“What is to become of me?”
“You will go on. There is nothing else you can do.”
“I don’t want to go on. And what of Samuel? Is that what is to become of me?”
Zedd shook his head. “I’m sorry, Richard. I don’t know. I gave you the sword against my own heart, because I had to, for everyone else. The magic of the Sword of Truth does that to a Seeker, in the end. The prophecies say that the one who truly masters the sword’s magic, and in so doing makes the blade turn white, will be protected from that fate. But I don’t know how it’s to be done. I don’t even know what it means. I didn’t have the courage to tell you. I’m sorry. If you want, you may strike me dead for what I’ve done to you. Only, promise me first that you will go on and stop Darken Rahl.”
Richard laughed bitterly through the tears. “Strike you dead. That’s a joke. You’re all I have, all I’m allowed to love. How could I kill that? It’s myself I should kill.”
“Don’t say such a thing,” Zedd whispered. “Richard, I know how you feel about the magic. I walked away from it too. Sometimes events happen that you have to deal with. You are all I have left. I went after the book because I didn’t want you to be in danger. I would do anything to spare you hurt. But I cannot spare you this. We must stop Darken Rahl, not just for ourselves, but for all the others who have no chance.”
Richard scrubbed his eyes. “I know. I won’t quit until it’s finished. I promise. Then maybe I can give up the sword, before it’s too late for me.”
“Go and get some sleep. Each day will get a little better for you. If it’s any consolation, although I don’t know why Seekers end up like Samuel, I truly don’t believe it will happen to you. But if it does, it won’t happen for some time, and therefore, that can only mean you have defeated Darken Rahl, and all the people of the lands will be safe. Know that if it happens I will always take care of you. If we can stop Rahl, maybe I can help you find the secret to turning the blade white.”
Richard nodded and rose to his feet, pulling his cloak around himself. “Thank you, my friend. Sorry I’ve been so hard on you tonight. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. Maybe the good spirits have deserted me. I’m sorry I can’t tell you what Shota said.
“And Zedd, be careful tonight. There’s something out there. It’s been following us for days. I don’t know what it is, I haven’t had the time to snap a circle on it. But I don’t think it means us harm, at least it hasn’t so far, but you never know in the Midlands.”
“I will be careful.”
Richard started to walk away. Zedd called his name. He stopped and turned.
“Just be glad she cares for you as much as she does. If she didn’t, she might have touched you.”
Richard stared back at him a long moment. “I’m afraid, in a way, she already has.”
Kahlan picked her way along in the dark among the rocks and trees, and found Zedd sitting on a rock, watching her come, his legs crossed under him.
“I would have come and woke you when it was time,” he said.
She went and sat next to him, hugging her cloak around herself. “I know, but I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I would come and sit with you.”
“Did you bring anything to eat?”
She reached in her cloak, pulling out a small bundle. “Here.” She smiled. “Some rabbit and biscuits.”
While Zedd rubbed his hands together and started right in, she watched out into the night, thinking how to put the question she had come to ask him. It didn’t take him long to finish the snack.
“Wonderful, dear one, wonderful. That’s all you brought?”
Kahlan laughed. “I also brought some berries.” She pulled out a cloth bundle. “I thought you might like something sweet. Can I share them with you?”
He eyed her up and down. “I guess you’re small enough, you couldn’t eat that many.”
She laughed again and took a small handful from the open bundle in his hands. “I think I know why Richard is so good at finding food. Growing up around you, he had to be good, or he would starve.”
“I would never let him starve,” he protested. “I care for him too much.”
“I know. Me, too.”
He chewed a few berries. “I want to thank you for keeping your word.”
“My word?”
Zedd peered up at her as he hunched over the bundle, eating berries one at a time. “Your word not to touch him, not to use your power on him.”
“Oh.” She looked off into the night, gathering her courage. “Zedd, you are the only wizard left, other than Giller. I am the last Confessor. You have lived in the Midlands, you have lived in Aydindril. You are the only one who knows what it is like to be a Confessor. I tried to explain it to Richard, but it takes a lifetime to truly understand, and then, I think none but another Confessor or a wizard can really understand.”
Zedd patted her arm. “You may be right.”
“I have no one. I can have no one. You can’t imagine what that’s like. Please, Zedd.” Her eyebrows wrinkled together. “Please, can you use your magic to remove this from me? Can you take the Confessor’s magic from me, and let me be a normal woman?”
She felt as if she was hanging by a thin strand over a gaping, dark, bottomless pit. She twisted on the end of the strand while she watched his eyes.
His head bent. He didn’t look up. “There is only one way to release you from the magic. Mother Confessor.”
Her heart leapt into her throat. “How?” she whispered.
His eyes came to hers. They were filled with pain. “I could kill you.”
She felt the strand of hope break. She put all her effort to making her face show nothing, a Confessor’s face, as she felt herself disappearing down into the blackness. “Thank you, wizard Zorander, for hearing my request. I didn’t really think there was, I just thought I would ask. I appreciate your honesty. You better go get some sleep now.”
He nodded. “First, you must tell me what Shota said.”
She maintained her expression. “Ask the Seeker. It is to him she spoke; I was covered with snakes at the time.”
