“I’d bet on Kelton joining with the Order,” Ahern said. Everyone turned his way. He shrugged. “I’m Keltish. I can tell you that they’ll go where the Crown goes; its the way of our people. With Fyren dead, then that would make Duchess Lumholtz next in line. She and her husband, the duke, will go to the side they think will win, no matter who that may be. At least that’s my opinion from what I’ve heard about her.”
“That’s foolish!” Harold threw his spoon down. “As much as I don’t trust Keltans—no offense intended, Ahern—and know their scheming ways, at the heart of it, they’re Midlanders. They may want to grab whatever scrap of a farm lies on a disputed border and call it Keltish, but the people are still Midlanders.
“The spirits know that Cyrilla and I had our fights, but when it came to trouble, we stood together. Same with our lands; when D’Hara attacked last summer, we fought to protect Kelton, despite some of our disagreements. If it means the future of the Midlands, they’ll go with us. The Midlands means more than what anyone come new to the crown has to say about it.” Harold snatched up his spoon and waved it at Ahern. “What have you to say about that?”
Ahern shrugged. “Nothing, I guess.”
Zedd’s eyes moved between the two men. “We are not here to argue. We are here to fight a war. Speak what you believe, Ahern. You are Keltish, and would know more of it than we.”
Ahern scratched his windburned face as he thought on Zedd’s words. “General Baldwin, the commander of all Keltish forces, and his generals, Bradford, Cutter, and Emerson, will go where the Crown goes. I don’t know the men, I’m just a driver, but I go a lot of places and I hear a lot of talk, and that’s what’s always said of them. People have a joke that if the queen tossed her crown out the window and it caught on a buck’s antlers, the whole of the army would be grazin’ on grass within a month.”
“And from the talk you hear, do you really believe this duchess become queen will go with the Order just for a chance at power, if it means breaking with the Midlands?” Zedd asked.
Ahern shrugged. “It’s just my opinion, understand, but I think it would be so.”
As Kahlan spooned out a sweet root without looking up, she spoke. “Ahern’s right. I know Cathryn Lumholtz, and her husband, the duke. She will be queen, and even though she takes counsel from her husband, she is of like mind anyway. Prince Fyren would have been king, and I thought he would have stuck with us no matter what, but someone from the Order won him to their side, and he betrayed us. I’m sure the Order will make Cathryn Lumholtz similar offers. She will see power in those offers.”
Harold reached across the table and snatched up some more bread. “If she does, and Ahern’s right, then we’ve lost Kelton. If we’ve lost Kelton, then we’ve got the first crack of ruin.”
“This not be good,” Adie observed. “Nicobarese be in trouble, Galea be weakened when so many of her army be killed in Ebinissia, and Kelton be leaning toward the Order, and with her will go a number of lands that be trade partners.”
“And then there are some of the others who when—”
“Enough.” The quiet, clear ring of authority in Kahlan’s voice lowered a pall of silence over the table. She remembered what Richard always said when they were in more trouble than they knew how to wiggle out of: think of the solution, not the problem. If your mind was filled only with thoughts of why you were going to lose, then you couldn’t think of how to win.
“Stop telling me why we can’t bring the Midlands back together, and why we can’t win. We already know there are problems. We need to discuss the solutions.”
Zedd smiled over his spoon. “Well put, Mother Confessor. I think we must have some ideas. For one, there are a number of smaller lands that will remain loyal to the Midlands no matter what. We must gather their representatives in Ebinissia, and begin rebuilding the council.”
“That’s right,” Kahlan said. “They might not be as powerful as Kelton, but there is a quality to numbers that has influence.”
Kahlan opened her fur mantle. The crackling fire was warming the room a bit and the food was warming her belly, but it was worry that was beginning to make her sweat. She couldn’t wait for Richard to join them; he would have ideas. Richard never sat around letting events dictate as they would. She watched the others as they bent over their bowls, each with a frown as they pondered their options.
