She spread her hands in dismay. "Do you really think that one with the gift must kill someone they love to pass the test? Richard, that can't be."
"No, Sister, they don't have to kill someone they love. But they must prove they can make the right decision. They must prove they have what it takes to choose the greater good. Would one with the gift be a good servant to this Creator of yours, to the hope of life, if they could act only for selfish needs?
"Giving someone pain, as the Sisters do, does not prove anything except that the victim does not die. Wouldn't serving the light of life, and loving life, require that the person prove instead that of their own free will they would choose right, choose that light of life and love for all people?"
"Dear Creator," she whispered, "have we had it wrong all this time?" Her hand covered her mouth a moment. "And we thought we were bringing the Creator's Light to these boys."
Sister Verna's back straightened with resolve. She stood before Warren, putting her hands to the sides of his Rada'Han. As she stood with her eyes closed, her hands to the collar, there was a humming vibration in the air. After a moment, silence settled over the room, and then Richard heard a snapping sound. The Rada'Han cracked and fell away.
Warren looked positively giddy at the sight of the broken collar. Richard wished it could be that easy for him.
"What are you going to do now, Warren," Richard asked. "Are you going to leave the Palace?"
"Maybe. But I wish to study the books some more first, if the Sisters will allow it."
"They will allow it," Sister Verna said. "I will see to it."
"Then, maybe I would like to travel to Aydindril, to the Wizard's Keep, and study the books and prophecies you told me were kept there."
"That sounds a wise plan, Warren. Sister, I must be going."
"Warren," she said, "why don't you come along until I reach the Valley? You are free, now." She glanced to the balcony. "I think it would do you good to get away from here for a time, and think of other things. And I could use some help when we reach the Valley, if Richard accomplishes what he thinks he will."
"Really? I would like that."
As the three of them lugged their gear toward the stables, three guards, Kevin, Walsh, and Bollesdun, spotted them and ran to catch up.
"We may have found them, Richard," Kevin said.
"May have? What do you mean? Where are they?"
"Well, last night, the Lady Sefa set sail. We talked to people down at the docks who said they saw some women, maybe the Sisters, go aboard. Most agree they saw six women go aboard in the darkness, just before she sailed."
"Sailed!" Richard groaned. "What is the Lady Sefa?"
"A ship. A big ship. They left with the tide late in the night. They have a good lead, and from what I hear, there isn't a ship in port that can catch the Lady Sefa, or go as far to sea."
"We can't go after them, and do your other task," Sister Verna said.
Richard shifted his pack in annoyance. "You're right. If it's really them, they're gone for now, but I know where they're going. We'll have to deal with them later. At least the Palace of the Prophets is safe. We have more important things to tend to right now. Let's get the horses, and be on our way."
67
Kahlan ran down the dark stone corridors and through the tomblike chambers. The first rays of light splashed golden patches against the coarse, dark gray granite wall opposite the windows as she raced up an east stairway. Her heart pounded with the effort. She had not stopped running since Jebra had told her that she had spied a light in the Wizard's Keep: that Zedd was back.
She remembered what it felt like to run with long hair; the weight of it, the way it streamed out behind, flowing with her strides. She felt none of that now. But it didn't matter; she felt only desperate elation that Zedd was back. She had been waiting so long. She screamed his name as she ran.
Bursting into the cluttered reading room she stumbled to a panting halt. Zedd stood behind a table with books and papers scattered over it, just as she remembered it from the last time she had seen it, months ago. Candles on stands gave the small room an intimate glow. The reading room had but a single window, facing the still murky western sky.
A big man with bushy eyebrows, mostly gray hair, and a weathered, creased face looked up from a walking stick he was inspecting. Adie sat in a chair to the side, her head flitting toward sounds. Zedd cocked his head with a curious frown.
"Zedd!" She gulped air. "Oh, Zedd, I'm so relieved to see you."
