The woman stuck a finger into her mat of red hair and scratched her scalp. “I think you got the wrong idea about Drefan, Lord Rahl. He never touched us . . . in that way. He only came here to do his healing.”
“He came here to heal?”
“Yeah,” Bridget said.
Silas nodded his agreement. “Half the girls had something or other. Rashes and sores and such. Most people who sell herbs and cures don’t want to help our kind, so we just live with our ailments.
“Drefan told us how he wanted us to wash. He gave us herbs, and unguents to put on the sores. He came twice before, real late, after we was done, so as not to interfere with us earning a living. He checked on the girls’ children, too. Drefan was special kind with the children. One had a bad cough, and he got better after Drefan gave him something to take.
“He came checking on us early this morning. After he saw one of the girls, he went to Rose’s room, to check on her. That’s when he found her. He came flying out of her room after what he saw and was calling out”—she pointed at the floor at Richard’s feet—“between throwing up. We all rushed out in the hall and saw him there, on his knees, heaved his guts out right there.”
“So he didn’t come here to . . . to . . . and he never—”
Bridget guffawed. “I offered—no charge, since he helped me and all with what he gave me. He said that that wasn’t why he had come. He said he only wanted to help, that he was a healer.
“I offered, mind you, and I can be very persuasive”—she winked—“but he said no. He has a real handsome smile, he does. Just like yours, Lord Rahl.”
“Enter,” came the response to Richard’s knock.
Drefan was kneeling before his array of candles set about on the table against the wall. His head was bowed, and his hands were folded in supplication.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” Richard said.
Drefan looked back over his shoulder and then stood. His eyes reminded Richard of Darken Rahl. Drefan had the same blue eyes, with the same indefinably odd, unsettling look in them. Richard couldn’t help being disquieted by them. It sometimes made him feel as if Darken Rahl himself were staring at him.
People who had lived in fear of Darken Rahl were probably terrified when they looked into Richard’s eyes, too.
“What are you doing?” Richard asked.
“Praying to the good spirits to watch over the soul of someone.”
“Whose soul?”
Drefan sighed. He looked tired and doleful. “The soul of a woman no one cared about.”
“A woman named Rose?”
Drefan nodded. “How did you know about her?” He waved off his own question. “Forgive me—I wasn’t thinking. You’re the Lord Rahl. I expect you get reports of such things.”
“Yes, well, I do hear about things.” Richard spotted something new in the room. “I see you’ve taken to brightening up the decor.”
Drefan saw where Richard was looking, and went to the chair beside the bed. He returned with a small pillow. He ran his fingers lovingly over the rose embroidered on it.
“This was hers. They didn’t know where she came from, so Silas—he’s the man who runs the house—Silas insisted I take this for the small help I offer the women there. I won’t accept their money. If they had money to spare, they wouldn’t be doing what they do.”
Richard wasn’t an expert, but the embroidered rose looked to be done with care. “Do you think she made it?”
Drefan shrugged. “Silas didn’t know. Maybe she did. Maybe she saw it somewhere and bought it because it had a rose on it, like her name.” He gently nibbled his thumb back and forth across the rose as he stared at it.
“Drefan, what are you doing going to . . . to places like that? There’s no shortage of people needing healing. We have soldiers here who were wounded down by the pit. There’s plenty for you to do. Why were you going to whorehouses?”
Drefan dragged a finger down the stem of green thread. “I’m seeing to the soldiers. I go on my own time, before people are up and need me.”
“But why go there at all?”
Drefan’s eyes welled with tears as he stared at the rose on the pillow. “My mother was a whore,” he whispered. “I am the son of a whore. Some of those women have children. I could have been any one of them.
“Just like Rose, my mother took the wrong man to her bed. No one knew Rose. No one knew who she was, or where she came from. I don’t even know my own mother’s name—she wouldn’t tell the healers she left me with. Only that she was a whore.”
“Drefan, I’m sorry. That was a pretty stupid question.”
“No, it was a perfectly logical question. No one cares about those women, I mean cares about them as people. They get beaten bloody by the men who come to them. They catch terrible diseases. They’re scorned by other people.
“Herb sellers don’t want them coming into their shops—it gives them a reputation and then decent people won’t come around. Many of the things those women have, even I don’t know how to cure. They suffer sad, lingering deaths. Just for money. Some of them are drunks, and the men prostitute them and pay them with liquor. They’re drunk all the time and don’t know the difference.
“Some of them think they’ll find a rich man and be his mistress. They think they will please him and gain his favor. Like my mother. Instead, they have bastard children, like me.”
Richard was mentally wincing. He had been ready to believe that Drefan was an unfeeling opportunist. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m the son of that bastard, too.”
Drefan looked lip and smiled. “I guess so. At least your mother loved you. Mine didn’t. She didn’t even leave me her name.”
“Don’t say that, Drefan. Your mother loved you. She took you to a place where you would be safe, didn’t she?”
He nodded. “And left me there with people she didn’t know.”
“But she left you because she had to, so that you would be safe. Can you imagine how that must have hurt her? Can you imagine how it must have broken her heart to leave you with strangers? She must have loved you a great deal to do that for you.”
