna. Richard was fraught with worry.

At last, he heard the door push open. Denna’s head was bowed, her posture stiff. The braid was undone and her hair disheveled. She laboriously pushed the door closed. He saw that her skin was ashen, her eyes wet. She didn’t look at him.

“Richard,” she said in a small voice, “fill my bath for me. Please? I need a bath, I feel very dirty right now.”

“Of course, Mistress Denna.”

He dragged the tub in and ran as fast as he could to fill it. He didn’t think he had ever done it more quickly. She stood and watched as he brought in bucket after bucket. When he was finished, he stood panting, waiting.

Her trembling fingers started unbuttoning the leather. “Help me with this? I don’t think I can do it by myself.”

He unbuttoned it for her as she shivered. Wincing, he had to peel it off her back; some of her skin came with it. His heart was pounding. Denna was covered with welts from the back of her neck to the back of her ankles. Richard was frightened, and he ached with hurt for her, for the pain she was in. Tears came to his eyes. The power roared up in him. He ignored it.

“Mistress Denna, who did this to you?” he demanded.

“Master Rahl. It is nothing I did not deserve.”

He held her hands and helped her into the tub. She let out a little sound as she sank slowly into the hot water, sitting stiffly.

“Mistress Denna, why would he do this to you?”

She winced when he put the soapy cloth to her back. “Constance told him I was being too easy on you. I deserve what was done to me. I have been lax in your training. I am Mord-Sith. I should have done better. I received only that which I deserve.”

“You do not deserve this, Mistress Denna, it is me who should have taken the punishment. Not you.”

Her hands trembled as she held the sides of the tub and he carefully washed her. He gently wiped the sweat off the white skin of her face. She stared ahead the whole time he worked, a few tears rolling down her cheeks.

Her lip quivered. “Tomorrow, Master Rahl will see you.” His hand stopped washing for a second. “I’m sorry, Richard. You will answer his questions.”

He glanced up at her face, but she didn’t look back. “Yes, Mistress Denna.” He rinsed her off with water cupped in his hands. “Let me dry you off.” He did it as gently as he could. “Do you wish to sit, Mistress Denna?”

She gave an embarrassed smile. “I don’t think I would like that, just now.” She turned her head stiffly. “Over there. I will lie on the bed.” She took his hand when he put it out for her. “I can’t seem to stop shaking. Why can’t I stop shaking?”

“Because it hurts, Mistress Denna.”

“I’ve had much worse than this done to me. This was only a small reminder of who I am. But still, I can’t stop shaking.”

She lay facedown on the bed, her eyes on him. Richard’s worry made his mind start working again.

“Mistress Denna, is my pack still here?”

“In the cabinet. Why?”

“Just lie still, Mistress Denna, let me do something, if I can remember how.”

He pulled his pack from a high shelf in the cabinet, laid it on the table, and started rummaging through it. Denna watched him, the side of her face resting on the backs of her hands. Beneath a carved bone whistle on a leather thong, he found the package he was searching for, and laid it open on the table. He pulled out a tin bowl, took his knife from his belt, and laid it, too, on the table. He stood and took a jar of cream from the cabinet. He had seen her spread it on her skin. It was just what he needed.

“Mistress Denna, may I use this?”

“Why?”

“Please?”

“Go ahead.”

Richard took the entire pile of neatly stacked, dried aum leaves and put them in the tin bowl, then selected a few other herbs he remembered by smell, but not by name, and dumped them in with the aum leaves. With the knife handle, he ground it all into a powder. Picking up the jar of cream, he scooped it all out and plopped it into the bowl, mixing it with two fingers. He took the bowl and sat on the bed next to her.

“Just lie still,” he told her.

“The appellation, Richard, the appellation. Will you never learn?”

“Sorry, Mistress Denna,” he smiled. “You may punish me later. For now, lie still. When I’m finished you will feel well enough to punish me all night. I promise.”

He spread the paste gently on the welts, smoothing it out as he went. Denna moaned. Her eyes closed while he worked. By the time he reached the back of her ankles, she was almost asleep. He stroked her hair while the aum cream soaked in.

“How does that feel, Mistress Denna?” he whispered.

She rolled onto her side, her eyes came open wide. “The pain is gone! How did you do that? How did you make the pain leave?”

Richard smiled in satisfaction. “I learned it from an old friend named…”He frowned. “I can’t remember his name. But he’s an old friend, and he taught me. I’m so relieved, Mistress Denna. I don’t like to see you in pain.”

She gently touched her fingers to the side of his face. “You are a very rare person, Richard Cypher. I have never had a mate like you before. The spirits take me, I have never even seen a person like you before. I killed the one who did the things to me that I have done to you, and you instead help me.”

“We all can be only who we are, no more, and no less, Mistress Denna.” He looked down at his hands. “I don’t like what Master Rahl has done to you.”

“You don’t understand about the Mord-Sith, my love. We are carefully selected, as young girls. Those chosen to be Mord-Sith are the most gentle, the most kind-hearted, that can be found. It is said that the deepest cruelty comes from the deepest caring. All of D’Hara is searched, and each year only about a half dozen are chosen. A Mord-Sith is broken three times.”

His eyes were wide. “Three times?” he whispered.

Denna nodded. “The first is the way in which I broke you, to break the spirit. The second is to break our empathy. To do it, we must watch our trainer break our mother, and make her his pet, and watch him hurt her until she dies. The third is to break us of our fear of hurting another, to make us enjoy giving pain. To do it, we must break our fathers, under the guidance of our trainer, and make him our pet, and keep hurting him until we kill him.”

Tears trickled down Richard’s cheeks. “They did all this to you?”

