Terry Goodkind - Wizard's First Rule

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 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 and 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, no 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.

As Richard and Denna approached him, Denna dropped to her knees, putting her forehead to the ground. Richard had been instructed and did the same as he pushed his sword out of the way.

Together, they chanted. “Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”