Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

Chapter 57

In crushing loneliness, Kahlan plodded northeast. She began to wonder why she bothered. What was the point of fighting for her life if there could be no future? What could there be to a life without her own mind in a world dominated by the fanatical beliefs of the Imperial Order, by people who defined their existence through a filter of hatred for those who wanted to live and accomplish for themselves? They didn’t want to accomplish anything; they simply wanted to murder anyone else who did, as if by destroying productive accomplishment they could revoke reality and live a life made of wishes.

All those who denned their existence by that burning hatred of others were smothering all joy out of life, and in the process suffocating life itself out of existence. It would be easy to simply give up. No one would care. No one would know.

But she would care. She would know. Reality was what it was. It was the only life she would ever have. In the end, that precious life was all she had, all anyone had.

It had been up to Samuel to decide how he would live his life, and he had made his choices. It was no less true for her. She had to make the most of what she had in life, even if her choices were limited, and even if that life itself was to be cut short.

She had walked for less than an hour when she began to hear the distant ramble of galloping hooves. She paused as she saw horses break from a line of trees ahead. They were coming right toward her.

She glanced around the bottomland she was crossing. In the gloomy light of a leaden sky she could see that the trees covering the foothills to each side were too far for her to reach their cover in time. The grass, long since brown as winter closed in, had been flattened by wind and weather. It didn’t provide anywhere for her to hide.

Besides, it looked like she might have been spotted. Even if she hadn’t, at the speed the horses were closing they soon would catch up to her, and she had no hope of running across their line of sight and not being seen.

She tossed the saddlebag on the ground. The gentle breeze lifted her hair back off her shoulders as she gripped the scabbard of the sword in her left hand. Her only choice was to stand and fight.

She realized, then, that she was invisible to most everyone. She almost laughed aloud with relief. This was one of those rare times when she was thankful to be invisible. She stood her ground, remaining quiet, hoping the riders wouldn’t see her and would simply ride by and be gone.

But in the back of her mind she remembered Samuel telling her that Jagang would send men after them. Jagang had men who could see her. If that was who was riding toward her, then she was going to have to fight.

She didn’t pull the sword free in case the riders, on the off chance they could see her, weren’t hostile. She didn’t want to start a battle unless she really had no choice. She knew she could draw the blade in an instant if need be. She had two knives as well, but she knew that she could handle a sword. She didn’t know where she’d learned, but she knew she was good with a sword.

She remembered seeing Richard fight with a blade. She recalled thinking at the time that it reminded her somewhat of the way in which she fought with a blade. She wondered if it had been Richard—her husband—who had taught her to use a sword the way she did.

She noticed then that while there were three horses, only one had a rider. That was good news. It cut the odds to even.

As the galloping horses bore down on her, she was astonished to recognize the rider.

“Richard!”

He leaped off the horse before it had skidded to a halt. It snorted, tossing its head. All three horses were lathered and hot.

“Are you all right?” he asked as he rushed toward her.

“Yes.”

“You used your power.”

She nodded, unable to take her gaze off his gray eyes. “How did you know?”

“I thought I felt it.” He looked giddy with excitement. “You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you.”

As she stared at him she wished that she could remember their past, remember all they meant to each other.

“I was afraid you were dead. I didn’t want to leave you there. I was so afraid that you were dead.”

He stood gazing at her, seeming unable to speak. He looked like she felt, as if he had a thousand things all bottled up, all wanting out first.

Kahlan remembered the way he had fought when he had started the war Nicci had said he would start. She remembered the way he had moved so fluidly among the other Ja’La players, and then among lumbering brutes as they hacked away with swords and axes, desperately trying to kill him.

She remembered the way the blade had seemed to be a part of him, almost an extension of his body, an extension of his mind. She had been spellbound that day as she’d watched him fighting his way toward her. It had been like watching a dance with death, and death had not been able to touch him.

She held the sword out. “Every weapon needs a master.”

Richard’s warm smile broke through like sunshine on a cold, cloudy day. It warmed her heart. He gazed at her a moment, still unable to look away, then gently lifted the weapon from her hands.

