“Richard, there is one other matter. Before you can say you will take me back, you must hear the rest of it. I can’t go on anymore without telling you about me. About what I am. It’s cleaving my heart, because I’m supposed to be your friend. I should have told you from the beginning. I have never had a friend like you before. I didn’t want it to end.” Her gaze left his. “But now it must,” she added faintly.
“Kahlan, I’ve told you before; you’re my friend, and nothing can change that.”
“This secret can.” Her shoulders were slumped. “This is about magic.”
Richard wasn’t sure anymore that he wanted to hear her secret. He had just gotten her back; he didn’t want to lose her again. He squatted down in front of the fire, picking up the roasting stick with the rabbit. Sparks swirled up into the waning darkness. He felt proud of her, for catching the rabbit on her own, the way he had taught her.
“Kahlan, I don’t care what your secret is. I care about you, that’s all that matters. You don’t have to tell me. Come on, the rabbit is done, come and have some.”
Cutting off a piece with his knife, he handed it to her as she sat on the ground next to him, pulling her hair back off her face. The meat was hot, so she held it lightly with her fingertips, and blew to cool it. Richard cut a piece for himself and sat back.
“Richard, when you first saw Shota, did she really look like your mother?” He looked over to Kahlan’s face, lit by the fire, and nodded before he took a bite.
“Your mother was very pretty. You have her eyes, and her mouth.”
Richard smiled a little at the memory. “But it wasn’t really her.”
“So you felt angry that Shota was pretending to be someone she could not be? That she was deceiving you?” She took a bite of the rabbit, breathing in through her mouth because the meat was still hot. She watched him carefully. Richard shrugged, feeling the sting of sorrow. “I guess. It wasn’t fair.” Kahlan chewed a minute, and then swallowed. “That is why I must tell you who I am, even if you hate me for it, because you have been my friend. Although I have not been the kind of friend you deserve. That is the other reason I came back, because I didn’t want someone else to tell you. I wanted you to hear it from me. After I tell you, if you want me to I will leave.”
Richard looked up at the sky, at the color coming slowly to it. He suddenly wished Kahlan weren’t telling him what she was; he wished things could stay the way they were. “Don’t worry, I’m not sending you away. We have a job to do. Remember what Shota said? The Queen won’t have the box long; that can only mean someone will take it from her. Better us than Darken Rahl.”
Kahlan put her hand on his arm. “I don’t want you to decide until you hear what I have to say, until you hear what I am. Then, if you want me to leave I will understand.” She looked intently into his eyes. “Richard, I just want you to know that I have never cared for anyone the way I care for you, nor will I ever again. But it is not possible for it to go beyond that. Nothing can ever come of it. Nothing good anyway.”
He refused to believe that. There was a way, there had to be. Richard took a heavy breath, letting it out slowly. “All right then, out with it.”
She nodded. “Remember when I told you that some who lived in the Midlands were creatures of magic? And that they couldn’t give up that magic, because it was part of them?” He nodded to her. “Well, I am one of those creatures. I am more than a woman.”
“So, what are you?”
“I am a Confessor.”
Confessor.
Richard knew that word.
Every muscle in his body went stiff. His breath caught in his throat. The Book of Counted Shadows suddenly flooded through his mind. Verification of the truth of the words of the Book of Counted Shadows, if spoken by another, rather than read by the one who commands the boxes, can only be insured by the use of a Confessor….
His mind raced, as if flipping the pages in his mind’s eye, scanning the words, trying to remember the whole book, trying to remember if Confessor was mentioned again. No, it wasn’t. He knew every word in the book, and Confessor was in it only once, at the beginning. He could remember puzzling over what a Confessor could be. He hadn’t even been sure, before, that it was a person. He felt the weight of the tooth hanging around his neck.
Kahlan frowned at the look on his face. “Do you know what a Confessor is?”
“No,” he managed. “I heard the word before, that’s all… from my father. But I don’t know what it means.” He struggled to regain control of himself. “So, what does it mean, to be a Confessor?”
Kahlan pulled her knees up, hugging her arms around them, withdrawing just a little. “It’s a power, magic power, that is passed from mother to daughter, going back almost as far as there have been the lands, back beyond the dark time.”
Richard didn’t know what the “dark time” was, but didn’t interrupt. “It is something we are born with, magic that is part of us, and cannot be separated from us any more than you could be separated from your heart. Any woman who is a Confessor will bear children who are Confessors. Always. But the power is not the same in all of us; in some it is weaker, in some, stronger.”
“So you can’t get rid of it, even if you wanted to. But what sort of magic is it?”
She looked away, to the fire. “It’s a power invoked by touch. It’s always there, inside us. We don’t bring it out to use it; instead, we must always hold it in, and use it by releasing our grip of it, relaxing our hold and letting it come forth.”
“Sort of like holding your stomach in?”
She smiled at his analogy. “Sort of.”
“And what does this power do?”
She twisted the corner of her cloak. “It does not reveal itself well in words. I never thought it would be this troublesome to explain, but to someone who is not from the Midlands, well, it’s difficult to put into words. I have never had to do this before, and I’m not even sure it can be done, accurately. It’s a little like trying to explain fog to a blind person.”
“Try.”
She nodded and stole a look into his eyes.
“It is the power of love.”
Richard almost laughed. “And I’m supposed to be afraid of the power of love?”
Kahlan’s back stiffened; indignation flared in her eyes: indignation and the kind of timeless look Adie and Shota had flashed him, one that said that his words were disrespectful, that even his small smile was insolent. It was a countenance he was not used to seeing her direct at him. He felt a cold realization that Kahlan was not used to having anyone smile about her power, and who she was. Her look said more to him about her power than any words could have. Whatever her magic was, it was definitely not something to be smiled about. His small grin withered. When she seemed sure he was not about to say anything else flippant, she went on.
“You don’t understand. Do not take it lightly.” Her eyes narrowed. “Once touched by it, you are no longer the person you were. You are changed forever. Forevermore you are devoted to the one who touches you, to the exclusion of all else. What you wanted, what you were, who you were, no longer means anything to you. You would do anything for the one who touches you. Your life is no longer yours, it is hers. Your soul is no longer yours, it is hers. The person you were no longer exists.”
Gooseflesh tingled up his arms. “How long does this, this, magic, whatever it is, how long does it last?”
“As long as the one I touch is alive,” she said evenly.
Richard felt the chill run the rest of the way through him. “So, it’s sort of like you bewitch people?”
She let out a breath. “Not exactly, but if it helps you to understand, I guess you could put it that way. But the touch of a Confessor is much more. Much more powerful, and final. A bewitching could be removed. My touch cannot. Shota was bewitching you, even though you did not realize it. It’s an incremental thing. Witches cannot help it, it’s their way. But your anger, and the anger from the sword, protected you.
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