“What I did to you, to break you, is nothing compared to what must be done to us to break us the second and third time. The more kindhearted a girl is, the better Mord-Sith she makes, but it makes it harder to break her the second and third time. Master Rahl thinks me special because they had a very difficult time with the second breaking of me. My mother lived a long time, to try to keep me from giving up hope, but that only made it harder. On both of us. They failed at the third breaking, had given up, and were going to kill me, but Master Rahl said that if I could be broken, I would be someone special, and so took over my training himself. He is the one who broke me the third time. On the day I killed my father, he took me to his bed, as a reward. His reward left me barren.”

Richard could hardly speak past the lump in his throat. With shaking fingers, he brushed some of her hair back off her face. “I don’t want anyone hurting you. Not ever again, Mistress Denna.”

“It is an honor,” Denna whispered through tears, “that Master Rahl would spare the time to punish one as low as me with my own Agiel.”

Richard sat numb. “I hope he kills me tomorrow, so I don’t have to learn anything else that gives me this much pain, Mistress Denna.”

Her wet eyes shone in the lamplight. “I have done things to hurt you that I have done to no other, yet you are the first person since I was chosen who has done anything to stop my pain.” She sat up, picked up the tin bowl. “There is some left. Let me put it on you where Constance did what I told her not to.”

Denna spread the aum cream on the welts on his shoulders, then on his stomach and chest, working up to his neck. Her eyes met his. Her hand stopped. The room
was dead quiet. Denna leaned forward and gently kissed him. She put her hand with the cream on the back of his neck and kissed him again.

She lay back on the bed, holding his hand against her belly with both of hers. “Come to me, my love. I want you very badly right now.”

He nodded and started to reach for the Agiel on the side table. Denna touched his wrist.

“Tonight, I want you without the Agiel. Please? Teach me what it’s like without the pain?”

She put a hand behind his neck and gently pulled him on top of her.

Denna didn’t train him the next morning, but instead took him for a walk. Master Rahl had said he wanted to see Richard after the second devotion. After it was over and they were starting to leave, Constance stopped them.

“You look surprisingly well today, Sister Denna.”

Denna looked at her without emotion. Richard was furious at Constance for talking to Master Rahl about Denna, for getting her punished, and had to concentrate on Denna’s braid.

Constance turned to Richard. “Well. I hear you are to be granted an audience with Master Rahl today. If you are still alive afterward, you will be seeing more of me. Alone. I want a piece of you, as it were, when he’s finished with you.”

He spoke before he thought. “The year they chose you, Mistress Constance, must have been a year of desperate need; otherwise, one of such limited intelligence would never have been selected to be Mord-Sith. Only the most ignorant would put their own petty ambitions above the value of a friend. Especially a friend who has sacrificed much for you. You are not worthy to kiss Mistress Denna’s Agiel.” Richard smiled smoothly, confidently, as she stood startled. “You had better hope Master Rahl kills me, Mistress Constance, because if he doesn’t, then the next time I see you, I’m going to kill you for what you’ve done to Mistress Denna.”

Constance stared in shock, then suddenly drove her Agiel toward him. Denna’s longer arm came up. She slammed her own Agiel against Constance’s throat, holding her back. Constance’s eyes bulged in surprise. She coughed blood, and dropped to her knees, clutching her hands to her throat.

Denna stared down at her a moment before starting off without a word. Richard followed, attached by the chain. He sped up to walk beside her.

Denna kept her eyes ahead, showing no emotion. “Just try and guess how many hours that has earned you.”

Richard smiled. “Mistress Denna, if there is a Mord-Sith who could raise a scream from a dead man, it would be you.”

“And if Master Rahl doesn’t kill you, how many hours?”

“Mistress Denna, there are not enough hours in a lifetime to dim my pleasure at what I have done.”

She smiled a little, but didn’t look over. “I’m glad, then, that it was worth it for you.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “I still don’t understand you. As you said, we can be no more, or less, than who we are. I regret I can be no more than I am, and I fear you can be no less. Were we not warriors fighting on opposite sides
in this war, I would keep you as a mate for life, and work to see you die of old age.”

Richard was warmed by her gentle tone. “I would try my best to live a long life for you, Mistress Denna.”

They walked on through the halls, past the devotion squares, past the statues, past the people. She took him upstairs, through vast rooms of exquisite decorations. She stopped in front of a pair of doors covered in carvings of rolling hills and forests, all sheathed in gold.

Denna turned to him. “Are you prepared to die this day, my love?”

“The day is not over yet, Mistress Denna.”

She slipped her arms around his neck, kissing him tenderly. She pulled her face away a few inches, stroked the back of his head. “I’m sorry, Richard, that I do these things to you, but I have been trained to do them, and can do nothing less; I live only to hurt you. Know that it is not by choice, but by training. I can be no more than what I am: Mord-Sith. If you are to die this day, my love, then make me proud, and die well.”

He was mate to a madwoman, he thought sadly. And one not of her own making.

She pushed the doors open and entered a grand garden. Richard would have been impressed, had his mind not been on other things. They went down a path between flowers and shrubs, past short, vine-covered stone walls, and small trees, to an expanse of lawn. A glass roof let in the light, keeping the plants healthy and in flower.

In the distance were two identically huge men. Their folded arms had metal bands with sharp projections just above their elbows. Guards of some sort, Richard thought. To their side stood another man. Imposing muscles flexed on his smooth chest. His short-cropped blond hair stood up in spikes, with a single black streak running through it.

Near the center of the lawn, near a circle of white sand, in a warm shaft of late-afternoon sunlight, stood a man with his back to them. The sunlight made his white robes and shoulder-length blond hair glow. Sparks of the sunlight glinted off the gold belt and curved dagger at his waist.