Stone of Tears tsot-2

by Terry Goodkind

  She remembered what it felt like to run with long hair: the weight of it, the way it streamed out behind, flowing with her strides. She felt none of that now. But it didn’t matter; she felt only desperate elation that Zedd was back. She had been waiting so long. She screamed his name as she ran.

  Bursting into the cluttered reading room she stumbled to a panting halt. Zedd stood behind a table with books and papers scattered over it, just as she remembered it from the last time she had seen it, months ago. Candles on stands gave the small room an intimate glow. The reading room had but a single window, facing the still murky western sky.

  A big man with bushy eyebrows, mostly gray hair, and a weathered, creased face looked up from a walking stick he was inspecting. Adie sat in a chair to the side, her head flitting toward sounds. Zedd cocked his head with a curious frown.

  “Zedd!” She gulped air. “Oh, Zedd, I’m so relieved to see you.”

  “Zedd?” He turned toward the big man. “Zedd?” The big man gave a nod. “But I like Ruben.”

  “Zedd! I need your help!”

  “Who be there?” Adie said from the chair.

  “Adie, it’s me. Kahlan.”

  “Kahlan?” She twitched her head toward Zedd. “Who be Kahlan?”

  Zedd shrugged. “A pretty girl with short hair. She seems to know us.”

  “What are you talking about! Zedd, I need help! Richard is in trouble! I need you!”

  Zedd’s brow wrinkled in bewilderment. “Richard. I know that name. I think . . .”

  Kahlan was frantic. “Zedd, what’s the matter! Don’t you know me? Please Zedd, I need you. Richard needs you.”

  “Richard . . .” He rubbed his smooth chin as he stared in thought at the table. “Richard . . .”

  “Your grandson! Dear spirits, don’t you know your own grandson!”

  He stared at the table, thinking. “Grandson . . . I seem to remember . . . no, can’t say I do.”

  “Zedd! Listen to me! The Sisters of the Light have him! They’ve taken him away!”

  Kahlan stood silently catching her breath. Zedd’s hazel eyes rose slowly to meet her gaze. His face lost its curiosity as his eyebrows drew in to hood his glare. “The Sisters of the Light have Richard?”

  Kahlan had seen wizards angry, but she had never seen a look in any wizard’s eyes like the look in Zedd’s eyes.

  “Yes,” she said. She wiped her sweaty palms on her hips as she watched a crack run up the stone of the wall behind him. “They came and took him.”

  Zedd put his knuckles to the table and leaned toward her. “That’s not possible. They couldn’t take him unless they got one of their cursed collars around his neck. Richard would not put a collar around his neck.”

  Kahlan’s knees were beginning to tremble. “He did.”

  His seething expression seemed it might ignite the very air. “Why would he put their collar around his neck, Confessor?”

  “Because,” she said in a small voice, “I made him put it on.”

  The candles on one of the stands close to him abruptly melted, dripping their wax to hissing puddles on the floor. The iron arms that had held the candles drooped down, like a plant needing water. The big man shrank back toward the wall of shelves.

  Zedd’s voice came in a dangerous whisper. “You did what, Confessor?”

  The room echoed with silence as she stood quivering. “He didn’t want to. I had to do it. I told him that he had to put it on to prove he loved me.”

  Kahlan thought she felt herself hit the wall. She couldn’t understand why she was sprawled on the floor. She pushed herself up with shaking arms. She gasped as she was suddenly jerked to her feet and slammed against the wall again.

  Zedd, his eyes wild, was right in front of her. “You did that to Richard!”

  Kahlan’s head spun. Her own voice sounded distant. “You don’t understand. I had to. Zedd, I need your help. Richard told me to find you, and tell you what I had done. Please Zedd, help him.”

  In a rage, Zedd backhanded her across the face. She skinned her hands on the stone floor as she went down. He yanked her to her feet and slammed her to the wall once more.

  “I can’t help him! No one can! You fool!”

  Tears ran down her face. “Why? Zedd, we have to help him!”

