Kahlan had been taught to use a sword by her father, King Wyborn. At least, he had been king before Kahlan’s mother took him for her mate. King was an insignificant title to a Confessor. King Wyborn of Galea had had two children with his queen and first wife, so Kahlan had both an older half sister and a half brother.
Kahlan wanted very much to make a good show of her training under her father. It was frustrating to know she was far better with a weapon than she was showing Richard. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t know what to do, but that she simply couldn’t do it; her muscles were not yet strong enough, nor would they respond nearly quickly enough.
Something about it, though, was still unsettling: Richard fought in a way Kahlan had never encountered in her training, or in the real combat she had seen. She couldn’t define or analyze the difference, but she could feel it, and she didn’t know what to do to counter it.
In the beginning, Richard and Kahlan had most of their battles in the meadow outside their house, so that Kahlan wouldn’t be as likely to trip over something, and if she did, not as likely to hit her head on anything granite. Cara was their ever-present audience. As time passed, the battles lasted longer, and grew more strenuous. They became furious and exhausting.
A couple of times Kahlan had been so upset by Richard’s relentless attitude toward their sword fights that she didn’t speak to him for hours afterward, lest she let slip words she didn’t really mean and which she knew she would regret.
Richard would then sometimes tell her, “Save your anger for the enemy. Here it will do you no good; there, it can overcome fear. Use this time now to teach your sword what to do, so later it will do it without conscious thought.”
Kahlan well knew that an enemy was never kind. If Richard gave in to kindness—awarded her false pride—it could only serve her ill. As aggravating as such lessons sometimes were, it was impossible to remain angry with Richard for very long, especially because she knew she was really only angry with herself.
Kahlan had been around weapons and men who used them all her life. A few of the better ones, in addition to her father, were on occasion her teachers. None of them had fought like Richard. Richard made fighting with a blade look like art. He gave beauty to the act of dealing death. There was something about it, though, tickling at her, something she knew she still wasn’t grasping.
Richard had told her once, before she had been hurt, that he had come to believe that magic itself could be an art form. She had told him she thought that was crazy. Now, she didn’t know. From the bits of the story she’d heard, she suspected that Richard had used magic in something of that way to defeat the chimes: he had created a solution where it had never before existed, or even been imagined.
One day, in one of their fierce sword fights, she had been positive she had him dead to rights and that she was delivering the stroke of victory. He effortlessly evaded what she had been sure was her killing strike and killed her instead. He made what had seemed impossible look natural.
It was in that instant that the whole concept came clear for her. She had been looking at it all wrong.
It wasn’t that Richard could fight well with a sword, or that he could create beautiful statues with a knife and chisel, it was that Richard was one with the blade—the blade in any form: sword, knife, chisel, or willow switch. He was a master—not of sword fighting or carving as such, but, in the most fundamental way, of the blade itself.
Fighting was but one use of a blade. His balance for using his sword to destroy—magic always sought balance—was using a blade to carve things of beauty. She had been looking at the individual parts of what he did, trying to understand them separately; Richard saw only one unified whole.
Everything about him: the way he shot an arrow; the way he carved; the way he used a sword; even the way he walked with such fluid reasoned intent—they weren’t separate things, separate abilities…they were all the same thing.
Richard paused. “What’s the matter? Your face is turning white.”
Kahlan stood with her willow sword lowered. “You’re dancing with death. That’s what you’re doing with your sword.”
Richard blinked at her as if she had just announced that rain was wet. “But, of course.” Richard touched the amulet hanging at his chest. In the center, surrounded by a complex of gold and silver lines, was a teardrop-shaped ruby as big as her thumbnail. “I told you that a long time ago. Are you just now coming to believe me?”
She stood gaping. “Yes, I think I am.”
Kahlan recalled all too clearly his chilling words to her when she had first seen the amulet around his neck, and she had asked him what it was:
“The ruby is meant to represent a drop of blood. It is the symbolic representation of the way of the primary edict.
