Stone of Tears

Chapter 70

Richard sat in Kahlan’s tall chair, stroking the long locks of her hair. He had pulled them out of his shirt, not wanting to stab himself through her hair. He didn’t know how long he had been sitting there, touching her hair, lost in memories of her, but he noticed it was just turning dark out the windows.

Richard laid the hair carefully over the arm of the chair, and picked up the knife once more. In a daze of anguish, he put the point to his heart. His knuckles were white around the handle.

It was time.

At last it was going to be over. The pain would end.

His brow creased. What was it Mistress Sanderholt had said? Kahlan had told her of him? He wondered if Kahlan had told Mistress Sanderholt anything else. Maybe a last message for him, before she died. What could it hurt to ask? He could die, then.

Richard pulled Mistress Sanderholt from her kitchen, into a small pantry lined with stores. He closed the door.

“What have you done, Richard?”

“I killed her murderers.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m sorry about that. Those men did not belong on the council. Let me get you something to eat?”

“No. I don’t want anything. Mistress Sanderholt, you said Kahlan told you of me. Is that right?”

She didn’t look like she wished to dredge up the memories, but at last she took a deep breath and nodded. “She came home, but things had changed here. Kelton had . . .”

“I don’t care what happened here, just tell me about Kahlan.”

“Prince Fyren was murdered. She was convicted, wrongly, of that crime and a whole list of others, including treason. The wizard in charge sentenced her to be . . . executed.”

“Beheaded,” Richard said.

She gave a reluctant nod. “She escaped, with the help of some of her friends, killing the wizard in so doing, then went into hiding. But she got word to me, and I visited her. At those visits, she told me of all the things she had been through. She told me all about you. She liked to talk of no thing more.”

“Why didn’t she escape? Why didn’t she run?”

“She said she had to wait for a wizard named Zedd. To help you.”

Richard’s eyes closed as pain tightened in his chest. “And so they caught her while she waited.”

“No. That’s not how it happened.” Richard stared at the grain patterns on the wood floor while she went on. “The wizard she waited for returned. He is the one who turned her in.”

Richard’s head came up. “What? Zedd came here? Zedd wouldn’t turn Kahlan over to be executed.”

Her back stiffened. “Turn her in he did. He stood on the platform before the cheering crowd and ordered it done. I watched as that vile man gave the nod to the axeman.”

Richard’s mind spun in confusion. “Zedd? A skinny, old man, with long, wavy, white hair sticking out in every direction?”

“That is he. First Wizard Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander.”

For the first time, a spark of hope ignited in him. He didn’t know everything about Zedd, but he did know him capable of similar things. Could it be?

He grabbed her by her shoulders. “Where is she buried?”

Mistress Sanderholt took him out into the dusk, to the secluded courtyard where Confessors were buried. She told him that Kahlan’s body had been burned in a funeral pyre, supervised by the First Wizard. Then she left him to be alone with the immense marker stone over her ashes.

Richard ran his fingers over the letters carved in the gray granite.

“She is not here,” he said aloud, quoting from the marker. Could it be a message? Could she be alive? Had it been a trick by Zedd to save her life? Why would he do it? Maybe, maybe, to keep them from chasing after her.

Richard fell to his knees in the snow before the monument. Dare he hope, just to have his hopes crushed?

He put his trembling hands together and bowed his head.

“Dear spirits, I know I have done wicked things, but I have always tried to do right. I have fought to help people and to uphold your principles of honesty and right.

“Please, dear spirits, help me.

“I’ve never prayed to you in earnest for anything before. Not like this. I’ve never meant anything like this before. Please, if you never again help me, help me this one time.

“Please, dear spirits, I can’t go on if I don’t know. I’ve given up everything to see right done. Please grant me this. Let me know if she is alive.”

His head hanging, tears dripping from his face, he saw flickers of light on the ground before him.

Richard looked up. A glowing spirit towered over him.

When he recognized who it was, he went rigid.

Kahlan had walked around the garden countless times. Part of her hesitation was dread that she might be granted confirmation of her fear. Finally, she she knelt down and folded her hands together on a rock before her. She bowed her head.

“Dear spirits, I know I am not worthy, but please grant this. I must know if Richard is all right. If he still loves me.”

She swallowed back the burning sensation in her throat. “I must know if I will ever see him again.

“I have been disrespectful, I know, and I have no excuse but my own failing as a good person. If you grant me this, I will do whatever the good spirits require of me.

“But please, dear spirits, I must know if I will ever see my Richard again.”

Her head hung as he cried. Tears dripped from her face. Before her, on the ground, flickers of light danced.

Kahlan looked up, into the face of the glowing spirit towering over her. She felt the warmth of the calm smile from the face she knew.

Slowly, involuntarily, Kahlan rose to her feet.

“Is it really . . . you?”

“Yes, Kahlan, it is I, Denna.”

“But . . . you went to the Keeper. You took the mark Darken Rahl put on Richard. You went to the Keeper in Richard’s place.”

The glowing smile of peace swelled Kahlan’s heart with joy.

“The Keeper was repulsed by what I had done. He rejected me. I went instead to be with what you think of as the good spirits.