  She brought up her arms in front of her face to ward him off when he drew his hand back again. It didn’t help. Her head smacked the wall again. The room spun. She shook all over. She had never seen a wizard in a rage so out of control. Kahlan knew he was going to kill her for what she had done to Richard.

  “You fool. You treacherous fool. No one can help him now.”

  “Please, Zedd. You can. Please, help him.”

  “Not even I. No one can get to him. I can’t pass the towers. Richard is lost to us. All I had left is lost.”

  “What do you mean, lost to us?” With trembling fingers, she wiped blood from the corner of her mouth. She didn’t wipe the tears. “He will be back. He has to come back.”

  Zedd’s eyes never left hers as he slowly shook his head. “Not while any of us are alive. The Palace of the Prophets is in a spell of time. Richard will be there for the next three hundred years while they train him. We will never see him again. He is lost to this world.”

  Kahlan shook her head. “No. Dear spirits, no. That can’t be. We will see him. It can’t be true!”

  “True, Mother Confessor. You have put him beyond any help. I will never again see my grandson. You will never again see him. Richard will not return to this world for another three hundred years. Because of you. Because you made him put on that collar to prove he loves you.”

  He turned his back to her. Kahlan fell to her knees. “Noooo!” She beat her fists on the floor. “Dear spirits, why have you done this to me!” She cried in choking sobs. “Richard, my Richard.”

  “What happened to your hair, Mother Confessor?” Zedd asked in a menacing voice, his back still to her.

  Kahlan sat back on her heels. What did it matter anymore. “The council convicted me of treason. I have been sentenced to be executed. To be beheaded. The people all cheered at the pronouncement of sentence. They all wanted to see it done. But I escaped.”

  Zedd nodded. “The people shall have their wish.” He grabbed what was left of her hair in his fist and started dragging her from the room. “For what you have done, you shall be beheaded.”

  “Zedd!” she screamed. “Zedd! Please, don’t do this!”

  He used magic to drag her down the hall like a sack of feathers.

  “Tomorrow, at the winter solstice festival, the people shall have their wish. They shall see the Mother Confessor beheaded. As First Wizard, I will see to it. I shall see it done.”

  Kahlan went limp. What did it matter? The good spirits had abandoned her. They had stripped her of everything that mattered.

  Worse, she herself had condemned Richard to three hundred years of the thing he feared most.

  She wanted to die. Death couldn’t come fast enough for her.

  Richard stood with his hands on his hips as he watched the dark clouds made by spells in the distance, in the Valley of the Lost. They looked beautiful in the sunrise, with golden edges and striations of glowing rays. But he knew they were deadly.

  Du Chaillu put an affectionate hand to his arm. “My husband makes me proud this day. He returns our land to us, as the old words have foretold.”

  “I’ve explained it to you a dozen times, Du Chaillu; I am not your husband. You have simply misinterpreted the old words. It only means we must do this together. And we haven’t done it yet. I wish you would have come with me without bringing everyone else. I don’t even know if this will work. We could be killed.”

  She patted his arm reassuringly. “The Caharin has come. He can do anything. He will return our land.” She left him to his thoughts and started back to the camp. “All our people should be with us. It is their right.” She stopped and turned back. “Will we be leaving soon, Caharin?”


  “Soon,” Richard said absently.

  She started off again. “I will be with our people when you are ready for me.”

  The entire Baka Ban Mana nation was camped behind them. Thousands upon thousands of tents were spread out over the hills, like mushrooms after a month of rain. He hadn’t been able to talk them out of coming, to convince them to wait, so they were all here, with him.

  Richard sighed. What difference did it make? If he was wrong, and this failed, he had no reason to worry about all the Baka Ban Mana being disappointed in him. He would be dead.

  Warren and Sister Verna quietly came up behind.

  “Richard,” Warren said, “can we talk to you?”

  Richard continued to stare out at the storms. “Of course, Warren.” He cast a glance back. “What’s on your mind?”