“It means only one thing, and everything: cut. Once committed to fight, cut. Everything else is secondary. Cut. That is your duty, your purpose, your hunger. There is no rule more important, no commitment that overrides that one. Cut.
“The lines are a portrayal of the dance. Cut from the void, not from bewilderment. Cut the enemy as quickly and directly as possible. Cut with certainty. Cut decisively, resolutely. Cut into his strength. Flow through the gaps in his guard. Cut him. Cut him down utterly. Don’t allow him a breath. Crush him. Cut him without mercy to the depths of his spirit.
“It is the balance to life: death. It is the dance with death.
“It is the law a war wizard lives by, or he dies.”
The dance was art. It was no different, really, from carving. Art expressed through a blade. It was all one and the same to him. He saw no distinction, for within him, there was none.
They shared the meadow with a red fox who hunted it for rodents, mostly, but wasn’t averse to chewing on whatever juicy bugs she could catch there. Their horses didn’t mind the fox so much, but they didn’t like the coyotes that sometimes visited. Kahlan rarely saw them, but she knew they were about when the horses snorted their displeasure. She often heard the coyotes barking at night, higher up in the surrounding slopes. They would let out long flat howls, followed by a series of yips. Some nights, the wolves sang, their long monotone howls, without the yapping of the coyotes, echoing through the mountains. Once Kahlan saw a black bear off in the trees, ambling along, giving them only a passing look, and once a bobcat passed near their house, sending the horses off in a panic. It took Richard the better part of a day to find the horses.
Chipmunks begged at their door, and regularly invited themselves into the house for a look around. Kahlan often caught herself talking to them and asking questions as if they could understand her every word. The way they paused and cocked their heads at her made her suspect they really could. In the early mornings, small herds of deer often visited the meadow, some leaving fresh, inverted heart-shaped tracks near the door as they passed. Lately, aggressive bucks in rut, bearing huge racks, had been showing up. One of the hides Kahlan wore was from a wolf injured by one of those bucks up in an oak grove not far away. Richard had spared the wounded animal a lingering, suffering death.
Beside the sword fights, they went on marches up into the mountains to help Kahlan strengthen her limbs. Those walks were taxing on her leg muscles, sometimes leaving her so sore she couldn’t sleep. Richard would rub oil into her feet, calves, and thighs when they hurt too much for her to sleep. That usually worked, relaxing her and making her drowsy and able to fall asleep.
She distinctly remembered the rainy night after walking home in the wet and cold, when she lay on her back in bed, eyes shut, as Richard rubbed warm oil into her leg muscles. He whispered that her legs finally seemed to have gotten back all their tone and shape. Kahlan looked up and saw desire in his eyes. It was an almost forgotten thrill to know his hunger for her. She had been so startled that she felt tears trickle down her cheeks with the joy of suddenly feeling like a woman again—a desirable woman.
Richard raised her leg to his mouth and gently kissed her bare ankle. By the time his soft warm kisses reache
d her thighs, she was panting with suddenly and unexpectedly awakened desire. He laid open her nightshirt and rubbed the warm oil on her exposed belly. His big hands moved up her body to caress her breasts. He breathed through his mouth as he rolled her nipples until they were hard between his finger and thumb.
“Why, Lord Rahl,” she said in a breathy whisper, “I do believe you are going to get carried away.”
He paused, seeming to check himself and what he was doing, and then pulled back.
“I won’t break, Richard,” she said as she caught his hand and pulled it back. “I’m all right, now. I’d like it if you got carried away.”
She clutched his hair in her fists as his kisses covered her breasts and then her shoulders and then worked up her neck. His panting warmed her ear. His exploring fingers made her frantic with need. His body against hers felt wildly erotic. She no longer felt weary. Finally, he tenderly kissed her lips. She let him know by the way she returned the kiss that he needn’t be all that tender.
