Richard released her hand. Running the fingers of both hands through his hair, he turned to the fire. “Every boy child?”
“Yes,” she admitted in a voice he could hardly hear. “No chance can be taken that any male Confessor lives, because he might be one who could not handle the power, and would use it to gain dominance for himself, bring back the dark times. The wizards and the other Confessors watch carefully any Confessor who is with child, and do everything they can to comfort her if it is a boy, and therefore must be…” Her voice trailed off.
Richard suddenly realized that he hated the Midlands—hated it with a vengeance second only to what he felt toward Darken Rahl. For the first time, he understood why those in Westland had wanted a place to live without magic. He wished he could be back there, away from any magic. Tears came to his eyes when he thought of how much he missed the Hartland Woods. He vowed to himself that if he stopped Rahl, he would see to it that the boundary was put back up. Zedd would help with that, there was no doubt. Richard understood now why Zedd, too, had wanted to be away from the Midlands. And when the boundary went back up, Richard would be on the other side. For as long as he lived.
But first, there would be the matter of the sword; he would not give back the Sword of Truth. He would destroy it.
“Thank you, Kahlan,” he forced himself to say, “for telling me. I wouldn’t have wanted to hear this from another.” He felt his world withering to nothing. He had always seen stopping Rahl as the beginning of his life, a point from where he went forward and anything was possible. Now stopping Rahl was an end. Not only of Rahl, but of him, too; there was nothing beyond that, everything beyond was dead. When he stopped Rahl, and Kahlan was safe, he would go back to the Hartland Woods, alone, and his life would be over.
He could hear her crying behind him. “Richard, if you want me to leave, please do not be afraid to tell me so. I will understand. It is something a Confessor is used to.”
He looked down at the dying fire for a moment and then closed his eyes tight, forcing back the lump in his throat, the tears. Pain seared through his chest as it sank with his labored breathing.
“Please, Kahlan, is there any way,” he asked, “any way at all… that we could… for us…”
“No,” she moaned.
He rubbed his shaking hands together. Everything was lost to him.
“Kahlan,” he managed at last, “is there any law, or rule or something, that says we can’t be friends?”
She answered in a whining cry. “No.”
He turned numbly to her and put his arms around her. “I could really use a friend right now,” he whispered.
“Me too,” she cried against his chest as she hugged him back. “But I can be no more.”
“I know,” he said as tears ran down his cheeks. “But Kahlan, I love…”
She put her fingers to his lips to silence him. “Don’t say that,” she cried. “Please, Richard, don’t ever say that.”
She could stop him from saying it out loud, but not in his mind.
She clung to him, sobbing, and he remembered when they had been in the wayward pine after they first met, and the underworld had almost reclaimed her; she had clung to him, and he had thought at the time that she was not used to having anyone hold her. Now he knew why. He laid his cheek against the top of her head.
A small flame of his anger flickered in the ashes of his dreams. “Have you picked your mate yet?”
She shook her head. “There are more important things to worry about right now. But if we win, and I live… then I must.”
“Make one promise for me.”
“If I can.”
His throat felt so hot he had to swallow twice to talk. “Promise me you won’t pick him until I’m back in Westland. I don’t want to know who it is.”
She sobbed for a moment before she answered, her fingers clutching tighter at his shirt. “I promise.”
After a time of standing, holding her, trying to get control of himself, fighting back the blackness, he forced a smile. “You’re wrong about one thing.”
“And what would that be?”
“You said no man can command a Confessor. You are wrong. I command the Mother Confessor herself. You are sworn to protect me, I hold you to your duty as my guide.”
She laughed a painful little laugh against his chest. “It would appear you are right. Congratulations—you are the first man ever to have done so. And what does my master command of his guide?”
“That she doesn’t give me any more trouble about ending her life; I need her. And that she gets us to the Queen, and the box, before Rahl, and then sees us safely away.”
Kahlan nodded her head against his chest. “By your command, my lord.” She separated from him, put her hands on his upper arms, and gave them a squeeze as she smiled through her tears. “How is it that you can always make me feel better, even at the worst times of my life?”
He shrugged, forced himself to smile for her, even though he was dying inside. “I am the Seeker. I can do anything.” He wanted to say more, but his voice failed him.
Her smile widened as she shook her head. “You are a very rare person, Richard Cypher,” she whispered.
He only wished he were alone so he could cry.
35
With his boot, Richard pushed little piles of dirt over the dying embers of the fire, snuffing out the only heat in the dawn of the cold new day. The sky was brightening into an icy blue, and a sharp wind blew from the west. Well, at least the wind would be at their backs, he thought. Near his other boot lay the roasting stick that Kahlan had used to cook the rabbit—the rabbit she had caught herself, with a snare he had taught her to make.
He felt his face flush with the thought of that, the thought of him, a woods guide, teaching her things like that. The Mother Confessor. More than a queen. Queens bow to the Mother Confessor, she had said. He felt as foolish as he had ever felt in his life. Mother Confessor. Who did he think he was? Zedd had tried to warn him, if he had only listened.
