Faith of the Fallen tsot-6

by Terry Goodkind

  He stood back and appraised the statue that was now more or less roughly a cone shape. Now, there were only lumps where the arms would extend out from the bodies. He wanted the arms to be free, the bodies to convey grace and movement. Life. What he carved for the Order was never free, always tightly bound to the stone, forever stiff, unable to move, like cadavers.

  Half of what had been there the night before was now gone. Richard ached to stay and work on, but he knew he couldn’t. From the corner, he excavated the canvas tarp Victor had left for him, and flung it over the statue.

  When he threw open the door, the white dust billowed out. Victor was sitting among the rubble of his stone monolith.

  The blacksmith blinked. “Richard, you have been here the whole night!”

  “I guess I have.”

  He gestured as a grin split his face. “You look like a good spirit. How goes the battle with the stone?”

  Richard could think of nothing to say. He could only beam with the joy of it.

  Victor laughed his belly laugh. “Your face says it all. You must be tired and hungry. Come, sit and rest—have some lardo.”

  Nicci heard Kamil and Nabbi shout a greeting as Richard came down the street, and then their footsteps as they ran down the front stairs. She glanced out the front window and, in the failing light of dusk, saw them meet up with Richard as he came down the street. She, too, was happy to see him coming home this early.

  Nicci had seen precious little of Richard in the weeks since he took on the duty of carving the statue for Brother Narev. She couldn’t imagine how Richard could endure carving a statue she knew had to be agony for him—not so much because of its size, but because of its nature.

  If anything, though, Richard seemed invigorated. Often, after working all day carving the moral lessons for the facade of the palace, he would then work late into the night on the grand statue for the entrance plaza. As tired as he had to be when he came home, he would sometimes pace. There were nights when he would only sleep for a couple of hours, rise, and go to work on the statue for hours before his workday at the site began. Several times he had worked the entire night.

  Richard seemed driven. Nicci didn’t know how he could do it. He sometimes came home to eat and to take a nap for an hour, and then he would go back. She would urge him to stay and sleep, but he would say that the penance had to be paid or they would put him back in prison. Nicci feared that possibility, so she didn’t insist that he stay home to sleep. Losing sleep was preferable to him losing his life.

  He had always been muscular and strong, but his muscles had become even more lean and defined since he came to the Old World. All that labor of loading iron and now moving rock and swinging a hammer had built him up even more. When he went out back to the washtubs and removed his shirt to rinse off the stone dust, the sight of him made her knees weak.

  Nicci heard footsteps passing down the hallway, and the excited voices of Kamil and Nabbi asking questions. She couldn’t understand Richard’s words, but she easily recognized the timbre of his voice calmly giving the two the answers to their questions.

  As tired as he was, as much as he was away at his work, he still took time to talk to Kamil and Nabbi, and to the people of the building. He was no doubt now on his way out back to give pointers to the two young men on their carving. During the day, they worked around the building, cleaning and caring for the place. They turned over the dirt in the garden, mixing in compost when it was ready. The women appreciated having the heavy spade work done for them. The two washed, painted, and repaired, hoping Richard would approve and then show them how to do new things. Kamil and Nabbi always offered to help Nicci with anything she might need—she was, after all, Richard’s wife.

  Richard came in the door as Nicci stood at the table cutting up carrots and onions into a pot. He slumped down into the chair across the table. He looked spent from his day of work—after having been up hours earlier working on the statue.

  “I came home to get something to eat. I have to go back and work on the statue.”

  “This is for tomorrow’s stew. I have some millet cooked.”

  “Is there anything more in it?”

  She shook her head. “I only had enough money for the millet today.”

  He nodded without complaint.

  Despite how exhausted he looked, there was some remarkable quality in his eyes, some inner passion, that made her pulse race faster. Whatever it was that she had seen in him from the first moment seemed to have only gotten stronger since that night she had almost put the knife through his heart.

  “Tomorrow, we’ll have this stew,” she said. His gray eyes were staring off into his private visions. “From the garden.”

  She retrieved the cook pot after setting a wooden bowl on the table before him and spooned millet into his bowl until it was full. There was little left, but he needed it more than she. She had spent the morning waiting in line for the millet, and then had spent the afternoon picking all the worms out of it. Some of the women just cooked it until you couldn’t tell. Nicci didn’t like to feed that to Richard.

  Standing close to the table, cutting up carrots, she could finally stand it no more. “Richard, I want to come to the site with you and see this statue that you’re carving for the Order.”

  He was silent for a moment as he chewed and then swallowed. When he finally did speak, it was with a quiet quality that matched that inexplicable look in his eyes.

  “I want you to see the statue, Nicci—I want everyone to see it. But not until I’m finished.”

  “Why?”

  He stirred his spoon around in his bowl. “Please, Nicci, will you grant me this? Let me finish it, then you will see it.”

  Her heart pounded against her ribs. This was important to him.

  “You aren’t carving what they told you to carve, are you?”

  Richard’s face turned up until his gaze met hers.

  “No, I’m not. I’m carving what I need to carve, what people need to see.”

