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She needed no mirror to know she was a terrible sight. She knew, too, how bad it was whenever she looked up into Richard’s eyes. She wished she could look good for him if for no other reason than to lift the suffering from his eyes. Reading her thoughts, he would say, “I’m fine. Stop worrying about me and put your mind to getting better.”
With a bittersweet longing, Kahlan recalled lying with Richard, their limbs tangled in delicious exhaustion, his skin hot against hers, his big hand resting on her belly as they caught their breath. It was agony wanting to hold him in her arms again and being unable to do so. She reminded herself that it was only a matter of some time and some healing. They were together and that was what mattered. His mere presence was a restorative.
She heard Richard, beyond the blanket over the door, speaking in a tightly controlled voice, stressing his words as if each had cost him a fortune. “We just need some time…”
The men’s voices were heated and insistent as they all began talking at once. “It’s not because we want to—you should know that, Richard, you know us…. What if it brings trouble here?… We’ve heard about the fighting. You said yourself she’s from the Midlands. We can’t allow…we won’t…”
Kahlan listened, expecting the sound of his sword being drawn. Richard had nearly infinite patience, but little tolerance. Cara, his bodyguard, their friend, was no doubt out there, too; Cara had neither patience nor tolerance.
Instead of drawing his sword, Richard said, “I’m not asking anyone to give me anything. I want only to be left alone in a peaceful place where I can care for her. I wanted to be close to Hartland in case she needed something.” He paused. “Please…just until she has a chance to get better.”
Kahlan wanted to scream at him: No! Don’t you dare beg them, Richard! They have no right to make you beg. They’ve no right! They could never understand the sacrifices you’ve made.
But she could do little more than whisper his name in sorrow.
“Don’t test us…. We’ll burn you out if we have to! You can’t fight us all—we have right on our side.”
The men ranted and swore dark oaths. She expected, now, at last, to hear the sound of his sword being drawn. Instead, in a calm voice, Richard answered the men in words Kahlan couldn’t quite make out. A dreadful quiet settled in.
“It’s not because we like doing this, Richard,” someone finally said in a sheepish voice. “We’ve no choice. We’ve got to consider our own families and everyone else.”
Another man spoke out with righteous indignation. “Besides, you seem to have gotten all high-and-mighty of a sudden, with your fancy clothes and sword, not like you used to be, back when you were a woods guide.”
“That’s right,” said another. “Just because you went off and saw some of the world, that don’t mean you can come back here thinking you’re better than us.”
“I’ve overstepped what you have all decided is my proper place,” Richard said. “Is this what you mean to say?”
“You turned your back on your community, on your roots, as I see it; you think our women aren’t good enough for the great Richard Cypher. No, he had to marry some woman from away. Then you come back here and think to flaunt yourselves over us.”
“How? By doing what? Marrying the woman I love? This, you see as vain? This nullifies my right to live in peace? And takes away her right to heal, to get well and live?”
These men knew him as Richard Cypher, a simple woods guide, not as the person he had discovered he was in truth, and who he had become. He was the same man as before, but in so many ways, they had never known him.
“You ought to be on your knees praying for the Creator to heal your wife,” another man put in. “All of mankind is a wretched and undeserving lot. You ought to pray and ask the Creator’s forgiveness for your evil deeds and sinfulness—that’s what brought your troubles on you and your woman. Instead, you want to bring your troubles among honest working folks. You’ve no right to try to force your sinful troubles on us. That’s not what the Creator wants. You should be thinking of us. The Creator wants you to be humble and to help others—that’s why He struck her down: to teach you both a lesson.”
“Did he tell you this, Albert?” Richard asked. “Does this Creator of yours come to talk with you about his intentions and confide in you his wishes?”
“He talks to anyone who has the proper modest attitude to listen to Him,” Albert fumed.
“Besides,” another man spoke up, “this Imperial Order you warn about has some good things to be said for it. If you weren’t so bullheaded, Richard, you’d see that. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see everyone treated decent. It’s only being fair minded. It’s only right. Those are the Creator’s wishes, you’ve got to admit, and that’s what the Imperial Order teaches, too. If you can’t see that much good in the Order—well then, you’d best be gone, and soon.”
Kahlan held her breath.
In an ominous tone of voice, Richard said, “So be it.”
These were men Richard knew; he had addressed them by name and reminded them of years and deeds shared. He had been patient with them. Patience finally exhausted, he had reached intolerance.
