Severed Souls (21 page)

Commander Fister snorted a short laugh.

“Let's move a little farther up the mountain,” Kahlan said, “and then let the men get some sleep before morning.”

Commander Fister tapped a fist to his heart in salute.

“Where's Richard,” Kahlan asked.

The commander pointed a thumb up the gorge. “Nicci is watching over him. Zedd and Irena are farther up making sure the way ahead is safe.”

Kahlan was glad to hear that. If there was one person she would want watching over Richard, it was Nicci.

Samantha hadn't moved. She seemed to be content where she was in Kahlan's arms. Kahlan thought that maybe she didn't want the others to see the tearstains running down her dusty face.

“You okay?” Kahlan whispered.

Samantha nodded. “Just tired … So tired.”

Kahlan could imagine that well enough.

As Kahlan carried Samantha up the gorge, making her way through the relieved men, she finally reached the horse. By the time she got there, Samantha was hanging limp, asleep in Kahlan's arms. Kahlan was dead tired, and as thin as Samantha was, she was still heavy. But Kahlan felt good holding the young woman. It felt good to be needed for comfort and shelter.

Nicci stood in a rush as Kahlan came close. “What in the world was that?”

“What are you so angry about?” Kahlan asked with a frown. The woman looked like she wanted to skin a dragon. “It killed the Shun-tuk, not us.”

Nicci cast a suspicious look at Samantha asleep in Kahlan's arms. “Did she do that?”

Kahlan nodded.

Nicci appraised the young woman a moment longer. “How?”

“She said that Richard taught her.”

Nicci shot a look back over her shoulder at the unconscious Richard. “Of course he did.”

Kahlan spotted Irena in the distance racing toward them. “Look, Nicci, let's not frighten her mother about this right now. We'll talk about it later. I think we need to get away from here just in case. Then we all need to get some rest. You and Zedd—and Samantha—need to rest if you are to recover your abilities. All right?”

Nicci heaved a sigh as in the distance Irena was calling her daughter's name.

“All right,” Nicci said. “Let's get moving. I want to find a safe place, then Zedd and I can work on waking Richard.”

“It can't be soon enough for me,” Kahlan said. “Irena might be able to help with it.”

Nicci folded her arms. “Zedd and I can do it. We'll get him back, I swear.”

Kahlan nodded. “Thanks, Nicci.”

She wondered why Nicci didn't want Irena helping. It was Richard, though, so she supposed that Nicci was not willing to take any chances with letting someone she didn't really know touch him with her power.

Nicci leaned close and shook her finger in Kahlan's face.

“But when I wake that husband of yours, I intend to ask him just what in the world he taught that girl.”

Kahlan smiled. “I bet you will.”

 

CHAPTER

29

After a march of nearly two hours, they came to a prominence at the head of the gorge from where a small waterfall fed the brook down where they stood. They needed to get up the steep rise and out of the gorge. While not as difficult as it would be to ascend the steep walls to the sides, Kahlan didn't much like the idea of climbing rugged terrain in the dark. She also didn't want to use torches or lanterns because it would allow anyone hunting them to be able to spot them from miles away. At least the moon was still out.

Commander Fister was eager to be onto higher ground for the defensive protection that it afforded. In much the same way they had used the gorge to trap the Shun-tuk, in the confines of a gorge, those same tactics could be used to corner them.

Kahlan didn't think that there could be any Shun-tuk left alive, but she had put the sword back in the scabbard Richard was wearing, which also meant putting away its attendant rage. Without the sword's intoxicating drive to fight, she took seriously the commander's advice for the extra measure of safety. Besides, she had no way to be certain that every one of the Shun-tuk was dead. What if there really had been a pocket under a slab of granite where some of them might have survived? What if even one of those with occult sorcery was still alive and later emerged to sneak up on them?

What if, because she didn't want to climb a hillside in the dark, that remaining Shun-tuk killed Zedd, or Nicci? Or Richard.

