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best." The thought of the job ahead was daunting. He ached to see Richard,
to help him, especially after searching for him for so long. Sometimes it
was hard to leave people alone when that was what they most needed. "That
would be best," he repeated, "I am tired."
"Summer be slipping away from us. The nights be turning chilly," Adie
said as she pressed against Zedd's side. She looked up at him with her white
eyes that in the lamplight had a soft amber cast. "Stay with me and warm my
bones, old man?"
Zedd smiled as he embraced her. It was as much of a comfort to be with
her again as he had expected. In fact, at that moment, if she had given him
another hat with a feather, he would have donned it, and with a smile.
Worry, though, ached through his bones like an approaching storm.
"Zedd," Verna said, seeming to notice in his eyes the weight of his
thoughts, "Richard is a war wizard who, as you say, has in the past proven
his remarkable ability. He's a very resourceful young man. Besides that, he
is none other than the Seeker himself and has the Sword of Truth with him
for protection-a sword that I can testify he knows how to use. Kahlan is a
Confessor-the Mother Confessorand is experienced in the use of her power.
They have a Mord-Sith with them. MordSith take no chances."
"I know," Zedd whispered, staring off into a nightmare swirl of
thoughts. "But I still fear greatly for them."
"What is it that worries you so?" Warren asked.
"Albino mosquitoes."
Panting in exhaustion, Kahlan had to dance backward through the snarl
of hobblebush stitched through with thorny blackberry to dodge the swing of
the sword. The tip whistled past, missing her ribs by an inch. In her mad
dash to escape, she ignored the snag and tug of thorns on her pants. She
could feel her heartbeat galloping at the base of her skull.
As he relentlessly pressed his attack, forcing her back over a low rise
of ledge and through the swale beyond, mounds of fallen leaves kicked aloft
by his boots boiled up into the late-afternoon air like colorful
thunderheads. The bright yellow, lustrous orange, and vivid red leaves
rained down over rocky outcrops swaddled in prickly whorls of juniper. It
was like doing battle amid a fallen rainbow.
Richard lunged at her again. Kahlan gasped but blocked his sword. He
pressed his grim attack with implacable determination. She gave ground,
stepping high as she did so in order to avoid tripping over the snare of
roots around a huge white spruce. Losing her footing would be fatal; if she
fell, Richard would stab her in an instant.
She glanced left. There loomed a tall prominence of sheer rock draped
with long trailers of woolly moss. To the other side, the brink of the ridge
ran back to eventually meet that rock wall. Once the level ground tapered
down to that dead end, the only option was going to be to climb straight up
or straight down.
She deflected a quick thrust of his sword, and he warded hers. In a
burst of fury, she pressed a fierce assault, forcing him back a dozen steps.
He effortlessly parried her strikes, and then returned her attack in kind.
What she had gained was quickly lost twice over. She was once again
desperately defending herself and trading ground for her life.
On a low, dead branch of a balsam fir not ten feet away, a small red
squirrel, with his winter ear tufts already grown in, plucked a leathery
brown rosette of lichen growing on the bark. With his white belly gloriously
displayed, he sat on his haunches at the end of the broken-off deadwood, his
bushy tail raised up, holding the crinkled piece of lichen in his tiny paws,
eating round and round the edges, like some spectator at a tournament eating
a fried bread cake while he watched the combatants clash.
Kahlan gulped air as her eyes darted around, looking for clear footing
among the imposing trunks of the highland wood while at the same time
watching for an opportunity that might save her. If she could somehow get
around Richard, around the menace of his sword, she might be able to gain a
clear escape route. He would run her down, but it would buy her time. She
dodged a quick thrust of his sword and ducked around a maple sapling into a
bed of brown and yellow bracken ferns dappled by glowing sunlight.
Richard, driving forward in a sudden mad rush to end it, lifted his
sword to hack her.
It was her opening-her only chance.
In a blink, Kahlan reversed her retreat and sprang ahead a step,
ducking under his arm. She drove her sword straight into his soft middle.
Richard covered the wound with both hands. He teetered a moment, and
then crumpled into the bed of ferns, sprawling flat on his back. Leaves
lying lightly atop taller ferns were lifted by the disturbance. They
somersaulted up into the air, finally drifting down to brightly decorate his
body. The fierce red of the maple leaves was so vibrant it would have made
blood look brown by comparison.
Kahlan stood over Richard, gasping to catch her breath. She was spent.
She dropped to her knees and then threw herself across his supine body. All
around them, fern fronds, the color of caramel candy, were curled into
little fists as if in defiance of having to die with the season. The
sprinkling of lighter, yellowish, hayscented ferns lent a clean, sweet scent
to the afternoon air. There were few things that could equal the fragrance
of the woods in late autumn. In a spectacular bit of chance, a tall maple
nearby, sheltered as it was by a protective corner in the rock wall, was not
yet denuded, but displayed a wide spread of leaves so orange they looked
tangy against the powder blue sky above.
"Cara!" Putting her left hand to Richard's chest, Kahlan pushed herself
up on one arm to call out. "Cara! I killed Richard!"
Cara, not far off, laying on her belly at the edge of the ridge as she
watched out beyond, said nothing.
"I killed him! Did you hear? Cara-did you see?"
"Yes," she muttered, "I heard. You killed Lord Rahl."
"No you didn't," Richard said, still catching his breath.
She whacked him across the shoulder with her willow-switch sword. "Yes
I did. I killed you this time. Killed you dead."
"You only grazed me." He pressed the point of his willow switch to her
side. "You've fallen into my trap. I have you at the point of my sword, now.
Surrender, or die, woman."
"Never," she said, still gasping for breath as she laughed. "I'd rather
die than be captured by the likes of you, you rogue."
She stabbed him repeatedly in his ribs with her willow practice sword
as he giggled and rolled from side to side.
"Cara! Did you see? I killed him this time. I finally got him!"
"Yes, all fight," Cara grouched as she intently watched out beyond the
ridge. "You killed Lord Rahl. Good for you." She glanced back over her
shoulder. "This one is mine, right, Lord Rahl? You promised this one was
mine."
"Yes," Richard said, still catching his breath, "this one goes for
yours, Cara."
"Good." Cara smiled in satisfaction. "It's a big one."
Richard smirked up at Kahlan. "I let you kill me, you know."
"No you didn't! I won. I got you this time." She whacked him again with
her willow sword. She paused and frowned. "I thought you said you weren't
dead. You said it was only a scratch. Ha! You admitted I got you this time."
Richard chuckled. "I let you-"
Kahlan kissed him to shut him up. Cara saw and rolled her eyes.
When Cara looked back over the ridge, she suddenly sprang up. "They
just left! Come on, before something gets it!"
"Cara, nothing is going to get it," Richard said, "not this quickly.'
"Come on! You promised this one was mine. I don't want to have gone
through all this for nothing. Come on."
"All right, all right." Richard said as Kahlan climbed off him. "We're
coming."
He held his hand out for Kahlan to help him up. She stabbed him in the
ribs instead. "Got you again, Lord Rahl. You're getting sloppy."
Richard only smiled as Kahlan finally offered her hand. When he was up
he hugged her in a quick gesture, and before turning to follow after Cara,
said, "Good job, Mother Confessor, good job. You killed me dead. I'm proud
of you."
Kahlan endeavored to show him a sedate smile, but she feared it came
out as a giddy grin. Richard scooped up his pack and hefted it onto his
back. Without delay, he started the descent down the steep, broken face of
the mountain. Kahlan threw her long wolf's-fur mantle around her shoulders
and followed him through the deep shade of sheltering spruce at the edge of
the ridge, stepping on the exposed ledge rather than the low places.
"Be careful," Richard called out to Cara, already a good distance ahead
of them, "With all the leaves covering the ground, you can't see holes or
gaps in the rock."
"I know, 1 know," she grumbled. "How many times do you think I need to
hear it'?"
Richard constantly watched out for them both. He had taught them how to
walk in such terrain and what to be careful of. From the beginning, marching
through the forests and mountains, Kahlan noted that Richard moved with
quiet fluidity, while Cara traipsed along, bounding up onto and off of rocks
and ledges, almost like an exuberant youngster. Since Cara had spent most of
her life indoors, she didn't know that it made a difference how you walked
in such terrain.
Richard had patiently explained to her, "Pick where to put your feet in
order to make your steps comparatively level. Don't step down to a lower
spot if you don't need to, only to have to step up again as you continue
your climb up the trail. Don't step up needlessly, only to have to step down
again. If you must step up on something, you don't always need to lift your
whole body just flex your legs."
Cara complained that it was too hard to think about where to put her
foot each time. He told her that by walling the way she did, she was
actually climbing the mountain twice for each time he climbed it. He
admonished her to think as she walked, and soon it would become instinctive
and would require no conscious thought. When Cara found that her shin and
thigh muscles didn't get as tired and sore when she followed his
suggestions, she became a keen student. Now she asked questions instead of
arguing. Most of the time.
Kahlan saw that as Cara descended the steep trail, she did as Richard
had taught her and used a stick as an improvised staff to probe any
suspicious low area where leaves collected before stepping there. This was
no place to break an ankle. Richard said nothing, but sometimes he smiled
when she found a hole with her stick rather than her foot, as she used to.
