I have had to trick Cara, which I greatly regret. She does not know anything of what I plan. She did not know I was leaving. If you hold her liable for this, I will view it with the greatest displeasure.
I don’t know when I will return, but I expect that I will be gone for a few days. I am doing this to help our situation. I beg you to understand and not be angry with me—I must do this.
Signed, the Mother Confessor, your queen, your love for all time, in this world and those beyond—Kahlan.
Kahlan folded the letter and wrote Richard’s name on the outside. She opened it and read it again, just to be sure she hadn’t revealed anything she didn’t want to him to know. She was satisfied with “to help our situation.” It was vague enough to mean anything. She hoped she wasn’t being too harsh with the way she insisted he not interfere.
Kahlan brought a candle close and heated the end of a stick of colored sealing wax from the drawer. She watched the wax drip onto the letter, making a red pool, and then pressed the Mother Confessor’s seal—twin lightning bolts—into the warm wax. She kissed the letter, blew out the candle, and propped the letter against it so it couldn’t be missed.
She never used to know why the Mother Confessor’s seal was twin lightning bolts, but she did now; it was the symbol of the Con Dar—the Blood Rage—an ancient component to a Confessor’s magic. It was magic so rarely invoked that she had never known of it; her mother had died before she could teach Kahlan to call it forth if needed.
After she had met Richard and fallen in love with him, she had invoked it by instinct. In the grip of that magic, she had painted a lightning bolt on each cheek as a warning to others not to get in her way. A Confessor in the Con Dar couldn’t be reasoned with.
The Blood Rage was the Subtractive side of a Confessor’s magic, invoked for retribution. Kahlan had brought it to life within herself when she thought Darken Rahl had killed Richard. It was called forth on behalf of someone, and could only be used to defend that person. It couldn’t be used to defend herself.
Like her Confessor’s power, which she had always felt in the core of her being, the Con Dar was always there, now, just below the surface, a menacing storm cloud on the horizon. She had felt it instantly rip through her when she needed it to protect Richard: blue lightning that destroyed all before it.
Without the Subtractive as well as the common Additive Magic, a person couldn’t travel in the sliph. The Sisters of the Dark, and the wizards who had become the Keeper’s minions, could call on Subtractive Magic, too.
Kahlan went into her bedroom. She stripped off the dressing robe and tossed it on the bed. She pulled open the bottom drawer of the ornately carved chest and pawed through her things, looking for what she needed.
Inside were clothes she had worn before, when she had been on her journeys, better suited to what she was going to do than was her white Mother Confessor’s dress. She stepped into dark green pants. She pulled out a heavy shirt and threw it on, buttoning it up with shaking fingers. She tucked in the shirt and buckled the wide belt. She left the waist pouch.
From the back of the drawer, Kahlan retrieved an object carefully wrapped in a square of white cloth. She set it on the floor and, crouching over it, laid back the corners of the cloth.
Even though she knew what it was, and what it looked like, she couldn’t help feeling a shiver when she actually saw it again.
Atop the cloth sat the spirit knife Chandalen had given her. It was a weapon made from the arm bone of his grandfather.
This knife had saved her life before. She had used it to kill Prindin, a man who had been her friend, but who had turned to the Keeper.
At least, she thought she had killed him; she didn’t remember exactly what had happened that day. She had, at the time, been under the influence of the poison Prindin had been giving her. She wasn’t entirely sure that it wasn’t the spirit of Chandalen’s grandfather who had saved her. Prindin had lunged atop her, and the knife seemed just to be there, in her hand. She remembered his blood running down the knife and over her fist.
Inky black raven feathers spread in a fan from the round knob of bone at the top. Raven was powerful spirit magic to the Mud People; it was associated with death.
Chandalen’s grandfather had sought the aid of the spirits to protect his people from slaughter by another people of the wilds who had gone mad with the blood lust of war lust. No one knew the reason, but the result was a bloodbath.