“Well,” Adie said as she set her spoon down, “I be sure we could get some sorceresses from Nicobarese to join with us. They would be a powerful aid. While some would refuse to fight, as it be against their convictions, they would not be averse to helping in other ways. None want to see the Blood, or their allies, the Imperial Order, take the Midlands. Most know the terror of times past, and would not want them to come anew.”
“Good,” Kahlan said. “That’s good. Do you think you could go there and convince them to join with us, maybe get some of the regular army to help, too? After all, the civil war is a part of the larger war, and it would not be going on if at least some didn’t want to aid the Midlands.”
Adie’s completely white eyes regarded Kahlan for a moment. “For something this important, of course I will try.”
Kahlan nodded. “Thank you, Adie.” She looked to the others. “What else? Any ideas?”
Harold rested an elbow on the table as he frowned in thought. He waggled his spoon. “I think if I sent some officers, as an official delegation, to some of the smaller lands, they could be convinced to send representatives to Ebinissia. Most hold Galea in high regard, and know how the Midlands has protected their freedom. They will come to our aid.”
“And perhaps,” Zedd said with a sly smile, “if I went to visit this Queen Lumholtz, as First Wizard, mind you, I could convince her that the Midlands is not without power of its own.”
Kahlan knew Cathryn Lumholtz, but she didn’t want to douse the warm hope of Zedd’s idea. She was the one, after all, who had said they needed to think of solutions instead of the problems.
What held her in the grip of terror, was the thought of being the Mother Confessor who lost the Midlands.
When dinner was finished, Prince Harold and Captain Ryan went to see to the men. Ahern threw his longcoat around his broad shoulders and said he had to check on his team.
After they were gone, Zedd caught Jebra’s arm as she went about helping Kahlan collect the bowls.
“Do you want to tell me, now, what it is you’re seeing every time you look my way?”
Jebra turned her blue eyes from his gaze and gathered another spoon into her hand with the others. “It’s nothing.”
“I would like to be the judge of that, if you don’t mind.”
She halted, and at last looked up at him. “Wings.”
Zedd lifted an eyebrow. “Wings?”
She nodded. “I see you with wings. You see? It makes no sense. It has to be a vision that means nothing. I told you, I get those kind sometimes.”
“That’s it? Just wings?”
Jebra fussed with her short, sandy hair. “Well, you are up in the air, with these wings, and you are dropped into a huge ball of flame.” The fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deepened. “Wizard Zorander, I don’t know what it means. It’s not an event—you know how my visions work sometimes—but a sense of events. I don’t know what they mean, all jumbled together like that.”
Zedd released her arm. “Thank you, Jebra. If you learn anything else, you will tell me?” She nodded. “And at once. We need all the help we can get.”
Her eyes sought the floor as she nodded again. Her head tilted toward Kahlan. “Circles. I see the Mother Confessor running around in circles.”
“Circles?” Kahlan asked as she stepped closer. “Why am I running in circles?”
“I can’t tell.”
“Well, I feel as if I’m running in circles right now, trying to find a way to pull the Midlands back together.”
Jebra looked up hopefully. “That may be it.”
Kahlan offered her a s
mile. “Maybe it is. Your visions aren’t always of calamity.”
As they all started to go back to cleaning up, Jebra spoke again. “Mother Confessor, we mustn’t leave your sister alone with any ropes.”
“What do you mean?”
Jebra let out a breath. “She is dreaming of hanging herself.”
“You mean that you have seen a vision of her hanging herself?”
Jebra laid a concerned hand to Kahlan’s arm. “Oh no, Mother Confessor, I’ve not seen that. It’s just that I can see the aura, see that she is dreaming of doing it. It does not mean she will, only that we must watch her, so she won’t have the chance before she can recover.”
“That sounds like sound advice,” Zedd offered.
Jebra tied the leftover bread in a cloth. “I will sleep with her tonight.”
“Thank you,” Kahlan said. “Why don’t you let me finish cleaning up, and you go to bed now, in case she wakes.”
