Table Of ContentCHAPTER 1
She didn't remember dying.
With an obscure sense of apprehension, she wondered if the distant angry
voices drifting in to her meant she was again about to experience that
transcendent ending: death.
There was absolutely nothing she could do about it if she was.
While she didn't remember dying, she dimly recalled, at some later point,
solemn whispers saying that she had, saying that death had taken her, but that he
had pressed his mouth over hers and filled her stilled lungs with his breath, his
life, and in so doing had rekindled hers. She had had no idea who it was that
spoke of such an inconceivable feat, or who "he" was.
That first night, when she had perceived the distant, disembodied voices as
little more than a vague notion, she had grasped that there were people around
her who didn't believe, even though she was again living, that she would remain
alive through the rest of the night. But now she knew she had; she had remained
alive many more nights, perhaps in answer to desperate prayers and earnest
oaths whispered over her that first night.
But if she didn't remember the dying, she remembered the pain before
passing into that great oblivion. The pain, she never forgot. She remembered
fighting alone and savagely against all those men, men baring their teeth like a
pack of wild hounds with a hare. She remembered the rain of brutal blows driving
her to the ground, heavy boots slamming into her once she was there, and the
sharp snap of bones. She remembered the blood, so much blood, on their fists, on
their boots. She remembered the searing terror of having no breath to gasp at the
agony, no breath to cry out against the crushing weight of hurt.
Sometime after-whether hours or days, she didn't know-when she was
lying under clean sheets in an unfamiliar bed and had looked up into his gray
eyes, she knew that, for some, the world reserved pain worse than she had
suffered.
She didn't know his name. The profound anguish so apparent in his eyes
told her beyond doubt that she should have. More than her own name, more
than life itself, she knew she should have known his name, but she didn't. Nothing
had ever shamed her more.
Thereafter, whenever her own eyes were closed, she saw his, saw not only
the helpless suffering in them but also the light of such fierce hope as could only
be kindled by righteous love. Somewhere, even in the worst of the darkness
blanketing her mind, she refused to let the light in his eyes be extinguished by her
failure to will herself to live.
At some point, she remembered his name. Most of the time, she
remembered it.
Sometimes, she didn't. Sometimes, when pain smothered her, she forgot
even her own name.
Now, as Kahlan heard men growling his name, she knew it, she knew him.
With tenacious resolution she clung to that name-Richard-and to her memory of
hint, of who he was, of everything he meant to her.
Even later, when people had feared she would yet die, she knew she would
live. She had to, for Richard, her husband. For the child she carried in her womb.
His child. Their child.
The sounds of angry men calling Richard by name at last tugged Kahlan's
eyes open. She squinted against the agony that had been tempered, if not
banished, while in the cocoon of sleep. She was greeted by a blush of amber light
filling the small room around her. Since the light wasn't bright, she reasoned that
there must be a covering over a window muting the sunlight, or maybe it was
dusk. Whenever she woke, as now, she not only had no sense of time, but no
sense of how long she had been asleep.
She worked her tongue against the pasty dryness in her mouth. Her body
felt leaden with the thick, lingering slumber. She was as nauseated as the time
when she was little and had eaten three candy green apples before a boat
journey on a hot, windy day. It was hot like that now: summer hot. She struggled
to rouse herself fully, but her awaking awareness seemed adrift, bobbing in a vast
shadowy sea. Her stomach roiled. She suddenly had to put all her mental effort
into not throwing up. She knew all too well that in her present condition, few
things hurt more than vomiting. Her eyelids sagged closed again, and she
foundered to a place darker yet.
She caught herself, forced her thoughts to the surface, and willed her eyes
open again. She remembered: they gave her herbs to dull the pain and to help her
sleep. Richard knew a good deal about herbs. At least the herbs helped her, drift
into stuporous sleep. The pain, if not as sharp, still found her there.
Slowly, carefully, so as not to twist what felt like double-edged daggers
skewered here and there between her ribs, she drew a deeper breath. The
fragrance of balsam and pine filled her lungs, helping to settle her stomach. It was
not the aroma of trees among other smells in the forest, among damp dirt and
toadstools and cinnamon ferns, but the redolence of trees freshly felled and
limbed. She concentrated on focusing her sight and saw beyond the foot of the
bed a wall of pale, newly peeled timber, here and there oozing sap from fresh axe
cuts. The wood looked to have been split and hewn in haste, yet its tight fit
betrayed a precision only knowledge and experience could bestow.