Emptiness threatened to consume him. He thought of his brother, his friends Zedd and Chase. Though it didn’t fill the void, at least he had them. Richard watched Kahlan shouldering her pack. She had no one, he thought; her only friends, the other Confessors, were dead. She was alone in the world, alone in the Midlands, surrounded by people she was trying to save, who feared and hated her, and enemies who wanted to kill her, or worse, and not even her wizard to protect her.
He understood why she had been afraid to tell him. He was her only friend. He felt even more foolish for thinking only of himself. If her friend was all he could be, then that’s what he would be. Even if it killed him.
“It must have been hard to tell me,” he said as he adjusted the sword at his hip.
She pulled her cloak around her, against the gusts of cold wind. Her face had resumed once more the calm expression that showed nothing, except that, as well as he knew her, he could now read the trace of pain in it. “It would have been easier to have killed myself.”
He watched as she turned and started off, then followed after her. If she had told him in the beginning, he wondered, would he still be with her? If she had told him before he had come to know her, would he have been too afraid to be near her, same as everyone else? Maybe she had been right in being afraid to tell him sooner. But then, if she had, it might have spared him what he was feeling now.
Near to midday, they came to a juncture of trails, marked with a stone half again as tall as he. Richard stopped, studying the symbols cut into the polished faces.
“What do they mean?”
“They give direction to different towns and villages, and their distances,” she said, warming her hands under her armpits. She inclined her head toward a trail. “If we want to avoid people, this trail is best.”
“How much farther?”
She looked at the stone again. “I usually travel the roads between towns, not these less-traveled trails. The stone does not give the distance by th
e trail, only by the roads, but I would guess a few more days.”
Richard drummed his fingers on the hilt of his sword. “Are there any towns near?”
She nodded. “We are an hour or two from Horners Mill. Why?”
“We could save ourselves time if we had horses.”
She looked up the trail toward the town, as if she could somehow see it. “Horners Mill is a lumber town, a sawmill. They would have a lot of horses, but it may not be a good idea. I have heard their sympathies lie with D’Hara.”
“Why don’t we go have a look; if we had horses, it could save us a day at least. I have some silver, and a piece or two of gold. Maybe we could buy some.”
“I guess if we are careful, we could go have a look. But don’t you dare pull out any of your silver or gold. It is Westland-marked, and these people view anyone from across the western boundary as a threat. Stories and superstition.”
“Well, how will we get horses then? Steal them?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Have you forgotten so soon? You are with the Mother Confessor. I have but to ask.”
Richard covered his displeasure as best he could with a blank face. “Let’s go have a look.”
Horners Mill sat hard on the edge of the Callisidrin River, drawing both power for the sawmills and transportation for the logs and lumber from the muddy brown water. Spillways snaked through the work areas, and ramshackle mill buildings loomed over the other structures. Stickered stacks of lumber lay row upon row under roofs of open buildings, and even more lay under tarps, waiting for either barges to take them by river or wagons to take them by road. Houses squatted close together on the hillside above the mill, looking as if they had started life as temporary shelter and as the years had worn on, became unfortunately permanent.
Even from a distance, Richard and Kahlan both knew that something was wrong. The mill was silent, the streets empty. The whole town should have been alive with activity. There should have been people at the shops, on the docks, at the mill, and in the streets, but there was no sign of beast or man. The town hunched in quiet, except for some tarps flapping in the wind, and a few squeaking and banging tin panels on the mill buildings.
When they got close enough, the wind brought something other than flapping tarps and banging tin; it brought the putrid smell of death. Richard checked that his sword was loose in its scabbard.
Bodies, puffy and swollen, nearly ready to burst, stretched buttons, and oozed fluid that attracted clouds of flies. The dead lay in corners and up against buildings, like autumn leaves blown into piles. Most had ghastly wounds; some were pierced through with broken lances. The silence seemed alive. Doors, smashed in and broken, hung at odd angles from a single hinge, or lay in the street with personal belongings and broken pieces of furniture. Windows in every building were shattered. Some of the buildings were nothing more than cold, charred piles of beams and rubble. Richard and Kahlan both held their cloaks across their noses and mouths, trying to shield themselves against the stench as their eyes were pulled to the dead.
“Rahl?” he asked her.
She studied different tumbled bodies from a distance. “No. This is not the way Rahl kills. This was a battle.”
“Looks more like a slaughter to me.”
She nodded her agreement. “Remember the dead among the Mud People? That is what it looks like when Rahl kills. It is always the same. This is different.”
They walked along through the town, staying close to the buildings, away from the center of the street, occasionally having to step over the gore. Every shop was looted, and what wasn’t carried off was destroyed. From one shop, a bolt of pale blue cloth, with evenly spaced dark stains, had unwound itself across the road, as if it had been thrown out because its owner had ruined it in death. Kahlan pulled his sleeve, and pointed. On the wall of a building was written a message-in blood. DEATH TO ALL WHO RESIST THE WESTLAND.
“What do you suppose that means?” she whispered, as if the dead might hear her.