“Snakes.” Zedd lifted an eyebrow. “Shota must have liked you. I have seen her do worse.”
Kahlan held his eyes. “She did worse to me, too.”
“I asked Richard. He won’t tell me. You must.”
“You would have me step between two friends? You would ask me to betray his trust? No, thank you.”
“Richard is smart, perhaps the smartest Seeker I have ever seen, but he knows very little of the Midlands. He has seen only a tiny portion of it. In some ways it’s his best defense and strongest asset. He found where the last box is by going to Shota. No Seeker from the Midlands would have done that. You have spent your whole life here, you know many of the dangers. There are creatures here who could use the magic of the Sword of Truth against him. There are creatures who would suck the magic from him and kill him with it. There are dangers of every kind. We don’t have the time to teach him all he needs to know, so we must protect him, so he can do his job. I must know what Shota said so I can judge if it’s important; if we need to protect him.”
“Zedd, please, he is my only friend. Don’t ask me to betray his trust.”
“Dear one, he is not your only friend. I’m your friend too. Help me protect him. I will keep it from him that you told me.”
She gave him a meaningful glare. “He has an uncanny way of finding out things you wish him not to know.”
Zedd gave a knowing smile at that; then his face hardened. “Mother Confessor, this is not a request, this is an order. I expect you to treat it as such.”
Kahlan folded her arms, half turning away from him as she bristled. She could hardly believe he was doing this to her. She no longer had a say in the matter. “Shota said Richard was the only one who has a chance to stop Darken Rahl. She doesn’t know how, or why, but he is the only one with a chance.”
Zedd waited in silence. “Go on.”
Kahl
an gritted her teeth. “She said you would try to kill him, that you would use wizard’s fire against him, and that he has a chance to beat you. There is a chance you will fail.”
Silence settled around them again. “Mother Confessor…”
“She said that I too will use my power on him. But he has no chance against it. If I live, I will not fail.”
Zedd took a deep breath. “I see why he didn’t want to tell me.” He thought in silence a moment. “Why didn’t Shota kill you?”
Kahlan wished he would stop asking questions. She turned back to him. “She planned on it. You were there. Well, it wasn’t really you, it was just an illusion, but we thought it was you. You, I mean, your image, tried to kill Shota. Richard knew she was the only way to find the box, so he, well, he protected her. He… well, he turned back your wizard’s fire, and gave Shota a chance to… to use her power on you.”
Zedd lifted an eyebrow. “Really…”
Kahlan nodded. “In return for ‘saving’ her, she granted him a wish. He used it to save us. He made her spare our lives. Richard wouldn’t back down. Shota was not happy. She said that if he ever comes back to Agaden Reach, she will kill him.”
“That boy never fails to amaze me. He really picked the information over my life?”
She was a little surprised by his smile. She nodded. “He jumped right in front of the wizard’s fire. He used his sword to turn it away.”
Zedd rubbed his chin. “How wondrous. That’s precisely what he should have done. I had always feared he wouldn’t be able to do what was necessary, if it came right down to it. I guess I need fear no longer. Then what?”
Kahlan looked down at her hands. “I wanted Shota to kill me, but she wouldn’t, because she had granted him the wish. Zedd, I… I couldn’t stand the thought of doing that to him. I begged him to kill me. I didn’t want to live to carry out the prophecy, to hurt him.”
She swallowed hard as she twisted her fingers together. “He wouldn’t do it. So I tried to. For days I tried. He took my knife away, he tied me up at night, he watched me every second. I felt like I had lost my mind. Maybe for a time, I had. At last, he convinced me that we couldn’t know what the prophecy meant, or even that it wasn’t he who would turn against us, and would have to be killed in order to defeat Darken Rahl. He made me see that I couldn’t act on a prophecy we didn’t yet understand.”
“I’m very sorry, dear one, that I had to make you tell me, and for what you two have been through. But Richard is right. Prophecies are dangerous things to take too seriously.”
“But a witch woman’s prophecies are always true, aren’t they?”
“Yes.” He shrugged as he spoke softly. “But not always in the way you think. Sometimes, prophecies can even be self-fulfilling.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “Really?”
“Sure. Just imagine, for the sake of illustration, that I tried to kill you because I wanted to protect Richard, from this prophecy coming true. He sees this, we fight, one of us wins, say it’s him. That part of the prophecy is fulfilled, so he fears the other part will be too, and thinks he must kill you. You don’t want to be killed, so you touch him to protect yourself. There you have it; prophecy fulfilled.
“The problem is, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Without it, none of these things would have happened. There was no outside influence other than the prophecy. Prophecies are always true, but we seldom know how.” He gave her a look as if asking if she understood.
“I always thought prophecies were to be taken seriously.”
“They are, but only by those who understand such things; prophecies are dangerous. The wizards guard books of prophecies, as you know. When I was at my Keep, I reread some of the pertinent books. But I don’t understand most of them. There used to be wizards who did nothing else but study the books of prophecies. There are prophecies in them I have read that would scare you blind, if you knew them. They sometimes make even me wake at night in a sweat. There are things in them I think might be about Richard, that frighten me, and there are things in them I know are about Richard, but I don’t know what they will turn out to mean, and I dare not act on what I have read. We can’t always know what the prophecies mean, and so they must be kept secret. Some of these could cause great trouble if people heard them.”
