Half a dozen dead men lay at the far end of the tent, covered with blankets. Here and there a bloody hand stuck out from under a cover. One man was missing a boot. Kahlan stared, unable to make her mind work, unable to understand how the soldier had lost a boot. It seemed so silly—dying and losing a boot. Tragedy and comedy together under a shroud.
Warren lay on his back on a pallet on the ground. Sister Philippa was on the far side of him, her tall frame bent over the youthful wizard, holding his hand. Sister Phoebe was on the near side, holding his other hand. Both women turned tearstained faces up to see Verna above them.
“Warren,” Sister Philippa said, “it’s Verna. She’s here. And Kahlan, too.”
The two Sisters quickly moved out of the way for Verna and Kahlan to take their places. They covered their mouths to hold in their cries as they fled the tent.
Warren was as white as the stacks of clean bandages lying nearby. His eyes were open wide as he stared up…as if he could no longer see. His curly blond hair was matted in sweat. His robes were soaked in blood.
“Warren,” Verna moaned. “Oh, Warren.”
“Verna? Kahlan?” he asked in a breathy whisper.
“Yes, my love.” Verna kissed his hand a dozen times.
Kahlan squeezed his other limp hand. “I’m here, too, Warren.”
“I had to hold on. Till you both came back. To tell you both.”
“Tell us what, Warren?” Verna asked through her tears.
“Kahlan…” he whispered.
She leaned in. “I’m here, Warren. Don’t try to talk, just—”
“Listen to me.”
Kahlan pressed his hand to her cheek. “I’m listening, Warren.”
“Richard is right. His vision. I had to tell you.”
Kahlan didn’t know what to say.
A smile came to his ashen face. “Verna…”
“What is it, my love?”
“I love you. Always have.”
Verna could hardly get her words past her choking tears. “Warren, don’t die. Don’t die. Please don’t die.”
“Give me a kiss,” Warren whispered, “while I still live. And don’t mourn what ends, but what a good life we’ve had. Kiss me, my love.”
Verna bent over him and met his lips with hers, giving him a gentle, loving kiss as her tears dripped onto his face.
Unable to bear the scene, Kahlan staggered out of the tent, finding Zedd’s protective arms waiting. She hid her weeping against his shoulder.
“What are we doing?” she cried. “What’s it all for? What good is any of it? We’re losing everything.”
Zedd had no answer for her tears at the futility of it all.
The minutes dragged on. Kahlan forced herself to be strong, to be the Mother Confessor. She couldn’t let the men see her giving up.
Silent men stood nearly, not wanting to look in the direction of the tent where Warren lay dying.
When General Meiffert materialized out of the darkness, the relief on Cara’s face was evident. He rushed up close to Cara, but didn’t touch her.
“I’m glad to see you safely returned,” he said to Kahlan. “How is Warren?”
Kahlan couldn’t speak.
Zedd shook his head. “I didn’t think he would live this long. I think he held on so he could see his wife.”
The general nodded sorrowfully. “We caught the man who did it.”
Kahlan came to full attention. “Bring him to me,” she growled.
Without hesitation the general hurried off to retrieve the assassin. When Kahlan gestured, Cara went with him.
“What did he say to you?” Zedd asked in a quiet voice so that others wouldn’t hear. “He wanted to tell you something.”
Kahlan took a purging breath. “He said, ‘Richard is right.’”
Zedd looked away in forlorn misery. Warren was his friend. Kahlan never knew Zedd to take a liking to anyone the way he had taken to Warren. They shared things she knew she could never understand. Despite his young appearance, Warren was over a hundred and fifty years old, close to the same age as Verna. To Zedd, who was always looked up to as the wise old wizard, it must have been a particular comfort to share wizardly matters with one who understood such things, instead of constantly needing explanation and direction.
“He said the same to me,” Zedd whispered tearfully.
“Why didn’t Warren use his gift?” Kahlan asked.
Zedd wiped a finger across his cheek. “He was walking past, just as the man seized and stabbed Holly. Perhaps the assassin couldn’t find his target, or maybe he became lost and confused, or he could have just panicked and decided to stab someone and Holly was handy at that moment.”