He ducked his head under the baldric, laying it over his right shoulder so that the sword rested against his left hip. The sword looked completely natural with him, unlike the way it had looked with Samuel.

“Samuel is dead.”

“When I felt you use your power I thought as much.” He rested his left palm on the hilt of the sword. “Thank goodness he didn’t hurt you.”

“He tried. That’s why he’s dead.”

Richard nodded. “Kahlan, I can’t explain it all right now, but there is a great deal happening that—”

“You missed all the excitement.”

“Excitement?”

“Yes. Samuel confessed. He told me that we’re married.”

Richard went stiff as stone. A look akin to terror passed across his face.

She thought that maybe he should take her in his arms and tell her how happy he was to have her back, but he just stood there, looking like he was afraid to breathe.

“We were in love, then?” she asked, trying to prompt him.

His face lost some of its color. “Kahlan, now is not the time to talk about this. We’re in more trouble than you can imagine. I don’t have time to explain it but—”

“So, you’re saying that we weren’t in love?”

She hadn’t expected this. She hadn’t even considered it. She suddenly had difficulty making her voice work.

She couldn’t understand why he just stood there, why he wouldn’t say anything. She supposed that there was nothing for him to say.

“It was just some kind of arranged thing, then?” She swallowed back the lump rising in her throat. “The Mother Confessor marrying the Lord Rahl for the good of their respective people? An alliance of convenience. Something like that?”

Richard looked more terrified than Samuel had when she had been questioning him. He drew his lower lip through his teeth as if trying to think how to answer.

“It’s all right,” Kahlan said. “You won’t hurt my feelings. I don’t remember any of it. So, that’s what it was, then? Just a marriage of convenience?”

“Kahlan . . .”

“We’re not in love, then? Please, answer me, Richard.”

“Look, Kahlan, it’s more complicated than that. I have responsibilities.”

That was what Nicci had said when Kahlan had asked if she loved Richard. It was more complicated than that. She had responsibilities.

Kahlan wondered how she could she have been so blind. It was Nicci he loved.

“You have to trust me,” he said when she could only stare at him. “There are important things at stake.”

She nodded, holding back the tears, putting on a blank face, hiding behind the mask of it. She didn’t try to test her voice just then.

She didn’t know why she had let her heart get ahead of her head. She didn’t know if her legs were going to hold.

Richard squeezed his temples between a finger and a thumb, his gaze going to the ground for a moment. “Kahlan . . . listen to me. I’ll explain everything to you—everything—I promise, but I can’t right now. Please, just trust me.”

She wanted to ask why she should trust a man who married her without loving her, but right then she was not sure that she would be able to summon her voice.

“Please,” he repeated. “I promise I’ll explain everything when I can, but right now we have to get to Tamarang.”

She cleared her throat, finally gathering the ability to speak. “We can’t go there. Samuel said that Six was there.”

He was nodding as she spoke. “I know. But I have to go there.”

“I don’t.”

He paused, gazing at her.

“I don’t want anything else to happen to you,” he finally said. “Please, you need to come with me. I’ll explain later. I promise.”

“Why is later better than now?”

“Because we’ll be dead if we don’t hurry. Jagang is going to open the boxes of Orden. I have to try to stop him.”

She didn’t buy the excuse. Had he wanted to, he could have already answered her.

“I’ll go with you if you answer one question. Did you love me when you married me?”

His gray eyes studied her face a moment before he finally answered in a quiet voice.

“You were the right person for me to marry.”

Kahlan swallowed back the pain, the cry wanting to escape. She turned away, not wanting him to see her tears, and started toward where Samuel had been taking her.

It was well after nightfall when they were finally forced to stop. Richard would have kept going but the terrain, thickly wooded, rocky, and becoming uneven as ridgelines rose up around them, was simply too treacherous to negotiate in the dark. The nearly new moon would have come up at sunset but the narrow crescent didn’t provide enough illumination to brighten the inky cloud cover in the least. Even the light that would have been provided by meager starlight was hidden by the thick clouds. The darkness was so complete that it was simply impossible to go on.