Forging a new trail on a steep slope like the one they were descending
was dangerous work. Potential trails often withered into dead ends,
requiring that you retrace your steps. On less severe slopes, hillsides, and
flatter ground especially, animals often made good trails. In a valley, a
suitable trail that shrank to nothing wasn't a big problem because there you
could beat through the brush to more open ground. Making your own trail on a
rocky precipice, a thousand feet up, was always arduous and often
frustrating. In such conditions, particularly if the hour grew late,
the desire not to have to backtrack a difficult climb tempted people
into taking chances.
Richard said that it was hard work that demanded you put reason before
your wish to get down, get home, or get to a place to camp. "Wishing gets
people killed," he often said. "Using your head gets you home."
Cara poked her stick into a pile of leaves between bare granite rocks.
"Don't step in the leaves here," she said over her shoulder as she hopped
onto the far rock. "There's a hole."
"Why, thank you, Cara," Richard said in mock gratitude, as if he would
have stepped there had she not warned him.
The cliff face they were on had a number of sizable ledges with rugged
little trees and shrubs that provided good footing and the safety of a
handhold. Below, the mountainside dropped away before them into a lush
ravine. Beyond the defile, it rose up again in a steep slope covered with
evergreens and the dull gray and brown skeletons of oaks, maples, and
birches.
The raucous coats of autumn leaves had been resplendent while they
lasted, but now they were but confetti on the ground, and there they faded
fast. Usually, the oaks held on to their leaves until at least early winter,
and some of them until spring, but up in the mountains icy winds and early
storms had already stripped even the oaks bare of their tenacious brown
leaves.
Cara stepped out onto a shelf of ledge jutting out over the chasm
below. "There," she said as she pointed across the way. "Up there. Do you
see?"
Richard shielded his eyes against the warm sunlight as he squinted
higher up on the opposite slope. He made a sound deep in his throat to
confirm that he saw it. "Nasty place to die."
Kahlan snugged the warm wolf fur up against her ears to protect them
from the cold wind. "There's a good place?"
Richard let his hand drop from his brow. "I guess not."
Farther up the slope from where Cara had pointed, the forest ended in a
place called the crooked wood. Above that, where no trees could grow, the
mountain was naked rock ridges and scree. A little farther up, snow, white
as sugar, sparkled in the slanting sunlight. Below the snow and bare rock,
the crooked wood was exposed to harsh winds and bitter weather, causing the
trees to grow in tortured shapes. The crooked wood was a line of demarcation
between the desolation where little more than lichen could survive the
forbidding weather, and the forest of trees huddled below.
Richard gestured off to their right. "Let's not waste any time, though.
I don't want to be caught up here come dark."
Kahlan looked out to where the mountain opened onto a grand vista of
snowcapped peaks, valleys, and the undulating green of seemingly endless,
trackless forests. A roiling blanket of thick clouds had invaded those
valleys, stealing in around the mountains, sneaking ever closer. In the
distance, some of the snowcapped peaks stood isolated in a cottony gray sea.
Lower down the mountains, below those dense, dark clouds, the weather would
be miserable.
Both Richard and Cara awaited Kahlan's word. She didn't like the
thought of being exposed in the crooked wood when the icy cold fog and
drizzle arrived. "I'm fine, let's go and get it done. Then we can get down
lower where we'll be able to find a wayward pine to stay dry tonight. I
wouldn't mind sitting beside a hearty little fire sipping hot tea."
Cara blew warm breath into her cupped hands. "That sounds good to me."
It was on the first day Kahlan met Richard, more than a year before,
that he had taken her to a wayward pine. Kahlan had never known about such
trees in the deep woods of Westland. Wayward pines still held the same
mystic quality for her as they did the first time she saw one silhouetted
against a darkening sky, taller than all the trees around it. Such mature
trees were a friend to travelers far from any conventional shelter.
A big wayward pine's boughs hung down to the ground all around. The
needles grew mostly at the outer fringe, leaving the inner branches bare.
Inside, under their dense green skirts, wayward pines provided excellent
shelter from harsh weather, Something about the tree's sap made them
resistant to fire, so if you were careful, you could have a cozy campfire
inside while outside it rained and stormed.
Richard, Kahlan, and Cara often stayed in wayward pines when they were
out in the mountains. Those nights getting warm around a small fire within
the tree's confines brought them all closer, and gave them time to reflect,
to talk, and to tell stories. Some of the stories made them laugh. Some
brought a lump to their throats.
After Kahlan's assurance that she was up to it, Richard and Cara nodded
and started down the cliff. She had recovered from her terrible wounds, but
they still left it up to her to decide if she was prepared for the effort of
such a descent and climb and then descent again before they found a
sheltered campsite-hopefully in a wayward pine.
Kahlan had been a long time in healing. She had known, of course, that
injuries such as she had suffered would take time to heal. Bedridden for so
long, her muscles had become withered, weak, and nearly useless. For a long
time, it had been hard for her to eat much. She became a skeleton. With the
realization of just how weak and helpless she had become, even as she
healed, she had inexorably spiraled down into a state of abject depression.
Kahlan had not comprehended completely the punishing effort that would
be required if she was to he herself again. Richard and Cara tried to cheer
her up, but their efforts seemed distant; they just didn't understand what
it was like. Her legs wasted away until they were bony sticks with knobby
knees. She felt not just helpless, but ugly. Richard carved animals for her:
hawks, foxes, otters, ducks, and even chipmunks. They seemed only a
curiosity to her. At the lowest point, Kahlan almost wished she had died
along with their child.
Her life became a tasteless gruel. All she saw, day after day, week
after week, were the four walls of her sickroom. The pain was exhausting and
the monotony numbing. She came to hate the bitter yarrow tea they made her
drink, and the smell of the poultice made of tall cinquefoil and yarrow.
When after a time she resisted drinking yarrow, they would sometimes switch
to linden, which wasn't so bitter but didn't work as well, yet it did help
her sleep. Skullcap often helped when her head hurt, though it was so
astringent it make her mouth pucker for a long time after, Sometimes, they
switched to a tincture of feverfew to help ease her pain. Kahlan came to
hate taking herbs and would often say she didn't hurt, when she did, just to
avoid some horrid concoction.
Richard hadn't made the window in the bedroom very big; in the summer
heat the room was often sweltering. Kahlan could see only a bit of the sky
outside her window, the tops of some trees, and the jagged blue.-gray shape
of a mountain in the distance.
Richard wanted to take her outside, but Kahlan begged him not to try
because
she didn't think it would be worth the pain. It didn't take much
convincing for him to be talked out of hurting her. Every kind of day, from
sunny and bright to gray and gloomy, came and went. Lying in her little room
as time slipped away while she slowly healed, Kahlan thought of it as her
"lost summer."
One day, she was parched, and Richard had forgotten to fill the cup and
place it where she could reach it on the simple table beside the bed. When
she asked for water, Richard came back with the cup and a full waterskin and
set them both on the windowsill as he called to Cara, outside. He rushed
out, telling Kahlan as he went that he and Cara had to go check the fishing
lines and they would be back as soon as they could. Before Kahlan could ask
him to put the water closer, he was gone.
Kahlan lay fuming in the silence, hardly able to believe that Richard
had been so inconsiderate as to leave the water out of her reach. It was
unusually warm for late summer. Her tongue felt swollen. She stared
helplessly at the wooden cup setting in the windowsill.
On the verge of tears, she let out a moan of self-pity and smacked her
fist against the bed. She rolled her head to the right, away from the
window, and closed her eyes. She decided to take a nap in order not to think
about her thirst. Richard and Cara would be back by the time she awoke, and
they would get the water for her. And Richard would get a scolding.
Sweat trickled down her neck. Outside, a bird kept calling. Its
repetitious song sounded like a little girl with a high pitched voice saying
"who, me?" Once a "who, me?" bird started in, it was a long performance.
Kahlan could think of little else besides how much she wanted a drink.
She couldn't make herself fall asleep. The annoying bird kept asking
its question over and over again. More than once, she found herself
whispering "yes, you," in answer. She growled a curse at Richard. She
squeezed her eyes shut and tried to forget her thirst, the heat, and the
bird and go to sleep. Her eyes kept popping open.
Kahlan lifted her sleeping gown away from her chest, ruffling it up and
down to cool herself. She realized she was staring at the water in the
window. It was out of her reach-clear over on the other side of the room.
The room wasn't very big, but still, she couldn't walk. Richard knew better.
She thought that maybe, if she could sit up and move to the bottom of the
bed, she might be able to reach the cup.
With an ill-tempered huff, she threw the light cover off her bony legs.
She hated seeing them. Why was Richard being so inconsiderate? What was the
matter with him? She intended to give him a piece of her mind when he got
back. She eased her legs over the side of the bed.
The mattress was a pliable woven mat stuffed with grasses and feathers
and tow padding. It was quite comfortable, and Kahlan was pleased with her
snug bed. With a great effort, she pushed herself up. For a long time, she
sat on the edge of the bed holding her head in her hands as she caught her
breath. Her whole body throbbed in pain.
It was the first time she had sat up all by herself.
She understood very well what Richard was doing. Still, she didn't
appreciate his way of forcing her to get up. It was cruel. She wasn't ready.
She was still badly hurt. She needed to rest in bed in order to recover. Her
oozing wounds had finally closed up and healed over, but she was sure she
was still too injured to be getting up. She feared to test broken bones.
