Temple of the Winds (Sword of Truth 4)

The Temple of the Winds was coming—there was no doubt in her mind. That took her thoughts back to Richard, because it was coming for him. She felt sudden shame. How could she so easily lose track of her heart? How could she find such pleasure from another man? What was she thinking?

She had never felt so dirty in her whole life as she suddenly did now. With Richard, she had felt wonderful afterward. Now, she was feeling worse by the moment. If Richard ever found out, he would never understand.

Richard would never know. There was no way for him to find out. Unless Drefan told him. Her heart pounded. She thought about the guile she thought she had seen in Drefan’s eyes. No, he wouldn’t tell Richard.

But what if he did?

With a sudden, close strike of lightning, Kahlan sat up straight. She saw something out the window—a structure. As the winds had said, there was no doubt. She could talk, now.

She spun back to Drefan. She had to secure his silence in this before they left this place. If Richard ever found out…

The wind lashed at the mountaintop. The thunder boomed.

In the darkness, she reached out and clutched his arm.

“Drefan, listen to me. You must promise. You can never tell what just happened, what I just did with you.” Her hand tightened. Her fingernails dug into his arm. “I’ll do whatever you tell me to do for the rest of my life, but you must promise me that you will never tell”—Ribbons of lightning lit the room—“Richard…”

Thunder crashed, jarring the ground. Lightning snaked along the bottoms of the clouds, lighting the room with a harsh glare.

In the flickering flashes, gray eyes were fixed on her.

“I think ‘Richard’ already knows.”

Kahlan screamed.

59

Kahlan froze. Thoughts crashed through her mind in a confusion of thundering terror.

Her scream came again, ripping through the night, loud enough to be heard over the sound of the thunder. She couldn’t make herself blink. She couldn’t tear her eyes from Richard’s face.

She couldn’t understand, couldn’t make sense of it. The world felt as if it had turned upside down. Everything tumbled around in her mind, making it impossible to think.

As the lightning lit the room again, she knew only one thing: this was Richard, not Drefan.

No look she had ever seen on Richard’s face was as terrifying to Kahlan as the one she saw now. There was nothing in his eyes. Not rage, not lethal commitment, not determination, not a deadly calm countenance, not jealousy, not even empty disinterest.

There was no… soul, in those gray eyes. No heart.

Kahlan covered her mouth with both trembling hands. She backed away until her back smacked into the stone wall.

He had known from the first instant she had come into the room. Richard could tell it was her coming into a room. He had known it was her the whole time—from the first instant Cara had led her in here.

He knew. He had tried to squeeze her hand, to reassure her, to let her know. She had pushed his hand away. He had been as gentle as he could. He had tried to brush her tears away, after. She had pushed his hand away. She hadn’t let him show her that it was him.

Kahlan collapsed to the floor with a wail of horror.

“No! Dear spirits, no!”

Richard didn’t rush to her, didn’t speak words of comfort, didn’t yell. Instead, he went to where his clothes were lying, near the door, and began getting dressed.

Kahlan scurried to her things nearby. She raced to pull on her underthings, suddenly feeling the humiliation of her nakedness, its reminder of what she had just done.

She scooped up her dress. She paused, tears streaming down her face. She reached around the outside of the doorway and brought the sword and scabbard up before her face. It had a leather handle, just as she remembered seeing, not a wire-wound hilt. It wasn’t the Sword of Truth, Richard’s sword. It was Drefan’s sword.

Kahlan gripped Richard by his wrist as he picked up his pants. “How… this is Drefan’s sword, not yours. It’s Drefan’s sword!”

Richard took it from her and leaned it against the wall. “They took your power. You have no way to defend yourself. Drefan will be the one near you, now, not me. I gave him the Sword of Truth so that he could protect you.” His eyes finally met hers. “I guess this one finds the truth just as well as the other.”

Richard stuffed his leg into his pants. Kahlan snatched his arm again.

“Richard, don’t you see? It was you. It was you in here with me, not Drefan. The spirits mark a distinction—between intent—and deed. It wasn’t him, it was you all along!”

He pulled his arm away. The spirits might mark a distinction, but he didn’t. To Richard, the intent was the same as the deed.