Kahlan wiped her hands back across her cheeks. “Maybe he had been told to look for a wizard in such robes, and when he saw Warren, he stabbed Holly to cause a commotion so he could get at Warren.”
“That could be. Warren doesn’t really know. It all happened in an instant. Warren was right there, and just reacted. I asked, but he didn’t know why he didn’t use his power. Perhaps in that terrible flash of the knife, he feared to kill Holly in the process, since the man had her and was stabbing her. His instinct to save her just caused him to snatch for the knife. It was a fatal mistake.”
“Maybe Warren simply hesitated before using his power.”
Zedd shrugged painfully. “A split-second hesitation has been the end of a lot of wizards.”
“If I hadn’t hesitated,” Kahlan said as she stared off into bitter memories, “Nicci wouldn’t have had me. She wouldn’t have Richard, now.”
“Don’t try to fix the past, dear one—it can’t be done.”
“What about the future?”
Zedd’s gaze sought hers. “Meaning?”
“Remember at the end of last winter, when we left camp—when the Order began moving?” When Zedd nodded, she went on. “Warren pointed at this place on the map. He said we had to be here to stop the Order.”
“Are you suggesting he knew he would die here?”
“You tell me.”
“I’m a wizard, not a prophet.”
“But Warren is.” When he said nothing, Kahlan asked in a whisper, “What about Holly?”
“I don’t know. I was just arriving to talk to Warren. It had just happened. Soldiers were jumping the man. Warren yelled orders for them not to kill him. I guess he was thinking the assassin might have valuable information. I saw Holly, bleeding from her wounds, in shock. I immediately had Warren brought in here and started to work on him. Sisters rushed in and took Holly to another tent.”
Zedd’s heartsick gaze sank to the cold ground. “I did everything I know to do. It wasn’t enough.”
Kahlan enclosed his shoulders protectively in her arm. “It was out of your hands from the first, Zedd.”
It was disorienting to see her source of strength in a state of such painful weakness. It was irrational to expect him to be unemotional and strong in such circumstances, but it was still disconcerting. In that moment, Kahlan was overcome with a sense of all the loss Zedd had suffered in his life; it was all there in his wet hazel eyes.
Men made way for the returning General Meiffert and Cara. Behind them, two burly soldiers had a wiry young man—little more than a boy, really. He was muscular, but no match for the men who had him. His hair tumbled down across a forehead above dark contemptuous eyes. He wore a proud sneer.
“So,” the lad said, trying to sound tough, “I guess that in my service to the Order I knifed someone important. That makes me a hero of the Order.”
“Make him kneel before the Mother Confessor,” General Meiffert said with quiet command.
The two soldiers kicked the back of the young man’s knees to take him down. He snickered as he knelt before her.
“So, you’re the big important whore I’ve heard so much about. Too bad you weren’t around—I’d have loved to have cut you. I guess I showed some people I’m pretty good with a knife.”
“So in my a
bsence,” Kahlan said, “you cut a child, instead.”
“Just for practice. I’d have cut a lot more people if these big dumb oxen wouldn’t have lucked into jumping me. But I still did my duty to the Order and the Creator.”
It was the bravado of someone who knew he was about to pay the ultimate price for his actions. He was trying to convince himself that he had fulfilled a valuable service. He wanted to die a hero, and then go straight to the Creator for his reward in the afterlife.
Verna emerged from the tent. There was no hurry in her movements. Her face was ashen and drawn. Kahlan took hold of her arm, ready to help if Verna should need it.
Verna stopped when she saw the young man on his knees.
“This is him?” she asked.
Kahlan put her other hand tenderly to Verna’s back, silently offering support.
“This is him,” Kahlan confirmed.
“That’s right.” The lad sneered up at Verna. “I’m the one who knifed the enemy wizard. I’m a hero. The Order will bring relief and justice to the people, and I helped do it. Your kind is always trying to keep us down.”
