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A novel of the nobility of the human spirit.
A novel of ideas.
New York Times bestselling author Terry Goodkind returns with an
extraordinary new novel of the majestic Sword of Truth. Richard, the Lord
Rahl and the Seeker of Truth, has returned to his boyhood home, Hartland.
When a Sister of the Dark captures Richard, he makes a desperate
sacrifice to ensure that his beloved Kahlan remains free. Taken deep into
the old World and forced to labor for the tyrannical evil he's sworn to
defeat, he is determined to remain defiant even in the heart of darkness.
Kahlan, left behind and unwilling to abandon the cause of the Midlands,
violates prophecy and breaks her last pledge to Richard. Finally she will
come face to face with the architect of the terror sweeping her land-the mad
dreamwalker, Emperor Jagang.
While Kahlan faces Jagang's vast horde, Richard discovers the truth of
the Imperial Order's rule. Forced to endure his ordeal without magic,
without the Sword of Truth, without his love, he stands against the despair
and soulnumbing regime of the Old World, his hope kept alive only by the
knowledge of the rightness of his cause.
She didn't remember dying.
With an obscure sense of apprehension, she wondered if the distant
angry voices drifting in to her meant she was again about to experience that
transcendent ending: death.
There was absolutely nothing she could do about it if she was.
While she didn't remember dying, she dimly recalled, at some later
point, solemn whispers saying that she had, saying that death had taken her,
but that he had pressed his mouth over hers and filled her stilled lungs
with his breath, his life, and in so doing had rekindled hers. She had had
no idea who it was that spoke of such an inconceivable feat, or who "he"
was.
That first night, when she had perceived the distant, disembodied
voices as little more than a vague notion, she had grasped that there were
people around her who didn't believe, even though she was again living, that
she would remain alive through the rest of the night. But now she knew she
had; she had remained alive many more nights, perhaps in answer to desperate
prayers and earnest oaths whispered over her that first night.
But if she didn't remember the dying, she remembered the pain before
passing into that great oblivion. The pain, she never forgot. She remembered
fighting alone and savagely against all those men, men baring their teeth
like a pack of wild hounds with a hare. She remembered the rain of brutal
blows driving her to the ground, heavy boots slamming into her once she was
there, and the sharp snap of bones. She remembered the blood, so much blood,
on their fists, on their boots. She remembered the searing terror of having
no breath to gasp at the agony, no breath to cry out against the crushing
weight of hurt.
Sometime after-whether hours or days, she didn't know-when she was
lying under clean sheets in an unfamiliar bed and had looked up into his
gray eyes, she knew that, for some, the world reserved pain worse than she
had suffered.
She didn't know his name. The profound anguish so apparent in his eyes
told her beyond doubt that she should have. More than her own name, more
than life itself, she knew she should have known his name, but she didn't.
Nothing had ever shamed her more.
Thereafter, whenever her own eyes were closed, she saw his, saw not
only the helpless suffering in them but also the light of such fierce hope
as could only be kindled by righteous love. Somewhere, even in the worst of
the darkness blanketing her mind, she refused to let the light in his eyes
be extinguished by her failure to will herself to live.
At some point, she remembered his name. Most of the time, she
remembered it.
Sometimes, she didn't. Sometimes, when pain smothered her, she forgot
even her own name.
Now, as Kahlan heard men growling his name, she knew it, she knew him.
With tenacious resolution she clung to that name-Richard-and to her memory
of hint, of who he was, of everything he meant to her.
Even later, when people had feared she would yet die, she knew she
would live. She had to, for Richard, her husband. For the child she carried
in her womb. His child. Their child.
The sounds of angry men calling Richard by name at last tugged Kahlan's
eyes open. She squinted against the agony that had been tempered, if not
banished, while in the cocoon of sleep. She was greeted by a blush of amber
light filling the small room around her. Since the light wasn't bright, she
reasoned that there must be a covering over a window muting the sunlight, or
maybe it was dusk. Whenever she woke, as now, she not only had no sense of
time, but no sense of how long she had been asleep.
She worked her tongue against the pasty dryness in her mouth. Her body
felt leaden with the thick, lingering slumber. She was as nauseated as the
time when she was little and had eaten three candy green apples before a
boat journey on a hot, windy day. It was hot like that now: summer hot. She
struggled to rouse herself fully, but her awaking awareness seemed adrift,
bobbing in a vast shadowy sea. Her stomach roiled. She suddenly had to put
all her mental effort into not throwing up. She knew all too well that in
her present condition, few things hurt more than vomiting. Her eyelids
sagged closed again, and she foundered to a place darker yet.
