Shota shrugged. “I know no more how to start a plague than to cure it. I know magic started this one. If magic started it, then it would stand to reason that magic could halt it.”
Kahlan straightened. “Then there is hope we can stop it, and save all those people from dying.”
“Possibly. If we were to put the pieces together, it would at least suggest that Jagang stole from the Temple of the Winds magic to start the plague, and that the temple is trying to warn Richard of the violation.”
“Why Richard?”
“Why do you think? What makes Richard different from anyone else?”
Kahlan felt transfixed by Shota’s small, sly smile.
“He’s a war wizard. He has Subtractive Magic. It’s how he defeated the spirit of Darken Rahl and stopped the Keeper. Richard is the only one with the power to do whatever it is that can help.”
“Keep that in mind,” Shota whispered into her teacup.
Kahlan was suddenly getting the feeling that she was being led down a path. She dismissed the feeling. Shota was trying to help.
Kahlan gathered her courage. “Shota, why did you send Nadine?”
“To marry Richard.”
“Why Nadine?”
Shota’s lips spread in a sad smile. It was the question for which she had been waiting.
“Because I care about him. I wanted it to be someone in whom he could find at least some small comfort.”
Kahlan swallowed. “But he finds comfort in me.”
“I know. But he is to marry another.”
“The flow of the future tells you this? Your future… memory?” Shota gave her a single nod. “It wasn’t your idea? You didn’t simply want to send someone to marry him so I wouldn’t?”
“No.” Shota leaned back in her chair and stared off into the trees. “I saw that he will marry another. I see great pain for him in this. I exerted all my influence so that it would be someone he knew, someone in whom he would find at least some solace. I wanted to spare him as much pain in it as I could.”
Kahlan didn’t know what to say. She felt as she had when she was struggling against the flow of water down in the drainage tunnel when she was fighting Marlin. She remembered the weight of the water, the way it pinned her in place.
“But I love him,” was all she could think to say.
“I know,” Shota whispered back. “It was not my choice to have him marry another. I was only able to influence who it would be.”
Kahlan struggled to pull a shaky breath as she looked away from the witch woman’s ageless eyes.
“I had no say,” Shota added, “in who would be your husband.”
Kahlan’s gaze returned to Shota. “What? What do you mean?”
“You are to be wedded. It is not Richard. I could not influence that part of it. That is not a good sign.”
Kahlan felt stunned. “What do you mean?”
“The spirits are somehow involved in this. They would only accept limited influence. They have their reasons for the rest of it. Those reasons are veiled from me.”
Kahlan felt a tear run down her cheek. “Shota, what am I to do? I’ll lose my only love. I could never love anyone but Richard, even if I wished it. I’m a Confessor.”
Shota sat still as stone as she watched Kahlan. “The good spirits have granted us all they could in allowing me to have a say in who will be Richard’s bride. I searched, and could find no other woman for whom he feels even this limited empathy. She was the best I could do.
“If you truly love Richard, then you should try to find comfort in the fact that he will have Nadine, a woman he knows and for whom he at least has some feeling, however small. Perhaps, with a woman such as this, he will someday find happiness and come to love her.”
Kahlan put her trembling hands in her lap. She felt sick to her stomach. It would do no good to argue with Shota. This wasn’t her doing. The spirits were involved.
“To what purpose? What good will it do for him to marry Nadine? For me to be mated to one I don’t love?”
Shota’s voice came soft and compassionate. “I don’t know, child. Just as some parents, for a variety of reasons, choose their children’s spouses, so have the spirits chosen for you and Richard.”
“If the spirits were involved, why would they desire our misery? They took us to that place so we could be together.” Kahlan struggled against the weight of the floodwaters. “Why would they want to do this to us?”
“Perhaps,” Shota whispered as she watched Kahlan, “it is because you will betray him.”
Kahlan’s throat clenched shut, locking her breath in her lungs. The prophecy screamed through her head.