Chandalen’s grandfather had called a gathering to ask the spirits for their help. His people were peaceful, and didn’t know how to defend themselves. The spirits had taught Chandalen’s grandfather how to kill the Jocopo, and in so doing, they became the Mud People. The Mud People defended themselves, and eliminated the threat.
There were no more Jocopo.
Chandalen’s grandfather had taught his son to be a protector of his people, and Chandalen’s father had in turn taught Chandalen. Kahlan knew few men who were as good protectors of their people as Chandalen. In a battle with the army of the Imperial Order, Chandalen had been death itself. So had she.
Chandalen wore this spirit knife made from his grandfather’s bones, and one made from his father’s. Chandalen had given Kahlan the one made from his grandfather, so that it might protect her. Indeed, it once had. Maybe it would again.
Kahlan reverently lifted the bone knife in her hands.
“Grandfather of Chandalen, you helped me before. Please protect me now.” She kissed the sharpened bone.
If she was to face Shota, Kahlan didn’t want to do it unarmed. She could think of no better weapon to carry.
She tied the band made of woven prairie cotton around her arm and slipped the knife through it. It lay against her upper arm, with the black feathers draped down over it. It was a surprisingly quick weapon to draw, held to her arm as it was. Even though she was going to see a woman she feared, Kahlan felt decidedly better with grandfather’s spirit knife.
Kahlan pulled a light tan cloak from another drawer. She would have liked to have taken one that was heavier, considering the spring snowstorm, but she wasn’t liable to be out in it all that long. Agaden Reach wouldn’t be cold, as it was in Aydindril.
She was hoping that the light color would help her slip unnoticed past the guards up at the Keep, and besides, with the light cloak, she could draw the knife faster.
She wondered if it was folly to think she could draw her bone knife faster than Shota could cast a spell, or if such a weapon would even be of any use against a witch women. She threw the cloak around her shoulders. The knife was all she had.
Other than her Confessor’s power. Shota was wary of a Confessor’s power: no one was immune to the touch of a Confessor. If Kahlan could touch Shota, that would be the end of her. Shota had magic that in the past had prevented Kahlan from getting close enough to use her power, though.
But the Con Dar wouldn’t have to be close. Kahlan wouldn’t have to be touching Shota for the blue lightning of the Con Dar to work. She gave a mental sigh; she couldn’t invoke the Con Dar to defend herself. Kahlan had defended Richard with the lightning before when the screeling had attacked him, and when the Sisters of the Light had come to take him.
Kahlan felt a wave of realization course through her mind. Richard loved her and wanted to marry her; to be with her always. Shota had defied his wishes and sent Nadine to marry him. He didn’t want that.
Even disregarding the fact that Richard loved Kahlan, Nadine had caused him anguish, hurt him. He didn’t want to be with her, and only tolerated her presence because Shota was up to something and he feared to let that threat out of his sight. But he desperately didn’t want to be forced to marry her.
Shota was harming Richard.
Richard was in danger because of Shota. Kahlan could call the Con Dar to defend him. She had done it before at the threat of the Sisters taking Richard against his wishes. Kahlan could use the blue lightning to stop Shota. Shota had no defense against that kind of magic.
&
nbsp; Kahlan knew how magic worked. This was magic from within her. Like the magic of Richard’s sword, it worked through perception. If Kahlan felt justified in its use to defend Richard, the Con Dar would do her bidding. She knew Richard didn’t want Shota using him, controlling him, dictating what his life would be.
Kahlan had justification: Shota was harming Richard. The Con Dar would work against her.
Kahlan paused, sitting back on her heels, and prayed to the good spirits that they would guide her. She wouldn’t want to think she was doing this for vengeance, or that she was setting out to murder someone. She didn’t want to think that she intended to kill Shota. She wondered if she was trying to put justification to something that couldn’t be justified.