The room was tiny; in the Confessors' Palace, where she had grown up, a
room this small would not have qualified as a closet for linens. Moreover, it would
have been stone, if not marble. She liked the tiny wooden room; she expected
that Richard had built it to protect her. It felt almost like his sheltering arms
around her. Marble, with its aloof dignity, never comforted her in that way.
Beyond the foot of the bed, she spotted a carving of a bird in flight. It had
been sculpted with a few sure strokes of a knife into a log of the wall on a flat
spot only a little bigger than her hand. Richard had given her something to look
at. On occasion, sitting around a campfire, she had watched him casually carve a
face or an animal from a scrap of wood. The bird, soaring on wings spread wide as
it watched over her, conveyed a sense of freedom.
Turning her eyes to the right, she saw a brown wool blanket hanging over
the doorway. From beyond the doorway came fragments of angry, threatening
voices.
"It's not by our choice, Richard... We have our own families to think about...
Wives and Children.”
Wanting to know what was going on, Kahlan tried to push herself up onto
her left elbow. Somehow, her arm didn't work the way she had expected it to.
Like a bolt of lightning, pain blasted up the marrow of her bone and exploded
through her shoulder.
Gasping against the racking agony of attempted movement, she dropped
back before she had managed to lift her shoulder an inch off the bed. Her panting
twisted the daggers piercing her sides. She had to will herself to slow her
breathing in order to get the stabbing pain under control. As the worst of the
torment in her arm and the stitches in her ribs eased, she finally let out a soft
moan.
With calculated calm, she gazed down the length of her left arm. The arm
was spitted. As soon as she saw it, she remembered that of course it was. She
reproached herself for not thinking of it before she had tried to put weight on it.
The herbs, she knew, were making her thinking fuzzy. Fearing to make another
careless movement, and since she couldn't sit up, she focused her effort on
forcing clarity into her mind.
She cautiously reached up with her right hand and wiped her fingers across
the bloom of sweat on her brow, sweat sown by the flash of pain. Her right
shoulder socket hurt, but it worked well enough. She was pleased by that
triumph, at least. She touched her puffy eyes, understanding then why it had hurt
to look toward the door. Gingerly, her fingers explored a foreign landscape of
swollen flesh. Her imagination colored it a ghastly black-and-blue. When her
fingers brushed cuts on her cheek, hot embers seemed to sear raw, exposed
nerves.
She needed no mirror to know she was a terrible sight. She knew, too, how
bad it was whenever she looked up into Richard's eyes. She wished she could look
good for him if for no other reason than to lift the suffering from his eyes.
Reading her thoughts, he would say, "I'm fine. Stop worrying about me and put
your mind to getting better."
With a bittersweet longing, Kahlan recalled lying with Richard, their limbs
tangled in delicious exhaustion, his skin hot against hers, his big hand resting on
her belly as they caught their breath. It was agony wanting to hold him in her
arms again and being unable to do so. She reminded herself that it was only a
matter of some time and some healing. They were together and that was what
mattered. His mere presence was a restorative.
She heard Richard, beyond the blanket over the door, speaking in a tightly
controlled voice, stressing his words as if each had cost him a fortune. "We just
need some time . . ."
The men's voices were heated and insistent as they all began talking at
once. "It's not because we want you to, you should know that, Richard, you know
us .... What if it brings trouble here? . . . We've heard about the fighting. You said
yourself she's from the Midlands. We can't allow . . . we won't . . ."
Kahlan listened, expecting the sound of his sword being drawn. Richard had
nearly infinite patience, but little tolerance. Cara, his bodyguard, their friend, was
no doubt out there, too; Cara had neither patience nor tolerance.
Instead of drawing his sword, Richard said, "I'm not asking anyone to give
me anything. I want only to be left alone in a peaceful place where I can care for
her. I wanted to be close to Hartland in case she needed something." He paused.
"Please . . . just until she has a chance to get better."
Kahlan wanted to scream at him: No! Don't you dare beg them, Richard!
They have no right to make you beg. They've no right! They could never
understand the sacrifices you've made.
But she could do little more than whisper his name in sorrow.
"Don't test us .... We'll burn you out if we have to! You can't fight us all-we
have right on our side."
The men ranted and swore dark oaths. She expected, now, at last, to hear
the sound of his sword being drawn. Instead, in a calm voice, Richard answered
the men in words Kahlan couldn't quite make out. A dreadful quiet settled in.