Accompanied by a lot of groaning and grunting, she worked herself to
the bottom
of the bed. Sitting there, one hand holding the footboard to steady
herself, she was still too far from the window to reach the water. She was
going to have to stand.
She paused for a while to have dark thoughts about her husband.
After a day many weeks before, when she had called for a long time and
Richard hadn't heard her weak voice, he had left a light pole beside her so
she would be able to use it to reach out and knock on the wall or door if
she was in urgent need of their help. Now, Kahlan worked her fingers around
the pole lying alongside her bed and lifted it upright. She planted the
thicker end on the ground and leaned on the pole for support as she
carefully slid off the bed. Her feet touched the cool dirt floor. Putting
weight on her legs made her gasp in pain.
She half stood, half leaned on the bed, prepared to cry out, but
realized she was gasping more at the brutal pain she expected than from the
actual pain. It did hurt, but she realized it wasn't too much to endure. She
was a bit disgruntled to learn it wasn't nearly as bad as it had been; she
had been planning on reducing Richard to tears with the torturous suffering
he had so cavalierly forced upon her.
She put more weight on her feet and pulled herself up with the aid of
the pole. Finally, she stood in wobbling triumph. She was actually on her
feet, and she had done it by herself.
Kahlan couldn't seem to make her legs walk the way she wanted them to.
In order to get to the water, she was going to have to make them do her
bidding-at least until she reached the window. Then, she could collapse to
the floor, where Richard would find her. She luxuriated in her mental
picture of it. He wouldn't think his plan to get her out of bed so clever,
then.
With the aid of the stout pole for support and her tongue poked out the
corner of her mouth for balance, she slowly shuffled to the window. Kahlan
told herself that if she fell, she was going to lie there in a heap on the
floor, without any water, until Richard came back and found her moaning
through cracked lips, dying of thirst. He would be sorry he had ever tried
such a pitiless trick. He would feel guilty for the rest of his life for
what he had done to her-she would see to it.
Almost wishing every difficult step of the way that she would fall, she
finally made it to the window. Kahlan threw an arm over the sill for support
and closed her eyes as she panted in little breaths so as not to hurt her
ribs. When she had her wind back, she drew herself up to the window. She
snatched the cup and gulped down the water.
Kahlan plunked the empty cup down on the sill and peered out as she
caught her breath again.
Richard was sitting on the ground just outside, his arms hooked around
his knees, his hands clasped.
"Hi there," he said with a smile.
Cara, sitting right beside him, gazed up without emotion. "I see you're
up."
Kahlan wanted to yell at him, but instead she found herself trying with
all her might not to laugh. She felt suddenly and overwhelmingly foolish for
not trying sooner to get up on her own.
Tears stung her eyes as she looked out at the expanse of trees, the
vibrant colors, the majestic mountains, and the huge sweep of blue sky
dotted with fluffy white clouds marching off into the distance. The size of
the mountains, their imposing slopes, their luscious color, was beyond
anything she had ever encountered before. How could she possibly not have
wanted more than anything to get up and see the world around her?
"You know, of course, that you've made a big mistake," Richard said.
"What do you mean?" Kahlan asked.
"Well, had you not gotten up, we'd have kept waiting on you-at least
for a time. Now that you've shown us that you can get up and move on your
own, we're only going to keep doing this-putting things out of your reach to
make you start moving about and helping yourself."
While she silently thanked him, she was unwilling, just yet, to tell
him out loud how right he had been. But inside, she loved him all the more
for braving her anger to help her.
Cara turned to Richard. "Should we show her where she can find the
table?"
Richard shrugged. "If she gets hungry, she'll come out of the bedroom
and find it."
Kahlan threw the cup at him, hoping to wipe the smirk off his face. He
caught the cup.
"Well, glad to see your arm works," he said. "You can cut your own
bread." When she started to protest, he said, "It's only fair. Cara baked
it. The least you can do is to cut it."
Kahlan's mouth fell open. "Cara baked bread?"
"Lord Rahl taught me," Cara said. "I wanted bread with my stew, real
bread, and he told me that if I wanted bread, I would have to learn to make
it. It was easy, really. A little like walking to the window. But I was much
more good-natured about it, and didn't throw anything at him."
Kahlan could not help smiling, knowing it must have been harder for
Cara to knead dough than for Kahlan to get up and walk. She somehow doubted
that Cara had been "good-natured" about it. Kahlan would like to have seen
that battle of wills.
"Give me back my cup. And then go catch some fish for dinner. I'm
hungry. I want a trout. A big trout. Along with bread."
Richard smiled. "I can do that. If you can find the table."
Kahlan did find the table. She never ate in bed again.
At first, the pain of walking was sometimes more than she could
tolerate, and she took refuge in her bed. Cara would come in and brush her
hair, just so Kahlan wouldn't be alone. She had no power in her muscles, and
could hardly move by herself. Brushing her own hair was a colossal task.
Just getting to the table was exhausting, and all she could accomplish at
first. Richard and Cara were sympathetic, and continually encouraged her,
but they pushed her, too.
Kahlan was joyous to be out of the bed and that helped her to ignore
the pain. The world was again a wondrous place. She was more than joyous to
be able at last to go out to the privy. While she never said so, Kahlan was
sure Cara was happy about that, too.
As much as she liked the snug home, going outside felt like finally
being freed from a dungeon. Before, Richard had frequently offered to take
her outside for the day, but she had never wanted to leave her bed, fearing
the pain. She realized that because she was so sick, her thinking had slowly
become dull and foggy. Along with her summer, she had for a time lost
herself. Now, at long last, she felt clearheaded.
She discovered that the view outside her window was the least
impressive of the surrounding sights. Snowcapped peaks towered around the
small house Richard and Cara had built in the lap of breathtaking mountains.
The simple house, with a bed-
room at either end, one for Richard and Kahlan, and one for Cara, with
a common room in the middle, sat at the edge of a meadow of velvety green
grasses sprinkled with wildflowers. Even though it was late in the season
when they had arrived, Richard managed to start a small garden in a sunny
place outside Cara's window, growing fresh greens for the table and some
herbs to add flavor to their cooking. Right behind the house, huge old white
pines towered over them, sheltering them from the full force of the wind.
Richard had continued his carving, to pass the time as he sat by
Kahlan's bed, talking and telling stories, but after she had at last gotten
out of bed, his carvings changed. Instead of animals, Richard began
sculpting people.
And then one day he surprised her with his most magnificent carving yet
in celebration, he said, of her getting well enough to finally come out into
the world.
Astonished by the utter realism and power of the small statue, she
whispered that it could only be the gift that had guided his hand in carving
it. Richard regarded such talk as nonsense.
"People without the gift carve beautiful statues all the time," he
said. "There's no magic involved."
She knew, though, that some artists were gifted, and able to invoke
magic through their art.
Richard occasionally spoke wistfully about the works of art he'd seen
at the People's Palace, in D'Hara, where he had been held captive. Growing
up in Hart land, he had never before seen statues carved in marble, and
certainly none carved on such a grand scale, or by such talented hands.
Those works had in some ways opened his eyes to the greater world around him
and had made a lasting impression on him. Who else but Richard would
remember fondly the beauty he saw while held captive and being tortured?
It was true that art could exist independent of magic, but Richard had
been taken captive in the first place only with the aid of a spell brought
to life through art. Art was a universal language, and thus an invaluable
tool for implementing magic.
Kahlan finally stopped arguing with him about whether the gift helped
him to carve. He simply didn't believe it. She felt, though, that, having no
other outlet, his gift must be expressing itself in this way. Magic always
seemed to find a way to seep out, and his carvings of people certainly did
seem magical to her.
But the figure of the woman that he carved for her as a gift stirred
profound emotion within her. He called it, an image nearly two feet tall
carved from buttery smooth, rich, aromatic walnut, Spirit. The feminity of
her body, its exquisite shape and curves, bones and muscle, were clearly
evident beneath her flowing robes. She looked alive.
How Richard had accomplished such a feat, Kahlan couldn't even imagine.
He had conveyed through the woman, her robes flowing in a wind as she stood
with her head thrown back, her chest out, her hands fisted at her sides, her
back arched and strong as if in opposition to an invisible power trying
unsuccessfully to subdue her, a sense of . . . spirit.
The statue was obviously not intended to look like Kahlan, yet it
evoked in her some visceral response, a tension that was startlingly
familiar. Something about the woman in the carving, some quality it
conveyed, made Kahlan hunger to be well, to be fully alive, to be strong and
independent again.
If this wasn't magic, she didn't know what was.
Kahlan had been around grand palaces her whole life, exposed to any
number of
pieces of great art by renowned artists, but none had ever taken her
breath with its thrust of inner vision, its sense of individual nobility, as
did this proud, vibrant woman in flowing robes. The strength and vitality of
it brought a lump to Kahlan's throat, and she could only throw her arms
around Richard's neck in speechless emotion.
Now Kahlan went outside at every opportunity. She placed the carving of
Spirit on the windowsill so she could see it not only from bed, but also
when she was outdoors. She turned the statue so that it always faced
outside. She felt it should always be facing the world.
