Confessor (14 page)

Men playing Ja’La usually seemed to function as a loosely coordinated mob, carrying out the designated job of their position—blockers, or wing men, or guards, as seemed fitting to each man in each circumstance that came up. The prevailing wisdom was that only if each man acted as he saw fit could the team expect to deal with the unexpected variations that came about during play. They were, in a way, each reacting to what fate dealt them.

Ruben’s team was different. At the completion of the signal, they pivoted and in a coordinated fashion charged ahead of him in formation. They were not acting as a loosely coordinated mob; they were behaving like a well-disciplined army going into a battle.

The men of the other team, by now enraged, each man driven by the desire for revenge, rushed to intercept the team with the broc. Crossing midfield, the red team turned as one, going for the net to their right. The defending team all went for them like bears on a tear. Their blockers knew that their job was to block, and they meant to stop the advancing red team before they could reach the scoring zone.

But Ruben didn’t follow his men. He broke left at the last moment. All by himself, without even his wing men for protection, he alone went diagonally the other way across the field, heading for the net to the left. The bulk of the two teams collided in a great heap, some of the defenders not
even aware that the man they were after wasn’t under the pile.

Only one guard had been lagging back, saw what Ruben was doing, and was able to turn in time to block. Ruben lowered a shoulder and caught the guard square in the chest, knocking the wind from him and sending him sprawling. Without pause as he reached the scoring area of the field, Ruben heaved the broc into the net.

The red team sprinted back to their side of the field, forming up for a second attack while they still had time left. As they waited for the referee trotting with the broc across the field, they all looked to their panting leader for his hand signal. It was quick and simple, a sign that, to Kahlan, didn’t look like it meant anything. When the referee tossed Ruben the broc he immediately broke into a dead run. His team was ready and sprang out ahead to fan out in a short, tight line before him.

When the angry, disorderly cluster of men of the other team were almost upon them, the red team pivoted left, scooping up the blocking charge, deflecting its momentum left. Ruben, not far behind his line of men, broke right and raced alone across open ground. Before any of the blockers could reach him, he yelled with the effort of heaving the broc from way behind the regular scoring zone. It was exceedingly difficult to make a shot from that far back. Thrown from there, a shot that went in was worth two points rather than one.

The broc arced through the air over the heads of net guards jumping wildly for it. Confused by the strange single-line charge, they hadn’t expected such a long-shot attempt to score and hadn’t been ready for it.

The broc just made it into the net.

The horn blew, signifying the end of the red team’s scoring period.

The crowd stood stunned, mouths hanging agape. In
their first turn at play, the red team had scored three points—not to mention the two points Ruben had made that didn’t count.

A hush fell over the field as the other team huddled in a confidential discussion of what to do about the sudden turn of events. Their point man made what appeared to be an angry proposal. All his men, grinning at what he suggested, nodded and then broke up to begin their turn with the broc.

Seeing that they had obviously cooked up a plan, the crowd again started cheering encouragement. Over the cheers, the point man growled orders to his men. Two of his guards nodded at words Kahlan couldn’t hear.

At his yell, they charged across the field, gathering into a tight knot of muscle and fury. Rather than going for the scoring zone, the point man abruptly hooked right, leading the charge oddly off course. Ruben and his defenders shifted to meet the charge but weren’t able to bring their full weight to bear in time. It was a brutal impact. The strike had deliberately targeted Ruben’s left wing man to the exclusion of all the other men, abandoning even the show of an attempt to score in favor of doing damage to one man in order to harm the red team’s ability to play effectively.

As the crowd cheered in anticipation of first blood, the pile of men got up one at a time. Players painted red yanked their opponents back out of the way, trying to reach the men at the bottom of the heap. The left wing man for the red team was the only man who did not get up.

As the team with the broc ran back to form up another charge, Ruben knelt beside the downed man, checking on him. It was obvious by his lack of urgency that there was nothing to be done. His left wing man was dead. The crowd cheered as the fallen player was dragged away, leaving a thick trail of blood across the field.

Ruben’s raptor gaze swept the sidelines. Kahlan recognized the appraisal. She could almost feel what he was thinking because she had also appraised opposition and weighed odds. The guards with arrows put tension to their bows as Ruben rose up.

“What’s going on?” Jillian whispered as she peeked out from under Kahlan’s cloak. “I can’t see past all of Jagang’s guards.”