As the rain drummed on the roof, as lightning lit the lines and the clenched-fist strength of the statue in the window and thunder rumbled through the mountains, Kahlan, without fearing it, without worrying about it, without wondering if she would be able, held Richard tightly as they made quiet, gentle, fierce love. They had never needed each other as much as that night. All her fears and worries evaporated in the heat of overpowering need welling up through her. She wept with the strength of her pleasure and the release of her emotions.
When later Richard lay in her arms, she felt a tear roll off his face, and she asked him if something was wrong. He shook his head and said distantly that he had for so long feared losing her that sometimes he had believed he might go mad. It seemed as if he could finally allow himself release from his private terror. The pain Kahlan had first seen in his eyes when she couldn’t remember his name was at last banished.
Their marches into the mountains ranged farther and farther. Sometimes they took packs and spent the night in the woods, often in a wayward pine, when they could find one. The rugged terrain offered a never-ending variety of vistas. In places, sheer rock cliffs towered over them. In other places, they stood at the brink of sheer drops and watched the sun turn the sky orange and purple as it went down while wispy clouds drifted through quiet green valleys below. They went to towering waterfalls with their own rainbows. There were clear, sunlit pools up in the mountains where they swam. They ate on rocks overlooking rugged sights no one but they ever saw. They followed animal trails through vast woods of gnarled trees, and others among the dark forest floor where grew trees with trunks like huge brown columns, so big twenty men couldn’t have joined hands around them.
Richard had Kahlan practice with a bow to help strengthen her arms. They hunted small game for stews, or for roasting. Some they smoked and dried along with the fish they caught. Richard usually didn’t eat meat, but occasionally he did. Not eating meat was part of the balance needed by his gift for when he was forced to kill. That need of balance was lessening because he wasn’t killing. He was at peace. Perhaps the balance was now being served by his carving. As time passed, he was able to eat more meat. When they were out on journeys, they usually ate rice and beans along with bannock and any berries they collected along the way, in addition to game they caught.
Kahlan helped clean fish and salt them down and smoke yet others for their winter stores. It was a job that she had never before undertaken. They collected berries, nuts, and wild apples and put a lot of those away in the root cellar along with root crops he had purchased before coming up into the mountains. Richard dug up small apple trees, when he found any, and planted them in the meadow by the house so that, he said, someday they would have apples close at hand.
Kahlan wondered how long he intended to keep them away from where they were needed. The silent question always hung there, seen by all, but unspoken. Cara never asked him, but she sometimes made some small mention of it to Kahlan when they were alone. She was Lord Rahl’s guard, and glad to be close at hand, so she generally offered no objection. He was, after all, Lord Rahl, and he was safe.
Kahlan had always felt the weight of their responsibilities. Like the towering mountains all around, looming over them, always shadowing them, that responsibility could never be completely forgotten. As much as she loved the house Richard had built on the edge of the meadow, and as much as she loved exploring the rugged, beautiful, imposing, and ever-changing mountains, with each passing day she more and more felt that weight and the anxious need to be back where they were needed most. She fretted at what could be going on that they weren’t aware of. The Imperial Order was not going to stay put; an army that size liked to move. Soldiers, especially soldiers of that ilk, became restless in long encampments, and sooner or later started causing trouble. She worried about all the people who needed the reassurance of Richard’s presence, his guidance—and hers. There were people who their whole lives had depended on the Mother Confessor always being there to stand up for them.
With winter coming on, Richard had made Kahlan a warm mantle, mostly out of wolf fur. The other two pelts were coyotes. Richard had found one of the coyotes with a broken leg, probably from a fall, and had put it out of its misery. The other had been a rogue chased off by the local pack. It had taken to raiding food from their little smokehouse. Richard had taken the sly looter with a single arrow.
They had collected most of the wolf pelts from injured or old animals. Richard, Kahlan, and Cara often tracked wolf packs as a way of helping to build Kahlan’s strength. Kahlan came to recognize their tracks, and even learned to know at a glance, if the prints were in mud or soft dirt, their front paws from the rear. Richard showed her how the toes of the front spread out more, with a more well-defined heel pad than the rear paw. He had located several packs in the mountains, and the three of them often followed one group or family to see if they could do so without the wolves knowing. Richard said it was a kind of game guides used to play to keep in practice—to keep their senses sharp.
