Warheart (2 page)

Her words echoed back to her as she knelt there in the wet square, her trembling hands on Richard's shoulders.

No one joined her in the devotion. They knew that, this time, it was hers alone to give. It was her good-bye.

Tears ran down her cheeks, through the cold specks of mist and dots of rain, to drip off her face. Sucking back a sob before it could escape her restraint, she finally rose to her feet and took on a Confessor's face that revealed nothing of her inner torment.

When Kahlan looked up, she saw through a gap between the soldiers gathered in the square the distant figure of Hunter sitting quietly on his haunches at the edge of the dark woods. Even at that distance, she could see that Hunter's green eyes were fixed on her.

The catlike creature didn't look the least bit bothered by the drizzle. It ran off his thick fur like water off a duck.

Kahlan looked down again at the only man she had ever loved. Still wearing her Confessor face, she cupped a hand to Richard's cold cheek. Even though his flesh was cold, the magic kept it as soft as it had been in life.

In a way, her own face was like his: still, calm, and showing no emotion.

Richard's soul was now on the eternal journey. She had seen it descending into the darkness, weighed down by the demons of the underworld, their wings wrapped tightly around him. At the time she had been dead as well, or at least on the journey into death. The demons of the dark had been dragging her down into eternal night, away from the lines of the Grace, but Richard passed through the veil to the underworld and drew them away. Once he had pulled them away from her, Kahlan's soul, that mysterious element within the Grace, had been able to return to her body in the world of life.

Though a knife had been plunged through Kahlan's heart, Nicci had been able to heal the damage, and Kahlan's soul had returned in time. Returned because Richard had sacrificed his own life to come after her and save her in time.

Kahlan frowned at the thought … in time.

There was no such thing as time in the eternity of the underworld. Time only mattered in the world of life.

Was it possible that Richard still carried with him the spark of life, as she had–the balance to the deadly poison that had touched them both? Was it possible that after all this time he still carried that connection to the world of life, even as he journeyed ever farther into the eternal, timeless world of the dead?

How long could that spark, that connection, exist in such a place? Especially if his worldly form was still preserved by occult magic so that it remained as it had been at the moment of his death? The decomposition of his body had been prevented by magic involving the timeless element of the underworld. In that way, it was in a sense still connected to his soul.

Richard had removed the poisonous taint of death from her, drawn away the demons, and used her spark of life to send her along the lines of the Grace back from the underworld to the world of the living. They hadn't used occult magic to preserve her, but they hadn't needed to because she had only just died. It had seemed an eternity in the underworld, but in the world of life it had been only a brief time.

Richard had been dead for a considerable time, but that had meaning only in the world of life. Time had been suspended for his worldly form by elements of the underworld, where his soul had gone, and in the underworld time did not exist as such.

What if there was a way?

Kahlan glanced up at Hunter watching her from the distance.

She had thought that Red, the witch woman, had sent Hunter as a gesture of condolence.

What if Kahlan was wrong, and that had not been the reason Red had sent Hunter?

Somehow, it was all beginning to make a crazy kind of sense. A Richard kind of sense. His ideas often seemed crazy at first, only to turn out to be true. What if what she was thinking was one of those impossible, crazy kinds of ideas that were actually true?

She was Richard's only hope, now. He had no one but her to find a way. No one but her to fight for him.

Kahlan knew that if there really was a chance, any chance at all to bring him back, no matter how crazy it might seem, she was the one who had to find it.

“I have to go,” she whispered.

She turned suddenly to Nicci and said aloud, “I have to go.”

Nicci, her brow bunched, looked up from her silent weeping. “What? Go where?”

“I have to go see the witch woman.”

Nicci's frown deepened at the urgency in Kahlan's voice.

“Why?”

Kahlan looked at Hunter, then looked back and met the sorceress's gaze. “One of love's desperate acts.”

 

CHAPTER

3

Kahlan ran to the closest of the soldiers holding a torch. She put her hands over his big fists around the torch and pushed him back.

“No. We can't do this. Extinguish the torches.” She looked around at the others, her voice rising. “All of you! Put them out!”

Everyone looked confused, but the dozen men with the torches looked more relieved than anything. They carried the hissing, crackling torches, flames flapping, back away from the pyre lest they accidentally ignite it, then doused them in buckets of water. The flames fizzed and popped and sputtered in protest, but finally went out.

Only then did Kahlan sigh with relief.

Nicci put a hand on Kahlan's shoulder, turning her back. “What desperate act are you talking about?”

Kahlan ignored the sorceress and pointed in command up at the citadel for all the soldiers watching her to see.

“Carry Richard back up to the bedroom where he was. Place him back on the bed. Be careful with him.”

Without questioning the strange request, the big men of the First File all clapped fists to hearts.

Kahlan turned her attention to Commander Fister when he rushed up in front of his men. “Mother Confessor, what–”

“Have the room guarded. No one but the First File goes in, not even staff. Have the citadel guarded until I can get back.”

He gave her a nod. “It will be done, Mother Confessor.”

“Kahlan, what's going on?” Nicci asked under her breath.

Kahlan glanced off at Hunter, sitting at the edge of the dark wood. She looked off above the trees to the distant mountains that looked like gray phantoms floating in the hazy light. Somewhere back there in those mountains was a pass where the witch woman lived.

“I have to go find Red, the witch woman,” Kahlan told her again.

Nicci glanced toward the mountains. “Why would you want to find a witch woman? Why now, of all times?”

Kahlan's gaze met Nicci's blue eyes. “Witch women can see things in the flow of time. They can see events.”

“They can certainly make it seem that way at times,” Nicci agreed, “but so can a fortune-teller. They will tell you most anything you want to hear for a silver coin. Exactly what you want to hear and make it sound convincing if the coin is gold.”