  Nicci swallowed. She knew: this was what she had been waiting for. He had been ready to give up, then he wanted to live, and now he was willing to die for this.

  Nicci nodded, having to look away from those gray eyes of his. “I’ll wait until it’s ready.”

  Now she knew why he seemed so driven, lately. That quality hinted at in her father’s eyes, and blazing in Richard’s, she felt was somehow tied to this. The very idea was intoxicating.

  In more ways than one, this was a matter of life and death.

  “Are you sure about this, Richard?”

  “I am.”

  She nodded again. “All right, I will honor your request.”

  The next day, Nicci got an early start to buy bread. She wanted Richard to have bread with the stew she was cooking. Kamil offered to go for her, but she wanted to get out of the house. She asked him to keep an eye on Richard’s stew as it simmered on the banked coals.

  It was an overcast day, and cool—a hint of the rapidly approaching winter. The streets were crowded with people out looking for work, with carts hauling everything from manure to bolts of coarse dark cloth, and with wagons, mostly carrying building materials for the palace. She had to step carefully to avoid the dung in the road and squeeze between all the people moving as slowly as the sludge of the open sewers as she made her way through the city.

  There were crowds of needy people in the street, many come to Altur’Rang for work, no doubt, although there were few people at the workers’ group hall. The lines at the bakeries were long. At least the Order saw to it that people got bread, even if it was gray, tough bread. You had to go early, though, before they ran out. With more people all the time, the shops ran out earlier every week.

  Someday, it was rumored, they were going to be able to provide more than one kind of bread. She hoped that this day, at least, they might have some butter, too. Sometimes, they sold butter. The bread, and the butter, were inexpensive, so she knew she could afford to buy a little fo
r Richard—if they had any. They almost never had any butter.

  Nicci had spent a hundred and eighty years trying to help people, and people seemed no better off now than they ever were. Those in the New World were prosperous enough, though. Someday, when the Order ruled the world, and those with the means were made to contribute their fair share to their fellow man, then everything would finally fall into place and all of mankind could at last live with the dignity they deserved. The Order would see to it.

  The bread shop stood at an intersection of two roads, so the line turned around the corner onto another street. Nicci was around that corner, leaning a shoulder against the wall, watching the passing throngs, when a face in the crowd caught her attention.

  Her eyes went wide as she straightened. She could hardly believe what she was seeing. What was she doing in Altur’Rang?

  Nicci didn’t really want to find out—not now, when it seemed she was getting close to finding her answers. Matters seemed to be at a critical state with Richard. She felt sure that it would soon come to resolution.

  Nicci flipped her dark shawl up over her head of blond hair and tied it snug under her chin. She sank back behind a wide woman and hugged the wall as she peeked out between the people in line.

  Nicci watched Sister Alessandra, her nose held high as her calculating gaze swept the faces of all the people on the street. She looked like a mountain lion on the prowl.

  Nicci knew who Alessandra was hunting.

  Ordinarily, Nicci would have been only too happy to cross paths with the woman, but not now.

  Nicci sank back against the rough clapboards, staying low behind the people ahead of her, until Sister Alessandra had vanished into the vast sea of people crowding the street.

  Chapter 61

  As Kahlan rode out of her home city of Aydindril for the last time, she pulled her wolf-fur mantle up over her shoulders for protection against the bitter wind. She recalled that the last time the weather had been about to close in for the winter was the last time she had seen Richard. With the world in such constant turmoil and the battle burning hot, her thoughts, by necessity, always seemed to be on urgent matters. The unexpected memory of Richard was a welcome, if bittersweet, respite from the worries of war.

  She took a last look before cresting the hill, to see the splendor of the Confessors’ Palace on the distant rise. It made her ache with the sense of home whenever she saw the soaring white marble columns and rows of tall windows. Other people were stricken with awe or fear at the sight of the palace, but Kahlan’s heart was always warmed by it. She had grown up there, and it was a place of many happy memories for her.

  “It won’t be forever, Kahlan.”

  Kahlan glanced over at Verna. “No, it won’t.”

  She wished she could believe that.

  “Besides,” Verna said, offering a smile, “we will be denying the Imperial Order the people, and that is what they are really after. The rest is just stone and wood. What matters stone and wood, if the people are safe?”

  Kahlan, despite her desolate tears, was overcome with a smile. “You’re right, Verna. That really is all that matters. Thank you for reminding me.”

  “Don’t worry, Mother Confessor,” Cara said, “Berdine and the rest of the Mord-Sith, along with the troops, will watch over the people and see them safely to D’Hara.”

  Kahlan’s smile widened. “I wish I could see Jagang’s face when he finally gets here next spring to be greeted by ghosts.”

  The season of war was drawing to an end. If the summer with Richard in their mountain home had been a wonderful dream, then the summer of endless warfare had been a nightmare.

  The fighting had been desperate, intense, and bloody. There were times when Kahlan thought she and the army could not go on, that they were finished. Each of those times, they had managed to pull through. There were occasions when she almost welcomed death, just to have the nightmare end, just to stop seeing people in agony and pain, to stop seeing all the precious lives in ruins.