The woods around the house were mysterious and alluring. Intriguing
trails went off into the shadowy distance, and she could just detect light
off at the end of the gently curving tunnel through the trees. She ached to
explore those narrow tracks, animal trails enlarged by Richard and Cara on
their short treks to tend fishing lines and forays in search of nuts and
berries. Kahlan, with the aid of a staff, hobbled around the house and the
meadow to strengthen her legs; she wanted to go with Richard on those treks,
through the filtered sunlight and gentle breezes, over the open patches of
ledge, and under the arched, enclosing limbs of huge oaks.
One of the first places Richard took her when she insisted she could
walk for a short distance was through that tunnel in the thick, dark wood to
the patch of light at the other end, where a brook descended a rocky gorge.
The brook was sheltered on the hillside above them by a dense stand of
trees. An enormous weight of water continuously plunged over that stepped
tumble of rocks, surging around boulders and pouring in glassy sheets over
ledges. Many of the bear-sized rocks sitting in the shady pools were flocked
in a dark green velvet of moss and sprinkled with long tawny needles from
the white pines that favored the rock slope. Flecks of sunlight winking
through the dense canopy shimmered in the clear pools.
At the bottom of that gorge, in that sunny mountain glen off behind
their house where the trail emerged from the woods, the brook broadened and
slowed as it meandered through the expansive valley surrounded by the
awesome jut of the mountains. Sometimes Kahlan would dangle her bony legs
over a bank and let the cool water caress her feet. There, she could sit on
the warm grass and soak up the sun while watching fish swim through the
crystal-clear water flowing over gravel beds. Richard had been right when he
told her that trout liked beautiful places.
She loved watching the fish, frogs, crayfish, and even the salamanders.
Oftentimes, she would lie on her stomach on the low grassy bank, with her
chin resting on the backs of her hands, and watch for hours as the fish came
out from under sunken logs, from beneath rocks, or from the dark depths of
the larger pools to snatch a bug from the surface of the water. Kahlan
caught crickets, grasshoppers, and grubs and periodically tossed them in for
the fish. Richard laughed when she talked to the fish, encouraging them to
come up out of their dark holes for a tasty bug. Sometimes, a graceful gray
heron would stand on its thin legs in the shallow marshes not far away and
occasionally spear a fish or a frog with its daggerlike bill.
Kahlan could not recall, in the whole of her life, ever being in a
place with such
a vibrancy of life to it, surrounded by such majesty. Richard teased
her, telling her she hadn't seen anything yet, making her curious and ever
eager to get stronger so she could explore new sights. She felt like a
little girl in a magical kingdom that was theirs and theirs alone. Having
grown up a Confessor, Kahlan had never spent much time outdoors watching
animals or water tumbling down over rocks or clouds or sunsets. She had seen
a great many magnificent things, but they were in the context of travel,
cities, buildings, and people. She had never lingered in one place in the
countryside to really soak it all in.
Still, the thoughts in the back of her mind hounded her; she knew that
she and Richard were needed elsewhere. They had responsibilities. Richard
casually deflected the subject whenever she broached it; he had already
explained his reasoning, and believed he was doing what was right.
They hadn't been visited by messengers for a very long time. That worry
played on her mind, too, but Richard said that he couldn't allow himself to
influence the army, so it was just as well that General Reibisch had stopped
sending reports. Besides, he said, it only needlessly endangered the
messengers who made the journey.
For the time being, Kahlan knew she needed to get better, and her
isolated mountain life was making her stronger by the day, probably as
nothing else could. Once they returned to the war-once she convinced him
that they must return-this peaceful life would be but a cherished memory.
She resolved to enjoy what she couldn't change, while it lasted.
Once when it had been raining for a few days and Kahlan was missing
going out to the brook to watch the fish, Richard did the most unheard-of
thing. He started bringing her fish in ajar. Live fish. Fish just for
watching.
After he'd cleaned an empty lamp-oil jug and several widemouthed glass
jars that had held preserves, herbs, and unguents for her injuries, along
with other supplies he had purchased on their journey away from Anderith, he
put some gravel in the bottom and filled them with water from the stream. He
then caught some blacknose dace minnows and put them in the glass
containers. They were yellowish olive on top speckled with black, with white
bottoms, and a thick black line down each side. He even provided them with a
bit of weed from the brook so they could have a place to hide and feel safe.
Kahlan was astonished when Richard brought home the first jar of live
fish. She set the jars-eventually four jars and one jug in all-on the
windowsill in the main room, beside several of Richard's smaller carvings.
Richard, Kahlan, and Cara sat at the small wooden table when they ate and
watched the marvel of fish living in ajar.
"Just don't name them," Richard said, "because eventually they're going
to die."
What she had at first thought was an entirely daft idea became a center
of fascination for her. Even Cara, who cited fish-in-a-jar as lunacy, took a
liking to the little fish. It seemed that every day with Richard in the
mountains held some new marvel to turn her mind away from her own pains and
troubles.
After the fish became accustomed to people, they went about their
little lives as if living in ajar were perfectly natural. From time to time,
Richard would pour out part of their water, and add fresh water from the
brook. Kahlan and Cara fed the little fish crumbs of bread or tiny scraps
from dinner, along with small bugs. The fish ate eagerly, and spent most of
their time pecking at the gravel on the bottom, or swimming about, looking
out at the world. After a while, the fish learned when it
was lunchtime. They would wiggle eagerly on the other side of the glass
whenever anyone approached, like puppies happy to see their masters.
The main room had a small fireplace Richard had built with clay from
stream banks he'd formed into bricks and dried in the sun, and then cooked
in a fire. They had the table he'd made, and chairs constructed of branches
intertwined and lashed together. He'd woven the chair bottoms and backs from
leathery inner bark.
In the corner of the room was a wooden door over a deep root cellar.
Against the back wall were simple shelves and a big cupboard full of
supplies. They'd bought a lot of supplies along the way and carried them
either in the carriage with Kahlan or strapped on the back and sides. For
the last part of the journey Richard and Cara had lugged everything in,
since the carriage couldn't make it over narrow mountain passes where there
were no roads. Richard had blazed the trail in.
Cara had her own room opposite theirs. Once up and about, Kahlan was
surprised to find that Cara had a collection of rocks. Cara bristled at the
term "collection," and asserted that they were there as defensive weapons,
should they be attacked and trapped in the house. Kahlan found the rocks-all
different colors-suspiciously pretty. Cara insisted they were deadly.
While Kahlan had been bedridden, Richard had slept on a pallet in the
main room, or sometimes outside under the stars. A number of times, at
first, when she was in so much pain, Kahlan had awakened to see him sitting
on the floor beside her bed, dozing as he leaned against the wall, always
ready to jump up if she needed anything, or to offer her medicines and herb
teas. He hadn't wanted to sleep in bed with her for fear of it hurting her.
She almost would have been willing to endure it for the comfort of his
presence beside her. Finally, though, after she was up and about, he was at
last able to lie beside her. That first night with him in bed, she had held
his big warm hand to her belly as she gazed at Spirit silhouetted in the
moonlight, listening to the night calls of birds, bugs, and the songs of the
wolves until her eyes closed and she drifted into a peaceful slumber.
It was on the next day that Richard first killed her.
They were at the stream, checking the fishing lines, when he cut two
straight willow switches. He tossed one on the ground beside where she sat,
and told her it was her sword.
He seemed in a playful mood, and told her to defend herself. Feeling
playful herself, Kahlan took up the challenge by suddenly trying to stab him
just to put him in his place. He stabbed her first and declared her dead.
She fought him again, more earnestly the second time, and he quickly
dispatched her with a convincingly feigned beheading. By the third time she
went after him, she was a little irked. She put all her effort into her
assault, but he smoothly thwarted her attack and then pressed the tip of his
willow-switch sword between her breasts. He announced her dead for a third
time out of three.
Thereafter, it became a game Kahlan wanted to win. Richard never let
her win, not even just to be nice when she was feeling low because of her
slow progress at getting stronger. He repeatedly humbled her in front of
Cara. Kahlan knew he was doing it to make her push herself to use her
muscles, to forget her aches, to stretch and strengthen her body. Kahlan
just wanted to win.
They each carried their willow-switch swords sheathed behind a belt,
always at the ready. Every day, she would attack him, or he would attack
her, and the fight was on. At first, she was no challenge to him, and he
made it clear she was no challenge. That, of course, only made her
determined to show him that she was no
novice, that it was not so much a battle of strength, but of leverage,
advantage, and swiftness. He encouraged her, but never gave her false
praise. As the weeks passed, she slowly began making him work for his kills.
Kahlan had been taught to use a sword by her father, King Wyborn. At
least, he had been king before Kahlan's mother took him for her mate. King
was an insignificant title to a Confessor. King Wyborn of Galea had had two
children with his queen and first wife, so Kahlan had both an older half
sister and a half brother.
Kahlan wanted very much to make a good show of her training under her
father. It was frustrating to know she was far better with a weapon than she
was showing Richard. It wasn't so much that she didn't know what to do, but
that she simply couldn't do it; her muscles were not yet strong enough, nor
would they respond nearly quickly enough.
Something about it, though, was still unsettling: Richard fought in a
way Kahlan had never encountered in her training, or in the real combat she
had seen. She couldn't define or analyze the difference, but she could feel
it, and she didn't know what to do to counter it.
