Faith of the Fallen

Chapter 71

Verna pulled the candle close. She warmed her hands over it a moment, then laid the journey book on the table. The sounds of the army camp outside her small tent were by now so familiar she almost didn’t hear them.

It was a cold D’Haran winter night, but at least they and all the people they had helped were safely over the mountains. Verna understood their quiet anxiety: it was a new and mysterious place, D’Hara, a land once only a source of nightmares. At least they were safe for the time being. In the distance the wolves’ long plaintive howls echoed through the frigid mountains, off the moonlit snow blanketing the seemingly endless, desolate, colossal slopes.

It was the proper phase of the moon, even if it was the moon in a new land, a strange and unknown land. Verna had checked for months, but there was never a message. She didn’t really expect one, since Kahlan had thrown Ann’s twinned journey book in the fire. But still, it was a journey book, an ancient thing of magic, and Ann was a resourceful woman. It didn’t hurt to look.

Verna opened the little book with no real hope.

There, on the first page, was a message.

All it said, was, Verna, I am waiting, if you are there.

Verna drew the stylus from the spine and immediately began writing.

Prelate! You have been able to fix the damaged journey book? That’s wonderful. Where are you? Are you well? Have you found Nathan?

Verna waited. Shortly, the reply began to appear.

Verna, I am well. I was able to restore the journey book with the help of some . . . people. Strange people. But the important part is that it is restored for the most part. I am still searching for the prophet. I have some good clues on Nathan’s whereabouts, and I am looking into them. But how are you, Verna? How goes the war? Warren? Kahlan? Is Zedd giving you much trouble? That man can try the patience of stone. Have you had word of Richard?

Verna stared at words on the page. A tear fell near Warren’s name. She picked up the stylus once more, and slowly began her reply.

Oh, Prelate, some terrible things have happened.

I am sorry, Verna, came the reply. Verna, I am here. I am going nowhere for the night. Take all the time you need. Tell me what happened. Tell me how you are, first. I worry so for you. Verna, I love you like a daughter. You know I do.

Verna nodded to the book. She did know it.

And I love you, too, Prelate, Verna began. I fear my heart is broken.

Kahlan stood silently beside him in the warm midday breeze as Richard looked out over the river, at the city beyond. The city was peaceful, now.

Battle had raged for weeks, various factions struggling for power, lusting to be the new local incarnation of the Order, each faction swearing that they had the best interest of the people at heart, each promising that they would be compassionate in their rule, each pledging that life would be easier under their mandate because they would see to it that everyone of means contributed to the common good.

After decades of such altruistic tyranny, decay and death had been the only product of the business of the common good. Despite graveyards full of evidence and a people left impoverished, these aspirants to power offered only more of the same, and yet many still believed them simply because they uttered such good intentions.

While a great number of brothers and officials had been killed, some had escaped. Some of those, who had not fled, thought to take advantage of the confusion and establish control, thinking they could rein in the hunger for freedom, the ideas loosed, and put things back to the way they were.

The free people of Altur’Rang, their numbers growing daily, eradicated each of these factions as they emerged from under their rocks. Nicci had been no small aid in the bloody battles. She knew the methods of such people, where they went to ground, and pounced on them like a wolf on vermin.

The forces lusting to oversee the welfare and betterment of mankind came to greatly fear that which they had in fact created: Death’s Mistress.

There was no telling, yet, if freedom’s flame, now ignited, would spread through the Old World. It was still a very small flame in a vast and dark place, but Richard knew that such a flame burned brightly.

To the north, matters were not nearly so auspicious. With Nicci’s magic withdrawn, Richard supposed that the D’Harans would know where he was, and send him messages. Cara was immensely relieved to be able to sense his location again through her bond.

He had listened quietly as Kahlan and Cara had told him all the details of the war, and how they had sent the people of Aydindril on a long and difficult journey to D’Hara before Jagang could march into the city in the spring. It would give them heart to know that Lord Rahl had struck a mighty blow against the Old World, to know that the Mother Confessor was with him, and that they were well. A number of men had requested the job of carrying that invaluable news north.

Soon, the D’Haran Empire and the people they were protecting who had fled their homes would know of the victory to the south. The messengers would actually be carrying a more precious commodity than that news: they would in reality be carrying hope.

Richard had also sent his grandfather the same word.

Richard could hardly believe that Warren, his friend, was gone. The terrible anguish, he knew, would be slow to fade.

Richard had sent one other thing north.