She caught herself, forced her thoughts to the surface, and willed her
eyes open again. She remembered: they gave her herbs to dull the pain and to
help her sleep. Richard knew a good deal about herbs. At least the herbs
helped her, drift into stuporous sleep. The pain, if not as sharp, still
found her there.
Slowly, carefully, so as not to twist what felt like double-edged
daggers skewered here and there between her ribs, she drew a deeper breath.
The fragrance of balsam and pine filled her lungs, helping to settle her
stomach. It was not the aroma of trees among other smells in the forest,
among damp dirt and toadstools and cinnamon ferns, but the redolence of
trees freshly felled and limbed. She concentrated on focusing her sight and
saw beyond the foot of the bed a wall of pale, newly peeled timber, here and
there oozing sap from fresh axe cuts. The wood looked to have been split and
hewn in haste, yet its tight fit betrayed a precision only knowledge and
experience could bestow.
The room was tiny; in the Confessors' Palace, where she had grown up, a
room this small would not have qualified as a closet for linens. Moreover,
it would have been stone, if not marble. She liked the tiny wooden room; she
expected that Richard had built it to protect her. It felt almost like his
sheltering arms around her. Marble, with its aloof dignity, never comforted
her in that way.
Beyond the foot of the bed, she spotted a carving of a bird in flight.
It had been sculpted with a few sure strokes of a knife into a log of the
wall on a flat spot only a little bigger than her hand. Richard had given
her something to look at. On occasion, sitting around a campfire, she had
watched him casually carve a face or an animal from a scrap of wood. The
bird, soaring on wings spread wide as it watched over her, conveyed a sense
of freedom.
Turning her eyes to the right, she saw a brown wool blanket hanging
over the doorway. From beyond the doorway came fragments of angry,
threatening voices.
"It's not by our choice, Richard... We have our own families to think
about... Wives and Children
Wanting to know what was going on, Kahlan tried to push herself up onto
her left elbow. Somehow, her arm didn't work the way she had expected it to.
Like a bolt of lightning, pain blasted up the marrow of her bone and
exploded through her shoulder.
Gasping against the racking agony of attempted movement, she dropped
back before she had managed to lift her shoulder an inch off the bed. Her
panting twisted the daggers piercing her sides. She had to will herself to
slow her breathing in order to get the stabbing pain under control. As the
worst of the torment in her arm and the stitches in her ribs eased, she
finally let out a soft moan.
With calculated calm, she gazed down the length of her left arm. The
arm was spitted. As soon as she saw it, she remembered that of course it
was. She reproached herself for not thinking of it before she had tried to
put weight on it. The herbs, she knew, were making her thinking fuzzy.
Fearing to make another careless movement, and since she couldn't sit up,
she focused her effort on forcing clarity into her mind.
She cautiously reached up with her right hand and wiped her fingers
across the bloom of sweat on her brow, sweat sown by the flash of pain. Her
right shoulder socket hurt, but it worked well enough. She was pleased by
that triumph, at least. She touched her puffy eyes, understanding then why
it had hurt to look toward the door. Gingerly, her fingers explored a
foreign landscape of swollen flesh. Her imagination colored it a ghastly
black-and-blue. When her fingers brushed cuts on her cheek, hot embers
seemed to sear raw, exposed nerves.
She needed no mirror to know she was a terrible sight. She knew, too,
how bad it was whenever she looked up into Richard's eyes. She wished she
could look good for him if for no other reason than to lift the suffering
from his eyes. Reading her thoughts, he would say, "I'm fine. Stop worrying
about me and put your mind to getting better."
With a bittersweet longing, Kahlan recalled lying with Richard, their
limbs tangled in delicious exhaustion, his skin hot against hers, his big
hand resting on her belly as they caught their breath. It was agony wanting
to hold him in her arms again and being unable to do so. She reminded
herself that it was only a matter of some time and some healing. They were
together and that was what mattered. His mere presence was a restorative.
She heard Richard, beyond the blanket over the door, speaking in a
tightly controlled voice, stressing his words as if each had cost him a
fortune. "We just need some time . . ."
The men's voices were heated and insistent as they all began talking at
once. "It's not because we want to-you should know that, Richard, you know
us .... What if it brings trouble here? . . . We've heard about the
fighting. You said yourself she's from the Midlands. We can't allow . . . we
won't . . ."
Kahlan listened, expecting the sound of his sword being drawn. Richard
had nearly infinite patience, but little tolerance. Cara, his bodyguard,
their friend, was no doubt out there, too; Cara had neither patience nor
tolerance.
Instead of drawing his sword, Richard said, "I'm not asking anyone to
give Me anything I want only to be left alone in a peaceful place where I
can care for her. I wanted to be close to Hartland in case she needed
something." He paused. "Please . . . just until she has a chance to get
better."
