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Prince Fyren lifted his eyebrows in delight. "Mother Confessor!" With deliberate care he took his polished boots down and came to his feet. He put his hands to the desk and leaned over, looking down. "So good to see you!"
Kahlan had no wizard, as always before. No protection. She could not afford to appear timid or vulnerable.
She glared up at Prince Fyren. "If I ever again catch you in the chair of the Mother Confessor, I will kill you."
He straightened with a smirk. "You would use your power on a Councilor?"
"I will slit your throat with my knife, if I have to."
The man in the plain robes watched her with unmoving, dark eyes. The other Councilors blanched.
Prince Fyren pulled his dark blue coat opened and rested a hand on his hip. "Mother Confessor, I meant no offense. You have been gone for a long time. We all thought you were dead. There has been no Confessor in the Palace for... what?" He looked to a few of the other men. "Four, Five, six, months?" Hand still on his hip, he held his other out and gave a bow. "I meant no offense, Mother Confessor. Your chair is returned to you, of course."
Kahlan swept her eyes over the remaining men. "It is late. The Council will meet in full session first thing in the morning. Every Councilor will be present. The Midlands is at war."
Prince Fyren lifted an eyebrow. "War? On who's authority? We have not discussed such a grave matter."
Kahlan swept her gaze over the Councilors, letting it finally settle on Prince Fyren. "On my authority as the Mother Confessor." Whispering broke out among the men. Prince Fyren never let his eyes leave hers. When she glowered at the men who were whispering, it sputtered out. "I want ever Councilor here, first thing in the morning. You are adjourned, for now, gentlemen."
Kahlan turned on her heel and marched from the room. She didn't recognize any of the guards she saw everywhere throughout the Palace, but then she wouldn't; Zedd had told her before how most of the Home Guard had been killed in the fall of Aydindril to D'Hara. She missed the old faces.
The center of the Confessors' Palace in Aydindril was dominated by a monumental eight-branched staircase, lit, from four stories overhead, by natural light that came through the glass roof. The vast square was surrounded at mid level by arcaded corridors, their arched openings separated by polished columns of wildly variegated gold and green marble standing on square plinth blocks, each decorated with a medallion of a past ruler of one of the lands of the Midlands. The hundreds upon hundreds of glistening, vase-shaped balusters had been turned from a mellow yellow stone that seemed to glow from within. The square newels, made of a dusky brown granite, were nearly as tall as she, and each was capped with a gold-leafed lamp. Florid carvings in stone covered expansive panels under the complex bands of dentil moldings that ran in mitered bands over the tops of the capitals. The center landing held statues of eight Mother Confessors. Kahlan had seen modest palaces that would fit within the space the staircase occupied.
The monumental staircase and the room that held it had taken forty years to build, the expense born entirely by Kelton, in partial recompense for their opposition to the joining of the lands into the Midlands, and the war it spawned. It was also decreed that no leader of Kelton could ever be honored with a medallion at the base of the columns. The staircase was dedicated to the people of the Midlands, and was to honor them, not those who built it as penalty. Kelton was now a powerful land of the Midlands in good standing, and Kahlan thought it foolish to rebuke a people for something their ancestors had done centuries ago.
As she reached the central landing and turned up the second flight toward her room, she saw a phalanx of servants waiting at the top of the stairs. They all bowed as one when her eyes fell on them. She thought it must look absurd—nearly thirty sparkling, combed and buffed people in clean, crisp uniforms, all bowing to a filthy woman in wolf hides, carrying a bow and heavy pack. Well, this could only mean one thing: word of her arrival had swept through the whole of the Palace already. There wasn't likely to be a gardener in the farthest greenhouse that didn't by now know the Mother Confessor was home.
"Rise, my children," Kahlan said when she reached the top of the stairs. They moved back to make way for her.
And then it started. Would the Mother Confessor like a bath, would the Mother Confessor like a massage, would the Mother Confessor like her hair washed and brushed, would the Mother Confessor like her nails buffed, would the Mother Confessor care to take any petitioners, would the Mother Confessor like to see any advisors, would the Mother Confessor like any letters written, would the Mother Confessor like, wish, want, need or require a whole list of things.