He stared at the dripping words. “I can’t even imagine.” He started off again, turning back twice to frown at the words on the wall.
Richard’s eye was caught by a cart sitting in front of a grain store. The cart was half loaded with small furniture and clothes, the wind whipping at the sleeves of little dresses. He exchanged a glance with Kahlan. Someone was left alive, and it looked as if they were preparing to leave.
He stepped carefully through the empty doorframe of the grain store, Kahlan close at his back. Streamers of sunlight coming through the door and window sent shafts through the dust inside the building, falling on spilled sacks of grain and broken barrels. Richard stood just inside the doorway, to one side, with Kahlan to the other, until his eyes adjusted to the dark. There were fresh footprints, mostly small ones, through the dust. His eyes followed them behind a counter. He gripped the hilt of his sword, but didn’t draw it, and went to the counter. People cowered behind, trembling.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said in a gentle voice, “come out.”
“Are you a soldier with the People’s Peace Army, here to help us?” came a woman’s voice from behind the counter.
Richard and Kahlan frowned at each other. “No,” she said. “We are… just travelers, passing through.”
A woman with a dirty, tearstained face and short, dark, matted hair pushed her head up. Her drab brown dress was ragged and torn. Richard took his hand away from his sword so as not to frighten her. Her lip quivered, and her hollow eyes blinked at them in the dim light as she motioned others to come out. There were six children—five girls and one boy—another woman, and an old man. Once they were out, the children clinging woodenly to the two women, the three adults glanced at Richard, then stared openly at Kahlan. Their eyes went wide, and they all shrank back as one against the wall. Richard frowned in confusion; then he realized what they were staring at. Her hair.
The three adults collapsed to their knees, heads bowed, each with their eyes to the floor; the children buried their faces silently in the women’s skirts. With a sideways glance at Richard, Kahlan quickly motioned with her hands for them to get up. They had their eyes fixed on the floor and couldn’t see her frantic gesturing.
“Get up,” she said, “there is no need for that. Get up.”
Their heads came up, confused. They looked at her hands, urging them to get to their feet. With great reluctance, they complied.
“By your command, Mother Confessor,” one woman said in a shaking voice. “Forgive us, Mother Confessor, we… did not recognize you… by your clothes, at first. Forgive us, we are only humble people. Forgive us for…”
Kahlan gently cut her off. “What is your name.”
The woman bowed deeply from the waist, remaining bent. “I am Regina Clark, Mother Confessor.”
Kahlan grabbed her by her shoulders and straightened her. “Regina, what has happened here?”
Regina’s eyes filled with tears, and she cast a shrinking glance toward Richard as her lip trembled. Kahlan looked back to him.
“Richard,” she said softly, “why don’t you take the old man and the children outside?”
He understood; the women were too afraid to talk in front of him. He gave a helping arm to the stooped old man, and herded four of the children out. Two of the youngest girls refused to leave the women’s skirts, but Kahlan nodded to him that it was all right.
The four children clung together in a clump as they sat on the step outside, eyes empty and distant. None would answer when he asked their names, or even look at him except with frightened peeks to make sure he didn’t come any closer. The old man only stared blankly ahead when Richard asked his name.
“Can you tell me what happened here?” Richard asked him.
His eyes widened as he looked out over the street. “Westlanders…”
Tears welled up and he wouldn’t say anything else. Fearing to get any more forceful, he decided to let the old man be. Richard offered him a piece of dried meat from his p
ack, but he ignored it. The children shrank back from his hand as he held it out with the same offer. He put the meat back in his pack. The oldest girl, just nearing womanhood, looked at him as if he might slay them, or eat them, on the spot. He had never seen anyone so terrified. Not wanting to frighten her or the other children more than they were, he kept his distance, smiled reassuringly, and promised he wouldn’t hurt them, or even touch them. They didn’t look as if they believed him. Richard turned toward the door often; he was uncomfortable and wished Kahlan would come out.
At last she did, her face an intense mask of calmness, a spring wound too tight. Richard stood and the children ran back into the building. The old man stayed where he was. She took Richard’s arm, walking him away.
“There are no horses here,” she said, watching fixedly ahead as she walked back the way they had come. “I think it best if we stay off the roads, stay to the less-traveled trails.”
“Kahlan, what’s going on?” He looked back over his shoulder. “What happened here?”
She glared at the bloody message on the wall as they went past, DEATH TO ALL WHO RESIST THE WESTLAND.
“Missionaries came, telling the people of the glory of Darken Rahl. They came often, telling the town council of the things they would have when D’Hara rules all the lands. Telling everyone of Rahl’s love for all the people.”
“That’s crazy!” Richard whispered harshly.
“Nonetheless, the people of Horners Mill were won over. They all agreed to declare the town a territory of D’Hara. The People’s Peace Army marched in, treating everyone with the utmost respect, buying goods from the merchants, spending silver and gold with abandon.” She pointed back at the rows of lumber under tarps. “The missionaries were as good as their word; orders came down for lumber. A lot of lumber. To build new towns where people would live in prosperity under the glowing rule of Father Rahl.”