… for the one in white, his true beloved, will betray him in her blood.
Kahlan shot to her feet. “No!” Her hands balled into fists. “I would never hurt him! I would never betray him!”
Shota calmly sipped her tea.
“Sit down, Mother Confessor.”
Kahlan fought to keep the tears back as she sank into her chair.
“I don’t control the future memories any more than I control the past. I told you, you must have the courage to hear the answers.” She tapped a finger to her temple. “Not only here”—She tapped the finger over her heart—“but here, too.”
Kahlan made herself take a deep breath. “Forgive me. It’s not your fault. I know that.”
Shota lifted an eyebrow. “Very good, Mother Confessor. Learning to accept the truth is the first step to gaining control of your destiny.”
“Shota, I don’t mean this to sound disrespectful, but seeing the future does not provide all the answers. Before, you told me that I would touch Richard with my power. I thought that would destroy him. I tried to kill myself to prevent your words from coming to pass, to prevent myself from hurting him.
“Richard wouldn’t allow me the chance at suicide. As it turned out, your seeing of the future was true, but there was more to it, and it turned out differently than we thought.
“I touched Richard, but his magic protected him, and my touch didn’t harm him.”
“I didn’t see the result of the touch. Only that you would touch him. This is different. I see you both being wedded.”
Kahlan felt numb. “Who is it to be that I will marry?”
“I see only a misty form. I cannot see the person. I do not know his identity.”
“Shota, I was told that a witch woman’s seeing of future events is a form of prophecy.”
“Who told you this?”
“A wizard. Zedd.”
“Wizards,” Shota muttered. “They don’t know what is in a witch woman’s mind. They think they know everything.”
Kahlan pushed her long hair back over her shoulder. “Shota, we were going to be honest with each other, remember?”
Shota let out a dainty grumble. “Well, I guess that in this case, they may be mostly right.”
“Prophecy does not always turn out how it seems. The dire dangers can be avoided, or changed. Do you think there is any way I can change the prophecy?”
Shota frowned. “The prophecy?”
“The one you mentioned. Betraying Richard.”
Shota’s frowned deepened into suspicion. “Are you saying that this was also foretold in a prophecy?”
Kahlan’s eyes turned away from the witch woman’s intense gaze. “When the wizard came, with Jagang possessing his mind, Jagang said that he had invoked a prophecy to trap Richard. It, too, says I will betray him.”
“Do you remember this prophecy?”
Kahlan rubbed her finger around the rim of her teacup. “It’s one of those memories that we spoke of, the memories we wish we could forget, but we can’t.
“‘On the red moon will come the firestorm. The one bonded to the blade will watch as his people die. If he does nothing, then he, and all those he loves, will die in its heat, for no blade, forged of steel or conjured of sorcery, can touch this foe.
“‘To quench the inferno, he must seek the remedy i
n the wind. Lightning will find him on that path, for the one in white, his true beloved, will betray him in her blood.’”
Shota leaned back, taking her teacup with her. “It is true, as you say, that the events in prophecy can be altered, or avoided, but not in a double bind prophecy. This one is such a prophecy, a trap that ensnares its victim. The red moon proves that the trap has sprung.”
“But there must be a way—” Kahlan pushed her hands back into her hair. “Shota, what am I to do?”
“You are to be wedded to another,” she whispered, “as is Richard. What is beyond, I don’t see, but this much of it is the future.”
“Shota, I know you’re speaking the truth, but how can it be that I would betray Richard? I’m telling you the truth; I would die before I would betray him. My heart won’t allow me to betray him. I couldn’t.”
Shota smoothed a loose wisp of her dress. “Think, Mother Confessor, and you will see that you are wrong, just as I showed you that you were wrong that I could no longer harm you.”
“How? How could I do such a thing, when I know it isn’t in me—for any reason—to betray him?”