  Warren pushed his hands up the opposite sleeves of his robes. Richard thought it made him look very wizardlike when he did that. Warren was going to someday end up being Richard’s idea of what a wizard ought to be: wise, compassionate, and charged with knowledge Richard could only wonder at. If they didn’t all die, that was.

  “Well, Sister Verna and I were talking. About what happens after you get through the valley. Richard, I know what you want to do, but we have run out of time. There never was enough time to begin with. Tomorrow is winter solstice. It can’t be done.”

  “Just because you don’t know how to do something, that does not mean it can’t be done.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Richard smiled at them. “You will. You will understand in a few hours.”

  Warren looked away toward the valley. He idly scratched his nose. “If you say so, Richard.”

  Sister Verna said nothing. Richard was still trying to get used to her not arguing with him whenever he said something oblique. He wasn’t sure she didn’t want to.

  “Warren, about the prophecy, the one about the gateway and the winter solstice. Are you sure it’s about this winter solstice?” Warren nodded. “And if there were an agent, with an open box of Orden, and the skrin bone, are those the only elements needed to open the gateway, to tear the veil?”

  A hot breeze ruffled Warren’s hair. “Yes . . . but you told me Darken Rahl is dead. There is no agent.”

  It sounded more like a worried question than a statement.

  “Must the agent be alive?” Sister Verna asked.

  Warren shifted his weight to the other foot. “Well, not in principle, I guess. If he were somehow called back into this world, but I don’t see how that could be done, but if it were done, that would be all that was needed.”

  Richard sighed in frustration. “And then this spirit agent could do the things the living agent would have done?”

  Suspicion crept onto Warren’s face. “Well, yes and no. It would require another element. A spirit cannot perform the physical requirements necessary to complete the covenant. He would need a coadjutor.”

  “You mean the spirit could not perform certain of the tasks needed, so he would need hands that would work in this world.”

  “Yes. With a helper, a spirit could do what was needed. But how could an agent be called back into this world? I don’t see how that could be accomplished.”

  Sister Verna glanced away. “You had better tell him.”

  Richard pulled his shirt up and showed Warren the scar. “Darken Rahl burned me with his hand, when I unintentionally called him back into this world. He said he was here to tear the veil.”

  Warren’s eyes opened wide. His worried gaze darted to the Sister, and then back to Richard. “If Darken Rahl is an agent, as you said, and he has someone to help him, then we are only one element away from destruction—the skrin bone. We need to know.”

  Richard pushed the mriswith cape back over his shoulder. “Sister Verna, would you help me?”

  “What is it you would like me to do?”

  “The first time you told me how to try to touch my Han, I decided to concentrate on a mental image of my sword. But that time, the first time, I used a background to put it against. It was something from the book of magic I told you about. The Book of Counted Shadows.

  “When I tried to touch my Han, with the sword on that background, something happened. I was somehow in D’Hara, in the People’s Palace, where the boxes are. I saw Darken Rahl. He saw me, too, and spoke to me. He told me he was waiting for me.”

  Sister Verna’s eyebrows lifted. “Did this ever happen again?”

  “No. It frightened the wits out of me. I never used that background again. I think if I use that background now, I may be able to see what is happening there.”

  She folded her hands together before herself. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. But it may have something to do with the Magic of Orden. It would not be the first thing about you that astonished me. It could be real, or just a fear, like a dream.”

  “I need to try. Would you sit with me? I’m afraid of not being able to pull back.”

  “Of course, Richard.” She sat down on the ground and held up a hand. “Come. I will be with you.”

  Richard pulled the mriswith cape around himself as he sat down, folding his legs. “This thing hides my Han, maybe it will work to keep Darken Rahl from seeing me this time.”

  Richard relaxed himself as he held hands with Sister Verna. He concentrated on the mental image of the sword against the black square with a white border, as he had done the first time. As he concentrated, seeking the calm center, something began to happen.

  The sword, the black square, and the white border all began to shimmer as if seen through heat waves, the same as the first time. The solid form of the sword softened, becoming transparent, and then vanished. The background dissolved. Once again, Richard was looking into the Garden of Life, at the People’s Palace.

