Chainfire Read Online Free PDF Page B

about. That’s why I was coming to you in the first place. Didn’t you get the letter I sent?”
    Richard paused. Letter…letter…“Yes,” he said, at last remembering. “I did get your letter. I sent word to you—with a soldier Kahlan had touched with her power.”
    Richard caught Cara’s brief glance up at Nicci—a surprised look that said that she didn’t recall any such thing.
    Nicci appraised him with an unreadable look. “The word you sent never found me.”
    Somewhat surprised, Richard gestured toward the New World. “His primary mission was to go north and assassinate Emperor Jagang. He was touched by a Confessor’s power; he would die before ever abandoning her command. If he couldn’t find you, he would have gone after Jagang. I suppose it’s also possible that something happened to him first. There are perils enough in the Old World.”
    The look on Nicci’s face made him feel like he had just offered herfurther evidence that he was losing his mind. “Do you honestly think, even in your wildest imaginings, that the dream walker can be so easily eliminated?”
    “No, of course not.” He pushed the bulge of a cooking pot in his pack back into place. “We expected that the soldier would probably be killed in the attempt. We sent him after Jagang because he was a murdering thug and deserved to die. But I also thought that there was a possibility that he might succeed. Even if he didn’t, I wanted Jagang to at least lose some sleep knowing that any of his men could be assassins.”
    He could see by Nicci’s too-calm expression that she thought that this, too, was no more than part of his elaborate delusion about a woman he had dreamed.
    Richard recalled, then, what else had happened. “Nicci, I’m afraid that shortly after Sabar delivered your letter we were attacked. He died in that fight.”
    A furtive glance to Cara brought a nod in confirmation.
    “Dear spirits,” Nicci said in sorrow at hearing the news about young Sabar. Richard shared her sentiment.
    He remembered Nicci’s urgent warning in the letter about how Jagang had started to create weapons out of gifted people, as had been done three thousand years before in the great war. It was a frightening development that had been thought impossible, but Jagang had discovered a way to accomplish the task by using the Sisters of the Dark he held captive.
    During the attack on their camp, Nicci’s letter had been knocked into the fire. Richard hadn’t had the chance to read the whole letter before it had been destroyed. He’d read enough, though, to understand the danger.
    When he made for the table, where his sword lay, Nicci stepped in front of him. “Richard, I know it’s hard, but you have to put this dream business behind you. We don’t have time for it. We need to talk. If you got my letter, then at least you know that you can’t—”
    “Nicci,” Richard said, silencing her, “I must do this.” He laid a hand on her shoulder and spoke as patiently as he could, considering his sense of urgency, but by his tone let her know that he was not going to discuss it further. “If you come with us then we can talk later, when there is time and it doesn’t interfere with what I need to do, but right now I don’t have the time and neither does Kahlan.”
    Pressing the back of his hand against the side of her shoulder, Richard moved her aside and strode to the table.
    As he lifted his sword by its polished scabbard, he briefly wondered why, when he had heard the wolf howl and he woke up, he’d thought the sword had been lying on the ground beside him. Maybe he had remembered a fragment of a dream. Impatient to get going, he dismissed it.
    He slipped the ancient tooled-leather baldric over his head and quickly adjusted the scabbard at his left hip, making sure it was securely fastened. With two fingers he lifted the sword by the downswept crossguard, not only to be sure that it was clear in its sheath, but to check that the blade was