Kahlan was tired, but as Richard started a fire in the fluff of cattails he’d broken open for tinder, she could see that he was in far worse condition. She wondered if he’d slept in recent days. After he had a fire going, he set fishing lines and then started to collect enough firewood to last them through the cold night. Up against a rocky rise they at least had some protection from the biting wind.

Kahlan did her best to care for the horses, fetching them water in a canvas bucket among the supplies Richard had with him. When he’d finished collecting firewood he found that they had some brook trout on his lines. As she watched him cleaning the fish, throwing the innards on the fire so they wouldn’t attract animals, she decided not to ask any more questions about the two of them. She couldn’t endure the pain of the answers. Besides, he had already told her what she had asked: she was simply the right person for him to marry.

She wondered if he’d even met her before he agreed to marry her. She realized that it must have been heartbreaking for Nicci to see the man she loved marry someone else for unromantic, practical reasons.

Kahlan forced her mind away from that whole line of thought.

“Why are we going to Tamarang?” she asked.

Richard glanced up from his work at cleaning the fish. “Well, a long time ago, back in the great war three thousand years ago, the people back then were fighting this same war we’re fighting now, a war to defend ourselves against those who want to eliminate magic and all other forms of freedom.

“The people defending against such aggression took a number of extremely valuable things of magic—things they had created over many centuries—and put those things in a place called the Temple of the Winds. Then, to protect it all from falling into the hands of the enemy, they sent the temple into the underworld.”

“They sent it into the world of the dead?”

Richard nodded as he laid out some big leaves. “During the war, wizards on both sides had conjured terrible weapons—constructed spells and such. But some of those weapons were made out of people. That’s how the dreamwalkers came to be. They were created out of people captured in Caska—Jillian’s ancestors.”

“And that was when they created the Chainfire event?” she asked. “During that great war.”

“That’s right,” he said as he spread a layer of mud on the leaves. “Other wizards were constantly working to counter the things that had been created from magic. The boxes of Orden, for example, were created during that great war in order to counter the Chainfire spell.”

“I remember the Sisters talking to Jagang about that.”

“Well, the whole thing is quite complicated but, basically, a traitor named Lothain went to the Temple of the Winds where it was hidden away in the underworld. He secretly did things to one day aid the basic cause of the Order when it eventually rekindled.”

“They thought the war would reignite?”

“There have always been, and always will be, those who are driven by hate and want to blame those who are happy, creative, and productive for their misery.”

“What sort of things did this Lothain do?”

Richard looked up. “Among other things, he made sure that a dreamwalker would one day again be born into the world of life. Jagang is that dreamwalker.”

Richard finished wrapping the fish in leaves and mud and set the little bundles in the glowing coals at the edge of the fire.

“After that, the people on our side sent the First Wizard to the Temple of the Winds. His name was Baraccus. He was a war wizard. He made sure that another war wizard would be born to try to stop the forces trying to take mankind into a dark age.”

Kahlan pulled her knees up and drew her blanket around herself to keep warm as she listened to the story. “You mean that there haven’t been any war wizards since that time?”

Richard shook his head. “I’m the first one in nearly three thousand years. Baraccus, though, did something at the temple to insure that another would one day be born to carry on the struggle. I’m the one born because of what he did back then.

“Realizing that such a person wouldn’t know anything about his ability, Baraccus came back and wrote a book called Secrets of a War Wizard’s Power. He had his wife, Magda Searus, who he loved very much, take that book away and hide it for me. He was very careful to make sure that no one but me would get ahold of the book.

“While Magda Searus was on that journey to hide Secrets of a War Wizard’s Power, Baraccus killed himself.”

Kahlan was astonished to hear this news. “But why would he do such a thing? If he loved Magda Searus, why would he do that and leave her all alone?”

Richard looked over in the flickering firelight. “I think that he had just seen so much pain and suffering in the war, as well as treason and betrayal, to say nothing of the experience of traveling through the underworld, that he just couldn’t stand it any longer.” His eyes looked haunted. “I’ve been through the veil. I can understand what he did.”

