Witch's Oath

13

Kahlan seemed lost in a quiet, lonely place on the fringes of panic when she heard Richard gasp in a breath.

She looked up into the life in his gray eyes, startled at him returning so abruptly. He smiled at her, too busy getting his breath to speak right then. Her fears, which she had been keeping under tight rein, were unexpectedly dispelled. Joy rushed in to displace despair.

Kahlan needed something more than words, though. She fell on him where he sat, holding him tight, feeling the life in him as his big arm came around to embrace her and pull her tight against him. It was salvation, redeeming her as she had been about to give up all hope.

“Lord Rahl!” Berdine squealed. “You’re back! You’re really back!”

He nodded, still panting.

Shale looked astonished. “How are you here? How is this possible?” The way she said it made it sound as if his return was almost unjust, a violation of everything she believed.

Richard swallowed, still catching his breath. He looked around at the forest of dead bodies, the empty vessels for souls now gone, perhaps, Kahlan thought, seeing them in a new and sympathetic light.

“I was lost. It’s beyond dark, there.” His haunted tone reflected everything behind those words. “I didn’t know where the veil was, or how to find my way back. Then I saw the cluster of light of your souls, the glimmer of your lives gathered together around me to show me the way back. That was what I needed.”

Berdine shook a finger at Kahlan. “That’s just what she said would bring you back!”

Richard chuckled. “I’m glad you listened to her. You all brought me back. Thank you.”

“The Law of Nines was the key,” Kahlan said.

Richard nodded, still drawing deep breaths. “It was the trigger for magic that made it work.”

Shale leaned in, looking bewildered to see him alive after being so clearly dead. She held up her wrists before him.

“We’re healed.” It sounded like an indictment. “Not just Vika. Kahlan and my wrists, and her face—we are all healed.”

Richard nodded. “I know. I healed Vika, then I healed the rest of us as well.” He ran a finger down Kahlan’s once bruised and swollen cheek and then held up his own wrists to show them that they, too, were no longer cut and bleeding.

Shale seemed to be bursting with questions. She started one, only to stop and start a different one. Finally she was able to settle on one and get it out.

“Lord Rahl, how could you have healed Vika? Her wounds were well beyond healing, but even if they hadn’t been quite so horrific and had been within the realm of the possible for healing, it would have taken many days to do such a complex healing. How is it possible that you healed her of such grievous wounds in the blink of an eye?”

Richard gazed into her eyes, looking for a long time as if gazing into her soul. “It was far more than the blink of an eye. The underworld is eternal. It never ends, so there is no such thing as time there. I could have taken months to heal her for all I know—there is no way to tell. In fact, it felt in many ways that I was there for that long. But here, despite how long I was there, only moments had passed. That was how my body survived until my soul could return. I was still connected to it through the Grace. There, those moments are an eternity that gave me the time to do what I needed to do. In a way, I was working in both worlds at the same time.”

The answer appeared to be worse than no answer to the sorceress. “Working in both worlds?” Shale pressed a hand to her forehead, looking exasperated as she tried to imagine the unimaginable. She pressed her palms against the side of her head, elbows up, looking like she feared she was descending into madness. “How is that even remotely possible?”

Richard shook his head as he sighed. “The only way I can begin to explain it is that there, in the underworld, I’m able to see and touch the threads of my gift in ways that I never could here, in this world. You might say that the lines of the Grace are revealed to me when I’m there.

“Those tendrils are more pure, more amazing, than any of us realize of ourselves. Things I could never do here, things I couldn’t even imagine doing, I can do there by touching the right strands in that line from Creation. It is beyond wondrous.”

He gestured toward Kahlan’s belly. “Those two lives growing in Kahlan are in the process of connecting all the countless filaments and fibers that will make up the lines of the Grace within each of them. We draw a representation of the Grace, but it is so much more than those simple diagrams. Each line is complex beyond our ability to comprehend.

“When I was beyond that outer circle of the Grace that represents the beginning of the underworld, I was able to see and touch those fibers, those strands and filaments, that connect us all to Creation. It’s more than merely life, Shale. It is all of Creation, the totality of it all. It is life and the absence of life, all connected within the Grace which we each have within ourselves.”

Shale bowed her head as she closed her eyes, fingers against her forehead. It looked like it was beyond overwhelming for her to fit it all into her understanding of the nature of the world of life. Kahlan reached over and put a hand over the sorceress’s other hand in her lap, giving her confusion and disbelief a bit of silent empathy.

“Believe me, I, too, have trouble comprehending it all.”

Even though Kahlan had been in that place, and understood some of what Richard said, he had been born a wizard, and he had a much deeper understanding of all those things. It was hard for her to remember the time when she had first met him, and he knew nothing about magic, and she had to teach him some of what she knew about it. He had come a long way. His understanding of it all had at some point surpassed hers. In some ways, it was hard to even grasp the reach of his awareness.

Vika was already up, hurriedly pulling on her red leather outfit. “Somehow, Lord Rahl, ‘thank you’ hardly touches it. You told me to be strong and hold on for you and you would take care of me. You were as good as your word. You always are.

“I find what you did impossible to understand and hard to believe. It also makes me appreciate not only life, but the bond, more than ever before and in ways I never did before.”

She gestured to her sisters of the Agiel after pulling a red leather sleeve up her arm. “We have all been to the cusp before, but this was different. This was seeing the threads of life, as you put it. I’ve seen the Grace drawn before, but when we were there, you showed it to me within myself.” She searched for words. “You touched my soul. I now understand your bond to each of us as never before. You are the magic against magic. I am honored to be back in the world of life so that I can be the steel against steel for you and the Mother Confessor.”

Berdine stood and helped tighten and buckle some of the straps on Vika’s outfit. “For today,” she said to Vika, “it’s all right with me for you to be Lord Rahl’s favorite.”

Richard shook his head with a smile. “I don’t have favorites. I love you all the same.”

“I understand that, now,” Vika said with a nod.

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Berdine told Vika, ignoring Richard. “He says that all the time. It’s not true. For today, you deserve to be his favorite for hanging on to life so you could be here to help us all.”

“Richard,” Kahlan said, eager to get back to the important matter at hand, “Michec is still down here somewhere. We need to find him.”

Richard agreed with a nod as he stood and slid his sword back into its scabbard. “Let’s go.”