Faith of the Fallen

Chapter 36

“Mother Confessor?”

Kahlan squinted up at a dark shape above her. She blinked, clearing her vision, and saw that it was Verna. The gold sunburst ring of the Prelate of the Sisters of the Light reflected a glimmer of lamplight. Behind her, twilight tainted the tent canvas with a rusty glow.

Kahlan rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Verna wore a long, gray wool dress and a dark brown cloak. At her throat, the dress had a bit of white lace that softened the austerity of the outfit. Verna’s brown hair had a carefree wave and spring to it, but her brown eyes held a troubled look.

“What is it, Verna?”

“If you have a moment, I would like to talk to you.”

No doubt, Verna had been talking to Warren. Whenever Kahlan saw them together, the shared intimate glances, the chance furtive touch reminded her of the way she and Richard felt about each other. It softened Kahlan’s feelings about Verna’s stern exterior, to know she was in love—knowing, for that matter, that she was capable of tenderness. Kahlan knew that she, too, must be regarded with the same sort of curiosity, if not amazement, where tender feelings were concerned.

She sighed, wondering if this was going to be a “talk” about Ann and prophecy. Kahlan wasn’t in the mood.

“Cara, how long have I been asleep?”

“A couple of hours. It will soon be dark.”

As tight and sore as Kahlan’s shoulders and neck were from sleeping with her head on the table, the lateness of the hour didn’t come as a surprise. She stretched to the side and then saw the frail looking sorceress sitting on a short bench. She had a dark blanket over her lap.

“How do you feel?” Adie asked.

“I’m fine.” Kahlan could see her breath in the frigid air. “The men we sent out?”

“Both groups be on their way, more than an hour ago,” Adie said. “The first group, the Galeans, all left together in big columns. The Keltans dribbled out in small groups not as likely to be noticed by any spies watching.”

Kahlan yawned. “Good.”

She knew they had to fear an attack by the Imperial Order as soon as morning. At least that should give their men enough time to travel to their positions and be ready. Waiting for an attack made her stomach feel queasy.

She knew the men, too, would be on edge and likely get little sleep.

Adie idly ran a thin finger back and forth along the red and yellow beads at the neckline of her modest robes. “I came back after the Galeans left, to help Cara keep people away so you would not be disturbed while you rested.”

Kahlan nodded her thanks. Apparently, either Adie thought Kahlan had rested enough, or she thought Verna’s visit was important.

“What is it, then, Verna?”

“We have . . . discovered something. Not so much discovered it, as had an idea.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

Verna cleared her throat. Under her breath she beseeched the Creator’s forgiveness before she went on.

“Actually, Mother Confessor, I thought of it. Some of my Sisters helped me with it, but I’m the one who thought it up. The blame falls to me.”

Kahlan thought that was an odd way of putting it. She didn’t think Verna looked at all pleased by her own idea, whatever it was. Kahlan waited silently for her to go on.

“Well, you see, we have a problem getting things past the enemy’s gifted. They have Sisters of the Light, but also Dark, and we don’t have their power. When we try to send things—”

“Send things?”

Verna pursed her lips. “Weapons.”

When Kahlan’s brow twitched with a questioning look, Verna bent and gathered something from the ground. She held out her open hand, showing Kahlan a collection of small pebbles.

“Zedd showed us how to turn simple things into devastating weapons. We can use our power to fling them or even with our breath blow on some small thing, like these pebbles, and use our magic to send them out faster than any arrow, even an arrow from a crossbow. The pebbles we flung out in this way cut down waves of advancing soldiers. The pebbles traveled so swiftly that sometimes each would pierce the bodies of half a dozen men.”

“I remember those reports,” Kahlan said. “But that stopped working because their gifted caught on to the artifice and now defend against such things.”

Kahlan recognized the weary look of the weight of responsibility in Verna’s brown eyes. “That’s right. The Order learned how to look for things of magic, or even things propelled by magic. Most of our conjuring that is in any way similar has become useless.”

“That’s what Zedd told me—that in war magic is most often unseen, that each side manages only to balance the other.”