Drefan smiled. “Wise words, my brother. With a mind like that, you might make something of yourself, someday.”
Richard returned the smile. “Sometimes, we have to do desperate things to save the ones we love. I have a grandfather who has great admiration for acts of desperation. I think, with your mother. I’m beginning to understand what he means.”
“Grandfather?”
“My mother’s father.” Richard idly stroked a finger along the raised gold wire spelling out the word TRUTH on the hilt of his sword. “One of the greatest men I’ve ever had the honor of knowing. My mother died when I was young, and my father—the man I thought was my father—was often gone on his business as a trader. Zedd practically raised me. I guess I’m more Zedd than anyone else.”
Zedd had the gift. Richard had inherited the gift not only from Darken Rahl, but also from Zedd, from his mother’s side as well as his father’s. From both bloodlines. Richard found comfort in knowing that the gift of a good man flowed in his veins, and not just that of Darken Rahl.
“Is he still living?”
Richard looked away from Drefan’s blue. Darken Rahl eyes. “I believe he is. I don’t think anyone else does, but I do. Sometimes I feel like if I don’t believe, then he will be dead.”
Drefan laid a hand on Richard’s shoulder. “Then keep believing; you may be right. You’re fortunate to have a family. I know, because I don’t.”
“You do now, Drefan. You have a brother, at least, and soon a sister-in-law.”
“Thanks, Richard. That means a lot to me.”
“How about you? I hear you have half the women in the palace chasing after you. Any of them special?”
Drefan smiled distantly. “Girls, that’s all. Girls who think they know what they want and are impressed by foolish things that shouldn’t matter. I see them all batting their eyelas
hes at you, too. Some people are drawn to power. People like my mother.”
“Me! You’re seeing things.”
Drefan turned serious. “Kahlan is beautiful. You’re a fortunate man to have a woman of such substance and noble character. A woman like that only comes along once in a lifetime, and then only if the good spirits smile on you.”
“I know. I’m the luckiest man alive.” Richard stared off, thinking about the prophecy, and the things he had read in Kolo’s journal. “Life wouldn’t be worth living without her.”
Drefan laughed and slapped Richard on the back. “If you weren’t my brother, and a good one besides, I’d steal her from you and have her for myself. On second thought, you’d better be careful, I may yet decide to have her.”
Richard smiled with him. “I’ll be careful.”
Drefan pointed an admonishing finger at Richard. “You treat her right.”
“I’d not know how to do otherwise.” Richard swept a hand out, indicating the small, simple room, and changed the subject. “What are you still doing here? We can find you better quarters than this.”
Drefan gazed about at his room. “This is a king’s room compared to my quarters at home. We live simply. This room is almost more ostentation than I can bear.” His brow drew down. “It isn’t what kind of house you have that matters. This is not happiness. It’s what kind of mind you have, and how you care for your fellow man—what you can do to help others who can be helped by no one else.”
Richard adjusted the bands at his wrists. They made him sweat under the leather pads. “You’re right, Drefan.”
He hadn’t even realized it, but he had come to be used to his surroundings. Since he had left Hartland, he had seen many splendid places. His own home, back in Hartland, wasn’t nearly as nice as this plain room, and he had been happy there. He had been happy being a woods guide.
But, as Drefan said, a person had to help others who could be helped in no other way. He was stuck with being Lord Rahl. Kahlan was the balance. Now, all he had to do was find the Temple of the Winds before he lost it all.
At least he had a woman he loved more than he would ever have thought possible, and now, too, he had a brother.
“Drefan, do you know the meaning of Raug’Moss?”
“I was taught that it’s old High D’Haran, meaning ‘Divine Wind.’ ”
“Do you know High D’Haran?”
Drefan brushed back his tumbled-down blond hair. “Just that word.”
“I hear that you’re their leader. You’ve done well for yourself to become the leader of a community of healers.”
“It’s the only life I’ve ever known. Being the High Priest, though, mostly means that they have someone to blame when things go wrong. If someone we try to help doesn’t get better, the healers point in my direction and say, ‘He is our leader. Talk to him.’ Being High Priest means I have to read the reports and records, and try to explain to distraught relatives that we are only healers, and we can’t revoke the Keeper’s call. Sounds more impressive than it is, really.”
“I’m sure you exaggerate. I’m proud that you’ve done well. What are the Raug’Moss? Where do they come from?”
“Legend has it that the Raug’Moss were founded thousands of years ago by wizards whose gift was for healing. The gift began dying out in the race of man, and wizards, especially ones gifted for healing, became more and more rare.”
Drefan told Richard the story of how the community of the Raug’Moss started to change as wizards began dying out. Worried that their work would die out with them, the healers, the wizard healers, decided to take in apprentices without the gift. Over time, there were fewer and fewer wizards to oversee the work, until long ago the last of the wizards died.
It sounded to Richard much like reading in Kolo’s journal how different the Keep had been in that time long past when it was filled with wizards and their families.