No, she wasn’t going with the intention of killing Shota. She was just going to get to the bottom of this business with Nadine, and to find out what Shota knew about the Temple of the Winds.
But if she had to, Kahlan intended to defend herself. Moreover, she intended to defend Richard against Shota—against her plans to ruin his future. Kahlan had had enough of being at the unfavorable end of Shota’s capricious ire. If Shota tried to kill her, or tried to force this suffering on Richard then Kahlan would end the threat.
Kahlan already missed Richard. For so long they had struggled to be together, and here she was leaving him. If the situation were reversed, would she be as understanding as she was expecting him to be?
At the thought of Richard, she slowly pulled open the top drawer to her most prized of possessions. Reverently, she lifted her blue wedding dress from its place as the only item in the drawer. Her thumbs stroked the fine fabric. Kahlan clutched the dress to her breast as tears took her.
She carefully set the dress back in its place in the drawer before she got tears on it. For a long moment, she stood there with one hand on the dress in the drawer.
She pushed the drawer closed. She had a job to do. She was the Mother Confessor, whether she liked it or not; Shota lived in the Midlands, and was therefore one of her subjects.
Kahlan didn’t want to die and never see Richard again, but she could no longer tolerate Shota’s meddling in their lives—her tampering with their future. Shota had sent another woman to marry Richard. Kahlan wouldn’t allow that kind of interference to go unchecked.
Her resolve hardened. She reached into the back of a wardrobe and pulled a knotted rope from a peg It was there in case of fire, so that the Mother Confessor could escape from the balcony.
Opening the glass doors gave her a shock of snarling wind and snow. Kahlan squinted against the storm and pulled the doors shut behind her. She drew up the hood and stuffed her hair inside it. It would do no good to have people recognizing the Mother Confessor—if anyone was even out on a night like this. But she knew that the guards up at the Wizards’ Keep would be.
She quickly secured the rope around one of the vase-shaped stone balusters and tossed the rest of the heavy coil out over the railing. In the darkness, she couldn’t see if it reached to the ground. She would have to trust that whoever had put the rope in the wardrobe had checked to make sure that it was long enough.
Kahlan swung a leg over the stone railing, gripped the rope in both hands, and started down.
Kahlan had decided to walk. It wasn’t that far, and besides, if she took a horse, she would have to leave it at the Keep and it might be found, giving her away, or else she’d have to turn it loose before she got there, only raising fears as to what had happened to her. A horse would also make it more difficult to get past the guards up at the Keep. The good spirits had provided her with a spring snowstorm, the least she could do was take advantage of it.
Tramping through the heavy, wet snow, she was beginning to wonder if going on foot was the wise thing to do. She stiffened her resolve. If she was already beginning to second-guess her decisions, she had no business going through with the rest of it.
Most of the buildings were shuttered. The few people she encountered were too worried about making their own way to be concerned with a huddled figure struggling into the wind. In the darkness, no one would even be able to tell if she was a man or a woman. Before long, she was out of the city and on the deserted road up to the Keep.
All the way up the road, she pondered the best way past the guards. These were D’Haran soldiers. It was always a mistake to underestimate D’Haran soldiers. It wouldn’t do to have them recognize her. They would report it.
Killing sentries was the easiest way to get past them, but she couldn’t do that; they were her men, now, fighting for their cause against the Imperial Order. Killing them was out of the question.
Whacking them across the skull to knock them unconscious was no good, either. That was never a dependable way to silence someone. In her experience, hitting a man across the head rarely had the desired result. Sometimes they would not be knocked unconscious and would scream at the top of their lungs before anything else could be done, raising an alarm and bringing other guards ready to kill the intruder.
Besides, she had seen men suffer and die from a blow on the head. She didn’t want that. You only hit someone on the head if you intended to kill them, because you most likely would.
The Sister and Marlin had probably used magic to get by the guards unseen. She didn’t have any magic that could do that. Her magic would destroy their minds.