"It's not because we like doing this, Richard," someone finally said in a
sheepish voice. "We've no choice. We've got to consider our own families and
everyone else."
Another man spoke out with righteous indignation. "Besides, you seem to
have gotten all high-and-mighty of a sudden, with your fancy clothes and sword,
not like you used to be, back when you were a woods guide."
"That's right," said another. "Just because you went off and saw some of
the world, that don't mean you can come back here thinking you're better than
us."
"I've overstepped what you have all decided is my proper place," Richard
said. "Is this what you mean to say?"
"You turned your back on your community, on your roots, as I see it; you
think our women aren't good enough for the great Richard Cypher. No, he had to
marry some woman from away. Then you come back here and think to flaunt
yourselves over us."
"How? By doing what? Marrying the woman I love? This, you see as vain?
This nullifies my right to live in peace? And takes away her right to heal, to get
well and live?"
These men knew him as Richard Cypher, a simple woods guide, not as the
person he had discovered he was in truth, and who he had become. He was the
same man as before, but in so many ways, they had never known him.
"You ought to be on your knees praying for the Creator to heal your wife,"
another man put in. "All of mankind is a wretched and undeserving lot. You ought
to pray and ask the Creator's forgiveness for your evil deeds and sinfulness-that's
what brought your troubles on you and your woman. Instead, you want to bring
your troubles among honest working folks. You've no right to try to force your
sinful troubles on us. That's not what the Creator wants. You should be thinking of
us. The Creator wants you to be humble and to help others-that's why He struck
her down: to teach you both a lesson."
"Did he tell you this, Albert?" Richard asked. "Does this Creator of yours
come to talk with you about his intentions and confide in you his wishes?"
"He talks to anyone who has the proper modest attitude to listen to Him,"
Albert fumed.
"Besides," another man spoke up, "this Imperial Order you warn about has
some good things to be said for it. If you weren't so bullheaded, Richard, you'd
see that. There's nothing wrong with wanting to see everyone treated decent. It's
only being fair minded. It's only right. Those are the Creator's wishes, you've got
to admit, and that's what the Imperial Order teaches, too. If you can't see that
much good in the Order-well then, you'd best be gone, and soon."
Kahlan held her breath.
In an ominous tone of voice, Richard said, "So be it."
These were men Richard knew; he had addressed them by name and
reminded them of years and deeds shared. He had been patient with them.
Patience finally exhausted, he had reached intolerance.
Horses snorted and stomped, their leather tack creaking, as the men
mounted up. "In the morning we'll be back to burn this place down. We'd better
not catch you or yours anywhere near here, or you'll burn with it." After a few last
curses, the men raced away. The sound of departing hooves hammering the
ground rumbled through Kahlan's back. Even that hurt.
She smiled a small smile for Richard, even if he couldn't see it. She wished
only that he had not begged on her behalf; he would never, she knew, have
begged for anything for himself.
Light splashed across the wall as the blanket over the doorway was thrown
back. By the direction and quality of the light, Kahlan guessed it had to be
somewhere in the middle of a thinly overcast day. Richard appeared beside her,
his tall form towering over her, throwing a slash of shadow across her middle.
He wore a black, sleeveless undershirt, without his shirt or magnificent gold
and black tunic, leaving his muscular arms bare. At his left hip, the side toward
her, a flash of light glinted off the pommel of his singular sword. His broad
shoulders made the room seem even smaller than it had been only a moment
before. His clean-shaven face, his strong jaw, and the crisp line of his mouth
perfectly complemented his powerful form. His hair, a color somewhere between
blond and brown, brushed the nape of his neck. But it was the intelligence so
clearly evident in those penetrating gray eyes of his that from the first had riveted
her attention.
"Richard," Kahlan whispered, "I won't have you begging on my account."
The corners of his mouth tightened with the hint of a smile. "If I want to
beg, I shall do so." He pulled her blanket up a little, making sure she was snugly
covered, even though she was sweating. "I didn't know you were awake."
"How long have I been asleep?"
"A while."
She figured it must have been quite a while. She didn't remember arriving
at this place, or him building the house that now stood around her.
Kahlan felt more like a person in her eighties than one in her twenties. She
had never been hurt before, not grievously hurt, anyway, not to the point of being
on the cusp of death and utterly helpless for so long. She hated it, and she hated
that she couldn't do the simplest things for herself. Most of the time she detested
that more than the pain.