Verna nodded. “It is so. We do the same against them. Things they used at first, we now know how to counter so we can protect our men. Our warning horns, for example. We learned that we must code them with a trace of magic to know they are genuine.”

Kahlan drew her fur mantle up around her neck. She was chilled to the bone and couldn’t seem to get warm. Not surprising, seeing as how she was spending all of her time outdoors. It was insanity to be carrying on a war in such conditions. She guessed that war in fine weather was no more sane.

Still, she ached to be inside, beside a cozy fire.

“So what is this thing you thought up?”

As if reminded of the cold, Verna pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders. “Well, I got the notion that if the enemy gifted are, in a sense, filtering for anything magic, or even anything being propelled by magic, then what we need is something not magic.”

Kahlan gave Verna a grim smile. “We do. They’re called soldiers.”

Verna didn’t smile. “No. I meant something the gifted could do to disable enemy troops without risk to our own men.”

Adie shuffled forward to stand behind Kahlan’s left shoulder as Verna reached into her cloak and pulled out a small leather pouch closed with a drawstring. She tossed it on the table before Kahlan, then set a piece of paper beside it.

“Pour a little on the paper, please.” Verna was holding her stomach as if she were having indigestion. “But be careful not to touch it with your finger or get it on your skin—and whatever you do, don’t blow on it. Be careful not to even breathe on it.”

Adie leaned in to watch as Kahlan carefully poured a small quantity of a sparkling dust from the pouch onto the square of paper. She pushed at the little pile with the corner of the pouch. There were hints of pallid colors, but it was mostly a pale, glimmering, greenish-gray.

“What is it? Some kind of magic dust?”

“Glass.”

Kahlan’s eyes turned up. “Glass. You thought up glass?”

Verna let out a tsk at herself for how foolish she must have sounded.

“No, Mother Confessor. I thought of breaking it. You see, this is just simple glass that has been broken and crushed into fine pieces—almost dust. But we used our Han to aid us when we crushed the glass with a mortar and pestle. By using our gift, we were able to break the glass into very tiny fragments, but in a special way.”

Verna leaned over, her finger hovering above the little greenish-gray mound. Cara leaned in beside her in order to look down at the dangerous thing on the piece of paper.

“This glass—every piece—is sharp and jagged, even though each piece is very tiny. Each piece is hardly bigger than dust, so it weighs nothing, almost like dust.”

“Dear spirits,” Adie said before whispering a prayer in her own language.

Kahlan cleared her throat. “I don’t understand.”

“Mother Confessor, we can’t get our magic past the defenses of the Order’s gifted. They are prepared for magic, even if it’s a simple pebble but uses magic to hurl it at their troops.

“This glass, however, even though we used magic to break it, has no magic properties—none at all. It’s just inert material, the same as the dust kicked up by their feet. They can’t detect it as magic, because it isn’t magic. Through their gift, they will sense this as simple as dust, or mist, or possibly fog, depending on atmospheric conditions at the time.”

“But we sent dust clouds at them before,” Kahlan said. “Dust to make them sick and such. They mostly countered it.”

Verna held up a finger to note her point as she smiled a grim smile.

“But those were dust clouds containing magic. Mother Confessor, this does not. Don’t you see? It’s so light it floats in the air for a long time. We could use simple magic to cast it up into the air, and then withdraw the magic, or we could simply fling it up into the breeze, for that matter. Either way, we have only to let their troops run through it.”

“All right.” Kahlan scratched an eyebrow. “But what will it do to them?”

“It will get in their eyes,” Adie said in her raspy voice from behind Kahlan’s shoulder.

“That’s right,” Verna said. “It gets in their eyes, just as any dust would. At first, it will feel like dust in their eyes and they will try to blink it away. However, since the fragments are all still jagged and razor sharp, they will instead embed themselves in the body’s tissue. It will stick in their eyes, and build up under their eyelids, where it will make thousands of tiny cuts across their eyes with each blink. The more they blink, the more it eats away at their delicate eyes.” Verna straightened and pulled her cloak together. “It will blind them.”

Kahlan sat in numb disbelief at the madness of it all.

“Are you sure?” Cara asked. “Might it just irritate them, like gritty dust?”