Kahlan wanted to scream at him: No! Don't you dare beg them, Richard!
They have no right to make you beg. They've no right! They could never
understand the sacrifices you've made.
But she could do little more than whisper his name in sorrow.
"Don't test us .... We'll burn you out if we have to! You can't fight
us all-we have right on our side."
The men ranted and swore dark oaths. She expected, now, at last, to
hear the sound of his sword being drawn. Instead, in a calm voice, Richard
answered the men in words Kahlan couldn't quite make out. A dreadful quiet
settled in.
"It's not because we like doing this, Richard," someone finally said in
a sheepish voice. "We've no choice. We've got to consider our own families
and everyone else."
Another man spoke out with righteous indignation. "Besides, you seem to
have gotten all high-and-mighty of a sudden, with your fancy clothes and
sword, not like you used to be, back when you were a woods guide."
"That's right," said another. "Just because you went off and saw some
of the world, that don't mean you can come back here thinking you're better
than us."
"I've overstepped what you have all decided is my proper place,"
Richard said. "Is this what you mean to say?"
"You turned your back on your community, on your roots, as I see it;
you think our women aren't good enough for the great Richard Cypher. No, he
had to marry some woman from away. Then you come back here and think to
flaunt yourselves over us."
"How? By doing what? Marrying the woman I love? This, you see as vain?
This nullifies my right to live in peace? And takes away her right to heal,
to get well and live?"
These men knew him as Richard Cypher, a simple woods guide, not as the
person he had discovered he was in truth, and who he had become. He was the
same man as before, but in so many ways, they had never known him.
"You ought to be on your knees praying for the Creator to heal your
wife," another man put in. "All of mankind is a wretched and undeserving
lot. You ought to pray and ask the Creator's forgiveness for your evil deeds
and sinfulness-that's what brought your troubles on you and your woman.
Instead, you want to bring your troubles among honest working folks. You've
no right to try to force your sinful troubles on us. That's not what the
Creator wants. You should be thinking of us. The Creator wants you to be
humble and to help others-that's why He struck her down: to teach you both a
lesson."
"Did he tell you this, Albert?" Richard asked. "Does this Creator of
yours come to talk with you about his intentions and confide in you his
wishes?"
"He talks to anyone who has the proper modest attitude to listen to
Him," Albert fumed.
"Besides," another man spoke up, "this Imperial Order you warn about
has some good things to be said for it. If you weren't so bullheaded,
Richard, you'd see that. There's nothing wrong with wanting to see everyone
treated decent. It's only being fair minded. It's only right. Those are the
Creator's wishes, you've got to admit, and that's what the Imperial Order
teaches, too. If you can't see that much good in the Order-well then, you'd
best be gone, and soon."
Kahlan held her breath.
In an ominous tone of voice, Richard said, "So be it."
These were men Richard knew; he had addressed them by name and reminded
them of years and deeds shared. He had been patient with them. Patience
finally exhausted, he had reached intolerance.
Horses snorted and stomped, their leather tack creaking, as the men
mounted up. "In the morning we'll be back to burn this place down. We'd
better not catch you or yours anywhere near here, or you'll burn with it."
After a few last curses, the men raced away. The sound of departing hooves
hammering the ground rumbled through Kahlan's back. Even that hurt.
She smiled a small smile for Richard, even if he couldn't see it. She
wished only that he had not begged on her behalf; he would never, she knew,
have begged for anything for himself.
Light splashed across the wall as the blanket over the doorway was
thrown back. By the direction and quality of the light, Kahlan guessed it
had to be somewhere in the middle of a thinly overcast day. Richard appeared
beside her, his tall form towering over her, throwing a slash of shadow
across her middle.
He wore a black, sleeveless undershirt, without his shirt or
magnificent gold and black tunic, leaving his muscular arms bare. At his
left hip, the side toward her, a flash of light glinted off the pommel of
his singular sword. His broad shoulders made the room seem even smaller than
it had been only a moment before. His cleanshaven face, his strong jaw, and
the crisp line of his mouth perfectly complemented his powerful form. His
hair, a color somewhere between blond and brown, brushed the nape of his
neck. But it was the intelligence so clearly evident in those penetrating
gray eyes of his that from the first had riveted her attention.
"Richard," Kahlan whispered, "I won't have you begging on my account."
The corners of his mouth tightened with the hint of a smile. "If I want
to beg, I shall do so." He pulled her blanket up a little, making sure she
was snugly covered, even though she was sweating. "I didn't know you were
awake."
"How long have I been asleep?"