Horses snorted and stomped, their leather tack creaking, as the men mounted up. “In the morning we’ll be back to burn this place down. We’d better not catch you or yours anywhere near here, or you’ll burn with it.” After a few last curses, the men raced away. The sound of departing hooves hammering the ground rumbled through Kahlan’s back. Even that hurt.
She smiled a small smile for Richard, even if he couldn’t see it. She wished only that he had not begged on her behalf; he would never, she knew, have begged for anything for himself.
Light splashed across the wall as the blanket over the doorway was thrown back. By the direction and quality of the light, Kahlan guessed it had to be somewhere in the middle of a thinly overcast day. Richard appeared beside her, his tall form towering over her, throwing a slash of shadow across her middle.
He wore a black, sleeveless undershirt, without his shirt or magnificent gold and black tunic, leaving his muscular arms bare. At his left hip, the side toward her, a flash of light glinted off the pommel of his singular sword. His broad shoulders made the room seem even smaller than it had been only a moment before. His cleanshaven face, his strong jaw, and the crisp line of his mouth perfectly complemented his powerful form. His hair, a color somewhere between blond and brown, brushed the nape of his neck. But it was the intelligence so clearly evident in those penetrating gray eyes of his that from the first had riveted her attention.
“Richard,” Kahlan whispered, “I won’t have you begging on my account.”
The corners of his mouth tightened with the hint of a smile. “If I want to beg, I shall do so.” He pulled her blanket up a little, making sure she was snugly covered, even though she was sweating. “I didn’t know you were awake.”
“How long have I been asleep?”
“A while.”
She figured it must have been quite a while. She didn’t remember arriving at this place, or him building the house that now stood around her.
Kahlan felt more like a person in her eighties than one in her twenties. She had never been hurt before, not grievously hurt, anyway, not to the point of being on the cusp of death and utterly helpless for so long. She hated it, and she hated that she couldn’t do the simplest things for herself. Most of the time she detested that more than the pain.
She was stunned to understand so unexpectedly and so completely life’s frailty, her own frailty, her own mortality. She had risked her life in the past and had been in danger many times, but looking back she didn’t know if she had ever truly believed that something like this could happen to her. Confronting the reality of it was crushing.
Something inside seemed to have broken that night—some idea of herself, some confidence. She could so easily have died. Their baby could have died before it even had a chance to live.
“You’re g
etting better,” Richard said, as if in answer to her thoughts. “I’m not just saying that. I can see that you’re healing.”
She gazed into his eyes, summoning the courage to finally ask, “How do they know about the Order way up here?”
“People fleeing the fighting have been up this way. Men spreading the doctrine of the Imperial Order have been even here, to where I grew up. Their words can sound good—almost make sense—if you don’t think, if you just feel. Truth doesn’t seem to count for much,” He added in afterthought. He answered the unspoken question in her eyes. “The men from the Order are gone. The fools out there were just spouting things they’ve heard, that’s all.”
“But they intend us to leave. They sound like men who keep the oaths they’ve sworn.”
He nodded, but then some of his smile returned. “Do you know that we’re very close to where I first met you, last autumn? Do you remember?”
“How could I ever forget the day I met you?”
“Our lives were in jeopardy back then and we had to leave here. I’ve never regretted it. It was the start of my life with you. As long as we’re together, nothing else really matters.”
Cara swept in through the doorway and came to a halt beside Richard, adding her shadow to his across the blue cotton blanket that covered Kahlan to her armpits. Sheathed in skintight red leather, Cara’s body had the sleek grace of a falcon: commanding, swift, and deadly. Mord-Sith always wore their red leather when they believed there was going to be trouble. Cara’s long blond hair, swept back into a single thick braid, was another mark of her profession of Mord-Sith, member of an elite corps of guards to the Lord Rahl himself.
Richard had, after a fashion, inherited the Mord-Sith when he inherited the rule of D’Hara, a place he grew up never knowing. Command was not something he had sought; nonetheless it had fallen to him. Now a great many people depended on him. The entire New World—Westland, the Midlands, and D’Hara—depended on him.
“How do you feel?” Cara asked with sincere concern.
Kahlan was able to summon little more voice than a hoarse whisper. “I’m better.”
“Well, if you feel better,” Cara growled, “then tell Lord Rahl that he should allow me to do my job and put the proper respect into men like that.” Her menacing blue eyes turned for a moment toward the spot where the men had been while delivering their threats. “The ones I leave alive, anyway.”
