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54
Richard awakened with a start. Kahlan was curled up with her back to his chest. The wound in his shoulder from the mriswith queen ached. He had let an army surgeon put a poultice on it, and then, too exhausted to stand any longer, he had fallen onto the bed in the guest room he had been using. He hadn’t even taken off his boots, and the uncomfortable pain in his hip told him that he still wore the Sword of Truth, and he was lying on it.
Kahlan stirred in his arms, a feeling that swelled him with joy, but then he remembered the thousands of dead, the thousands who were dead because of him, and his joy evaporated.
“Good morning, Lord Rahl,” came a cheery voice from above.
He frowned up at Cara and groaned in greeting. Kahlan squinted in the sunlight streaming in the window.
Cara waggled a hand over the two of them. “It works better with your clothes off.”
Richard frowned. His voice came as a hoarse croak. “What?”
She seemed mystified by the question. “I believe you will find such things work better without clothes.” She put her hands to her hips. “I thought you would know at least that much.”
“Cara, what are you doing in here?”
“Ulic wanted to see you, but was afraid to look, so I said I would. For one so large, he can be timid at times.”
“He needs to give you lessons.” Richard winced as he sat up. “What does he want?”
“He found a body.”
Kahlan rubbed her eyes as she sat up. “That shouldn’t have been hard.”
Cara smiled, but it vanished when Richard noticed it. “He found a body at the bottom of the cliff, below the Keep.”
Richard swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “Why didn’t you say so.”
Kahlan rushed to catch up with him as he charged out in the hall to find Ulic waiting.
“Did you find him? Did you find a body of an old man?”
“No, Lord Rahl. It was the body of a woman.”
“A woman! What woman?”
“She was in bad shape, after all this time, but I recognized those gaped teeth and tattered blanket. It was that old woman, Valdora. The one who sold those honey cakes.”
Richard rubbed his sore shoulder. “Valdora. How odd. And the little girl, what was her name?”
“Holly. We saw no trace of her. We found no one else, but there’s a lot of area to search, and animals could have… well, we may never find anything.”
Richard nodded, words failing him. He felt the shroud of death all around him.
Cara’s voice turned compassionate. “The funeral fires will begin in a while. Do you wish to go?”
“Of course!” He checked his tone when he felt Kahlan’s tempering hand on his back. “I must be there. They died because of me.”
Cara frowned. “They died because of the Blood of the Fold, and because of the Imperial Order.”
“We know, Cara,” Kahlan said. “We’ll be there just as soon as I see to the poultice on his shoulder and we get cleaned up.”
The funeral fires burned for days. Twenty seven thousand were dead. Richard felt as if the flames carried away his spirits, as well as those of the men who had died. He stayed and said the words along with the others, and by night stood guard over the flames along with the others, until it was done.
From the light of this fire, and into the light. Safe journey to the spirit world.
Richard’s shoulder worsened over the next few days, getting swollen, red, and stiff.
His mood was no better.
He walked the halls and occasionally watched the streets from the windows, but talked to few people. Kahlan strolled at his side, offering her comforting presence, remaining quiet unless he spoke. Richard couldn’t banish the image of all the dead from his mind. He was haunted by the name the prophecies had given him: the bringer of death.
One day, after his shoulder had begun to heal, at last, as he sat at the table he used as a desk, staring at nothing, there was sudden light. He looked up. Kahlan had come in, and he hadn’t even noticed. She had pulled the drapes open to let in the sunlight.
“Richard, I’m starting to worry about you.”
“I know, but I can’t seem to make myself forget.”
“It’s right for the mantle of rule to be heavy, Richard, but you can’t let it crush you.”
“That’s easy to say, but it was my fault that all those men died.”
Kahlan sat on the table in front of him and with a finger, lifted his chin. “Do you really think that, Richard, or are you just feeling sorry that so many had to die?”
“Kahlan, I was stupid. I just acted. I never thought. If I would have used my head, maybe all those men wouldn’t be dead.”
“You acted on instinct. You said that that was the way the gift worked with you, sometimes anyway.”
“But I—”
“Let’s play ‘what if.’ What if you had done it differently, as you now think you should have?”
“Well, then all those people wouldn’t have been killed.”
“Really? You’re not playing by the rules of ‘what if.’ Think it through, Richard. What if you had not acted on instinct, and had not gone to the sliph? What would have been the result?”
“Well, let’s see.” He rubbed her leg. “I don’t know, but things would have worked out differently.”
“Yes, they would have. You would have been here when the attack came. You would have gone to fight the mriswith in the morning, instead of at the end of the day. You would have been worn down and killed long before the gars arrived at dusk. You would be dead. All these people would have lost their Lord Rahl.”
Richard tilted his head up. “That makes sense.” He thought about it a moment. “And if I hadn’t gone to the Old World, then the Palace of the Prophets would be in Jagang’s hands. He would have the prophecies.” He stood and went to the window, looking out on the bright spring day. “And no one would have any protection from the dream walker, because I would be dead.”
“You’ve been letting your emotions control your thinking.”
Richard came back and took up her hands, truly noticing how radiant she looked. “Wizard’s Third Rule: Passion rules reason. Kolo warned that it was insidious. I’ve been breakin
g it by thinking I had broken it.”
Kahlan slipped her arms around him. “Feeling just a little better, then?”
He put his hands on her waist as he smiled for the first time in days. “You’ve helped me see. Zedd used to do those kinds of things. I guess I’ll just have to count on you to help me.”
She hooked her legs around him and pulled him closer. “You had better.”
As he gave her a little kiss, and was about to give her a bigger one, the three Mord-Sith marched into the room. Kahlan put her cheek against his. “Do they ever knock?”
“Rarely,” Richard whispered back. “They enjoy testing. It’s their favorite thing to do. They never tire of it.”
Cara, in the lead, came to a halt beside them, looking from one to the other. “Still with the clothes, Lord Rahl?”
“You three look well this morning.”
“Yes, we are,” Cara said. “And we have business.”
“What business?”
“When you have the time, some representatives have arrived in Aydindril, and have requested an audience with the Lord Rahl.”
Berdine brandished Kolo’s journal. “And I would like to have your help with this. What we already learned has helped us, and there is much more yet that we haven’t translated. We have work to do.”
“Translate?” Kahlan asked. “I know many languages. What is it.”
“High D’Haran,” Berdine said, taking a bite out of a pear in her other hand. “Lord Rahl is getting even better at High D’Haran than me.”
“Really,” Kahlan said. “I’m impressed. Few people know High D’Haran. It’s an extremely difficult language, I’m told.”
“We worked on it together.” Berdine smiled. “At night.”
Richard cleared his throat. “Let’s go find out about the representatives.” He boosted Kahlan with his hands on her sides and set her on the floor.
Berdine gestured with her pear. “Lord Rahl has very big hands. They fit perfectly over my breasts.”
One eyebrow went up over a green eye. “Really.”
“Yes,” Berdine observed. “He had us all show him our breasts one day.”