"A while."
She figured it must have been quite a while. She didn't remember
arriving at this place, or him building the house that now stood around her.
Kahlan felt more like a person in her eighties than one in her
twenties. She had never been hurt before, not grievously hurt, anyway, not
to the point of being on the cusp of death and utterly helpless for so long.
She hated it, and she hated that she couldn't do the simplest things for
herself. Most of the time she detested that more than the pain.
She was stunned to understand so unexpectedly and so completely life's
frailty, her own frailty, her own mortality. She had risked her life in the
past and had been in danger many times, but looking back she didn't know if
she had ever truly believed that something like this could happen to her.
Confronting the reality of it was crushing.
Something inside seemed to have broken that night-some idea of herself,
some confidence. She could so easily have died. Their baby could have died
before it even had a chance to live.
"You're getting better," Richard said, as if in answer to her thoughts.
"I'm not just saying that. I can see that you're healing."
She gazed into his eyes, summoning the courage to finally ask, "How do
they know about the Order way up here?"
"People fleeing the fighting have been up this way. Men spreading the
doctrine
of the Imperial Order have been even here, to where I grew up. Their
words can sound good-almost make sense-if you don't think, if you just feel.
Truth doesn't seem to count for much," He added in afterthought. He answered
the unspoken question in her eyes. "The men from the Order are gone. The
fools out there were just spouting things they've heard, that's all."
"But they intend us to leave. They sound like men who keep the oaths
they've sworn."
He nodded, but then some of his smile returned. "Do you know that we're
very close to where I first met you, last autumn? Do you remember?"
"How could I ever forget the day I met you?"
"Our lives were in jeopardy back then and we had to leave here. I've
never regretted it. It was the start of my life with you. As long as we're
together, nothing else really matters."
Cara swept in through the doorway and came to a halt beside Richard,
adding her shadow to his across the blue cotton blanket that covered Kahlan
to her armpits. Sheathed in skintight red leather, Cara's body had the sleek
grace of a falcon: commanding, swift, and deadly. Mord-Sith always wore
their red leather when they believed there was going to be trouble. Cara's
long blond hair, swept back into a single thick braid, was another mark of
her profession of Mord-Sith, member of an elite corps of guards to the Lord
Rahl himself.
Richard had, after a fashion, inherited the Mord-Sith when he inherited
the rule of D'Hara, a place he grew up never knowing. Command was not
something he had sought; nonetheless it had fallen to him. Now a great many
people depended on him. The entire New World-Westland, the Midlands, and
D'Hara depended on him.
"How do you feel?" Cara asked with sincere concern.
Kahlan was able to summon little more voice than a hoarse whisper. "I'm
better."
"Well, if you feel better," Cara growled, "then tell Lord Rahl that he
should allow me to do my job and put the proper respect into men like that."
Her menacing blue eyes turned for a moment toward the spot where the men had
been while delivering their threats. "The ones I leave alive, anyway."
"Cara, use your head," Richard said. "We can't turn this place into a
fortress and protect ourselves every hour of every day. Those men are
afraid. No matter how wrong they are, they view us as a danger to their
lives and the lives of their families. We know better than to fight a
senseless battle when we can avoid it."
"But Richard," Kahlan said, lifting her right hand in a weak gesture
toward the wall before her, "you've built this-"
"Only this room. I wanted a shelter for you first. It didn't take that
long just some trees cut and split. We've not built the rest of it yet. It's
not worth shedding blood over."
If Richard seemed calm, Cara looked ready to chew steel and spit nails.
"Would you tell this obstinate husband of yours to let me kill someone
before I go crazy? I can't just stand around and allow people to get away
with threatening the two of you! I am Mord-Sith!"
Cara took her job of protecting Richard-the Lord Rahl of D'Hara-and
Kahlan very seriously. Where Richard's life was concerned, Cara was
perfectly willing to kill first and decide later if it had been necessary.
That was one of the things for which Richard had no tolerance.
Kahlan's only answer was a smile.
"Mother Confessor, you can't allow Lord Rahl to bow to the will of
foolish men like those. Tell him."
Kahlan could probably count on the fingers of one hand the people who,
in her whole life, had ever addressed her by the name "Kahlan" without at
minimum the appellation "Confessor" before it. She had heard her ultimate
title-Mother Confessor-spoken countless times, in tones ranging from awed
reverence to shuddering fear. Many people, as they knelt before her, were
incapable of even whispering through trembling lips the two words of her
title. Others, when alone, whispered them with lethal intent.
Kahlan had been named Mother Confessor while still in her early
twenties-the youngest Confessor ever named to that powerful position. But
that was several years past. Now, she was the only living Confessor left.