  He searched the filmy image, seeing white bones where before he had seen burned bodies. He remembered them lying over the short walls, in bushes, and sprawled on the grass. They were much as he remembered, only now they were mostly exposed bones.

  Richard saw the white, glowing figure of Darken Rahl, but he was not standing before the stone altar, before the three boxes of Orden. He was near the circle that had held white sand. The sand had not been there the last time he had seen this vision.

  A woman in a long, brown skirt and white blouse knelt at Darken Rahl’s feet, bent over the circle of sand. Richard willed himself closer. She was drawing lines in the sparkling sorcerer’s sand. Richard remembered some of the symbols she was drawing; Darken Rahl had drawn them before when he had opened the box.

  Richard watched her hand moving slowly, carefully, as she drew the lines of spells. Her right hand, he noticed, was missing the little finger.

  In the center of the circle, in the center of the sorcerer’s sand, sat a round object. Richard went closer. It was carved all over with beasts, just as the Prelate had described.

  Richard wanted to scream with rage.

  Just then, Darken Rahl lifted his face, and looked right into Richard’s eyes. A smile slowly spread on his lips.

  Richard didn’t know if Darken Rahl was really looking at him or not, but he didn’t wait to find out. With desperate effort, he forced the image of the sword back into his mind, like slamming a door, at the same time banishing the black-and-white background.

  With a gasp, Richard forced his eyes open. His chest heaved.

  Sister Verna’s eyes came open, too. “Richard, are you all right? You’ve been at it an hour. I felt you trying to pull back, so I pulled with you. What happened? What did you see?”

  “An hour?” Richard was still trying to catch his breath. “I saw Darken Rahl, and the skrin bone. He had a woman there, helping him draw spells in the sorcerer’s sand.”

  Warren leaned over Richard’s shoulder. “Maybe it was just a vision of a fear. It may not have been real.”

  “Warren could be right,” Sister Verna said. She drew her lower lip through her teeth as she thought. “What did the woman look like?”


  “Wavy, shoulder-length brown hair, maybe about your size. She was bent over, drawing in the sand, so I couldn’t see her eyes.” Richard pressed his fingers to his forehead as he thought. “Her hand. She was missing the little finger on her right hand.”

  Warren groaned. Sister Verna’s eyes slid closed.

  “What? What’s the matter?”

  “Sister Odette,” she said. “That’s Sister Odette.”

  Warren nodded confirmation. “She has been gone for close to six months. I thought she went to get a boy.”

  “Curse the spirits,” Richard said under his breath. He sprang to his feet. “Warren, run and get Du Chaillu. Tell her we must leave right now.”

  He ground his teeth in frustration. He had thought he had all the time he needed. Well, he still had enough time, if he hurried.

  Du Chaillu seemed in a trance as Richard pulled her forward by the hand. With the Sword of Truth in his other hand, Richard was in a world of his own, too. His thundering rage was a match for the angry black clouds. The spells of magic circled them like a pack of dogs around a porcupine, angry and insistent, but holding their distance as they searched for an opening.

  Wisps of light emerged from the darkness and whirled around them, spiraling down to vanish into an aura that surrounded Du Chaillu. She seemed to be absorbing the magic, as Sister Verna told him she had done before. Together, they were the completed link Warren had told him the old books said would contain the power and bring the towers down.

  Through the waves of heat and the boiling mist, Richard saw the first tower. He pulled Du Chaillu onward, toward the glistening black wall that disappeared into the darkness overhead. Dust and dirt lifted around them as they rushed toward the arched opening in the wall. Spells snatched at them, but their light was sucked to Du Chaillu.

  Richard acted without thought, not knowing what drove him onward, and not trying to stop it. If he was to succeed, if he was to save Kahlan, he had to let those things within himself guide him. He had to hope that if he truly had the gift, it would react on instinct, as Nathan had told him, and do what was needed.