“In much the same way that what I did earned me peace I never expected, the sacrifices you and Richard have selflessly made for others, and each other, have merited the granting of this peace to the two of you. Because you each possess both sides of the magic, and are linked to me by deeds, before I pass beyond the veil I am empowered to bring you together, for a brief time, in a place between the worlds.”

Denna, draped in long, flowing robes, spread her arms wide. The luminous folds hung from her arms all the way to the ground.

“Come, child. Come into my arms, and I will take you to Richard.”

Trembling, Kahlan stepped under Denna’s outstretched arm.

Richard stood under the illumination of Denna’s arm as it came tenderly around him. The world vanished into the radiance. He didn’t know what to expect, only that he wanted to see Kahlan more than life itself.

The overpowering, white blaze dimmed to a mellow glow.

Kahlan appeared before him. She gasped, and then threw herself into his arms. She wailed his name as she clutched him.

They embraced, without words, just feeling the presence of each other. He felt her warmth, her breathing, her quaking. He didn’t want to ever let her go.

They sank to the soft support under them. He didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t care; it was solid enough to hold them. He wanted her arms around him forever. She finally stopped weeping, and put her head against his shoulder as he held her tight.

At last, she looked up to his face, her beautiful green eyes gazing deeply into his. “Richard, I’m so sorry I made you put that collar around your . . .”

Richard put his ringer to her lips. “It was all for a reason. It took me time to understand how foolish I was being, and how brave you are. That is all that matters. It makes me love you all the more, because you sacrificed your own needs to save me.”

She shook her head. “My Richard. How did you get here?”

“I prayed to the good spirits. Denna came.”

“Me too. Denna made a sacrifice for you, too. She took the power of the mark, so you would live. Denna gave your life back to me. She is at peace now.”

“I know.” He ran his hand down her head, down her short hair. “What happened to your hair?”

“A wizard cut it off.”

“A wizard. Well then, I guess a wizard will have to restore it to you.”

Richard ran his hand lovingly down her hair. He remembered the way Zedd had stroked his hand down his own jaw to make his beard grow. It seemed as if from having seen Zedd do it, he knew how to do it, too. With each stroke of his hand, her hair lengthened. Richard continued to pull from the calm center within him, and her hair continued to lengthen. When it was the same as before, he stopped.

Kahlan lifted a long lock of her hair, looking at it in wonder. “Richard, how did you do that?”

“I have the gift, remember?”

She beamed with her special smile, the smile of sharing she gave no other. Kahlan ran her hand down his cheek.

“I’m sorry, Richard, but I don’t like your beard. I like you the way you were before.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Really? Well then, since we set you back to right, we will just have to do the same for me, too.”

Richard drew his hand down his jaw, again pulling the power from the calm center.

Kahlan gasped in astonishment. “Richard! It’s gone! Your beard is gone! You made it vanish! How did you do that!”

“I have the gift for both sides of the magic.”

She blinked in surprise. “Subtractive Magic? Richard, is any of this real, or am I just dreaming it?”

And then he kissed her, long and deep.

“Feels real to me,” he said breathlessly.

“Richard, I’m afraid. You’re with the Sisters. I will never again be able to be with you. I can’t go on if you are going to be taken from . . .”

“I’m not with the Sisters. I’m in Aydindril.”

“Aydindril!”

He nodded. “I left the Palace of the Prophets. Sister Verna helped me. Then I had to go to D’Hara.”

Richard told her everything that had happened since he had left her, and she told him all she had been through. Richard could hardly believe the things she had done.

“I’m so proud of you,” he said. “You truly are the Mother Confessor. You are the greatest Mother Confessor that ever lived.”

“Go back to the hall before the council chambers, and you will see big paintings of Confessors who were greater than I will ever be.”

“That, my love, I doubt.”

He kissed her again. A hot, passionate kiss. She kissed him back, desperately, as if she needed nothing so much from life as to be in his arms kissing him. He kissed her cheek, her ears and her neck. She moaned against him.

“Richard, is the scar, Darken Rahl’s mark, really gone?”

He pulled his shirt open to show her.

Her hand stroked his chest. “It’s really true,” she whispered.

Tenderly, she kissed his chest. She ran her hand over him, kissing where it had been. She gave a sucking kiss to his nipple.

“Not fair,” he said breathlessly. “I get to kiss anything on you that you kiss on me.”

Kahlan looked him in the eye as she unbuttoned her shirt. “Bargain struck.”

She started pulling at his clothes as he trailed wet kisses down her soft flesh. Her breathing quickened with each.

“Kahlan,” he managed to say as he pulled away, “the good spirits may be watching us.”

She pushed him onto his back and kissed him. “If they truly are good spirits, they will turn their backs.”

The feel of her warm flesh made his head spin. The feel of the shape of her made him moan with need. Around them, the mellow glow pulsed with their breathing. It seemed to be an extension of their heat.

Richard rolled over on top of her. He gazed down into her green eyes. “I love you, Kahlan Amnell. Now, and always.”

“And I you, my Richard.”

As they pressed their lips together, she wrapped her arms around his neck, and her soft legs around his.

In the void between worlds, in the soft glow of a timeless place, they were one.