Kahlan had always endured the title, the bowing and kneeling, the
reverence, the awe, the fear, and the murderous intentions, because she had
no choice. But more than that, she was the Mother Confessor-by succession
and selection, by right, by oath, and by duty.
Cara always addressed Kahlan as "Mother Confessor." But from Cara's
lips the words were subtly different than from any others. It was almost a
challenge, a defiance by scrupulous compliance, but with a hint of an
affectionate smirk. Coming from Cara, Kahlan didn't hear "Mother Confessor"
so much as she heard "Sister." Cara was from the distant land of D'Hara. No
one, anywhere, outranked Cara, as far as Cara was concerned, except the Lord
Rahl. The most she would allow was that Kahlan could be her equal in duty to
Richard. Being considered an equal by Cara, though, was high praise indeed.
When Cara addressed Richard as Lord Rahl, however, she was not saying
"Brother." She was saying precisely what she meant: Lord Rahl.
To the men with the angry voices, the Lord Rahl was as foreign a
concept as was the distant land of D'Hara. Kahlan was from the Midlands that
separated D'Hara from Westland. The people here in Westland knew nothing of
the Midlands or the Mother Confessor. For decades, the three parts of the
New World had been separated by impassable boundaries, leaving what was
beyond those boundaries shrouded in mystery. The autumn before, those
boundaries had fallen.
And then, in the winter, the common barrier to the south of the three
lands that had for three thousand years sealed away the menace of the Old
World had been breached, loosing the Imperial Order on them all. In the last
year, the world had been thrown into turmoil; everything everyone had grown
up knowing had changed.
"I'm not going to allow you to hurt people just because they refuse to
help us," Richard said to Cara. "It would solve nothing and only end up
causing us more trouble. What we started here only took a short time to
build. I thought this place would be safe, but it's not. We'll simply move
on."
He turned back to Kahlan. His voice lost its fire.
"I was hoping to bring you home, to some peace and quiet, but it looks
like home doesn't want me, either. I'm sorry."
"Just those men, Richard." In the land of Anderith, just before Kahlan
had been attacked and beaten, the people had rejected Richard's offer to
join the emerging D'Haran Empire he led in the cause of freedom. Instead,
the people of Anderith willingly chose to side with the Imperial Order.
Richard had taken Kahlan and walked away from everything, it seemed. "What
about your real friends here?"
"I haven't had time . . . I wanted to get a shelter up, first. There's
no time now. Maybe later."
Kahlan reached for his hand, which hung at his side. His fingers were
too far away. "But, Richard-"
"Look, it's not safe to stay here anymore. It's as simple as that. I
brought you here because I thought it would be a safe place for you to
recover and regain your strength. I was wrong. It's not. We can't stay here.
Understand?"
"Yes, Richard."
"We have to move on."
"Yes, Richard."
There was something more to this, she knew-something of far greater
importance than the more immediate ordeal it meant for her. There was a
distant, troubled look in his eyes.
"But what of the war? Everyone is depending on us-on you. I can't be
much help until I get better, but they need you right now. The D'Haran
Empire needs you. You are the Lord Rahl. You lead them. What are we doing
here? Richard. . ." She waited until his eyes turned to look at her. "Why
are we running away when everyone is counting on us?"
"I'm doing as I must."
"As you must? What does that mean?"
Shadow shrouded his face as he looked away.
"I've . . . had a vision."
A vision?" Kahlan said in open astonishment.
Richard hated anything to do with prophecy. It had caused him no end of
trouble.
Prophecy was always ambiguous and usually cryptic, no matter how clear
it seemed on the surface. The untrained were easily misled by its
superficially simplistic construction. Unthinking adherence to a literal
interpretation of prophecy had in the past caused great turmoil, everything
from murder to war. As a result, those involved with prophecy went to great
lengths to keep it secret.
Prophecy, at least on the face of it, was predestination; Richard
believed that man created his own destiny. He had once told her, "Prophecy
can only say that tomorrow the sun will come up. It can't say what you are
going to do with your day. The act of going about your day is not the
fulfillment of prophecy, but the fulfillment of your own purpose."
Shota, the witch woman, had prophesied that Richard and Kahlan would
conceive an infamous son. Richard had more than once proven Shota's view of
the future to be, if not fatally flawed, at least vastly more complex than
Shota would have it seem. Like Richard, Kahlan didn't accept Shota's
prediction.
On any number of occasions, Richard's view of prophecy had been shown
to be correct. Richard simply ignored what prophecy said and did as he
believed he must. By his doing so, prophecy was in the end often fulfilled,
but in ways that could not have been foretold. In this way, prophecy was at
once proven and disproved, resolving nothing and only demonstrating what an
eternal enigma it truly was.
