He had touched the core of power in this place, though; there would be no more entry through Betrayer’s Hall. Jagang would not twice accomplish the same feat.
Richard paused. He drew his sword, Drefan’s sword. He held it out in his palms, staring at it, watching the light catch it. This wasn’t his sword—the Sword of Truth.
He let his will flow from the core of his soul, carrying his birthright of power with it. His gift came as easily as a sigh, where before he had struggled to bring forth the most insignificant shred of his power. Force flowed outward, through his arms, and into the object he held.
His mind guided its elements, balancing each to the desired sequence and result, until the sword in his hands transmuted into the twin of the one he knew so well. He held the twin to the Sword of Truth, although without its attendant impressions of those past souls who had used his real sword. In every other way, though, it was the same. It held the same power, the same magic.
Wizards had died in the attempt to make the Sword of Truth, until some were finally successful. Once they had succeeded, that knowledge was borne to this place, and it was therefore Richard’s for the taking, as was all the knowledge here.
He seized the hilt and held the blade aloft. Richard let the power, the magic, the rage of the sword inundate him, storm through him, just to feel something. Even wrath was something.
He had no need of a sword, though. The wrath winked out, to be replaced again by the emptiness.
He tossed the sword high into the air and held it there, where it rotated slowly on a bed of force. With a pulse of power, he shattered the sword he had made into a cloud of metallic dust, and with another thought, evacuated the dust out of existence. He stood empty again. Empty and alone.
A presence caused him to turn. It was another spirit. They came, from time to time, to see him, to speak with him, to urge him to return to his world before it was too late, before he lost the thread back to the world of life. This form, this spirit, rooted him to the floor in rigid shock. It looked like Kahlan.
The soft, glowing apparition hovered before him, radiating with a glow the same color as everything else in this place, only with more intensity, more definition.
It looked like Kahlan.
For the first time in weeks, his heart pounded. “Kahlan? Have you died? Are you a spirit, now?”
“No,” the spirit said, “I am Kahlan’s mother.”
Richard’s muscles went slack again. He turned away and continued on through the hall. “What do you want?”
The spirit followed, as they sometimes did, interested in him, a curiosity, perhaps, in their world.
“I have brought you something,” the spirit said.
Richard turned. “What?”
She held out a rose. The green of the stem and the red of the petals were stunning in this colorless world, a ripple of pleasure to his eyes. The fragrance filled his lungs with its pleasant aroma. He had almost forgotten the pleasure of such a thing.
“What am I to do with this?”
The spirit held it out, urging him to take it. He had no fear of the spirits who came to see him. Even those who hated him could not harm him. He knew how to protect himself.
Richard took the rose. “Thank you.”
He slid the stem behind his belt. He turned and continued on. The spirit of Kahlan’s mother followed. He didn’t like looking into her face. Though she was a spirit, and her features were indistinct in that glow they had, she still looked too much like Kahlan.
“Richard, may I talk with you?”
His footsteps echoed through the vast hall. “If you wish.”
“I wish to tell you about my daughter, Kahlan.”
Richard stopped and turned back to the spirit. “Why?”
“Because she is part of me. She was of my flesh, just as you are of your mother’s flesh. Kahlan is my connection to the world of life, the place I once was. Where you must return.”
Richard started out once more. “I am home. I have no intention of returning to that bitter world. If you wish me to carry a message to your daughter, I’m sorry, I can’t. Leave me.”
He lifted his hand to banish her from the hall, but she raised her hands, pleading for him to stay his power.
“I do not wish you to carry a message. Kahlan knows I love her. I wish to talk to you.”
“Why?”
“Because of what I did to Kahlan.”
“Did to her? What did you do to her?”
“I instilled in her a sense of duty. ‘Confessors don’t have love, Kahlan. They have duty.’ That was what I told her. To my shame, I never explained what I meant by that. I fear I left her no room for life.
“More than any Confessor I knew, Kahlan wanted to live life, to relish it. Duty denied her much of that. That is what makes her such a good protector of her people. She wants them to have a chance at their joy, because she sees so clearly what she was denied. She is left to take small pleasures as she can.”
“Is there a point to this?”
“Don’t you enjoy life, Richard?”
Richard walked on. “I understand about duty. I have been born to duty. I am now done with it. I am done with everything.”
“You, too, misunderstand what I meant about duty. To the right person, the person who is truly born to it, duty is a form of love, through which all is possible. Duty is not always a denial of things, but an expansion of them to others. Duty is not always a chore, but is best carried out with love.
“Will you not return to her, Richard? She needs you.”
“Kahlan has a husband, now. I have no place in her life.”
“You have a place in her heart.”
“Kahlan said she would never forgive me.”
“Richard, have you never said something you didn’t mean, in desperation? Have you never wished you could take back the words?”
“I can’t return to her. She is married to another. She has given an oath, and she has . . . I won’t go back.”
“Even if she is married to another, even if you cannot be with her, even if it breaks your heart to know you can’t have her, don’t you love her enough to mend her heart? To put her heart at peace? Is it all you, and none of it her, in this love you have?”