“We know for sure,” Verna said. “We . . . had an accident, and know all too well what it does. It may do more damage when it gets in the throat, the lungs, and the gut—we don’t know about that, yet—but we do know for sure that such special glass, if we grind it to just the right size particles, will float in the air and people passing through the cloud will be blinded in remarkably short order. As long as we can blind a man, he can’t fight. It may not kill them, but as long as they are blind they can’t kill us, or fight back as we kill them.”

Cara, usually gleeful at the prospect of killing the enemy, did not seem so, now. “We would have but to line them up and butcher them.”

Kahlan put her head in her hands, covering her eyes.

“You want me to approve its use, don’t you? That’s why you’re here.”

Verna said nothing. Kahlan looked up at last.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Mother Confessor, I need not tell you that the Sisters of the Light abhor harming people. However, this is a war for our very existence, for the very existence of free people. We know it must be done. If Richard were here . . . I just thought that you would want to be made aware of this, and be the one to give such orders.”

Kahlan stared at the woman, understanding then why she was holding her hand over a pain in her stomach.

“Do you know, Prelate,” Kahlan said in a near whisper, “that I killed a child today? Not by accident, but on purpose. I would do it again without hesitation. But that won’t make me sleep any better.”

“A child? It was truly necessary to . . . kill a child?”

“His name was Lyle. I believe you know him. He was another one of the victims of Ann’s Sisters of the Light.”

Verna, her face gone ashen, closed her eyes against the news.

“I guess if I can kill a child,” Kahlan said, “I can easily enough give the orders for you to use your special glass against the monsters who would use a child as a weapon. I have sworn no mercy, and I meant it.”

Adie laid a gnarled hand on Kahlan’s shoulder.

“Kahlan,” Verna said in a gentle voice, “I can understand how you feel. Ann used me, too, and I didn’t understand why. I thought she used everyone for her own selfish purposes. For a time, I thought her a despicable person. You have every reason to believe as you do.”

“But I would be wrong, Verna? Is that what you were going to add? I’d not be so sure, were I you. You didn’t have to kill a little boy today.”

Verna nodded in sympathy but didn’t argue.

“Adie,” Kahlan asked, “do you think there would be anything you might be able to do for the woman who was accidentally blinded? Perhaps you could help her?”

Adie nodded. “That be a good idea. Verna, take me to her, and let me see what I can do.”

Kahlan cocked her head as the two women moved toward the tent opening.

“Did you hear that?”

“The horn?” Verna asked.

“Yes. It sounds like alarm horns.”

Verna squinted in concentration. She turned her head to the side, listening attentively.

“Yes, it does sound like alarm horns,” she finally declared, “but it doesn’t have the right trace of magic through it. The enemy does that often—tries to get us to act based on false alarms. We’ve been having more and more lately.”

Kahlan frowned. “We have? Why?”

“Why . . . what?”

Kahlan stood. “If we know they’re false alarms, and they don’t work, then why would the Order increase the attempts? That makes no sense.”

Verna’s gaze roved about as as if searching in vain for an answer.

“Well, I don’t know. I can’t imagine. I’m no expert in the tactics of warfare.”

Cara turned to go have a look. “Maybe it’s just some scouts coming back in.”

Kahlan turned her head, listening. She heard horses running, but that wasn’t so rare. It could be, as Cara suggested, scouts returning with reports. But, by the sound of the hooves, the horses sounded big.

She heard men yelling. The clash of steel rang out—along with cries of pain.

Kahlan drew her Galean royal sword as she started around the table.

Before any of them could get more than a step, the tent shuddered violently as something crashed against its walls. For an instant, the whole thing tipped at an impossible angle; then steel-tipped lances burst through the canvas. With a rush of wind the tent collapsed around them.

The heavy canvas drove Kahlan to the ground as it caved in. She couldn’t get a grip on anything solid as the tent rolled her over and began dragging her along. Hooves thundered past, pounding the ground right beside her head.

She could smell lamp oil as it sloshed across the canvas. With a whoosh, the oil and the tent ignited. Kahlan coughed on the smoke. She could hear the crackle of flames. She could see nothing. She was trapped—rolled up in the bucking tent as it slid across the ground.