Richard's grandfather, Zedd, who had helped raise him not far from
where they were, had not only kept his own identity as a wizard secret. In
order to protect Richard, he also hid the fact that Richard had been
fathered by Darken Rahl and not George Cypher, the man who had loved and
raised him. Darken Rahl, a wizard of great power, had been the dangerous,
violent ruler of far-off D'Hara. Richard had inherited the gift of magic
from two different bloodlines. After killing Darken Rahl, he had also
inherited the rule of D'Hara, a land that was in many ways as much a mystery
to him as was his power.
Kahlan, being from the Midlands, had grown up around wizards; Richard's
ability was unlike that of any wizard she had ever known. He possessed not
one aspect of the gift, but many, and not one side, but both: he was a war
wizard. Some of his outfit came from the Wizard's Keep, and had not been
worn in three thousand years-since the last war wizard lived.
With the gift dying out in mankind, wizards were uncommon; Kahlan had
known fewer than a dozen. Among wizards, prophets were the most rare; she
knew of the existence of only two. One of those was Richard's ancestor,
which made visions all
the more within the province of Richard's gift. Yet Richard had always
treated prophecy as a viper in his bed.
Tenderly, as if there were no more precious thing in the whole world,
Richard lifted her hand. "You know how I always talk about the beautiful
places only I know way back in the mountains to the west of where I grew up?
The special places I've always wanted to show you? I'm going to take you
there, where we'll be safe."
"D'Harans are bonded to you, Lord Rahl," Cara reminded him, "and will
be able to find you through that bond."
"Well, our enemies aren't bonded to me. They won't know where we are."
Cara seemed to find that thought agreeable. "If people don't go to this
place, then there won't be any roads. How are we going to get the carriage
there? The Mother Confessor can't walk."
"I'll make a litter. You and I will carry her in that."
Cara nodded thoughtfully. "We could do that. If there were no other
people, then the two of you would be safe, at least."
"Safer than here. I had expected the people here to leave us to
ourselves. I hadn't expected the Order to foment unrest this far away-at
least not this quickly. Those men usually aren't a bad lot, but they're
working themselves up into a dangerous mood. "
"The cowards have gone back to their women's skirts. They won't be back
until morning. We can let the Mother Confessor rest and then leave before
dawn."
Richard cast Cara a telling look. "One of those men, Albert, has a son,
Lester. Lester and his pal, Tommy Lancaster, once tried to put arrows into
me for spoiling some fun Tommy was about to have hurting someone. Now Tommy
and Lester are missing a good many teeth. Albert will tell Lester about us
being here, and soon after, Tommy Lancaster will know, too.
"Now that the Imperial Order has filled their heads with talk of a
noble war on behalf of good, those men will be fancying what it would be
like to be war heroes. They aren't ordinarily violent, but today they were
more unreasonable than I've ever seen them.
"They'll go drinking to fortify their courage. Tommy and Lester will be
with them by then, and their tales of how I wronged them and how I'm a
danger to decent folks will get everyone all worked up. Because they greatly
outnumber us, they'll begin to see the merit in killing us-see it as
protecting their families and doing the right thing for the community and
their Creator. Full of liquor and glory, they won't want to wait until
morning. They'll be back tonight. We have to leave now."
Cara seemed unconcerned. "I say we wait for them, and when they come
back, we end the threat."
"Some of them will bring along other friends. There will be a lot of
them by the time they get here. We have Kahlan to think about. I don't want
to risk one of us being injured. There's nothing to be gained by fighting
them."
Richard pulled the ancient, tooled-leather baldric, holding the
gold-and-silverwrought scabbard and sword, off over his head and hung it on
the stump of a branch sticking out of a log. Looking unhappy, Cara folded
her arms. She would rather not leave a threat alive. Richard picked his
folded black shirt off the floor to the side, where Kahlan hadn't seen it.
He poked an arm through a sleeve and drew it on.
"A vision?" Kahlan finally asked again. As much trouble as the men
could be, they were not her biggest concern just then. "You've had a
vision?"
"The sudden clarity of it felt like a vision, but it was really more of
a revelation."
"Revelation." She wished she could manage more than a hoarse whisper.
"And what form did this vision revelation thing take?"
"Understanding."
Kahlan stared up at him. "Understanding of what?"
He started buttoning his shirt. "Through this realization I've come to
understand the larger picture. I've come to understand what it is I must
do."
"Yes," Cara muttered, "and wait until you hear it. Go ahead, tell her."
Richard glared at Cara and she answered him in kind. His attention
finally returned to Kahlan.