“A man was hurt,” Kahlan said. “Just stay warm, there’s nothing worth seeing.”

Jillian nodded and remained huddled under Kahlan’s protective arm and the warmth of her cloak.

The play of Ja’La was not halted for anything, even a death on the field. Kahlan felt great sadness that the death of a man was all part of the game, and cheered by the spectators.

The men with bows stationed around the field, watching over the captives who played on the red team, all seemed to be pointing their nocked arrows toward one man. She and the man with the lightning bolts painted on his face had something in common: they each had their own special guards.

As the crowd chanted for play, Kahlan felt an odd, tense foreboding in the air.

The broc was returned to the team with time left in their turn at play. As they formed up, she knew that the moment had passed.

Kahlan saw a grim Ruben give his men a stealthy signal. Each of his men returned a slight nod. Then, just enough for them to catch his meaning, Ruben stealthily showed them three fingers. The men immediately assembled up into an odd formation.

They waited briefly as the other team started across the field at a dead run, yelling battle cries inspired by their brutal accomplishment. They believed they now had a tactical
advantage that gave them the upper hand. They were confident that they could now dictate the course of the game.

As the team with the broc charged across the field, the red team broke into three separate wedges. Ruben led the smaller center wedge, heading for the point man with the broc. His two wing men—his big right wing man and the newly designated left wing man—led the majority of the blockers in the two side wedges. Some of the men on the team with the broc shifted to each side as they charged ahead to block the odd outrigger formation should they try to turn in toward their point man.

The strange defensive tactic drew scorn from Jagang’s guards. From the comments Kahlan could hear they were convinced that the red team, by splitting up into three groups, would not have the weight of enough blockers left in the center to stop the point man with the broc, much less handle all the men coming at them. The guards thought that such an ineffective defense would give the aggressors an easy score and probably cost the life of another member of the red team in the center group—very possibly the point man himself, since he was now virtually unprotected.

The two outer red-team wedges cut through the sides of the charge, not blocking in the expected manner. The legs of men on the attacking team flipped up through the air as men were violently upended. Ruben’s center wedge smashed into the main group of blockers defending the point man with the broc. He tucked the broc tightly against his stomach and, following behind some of his guards, leaped over the tumbling tangle of men.

Ruben, at the rear of the center wedge, running at full speed, deftly evaded the onrushing line of guards and sprang over the pileup of his blockers. As he jumped, he pushed off with one foot, twisting as he leaped off from the ground so that he spiraled through the air. In midair, as they came together, Ruben hooked his right arm around the
other point man’s head as if to tackle him, but the momentum of his spin suddenly and violently twisted the man’s head around.

Kahlan could hear the sound of the pop as the point man’s neck broke. They both crashed to the ground, Ruben on top, his arm still around the other man’s neck.

When men from both teams scrambled to their feet, two men from the attacking team were down, one on each side of the field. Both men rolled in pain with broken limbs.

Ruben rose up over the point man lying dead in the center of the field. The man’s head lay twisted back at a gruesome angle.

Ruben scooped the loose broc up off the ground, trotted through the stunned, confused players, and threw a point that didn’t count.

The meaning of what he’d just done was clear: if another team played specifically to harm anyone on his team, then he would retaliate with a withering response. He was giving notice that by their own actions they were choosing for themselves what would happen to them.

Kahlan now knew without doubt that Ruben’s red paint was no hollow display. The men on the other team lived only by his grace.

Surrounded by nearly uncountable captors, with dozens of arrows pointed at him, this one man had just laid down his own laws, laws that could not be avoided or dismissed. He had just told his opponents how they would play against him and his team. It was a clear message that, by their own actions, Ruben’s opponents chose their own fate.

Kahlan had to school her features and keep herself from smiling, from shouting with joy at what he had just accomplished—from being the only one in the crowd to cheer this one man.

She wished he would look at her, but he never did.

With their point man dead and two other players now out
of play—the ones primarily responsible for what could only be described as the murder of the red team’s left wing man—it looked like the favored team was on the verge of an unprecedented loss.

Kahlan wondered just how many points the red team was going to win by. She expected it was going to be a rout.

Just then, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the messenger rushing up, waving an arm to get the emperor’s attention as he shoved his way through the big guards.