After Kahlan’s mantle was completed, they had turned to collecting pelts for Cara’s winter fur. Cara, who always wore the clothes of her profession, had liked the idea of Lord Rahl making something for her to wear—the same as he had made for Kahlan. While she had never said as much, Kahlan had always felt that Cara saw the mantle he was making for her as a mark of his feelings, his respect—proof that she was more than just his bodyguard.
This had been a journey to find pelts for Cara’s mantle, and she had been eager. She had even cooked for them.
Now, coming down off the ridge where Kahlan had finally bested Richard in a sword fight, Kahlan was in a good mood. For the last two days they had been following the wolf pack up in the mountains to the west of their house. It was not simply a hunt, and not simply to get a pelt for Cara, but part of the never-ending pressure Richard put on Kahlan to keep up.
Almost every day for the last two months, Richard had her marching over the most difficult terrain, the kind of terrain that made her strain every muscle in her body. As Kahlan had gotten stronger, the marches had gotten longer. At first they were only across the house; now they were across mountains. On top of that, he frequently attacked her with his willow sword and poked fun at her if she didn’t put in her absolute hardest fight.
In a way, finally beating Richard in one of their mock sword fights puzzled her. He might have been tired from carrying the heaviest pack and scouting some of the steeper trails by himself first and then coming back for them, but he hadn’t slacked off, and she had still killed him. She couldn’t help but be pleased with herself, even if she did question her victory. Out of the corner of her eye, she had caught him smiling as he looked at her. Kahlan knew Richard was proud of her for besting him. In a way, his losing was a victory for him.
Kahlan thought that she must be stronger, now, after all Richard had put her through, than at any time in her life. It had not been easy, but it had been worth at last feeling like the carving in t
he window of her bedroom.
Kahlan put a hand on Richard’s shoulder as he followed Cara down broken granite blocks placed by chance like big, irregular steps. “Richard, how did I beat you?”
He saw in her eyes the seriousness of the question. “You killed me because I made a mistake.”
“A mistake? You mean, perhaps you had gotten too confident? Perhaps you were just tired, or were thinking of something else.”
“Doesn’t really matter, does it? Whatever it was, it was a mistake that cost me my life in the game. In a real fight, I would have died. You’ve taught me a valuable lesson to redouble my resolve to always put in my absolute full effort. It just goes to remind me, though, that I could make a mistake at any time, and lose.”
Kahlan couldn’t help but to be struck by the obvious question: was he making a mistake in staying out of the effort to keep the Midlands free from the tyranny of the Imperial Order? She couldn’t help feeling the pull to help her people, even though Richard still felt that if the people didn’t want his leadership, his efforts could do no good. As Mother Confessor, Kahlan knew that while people didn’t always understand that what a leader did was done in their best interest, that was no reason to abandon them.
With winter coming on, she hoped the Imperial Order would choose to stay put in Anderith. Kahlan needed to convince Richard to return to help the Midlands, but she was at a loss to know how. He was firm in his reasoning, and she could find no chink in the armor of his logic. Emotion did not sway him in this.
Cara led them down the craggy precipice, having to backtrack only twice. It was a difficult descent. Cara was pleased with herself, and that Richard had let her pick the route. It was her pelt they were going after, so he let her lead them across the tangle of undergrowth in the ravine at the bottom and then up the following lip of the notch where trees clung with roots like talons to the rocky rise.
The wind coming up the ravine had turned bitter. The clouds had thickened until they snuffed out the golden rays of sunlight. Their ascent took them up into a gloomy, dark wood of towering evergreens. Far over their heads, the treetops swayed in the wind, but down on the ground, it was still. Their footfalls were hushed by a thick spongy mat of brown needles.
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