Or any of them, for that matter. Each life was precious. That was, after all, ultimately what they were fighting to protect—the sanctity of every life. Kahlan didn't want any of these men dying. She wanted them to be able to live in peace and not have to do the job at which they were so good.

Perhaps worst of all, the thought of being awakened suddenly and trying to scramble up out of the gorge in the dark with bloodthirsty Shun-tuk grabbing their ankles and pulling them back down into waiting arms of flesh-eating half people had her more than willing to do what was necessary to get up and out of the gorge before they stopped for the remainder of the night.

With the sword no longer gripped in her fist, exhaustion was setting in, but she was mostly interested in Zedd and Nicci having a safe place to get the rest and food they needed so they would be able to apply their full gifted ability to strengthen Richard and bring him back from the pull of death.

When Kahlan agreed to the commander's advice to press on and make the difficult climb to find a safer place to set up camp, he sent some men ahead first to scout the best way up.

Kahlan's clothes were stiff and sticky from all the blood of the Shun-tuk she had killed. She had no idea how many she had slaughtered. The memory of it was a blur of relentless fighting interspersed with halting mental visions of particularly desperate, violent moments.

Her hair was stiff and matted with blood. She was glad she didn't have a mirror handy, but by the looks she got, she could imagine well enough what a sight she must be.

In the war, some of the men she had led in battle at the time had called her their warrior queen. They hadn't meant it as the demotion such a title actually was, but it was meant as their highest tribute, so she had always accepted it in the spirit in which it had been intended.

Titles meant more to Kahlan than they did to Richard, but probably because she had been born a Confessor—her title was part of her inherent nature. That power she carried within her couldn't be separated from her by removing the title. It had taken the touch of death from the Hedge Maid to block her from that inner ability.

People had avoided and feared her all her life for the power she carried. That fear set her apart, kept her from so many of the simple pleasures of life that they could enjoy without a thought, even as simple a thing as a benevolent smile or nod in passing. It was not because she wanted to be set apart—she didn't—but because people had always distanced themselves from Confessors.

Most everyone feared Confessors, and in many, that fear had curdled into hatred.

No one smiled or nodded at a Confessor the way they did a normal person. Even those who respected the Confessors still feared them. She had always been able to see the tension in the faces of anyone who spotted her. All her life, she could detect the tremble in most people's voice when they spoke to her. She could often see their hands start to shake when she spoke to them. She always did her best to pretend not to notice in order to as gracefully as possible put them at ease. That was usually the best she could do. They feared what they feared.

Most of those who had been close to her for a time grew more used to her as they came to realize that a Confessor was not going to suddenly lose control and unleash her power on them. At times they came to almost forget about her power. Almost.

That inherent nature also drew those who wanted to kill her. For that reason, Confessors had once each been assigned a wizard to protect them. But all those other Confessors were long dead, as were the wizards assigned to them, including Giller, the wizard once assigned to Kahlan. Those who hated a Confessor's ability to uncover truth had finally been able to kill them all. All but her.

Now, Kahlan was married to her wizard, Richard, who was more importantly the man she loved.

In a way, her title, the one she was born with, Confessor, and then Mother Confessor, the title given her by her sister Confessors, represented her armor, the armor she wore to fight for truth. In that way, she was a warrior queen. Those other Confessors had wanted her to be the one who led them in that fight for truth. She was the one.

Born a simple Confessor, she now was and always would be the Mother Confessor, the last of her kind.

Richard was the first man who had not avoided her because of what she was. Of course, he hadn't known at the time that she was the Mother Confessor, or even known what being a Confessor really meant. As she had come to know Richard, though, she came to understand that even had he known, it wouldn't have stopped him from wanting to get closer to her. Nothing would have.

Richard was a very rare person.

He was the one.

He was the one for her, the only one. In so many ways, Richard was the only one. He was a point of singularity.