“Excellency,” the excited man said in a breathless voice, “the men have gotten in. The Sisters there at the site asked for you to come at once.”

Jagang asked no questions and wasted no time. As the play on the field resumed he started away. Kahlan glanced back just in time to see Ruben tackle the new opposing point man hard enough to rattle his teeth. All of the big guards swarmed around the emperor, opening a clear pathway before him. Kahlan knew better than to draw his attention by not following close behind.

“We’re leaving,” she said to Jillian, still huddling for warmth under Kahlan’s cloak.

Holding hands so that they wouldn’t become separated, they turned to follow Jagang. Kahlan looked back over her shoulder.

For a brief moment, their eyes met. In that fleeting instant, Kahlan realized that even though he hadn’t looked her way once throughout the game, he had known exactly where she had been the entire time.

Nicci’s eyes popped open. She gasped in panic.

Dim shapes swam in her vision. She could make no sense of the indistinct forms she saw. In an effort to get her bearings her mind snatched at memories of every sort, frantically searching through their ever-changing essence, trying to find ones that seemed relevant, ones that fit. The great store of all of her thoughts seemed in as much disarray as a library full of books scattered by the twisting winds of a thunderstorm. Nothing seemed to make sense to her. She couldn’t understand where she was.

“Nicci, it’s me, Cara. You’re safe. Calm down.”

A different voice in the murky, blurry distance said, “I’ll go get Zedd.” Nicci saw the dark shape move and then vanish into yet more darkness.

She realized that it had to be the person who had spoken going through a doorway. That was the only thing that made sense. She thought she might cry with relief at finally being able, out of all the shapes and shadows, to grasp the simple concept of a doorway, and the vastly more complex concept of a person.

“Nicci, calm down,” Cara repeated.

Nicci only then realized that she was struggling mightily,
trying to move her arms, and that she was being held down. It was as if her mind and body were both jumbled, trying to function through turmoil and confusion, trying to get a grip on something solid.

But she was beginning to make sense of things.

“Six,” she said with great effort. “Six.”

The black memory loomed up in her mind as if she had summoned it and it had returned to finish her.

She fixated on the meaning of that word, that name, that dark form floating there in her mind. She pulled random bits inward, building them together around it. When one memory fit—the memory of the hallway with Rikka, Zedd, and Cara up ahead frozen in place on the stairs—she went on to the next and worked to add another piece.

By the sheer force of her will, order began tumbling into place. Her thoughts fused into coherence. Her memories began to coalesce.

“You’re safe,” Cara said, still holding Nicci’s arms. “Be still, now.”

Nicci wasn’t safe. None of them were safe. She had to do something.

“Six is here,” she managed through gritted teeth as she struggled to push Cara out of the way. “I have to stop her. She has the box.”

“She’s gone, Nicci. Just calm down.”

Nicci blinked, still trying to clear her vision, still trying to catch her breath. “Gone?”

“Yes. We’re safe for the time being.”

“Gone?” Nicci clutched a fistful of red leather, pulling the Mord-Sith closer. “Gone? She’s gone? How long has she been gone?”

“Since yesterday.”

The memory of the dark figure seemed to stretch away into the distance, out of reach.

“Yesterday,” Nicci breathed as she sank back against the pillow. “Dear spirits.”

Cara finally straightened. Nicci no longer cared if she got up.

Everything had been for nothing.

She thought she might not ever want to get up again.

She stared off at nothing. “Was anyone else hurt?”

“No. Just you.”

“Just me,” Nicci repeated in a flat tone. “She should have killed me.”

Cara frowned. “What?”

“Six should have killed me.”

“Well, I’m sure she probably would have liked to, but she didn’t manage to accomplish it. You’re safe.”

Cara hadn’t understood what Nicci had meant.

“All for nothing,” Nicci mumbled to herself.

Everything was lost. All the work had been for nothing. All that Nicci had accomplished had unraveled, melting away in a dark shadow’s echoing laughter. All the studying, the piecing together, the monumental effort to finally understand how it all actually functioned, the work to invoke such power, to control it, to direct it—all of it had been in vain.

It had been one of the most difficult things she had ever done…and now it was all in ashes.

Cara dunked a cloth in a basin of water on a side table. Water ran back as she wrung the cloth. The sound of each drop falling back into the basin was pronounced, penetrating, painful.