"Zedd?" He turned toward the big man. "Zedd?" The big man gave a nod. "But I like Ruben."
"Zedd! I need your help!"
"Who be there?" Adie said from the chair.
"Adie, it's me. Kahlan."
"Kahlan?" She twitched her head toward Zedd. "Who be Kahlan?"
Zedd shrugged. "A pretty girl with short hair. She seems to know us."
"What are you talking about! Zedd, I need help! Richard is in trouble! I need you!"
Zedd's brow wrinkled in bewilderment. "Richard. I know that name. I think..."
Kahlan was frantic. "Zedd, what's the matter! Don't you know me? Please Zedd, I need you. Richard needs you."
"Richard..." He rubbed his smooth chin as he stared in thought at the table. "Richard..."
"Your grandson! Dear spirits, don't you know your own grandson!"
He stared at the table, thinking. "Grandson... I seem to remember... no, can't say I do."
"Zedd! Listen to me! The Sisters of the Light have him! They've taken him away!"
Kahlan stood silently catching her breath. Zedd's hazel eyes rose slowly to meet her gaze. His face lost its curiosity as his eyebrows drew in to hood his glare. "The Sisters of the Light have Richard?"
Kahlan had seen wizards angry, but she had never seen a look in any wizard's eyes like the look in Zedd's eyes.
"Yes," she said. She wiped her sweaty palms on her hips as she watched a crack run up the stone of the wall behind him. "They came and took him."
Zedd put his knuckles to the table and leaned toward her. "That's not possible. They couldn't take him unless they got one of their cursed collars around his neck. Richard would not put a collar around his neck."
Kahlan's knees were beginning to tremble. "He did."
His seething expression seemed it might ignite the very air. "Why would he put their collar around his neck, Confessor?"
"Because," she said in a small voice, "I made him put it on."
The candles on one of the stands close to him abruptly melted, dripping their wax to hissing puddles on the floor. The iron arms that had held the candles drooped down, like a plant needing water. The big man shrank back toward the wall of shelves.
Zedd's voice came in a dangerous whisper. "You did what, Confessor?"
The room echoed with silence as she stood quivering. "He didn't want to. I had to do it. I told him that he had to put it on to prove he loved me."
Kahlan thought she felt herself hit the wall. She couldn't understand why she was sprawled on the floor. She pushed herself up with shaking arms. She gasped as she was suddenly jerked to her feet and slammed against the wall again.
Zedd, his eyes wild, was right in front of her. "You did that to Richard!"
Kahlan's head spun. Her own voice sounded distant. "You don't understand. I had to. Zedd, I need your help. Richard told me to find you, and tell you what I had done. Please Zedd, help him."
In a rage, Zedd backhanded her across the face. She skinned her hands on the stone floor as she went down. He yanked her to her feet and slammed her to the wall once more.
"I can't help him! No one can! You fool!"
Tears ran down her face. "Why! Zedd, we have to help him!"
She brought up her arms in front of her face to ward him off when he drew his hand back again. It didn't help. Her head smacked the wall again. The room spun. She shook all over. She had never seen a wizard in a rage so out of control. Kahlan knew he was going to kill her for what she had done to R
ichard.
"You fool. You treacherous fool. No one can help him now."
"Please, Zedd. You can. Please, help him."
"Not even I. No one can get to him. I can't pass the Towers. Richard is lost to us. All I had left is lost."
"What do you mean, lost to us?" With trembling fingers, she wiped blood from the corner of her mouth. She didn't wipe the tears. "He will be back. He has to come back."
Zedd's eyes never left hers as he slowly shook his head. "Not while any of us are alive. The Palace of the Prophets is in a spell of time. Richard will be there for the next three hundred years while they train him. We will never see him again. He is lost to this world."
Kahlan shook her head. "No. Dear spirits, no. That can't be. We will see him. It can't be true!"