"If I lead us into this war, we will lose. A great many people will die
for nothing. The result will be a world enslaved by the Imperial Order. If I
don't lead our side in battle, the world will still fall under the shadow of
the Order but far fewer people will die. Only in that way will we ever stand
a chance."
"By losing? You want to lose first, and then fight? . . . How can we
even consider abandoning the fight for freedom?"
"Anderith helped teach me a lesson," he said. His voice was restrained,
as if he regretted what he was saying. "I can't press this war. Freedom
requires effort if it is to be won and vigilance if it is to be maintained.
People just don't value freedom until it's taken away."
"But many do," Kahlan objected.
"There are always some, but most don't even understand it, nor do they
care to-the same as with magic. People mindlessly shrink from it, too,
without seeing the truth. The Order offers them a world without magic and
ready-made answers to everything. Servitude is simple. I thought that I
could convince people of the value of their own lives, and of liberty. In
Anderith they showed me just how foolish I had been."
"Anderith is just one place-"
"Anderith was not remarkable. Look at all the trouble we've had
elsewhere. We're having trouble even here, where I grew up." Richard began
tucking in his shirt. "Forcing people to fight for freedom is the worst kind
of contradiction.
"Nothing I can say will inspire people to care-I've tried. Those who
value liberty will have to run, to hide, to try to survive and endure what
is sure to come. I can't prevent it. I can't help them. I know that now."
"But Richard, how can you even think of-"
'I must do what is best for us. I must be selfish; life is far too
precious to be casually squandered on useless causes. There can be no
greater evil than that. People can only be saved from the coming dark age of
subjugation and servitude if they, too, come to understand and care about
the value of their own lives, their freedom, and are willing to act in their
own interest. We must try to stay alive in the hope that such a day will
come."
"But we can prevail in this war. We must."
"Do you think that I can just go off and lead men into war, and because
I wish it, we will win? We won't. It takes more than my wishing it. It will
take vast numbers of people fully committed to the cause. We don't have
that. If we throw our forces against the Order, we will be destroyed and any
chance for winning freedom in the future will be forever lost." He raked his
fingers back through his hair. "We must not lead our forces against the army
of the Order."
He turned to pulling his black, open-sided tunic on over his head.
Kahlan struggled to give force to her voice, to the magnitude of her
concern.
"But what about all those who are prepared to fight-all the armies
already in the field? There are good men, able men, ready to go against
Jagang and stop his Imperial Order and drive them back to the Old World. Who
will lead our men?"
"Lead them to what? Death? They can't win."
Kahlan was horrified. She reached up and snatched his shirtsleeve
before he could lean down to retrieve his broad over-belt. "Richard, you're
only saying this, walking away from the struggle, because of what happened
to me."
"No. I had already decided it that same night, before you were
attacked. When I went out alone for a walk, after the vote, I did a lot of
thinking. I came to this realization and made up my mind. What happened to
you made no difference except to prove the point that I'm right and should
have figured it out sooner. If I had, you would never have been hurt."
"But if the Mother Confessor had not been hurt, you would have felt
better by morning and changed your mind."
Light coming through the doorway behind him lit in a blaze of gold the
ancient symbols coiled along the squared edges of his tunic. "Cara, what
would happen if I'd been attacked with her, and we had both been killed?
What would you all do then?"
"I don't know."
"That is why I withdraw. You are all following me, not participating in
a struggle for your own future. Your answer should have been that you would
all fight on for yourselves, for your freedom. I have come to understand the
mistake I've made in this, and to see that we cannot win in this way. The
Order is too large an opponent."
Kahlan's father, King Wyborn, had taught her about fighting against
such odds, and she had practical experience at it. "Their army may outnumber
ours, but that doesn't make it impossible. We just have to outthink them. I
will be there to help you, Richard. We have seasoned officers. We can do it.
We must."
"Look how the Order's cause spreads on words that sound good"-Richard
swept out an arm-"even to distant places like this. We know beyond doubt the
evil of the Order, yet people everywhere passionately side with them despite
the ghastly truth of everything the Imperial Order stands for."
"Richard," Kahlan whispered, trying not to lose what was left of her
voice, "I led those young Galean recruits against an army of experienced
Order soldiers who greatly outnumbered us, and we prevailed."
"Exactly. They had just seen their home city after the Order had been
there. Everyone they loved had been murdered, everything they knew had been
destroyed. Those men fought with an understanding of what they were doing
and why. They were going to throw themselves at the enemy with or without
you commanding them. But they were the only ones, and even though they
succeeded, most of them were killed in the struggle."