Zedd, Adie, and Kahlan shared the chores after Jebra took her bedroll into the room with Cyrilla. When they were finished, Zedd placed a chair before the fire for Adie. Kahlan loosely twined her fingers together and stood looking into the flames.
“Zedd, when we send the delegations to the smaller lands to ask them to come to a council in Ebinissia, it would be easier to convince them if it were an official delegation from the Mother Confessor.”
Zedd finally broke the quiet. “They all think the Mother Confessor is dead. If we let them know you’re alive, then you become a target, and it would bring the Order down on us before we could gather a strong enough force.”
Kahlan turned and gripped his robes. “Zedd, I’m tired of being dead.”
He patted her hand on his arm. “You’re the queen of Galea, and you can use your influence in that way, for now. If the Imperial Order finds out you’re alive, then we’ll have more trouble than we’re prepared to handle.”
“If we’re going to unite the Midlands, then they need a Mother Confessor.”
“Kahlan, I know you don’t want to do anything to jeopardize the lives of those men out there. They’ve just won a costly battle; they aren’t strong enough yet. We need more gathered to our side. If anyone knows you are the Mother Confessor, then you become a target and they will have to fight to protect you. If you must fight, it must be for the right reasons. We don’t need more problems than we can handle right now.”
Kahlan pressed the tips of her fingers together as she stared into the fire. “Zedd, I am the Mother Confessor. I’m terrified I will be the Mother Confessor who presides over the destruction of the Midlands. I was born a Confessor. It’s more than my job. It is who I am.”
Zedd hugged her shoulders. “Dear one, you are still the Mother Confessor. That’s why we must hide your identity for now. We need the Mother Confessor. When the time comes, you will rule over the Midlands again, a Midlands stronger than it has ever been. Have patience.”
“Patience,” she muttered.
“Ah, well,” he said with a grin, “there is magic in patience, too, you know.”
“Zedd be right,” Adie said from her chair. “The wolf does not survive if he announces to the herd he be a wolf. He makes his plans of attack, and only at the last moment, lets the prey know that it be he, the wolf, who be after them.”
Kahlan rubbed her arms. There was more to it—another reason.
“Zedd,” she whispered with the pain of it, “I can’t stand this spell any longer. It’s driving me mad. I can feel it all the time, like death walking in my flesh with me.”
Zedd pulled her head to his shoulder. “My daughter used to say the same thing. Those very words, in fact, ‘like death walking in my flesh with me.’”
“How did she stand it all those years?”
Zedd sighed. “Well, when Darken Rahl raped her, I knew that if he thought she was alive, he would come after her. There was no choice. I wanted to protect her more than I wanted to go after him. I took her to the Midlands, where Richard was born, and then she had another reason to hide. If Darken Rahl ever knew, he might have come after Richard, too, so she had to endure it.”
Kahlan shuddered. “All those years. I wouldn’t have the strength. How could she stand it?”
“Well, there was no alternative, for one thing, and for another, she said that after a time she became used to it a bit, and it wasn’t so bad as it was in the beginning. The feeling will ease a bit over time. You will get used to it, and hopefully, you will not have to go on long like this.”
“I hope so,” Kahlan said.
The firelight flickering on Zedd’s thin face. “She also said that having Richard lessened the burden.”
Kahlan’s heart leapt at the mere mention aloud of his name. She grinned. “That will surely help.” She clutched Zedd’s arm. “He’ll be here soon. He won’t let anything hold him back. He’ll be here in a couple of weeks at the most. Dear spirits, how will I ever wait that long?”
Zedd chuckled. “You have as little patience as that boy. You two were made for each other.” He brushed back her hair. “Your eyes look better already, dear one.”
“Then when Richard is with us, and we start pulling the Midlands back together, you can take this death spell off me. Then the Midlands will have a Mother Confessor again.”
“It can’t be soon enough for me, either.”
Kahlan frowned. “Zedd, if you go away to see Queen Cathryn, and I need to get this spell off, how can I do it?”