  Against the seemingly indomitable millions of the Imperial Order, the forces of the D’Haran Empire had managed to slow the enemy enough to keep them from taking Aydindril this year. With thousands of lives lost in the fighting, they had bought the hundreds of thousands of people of Aydindril and other cities that lay along the path of the Order the time they needed to escape.

  As autumn had turned bitter, the immense force of the Imperial Order had reached a broad valley at a convergence of the Kern River and a large tributary, where the lay of the land provided space to accommodate their entire force. With winter closing in, Jagang knew better than to be caught unprepared. They had dug in while they had the opportunity. The D’Haran forces had set up their defensive lines to the north, bulwarking the way to Aydindril.

  Just as Warren had forecast, Aydindril was more than Jagang’s army could take in this season of war. Jagang, once again, had proven his prudent patience; he had chosen to preserve the viability of his army so he would be able to press on successfully when conditions allowed. In the short run, it gave Kahlan and her forces breathing room, but in the long run, it would spell their doom.

  Kahlan felt sweet relief that Warren’s prediction, of Aydindril falling the following year, at least would not be at the cost of a slaughter of the city’s citizens. She didn’t know what hardships the people would have to endure escaping to D’Hara, but it was better than the certain slavery and widespread death of remaining behind in Aydindril.

  Some people, she knew, would refuse to leave. In cities along the Order’s march up the Midlands, some people put their faith in “Jagang the Just.” Some people believed that the good spirits, or the Creator, would watch over them no matter what. Kahlan knew they couldn’t save everyone from themselves. Those who wished to live, and were willing to see reason, stood a chance. Those who saw only what they wished to see, would, at the least, fall under the pall of the Order’s domination.

  Kahlan reached back and touched the hilt of the Sword of Truth sticking up behind her shoulder. It was comforting, sometimes, to touch it. The Confessors’ Palace was no longer her home. Home was wherever Richard and she were together.

  The fighting was often so intense, the fear so palpable, that there were times—days at a stretch—when she never thought of him. Sometimes, she had to devote all her physical and mental effort to just staying alive one more day.

  Some men, feeling the war was hopeless, had deserted. Kahlan could understand the way they felt. All they ever did, it seemed, was to fight for their lives against overwhelming odds as they backed their way up through the Midlands.

  Galea had fallen. That there was no word from any city in Galea probably said it all.

  They had lost Kelton, too. Many of the Keltans in Winstead, Penverro, and other cities had fled, first. Most of Kelton’s army were still with them, though some had rushed home in desperation.

  Kahlan tried not to think too long on everything that had gone wrong, lest she give up. They had saved a good many people—gotten them out of the way of the Order. At least for the time being. It was the best they could do.

  Along the long retreat north, tens of thousands of their joint forces had lost their lives in the fierce battles. The Order had lost many times that number. In the high summer heat, the Order had lost a quarter million men to fever alone. It made little difference; they continued to grow and to roll onward.

  Kahlan recalled the things Richard had told her, that they could not win, that the New World was going to fall to the Order, and if they resisted, it would only cause greater bloodshed. She was reluctantly coming to understand that hopeless outlook.

  She feared she was only getting people killed to no good end. Yet giving up still was out of the question for her.

  Kahlan looked over her shoulder, past the long column of men escorting her, past the trees and up the mountain, to the great dark mass of the Wizard’s Keep looming up on the mountain overlooking Aydindril.

  Zedd would have to go ther
e; they could not stop the Imperial Order from having Aydindril, but they dared not let them have the Keep.

  It was dusk, ten days later, when Kahlan and her company rode back into the D’Haran camp. It was obvious from the first instant that something was wrong. Men were running through camp, swords drawn. Others were rushing pole weapons to the barricades. Men were donning leather and chain mail as they ran to their posts. It was a tense scene, but one Kahlan had seen repeated so often that it seemed almost routine.

  “I wonder what this is all about,” Verna said with a scowl. “I’ll not like it if Jagang spoils my dinner.”

  Kahlan, not wearing her leather armor, suddenly felt naked. It was uncomfortable to wear on long rides, so, going through friendly territory, she had tied it to her saddle. Cara moved close as they dismounted. They handed the reins to soldiers as men closed in protectively.

  Kahlan couldn’t remember what color cloth would be used to mark the command tents. She had lost track of the exact number of days she had been gone. It had been somewhat over a month. She took the arm of an officer among the men who had swept in around her.

  “Where are the commanders?”

  He pointed with his sword. “Down that way, Mother Confessor.”

  “Do you know what’s going on?”

  “No, Mother Confessor. The alarm sounded. As a Sister rushed past, I heard her say it was genuine.”

  “Do you know where my Sisters, or Warren, are?” Verna asked the officer.

  “I’ve seen Sisters running around everywhere, Prelate. I’ve not seen Wizard Warren.”

  Darkness was settling in, leaving only the fires to guide them through camp. Most of the fires, though, had been doused at the alarm, so the camp was becoming a black maze.

  Horses with D’Haran riders flashed past, headed out on patrol. Foot soldiers raced out of camp to scout. No one seemed to know what the threat was, but that wasn’t unusual. Besides being frequent and varied, attacks were usually confusing, in addition to being frightening.