In the beginning, Richard and Kahlan had most of their battles in the
to help him, especially after searching for him for so long. Sometimes it
was hard to leave people alone when that was what they most needed. "That
would be best," he repeated, "I am tired."
"Summer be slipping away from us. The nights be turning chilly," Adie
said as she pressed against Zedd's side. She looked up at him with her white
eyes that in the lamplight had a soft amber cast. "Stay with me and warm my
bones, old man?"
Zedd smiled as he embraced her. It was as much of a comfort to be with
her again as he had expected. In fact, at that moment, if she had given him
another hat with a feather, he would have donned it, and with a smile.
Worry, though, ached through his bones like an approaching storm.
"Zedd," Verna said, seeming to notice in his eyes the weight of his
thoughts, "Richard is a war wizard who, as you say, has in the past proven
his remarkable ability. He's a very resourceful young man. Besides that, he
is none other than the Seeker himself and has the Sword of Truth with him
for protection-a sword that I can testify he knows how to use. Kahlan is a
Confessor-the Mother Confessorand is experienced in the use of her power.
They have a Mord-Sith with them. MordSith take no chances."
"I know," Zedd whispered, staring off into a nightmare swirl of
thoughts. "But I still fear greatly for them."
"What is it that worries you so?" Warren asked.
"Albino mosquitoes."
Panting in exhaustion, Kahlan had to dance backward through the snarl
of hobblebush stitched through with thorny blackberry to dodge the swing of
the sword. The tip whistled past, missing her ribs by an inch. In her mad
dash to escape, she ignored the snag and tug of thorns on her pants. She
could feel her heartbeat galloping at the base of her skull.
As he relentlessly pressed his attack, forcing her back over a low rise
of ledge and through the swale beyond, mounds of fallen leaves kicked aloft
by his boots boiled up into the late-afternoon air like colorful
thunderheads. The bright yellow, lustrous orange, and vivid red leaves
rained down over rocky outcrops swaddled in prickly whorls of juniper. It
was like doing battle amid a fallen rainbow.
Richard lunged at her again. Kahlan gasped but blocked his sword. He
pressed his grim attack with implacable determination. She gave ground,
stepping high as she did so in order to avoid tripping over the snare of
roots around a huge white spruce. Losing her footing would be fatal; if she
fell, Richard would stab her in an instant.
She glanced left. There loomed a tall prominence of sheer rock draped
with long trailers of woolly moss. To the other side, the brink of the ridge
ran back to eventually meet that rock wall. Once the level ground tapered
down to that dead end, the only option was going to be to climb straight up
or straight down.
She deflected a quick thrust of his sword, and he warded hers. In a
burst of fury, she pressed a fierce assault, forcing him back a dozen steps.
He effortlessly parried her strikes, and then returned her attack in kind.
What she had gained was quickly lost twice over. She was once again
desperately defending herself and trading ground for her life.
On a low, dead branch of a balsam fir not ten feet away, a small red
squirrel, with his winter ear tufts already grown in, plucked a leathery
brown rosette of lichen growing on the bark. With his white belly gloriously
displayed, he sat on his haunches at the end of the broken-off deadwood, his
bushy tail raised up, holding the crinkled piece of lichen in his tiny paws,
eating round and round the edges, like some spectator at a tournament eating
a fried bread cake while he watched the combatants clash.
Kahlan gulped air as her eyes darted around, looking for clear footing
among the imposing trunks of the highland wood while at the same time
watching for an opportunity that might save her. If she could somehow get
around Richard, around the menace of his sword, she might be able to gain a
clear escape route. He would run her down, but it would buy her time. She
dodged a quick thrust of his sword and ducked around a maple sapling into a
bed of brown and yellow bracken ferns dappled by glowing sunlight.
Richard, driving forward in a sudden mad rush to end it, lifted his
sword to hack her.
It was her opening-her only chance.
In a blink, Kahlan reversed her retreat and sprang ahead a step,
ducking under his arm. She drove her sword straight into his soft middle.
Richard covered the wound with both hands. He teetered a moment, and
then crumpled into the bed of ferns, sprawling flat on his back. Leaves
lying lightly atop taller ferns were lifted by the disturbance. They
somersaulted up into the air, finally drifting down to brightly decorate his
body. The fierce red of the maple leaves was so vibrant it would have made
blood look brown by comparison.
Kahlan stood over Richard, gasping to catch her breath. She was spent.
She dropped to her knees and then threw herself across his supine body. All
around them, fern fronds, the color of caramel candy, were curled into
little fists as if in defiance of having to die with the season. The
sprinkling of lighter, yellowish, hayscented ferns lent a clean, sweet scent
to the afternoon air. There were few things that could equal the fragrance
of the woods in late autumn. In a spectacular bit of chance, a tall maple
nearby, sheltered as it was by a protective corner in the rock wall, was not
yet denuded, but displayed a wide spread of leaves so orange they looked
tangy against the powder blue sky above.
"Cara!" Putting her left hand to Richard's chest, Kahlan pushed herself
up on one arm to call out. "Cara! I killed Richard!"
Cara, not far off, laying on her belly at the edge of the ridge as she
watched out beyond, said nothing.
"I killed him! Did you hear? Cara-did you see?"
"Yes," she muttered, "I heard. You killed Lord Rahl."
"No you didn't," Richard said, still catching his breath.
She whacked him across the shoulder with her willow-switch sword. "Yes
I did. I killed you this time. Killed you dead."
"You only grazed me." He pressed the point of his willow switch to her
side. "You've fallen into my trap. I have you at the point of my sword, now.
Surrender, or die, woman."
"Never," she said, still gasping for breath as she laughed. "I'd rather
die than be captured by the likes of you, you rogue."
She stabbed him repeatedly in his ribs with her willow practice sword
as he giggled and rolled from side to side.
"Cara! Did you see? I killed him this time. I finally got him!"
"Yes, all fight," Cara grouched as she intently watched out beyond the
ridge. "You killed Lord Rahl. Good for you." She glanced back over her
shoulder. "This one is mine, right, Lord Rahl? You promised this one was
mine."
"Yes," Richard said, still catching his breath, "this one goes for
yours, Cara."
"Good." Cara smiled in satisfaction. "It's a big one."
Richard smirked up at Kahlan. "I let you kill me, you know."
"No you didn't! I won. I got you this time." She whacked him again with
her willow sword. She paused and frowned. "I thought you said you weren't
dead. You said it was only a scratch. Ha! You admitted I got you this time."
Richard chuckled. "I let you-"
Kahlan kissed him to shut him up. Cara saw and rolled her eyes.
When Cara looked back over the ridge, she suddenly sprang up. "They
just left! Come on, before something gets it!"
"Cara, nothing is going to get it," Richard said, "not this quickly.'
"Come on! You promised this one was mine. I don't want to have gone
through all this for nothing. Come on."
"All right, all right." Richard said as Kahlan climbed off him. "We're
coming."
He held his hand out for Kahlan to help him up. She stabbed him in the
ribs instead. "Got you again, Lord Rahl. You're getting sloppy."
Richard only smiled as Kahlan finally offered her hand. When he was up
he hugged her in a quick gesture, and before turning to follow after Cara,
said, "Good job, Mother Confessor, good job. You killed me dead. I'm proud
of you."
Kahlan endeavored to show him a sedate smile, but she feared it came
out as a giddy grin. Richard scooped up his pack and hefted it onto his
back. Without delay, he started the descent down the steep, broken face of
the mountain. Kahlan threw her long wolf's-fur mantle around her shoulders
and followed him through the deep shade of sheltering spruce at the edge of
the ridge, stepping on the exposed ledge rather than the low places.
"Be careful," Richard called out to Cara, already a good distance ahead
of them, "With all the leaves covering the ground, you can't see holes or
gaps in the rock."
"I know, 1 know," she grumbled. "How many times do you think I need to
hear it'?"
Richard constantly watched out for them both. He had taught them how to
walk in such terrain and what to be careful of. From the beginning, marching
through the forests and mountains, Kahlan noted that Richard moved with
quiet fluidity, while Cara traipsed along, bounding up onto and off of rocks
and ledges, almost like an exuberant youngster. Since Cara had spent most of
her life indoors, she didn't know that it made a difference how you walked
in such terrain.
Richard had patiently explained to her, "Pick where to put your feet in
order to make your steps comparatively level. Don't step down to a lower
spot if you don't need to, only to have to step up again as you continue
your climb up the trail. Don't step up needlessly, only to have to step down
again. If you must step up on something, you don't always need to lift your
whole body just flex your legs."
Cara complained that it was too hard to think about where to put her
foot each time. He told her that by walling the way she did, she was
actually climbing the mountain twice for each time he climbed it. He
admonished her to think as she walked, and soon it would become instinctive
and would require no conscious thought. When Cara found that her shin and
thigh muscles didn't get as tired and sore when she followed his
suggestions, she became a keen student. Now she asked questions instead of
arguing. Most of the time.
Kahlan saw that as Cara descended the steep trail, she did as Richard
had taught her and used a stick as an improvised staff to probe any
suspicious low area where leaves collected before stepping there. This was
no place to break an ankle. Richard said nothing, but sometimes he smiled
when she found a hole with her stick rather than her foot, as she used to.