She had felt a pull to him that they had both felt from the first moment their eyes had met that fateful day in the Hartland woods.

Richard was referred to in prophecy as the pebble in the pond. Ripples from that pebble touched everything. He rippled through so much about prophecy that in that way he had created ripples through time itself.

Sometimes it made her head hurt to think about all the interlocking connections, so she simply loved him and tried not to think about all the wider implications of any of it.

But Richard was always thinking about it, even when he didn't consciously realize it. She could see it in his gray eyes when he was quietly watching the sun set. Even when he looked into her eyes, she could tell that there were always some kind of cosmic calculations going on somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind.

Since he had come into her life, others had come to treat her differently, to accept her. She now got smiles and sincere nods. Especially from soldiers like these. She had fought beside them and they had come to know her for who she was, and that she was more than simply a Confessor.

Richard had done that. He had changed everything.

While she waited for the men to scout the climb, Kahlan joined some of the soldiers under the gentle falls to wash blood out of her hair and off her clothes. They shared a bar of soap with her—soldiers all, passing it around to wash off the blood of their enemy. Fortunately, after the exertion of battle, the cold water felt good on her sore muscles. It wasn't a proper bath with her clothes on, but they needed to be washed as well, and in the wilds of the Dark Lands even this much was a luxury she very much appreciated.

As she wiped the clean water back off her long hair, some of the men told her how proud they were of how much blood she'd had all over her. They had viewed her blood-soaked hair as a mantle she had earned. They seemed especially pleased to see that she was just as committed as they were to killing the enemy, that she was willing to do all that she asked of them, and that she had waded into the task with every ounce of commitment they did.

Kahlan understood their feelings, but she still wanted all the blood off her.

She was looking forward to Richard waking and giving him a kiss. She wanted to look her best for that first kiss welcoming him back to the world of life.

 

CHAPTER

30

Once the scouts had found a good route, the climb was easier than they'd thought it would be. Fortunately, the way up was easy enough that the horse could negotiate the steep climb without too much difficulty, so they were able to save time by leaving Richard lashed in place.

The climb was mercifully short, but Kahlan's legs kept cramping from the effort of the long scramble up through the gorge, much of it at a dead run, to say nothing of what had seemed like an endless battle. The steeper ascent up the prominence and out of the gorge, short as it was, demanded that she dig deep for enough strength to make it.

Her arms felt like lead from swinging the sword. She knew that she was going to be sore for a couple of days. She reminded herself to be thankful for the sore muscles; it was better to be alive to feel sore than to be dead. She tried not to think of how many times she had come close to dying. She thought of Richard and tried not to think of how close both of them still were to dying.

At the top of the climb, in the lap of surrounding mountains, the land flattened out. A small lake collecting mountain runoff fed the falls and the brook down in the gorge. One of the men scouted out ahead beyond swampy ground thick with reeds and then through the woods beyond the far shore while another two scouted to either side. The center scout ran back from the woods and motioned for them with three sparks from his steel and flint. At seeing the three small flashes of sparks, they all hurried around the small moonlit lake, beyond the expanse of reeds, and into the woods beyond.

After following the man a brief distance across ground covered with a soft bed of pine needles beneath a stand of towering pines, they emerged on the far side, where they were brought to a halt at the brink of a chasm. In the moonlight it looked like a black snake stretching off to the left and right as far in each direction as they could see. Nicci cast a sparkling flame down the deep fissure. The light continued sinking far longer than Kahlan would have expected. Seeing how deep it was, they all took a step back from the edge. It was far too steep and too deep to climb down.

As far as she could see, there was no way over the chasm.

“Looks like we're going to have to go either left or right,” Zedd offered.

Kahlan scanned the forest on the far side of the chasm. “Not a lot of choice. We're hemmed by the gorge and this rift. If we could get to the other side, this kind of natural barrier would make it a safer place to get the rest we all need.”