She sounded forlorn and terrified. While Berdine was bubbly and cheerful, it was always filtered through a Mord-Sith’s iron temperament. Richard had never seen her behave in such a normal human way. Human feelings were suppressed in Mord-Sith. But with Richard as the Lord Rahl, he always hoped that their humanity would return to them. He had seen a number of instances where it rose to the surface. This seemed to be one of those times, yet not a joyful one. It made him ache for all she had been through.
When he reached out and gently held her by her shoulders, he could feel her trembling. He shook her just enough to make her look up at him.
“Berdine, what are you saying? Do you know who took her?”
“Moravaska.”
“Moravaska? Who is Moravaska?”
Her big eyes brimmed with tears. “Moravaska Michec.”
Richard frowned at her. The tears began to run down her cheeks as she shook. He could only imagine what would make a Mord-Sith tremble in fear.
“Berdine, who is Moravaska Michec?”
Berdine wiped tears back off her cheek as she swallowed. Her eyes turned away from him in embarrassment for having shown such emotion.
“A bad man. A very, very bad man.”
Kahlan gently circled a comforting arm around Berdine’s shoulders as she looked back at Richard. “What’s going on?”
When Richard saw the faces of the other Mord-Sith, there was no doubt that they all knew who Moravaska Michec was. But Berdine’s reaction was the strongest.
He gestured to the tracks to explain it to Kahlan. “See here? These are Vika’s tracks. She came around this building.” He pointed. “She stopped and knelt down there. A man walked around in front of her while she was kneeling, and then the two of them walked away in that direction.”
“Are you sure, Lord Rahl?” Shale asked, sounding more than a little skeptical. “You really believe you can tell all that just by looking at the ground?”
“Richard can track a cricket through a field of tall grass in a rainstorm at midnight,” Kahlan said to the sorceress.
Shale arched a cynical eyebrow.
“Figure of speech,” Kahlan said. “But Richard knows tracks. It’s what he was raised doing, what he used to do as a woods guide. If Richard says that’s what happened, then that’s what happened.”
Richard looked around at the Mord-Sith standing in a semicircle. “Who is Moravaska Michec?”
Nyda was the one who spoke up. “Michec was Vika’s trainer. She was taken when she was twelve and given to Michec to be trained. He tortured her for three years. After that first phase of her training, he eventually tortured her mother to death in front of her, but after keeping her alive for a long, long time to numb Vika to another’s pain. As her last stage of training to be Mord-Sith, when ordered, Vika had to torture her father, keeping him alive for a protracted period of time to demonstrate that she could keep a captive on the cusp of life and death for as long as she wanted. She was finally ordered by Michec to kill him. When she completed her training, and had been broken those three times, Michec took her as his mate.”
Richard knew all too well about a Mord-Sith’s training, but even so he stood in pain for a moment in the dragging silence. “Was Michec gifted?”
Nyda huffed. “Oh yes. That was part of how he was so easily able to control his trainees. Michec was feared here at the People’s Palace. Darken Rahl let him indulge his sick appetites, not merely with the Mord-Sith in training but on others as well. Darken Rahl ordinarily didn’t trust having strongly gifted people around him, but Moravaska Michec was so loyal and devoted to the cause that Darken Rahl trusted him.”
“Then that must have been how he captured her, here,” Richard said. “With his gift and the power he had over her.”
“She would have been kneeling in front of him,” Nyda said in a flat tone that unlike Berdine’s seemed devoid of all emotion, “so that he could have put a training collar back around her neck and attached a chain to it.”
Richard knew all too well about the collar and chain.
In the terrible silence, Berdine, still turned away, said, “Vika wasn’t the only one Moravaska Michec trained. Not the only one he took as his mate.”
Now he understood Berdine’s reaction.
“But Vika was with Hannis Arc,” Richard said. “That’s where I first came into contact with her. She was his most trusted protection, always at his side. When they had me captive for a time, I told her that her life could be her own. She eventually came to believe me. She’s the one who killed Hannis Arc to join with us.”
Nyda nodded. “Long before that, Vika belonged to Michec. He gave her to Hannis Arc on the condition that if and when he no longer had need of her services, she was to be returned to him. Hannis Arc liked the status of having a Mord-Sith at his side. But Vika always belonged to Moravaska Michec. She was his property.”
Richard rested the palm of his left hand on the pommel of the sword in the scabbard at his left hip. “So then when she killed Hannis Arc, she was supposed to go back to Michec.”
“Yes,” Nyda said. “But she instead swore loyalty to you. Against all the training and despite being the property of Moravaska Michec.”
Richard was incensed at such a concept. “She belongs to no one but herself.”
“We have to go find her,” Berdine said, the strength returning to her voice. “We have to.”
“What we have to do,” Shale said in a sympathetic but firm tone, “is get the horses and supplies we need and get away from the palace. It’s dark. Sentries won’t be able to see which way we ride off. I can help to make sure of it.”
“That would mean the death of Vika,” Richard said.
“A very long and torturous death,” Nyda added.
Shale didn’t shy away from Richard’s glare. “Vika knows the possible price of her loyalty to you. She knows that her sacrifice might be necessary to protect you. It was what she chose. For your safety, for the Mother Confessor’s safety, and for the future hope of everyone in this world carried in the gift of those babies, we need to get to the Keep. Delay would risk everything.”
“We don’t leave one of ours behind if there is any chance we can save them,” Kahlan said with quiet authority.
“I understand, Mother Confessor, but—”
“We would come after you,” Richard said in an equally quiet voice.
Staring up at him, Shale considered for a long moment. “I am a witch woman. No one would come after me.”
“We would,” he said without hesitation.
Her brow twitched as she seemed captured in his gaze, unable to look away. Finally, her voice returned.
“Let’s go get Vika back.”
6
The eight of them hurried through the halls and corridors of the palace urgently going after the ninth. Nyda and Rikka, both tall and blond, were in the lead, Richard, Kahlan, and Shale in the middle, with Vale, Berdine, and Cassia guarding them from the rear. They took the shortest route, which necessarily meant going through the public areas.
Even at night there were quite a number of people in the sprawling corridors. When they saw the five Mord-Sith in red leather, they kept their heads down and averted their eyes, wanting nothing to do with why they might be rushing through the halls. Richard couldn’t help wondering if the Golden Goddess was also watching them. Right then, what mattered the most was not only getting Vika back, but stopping Michec from running free in the palace.
Without the Mord-Sith saying anything, Richard knew where they were headed. They were going to the Mord-Sith’s traditional quarters. Vika would once have had quarters there. It seemed unlikely but possible that Moravaska Michec would have taken her back to her room and would be using the adjacent training room to punish her for ever thinking she could walk away from the master who owned her.