Forging a new trail on a steep slope like the one they were descending
was dangerous work. Potential trails often withered into dead ends,
requiring that you retrace your steps. On less severe slopes, hillsides, and
flatter ground especially, animals often made good trails. In a valley, a
suitable trail that shrank to nothing wasn't a big problem because there you
could beat through the brush to more open ground. Making your own trail on a
rocky precipice, a thousand feet up, was always arduous and often
frustrating. In such conditions, particularly if the hour grew late,
the desire not to have to backtrack a difficult climb tempted people
into taking chances.
Richard said that it was hard work that demanded you put reason before
your wish to get down, get home, or get to a place to camp. "Wishing gets
people killed," he often said. "Using your head gets you home."
Cara poked her stick into a pile of leaves between bare granite rocks.
"Don't step in the leaves here," she said over her shoulder as she hopped
onto the far rock. "There's a hole."
"Why, thank you, Cara," Richard said in mock gratitude, as if he would
have stepped there had she not warned him.
The cliff face they were on had a number of sizable ledges with rugged
little trees and shrubs that provided good footing and the safety of a
handhold. Below, the mountainside dropped away before them into a lush
ravine. Beyond the defile, it rose up again in a steep slope covered with
evergreens and the dull gray and brown skeletons of oaks, maples, and
birches.
The raucous coats of autumn leaves had been resplendent while they
lasted, but now they were but confetti on the ground, and there they faded
fast. Usually, the oaks held on to their leaves until at least early winter,
and some of them until spring, but up in the mountains icy winds and early
storms had already stripped even the oaks bare of their tenacious brown
leaves.
Cara stepped out onto a shelf of ledge jutting out over the chasm
below. "There," she said as she pointed across the way. "Up there. Do you
see?"
Richard shielded his eyes against the warm sunlight as he squinted
higher up on the opposite slope. He made a sound deep in his throat to
confirm that he saw it. "Nasty place to die."
Kahlan snugged the warm wolf fur up against her ears to protect them
from the cold wind. "There's a good place?"
Richard let his hand drop from his brow. "I guess not."
Farther up the slope from where Cara had pointed, the forest ended in a
place called the crooked wood. Above that, where no trees could grow, the
mountain was naked rock ridges and scree. A little farther up, snow, white
as sugar, sparkled in the slanting sunlight. Below the snow and bare rock,
the crooked wood was exposed to harsh winds and bitter weather, causing the
trees to grow in tortured shapes. The crooked wood was a line of demarcation
between the desolation where little more than lichen could survive the
forbidding weather, and the forest of trees huddled below.
Richard gestured off to their right. "Let's not waste any time, though.
I don't want to be caught up here come dark."
Kahlan looked out to where the mountain opened onto a grand vista of
snowcapped peaks, valleys, and the undulating green of seemingly endless,
trackless forests. A roiling blanket of thick clouds had invaded those
valleys, stealing in around the mountains, sneaking ever closer. In the
distance, some of the snowcapped peaks stood isolated in a cottony gray sea.
Lower down the mountains, below those dense, dark clouds, the weather would
be miserable.
Both Richard and Cara awaited Kahlan's word. She didn't like the
thought of being exposed in the crooked wood when the icy cold fog and
drizzle arrived. "I'm fine, let's go and get it done. Then we can get down
lower where we'll be able to find a wayward pine to stay dry tonight. I
wouldn't mind sitting beside a hearty little fire sipping hot tea."
Cara blew warm breath into her cupped hands. "That sounds good to me."
It was on the first day Kahlan met Richard, more than a year before,
that he had taken her to a wayward pine. Kahlan had never known about such
trees in the deep woods of Westland. Wayward pines still held the same
mystic quality for her as they did the first time she saw one silhouetted
against a darkening sky, taller than all the trees around it. Such mature
trees were a friend to travelers far from any conventional shelter.
A big wayward pine's boughs hung down to the ground all around. The
needles grew mostly at the outer fringe, leaving the inner branches bare.
Inside, under their dense green skirts, wayward pines provided excellent
shelter from harsh weather, Something about the tree's sap made them
resistant to fire, so if you were careful, you could have a cozy campfire
inside while outside it rained and stormed.
Richard, Kahlan, and Cara often stayed in wayward pines when they were
out in the mountains. Those nights getting warm around a small fire within
the tree's confines brought them all closer, and gave them time to reflect,
to talk, and to tell stories. Some of the stories made them laugh. Some
brought a lump to their throats.
After Kahlan's assurance that she was up to it, Richard and Cara nodded
and started down the cliff. She had recovered from her terrible wounds, but
they still left it up to her to decide if she was prepared for the effort of
such a descent and climb and then descent again before they found a
sheltered campsite-hopefully in a wayward pine.
Kahlan had been a long time in healing. She had known, of course, that
injuries such as she had suffered would take time to heal. Bedridden for so
long, her muscles had become withered, weak, and nearly useless. For a long
time, it had been hard for her to eat much. She became a skeleton. With the
realization of just how weak and helpless she had become, even as she
healed, she had inexorably spiraled down into a state of abject depression.
Kahlan had not comprehended completely the punishing effort that would
be required if she was to he herself again. Richard and Cara tried to cheer
her up, but their efforts seemed distant; they just didn't understand what
it was like. Her legs wasted away until they were bony sticks with knobby
knees. She felt not just helpless, but ugly. Richard carved animals for her:
hawks, foxes, otters, ducks, and even chipmunks. They seemed only a
curiosity to her. At the lowest point, Kahlan almost wished she had died
along with their child.
Her life became a tasteless gruel. All she saw, day after day, week
after week, were the four walls of her sickroom. The pain was exhausting and
the monotony numbing. She came to hate the bitter yarrow tea they made her
drink, and the smell of the poultice made of tall cinquefoil and yarrow.
When after a time she resisted drinking yarrow, they would sometimes switch
to linden, which wasn't so bitter but didn't work as well, yet it did help
her sleep. Skullcap often helped when her head hurt, though it was so
astringent it make her mouth pucker for a long time after, Sometimes, they
switched to a tincture of feverfew to help ease her pain. Kahlan came to
hate taking herbs and would often say she didn't hurt, when she did, just to
avoid some horrid concoction.
Richard hadn't made the window in the bedroom very big; in the summer
heat the room was often sweltering. Kahlan could see only a bit of the sky
outside her window, the tops of some trees, and the jagged blue.-gray shape
of a mountain in the distance.
Richard wanted to take her outside, but Kahlan begged him not to try
because
she didn't think it would be worth the pain. It didn't take much
convincing for him to be talked out of hurting her. Every kind of day, from
sunny and bright to gray and gloomy, came and went. Lying in her little room
as time slipped away while she slowly healed, Kahlan thought of it as her
"lost summer."
One day, she was parched, and Richard had forgotten to fill the cup and
place it where she could reach it on the simple table beside the bed. When
she asked for water, Richard came back with the cup and a full waterskin and
set them both on the windowsill as he called to Cara, outside. He rushed
out, telling Kahlan as he went that he and Cara had to go check the fishing
lines and they would be back as soon as they could. Before Kahlan could ask
him to put the water closer, he was gone.
Kahlan lay fuming in the silence, hardly able to believe that Richard
had been so inconsiderate as to leave the water out of her reach. It was
unusually warm for late summer. Her tongue felt swollen. She stared
helplessly at the wooden cup setting in the windowsill.
On the verge of tears, she let out a moan of self-pity and smacked her
fist against the bed. She rolled her head to the right, away from the
window, and closed her eyes. She decided to take a nap in order not to think
about her thirst. Richard and Cara would be back by the time she awoke, and
they would get the water for her. And Richard would get a scolding.
Sweat trickled down her neck. Outside, a bird kept calling. Its
repetitious song sounded like a little girl with a high pitched voice saying
"who, me?" Once a "who, me?" bird started in, it was a long performance.
Kahlan could think of little else besides how much she wanted a drink.
She couldn't make herself fall asleep. The annoying bird kept asking
its question over and over again. More than once, she found herself
whispering "yes, you," in answer. She growled a curse at Richard. She
squeezed her eyes shut and tried to forget her thirst, the heat, and the
bird and go to sleep. Her eyes kept popping open.
Kahlan lifted her sleeping gown away from her chest, ruffling it up and
down to cool herself. She realized she was staring at the water in the
window. It was out of her reach-clear over on the other side of the room.
The room wasn't very big, but still, she couldn't walk. Richard knew better.
She thought that maybe, if she could sit up and move to the bottom of the
bed, she might be able to reach the cup.
With an ill-tempered huff, she threw the light cover off her bony legs.
She hated seeing them. Why was Richard being so inconsiderate? What was the
matter with him? She intended to give him a piece of her mind when he got
back. She eased her legs over the side of the bed.
The mattress was a pliable woven mat stuffed with grasses and feathers
and tow padding. It was quite comfortable, and Kahlan was pleased with her
snug bed. With a great effort, she pushed herself up. For a long time, she
sat on the edge of the bed holding her head in her hands as she caught her
breath. Her whole body throbbed in pain.
It was the first time she had sat up all by herself.
She understood very well what Richard was doing. Still, she didn't
appreciate his way of forcing her to get up. It was cruel. She wasn't ready.
She was still badly hurt. She needed to rest in bed in order to recover. Her
oozing wounds had finally closed up and healed over, but she was sure she
was still too injured to be getting up. She feared to test broken bones.