Nicci had told him of Brother Narev’s importance to Emperor Jagang, of their long history together, and of their shared vision of the future of mankind. In the spring when Jagang finally, triumphantly, rode in to seize the Confessors’ Palace, waiting for him there, before his empty victory, would be his mentor’s head on a pike, topped by his creased brown cap.

Nicci had woven a spell around it, to preserve it, to keep scavengers away. Richard wanted to be sure that when Jagang finally saw it, he would not mistake who it was.

In the teeming city of Altur’Rang, peace had returned, along with freedom. Life had returned. People had begun to open new businesses. In a matter of weeks, there was already a variety of bread available. New enterprises were starting every day. Ishaq was making a fortune hauling goods, but already had competitors vying for the business. Nabbi had gone to work for him. Ishaq had begged Richard to come work for him when he was strong enough. Richard had only laughed.

Faval, the charcoal maker, had beseeched Ishaq to ask Richard to come to visit and have dinner with him and his family. Faval had bought a cart, and his sons now delivered charcoal.

Richard leaned with his forearms on the railing at the edge of the pier and gazed down over the edge, to the swirling water below, as if trying to divine what the future held.

The piers out into the river and the walkway atop them, along with the plaza, were about all that remained of the palace. Richard had seen to it that the spellforms were removed from the tops of the columns around the grounds, and had Priska melt them down.

Richard had regained most of his strength. Kahlan was strong, and as beautiful as he remembered her. She had changed, though. Her face had grown more mature in the year they had been apart. When he gazed at her, he hungered for a piece of marble and his chisels so he could carve her face in stone.

Flesh in stone.

He turned and looked back along the pier, toward the plaza, with its semicircle of columns behind it. The fallen column had been restored. The plaza had been renamed “Liberty Square,” Victor’s idea. Richard asked if it shouldn’t be called “Liberty Circle,” since it was round, and not square.

Victor thought it sounded better as Liberty Square, so Richard called it Liberty Square. After all, the first man to declare himself free, there, had been Victor.

Kahlan gazed with him back toward the plaza.

“What do you think?” Richard asked her.

She shook her head, looking at best a little uneasy. “I don’t know, Richard. It just seems so strange to see it so . . . big. So . . . white.”

“You don’t like it?”

She quickly put a hand on his arm to dispel the notion. “No, it isn’t that, it’s just that it’s so . . .” her uncertain gaze returned down the pier—“big.”

The center of the plaza, where the statue Richard had carved had briefly stood, now held a towering marble statue being worked on by a number of stone carvers who used to work at the site carving misery and death.

Kamil was down there, learning the craft of stone carving from masters. His education started with a broom.

Richard had hired the carvers. With the fortune he had made helping the Order build its palace, he could easily afford it. The carvers were glad for such work—to exchange value for value.

The expert carvers were working on scaling up the small statue of Spirit, which Richard had carved for Kahlan, way back in their mountain home when she needed to witness vitality, courage, and indomitable spirit. It emerged anew in the best white Cavatura marble.

The bronze ring of the sundial had survived intact, and was being added to the piece. The statue rising in the center would cast its shadow on the curved dial plane. The words so many had touched that day would be there for all to see, now.

Kahlan had been enthusiastic about the concept, but had spent so many months with the carving Richard had done, that it was disorienting for her to see it on such a massive scale. She was eager for the day when the carvers were finished scaling it up and she could have her own statue of Spirit back.

“I hope you don’t mind sharing it with the world,” he said.

Kahlan smiled wistfully. “No, not at all.”

“Everyone loves it,” he assured her.

Her wonderful lilting laugh drifted out across the warm afternoon air.

“I’ll just have to get used to you showing people my body and soul.”

Together, they watched as the carvers working on the flowing robes checked their work with calipers against the statue Richard had carved and the reference points from wooden braces used to scale up the work.

Kahlan rubbed his lower back. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine. Now that you’re with me, I couldn’t feel better.”

Kahlan laughed, then. “As long as I don’t run you through?”

Richard’s laugh fell in easily with hers. “You know, when we tell our children how their mother ran their father through with a sword, it’s going to look pretty bad for you.”

“Are we going to have children, Richard?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Then I’ll risk the tale.”

As the warm breeze ruffled her hair, he kissed her brow.

Glancing along the line of trees, their leaves shimmering in the sunlight, Richard watched birds cavort above the riverbank, sweep into a group, and then soar together up over the semicircle of white marble columns standing in the expanse of green grass.

Kahlan leaned contentedly against his shoulder as they watched men, filled with pride, smiling while they worked on the statue standing before those columns.

In Altur’Rang, there was a new spirit.

In the former heart of the Order beat freedom.