“Keep you down,” Verna repeated in a dead tone.
“Those who are born with all the luck and advantages—they never want to share. I waited, but no one ever gave me a chance in life until the Order did. I’m a hero of downtrodden people everywhere. I’ve struck a blow against the oppressors of mankind. I’ve helped bring justice to those who are never given a chance. I killed an evil man. I’m a hero!”
The silence of everyone nearby was all the more grim with the backdrop of activity going on as men searched the camp for other assassins. Officers called out names, getting quick replies. Troops searching for invaders trotted through the night, their chain mail and weapons jingling like thousands of tiny bells.
The man on his knees grinned at Verna. “The Creator will give me my reward in the next life. I’m not afraid to die. I’ve earned eternity in his everlasting Light.”
Verna passed her gaze among the eyes of all those gathered.
“I don’t care what you do to him,” she said, “but I want to hear his screams the entire night. I want this camp to hear his screams the entire night. I want the Order’s scouts to hear his screams. That will be my tribute to Warren.”
The young man licked his lips, realizing things weren’t going as he had expected.
“That isn’t fair!” the young assassin shouted in protest.
Panic began to tremble through his body. He had been prepared for a martyr’s death, a quick end. This was something unforeseen.
“He died quick. I should have the same consideration! This isn’t fair!”
“Fair? What isn’t fair,” Verna said with terrible calmness, “is that your mother ever opened her legs for your father. We shall now belatedly correct her mistake. What isn’t fair is that a good and kind man died at the hands of a sniveling little coward so lacking in sense that he is incapable of recognizing the lies he now spews out at us.
“You wish to trade your life for the one you have taken? You wish to die in a cause you foolishly believe to be noble? You shall have your wish, young man. But before you die, you shall fully understand what it is you have surrendered, how precious is your life, and how utterly wasted. You shall come to regret your mother’s act of creation as much as do we.”
Verna swept a look of finality over the group watching. “This is my wish. Please see to its execution.”
Cara took a step forward. “Let me do it, then.” Her grim face held no hint of relish. “I would be best at carrying out your wish as you intend it, Verna.”
The lad laughed hysterically. “A woman? You all think you’re going to have some big blond bitch try to teach me a lesson? You’re all as crazy as I’ve heard.”
Verna nodded. “I will be indebted to you, Cara.” She started to leave, but paused. “Don’t let him die before morning, when I will come to witness it. I wish to look into his eyes and see if this young man has come to understand the nature of reality, and its lack of fairness, before he forfeits his life for nothing of worth and for his part in a great evil.”
“I promise you,” Cara said softly to Verna, “that even though this night will seem forever to you in your grief, it will be infinitely longer for him.”
Verna simply touched Cara’s shoulder in appreciation on her way past.
After Verna had walked off into the darkness, Cara turned to Kahlan. “I would ask to use a tent. No one should have to see what I do to him. His screams will be knowledge enough.”
“As you wish.”
“Mother Confessor!” The young man struggled frantically, but the soldiers had him in a firm grip. “If you’re so good as you claim, then show me mercy!”
Drool ran from the corner of the boy’s mouth and hung swinging in rhythm with his panting.
“But I have,” Kahlan said. “I am allowing you to suffer the sentence Verna has named, and not the one I would impose.”
Cara snapped her fingers and pointed at the young man as she marched off. The soldiers dragged the shrieking boy after her.
“The others we captured?” the general asked Kahlan.
Kahlan started for her tent. “Cut their throats.”
Chapter 62
Kahlan sat up when she realized that she didn’t hear the distant screams any longer. It was still hours till dawn. Maybe his heart had stopped unexpectedly.
No, Cara was Mord-Sith, and was well trained in what Mord-Sith did.
As she had lain fully dressed in her bed, listening to the bloodcurdling screams, aching for Verna, missing Warren, sweat had occasionally beaded her brow whenever she thought about how Richard had once been the one under a Mord-Sith’s Agiel.