"True, Mother Confessor. You have put him beyond any help. I will never again see my grandson. You will never again see him. Richard will not return to this world for another three hundred years. Because of you. Because you made him put on that collar to prove he loves you."
He turned his back to her. Kahlan fell to her knees. "Noooo!" She beat her fists on the floor. "Dear spirits, why have you done this to me!" She cried in choking sobs. "Richard, my Richard."
"What happened to your hair, Mother Confessor." Zedd asked in a menacing voice, his back still to her.
Kahlan sat back on her heals. What did it matter anymore. "The Council convicted me of treason. I have been sentenced to be executed. To be beheaded. The people all cheered at the pronouncement of sentence. They all wanted to see it done. But I escaped."
Zedd nodded. "The people shall have their wish." He grabbed what was left of her hair in his fist and started dragging her from the room. "For what you have done, you shall be beheaded."
"Zedd!" she screamed. "Zedd! Please, don't do this!"
He used magic to drag her down the hall like a sack of feathers.
"Tomorrow, at the winter solstice festival, the people shall have their wish. They shall see the Mother Confessor beheaded. As First Wizard, I will see to it. I shall see it done."
Kahlan went limp. What did it matter? The good spirits had abandoned her. They had stripped her of everything that mattered.
Worse, she herself had condemned Richard to three hundred years of the thing he feared most.
She wanted to die. Death couldn't come fast enough for her.
*****
Richard stood with his hands on his hips as he watched the dark clouds made by spells in the distance, in the Valley of the Lost. They looked beautiful in the sunrise, with golden edges and striations of glowing rays. But he knew they were deadly.
Du Chaillu put an affectionate hand to his arm. "My husband makes me proud this day. He returns our land to us, as the old words have foretold."
"I've explained it to you a dozen times, Du Chaillu; I am not your husband. You have simply misinterpreted the old words. It only means we must do this together. And we haven't done it yet. I wish you would have come with me without bringing everyone else. I don't even know if this will work. We could be killed."
She patted his arm reassuringly. "The Caharin his come. He can do anything. He will return our land." She left him to his thoughts and started back to the camp. "All our people should be with us. It is their right." She stopped and turned back. "Will we be leaving soon, Caharin?"
"Soon," Richard said absently.
She started off again. "I will be with our people when you are ready for me."
The entire Baka Ban Mana nation was camped behind them. Thousands upon thousands of tents were spread out over the hills, like mushrooms after a month of rain. He hadn't been able to talk them out of coming, to convince them to wait, so they were all here, with him.
Richard sighed. What difference did it make? If he was wrong, and this failed, he had no reason to worry about all the Baka Ban Mana being disappointed in him. He would be dead.
Warren and Sister Verna quietly came up behind.
"Richard," Warren said, "can we talk to you?"
Richard continued to stare out at the storms. "Of course, Warren." He cast a glance back. "What's on your mind?"
Warren pushed his hands up the opposite sleeves of his robes. Richard thought it made him look very wizard-like when he did that. Warren was going to some day end up being Richard's idea of what a wizard ought to be: wise, compassionate, and charged with knowledge Richard could only wonder at. If they didn't all die, that was.
"Well, Sister Verna and I were talking. About what happens after you get through the Valley. Richard, I know what you want to do, but we have run out of time. There never was enough time to begin with. Tomorrow is winter solstice. It can't be done."
"Just because you don't know how to do something, that does not mean it can't be done."
"I don't understand."
Richard smiled at them. "You will. You will understand in a few hours."
Warren looked away toward the Valley. He idly scratched his nose. "If you say so, Richard."
Sister Verna said nothing. Richard was still trying to get used to her not arguing with him whenever he said something oblique. He wasn't sure she didn't want to.
"Warren, about the prophecy, the one about the gateway and the winter solstice. Are you sure it's about this winter solstice?" Warren nodded. "And if there were an agent, with an open box of Orden, and the skrin, are those the only elements needed to open the gateway, to tear the veil?"