Kahlan addressed the mistress of the maidservants. "Bernadette, I would like a bath. Nothing else. Just a bath."
Two women rushed off to see to the bath.
Mistress Bernadette's eyes made an involuntary flick down at Kahlan's attire. "Would the Mother Confessor like to have any of her clothes mended, or cleaned?"
Kahlan thought about the blue dress in her pack. "I guess I have a few things that need cleaning." She thought about all the rest of her clothes, most soaked with blood from one battle or another. "I guess I have a lot of things that need to be washed."
"Yes, Mother Confessor. And would you like me to lay out your white dress for tonight?"
"Tonight?"
Mistress Bernadette reddened. "Runners have already been sent to Kings Row, Mother Confessor. Everyone will want to welcome the Mother Confessor home."
Kahlan groaned. She was dead tired. She didn't want to greet people, just to tell women how fine their hair looked all pinned and decorated, or men how fine the cut of their coat was, or to listen patiently to supplications that invariably involved the distribution of funds and always sought to prove that the appellant was in no way seeking advantage, but only relief from the inequitable situation in which they were mired.
Mistress Bernadette gave her a corrective look, as she had done when Kahlan was little, as if to say, "Look here, young lady, you have obligations, and I expect no trouble about it."
What she said, though, was, "Everyone has been fraught with concern over the safe return of the Mother Confessor. It would do their hearts good to see you safe and well."
Kahlan doubted that. What Mistress Bernadette really meant was that it would do Kahlan good to remind people that the Mother Confessor was still alive and in charge. Kahlan sighed. "Of course, Bernadette. Thank you for reminding me people have kept me in their hearts and been worried."
Mistress Bernadette gave a smile and a bow of her head. "Yes, Mother Confessor."
As the rest of the servants rushed off, Kahlan leaned toward Mistress Bernadette. "I remember when you would have added a swat on my behind for having to remind me of things."
Mistress Bernadette smiled. "I think you are too smart, now, for that, Mother Confessor." She rubbed an invisible spot from the back of her hand. "Mother Confessor... did you bring any of the other Confessors home with you? Will any of the others be returning, soon?"
Kahlan's features slid into her Confessor's face, as her mother had taught her. "I'm sorry, Bernadette, I thought you knew. They are all dead. I am the last living Confessor."
Mistress Bernadette's eyes filled with
tears as she whispered a prayer. "May the good spirits be with them always."
"Why should they commence now," Kahlan said tersely. "They didn't bother to be with Dennee the day the quad caught her."
The fireplaces in her rooms were all blazing, as she had known they would be, and would have been every day she had been away, month after month. The fires in the Mother Confessor's rooms would never be allowed to go out in the winter, in case she returned. There was a sliver tray on a table, with a fresh loaf of bread, a pot of tea, and a steaming bowl of spice soup. Mistress Sanderholt knew spice soup was her favorite.
Spice soup reminded Kahlan of Richard, now. She remembered making it for him, and he for her.
After dropping her pack and bow to the floor, Kahlan crossed the plush carpets and went into the next room. She stood, idly rubbing her fingers on one of the great, polished posts at the foot of her bed, staring, remembering that she was supposed to be here with Richard. The day they arrived in Aydindril they were to already have been wed. She had promised him this big bed.
Kahlan remembered the joy in her heart the day they talked about being wed and coming to Aydindril as husband and wife. She felt a tear roll down her cheek. She gasped a deep breath against the hot pain that burned through her chest, and wiped the tear away with her fingertips.
Kahlan went to the glassed doors, opening them out onto the expansive balcony. She put her trembling fingers to the broad, icy railing and stood in the cold air, looking up the mountainside to the Wizard's Keep, its dark stone walls standing out in the last golden rays of the sunset.
"Where are you Zedd?" she whispered. "I need you."
*****
He came awake with a gasp as he slid and thumped his head. He sat up, blinking. An old woman with straight, black and white, jaw length hair was sitting opposite him, cowering in a corner. The two of them were inside a coach. It rolled abruptly, siding him across to the other side. The woman was staring in his direction. He blinked in surprise at her. Her eyes were completely white.