To banish the uninvited, ghastly images invading her thoughts, she looked up at Spirit. The lamp hanging from the ridgepole cast a warm light on the carving, stressing the graceful lines of her flowing robes, her fisted hands, her head thrown back. No matter how many times Kahlan looked at the statue, she never tired of it. Every time, it was a thrill.
Richard had chosen this view of life over the terrible bitterness he could have fallen into. Clinging to such bitterness would only have robbed him of his ability to experience happiness.
Kahlan heard a commotion outside. Just as she sprang to her feet, Cara poked her head in through the flap Kahlan had left open. The Mord-Sith’s blue eyes were in a lethal rage. She stepped into the tent, pulling the lad behind by a fistful of his hair. He shook as he blinked frantically, blinded by the blood in his eyes.
Gritting her teeth, Cara shoved him. He fell to the dirt at Kahlan’s feet.
“What’s this about?” Kahlan asked.
The look in Cara’s eyes revealed a woman at the edge of a feral fury, at the edge of control, at the far-distant reaches of what it was to even be human. She was treading the soil of another world: madness.
Cara dropped to her knees and seized the young man by the hair. She yanked him back up and held him against her red-leather-clad body as she pressed her Agiel to his throat. He choked and coughed. Blood frothed from his mouth.
“Tell her,” Cara growled.
He held his hands out to the sides in surrender. “I know him! I know him!”
Kahlan frowned down at the terrified young man. “You know who?”
“Richard Cypher! I know Richard Cypher!—And his wife, Nicci.”
Kahlan felt as if the world crashed down around her. The weight of that world sank her to her knees before Cara’s charge.
“What is your name?”
“Gadi! I’m Gadi!”
Cara pressed her Agiel into his back, causing him to let loose a wild scream. She slammed his face to the ground.
Kahlan held a hand out. “Cara, wait…we need to talk to him.”
“I know. I’m just making sure he wants to talk to us.”
Kahlan had never seen Cara quite like this, unleashed this way. This was more than doing as Verna asked. This was personal to Cara.
Warren had been someone she liked, but worse for Gadi, Richard was Cara’s life.
The Mord-Sith pulled him upright again. Red bubbles grew around his broken nose. When the light caught Cara just right, Kahlan could see blood glistening on the red leather.
“Now, I want you to tell the Mother Confessor everything.”
He was nodding as he wept and before Cara had even completed the command.
“I lived there—where they came to live. I lived where Richard and his wife—”
“Nicci,” Kahlan corrected.
“Yes, Nicci.” He didn’t understand what she meant. “They came to live in a room in our house. My friends and I didn’t like him. Then, Kamil and Nabbi started talking to him. They started liking Richard. I was angry—”
He fell to such blubbering that he couldn’t finish. Kahlan seized his jaw, slick with blood, and shook his face.
“Talk! Or I’ll have Cara start in again!”
“I don’t know what to say, what you want,” he sobbed.
“Everything you know about him and Nicci. Everything!” Kahlan yelled inches from his face.
“Tell her the rest of it,” Cara said in his ear as she pulled him to his feet.
Kahlan followed him up, fearing to miss a precious word.
“Richard started to get people to fix up the place. He works for Ishaq, at the transport company. When he came home at night, he would fix things. He showed Kamil and Nabbi how to fix things.
“I hated him.”
“You hated him because he made things better?”
“He made Kamil and Nabbi and others think they could do things for themselves, when they can’t—people can’t do for themselves. That’s a cruel deception. People have to be helped by those with the ability. It’s their duty. Richard should have made things better, because he could—he shouldn’t have made Kamil and Nabbi and the others think they could change their lives for themselves. No one can do that. The people need help, not such heartless and unfeeling expectations.
“I found out Richard was working at night. He was hauling extra loads for greedy people. He was making money he shouldn’t be allowed to make.
“Then, one night, I was sitting on the steps, and I heard Nicci get mad at Richard. She came out to me on the steps and asked me to have sex with her. Women always want me. She was a whore—no better than the rest—despite all her airs. She told me that Richard wasn’t man enough to take care of her, and she wanted me to have her because he wouldn’t.
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