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If there was one thing about Fitch that was better than Morley and all his muscles, it was that Fitch could run like the wind. Now, he ran like a gale.
A quick glance back shocked him; the woman could run faster. She was tall, and had longer legs. She was going to catch him. If she did, she’d smash his face, just as easily as she smashed Morley’s. She’d throw him to his death, too. Or take the sword from him and cut out his heart.
Fitch could feel tears streaming down his cheeks. He’d never run so fast. She was running faster.
He flew down steps, falling more than running. He dove over the side of the landing and down the next flight. Everything was a blur. Stone walls, windows, railings, steps—all flashed by in a smear of light and dark.
Fitch, clutching the Sword of Truth to his chest, sailed through a doorway, caught the edge of the thick door with his free hand, and slammed it shut. As the door was still banging closed in its frame, he toppled a big stone pedestal across the floor behind the door. It was heavier than the white marble columns, but his terror gave him strength.
Just as the granite pedestal hit the floor, she crashed into the heavy oak door. The impact drove the door open a few inches. Dust billowed up. Everything was still for a moment; then the woman let out a dazed groan and Fitch knew she’d been hurt.
Not wasting the chance, he ran on through the Wizard’s Keep, closing doors, pushing things over behind them if there was anything handy. He didn’t even know if he was going the right way. His lungs burned as he ran, crying for his friend. Fitch could hardly believe it had happened, that Morley was dead. He kept seeing the image over and over in his mind. He almost expected the big dumb fool to catch up and grin and say it was a joke.
The sword in Fitch’s arms had cost Morley his life. Fitch had to wipe at his eyes so he could see. A look over his shoulder showed a long, twisting, empty hallway.
But he could hear doors crashing open. She was coming.
She wasn’t going to quit for nothing. She was an avenging spirit come to take his life in return for him removing the Sword of Truth from its place in the Wizard’s Keep. He ran on, faster.
Fitch burst out into the sunlight, disoriented for a moment. He twisted around and saw the horses. Three. His and Morley’s, and the woman’s. Saddlebags with her things hung on the fence.
In order to free his hands, Fitch ducked his head under the sword’s baldric, setting the leather strap over his right shoulder and diagonally across his chest to let the weapon hang at his left hip as it was designed. He caught up the rains of all three horses. He seized the saddle of the one closest and sprang up.
With a cry to urge them on, he gave his horse his heels. It was her horse; the stirrups were adjusted too long and his feet wouldn’t reach them, so he hugged his legs to the horse’s belly and hung on for his life as the big animal galloped through the paddock gate with the other two horses being pulled along behind.
As the horses hit the road at full speed, the woman in red stumbled out of the Keep, blood all over the side of her face. She clutched a black bottle in one hand. It was the bottle from back in the Keep, the bottle that had fallen but not broken.
He bent forward over the horse’s neck as it raced down the road. Fitch glimpsed back over his shoulder. The woman was running down the road after them. He had her horse. She was on foot, a long way from another horse.
Fitch tried to push thoughts of Morley from his mind. He had the Sword of Truth. Now he could go home and use it to help him prove he didn’t rape Beata, and that he did what he did to Claudine Winthrop to protect the Minister from her ruinous lies.
Fitch looked over his shoulder again. She was a lot farther back, but still running. He knew he dare not stop for anything. She was coming. She was coming after him and she wasn’t going to stop for anything or anyone.
She wasn’t going to give up. She wasn’t going to rest. She wasn’t going to stop. If she caught him, she’d tear his heart out.
Fitch thumped his heels against the horse, urging her to run faster.
55
Kahlan bent over Richard’s shoulder and rubbed his back as he sat at the little table.
“Anything?” she asked.
He swiped his hair back from his forehead. “I’m not sure, yet.” He tapped the vellum scroll. “But there’s something about this.… It has more specific information than most of Ander’s writings back at the library at the Minister’s estate.”
Kahlan smiled. “I hope so. I’m going to stretch my legs, check on the others.”
A sound of assent eased from deep in his throat as he studied the scroll.