Shota took a patient breath. “It is not nearly so difficult as you wish to think. What if you knew, for example, that you had only one way to save his life, and that way was to betray him, but in so doing, you would lose his love. Would you make the sacrifice of his love to preserve his life? The truth, now.”
Kahlan swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Yes. I would betray him if it was to save his life.”
“So, you see, it is not as impossible an event as you imagined.”
“I guess not,” Kahlan said in a small voice. She pushed at a few crumbs on the table. “Shota, what is the purpose of all this? Why would the future hold that Richard will marry Nadine, and that I will marry another man? There must be a reason. It goes against everything we both want, so there must be some force pushing events down that path.”
Shota said after a moment’s deliberation, “The Temple of the Winds hunts Richard. The spirits have a hand in this.”
Kahlan’s face sank wearily into her hands.
“You said to Nadine, ‘May the spirits have mercy on him.’ What did you mean by that?”
“The underworld contains more than just the good spirits. The spirits—good, and the evil—are all involved in this.”
Kahlan didn’t want to talk anymore. It was too painful, talking about the ruination of her dreams and hopes as if they were pieces on a game board.
“To what purpose?” she mumbled.
“The plague.”
Kahlan looked up. “What?”
“It has something to do with the plague, and the thing of magic the dream walker stole from the Temple of the Winds.”
“You mean that it could be that this could somehow be part of our attempt to find the magic to stop the plague?”
“I believe it is so,” the witch woman said at last. “You and Richard are desperately seeking a way to stop the plague and save the lives of countless people. I see in the future that you each wed other people.
“For what other reason would both of you make such a sacrifice?”
“But why would it be necessary—”
“You seek something I cannot answer. I cannot alter what will be, nor do I know the reason for it. We are forced to consider the possibilities. Think.
“If the only way to save all those people from dying in a firestorm of plague were for Richard and you to sacrifice your life together, perhaps, say, to prove your true devotion to protecting innocent lives, would you both do such a thing?”
Kahlan put her trembling hands in her lap, under the table. She had seen the pain in Richard’s eyes when he had watched that boy die. She knew her own pain. They had both seen innocent, sick children, who were going to die. How many more would die?
She would never be able to live with herself if the only way to save those children was to sacrifice her love, and she refused.
“How could we not? Even if it would kill us, how could we not? But how could the good spirits demand such a price?”
Kahlan suddenly remembered Denna’s spirit taking the Keeper’s mark from Richard, and freely choosing to go in Richard’s place to eternal torment at the Keeper’s hands. That it turned out that Denna didn’t have to face that fate didn’t matter; she thought that she would, and had sacrificed her soul in the place of one she loved.
The branches of a nearby maple tree clacked together in the gentle breeze. Kahlan could hear the flags atop Shota’s palace snapping in the wind. The air tasted of spring. The grasses were a bright, new green. Life was beginning to bud all around.
Kahlan’s heart felt like dead ashes.
“Then I will tell you one other thing,” Shota said, as if from a great distance. Kahlan listened from the bottom of a well of despair. “You have not heard the last message from the winds. You will receive one more, involving the moon. This will be the consequential communion.
“Do not ignore it, nor dismiss it. Your future, Richard’s future, and the future of all those innocent people will hinge on this event. Both of you must use all you have learned in order to comprehend the chance you will be offered.”
“Chance? Chance for what?”
Shota’s gaze riveted Kahlan. “The chance to carry out your most solemn duty. The chance to save all the innocent lives of those who depend upon you to do what they cannot.”
“How soon?”
“I only know it will not be long.”
Kahlan nodded. She wondered why she wasn’t crying. It seemed as if this was the most devastating personal tragedy she could imagine—losing Richard—and yet, she wasn’t crying.
She guessed she would, but not now, not here.
Kahlan stared at the table. “Shota, you would try to stop us from having a child, wouldn’t you? A boy child?”
“Yes.”