Kahlan rested her chin on her knees. “After spending time in the Order’s camp, I guess I know how disheartened a person can get about everything.” She looked over at him. “So, you need this book to help stop the Imperial Order?”

“I do. I found it, but I had to hide it again when I was taken to the Order’s camp.”

To rescue her. “Don’t tell me, the book is in Tamarang.”

He smiled. “Why else would we be going there?”

Kahlan sighed. Now she could see why it was so important. She stared into the flames, thinking about Baraccus.

“Do you know what ever happened to Magda Searus?”

Richard used a stick to drag a wrapped fish out of the fire. He opened it and tested it with his knife. When he saw that it was flaky and done, he set it beside her.

“Careful, it’s hot.” He dragged out the other baking bundle. “Well, Magda Searus was heartbroken. After the war they needed to get the truth out of Lothain, the traitor who had betrayed them. A wizard at the time, Merritt, came up with a way to do that.”

Richard stared into the flames for a moment before he went on. “He created a Confessor to get the truth.”

Kahlan paused at nibbling at the fish. “Really? That was where the Confessors came from?” When he nodded, she asked, “Do you know who she was?”

“Magda Searus. She was so heartbroken about her husband being dead that she volunteered for the experiment. It was extremely dangerous, but it worked. The Confessors were created. She was the first. Eventually she fell in love with Merritt and they married.”

Being a Confessor was the only part of her past to which Kahlan felt connected. Now she knew where Confessors had come from. They had come from a woman who had lost the man she loved.

Richard picked up a fat piece of wood and was about to toss it into the fire, but instead he paused and held it in a hand, turning it around, staring at it. He finally set it aside and tossed a different piece in the fire.

“You’d better get some sleep,” he said when they’d finished. “I want to be out of here as soon as it’s light enough to see.”

Kahlan could tell that he was more exhausted than she was, but she could also tell that something was deeply troubling him, so she didn’t argue. She wrapped herself in her blanket close enough to the fire to stay warm.

As she glanced up at Richard, she saw him still sitting before the fire, staring at the piece of firewood he’d set beside before. She had thought that he would be more interested in looking at his sword now that he finally had it back.

Kahlan woke softly. It was a good feeling not to wake the way she had the day before with Samuel on top of her. She rubbed her eyes and saw that Richard was still sitting before the fire. He looked terrible. She couldn’t imagine what must be going through his head with the responsibilities on his shoulders, with all the people depending on him.

“I have something I’d like to give you,” he said in a quiet voice that felt so soothing to hear when she first woke.

Kahlan sat up, stretching for a moment. She saw that there was just a hint of light in the sky. They would need to be on their way soon.

“What is it?” she asked as she folded her blanket and set it aside.

“You don’t have to take it, but it would mean a great deal to me if you would.”

He finally looked away from the flames and into her eyes. “I know that you don’t know what’s going on, or even who you are, much less what you’re doing here with me. I wish more than anything in the world that I could explain it all to you. You’ve been through a nightmare and you deserve to know everything, but I just can’t tell you right now. I’m asking you to trust me.”

She looked away from his eyes. She couldn’t bear to look into those eyes of his.

“In the meantime, I’d like you to have something.”

Kahlan swallowed. “What is it?”

Richard reached around on the other side of him and pulled something out. He held it out to her in the dim firelight.

It was the statue she had before, the statue she had left in the Garden of Life when she had taken the boxes for the Sisters.

It was a carving of a woman with her back arched, her head thrown back, and her hands fisted at her sides. It was the embodiment of the spirit of defiance against forces that would subdue her. It was a carving of nobility and strength.

It was the statue she had before. It had been the most precious thing she had, and she’d had to leave it behind. This was not the same one, yet it was. She remembered every curve and turn of that one. This one was the same, but a little smaller.

She saw then the wood shavings all over the ground. He had spent the night carving it for her.

“It’s called Spirit,” he said in a voice that broke with emotion. “Would you accept it from me?”

Kahlan reverently lifted it from his hands and clutched it to her heart as she broke down in tears.