Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

She made herself look into his dark, sunken eyes, which peered out from puffy slits. “Where’s Richard?” she demanded in a level voice.

“Dancing with the spirits in the underworld.” He cocked his head to one side. “Where’s the blond bitch? The one my friends said they saw before. The one with the smart mouth. The one what needs to have her tongue shortened before I gut her.”

Kahlan glared at him so he would know she had no intention of answering. As the crude knife advanced toward her, his stench hit her.

“You would have to be Tommy Lancaster.”

The knife paused. “How’d you know that?”

Anger welled up from deep inside her. “Richard told me about you.”

The eyes glittered with menace. His grin widened. “Yeah? What did he tell you?”

“That you were an ugly toothless pig who wets his pants whenever he grins. Smells like he was right.”

The smirking grin turned to a scowl. He raised up on the step and leaned in with the knife. That was what Kahlan wanted him to do—to get close enough so she could touch him.

With the discipline borne of a lifetime of experience, she mentally shed her anger and donned the calm of a Confessor committed to a course of action. Once a Confessor was resolved to releasing her power, the nature of time itself seemed to change.

She had but to touch him.

A Confessor’s power was partly dependent on her strength. In her injured condition, she didn’t know if she would be able to call forth the required force, and if she could, whether she would survive the unleashing of it, but she knew she had no choice. One of them was about to die. Maybe both.

He leaned his elbow on the side rail. His fist with the knife went for her exposed throat. Rather than watching the knife, Kahlan watched the little scars, like dusty white cobwebs caught on his knuckles. When the fist was close enough, she made her move to snatch his wrist.

Unexpectedly, she discovered she was snugly enfolded in the blue blanket. She hadn’t realized Richard had placed her on the litter he’d made. The blanket was wrapped around her and tightly tucked under the stretcher poles in order to hold her as still as possible and prevent her from being hurt when the carriage was moving. Her arm was trapped inside what was about to become her death shroud.

Hot panic flared up as she struggled to free her right arm. She was in a desperate race with the blade coming for her throat. Pain knifed her injured ribs as she battled with the blanket. She had no time to cry out or to curse in frustration at being so unwittingly snared. Her fingers gathered a fold of material. She yanked at it, trying to pull some slack from under the litter she lay atop so she could free her arm.

Kahlan had merely to touch him, but she couldn’t. His blade was going to be the only contact between them. Her only hope was that maybe his knuckles would brush her flesh, or maybe he just might be close enough as he started to slice her throat that she could press her chin against his hand. Then, she could release her power, if she was still alive—if he didn’t cut too deep, first.

As she twisted and pulled at the blanket, it seemed to her an eternity as she watched the blade poised over her exposed neck, an eternity to wait before she had any hope of unleashing her power—an eternity to live. But she knew there was only an instant more before she would feel the ripping slash of that rough blade.

It didn’t happen at all as she expected.

Tommy Lancaster wrenched backward with an earsplitting shriek. The world around Kahlan crashed back in a riot of sound and motion with the abrupt readjustment to the discontinuation of her intent. Kahlan saw Cara behind him, her teeth clenched in a grim commitment of her own. In her pristine red leather, she was a precious ruby behind a clod of dirt.

Bent into the Agiel pressed against his back, Tommy Lancaster had less hope of pulling away from Cara than if she had impaled him on a meat hook. His torment would not have been more brutal to witness, his shrieks more painful to hear.

Cara’s Agiel dragged up and around the side of his ribs as he collapsed to his knees. Each rib the Agiel passed over broke with a sharp crack, like the sound of a tree limb snapping. Vivid red, the match of her leather, oozed over his knuckles and down his fingers. The knife clattered to the rocky ground. A dark stain of blood grew on the side of his shirt until it dripped off the untucked tails.

Cara stood over him, an austere executioner, watching him beg for mercy. Instead of granting it, she pressed her Agiel against his throat and followed him to the ground. His eyes were wide and white all around as he choked.