“Richard, you don’t understand. It wasn’t what you think.”

He shot her a glare of such power that it staggered her back a step. He waited as she stood frozen, unable to find any words to explain. He went back to dressing.

Kahlan pulled on her white Confessor’s dress. Outside, the lightning was coming closer. During some of the closer strikes, she could see an immense structure rising up at the edge of the cliff: the Temple of the Winds. When the flash extinguished, the temple vanished again, and she could see the distant mountains beyond, lit by the lightning farther away.

“Richard,” she wept as he pulled on a boot, “please, talk to me. Say something. Ask me to explain. Tell me there can be no explanation. Yell at me. Call me a whore. Tell me you hate me. Hit me. Do something! Don’t ignore me!”

He turned and picked up his black sleeveless undershirt. As he pulled it on over his head, she scooped up his black shirt and held it to her breast, hoping to halt his dressing.

“Richard, please! I love you!”

His gaze again rose to hers. She thought he was going to say something, but instead he turned away and retrieved his belt with the leather packs on it. He snapped on his wristbands.

Kahlan held his shirt to her chest and shook as she watched him hook his belt together. She didn’t know what to do. He picked up Drefan’s sword and buckled it on.

“Richard, please talk to me. Say something. This is the doing of the spirits. Don’t you remember what I told you that grandfather’s spirit told me? The winds have decided that you are the path of the price. They did this to us!”

He shot her a look again. The intensity in his eyes extinguished. He saw that she wasn’t going to surrender his shirt, so he threw his golden cloak around his shoulders.

As he turned toward the door, Kahlan seized his arm with both her hands and turned him back to her.

“Richard, I love you. You’ve got to believe me. I’ll explain this in here to you later, but for now, you have to believe me. I love you. No other. My heart is yours alone. Dear spirits, please believe me.”

Richard gripped her jaw in his hand and wiped a thumb across her lips. He held his thumb up for her to see in the pandemonium of lightning.

“… for the one in white, his true beloved, will betray him in her blood.”

His words ripped her heart.

Kahlan covered her scream with his shirt as he swept out the door. The one thing she had sworn she would never do, she had done; she had betrayed him. It could have been no worse betrayal. It was a betrayal that had destroyed his heart.

Crying hysterically, Kahlan raced after him, out into the wild night. She had to do something to mend that heart. She couldn’t let him endure the pain she had caused him. She loved him more than life itself, and she had done the worst thing possible to him.

Outside, the wind howled across the mountain. She could see his black shape, with his bare arms, in the flashes of lightning as he headed for the road.

As he reached the edge of the cliff at the end of the road, Kahlan threw herself on him, dragging him to a halt.

The sky was a savage show of violent discharges. Thunder thumped in her bones. Lightning ripped across the sky followed by deafening bo

oms. Beyond the edge, when the most powerful of those bolts struck, the Temple of the Winds was there—but only during those fierce strikes. Between those strikes, there was nothing but empty space.

“Richard, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to stop the plague.”

“When will you be back? I’ll wait here. When will you be back?”

He stared into her eyes a long moment as the storm raged around them.

“There is nothing here for me.”

Kahlan clutched at him. “Richard, you have to come back. Come back. I’ll be here, waiting. I love you. Dear spirits, I need you. Richard, you have to come back to me!”

“You have a husband. You have given him an oath… and everything else.”

“Richard, don’t leave me alone,” Kahlan wailed, on the edge of hysteria. “If you don’t come back, I’ll never forgive you.”

Richard turned to the edge of the cliff.

“Richard, you have a wife! You have to come back!”

Thunder shuddered the mountain.

He looked back over his shoulder. “Nadine is dead. I am no longer bound by my oath to her. You have a husband, and an oath. There is nothing here for me.”

Brutal cords of lightning slammed into the road beyond the edge of the cliff, bringing the Temple of the Winds into full view.

Golden cloak billowing out behind, Richard leaped into the lightning.

“Richard! I’m here! I’m here for you! We can find a way! Please come back to me!”

When the frenetic flash cut off, the temple was gone. Another flash came, and the soaring towers were back for a second, weaker this time, and then gone again.

Kahlan dropped to the ground, clutching Richard’s black shirt to herself. She had destroyed him.