Richard glared at the spirit. “She has found happiness in my absence. She doesn’t need anything from me.”
“Do you find enjoyment in the rose, Richard?”
Richard walked on. “Yes, it’s very nice, thank you.”
“Will you consider going back, then?”
Richard wheeled to the spirit of Kahlan’s mother.
“Thank you for the rose. Here are a thousand in repayment, so you may not say I owe you anything in return!”
Richard cast out his hand and the air filled with roses. Rose petals flew and swirled in a red blizzard.
“I’m sorry I could not make you understand, Richard. I can see that I only bring you pain. I will leave you.”
When she vanished, the floor was bespattered with red petals, looking like nothing so much as a pool of blood.
Richard sank to the floor, feeling too sick to stand. Soon, he would be one of them, a spirit, and he would not have to endure this limbo where he twisted between worlds. He had food, when he wanted it, he had sleep, when he wanted it, but he couldn’t maintain life here indefinitely. This was not the world of life.
Soon enough, he would be one of them, and finished with this emptiness that was his life.
Kahlan had once filled that emptiness. She had once been everything to him. He had trusted her. He had thought his heart had been safe in her care. He had imagined more than was true. How could he have been such a fool? Was it all such illusion?
Richard’s head came up. He peered across the hall. He went through a mental inventory of the items stored here. The gazing font. It was there, across the hall. He knew how to use it.
He rose and crossed the hall, going between two of the columns, to find the stone gazing font. It had two basins,
in two tiers, the lower one waist-high, and the upper just above his head. Each basin was a long rectangle. Carved into the glittering charcoal-gray stone were ornate symbols of instruction and power. The lower basin was brimful of a silver liquid, appearing similar to the sliph, but very different, he knew.
Richard lifted the silver ewer from the shelf below and dipped it in the lower basin. He emptied the ewer into the upper basin. He continued, until the upper basin was loaded with its charge of the gazing liquid.
Richard leaned across the lower basin to place his hands on the proper symbols, spread wide to each side. He read the ancient words before him as he leaned in, hands pressed to the gazing keyways. When the words were said, he focused his mind on the person he wished to gaze upon. As he did this, he let slip a small cord of power to release the liquid in the upper font.
Across the entire knife-edge front of the upper basin, the silver liquid spilled out in a thin, silvery sheet before his face. In that waterfall of gazing liquid, Richard saw the person he called in his mind: Kahlan.
His chest tightened at seeing her. He almost gasped, almost called out her name in anguish.
She was in her white Confessor’s dress. The familiar contours of her face made him ache with longing. She was near her rooms, her bedroom, in the Confessors’ Palace. It was night, there. Richard could feel his heart hammering against his ribs as he watched her glide to a halt at the door.
Drefan slipped up behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders, giving them a squeeze as he leaned close, putting his mouth by her ear.
“Kahlan, my wife, my love. Are you ready to go into bed? I’ve had a hard day. I so look forward to a night of your lustful passion.”
Richard released the font. He lifted his fists as he staggered back. The gazing font exploded apart, heavy pieces of rock driven ahead of huge gouts of flame and smoke. Shards of stone whistled through the hall, disappearing into the distance. Massive chunks of stone wailed as they rose up into the air, lifted on a raging inferno, until they lost their upward momentum and dropped back down, to shatter into fragments and dust. The gazing liquid flooded the floor. In each droplet and pool, Richard could see Kahlan’s face. He turned his back and stalked away. A furnace of flame blasted the floor, evaporating each droplet, yet he could still perceive her face in the tiniest mist of it filling the air. He cast up his fists. Every droplet, every infinitesimal bit of mist, winked into nothingness behind him.
In the center of the hall, in a daze, Richard slumped to the floor, staring out at nothing.
A malicious chuckle drifted through the winds. Richard knew who it was. His father was back to torment him again.
“What’s the matter, my son?” Darken Rahl said in his derisive hiss. “Aren’t you happy with my choice of a husband for your true love? My own son, my own flesh and blood, Drefan, wed to the Mother Confessor. I think it a good choice myself. He’s a good boy. She seemed pleased. But then, you already know that, don’t you? You should be pleased that she is pleased. So very pleased.” Darken Rahl’s laughter cavorted through the hall.
Richard didn’t bother to banish the luminous form standing over him. What did it matter?
“So, what do you say, my wife? Shall we have a night of wild passion? Like you showed my brother when you thought it me?”
Kahlan used all her strength to ram her elbow into Drefan’s sternum. She had caught him off guard. He hadn’t expected that. He doubled over in pain, unable to get his breath.
“I told you, Drefan, if you touch me, I’ll cut your throat.”
Before he could recover to laugh at her anger, or to taunt her with his threats of force, she slipped into her room, slammed the door, and threw the bolt.
She stood trembling in the near darkness. She had felt something. For a moment, it had felt as if Richard was there with her. She had almost called out his name—screamed she loved him.
She clutched her abdomen in agony. When would she ever stop thinking about him?
Richard was never coming back.
Kahlan crossed the thick carpets in her sitting room and went back into the bedroom. She dropped into a defensive crouch when someone stepped out in front of her.