She was stunned to understand so unexpectedly and so completely life's
frailty, her own frailty, her own mortality. She had risked her life in the past and
had been in danger many times, but looking back she didn't know if she had ever
truly believed that something like this could happen to her. Confronting the
reality of it was crushing.
Something inside seemed to have broken that night-some idea of herself,
some confidence. She could so easily have died. Their baby could have died
before it even had a chance to live.
"You're getting better," Richard said, as if in answer to her thoughts. "I'm
not just saying that. I can see that you're healing."
She gazed into his eyes, summoning the courage to finally ask, "How do
they know about the Order way up here?"
"People fleeing the fighting have been up this way. Men spreading the
doctrine of the Imperial Order have been even here, to where I grew up. Their
words can sound good-almost make sense-if you don't think, if you just feel. Truth
doesn't seem to count for much," He added in afterthought. He answered the
unspoken question in her eyes. "The men from the Order are gone. The fools out
there were just spouting things they've heard, that's all."
"But they intend us to leave. They sound like men who keep the oaths
they've sworn."
He nodded, but then some of his smile returned. "Do you know that we're
very close to where I first met you, last autumn? Do you remember?"
"How could I ever forget the day I met you?"
"Our lives were in jeopardy back then and we had to leave here. I've never
regretted it. It was the start of my life with you. As long as we're together, nothing
else really matters."
Cara swept in through the doorway and came to a halt beside Richard,
adding her shadow to his across the blue cotton blanket that covered Kahlan to
her armpits. Sheathed in skintight red leather, Cara's body had the sleek grace of
a falcon: commanding, swift, and deadly. Mord-Sith always wore their red leather
when they believed there was going to be trouble. Cara's long blond hair, swept
back into a single thick braid, was another mark of her profession of Mord-Sith,
member of an elite corps of guards to the Lord Rahl himself.
Richard had, after a fashion, inherited the Mord-Sith when he inherited the
rule of D'Hara, a place he grew up never knowing. Command was not something
he had sought; nonetheless it had fallen to him. Now a great many people
depended on him. The entire New World-Westland, the Midlands, and D'Hara
depended on him.
"How do you feel?" Cara asked with sincere concern.
Kahlan was able to summon little more voice than a hoarse whisper. "I'm
better."
"Well, if you feel better," Cara growled, "then tell Lord Rahl that he should
allow me to do my job and put the proper respect into men like that." Her
menacing blue eyes turned for a moment toward the spot where the men had
been while delivering their threats. "The ones I leave alive, anyway."
"Cara, use your head," Richard said. "We can't turn this place into a fortress
and protect ourselves every hour of every day. Those men are afraid. No matter
how wrong they are, they view us as a danger to their lives and the lives of their
families. We know better than to fight a senseless battle when we can avoid it."
"But Richard," Kahlan said, lifting her right hand in a weak gesture toward
the wall before her, "you've built this-"
"Only this room. I wanted a shelter for you first. It didn't take that long just
some trees cut and split. We've not built the rest of it yet. It's not worth shedding
blood over."
If Richard seemed calm, Cara looked ready to chew steel and spit nails.
"Would you tell this obstinate husband of yours to let me kill someone before I go
crazy? I can't just stand around and allow people to get away with threatening the
two of you! I am Mord-Sith!"
Cara took her job of protecting Richard-the Lord Rahl of D'Hara-and Kahlan
very seriously. Where Richard's life was concerned, Cara was perfectly willing to
kill first and decide later if it had been necessary. That was one of the things for
which Richard had no tolerance.
Kahlan's only answer was a smile.
"Mother Confessor, you can't allow Lord Rahl to bow to the will of foolish
men like those. Tell him."
Kahlan could probably count on the fingers of one hand the people who, in
her whole life, had ever addressed her by the name "Kahlan" without at minimum
the appellation "Confessor" before it. She had heard her ultimate title-Mother
Confessor-spoken countless times, in tones ranging from awed reverence to
shuddering fear. Many people, as they knelt before her, were incapable of even
whispering through trembling lips the two words of her title. Others, when alone,
whispered them with lethal intent.
Kahlan had been named Mother Confessor while still in her early twenties-
the youngest Confessor ever named to that powerful position. But that was
several years past. Now, she was the only living Confessor left.
Kahlan had always endured the title, the bowing and kneeling, the
reverence, the awe, the fear, and the murderous intentions, because she had no
choice. But more than that, she was the Mother Confessor-by succession and
selection, by right, by oath, and by duty.
