“Vast numbers of people, many times as many people as lived in this city, are about to die horrible, suffering, lingering deaths. I can’t help these people, but I can try to help those others. Is freedom worth having, life worth living, if I don’t try?
“It is time for you to decide if you will help, if your life is worth living, worth the Creator’s gift of your soul.”
Visions of what was happening up in the great hall, out in the streets, and to her whole city flashed chaotically through her mind. She felt as if she were already dead. If she could have a chance to help others, and to live again, she must take it. This was the only chance she would get. She knew it was.
She wiped the tears from her eyes, and the blood from her chin. “Yes. I’ll help you. I swear on my soul that I will do what you ask, if it means a chance to save lives, and a chance at my freedom.”
“Even if I ask you to do something that you fear? Even if you think you will die doing it?”
“Yes.”
His warm smile made her heart lift. Surprisingly, he drew her to him and gave her a comforting hug. She had been a child the last time she had been comforted with a hug. It made her weep.
Nathan put his fingers to her lip, and she felt a warm sensation of succor. Her terror eased. Her memories of what she had seen now gave her the determination to stop the men who did this, to prevent them from visiting suffering on others. Her mind filled with hope that she might do something important that would help other people to be free, too.
Clarissa felt her lip after Nathan had taken his hand away. It no longer throbbed. The wound was healed around the ring.
“Thank you—Prophet.”
“Nathan.” He ran a hand down her hair. “We must go. The longer we stay here, the greater the chance of never getting away.”
Clarissa nodded. “I’m ready.”
“Not yet.” He cupped his big hands to her cheeks. “We must walk through the city, through it all, to get away. You have seen too much already. I don’t want you to see any more, or hear any more. I would spare you that much, at least.”
“But I don’t see how we can ever get past the Order.”
“You let me worry about that. For now, I am going to put a spell over you. You will be blind, so that you don’t have to see any more of what is happening to your city, and you will be deaf, so that you don’t have to hear any more of the suffering and death that now possesses this place.”
She suspected that he feared she might panic and get them caught. She didn’t know that he might not be right.
“If you say so, Nathan. I will do as you say.”
Standing there in the dim light, two steps below her so that his face was closer to hers, he gave her a warm smile. For as old as he was, he was a strikingly handsome man.
“I have chosen the right woman. You will do well. I pray the good spirits grant you freedom in return for your help.”
Holding his hand as they walked was her only connection to the world. She couldn’t see the slaughter. She couldn’t hear the screams. She couldn’t smell the fires. Yet she knew that those things had to be happening around her.
In her silent world, she prayed as she walked, prayed that the good spirits would keep safe the souls of those who had died here this day, and for those who still lived she prayed for the good spirits to give them strength.
He guided her around rubble, and around the heat of fires. He held her hand tight when she stumbled over debris. It seemed they walked for hours through the ruins of the vast city.
Occasionally they stopped, and she lost the connection to his hand as she stood still and alone in her silent world. She could neither see nor hear, so she didn’t know the exact reason for the stop, but she suspected that Nathan was having to talk their way out. Sometimes those stops dragged on and on, and her heart raced at the thought of what unseen danger Nathan warded. Sometimes, the stop was followed by his arm around her waist pulling her into a run.
She felt confident in his care, and comfort, too.
Her hip sockets ached from walking, and her weary feet throbbed. He at last placed both hands on her shoulders, turned her, and helped her sit. She felt cool grass under her.
Her vision suddenly returned, along with her hearing and sense of smell.
Rolling green hills spread away before her. She looked around and saw only countryside. There were no people anywhere. The city of Renwold was nowhere to be seen.
She dared to feel the budding of sweet relief, not only at having escaped the slaughter but at having escaped her old life.
The terror had burned so deep into her soul that she felt as if she had been recast in a furnace of fear, and had come out a shiny new ingot, hardened for what lay ahead.
Whatever she had to face, it could be no worse than what she would have faced had she stayed. If she had chosen to stay, it would have been a turning away from helping others, and from herself.
She didn’t know what he was going to ask her to do, but every day of freedom she had was one she wouldn’t otherwise have had if not for the prophet.
“Thank you, Nathan, for choosing me.”
He was staring off in thought, and didn’t seem to hear her.
23
Sister Verna turned to the commotion and saw a scout leaping from his lathered horse before it had skidded to a stop in the near darkness. The scout panted, trying to catch his breath, at the same time as he relayed his report to the general. The general’s tense posture visibly relaxed at the report. He gestured in a jaunty fashion for his officers to stand down their concern, too.
She couldn’t hear the scout’s report, but she knew what it would be. She didn’t have to be a prophet to know what the scout would have seen.
The fools. She had told him as much.
The smiling General Reibisch approached her, his heavy eyebrows arched with his good humor. When he came into the ring of firelight, his grayish-green eyes searched her out.
“Prelate! There you are. Good news!”
Verna, her mind on other, more important matters, loosened the shawl around her shoulders.
“Don’t tell me, general; my Sisters and I won’t have to spend the whole night calming nervous soldiers and casting spells to tell you where panicked men have run off to hide while they await the end of the world.”
He scratched his rust-colored beard. “Ah, well, I do appreciate your help, Prelate, but no, you won’t. You’re right, as usual.”
She snorted an I-told-you-so.
The scout had been watching from atop the hill, and from there could see the moonrise before any of them down in the valley.
“My man said that the moon didn’t rise red, tonight. I know you told me it wouldn’t, and that three nights of it was all there would be, but I can’t help being relieved to know things are back to normal, Prelate.”
Back to normal. Hardly.
“I’m glad, general, that we will
all get a good night’s sleep for a change. I hope, too, that your men have learned a lesson, and that in the future, when I tell them that the underworld isn’t about to swallow us all, they will have a little more faith.”
He smiled sheepishly. “Yes, Prelate. I believed you, of course, but some of these men are more superstitious than is healthy for their hearts. Magic scares them.”
She leaned a little closer to the man and lowered her voice. “It should.”
He cleared his throat. “Yes, Prelate. Well, I guess we better all get some sleep.”
“Your messengers haven’t returned yet, have they?”
“No.” He traced a finger down the lower part of the white scar running from his left temple to his jaw. “I don’t expect they’ve even reached Aydindril yet.”
Verna sighed. She wished she could have heard word first. It might have made her decision easier.
“I suppose not.”
“What do you think, Prelate? What’s your advice? North?”
She stared off, watching the sparks from the fire spiral up into the darkness, and feeling its heat on her face. She had more important decisions to make.
“I don’t know. Richard’s exact words to me were, ‘Head north. There’s an army of a hundred thousand D’Haran soldiers heading south looking for Kahlan. You’ll have more protection with them, and they with you. Tell General Reibisch that she is safe with me.’”
“It would have made things easier if he would have said for sure.”
“He didn’t say for us to go north, back to Aydindril, but it was implied. I’m sure he thought that’s what we would do. However, I take seriously your advice in matters such as this.”
He shrugged. “I’m a soldier. I think like a soldier.”
Richard had gone to Tanimura to rescue Kahlan, and had managed to destroy the Palace of the Prophets, along with its vault of prophecies, before Emperor Jagang could capture it. Richard had said that he had to return to Aydindril at once, and that he didn’t have time to explain, but only he and Kahlan had the magic required that would allow their immediate return. He said he couldn’t take the rest of them. He had told her to go north to meet up with General Reibisch and his D’Haran army.