A hot breeze ruffled Warren's hair. "Yes... but you told me Darken Rahl is dead. There is no agent."
It sounded more like a worried question than a statement.
"Must the agent be alive?" Sister Verna asked.
Warren shifted his weight to the other foot. "Well, not in principle, I guess. If he were somehow called back into this world, but I don't see how that could be done, but if it were done, that would be all that was needed."
Richard sighed in frustration. "And then this spirit agent could do the things the living agent would have done?"
Suspicion crept onto Warren's face. "Well, yes and no. It would require another element. A spirit cannot perform the physical requirements necessary to complete the covenant. He would need a coadjutor."
"You mean the spirit could not perform certain of the tasks needed, so he would need hands that would work in this world."
"Yes. With a helper, a spirit could do what was needed. But how could an agent be called back into this world? I don't see how that could be accomplished."
Sister Verna glanced away. "You had better tell him."
Richard pulled his shirt up and showed Warren the scar. "Darken Rahl burned me with his hand, when I unintentionally called him back into this world. He said he was here to tear the veil."
Warren's eyes opened wide. His worried gaze darted to the Sister, and then back to Richard. "If Darken Rahl is an agent, as you said, and he has someone to help him, then we are only one element away from destruction—the skrin. We need to know."
Richard pushed the mriswith cape back over his shoulder. "Sister Verna, would you help me?"
"What is it you would like me to do?"
"The first time you told me how to try to touch my Han, I decided to concentrate on a mental image of my sword. But that time, the first time, I used a background to put it against. It was something from the book of magic I told you about. The Book of Counted Shadows.
"When I tried to touch my Han, with the sword on that background, something happened. I was somehow in D'Hara, in the People's Palace, where the boxes are. I saw Darken Rahl. He saw me, too, and spoke to me. He told me he was waiting for me."
Sister Verna's eyebrows lifted. "Did this ever happen again."
"No. It frightened the wits out of me. I never used that background again. I think if I use that background now, I may be able to see what is happening there."
She folded her hands together before herself. "I've never heard of such a thing. But it may have something to do with the magic of Orden. It would not be the first thin
g about you that astonished me. It could be real, or just a fear, like a dream."
"I need to try. Would you sit with me? I'm afraid of not being able to pull back."
"Of course, Richard." She sat down on the ground and held up a hand. "Come. I will be with you."
Richard pulled the mriswith cape around himself as he sat down, folding his legs. "This thing hides my Han, maybe it will work to keep Darken Rahl from seeing me this time."
Richard relaxed himself as he held hands with Sister Verna. He concentrated on the mental image of the sword against the black square with a white border, as he had done the first time. As he concentrated, seeking the calm center, something began to happen.
The sword, the black square, and the white border all began to shimmer as if seen through heat waves, the same as the first time. The solid form of the sword softened, becoming transparent, and then vanished. The background dissolved. Once again, Richard was looking into The Garden of Life, at the People's Palace.
He searched the filmy image, seeing white bones where before he had seen burned bodies. He remembered them lying over the short walls, in bushes, and sprawled on the grass. They were much as he remembered, only now they were mostly exposed bones.
Richard saw the white, glowing figure of Darken Rahl, but he was not standing before the stone altar, before the three boxes of Orden. He was near the circle that had held white sand. The sand had not been there the last time he had seen this vision.
A woman in a long, brown skirt and white blouse knelt at Darken Rahl's feet, bent over the circle of sand. Richard willed himself closer. She was drawing lines in the sparkling sorcerer's sand. Richard remembered some of the symbols she was drawing; Darken Rahl had drawn them before when he had opened the box.
Richard watched her hand moving slowly, carefully, as she drew the lines of spells. Her right hand, he noticed, was missing the little finger.
In the center of the circle, in the center of the sorcerer's sand, sat a round object. Richard went closer. It was carved all over with beasts, just as the Prelate had described.
Richard wanted to scream with rage.
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