Jennsen leaned in, even more astonished. "But can you trust someone like that, someone who had labored on behalf of Jagang? Worse, a Sister of the Dark? Richard, I've been with some of those women, I know how ruthless they are. They may have to do as Jagang makes them, but they're devoted to the Keeper of the underworld. Do you really think you can trust with your life that she will not betray you?"
Richard looked Jennsen in the eye. "I trust you with a knife while I sleep."
Jennsen sat back up. She smiled, more out of embarrassment than anything else, Richard thought. "I guess I see your point."
"What else did Nicci say," Kahlan asked, keen to get back to the matter at hand.
"Only that I must go in her place and meet you," Sabar said.
Richard knew that Nicci was being cautious. She didn't want to tell the young man too much in case he was caught.
"How did she know where I was?"
"She said that she was able to tell where you were by magic. Nicci is as powerful with magic as she is beautiful."
Sabar said this in a tone of awe. He didn't know the half of it. Nicci was one of the most powerful sorceresses ever to have lived. Sabar didn't know that when Nicci was laboring toward the ends sought by the Order, she was known as Death's Mistress.
Richard surmised that Nicci had somehow used the bond to the Lord Rahl to find him. That bond was loyalty sworn in the heart, not by rote, and its power protected those so sworn from the dream walker entering their minds.
Full-blooded D'Harans, like Cara, could tell through the bond where the Lord Rahl was. Kahlan had confided to him that she found it unnerving the way Cara always knew where Richard was. Nicci wasn't D'Haran, but she was a sorceress and she was bonded to Richard, so she might have been able to manipulate that bond to tell where he was.
"Sabar, Nicci must have sent you to us for a reason," Richard said, "other than to say that she couldn't wait for us at our meeting place."
"Yes, of course," Sabar said as he nodded hastily, as if chagrined to have to be reminded. "When I asked her what I was to say to you, she told me that she had put it all in a letter." Sabar opened the leather flap of the pouch at his belt. "She said that when she realized how far away you really were, she was distraught and couldn't take the time to journey to you. She told me that it was important for me to be sure I found you and gave you her letter. She said the letter would explain why she could not wait."
With one finger and a thumb, Sabar lifted out the letter, looking as if he were handling a deadly viper instead of a small roll sealed with red wax.
"Nicci told me that this is dangerous," he explained, looking up into Richard's eyes. "She said that if anyone but you opened it, I should not be standing too close or I would die with them."
Sabar carefully laid the rolled letter on Richard's palm. It warmed appreciably in his hand. The red wax brightened, as if lit by a ray of sunlight even though it was getting dark. The glow spread from the wax to envelop the whole length of the rolled letter. Fine cracks raced all across the red wax, like autumn ice on a pond breaking up under the weight of a foot placed on it. The wax suddenly shattered and crumbled away.
Sabar swallowed. "I hate to think of what would have happened had anyone but you tried to open it."
Jennsen leaned in again. "Was that magic?"
"Must have been," Richard told her as he started to unroll the letter.
"But I saw it fall apart," she said in a confidential tone.
"Did you see anything else?"
"No, it just all of a sudden crumbled."
With a thumb and finger, Richard lifted some of the disintegrated wax from his palm. "She probably put a web of magic around the letter and keyed that spell to my touch. If anyone else had tried to break that web to open the letter it would have ignited the spell. I guess that my touch unlocked the seal. You saw the result of the magic-the broken seal-not the magic itself."
"Oh, wait!" Sabar smacked his forehead with the flat of his palm. "What am I thinking? I'm supposed to give you this, too."
Shrugging the straps off his shoulders and down his arms, he pulled his pack around onto his lap. He quickly undid the leather thongs and reached inside, then carefully lifted out something wrapped in black quilted material. It was only about a foot tall but not very big around. By the way Sabar handled it, it appeared to be somewhat heavy.
Sabar set the wrapped object on the ground, upright, in front of the fire. "Nicci told me that I should give this to you, that the letter would explain it."
Jennsen leaned in a little, fascinated by the mystery of the tightly wrapped object. "What is it?"
Sabar shrugged. "Nicci didn't tell me." He made a face that suggested he was somewhat uncomfortable with the way he was in the dark about much of the mission he'd been sent on. "When Nicci looks at you and tells you to do something, it goes out of your head to ask questions."