Accompanied by a lot of groaning and grunting, she worked herself to
the bottom
of the bed. Sitting there, one hand holding the footboard to steady
herself, she was still too far from the window to reach the water. She was
going to have to stand.
She paused for a while to have dark thoughts about her husband.
After a day many weeks before, when she had called for a long time and
Richard hadn't heard her weak voice, he had left a light pole beside her so
she would be able to use it to reach out and knock on the wall or door if
she was in urgent need of their help. Now, Kahlan worked her fingers around
the pole lying alongside her bed and lifted it upright. She planted the
thicker end on the ground and leaned on the pole for support as she
carefully slid off the bed. Her feet touched the cool dirt floor. Putting
weight on her legs made her gasp in pain.
She half stood, half leaned on the bed, prepared to cry out, but
realized she was gasping more at the brutal pain she expected than from the
actual pain. It did hurt, but she realized it wasn't too much to endure. She
was a bit disgruntled to learn it wasn't nearly as bad as it had been; she
had been planning on reducing Richard to tears with the torturous suffering
he had so cavalierly forced upon her.
She put more weight on her feet and pulled herself up with the aid of
the pole. Finally, she stood in wobbling triumph. She was actually on her
feet, and she had done it by herself.
Kahlan couldn't seem to make her legs walk the way she wanted them to.
In order to get to the water, she was going to have to make them do her
bidding-at least until she reached the window. Then, she could collapse to
the floor, where Richard would find her. She luxuriated in her mental
picture of it. He wouldn't think his plan to get her out of bed so clever,
then.
With the aid of the stout pole for support and her tongue poked out the
corner of her mouth for balance, she slowly shuffled to the window. Kahlan
told herself that if she fell, she was going to lie there in a heap on the
floor, without any water, until Richard came back and found her moaning
through cracked lips, dying of thirst. He would be sorry he had ever tried
such a pitiless trick. He would feel guilty for the rest of his life for
what he had done to her-she would see to it.
Almost wishing every difficult step of the way that she would fall, she
finally made it to the window. Kahlan threw an arm over the sill for support
and closed her eyes as she panted in little breaths so as not to hurt her
ribs. When she had her wind back, she drew herself up to the window. She
snatched the cup and gulped down the water.
Kahlan plunked the empty cup down on the sill and peered out as she
caught her breath again.
Richard was sitting on the ground just outside, his arms hooked around
his knees, his hands clasped.
"Hi there," he said with a smile.
Cara, sitting right beside him, gazed up without emotion. "I see you're
up."
Kahlan wanted to yell at him, but instead she found herself trying with
all her might not to laugh. She felt suddenly and overwhelmingly foolish for
not trying sooner to get up on her own.
Tears stung her eyes as she looked out at the expanse of trees, the
vibrant colors, the majestic mountains, and the huge sweep of blue sky
dotted with fluffy white clouds marching off into the distance. The size of
the mountains, their imposing slopes, their luscious color, was beyond
anything she had ever encountered before. How could she possibly not have
wanted more than anything to get up and see the world around her?
"You know, of course, that you've made a big mistake," Richard said.
"What do you mean?" Kahlan asked.
"Well, had you not gotten up, we'd have kept waiting on you-at least
for a time. Now that you've shown us that you can get up and move on your
own, we're only going to keep doing this-putting things out of your reach to
make you start moving about and helping yourself."
While she silently thanked him, she was unwilling, just yet, to tell
him out loud how right he had been. But inside, she loved him all the more
for braving her anger to help her.
Cara turned to Richard. "Should we show her where she can find the
table?"
Richard shrugged. "If she gets hungry, she'll come out of the bedroom
and find it."
Kahlan threw the cup at him, hoping to wipe the smirk off his face. He
caught the cup.
"Well, glad to see your arm works," he said. "You can cut your own
bread." When she started to protest, he said, "It's only fair. Cara baked
it. The least you can do is to cut it."
Kahlan's mouth fell open. "Cara baked bread?"
"Lord Rahl taught me," Cara said. "I wanted bread with my stew, real
bread, and he told me that if I wanted bread, I would have to learn to make
it. It was easy, really. A little like walking to the window. But I was much
more good-natured about it, and didn't throw anything at him."
Kahlan could not help smiling, knowing it must have been harder for
Cara to knead dough than for Kahlan to get up and walk. She somehow doubted
that Cara had been "good-natured" about it. Kahlan would like to have seen
that battle of wills.
"Give me back my cup. And then go catch some fish for dinner. I'm
hungry. I want a trout. A big trout. Along with bread."
Richard smiled. "I can do that. If you can find the table."
Kahlan did find the table. She never ate in bed again.
At first, the pain of walking was sometimes more than she could
tolerate, and she took refuge in her bed. Cara would come in and brush her
hair, just so Kahlan wouldn't be alone. She had no power in her muscles, and
could hardly move by herself. Brushing her own hair was a colossal task.
Just getting to the table was exhausting, and all she could accomplish at
first. Richard and Cara were sympathetic, and continually encouraged her,
but they pushed her, too.
Kahlan was joyous to be out of the bed and that helped her to ignore
the pain. The world was again a wondrous place. She was more than joyous to
be able at last to go out to the privy. While she never said so, Kahlan was
sure Cara was happy about that, too.
As much as she liked the snug home, going outside felt like finally
being freed from a dungeon. Before, Richard had frequently offered to take
her outside for the day, but she had never wanted to leave her bed, fearing
the pain. She realized that because she was so sick, her thinking had slowly
become dull and foggy. Along with her summer, she had for a time lost
herself. Now, at long last, she felt clearheaded.
She discovered that the view outside her window was the least
impressive of the surrounding sights. Snowcapped peaks towered around the
small house Richard and Cara had built in the lap of breathtaking mountains.
The simple house, with a bed-
room at either end, one for Richard and Kahlan, and one for Cara, with
a common room in the middle, sat at the edge of a meadow of velvety green
grasses sprinkled with wildflowers. Even though it was late in the season
when they had arrived, Richard managed to start a small garden in a sunny
place outside Cara's window, growing fresh greens for the table and some
herbs to add flavor to their cooking. Right behind the house, huge old white
pines towered over them, sheltering them from the full force of the wind.
Richard had continued his carving, to pass the time as he sat by
Kahlan's bed, talking and telling stories, but after she had at last gotten
out of bed, his carvings changed. Instead of animals, Richard began
sculpting people.
And then one day he surprised her with his most magnificent carving yet
in celebration, he said, of her getting well enough to finally come out into
the world.
Astonished by the utter realism and power of the small statue, she
whispered that it could only be the gift that had guided his hand in carving
it. Richard regarded such talk as nonsense.
"People without the gift carve beautiful statues all the time," he
said. "There's no magic involved."
She knew, though, that some artists were gifted, and able to invoke
magic through their art.
Richard occasionally spoke wistfully about the works of art he'd seen
at the People's Palace, in D'Hara, where he had been held captive. Growing
up in Hart land, he had never before seen statues carved in marble, and
certainly none carved on such a grand scale, or by such talented hands.
Those works had in some ways opened his eyes to the greater world around him
and had made a lasting impression on him. Who else but Richard would
remember fondly the beauty he saw while held captive and being tortured?
It was true that art could exist independent of magic, but Richard had
been taken captive in the first place only with the aid of a spell brought
to life through art. Art was a universal language, and thus an invaluable
tool for implementing magic.
Kahlan finally stopped arguing with him about whether the gift helped
him to carve. He simply didn't believe it. She felt, though, that, having no
other outlet, his gift must be expressing itself in this way. Magic always
seemed to find a way to seep out, and his carvings of people certainly did
seem magical to her.
But the figure of the woman that he carved for her as a gift stirred
profound emotion within her. He called it, an image nearly two feet tall
carved from buttery smooth, rich, aromatic walnut, Spirit. The feminity of
her body, its exquisite shape and curves, bones and muscle, were clearly
evident beneath her flowing robes. She looked alive.
How Richard had accomplished such a feat, Kahlan couldn't even imagine.
He had conveyed through the woman, her robes flowing in a wind as she stood
with her head thrown back, her chest out, her hands fisted at her sides, her
back arched and strong as if in opposition to an invisible power trying
unsuccessfully to subdue her, a sense of . . . spirit.
The statue was obviously not intended to look like Kahlan, yet it
evoked in her some visceral response, a tension that was startlingly
familiar. Something about the woman in the carving, some quality it
conveyed, made Kahlan hunger to be well, to be fully alive, to be strong and
independent again.
If this wasn't magic, she didn't know what was.
Kahlan had been around grand palaces her whole life, exposed to any
number of
pieces of great art by renowned artists, but none had ever taken her
breath with its thrust of inner vision, its sense of individual nobility, as
did this proud, vibrant woman in flowing robes. The strength and vitality of
it brought a lump to Kahlan's throat, and she could only throw her arms
around Richard's neck in speechless emotion.
Now Kahlan went outside at every opportunity. She placed the carving of
Spirit on the windowsill so she could see it not only from bed, but also
when she was outdoors. She turned the statue so that it always faced
outside. She felt it should always be facing the world.