Kahlan was incredulous. "So you are going to let the Order do the same
elsewhere so as to give people a reason to fight? You are going to stand
aside and let the Order slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent people?
"You want to quit because I was hurt. Dear spirits, I love you Richard,
but don't do this to me. I'm the Mother Confessor; I'm responsible for the
lives of the people of the Midlands. Don't do this because of what happened
to me."
Richard snapped on his leather-padded silver wristbands. "I'm not doing
this because of what happened to you. I'm helping save those lives in the
only way that has a chance. I'm doing the only thing I can do."
"You are doing the easy thing," Cara said.
Richard met her challenge with quiet sincerity. "Cara, I'm doing the
hardest thing I have ever had to do."
Kahlan was sure now that their rejection by the Anderith people had hit
him harder than she had realized. She caught two of his fingers and squeezed
sympathetically. He had put his heart into sparing those people from
enslavement by the Order. He had tried to show them the value of freedom by
allowing them the freedom to choose their own destiny. He had put his faith
in their hands.
In a crushing defeat, an enormous majority had spurned all he had
offered, and in so doing devastated that faith.
Kahlan thought that perhaps with some time to heal, the same as with
her, the pain would fade for him, too. "You can't hold yourself to blame for
the fall of Anderith, Richard. You did your best. It wasn't your fault."
He picked up his big leather over-belt with its gold-worked pouches and
cinched it over the magnificent tunic.
"When you're the leader, everything is your fault."
Kahlan knew the truth of that. She thought to dissuade him by taking a
different tack.
"What form did this vision assume?"
Richard's piercing gray eyes locked on her, almost in warning.
"Vision, revelation, realization, postulation, prophecy . . .
understanding--call it what you will, for in this they are all in one the
same, and unequivocal. I can't describe it but to say it seems as if I must
have always known it. Maybe I have. It wasn't so much words as it was a
complete concept, a conclusion, a truth that became absolutely clear to me."
She knew he expected her to leave it at that. "If it became so clear
and is unambiguous," she pressed, "you must be able to express it in words."
Richard slipped the baldric over his head, laying it over his right
shoulder. As he adjusted the sword against his left hip, light sparkled off
the raised gold wire woven through the silver wire of the hilt to spell out
the word TRUTH.
His brow was smooth and his face calm. She knew she had at last brought
him to the heart of the matter. His certainty would afford him no reason to
keep it from her if she chose to hear it, and she did. His words rolled
forth with quiet power, like prophecy come to life.
"I have been a leader too soon. It is not I who must prove myself to
the people, but the people who must now prove themselves to me. Until then,
I must not lead them, or all hope is lost."
Standing there, erect, masculine, masterful in his black war wizard
outfit, he looked as if he could be posing for a statue of who he was: the
Seeker of Truth, rightfully named by Zeddicus Zu'1 Zorander, the First
Wizard himself-and Richard's grandfather. It had nearly broken Zedd's heart
to do so, because Seekers so often died young and violently.
While he lived, a Seeker was a law unto himself. Backed by the awesome
power of his sword, a Seeker could bring down kingdoms. That was one reason
it was so important to name the right person-a moral person-to the post.
Zedd claimed that the Seeker, in a way, named himself by the nature of his
own mind and by his actions, and that the First Wizard's function was simply
to act on his observations by officially naming him and giving him the
weapon that was to be his lifelong companion.
So many different qualities and responsibilities had converged in this
man she loved that she sometimes wondered how he could reconcile them all.
"Richard, are you so sure?"
Because of the importance of the post, Kahlan and then Zedd had sworn
their lives in defense of Richard as the newly named Seeker of Truth. That
had been shortly after Kahlan had met him. It was as Seeker that Richard had
first come to accept all that had been thrust upon him, and to live up to
the extraordinary trust put in him.
His gray eyes fairly blazed with clarity of purpose as he answered her.
"The only sovereign I can allow to rule me is reason. The first law of
reason is this: what exists, exists; what is, is. From this irreducible,
bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. This is the foundation from which
life is embraced.
"Reason is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a
means to discovering them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality-it's
our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to
reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we
refuse to see.
"If I fail to use reason in this struggle, if I close my eyes to the
reality of what is, in favor of what I would wish, then we will both die in
this, and for nothing. We will be but two more among uncounted millions of
nameless corpses beneath the gray, gloomy decay of mankind. In the darkness
that will follow, our bones will be meaningless dust.
"Eventually, perhaps a thousand years from now, perhaps more, the light
of liberty will again be raised up to shine over a free people, but between
now and then, millions upon millions of people will be born into hopeless
misery and have no choice but to bear the weight of the Order's yoke. We, by
ignoring reason, will have purchased those mountains of broken bodies, the