Rather than a blur of shapes and shadows, as it had been when she’d first awakened, now everything had focused into raw sharpness. Colors seemed blindingly bright, sounds strident. The dozen candles in the nearby stand shone like twelve little suns.

Cara pressed the damp cloth to Nicci’s forehead. The red
color of the Mord-Sith’s leather outfit hurt Nicci’s eyes, so she closed them. The cloth felt like a thorned hedge being pressed against her tender flesh.

“There is other trouble,” Cara said in a quiet, confidential voice.

Nicci opened her eyes. “Other trouble?”

Cara nodded as she blotted the cloth on the sides of Nicci’s neck.

“Trouble with the Keep.”

Nicci glanced past the foot of her bed to the heavy dark blue and gold drapes over the narrow window. The drapes were drawn closed, but there was no light at all leaking in, so she realized that it had to be nighttime.

As she looked back at Cara, Nicci frowned even though doing so hurt. “What do you mean, trouble with the Keep? What sort of trouble?”

Cara opened her mouth to speak, but then turned at the sound of a commotion coming from behind her across the room.

Zedd swooped into the room without knocking, his elbows pumping up and out to the sides in time with each long stride, his simple robes billowing behind him as if he were the king of the place come to see to kingly business. Nicci supposed that, in a way, he was.

“Is she awake?” he demanded of Cara before he had even arrived at the bedside. His wavy white hair seemed especially disheveled.

“I’m awake,” Nicci answered for herself.

Zedd came to an abrupt halt, looming over her. He leaned down, scowling, having a look for himself as if not trusting her word for it.

He pressed the tips of his long, bony fingers to her forehead. “Your fever has broken,” he announced.

“I had a fever?”

“Of a sort.”

“What do you mean, of a sort? A fever is a fever.”

“Not always. The fever you had was induced by the exertion of forces, rather than by illness. In this case, to be precise, your own forces. The fever was your body’s reaction to the stress of it. Rather like the way a piece of metal gets hot when you bend it back and forth.”

Nicci pushed herself up on her elbows. “You mean I had a fever caused by what Six did to me?”

Zedd straightened his robes on his angular shoulders. “In a way. The stress of exerting force against all that witchery she was doing threw your body into a feverish condition.”

Nicci looked from one to the other. “Why weren’t you affected? Or Cara?”

Zedd impatiently tapped his temple. “Because I was smart enough to cast a web. It protected Cara and me, but you were too far away. At that distance its protective properties weren’t adequate to keep you from harm, but I dared not try any harder. Even though it wasn’t enough to protect you from all harm, it was enough to at least save your life.”

“Your spell protected me?”

Zedd shook a finger at her as if she had misbehaved. “You certainly weren’t doing anything to defend yourself.”

Nicci blinked in surprise. “Zedd, I was trying. I don’t think I’ve ever tried harder to use my Han. I tried with all my strength to cast my power—I swear. It just wouldn’t work.”

“Of course not.” He threw his arms up in exasperation. “That was your problem.”

“What was my problem?”

“You were trying too hard!”

Nicci sat up the rest of the way. The world suddenly started spinning. She had to put a hand over her eyes. The spinning was making her sick to her stomach.

“What are you talking about?” She lifted her hand just enough to squint up at him in the candlelight. “What do you mean I was trying too hard?”

She thought she might throw up. As if annoyed by the distraction, Zedd pushed his sleeves up his arms and then reached out, pressing a finger of each hand to the opposite sides of her forehead. Nicci recognized the tingling sensation of Additive Magic crawling under her skin. It felt a little odd to her not to feel any of the Subtractive side as an element of his power, but he had no Subtractive Magic.

The sick feeling lifted.

“Better?” he asked in a tone that suggested he thought it had all been her own fault.

Nicci turned her head this way and that, stretching the muscles of her neck, testing her equilibrium. She tried to feel the nausea, fearing it would well up suddenly, but it didn’t.

“Yes, I guess I am.”

Zedd smiled at the small triumph. “Good.”

“What do you mean I was trying too hard?”

“You can’t fight a witch woman the way you were trying to do it—especially not a witch woman as powerful as that one. You were pushing too hard.”

“Pushing too hard?” She felt as uncomfortable as she had as a novice when she’d been unable to grasp a lesson being taught by an impatient Sister. “What do you mean?”