That left either a trick, or stealth. D’Haran sentries were trained in every kind of trick, and probably knew more of them than she could even imagine.
She was down to stealth.
She wasn’t sure exactly where she was, but she knew she was getting close. The wind was coming from the left, so she stayed to the right of the road, downwind of them, crouching lower as she went on. When she got close enough, she would have to crawl.
If she laid down on the snow, spread her cloak out over her, and waited for a short time, the snow would cover her back and hide her. Then she would have to proceed slowly, and if she saw a soldier, simply lie still until he passed. She wished she had remembered to bring gloves.
Deciding that she was as close as she dared get, she moved off the right side of the road. She knew that the bridge would be the hardest part; it would funnel her into a relatively narrow space, with no option of moving away from the soldiers. But the soldiers feared the magic of the Keep, and would probably not be close to the bridge. They had been twenty or thirty feet from it when she had seen them before, and in the darkness and snow, visibility wasn’t great.
She was beginning to feel better about her chances of getting by unseen. The snow would provide enough cover.
Kahlan froze in her tracks as a sword blade appeared in front of her face. A darting glance revealed a sword to each side. Another man rested a lance on her back, at the base of her neck.
So much for stealth.
“Who goes there?” came a gruff voice from the man in front of her.
Kahlan had to think of a new plan, and fast. She quickly settled on a bit of truth, mixed in with their fear of magic.
“Captain, you nearly scared me to death. It’s me, the Mother Confessor.”
“Show yourself.”
Kahlan pushed back her hood. “I thought I’d be able to get past you unnoticed. I guess D’Haran sentries are even better than I thought.”
The men lowered their weapons. Kahlan was the most relieved to feel the lance lift from the back of her neck. That was the killing weapon in a challenge.
“Mother Confessor! You gave us a fright, you did. What are you doing up here again tonight? And on foot, no less?”
Kahlan sighed in resignation. “Get all your men together and I’ll explain.”
The captain tilted his head. “Over here. We have a shelter to get you out of the wind.”
Kahlan let them lead her to the other side of the road, where stood a simple three-sided structure meant to give some relief from wind and wet weather. It wasn’t big enough for her and all six men. They insisted she take the driest spot, farthest inside.
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She was torn between satisfaction that even in a snowstorm no one got past D’Haran guards, and wishing she had. It would have made it much easier. Now, she was going to have to talk her way out of it.
“All of you, listen carefully,” she began. “I don’t have a lot of time. I’m on an important mission. I need your confidence. All of you. You all know about the plague?”
The men grunted and nodded that they did, shifting their weight uncomfortably.
“Richard, Lord Rahl, is trying to find a way to stop it. We don’t know if there is a way, but he won’t give up, you know that. He would do anything it takes to save his people.”
The men were nodding again. “What’s that got to do with—”
“I’m in a hurry. Lord Rahl is sleeping right now. He’s exhausted from trying to find a cure for the plague. A cure that involves magic.”
The men straightened a bit. The captain rubbed his chin. “We know that Lord Rahl won’t let us down. He cured me a few days back.”
Kahlan looked to all the eyes watching her. “Well, what if Lord Rahl comes down with the plague himself? Before he can find an answer? Then what? We’re all dead, that’s what.”
The anxiety on their faces was clear. For D’Harans to lose a Lord Rahl was a calamitous event. It cast all their futures into doubt.
“What can be done to protect him?” the captain asked.
“What can be done is up to you men, here, tonight.”
“What can we do?”
“Lord Rahl loves me. You men all know how he protects me. He has those Mord-Sith shadowing me all the time. He sends guards with me wherever I go. He won’t let danger come within miles of me. He won’t let harm even get a view of me.
“Well, I don’t want him harmed, either. What if he gets the plague? Then we all lose him, that’s what.
“I may have a way to help him stop the plague before it can touch us all—before he can get it, as surely he will.”