Temple of the Winds (14 page)

“
Maybe you’re having an effect. Despite what Cara said back there, earlier today she said some things that make me think they understand.” Kahlan smiled and tried to lighten the subject of the Mord-Sith. “I heard you were outside today with Berdine and Raina, taming chipmunks.”

“
Taming chipmunks is easy. I was doing something considerably more difficult; I was trying to tame Mord-Sith.” His tone was grave, leading to the impression that his thoughts were far away. “You should have seen Berdine and Raina. They were giggling, just like little girls. I almost wept at the sight.”

Kahlan smiled to herself in wonder. “And here I thought you were just out there wasting time. How many more Mord-Sith are back at the People’s Palace in D’Hara?”

“
Dozens.”

“
Dozens.” It was a daunting thought. “At least chipmunks are plentiful.”

He stroked a hand down her hair as he held her head to his chest. “I love you, Kahlan Amnell. Thanks for being patient.”

“
I love you, too, Richard Rahl.” She clutched his tunic and pressed herself against him. “Richard, Shota still scares me. Promise me that you really will marry me.”

He let out a little, breathy laugh and then kissed the top of her head.

“
I love you more than I could ever tell you. There is no one else, not Nadine, not anyone; I swear an oath on my gift. You are the only one I will ever love. I promise.”

She could hear her heart drumming in her ears. That was not the promise she had asked for.

He pushed away. “I have to go.”

“
But …”

He looked back around the corner. “What? I have to go.”

She shooed him with a hand. “Go. Hurry back to me.”

He blew her a kiss and then he was gone. She leaned a shoulder against the corner as she watched his billowing gold cape recede down the hall, and listened to the jangle of chain mail and weapons and thud of boots as a raft of guards trailed in his wake.

The two remaining Mord-Sith and Egan waited in the red sitting room. The door to the bedroom was closed.

“
Raina, Egan, I want you to go protect Richard,” Kahlan announced as she walked in.

“
Lord Rahl told us to remain with you, Mother Confessor,” Raina said.

Kahlan lifted an eyebrow. “Since when have you followed Lord Rahl’s orders when it comes to matters of protecting him?”

Raina grinned wickedly: a rare sight. “Fine by us. But he will be angry that we left you alone.”

“
I have Cara and a palace packed with guards and surrounded by troops. The biggest danger to me is that one of those hulking guards will step on my foot. Richard has only five hundred men, and Berdine and Ulic. I’m worried for him.”

“
What if he sends us back?”

“
Tell him … tell him … Wait.”

Kahlan crossed the room to the mahogany writing desk and pulled paper, ink, and pen from under the lid. She dipped the pen, leaned over, and wrote:
Stay warm and sleep snug. It gets cold in the mountains in the spring. I love you—Kahlan.

She folded the paper and handed it to Raina. “Follow at a distance. Wait until after they set up camp, then give him this message. Tell him that I told you it was important. It will be dark, and he won’t send you back in the dark.”

Raina unfastened two buttons at the side of her leather outfit and slid the note in between her breasts. “He will still be angry, but at you.”

Kahlan smiled. “The big fellow doesn’t scare me. I know how to cool his scowl.”

Raina smiled conspiratorially. “I’ve noticed.” She looked over her shoulder at a pleased-looking Egan. “Let’s do our duty and deliver the Mother Confessor’s message to Lord Rahl. We need to find some slow horses.”

After they had departed, Kahlan glanced to a watchful Cara, and then knocked on the bedroom door.

“
Come in,” came Nadine’s muffled voice.

Cara followed Kahlan in. Kahlan didn’t object; she knew that if she had asked her to wait outside, Cara would have ignored the order. The Mord-Sith paid no heed to orders if they thought protecting her or Richard required that they did so.

Nadine was rearranging things in her scruffy travel bag. Her head hung low, looking into the bag, and her thick hair dangled down around her head, hiding her face. Periodically, she pushed her kerchief in under that veil of hair.

“
Are you all right, Nadine?”

Nadine sniffled, but didn’t look up. “If you call being the biggest fool the spirits ever saw all right, then I guess I’m just dandy.”

“
Shota has played me for a fool, too. I know how you feel.”

“
Sure.”

“
Is there anything you need? Richard wanted me to see to it that you have anything you need. He’s concerned about you.”

“
And pigs fly. He just wants me out of your fine room, and on the road home.”

“
That’s not true, Nadine. He said that you were a nice person.”

Nadine finally straightened and pushed some of her hair back over her shoulder. She wiped her nose and stuffed the kerchief in a pocket in her blue dress.

“
I’m sorry. You must hate me. I didn’t mean to come busting in here and try to take your man. I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know, or I’d never have done it. I thought … well, I thought he wanted …” The word “me” was drowned in the sound of her tears.

Trying to imagine the devastation of losing Richard’s love stirred Kahlan’s sympathy. She gave Nadine a comforting hug and sat her on the bed. Nadine pulled the kerchief back out of her pocket and pressed it against her nose as she wept.

Kahlan sat down on the bed next to the woman. “Why don’t you tell me about it, about you and Richard, if it would make you feel better? Sometimes, it helps to have someone listen.”

“
I feel so foolish.” Nadine flopped her arms down in her lap as she made an effort to control her weeping. “It’s my own fault. I always liked Richard. Everybody liked Richard. He’s nice to everyone. I’ve never seen him like he was today. He seems so different.”