Cara always addressed Kahlan as "Mother Confessor." But from Cara's lips
the words were subtly different than from any others. It was almost a challenge, a
defiance by scrupulous compliance, but with a hint of an affectionate smirk.
Coming from Cara, Kahlan didn't hear "Mother Confessor" so much as she heard
"Sister." Cara was from the distant land of D'Hara. No one, anywhere, outranked
Cara, as far as Cara was concerned, except the Lord Rahl. The most she would
allow was that Kahlan could be her equal in duty to Richard. Being considered an
equal by Cara, though, was high praise indeed.
When Cara addressed Richard as Lord Rahl, however, she was not saying
"Brother." She was saying precisely what she meant: Lord Rahl.
To the men with the angry voices, the Lord Rahl was as foreign a concept as
was the distant land of D'Hara. Kahlan was from the Midlands that separated
D'Hara from Westland. The people here in Westland knew nothing of the
Midlands or the Mother Confessor. For decades, the three parts of the New
World had been separated by impassable boundaries, leaving what was beyond
those boundaries shrouded in mystery. The autumn before, those boundaries had
fallen.
And then, in the winter, the common barrier to the south of the three lands
that had for three thousand years sealed away the menace of the Old World had
been breached, losing the Imperial Order on them all. In the last year, the world
had been thrown into turmoil; everything everyone had grown up knowing had
changed.
"I'm not going to allow you to hurt people just because they refuse to help
us," Richard said to Cara. "It would solve nothing and only end up causing us more
trouble. What we started here only took a short time to build. I thought this place
would be safe, but it's not. We'll simply move on."
He turned back to Kahlan. His voice lost its fire.
"I was hoping to bring you home, to some peace and quiet, but it looks like
home doesn't want me, either. I'm sorry."
"Just those men, Richard." In the land of Anderith, just before Kahlan had
been attacked and beaten, the people had rejected Richard's offer to join the
emerging D'Haran Empire he led in the cause of freedom. Instead, the people of
Anderith willingly chose to side with the Imperial Order. Richard had taken Kahlan
and walked away from everything, it seemed. "What about your real friends
here?"
"I haven't had time . . . I wanted to get a shelter up, first. There's no time
now. Maybe later."
Kahlan reached for his hand, which hung at his side. His fingers were too far
away. "But, Richard-"
"Look, it's not safe to stay here anymore. It's as simple as that. I brought
you here because I thought it would be a safe place for you to recover and regain
your strength. I was wrong. It's not. We can't stay here. Understand?"
"Yes, Richard."
"We have to move on."
"Yes, Richard."
There was something more to this, she knew-something of far greater
importance than the more immediate ordeal it meant for her. There was a
distant, troubled look in his eyes.
"But what of the war? Everyone is depending on us-on you. I can't be much
help until I get better, but they need you right now. The D'Haran Empire needs
you. You are the Lord Rahl. You lead them. What are we doing here? Richard. . ."
She waited until his eyes turned to look at her. "Why are we running away when
everyone is counting on us?"
"I'm doing as I must."
"As you must? What does that mean?"
Shadow shrouded his face as he looked away.
"I've . . . had a vision."
CHAPTER 2
"A vision?" Kahlan said in open astonishment.
Richard hated anything to do with prophecy. It had caused him no end of
trouble.
Prophecy was always ambiguous and usually cryptic, no matter how clear it
seemed on the surface. The untrained were easily misled by its superficially
simplistic construction. Unthinking adherence to a literal interpretation of
prophecy had in the past caused great turmoil, everything from murder to war. As
a result, those involved with prophecy went to great lengths to keep it secret.
Prophecy, at least on the face of it, was predestination; Richard believed
that man created his own destiny. He had once told her, "Prophecy can only say
that tomorrow the sun will come up. It can't say what you are going to do with
your day. The act of going about your day is not the fulfillment of prophecy, but
the fulfillment of your own purpose."
Shota, the witch woman, had prophesied that Richard and Kahlan would
conceive an infamous son. Richard had more than once proven Shota's view of
the future to be, if not fatally flawed, at least vastly more complex than Shota
would have it seem. Like Richard, Kahlan didn't accept Shota's prediction.
On any number of occasions, Richard's view of prophecy had been shown
to be correct. Richard simply ignored what prophecy said and did as he believed
he must. By his doing so, prophecy was in the end often fulfilled, but in ways that
could not have been foretold. In this way, prophecy was at once proven and
disproved, resolving nothing and only demonstrating what an eternal enigma it
truly was.