“Witch women don't ask for silver or gold.”

Nicci looked sympathetic. “That doesn't mean the things they see really turn out to be true.”

“Red told me that I would be murdered.”

Nicci paused momentarily at such news. “And did she tell you that Richard would give his life to go to the underworld to come after you?”

“No. That's the point. That's why I have to go see her.”

“What do you mean, that's the point?”

“She told me that Richard is the pebble in the pond, and because he acts of free will, the ripples of those things he does touch everything, so it disrupts what she can see.” Kahlan gestured toward the puddles. “The same way ripples from the raindrops disturb the reflection.”

“Meaning?” Cassia asked, her wet, red leather creaking.

Kahlan looked to the hope in the eyes of the three Mord-Sith. “Meaning, there may be a way for us to bring Richard's soul back to his body in this world.”

“Bring him back to life?” Vale asked in a tone of astonished hope.

Kahlan gave her a quick nod. “Yes.”

“But you just said that she can't see what Richard will do,” Cassia said.

“That's right–that's my point. She can't see what he will do, but she may be able to see what others will do, what others might be able to do, or have the potential to do. Don't you see?” Kahlan turned back to Nicci. “Red told me to kill you.”

Nicci's mouth fell open. “What?”

Kahlan grasped Nicci's arm and pulled her a little farther away from the soldiers. The three Mord-Sith followed, forming a shield from the others.

“Red saw that if you weren't stopped, you would kill Richard,” Kahlan said in a lower voice. “She didn't know what Richard would do because she can't predict his actions, but she knew what would happen to others and what you would do. She knew that you would kill him.

“She said that the future–all of our lives–depends on Richard. Without him, we were all lost. That includes her. Do you see? She has a vested interest in Richard surviving because she would not want the Keeper of the underworld to be able to get hold of her outside the natural order of the Grace.

“Sulachan and Hannis Arc want to do exactly that. They intend to break the Grace, break the division between the world of the living and the world of the dead. See what I mean? As a witch woman, she would be doomed to an eternity of torture.

“She says that Richard is the only one who can stop them. You probably know better than I do all the prophecy that names Richard, and all the different ways he is named and the way he always seems to be at the center of everything.”

Nicci sighed. “Indeed I do.”

“So, Red told me that I had to kill you so that you in turn couldn't end Richard's life. She said he must live in order for everyone else to have a chance at life. She told me that I would be murdered before you killed him, so I had to kill you first.

“She was right about it all. But at the time I told her I didn't believe you would kill Richard. She said you would do it because you love him. That was all true. It happened just as she said, but at the time it made no sense.

“She didn't say that you would do it out of an act of love. She only said you would do it because you love him. I thought it meant that she was saying you would somehow do it out of anger or jealousy or something.” Kahlan tried to dismiss the accusation with a quick wave of a hand. “You know what I mean.”

Nicci's only answer was to let out a deep sigh.

“That part just didn't seem possible to me,” Kahlan said. “I couldn't bring myself to believe you would do such a thing to Richard and I told her so. She said that if you lived, you would. In the end I couldn't seriously consider ending your life on her word when it made no sense to me.”

Nicci smiled sadly, then. “Thank you for believing in me.”

The sorceress looked over at Richard lying atop the funeral pyre. Men were starting to clamber up over the planks and logs to carefully lift him down.

“Maybe you should have taken her advice,” Nicci said. “Had you done as she insisted, Richard would be alive right now. I'd rather it be me lying there dead than him.”

“Done is done,” Kahlan said, waving off the notion. “We can't change what is done, but maybe we can change what will be.”

Nicci looked back at her. “What do you mean?”

“Red felt real sorrow for me, true compassion. I know she did.” Kahlan gestured off toward Hunter. “Because she did, I thought that Red sent Hunter as a way of offering her condolences.”

Nicci was beginning to look more intrigued. “Now you think otherwise? You think she sent him for some other reason?”

“Yes–maybe. The last time she sent Hunter to me, it was so he could lead me safely to her so that she could tell me what she saw in the flow of time. She wanted to protect Richard and she believed that I was the best one to do that. She said that she could not kill you herself because it is not her place to interfere directly. Her place is to see what she can in order to help others do what must be done. She was right about it all, but I didn't believe her and so I didn't follow her instructions.”

Kahlan gripped Nicci's arm. “What if that's what she is doing this time as well? What if that's why she sent Hunter? What if she sees something in the flow of time, something we could do to help bring Richard back?”

Nicci's expression was guarded. “Witch women often seem like they are trying to help you, but that isn't necessarily the case. They have their own agenda and they have an unpleasant way of giving you false hope to serve their own ends.”

Kahlan knew that Nicci would do anything, take any chance no matter how crazy, if it could save Richard, so she knew that the sorceress was expressing doubt as a way of testing the strength of Kahlan's theory.

“Her agenda this time is for Richard to survive in order to stop Sulachan. There is no bigger threat to her. What if there really is a way?” Kahlan asked. “What if the witch woman sees something, some way to help Richard? While it's true that they misdirect you at times, it's never with lies–there is always a core of truth in what they say. I actually liked her, Nicci. I think she really cares about all of us.”

Nicci regarded her with a skeptical expression but didn't say anything.

“Since I didn't do as she told me to do and stop Richard's death by killing you, that changed events, changed the course and flow of events in time. Richard's act of free will changed the future. What if she now sees something new in the flow of time, something that we could do–something that has only now become a possibility because Richard did what he did by coming after me?”

Nicci looked off toward Hunter.

“Let's go,” Cassia said, growing impatient with the discussion. “We're wasting time. Let's get to this witch woman and find out.”

“She wanted me to come alone the last time,” Kahlan told the Mord-Sith.