Kahlan’s eyes were wide. “Richard is in the books of prophecies? I have never met anyone before who was in the books.”
He gave her an even gaze. “You are in the books too.”
“Me! My name is in the books of prophecies!”
“Well, yes and no. That’s not how it works. You seldom know for sure. But in this case, I do. It says things like, ‘The last Mother Confessor’ this, and ‘The last Mother Confessor’ that, but there can be no doubt who the last Mother Confessor is. It is you, Kahlan. There can also be no doubt who ‘the Seeker who commands the wind against the heir to D’Hara’ is. It is Richard. Heir to D’Hara is Rahl.”
“Commands the wind! What does that mean?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
Kahlan frowned and looked down as she picked at the rock. “Zedd, what does it say about me in the books of prophecies?”
He was watching her when her eyes came back up. “I’m sorry, dear one, I can’t tell you that. You would be too frightened to ever sleep again.”
She nodded. “I feel very foolish now, for wanting to kill myself because of Shota’s prophecy. To keep it from coming true, I mean. You must think me stupid.”
“Kahlan, until it comes to be, we can’t know. But you shouldn’t feel foolish. It could be that it’s just as it says, that Richard is the only one with a chance, and you will betray us, and take him, and thus give victory to Rahl. There is a chance you should have done it to save us all.”
“You are not making me feel any better.”
“It could also be that Richard will somehow be a traitor, and you will save us all.”
She gave him a dark look. “Either way, I don’t like it.”
“Prophecies are not meant for people to see. They can cause more trouble than you could believe; there have been wars over them. Even I don’t understand most of them. If we had the wizards of old, the experts in the prophecies, maybe they could help us, but without them to guide us, it is best to leave Shota’s prophecy be. The first page of one of the books of prophecies says: ‘Take these Prophecies to mind, not to heart.’ It is the only thing on the whole page, in a book half as big as a good-size table. Each letter is gilded. It is that important.”
“The prophecy from Shota is different somehow, from those in books, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Prophecy given directly from one to another, is meant to be an aid to that person. Shota was trying to help Richard. Shota herself wouldn’t even know how it is meant to help, though; she was only the channel. Someday, it may mean something to Richard, it may aid him. There is no way to tell, though. I was hoping I would be able to understand it, and help him. He doesn’t take to riddles. Unfortunately, it is of the kind called a Forked Prophecy, and I can be of no aid.”
“Forked, that means it can go different ways?”
“Yes. It could mean what it says, or just about anything else. Forked Prophecies are almost always useless. Hardly better than a guess. Richard was right in his choice not to be guided by it. I would like to think it’s because I have taught him well, but it could be his instinct. He has the instincts of a Seeker.”
“Zedd, why don’t you just tell him these things, like you have told me? Doesn’t he have a right to know all this?”
Zedd stared off into the night for a long time. “It’s difficult to explain. You see, Richard has a feel for things.” He made an odd frown. “Have you ever shot a bow?”
Kahlan smiled. She drew her knees up, folded her fingers together over them, and rested her chin on her fingers. “Girls are not supposed to do such things. So I took it up as a diversion when I was young. Before I began taking confessions.”
Zedd gave a
little laugh. “Have you ever been able to feel the target? Have you ever been able to ignore all the noise in your head and hear the silence, and know where the arrow is going to go?”
She nodded with her chin still resting on her fingers. “Only a couple of times. But I know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, Richard can feel the target like that almost at will. Sometimes I think he could even hit it if he closed his eyes. When I have asked him how he does it, he shrugs and can’t explain. He simply says he can feel where the arrow is to go. He can do it all day long. But if I start telling him things, like how fast the wind is, how many feet away the target is, or that the bow was outside the night before and it was a humid night, affecting the draw, well, then he can’t even hit the ground. The thinking interferes with the feeling.
“He does the same thing with people. He’s relentless in the search for an answer. He has been heading for the box like an arrow. He has never been to the Midlands before, yet he found a way through the boundary, and has found the answers he needed to keep going, to seek out the target. That is the way of a true Seeker. The problem is, if I give him too much information, he starts doing what he thinks I want him to do, instead of what he feels. I have to point him in the right direction, toward the target, and then let him go. Let him find it himself.”
“That’s pretty cynical. He is a human being, not an arrow. He only does that because he thinks so much of you, and he would do anything to please you. You are an idol to him. He loves you very much.”
He gave her a somber look. “There is no way I could be any more proud of him, or love him any more, but if he doesn’t stop Darken Rahl, I will be a dead idol. Sometimes, wizards must use people to accomplish what must be done.”
“I guess I know how you feel, not telling him what you wish you could.”
Zedd rose. “I’m sorry the two of you have had a hard time of it. Maybe with me here, it will be easier. Good night, dear one.” He started off into the darkness.
“Zedd?” He stopped and looked back toward her, a dark form against the moonlit forest. “You had a wife.”
“I did.”
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