It was a slow, agonizing journey toward death. Tommy Lancaster’s arms and legs writhed as he began to drown in his own blood. Cara could have ended it quickly, but it didn’t appear she had any intention of doing so. This man had meant to kill Kahlan. Cara meant to extract a heavy price for the crime.

“Cara!” Kahlan was surprised that she could get so much power into the shout. Cara glanced back over her shoulder. Tommy Lancaster’s hands went to his throat and he gasped for air when she rose up to stand over him. “Cara, stop it. Where’s Richard? Richard may need your help.”

Cara leaned down over Tommy Lancaster, pressed her Agiel to his chest, and gave it a twist. His left leg kicked out once, his arms flopped to the side, and he went still.

Before either Cara or Kahlan could say anything, Richard, his face set in cold ferocity, sprinted up toward the carriage. He had his sword to hand. The blade was dark and wet.

The instant Kahlan saw his sword, she comprehended what had awakened her. The sound had been the Sword of Truth announcing its arrival in the evening air. In her sleep, her subconscious recognized the unique ring of steel made by the Sword of Truth when it was drawn, and she instinctively grasped the danger that that sound represented.

On his way to Kahlan’s side, Richard only glanced at the lifeless body at Cara’s feet.

“Are you all right?”

Kahlan nodded. “Fine.” Belatedly, yet feeling triumphant at the accomplishment, she pulled her arm free of the blanket.

Richard turned to Cara. “Anyone else come up the road?”

“No. Just this one.” She gestured with her Agiel toward the knife on the ground. “He intended to cut the Mother Confessor’s throat.”

If Tommy Lancaster hadn’t already been dead, Richard’s glare would have finished him. “I hope you didn’t make it easy on him.”

“No, Lord Rahl. He regretted his last vile act—I made certain of it.”

With his sword, Richard indicated the surrounding area. “Stay here and keep your eyes open. I’m sure we got them all, but I’m going to check just to be certain no one else was holding back and trying to surprise us from another direction.”

“No one will get near the Mother Confessor, Lord Rahl.”

Dust rose in the gloomy light when he gave a reassuring pat to the shoulder of one of the two horses standing in their harnesses. “Soon as I get back, I want to get going. We should have enough moon—for a few hours, anyway. I know a safe place to make camp about four hours up the road. That will get us a good distance away from all this.”

He pointed with his sword. “Drag his body past the brush over there and roll him off the edge, down into the ravine. I’d just as soon the bodies weren’t found until after we’re long gone and far away. Probably only the animals will ever find them way out here, but I don’t want to take any chances.”

Cara snatched a fistful of Tommy Lancaster’s hair. “With pleasure.” He was stocky, but the weight gave her no difficulty.

Richard trotted soundlessly off into the gathering darkness. Kahlan listened to the sound of the body scraping across the ground. She heard small branches snapping as Cara pulled the dead weight through the brush, and then the muffled thuds and tumbling scree as Tommy Lancaster’s body rolled and bounced down a steep slope. It was a long time before Kahlan heard the final thump at the bottom of the ravine.

Cara ambled back to the side of the carriage. “Everything all right with you??

? She casually pulled off her armored gloves.

Kahlan blinked at the woman. “Cara, he nearly had me.”

Cara flicked her long blond braid back over her shoulder as she scanned the surrounding area. “No he didn’t. I was standing right there behind him the whole time. I was nearly breathing down his neck. I never took my eyes from his knife. He had no chance to harm you.” She met Kahlan’s gaze. “Surely, you must have seen me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Oh. I thought you saw me.” Looking a little sheepish, she tucked most of the cuffs of the gloves behind her belt and folded the rest down over the front. “I guess maybe you were too low in the carriage to see me there behind him. I had my attention on him. I didn’t mean to let him frighten you.”

“If you were there the whole time, why did you allow him to nearly kill me?”

“He did not nearly kill you.” Cara smiled without humor. “But I wanted to let him believe it. It’s more of a shock, more of a horror, if you let them think they’ve won. It crushes a man’s spirit to take him then, when you’ve caught him dead to rights.”