“Now, there are no gifted among us,” Drefan said. “The Raug’Moss were taught many keys of health and healing, but we have nowhere near the talent of the wizards of old; we have no magic to aid us. We do what we can, with the teachings the true healers of old passed down, but we can only do so much. It’s a simple life, a hard life, but it has rewards that comforts of belongings can’t provide.”
“I understand. It must be the best feeling in the world to help people.”
Drefan’s face took on a curious set. “What of you? What is your gift? Your talent?”
Richard looked away from Drefan’s eyes. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword.
“I was born a war wizard,” he whispered. “I have been named fuer grissa ost drauka. High D’Haran for ‘the bringer of death.’ ”
The room fell quiet.
Richard cleared his throat. “I was pretty distraught by that, at first, but since then I’ve come to understand that being a war wizard means that I have been born to help others, by protecting them from those who would enslave them. From those like our bastard father—Darken Rahl.”
“I understand.” Drefan said into the uneasy silence. “Sometimes the best use of our ability is to kill—such as to end a life that has no hope but pain, or to end the life of one who would bring endless pain to others.”
Richard rubbed a thumb over the symbols on the silver bands at his wrist. “Yes. I understand what you mean by that, now. I don’t think I did, before. We both must do things that we don’t like, but which must be done.”
Drefan smiled a small smile. “Not many, other than my healers, ever understand it. I’m glad you do. Sometimes killing is the greatest of charity. I am careful to whom I speak those words. It is good to have my brother understand them.”
“The same with me, Drefan.”
Before Richard could ask more, they were interrupted by a knock at the door. Raina poked her head in. Her long, dark braid fell forward over her shoulder. “Lord Rahl, do you have a moment?”
“What is it, Raina?”
Raina rolled her eyes, indicating someone behind her. “Nadine wishes to see you. She seems upset about something, and will only speak to you.”
When Richard gestured, Raina opened the door a little wider and Nadine pushed her way in, oblivious to Raina’s scowl.
“Richard. You have to come with me.” She took up his hand in both of hers. “Please? Please, Richard, come with me? There’s someone here who desperately needs to see you.”
“Who?”
She looked to be genuinely troubled. She tugged on his hand. “Please, Richard.”
Richard was still wary. “Mind if I bring Drefan along?”
“Of course not. I was going to ask that you did.”
“Let’s go, then, if it’s really important.”
She held his hand tight and dragged him behind her.
Chapter 28
Richard spotted Kahlan coming down the hall toward him. She frowned at seeing Nadine pulling him along by the hand. Drefan, Raina, Ulic, and Egan trailed behind him as they all wove their way past palace staff going about their chores, and soldiers on patrol. Richard shrugged to Kahlan.
Nadine glared at Kahlan before turning down the hall toward her room. He wondered what that was all about. Annoyed, Richard yanked his hand away from Nadine’s grip, but kept following. Nadine skirted a walnut table against the wall beneath an old tapestry with a herd of white-tailed deer grazing before white-peaked mountains in the background. She checked over her shoulder to make sure Richard was still with her.
Kahlan and Cara caught up. Kahlan fell in beside him.
“Well,” Cara said from behind, as she stroked her thick braid, “doesn’t this look interesting?”
Richard shot her a scowl. Nadine turned and impatiently snatched his hand again. “You promised. Come on.”
“I promised nothing. I said I’d go with you,” Richard complained. “I didn’t say I would run.”
“Big strong Lord Rahl can’t keep up with me?” Nadine taunted. “The woods guide I remember could walk faster t
han this when he was half asleep.”
“I am half asleep,” he muttered.
“The guards told me you were back, and had gone to Drefan’s room,” Kahlan whispered to him. “I was on my way to meet you there. What’s this business with Nadine?”
Her whispered question was laced with aggravation. He noticed her quick glance to Nadine’s hand gripping his. “Beats me. She wants me to see someone.”
“And must you hold her hand to do it?” she growled under her breath. He yanked his hand away again.
Kahlan stole a quick peek at Drefan, back behind Cara and Raina. She twined her arm through Richard’s. “How are you doing? What did you . . . find out?”
Richard put his hand over hers and gave it a squeeze. “Everything is fine,” he whispered to her. “It wasn’t what I thought. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“What about the murderer? Has anyone found him yet?”
“Yes, someone found him, and murdered him for his crime,” Richard told her. “What about the representatives? Did you take care of it?”
Her answer was a moment in coming. “Grennidon, Togressa, and Pendisan Reach surrendered. Jara may yet, but they wish to wait for two weeks for a sign from the sky.” Richard frowned. “Mardovia refused to join with us. They choose to remain neutral.”
Richard jerked to a halt. “What!”
Everyone marching behind almost lurched into him.
“They refuse to surrender. They claim to be neutral.”
“The Order doesn’t recognize neutrality. Neither do we. Didn’t you tell them that?”
Kahlan’s face showed nothing. “Of course I did.”
Richard hadn’t meant to yell at her. He was angry at Mardovia, not her.
“General Reibisch is in the south. Maybe we could have him take Mardovia before the Order grinds them into carrion.”
“Richard, they were given a chance. They are now the walking dead. We can’t waste the lives of our soldiers to take Mardovia just so that we might protect them. It would serve no purpose and it would weaken our effort.”
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