Zedd gestured vaguely. “When you use your force to try to push against what she’s doing, she simply turns it back around on you. You can’t reach her with your power because the force you use hasn’t yet established a foundational link between the two of you, between principal and object; it’s still in its free-floating, formative stage.”

Nicci understood what he was saying, in theory, she just didn’t know if it fit in this case.

“Are you trying to say that it’s like lightning needing to find a tree, or something tall, to anchor its connection to the ground so it can ignite? That if there is no place within range to link to, it simply jumps back and ignites within the cloud? Turns in on itself?”

“I never thought of it in those terms, but I guess you could say that it’s something like that. You might say that your power turned back in on you, like lightning turns back within a cloud when it isn’t able to make it to ground. A witch woman is one of the few people who instinctively understands the precise nature of the exertion of force, the intricacies of its needs for connections, and the ways in which specific spells link at both ends.”

“You mean she knows how lightning works,” Cara said, “and she pulled the rug out from under Nicci.”

Zedd shot the woman a dumbfounded look. “You really don’t know anything about magic, do you? Or about a mixed-up token turn of a phrase.”

Cara’s expression darkened. “If I pull that rug out from under you, I think you’ll understand it well enough.”

Zedd rolled his eyes. “Well, it’s an oversimplification, but I guess you could put it that way…. Sort of,” he added under his breath.

Nicci wasn’t really listening; her mind was elsewhere. She remembered that she herself had done something involving those same relationships of power and connections when the beast had been attacking Richard in the shielded part of the Keep. She had created a linking node but denied that link the power to complete it. That expectancy, without being fulfilled, drew the nearest power—lightning—to the beast, eliminating it for the moment. Because the beast was not really alive, though, it couldn’t actually be destroyed, in much the same way a corpse, because it was already dead, couldn’t be killed, or made any more dead.

But this was different. This was well beyond what Nicci had done with the beast. This, in a way, was the opposite of what she had done.

“Zedd, I don’t understand how such a thing is possible. It’s like throwing a rock; once thrown, the trajectory is set. The rock would follow that trajectory to a termination point.”

“She hit you on the head with your own rock before you’d even thrown it,” Cara said.

Zedd fixed her in a murderous scowl, as if she were an impetuous student who had just spoken out of turn. Cara’s mouth took on an obstinate twist, but she kept it closed.

Nicci ignored the interruption as she went on. “She would have needed to act on specific power as it was engendered—before it was even fully formed—as it began to ignite. That’s when the foundational node is formed as well. At that point the full nature and power of the spell wouldn’t even have come into being, yet.”

Zedd gave Cara a sidelong glance to make sure she intended to keep quiet. When she folded her arms and remained mute, Zedd turned back to Nicci.

“That’s precisely what she does,” he said.

Having never actually encountered a witch woman before, the explicit mechanisms they used were a mystery to Nicci. “How?”

“A witch woman rides eddies of time. She sees the flow of events into the future. Their ability is in many ways an ancillary form of prophecy. That means she is ready for the spell before you cast it. She knows what is coming. Her own ability, her own gift, allows her to act against you before you can complete what you are doing to her.

“It all comes naturally to them—like lifting an arm when someone throws a punch at you. Her block is there as your web forms—as you begin to throw your punch. She is denying you a foundational link so that your web can’t even begin to form. As I said, she has the ability to turn it back before that link between principal and object is established. Your power falls inward on itself—on you.

“It doesn’t take great power on her part. Her strength is your strength. The harder you try to do something, the more difficult it becomes. She doesn’t increase her effort, she merely denies yours a completing node. The harder
you push, the more force it feeds back at you from her block.

“A witch woman uses you. That force, your force, folds back in on you, over and over, as you try all the harder. Much the way bending a piece of metal back and forth makes it hot, your own force bent back in on you, over and over as you tried to conjure your ability to overpower her, sent your body into a fever.”

“Zedd, that can’t be. You used magic. I saw you, I saw the web you cast and it didn’t harm you. It merely fizzled out.”

The old wizard smiled. “No, it did not fizzle out. It was a fizzle from the beginning. I was using so little power that she couldn’t draw strength from it. Since she couldn’t draw strength from it, she couldn’t block it or bend it back. There wasn’t enough for her to grab hold of.”

“What kind of spell can do such a thing?”

“I cast a protection web laced inside a simple tranquillity spell. You should have done the same.”