Zedd looked back to the flames. “You can’t. If you were to announce that you were the Mother Confessor, people would believe you no more than if Jebra were to announce that she was the Mother Confessor. The spell won’t leave because you simply declare who you are.”
“Then how do I get it off?”
Zedd sighed. “Only I can do that.”
Kahlan felt a sudden flush of fear. She didn’t want to voice it, but she would be trapped with the spell if anything happened to Zedd.
“But surely there must be another way to remove the spell. Perhaps Richard?”
Zedd shook his head. “Even if Richard knew how to be a wizard, he could not remove the web. Only I can do it.”
“And that’s the only way?”
“Yes.” He looked back to her eyes. “Unless, of course, another with the gift were to deduce your true identity. If such a man were to see you, understand who you were, and name you aloud, then it would break the spell, and all would once again know your identity.”
There was no hope of that. She felt her hopes sink. Kahlan squatted and shoved another stick of wood in the fire. The only way she was going to get the death spell off was for Zedd to do it, and he wasn’t going to do it until he was good and ready.
As Mother Confessor, she would not order a wizard to do something both knew was wrong.
Kahlan watched the sparks swirling up. She brightened. Richard would be with her soon, and it wouldn’t be so bad, then. When Richard was with her she wouldn’t think about the spell; she would be too busy kissing him.
“What’s funny?” Zedd asked.
“What? Oh, nothing.” She stood and brushed her hands off on her pants. “I think I’ll go check on the men. Maybe some cold air will get this spell off my mind.”
The cold air did feel good. She stood in the clearing outside the small farmhouse and took a deep breath. The woodsmoke smelled good. She recalled the previous days when they were on the march, and her feet and fingers felt frozen, when her ears burned with the bite of cold, and her nose ran, how she daydreamed about woodsmoke because it meant the warmth of a fire.
Kahlan strolled across the field outside the house. She stared up at the stars, her breath drifting slowly in the still air. She could see small fires dotting the valley beyond, and she could hear the murmurs of conversation of the men sitting around the fires. She was glad they, too, could have fires this night. Soon they would be to Ebinissia and they could be warm again.
Kahlan took a deep breath of the cold air, trying to forget the spel
l. The whole sky was aglitter with stars, like sparks from a huge fire. She wondered what Richard was doing right now, and if we was riding hard, or getting sleep. She longed to see him, but she also wanted him to get enough sleep. When he finally reached her, she could sleep in his arms. She grinned at the thought.
Kahlan frowned as a swath of stars went dark. Almost as soon as they darkened, they winked back to points of light. Had she really seen them go dark for an instant? Must be her imagination, she thought.
She heard a thud as something hit the ground. No alarm went up. Only one thing could get through the ring of defenders and not raise and alarm. She tingled in sudden gooseflesh, and it wasn’t the spell.
Kahlan yanked her knife free.
34
She saw glowing green eyes. In the faint light coming from the small winter moon and the stars, she saw a great hulk step toward her. Kahlan wanted to cry out, but her voice wasn’t there.
When the huge beast’s lips drew back, she saw the entire length of its prodigious fangs. She staggered back a step. She was squeezing the knife handle so hard that her fingers ached. If she was quick, and if she didn’t panic, she might have a chance. If she called out, would Zedd hear her? Would anyone hear her? Even if they did, they were too far away. They wouldn’t be able to get to her in time.
In the dim light she could see by its size that it was a short-tailed gar. It would have to be a short-tailed gar; they were the smartest, the biggest, the most deadly. Dear spirits, why couldn’t it be a long-tailed gar?
Kahlan stared as it lifted something from its chest. Why was it just standing there? Where were its blood flies? It looked down, looked up at her, and looked down again. The eyes glowed a menacing green. Its lips drew back farther, vapor clouding the air when it let out a gurgling sound.
Kahlan’s eyes went wide. Could it be? “Gratch?”
The gar suddenly started jumping up and down, howling with excitement and flapping its wings.
Kahlan sagged with heady relief. She sheathed her knife and stepped closer to the towering beast, but she was still cautious.
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