“You would try to kill our son, if we had one, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then how do I know that this isn’t just some plot on your part to prevent us from having a child?”
“You will have to judge the truth of my words with your own mind and heart.”
Kahlan remembered the dying boy’s words, and the prophecy. Somehow, she had known all along that she would never marry Richard. It was all just an impossible dream.
When she was young, Kahlan had asked her mother about growing up and having a love, a husband, a home. Her mother had stood before her, beautiful, radiant, statuesque, but wearing her Confessor’s face.
Confessors don’t have love, Kahlan. They have duty.
Richard was born a war wizard. He had been born for a purpose. Duty.
She watched the breeze roll a few of the crumbs from the table. “I believe you,” Kahlan whispered. “I wish I didn’t, but I do. You’re telling me the truth.”
There was nothing else to say. Kahlan stood. She had to lock her knees to stay upright on her trembling legs. She tried to remember where the sliph’s well was, but she couldn’t seem to make her mind work.
“Thank you for the tea,” she heard herself say. “It was lovely.”
If Shota answered, Kahlan didn’t hear it.
“Shota?” Kahlan grasped the back of the chair to steady herself. “Could you point me in the right direction? I can’t seem to remember…”
Shota was there, taking her arm. “I will walk partway with you, child,” Shota said in a soft, compassionate voice, “so you may find your way.”
They walked the road in silence. Kahlan tried to find cheer in the warm spring morning. It was still so cold in Aydindril. It had been snowing when she left. Still, she couldn’t find any cheer in the fine day.
As they climbed the stone steps cut into the cliff, Kahlan fought to regain a sense of purpose. If she and Richard could somehow save all those people from the plague, it would be a wonderful thing. Most wouldn’t care about the sacrifice they made, but that wouldn’t lessen the relief she would fe
el in the sound of a child’s laughter, or the sight of a mother’s joy in her child’s safety.
There would still be things to live for. She could fill the void with the happiness to be seen in the eyes of her people. She would have done something no other could do. She and Richard would have stopped Jagang from harming all those people.
Near the top of the cliff, Kahlan paused at a turn in the steps and looked out at Agaden Reach. It truly was a beautiful place, this valley nestled among the peaks of jagged mountains.
She remembered that the Keeper had sent a wizard and a screeling to kill Shota. Shota had barely escaped with her life. She had vowed to regain her home.
“I’m glad you got your home back. I’m glad for you, Shota. I really am. Agaden Reach belongs to you.”
“Thank you, Mother Confessor.”
Kahlan looked to the witch woman’s almond eyes. “What did you do to the wizard who chased you out?”
“What I said I would do. I tied him up by his thumbs, and I skinned him alive. I sat back and watched as his magic bled from his skinless carcass.” She turned and gestured back down into the green valley. “I covered the seat of my throne with his hide.”
Kahlan remembered that that was precisely what Shota had promised to do. It was small wonder that even wizards rarely dared to enter Agaden Reach; Shota was more than a match for a wizard. One wizard, at least, had learned that lesson too late.
“I can’t say I blame you—the Keeper sending him to kill you and all. If the Keeper had gotten you, well, I know how much you feared that.”
“I owe you and Richard a debt. Richard prevented the Keeper from having us all.”
“I’m glad the wizard didn’t send you to the Keeper, Shota.”
Kahlan really meant it. She still knew Shota was dangerous, but the witch woman seemed also to have a compassion that Kahlan hadn’t expected.
“Do you know what he said to me, this wizard?” Shota asked. “He said he forgave me. Can you believe it? He granted me forgiveness. And then he begged mine.”
The wind carried some of Kahlan’s hair across her face. She pulled it back. “Seems a strange thing for him to say, considering.”
“The Wizard’s Fourth Rule, he called it. He said that there was magic in forgiveness, in the Fourth Rule. Magic to heal. In the forgiveness you grant, and more so in the forgiveness you receive.”
Temple of the Winds Page 50