“
He is different, in some ways,” Kahlan said. “Even from last autumn, when I first met him. He’s been through a lot. He’s had to sacrifice his old life, and he’s been tested by events. He’s had to learn to fight, or die. He’s had to face the fact that George Cypher wasn’t his real father.”

Nadine looked up in astonishment. “George wasn’t his father? Then who was? Someone named Rahl?”

Kahlan nodded. “Darken Rahl. The leader of D’Hara.”

“
D’Hara. Until the boundary came down, I only thought of D’Hara as an evil place.”

“
It was,” Kahlan said. “Darken Rahl was a violent ruler who sought conquest through torture and murder. He had Richard captured and tortured nearly to death. Richard’s brother, Michael, had betrayed him to Darken Rahl.”

“
Michael? Well, I guess that really doesn’t surprise me. Richard loved Michael. Michael is an important man, but he has a mean streak. If he wants something, he doesn’t care who it hurts. Though no one had the nerve to voice it, I don’t think anyone was too unhappy when he left and never came back.”

“
He died in the fight with Darken Rahl.”

Nadine didn’t seem unhappy about this news either. Kahlan didn’t say that Richard had had Michael executed for betraying the people he was supposed to be protecting, for his responsibility in the deaths of so many.

“
Darken Rahl was trying to use magic that would have enslaved everyone under his rule. Richard escaped and killed his real father, and saved us all. Darken Rahl was a wizard.”

“
Wizard! And Richard defeated him?”

“
Yes. We all owe Richard a great debt for saving us from what his father would have taken the world into.

“
Richard is a wizard, too.”

Nadine laughed at what she thought was a joke. Kahlan didn’t so much as smile. Cara stood stone-faced. Nadine’s eyes widened.

“
You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“
Yes. Zedd was his grandfather. Zedd was a wizard, as was Richard’s real father. Richard was born with the gift, but he doesn’t know very much about how to use it.”

“
Zedd’s gone, too.”

“
He came with us, in the beginning. He’s been fighting with us, and trying to help Richard, but a short time ago, in a battle, he was lost. I fear he was killed up at the Wizard’s Keep, up on the mountain above Aydindril. Richard refuses to believe Zedd was killed.” Kahlan shrugged. “Maybe he wasn’t. That old man was the most resourceful person I’ve ever met, other than Richard.”

Nadine wiped her kerchief across her nose. “Richard and that crazy old man were best friends. That was what Richard meant, then, when he said that his grandfather taught him about herbs. Everyone comes to my father for remedies. My father knows just about everything about herbs, and I hope someday to know half of what he knows, but my father always said that he wished he knew half as much as old Zedd. I never knew Zedd was Richard’s grandfather.”

“
No one did, not even Richard. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you a bit of the more important parts.” Kahlan looked down at her own hands nested in her lap. “After Richard stopped Darken Rahl, he was taken by the Sisters of the Light to the Old World, so that they could teach him to use his gift. They would have kept him at the Palace of the Prophets, in a web of magic that slowed time. They would have had him there for centuries. We thought he was lost to us.

“
The Palace of the Prophets turned out to be infested with Sisters of the Dark, and they wanted to free the Keeper of the Underworld. They tried to use Richard to those ends, but he escaped his confinement and stopped them. In the process, the Towers of Perdition that kept the Old and New Worlds separated were destroyed.

“
Now, Emperor Jagang, of the Imperial Order in the Old World, is no longer restrained by those towers and is trying to bring all the world under his rule. He wants Richard dead for thwarting him. Jagang is powerful and has a huge army. We have been unwillingly cast into a war for our destiny, our freedom, and for our very existence. Richard leads us in that war.

“
Zedd, acting in his capacity as First Wizard, named Richard the Seeker of Truth. It’s an ancient post, created three thousand years ago in the great war that raged at that time. It’s a solemn assignment of rectitude granted when there is grave need. A Seeker is above any law but his own, and backs his authority with the Sword of Truth and its attendant magic.

“
Fate occasionally touches us all in ways we don’t always understand, but it sometimes seems to have a death grip on Richard.”

Nadine, her eyes wide, finally blinked. “Richard? Why Richard? Why is he in the center of all this? He’s just a woods guide. He’s just a nobody from Hartland.”

“
Just because kittens are born in the hearth oven, that doesn’t make them muffins. No matter where they’re born, it’s their destiny to grow up to go out and kill rats.

“
Richard is a very special kind of wizard: a war wizard. He is the first wizard with both sides of the magic, Additive and Subtractive, to be born in three thousand years. Richard didn’t choose to do all this; he does this because we are all depending on him to help us remain a free people. Richard isn’t one to stand by and watch while people are hurt.”

Nadine looked away. “I know.” She fumbled with the kerchief in her fingers. “I kind of lied to you before.”

“
About what?”

She heaved a sigh. “Well, when I told you about Tommy and Lester. I made it sound like it was me who knocked out their front teeth. The truth is, I was on my way to meet Richard. We were to go for a walk and look for some maple-leafed viburnum. My father needed some of the inner bark to make a decoction for a baby with colic, and he had run out. Richard knew where there was a patch.

“
Anyway, when I was on my way through the woods, to Richard’s place, I came across Tommy Lancaster and his friend Lester on their way back from hunting doves. I’d fended off Tommy’s unwanted advances in front of some of his pals, and made him look a fool. I guess I kind of slapped him and called him a name.

“
He thought to pay me back when he came across me in the woods. He had Lester hold me down, and he … well, about the time he got his pants pushed down around his knees, Richard showed up. That took the starch right out of Tommy. Richard told them to be off, and said that he was going to tell their fathers.