Richard's grandfather, Zedd, who had helped raise him not far from where
they were, had not only kept his own identity as a wizard secret. In order to
protect Richard, he also hid the fact that Richard had been fathered by Darken
Rahl and not George Cypher, the man who had loved and raised him. Darken Rahl,
a wizard of great power, had been the dangerous, violent ruler of far-off D'Hara.
Richard had inherited the gift of magic from two different bloodlines. After killing
Darken Rahl, he had also inherited the rule of D'Hara, a land that was in many
ways as much a mystery to him as was his power.
Kahlan, being from the Midlands, had grown up around wizards; Richard's
ability was unlike that of any wizard she had ever known. He possessed not one
aspect of the gift, but many, and not one side, but both: he was a war wizard.
Some of his outfit came from the Wizard's Keep, and had not been worn in three
thousand years-since the last war wizard lived.
With the gift dying out in mankind, wizards were uncommon; Kahlan had
known fewer than a dozen. Among wizards, prophets were the most rare; she
knew of the existence of only two. One of those was the more within the province
of Richard's gift. Yet Richard had always treated prophecy as a viper in his bed.
Tenderly, as if there were no more precious thing in the whole world,
Richard lifted her hand. "You know how I always talk about the beautiful places
only I know way back in the mountains to the west of where I grew up? The
special places I've always wanted to show you? I'm going to take you there, where
we'll be safe."
"D'Harans are bonded to you, Lord Rahl," Cara reminded him, "and will be
able to find you through that bond."
"Well, our enemies aren't bonded to me. They won't know where we are."
Cara seemed to find that thought agreeable. "If people don't go to this
place, then there won't be any roads. How are we going to get the carriage there?
The Mother Confessor can't walk."
"I'll make a litter. You and I will carry her in that."
Cara nodded thoughtfully. "We could do that. If there were no other
people, then the two of you would be safe, at least."
"Safer than here. I had expected the people here to leave us to ourselves. I
hadn't expected the Order to foment unrest this far away-at least not this quickly.
Those men usually aren't a bad lot, but they're working themselves up into a
dangerous mood. "
"The cowards have gone back to their women's skirts. They won't be back
until morning. We can let the Mother Confessor rest and then leave before
dawn."
Richard cast Cara a telling look. "One of those men, Albert, has a son,
Lester. Lester and his pal, Tommy Lancaster, once tried to put arrows into me for
spoiling some fun Tommy was about to have hurting someone. Now Tommy and
Lester are missing a good many teeth. Albert will tell Lester about us being here,
and soon after, Tommy Lancaster will know, too.
"Now that the Imperial Order has filled their heads with talk of a noble war
on behalf of good, those men will be fancying what it would be like to be war
heroes. They aren't ordinarily violent, but today they were more unreasonable
than I've ever seen them.
"They'll go drinking to fortify their courage. Tommy and Lester will be with
them by then, and their tales of how I wronged them and how I'm a danger to
decent folks will get everyone all worked up. Because they greatly outnumber us,
they'll begin to see the merit in killing us-see it as protecting their families and
doing the right thing for the community and their Creator. Full of liquor and glory,
they won't want to wait until morning. They'll be back tonight. We have to leave
now."
Cara seemed unconcerned. "I say we wait for them, and when they come
back, we end the threat."
"Some of them will bring along other friends. There will be a lot of them by
the time they get here. We have Kahlan to think about. I don't want to risk one of
us being injured. There's nothing to be gained by fighting them."
Richard pulled the ancient, tooled-leather baldric, holding the gold-and-
silver wrought scabbard and sword, off over his head and hung it on the stump of
a branch sticking out of a log. Looking unhappy, Cara folded her arms. She would
rather not leave a threat alive. Richard picked his folded black shirt off the floor to
the side, where Kahlan hadn't seen it. He poked an arm through a sleeve and
drew it on.
"A vision?" Kahlan finally asked again. As much trouble as the men could
be, they were not her biggest concern just then. "You've had a vision?"
"The sudden clarity of it felt like a vision, but it was really more of a
revelation."
"Revelation." She wished she could manage more than a hoarse whisper.
"And what form did this vision revelation thing take?"
"Understanding."
Kahlan stared up at him. "Understanding of what?"
He started buttoning his shirt. "Through this realization I've come to
understand the larger picture. I've come to understand what it is I must do."