“Sorry,” Berdine whispered. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Kahlan sighed as she unclenched her fists and rose to her feet. “Berdine.” She threw her arms around the woman. “Oh, Berdine, I’m glad to see you. How are you doing?”
Berdine hugged Kahlan with a desperate need for comfort. “It’s been a few weeks, but it seems as if Raina died only yesterday. I’m so angry with her for leaving me. And then when I get angry at her, I cry because I miss her so. If she would only have held on for a few more days, she would be alive now. Just a couple of days.”
“I know, I know,” Kahlan whispered. She parted from Berdine, keeping her voice low. “What are you doing here? I thought you went up to the Keep to relieve Cara.”
“I did, but I had to come down to talk to you.”
“You mean the sliph is unguarded?” Berdine nodded. “Berdine, we can’t leave her alone. We would never know if someone slipped into Aydindril—someone with dangerous magic. That was what—”
Berdine shushed her. “I know. This is important, too. Besides, what difference does it really make? Cara and I have lost our power. We couldn’t stop someone with magic, now, if they did come through the sliph.
“I have to talk to you, Mother Confessor, and I can never do it in the day because Drefan is always showing up.”
“Don’t let him catch you calling him anything other than Lord Rahl, or he—”
“He isn’t Lord Rahl. He isn’t, Mother Confessor.”
“I know. But he’s all the Lord Rahl we have.”
Berdine looked Kahlan in the eye. “Cara and I have been talking. We decided we should kill him. We need you to help us.”
“We can’t do that.” Kahlan gripped Berdine’s shoulder. “We can’t.”
“Sure we can. We’ll hide out on the balcony, you get him out of his clothes so that he’s away from those knives of his, and while you . . . distract his attention, we’ll burst in and end it.”
“Berdine, we can’t.”
“Well, all right, if you’re skittish about that plan, we can easily think of another. The point is, we have to kill him.”
“No, the point is, we can’t kill him.”
Berdine scowled. “Do you want to be married to that pig? Sooner or later, he’s going to insist on his rights as your husband.”
“Berdine, listen to me. Even if he does that, I will have to endure it. I can endure rape if it means saving lives. We can’t kill Drefan. He’s the only Lord Rahl we have. Until we can figure out what to do, he is the only thing holding the army together.
“Right now, they’re confused by his aggressive command. D’Harans are used to being told what to do by Lord Rahl. Drefan is acting as if he is the Lord Rahl and, for the moment, the army is scratching their heads, wondering if they’re sure he isn’t.”
“But he isn’t,” Berdine insisted.
“But at the moment, that’s all that is holding the whole thing together. If it falls apart, then the Imperial Order will be able to roll right over the Midlands. Drefan is right about that much of it.”
“But you are the Mother Confessor. General Kerson is loyal to you. Even without the bond, he sticks around because of you. Most of the officers do the same. Because of you, not Drefan. You could hold things together as well as Drefan. Maybe it would work.”
“And maybe not. I may not like Drefan, but he has done nothing to earn assassination. As much as I don’t like his ways, he’s doing his best to keep us all together. With him, and me, we may be able to keep everyone together in this.”
Berdine tilled her head closer. “It won’t last, and you know it.”
Kahlan wiped a hand across her face. “Berdine, Drefan is my husband. I have sworn an oath to him.”
“An oath, is it? Then why haven’t you let him in your bed
?”
Kahlan opened her mouth, but couldn’t find the words.
“It’s because of Lord Rahl, isn’t it? You still think he’s coming back, don’t you? You want him to come back.”
Kahlan put her fingertips to her lips. She turned away. “If Richard was going to come back, he’d have done so by now.”
“Maybe it’s the plague, maybe he isn’t finished ridding the magic of the plague. Maybe when he’s finished, he will return.”
Kahlan hugged her arms to herself. She knew that wasn’t it.
“Mother Confessor, you do want him to return, don’t you?”
“I’m married to Drefan. I have a husband.”
“That isn’t what I asked you. You do want him to return. You must want him to come back.”
Kahlan shook her head. “He said he would always love me. He said his heart would always be mine. He promised.” Kahlan swallowed the anguish. “He walked away. I may have hurt him, but if he really loved me, he wouldn’t do this to me. He’d have given me a chance . . .”
“But you still want him back.”
“No. I don’t want ever to go through this kind of pain again. I don’t want ever to leave myself open to this much hurt. I was wrong ever to let myself fall in love with him in the first place.” Kahlan shook her head again. “I don’t want him to come back.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re just upset, as I get because Raina died. But if she came back, I’d forgive her for dying and take her back in a heartbeat.”
“Not Richard. I’ll not trust my heart to him again. Regardless of what I did, that doesn’t make it right for him to hurt me as he did. He just walked away from me, and after he’d made promises of always loving me no matter what. He failed me in that test.
“I never thought he would hurt me like that. I thought my heart was safe with him, no matter what, but it wasn’t.”
Berdine turned her around and gripped her shoulders.
“Mother Confessor, you don’t mean that. You don’t. Trust works both ways. If you really loved him, then you must trust in him, no matter what, just as you expected him to always trust in you.”
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