They had spent two days at the library in the estate, going over everything there about or from Joseph Ander. It was mostly his writings about himself, and what he believed to be previously undiscovered insights into human behavior. He went on at great length about how his observations were more relevant to the course of human events than were those of anyone who had come before him.
A lot of the reading was accompanied by raised eyebrows. It was almost like listening to an adolescent who thought he knew everything, and failed to see how genuinely ignorant he was. One was left to silently read his words, helpless to correct some of the more grandiose declarations that any adult should have long before outgrown.
Joseph Ander believed he had the perfect place where he could shepherd people in the ideal life, without any exterior forces being able to upset his “balanced community,” as he called it. He explained that he realized he no longer needed the support or advice of others—meaning the wizards at the Keep in Aydindril, Richard believed—and that he had even come to realize such outside contamination was profoundly harmful because it corrupted the people in his collective community with the evil of self-interest.
Not one name but his own was ever recorded by Joseph Ander. He referred to people as “a man,” or “a woman,” or said that “the people” built, planted, gathered, or worshiped.
Joseph Ander seemed to have found the perfect place for himself: a land where his powers exceeded anyone else’s, and where the people all adored him. Richard believed Joseph Ander was misinterpreting fear as adoration. In any event, the situation allowed the man to establish himself as an esteemed and celebrated leader—a virtual king—with unquestioned authority over a society where no one else was allowed to display individualism or exert superiority.
Joseph Ander believed he had established a blissful land where suffering, greed, and envy had been eliminated—where cooperation replaced avarice. Purification of the culture—public executions—brought this harmonious state of the collective community into balance. He called it “burning away the chaff.”
Joseph Ander had come to be a tyrant. People professed their belief in him and lived by his ways, or they died.
Richard squeezed Kahlan’s hand before she turned to go. The little building wasn’t big enough for the others to fit inside. It was only big enough for the little table and Joseph Ander’s chair, which, to the horror of the old man whose duty it was to watch over the priceless artifacts, Richard was occupying. The old man didn’t have the courage to refuse Richard’s request.
Richard wanted to sit in Joseph Ander’s chair to get a feel for the man. Kahlan had enough of a feel for the totalitarian despot.
Down the path a ways, people from the town of Westbrook were gathered. They stared in awe as Kahlan lifted her hand in a wave of acknowledgment. Many went to a knee simply because she had looked their way.
Soldiers had already brought word of the approaching vote, as they had carried word to many a place. With Richard and Kahlan here, the people hoped to hear them speak on the subject of joining with the D’Haran Empire as most of the rest of the Midlands was. To these people, the Midlands, even though they were part of it, seemed a strange and distant land. They lived their lives in this one small place, most hearing little word, other than rumor, of the outsi
de world.
D’Haran guards gently kept the crowd at a distance while Richard viewed the artifacts of their luminary founder and namesake to their land. Baka Tau Mana blade masters backed the guards. Richard had told the soldiers to act friendly and “be nice.”
Walking down the path, Kahlan spotted Du Chaillu alone, off the path, resting on a bench made of a split log and set in the shade beneath a spreading cedar. Kahlan had come to respect the spirit woman’s firm resolution. She seemed to have righteously insisted on coming for no reason other than her determination to help Richard—her “husband,” the Caharin to her people. Kahlan, after Du Chaillu had helped him that day he fell from his horse, was less dismayed to have her along.
While Du Chaillu had several times reminded Richard that as his wife she would be available should he desire her, she never made any advances on behalf of herself. In a bizarre way, it seemed nothing more than her being polite. It appeared that while Du Chaillu would be perfectly happy to serve and submit in any and every capacity as his wife, she offered services more out of duty and respect for her people’s laws than from personal desires.
Du Chaillu worshiped what Richard represented. She did not worship Richard, as such. While Richard found little comfort in that, Kahlan did.
As long as it stayed that way, Du Chaillu and Kahlan observed an uneasy truce. Kahlan still didn’t entirely trust the woman, not when Richard was the object of her attention—duty or otherwise.
For her part, Du Chaillu viewed Kahlan, in her role as leader of her people, in her magic, and as wife to Richard, not as a superior, but simply as an equal. Kahlan was ashamed to admit to herself that in all of it, she was irritated by that more than anything.