The woods around the house were mysterious and alluring. Intriguing
trails went off into the shadowy distance, and she could just detect light
off at the end of the gently curving tunnel through the trees. She ached to
explore those narrow tracks, animal trails enlarged by Richard and Cara on
their short treks to tend fishing lines and forays in search of nuts and
berries. Kahlan, with the aid of a staff, hobbled around the house and the
meadow to strengthen her legs; she wanted to go with Richard on those treks,
through the filtered sunlight and gentle breezes, over the open patches of
ledge, and under the arched, enclosing limbs of huge oaks.
One of the first places Richard took her when she insisted she could
walk for a short distance was through that tunnel in the thick, dark wood to
the patch of light at the other end, where a brook descended a rocky gorge.
The brook was sheltered on the hillside above them by a dense stand of
trees. An enormous weight of water continuously plunged over that stepped
tumble of rocks, surging around boulders and pouring in glassy sheets over
ledges. Many of the bear-sized rocks sitting in the shady pools were flocked
in a dark green velvet of moss and sprinkled with long tawny needles from
the white pines that favored the rock slope. Flecks of sunlight winking
through the dense canopy shimmered in the clear pools.
At the bottom of that gorge, in that sunny mountain glen off behind
their house where the trail emerged from the woods, the brook broadened and
slowed as it meandered through the expansive valley surrounded by the
awesome jut of the mountains. Sometimes Kahlan would dangle her bony legs
over a bank and let the cool water caress her feet. There, she could sit on
the warm grass and soak up the sun while watching fish swim through the
crystal-clear water flowing over gravel beds. Richard had been right when he
told her that trout liked beautiful places.
She loved watching the fish, frogs, crayfish, and even the salamanders.
Oftentimes, she would lie on her stomach on the low grassy bank, with her
chin resting on the backs of her hands, and watch for hours as the fish came
out from under sunken logs, from beneath rocks, or from the dark depths of
the larger pools to snatch a bug from the surface of the water. Kahlan
caught crickets, grasshoppers, and grubs and periodically tossed them in for
the fish. Richard laughed when she talked to the fish, encouraging them to
come up out of their dark holes for a tasty bug. Sometimes, a graceful gray
heron would stand on its thin legs in the shallow marshes not far away and
occasionally spear a fish or a frog with its daggerlike bill.
Kahlan could not recall, in the whole of her life, ever being in a
place with such
a vibrancy of life to it, surrounded by such majesty. Richard teased
her, telling her she hadn't seen anything yet, making her curious and ever
eager to get stronger so she could explore new sights. She felt like a
little girl in a magical kingdom that was theirs and theirs alone. Having
grown up a Confessor, Kahlan had never spent much time outdoors watching
animals or water tumbling down over rocks or clouds or sunsets. She had seen
a great many magnificent things, but they were in the context of travel,
cities, buildings, and people. She had never lingered in one place in the
countryside to really soak it all in.
Still, the thoughts in the back of her mind hounded her; she knew that
she and Richard were needed elsewhere. They had responsibilities. Richard
casually deflected the subject whenever she broached it; he had already
explained his reasoning, and believed he was doing what was right.
They hadn't been visited by messengers for a very long time. That worry
played on her mind, too, but Richard said that he couldn't allow himself to
influence the army, so it was just as well that General Reibisch had stopped
sending reports. Besides, he said, it only needlessly endangered the
messengers who made the journey.
For the time being, Kahlan knew she needed to get better, and her
isolated mountain life was making her stronger by the day, probably as
nothing else could. Once they returned to the war-once she convinced him
that they must return-this peaceful life would be but a cherished memory.
She resolved to enjoy what she couldn't change, while it lasted.
Once when it had been raining for a few days and Kahlan was missing
going out to the brook to watch the fish, Richard did the most unheard-of
thing. He started bringing her fish in ajar. Live fish. Fish just for
watching.
After he'd cleaned an empty lamp-oil jug and several widemouthed glass
jars that had held preserves, herbs, and unguents for her injuries, along
with other supplies he had purchased on their journey away from Anderith, he
put some gravel in the bottom and filled them with water from the stream. He
then caught some blacknose dace minnows and put them in the glass
containers. They were yellowish olive on top speckled with black, with white
bottoms, and a thick black line down each side. He even provided them with a
bit of weed from the brook so they could have a place to hide and feel safe.
Kahlan was astonished when Richard brought home the first jar of live
fish. She set the jars-eventually four jars and one jug in all-on the
windowsill in the main room, beside several of Richard's smaller carvings.
Richard, Kahlan, and Cara sat at the small wooden table when they ate and
watched the marvel of fish living in ajar.
"Just don't name them," Richard said, "because eventually they're going
to die."
What she had at first thought was an entirely daft idea became a center
of fascination for her. Even Cara, who cited fish-in-a-jar as lunacy, took a
liking to the little fish. It seemed that every day with Richard in the
mountains held some new marvel to turn her mind away from her own pains and
troubles.
After the fish became accustomed to people, they went about their
little lives as if living in ajar were perfectly natural. From time to time,
Richard would pour out part of their water, and add fresh water from the
brook. Kahlan and Cara fed the little fish crumbs of bread or tiny scraps
from dinner, along with small bugs. The fish ate eagerly, and spent most of
their time pecking at the gravel on the bottom, or swimming about, looking
out at the world. After a while, the fish learned when it
was lunchtime. They would wiggle eagerly on the other side of the glass
whenever anyone approached, like puppies happy to see their masters.
The main room had a small fireplace Richard had built with clay from
stream banks he'd formed into bricks and dried in the sun, and then cooked
in a fire. They had the table he'd made, and chairs constructed of branches
intertwined and lashed together. He'd woven the chair bottoms and backs from
leathery inner bark.
In the corner of the room was a wooden door over a deep root cellar.
Against the back wall were simple shelves and a big cupboard full of
supplies. They'd bought a lot of supplies along the way and carried them
either in the carriage with Kahlan or strapped on the back and sides. For
the last part of the journey Richard and Cara had lugged everything in,
since the carriage couldn't make it over narrow mountain passes where there
were no roads. Richard had blazed the trail in.
Cara had her own room opposite theirs. Once up and about, Kahlan was
surprised to find that Cara had a collection of rocks. Cara bristled at the
term "collection," and asserted that they were there as defensive weapons,
should they be attacked and trapped in the house. Kahlan found the rocks-all
different colors-suspiciously pretty. Cara insisted they were deadly.
While Kahlan had been bedridden, Richard had slept on a pallet in the
main room, or sometimes outside under the stars. A number of times, at
first, when she was in so much pain, Kahlan had awakened to see him sitting
on the floor beside her bed, dozing as he leaned against the wall, always
ready to jump up if she needed anything, or to offer her medicines and herb
teas. He hadn't wanted to sleep in bed with her for fear of it hurting her.
She almost would have been willing to endure it for the comfort of his
presence beside her. Finally, though, after she was up and about, he was at
last able to lie beside her. That first night with him in bed, she had held
his big warm hand to her belly as she gazed at Spirit silhouetted in the
moonlight, listening to the night calls of birds, bugs, and the songs of the
wolves until her eyes closed and she drifted into a peaceful slumber.
It was on the next day that Richard first killed her.
They were at the stream, checking the fishing lines, when he cut two
straight willow switches. He tossed one on the ground beside where she sat,
and told her it was her sword.
He seemed in a playful mood, and told her to defend herself. Feeling
playful herself, Kahlan took up the challenge by suddenly trying to stab him
just to put him in his place. He stabbed her first and declared her dead.
She fought him again, more earnestly the second time, and he quickly
dispatched her with a convincingly feigned beheading. By the third time she
went after him, she was a little irked. She put all her effort into her
assault, but he smoothly thwarted her attack and then pressed the tip of his
willow-switch sword between her breasts. He announced her dead for a third
time out of three.
Thereafter, it became a game Kahlan wanted to win. Richard never let
her win, not even just to be nice when she was feeling low because of her
slow progress at getting stronger. He repeatedly humbled her in front of
Cara. Kahlan knew he was doing it to make her push herself to use her
muscles, to forget her aches, to stretch and strengthen her body. Kahlan
just wanted to win.
They each carried their willow-switch swords sheathed behind a belt,
always at the ready. Every day, she would attack him, or he would attack
her, and the fight was on. At first, she was no challenge to him, and he
made it clear she was no challenge. That, of course, only made her
determined to show him that she was no
novice, that it was not so much a battle of strength, but of leverage,
advantage, and swiftness. He encouraged her, but never gave her false
praise. As the weeks passed, she slowly began making him work for his kills.
Kahlan had been taught to use a sword by her father, King Wyborn. At
least, he had been king before Kahlan's mother took him for her mate. King
was an insignificant title to a Confessor. King Wyborn of Galea had had two
children with his queen and first wife, so Kahlan had both an older half
sister and a half brother.
Kahlan wanted very much to make a good show of her training under her
father. It was frustrating to know she was far better with a weapon than she
was showing Richard. It wasn't so much that she didn't know what to do, but
that she simply couldn't do it; her muscles were not yet strong enough, nor
would they respond nearly quickly enough.
Something about it, though, was still unsettling: Richard fought in a
way Kahlan had never encountered in her training, or in the real combat she
had seen. She couldn't define or analyze the difference, but she could feel
it, and she didn't know what to do to counter it.
In the beginning, Richard and Kahlan had most of their battles in the