Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

“With Richard, I don’t think you would have any better luck than we did,” Verna railed.

Warren didn’t give ground. “But Zedd believes—”

Zedd cleared his throat, bidding silence. “You’re right, my boy; it is the job of a wizard to teach another wizard born with the gift.” Verna rose an angry finger to object, but Zedd went right on. “In this case, however, I believe Verna is right.”

“She is?” Warren asked.

“I am?” Verna asked.

Zedd waved in a mollifying gesture. “Yes, I believe so, Verna. I think the Sisters can do some teaching. After all, look at Warren, here. The Sisters have managed to teach him something about using his gift, even if it was at the cost of time. You’ve taught others—if in a limited way, to my view of it—but you couldn’t manage to teach Richard the most simple of things. Is that correct?”

Verna’s mouth twisted with displeasure. “None of us could teach him the simple task of sensing his own Han. I sat with him hours at a time and tried to guide him through it.” She folded her arms and looked away from his intent gaze. “It just didn’t work the way it should have.”

Warren touched a finger to his chin while he frowned, as if recalling something. “You know, Nathan said something to me once. I told him that I wanted to learn from him—that I wanted him to teach me about being a prophet. Nathan said that a prophet could not be made, but that they were born. I realized, then, that everything I knew and understood about prophecy—really understood about it, in a whole new way—I had learned on my own, and not from anyone else. Could this, with Richard, be something like that? Is that your point, Zedd?”

“It is.” Zedd sat down once more on the hard wooden bench beside Adie. “I would love, not only as his grandfather, but as First Wizard, to teach Richard what he needs to know about using his ability, but I’m coming to doubt that such a thing is possible. Richard is different from any other wizard in more ways than just his having the gift for Subtractive Magic in addition to the usual Additive.”

“But still,” Sister Philippa said, “you are First Wizard. Surely, you would be able to teach him a great deal.”

Zedd pulled a fold of his heavy robes from between his bony bottom and the hard bench as he considered how to explain it.

“Richard has done things even I don’t understand. Without my training, he has accomplished more than I can even fathom. On his own, Richard reached the Temple of the Winds in the underworld, accomplished the task of stopping a plague, and returned from beyond the veil to the world of life. Can any of you even grasp such a thing? Especially for an untrained wizard? He banished the chimes from the world of the living—how, I have no idea. He has worked magic I’ve never heard of, much less seen or understand.

“I’m afraid my knowledge could be more of an interference than an aid. Part of Richard’s ability, and advantage, is the way he views the world—through not just fresh eyes, but the eyes of a Seeker of Truth. He doesn’t know something is impossible, so he tries to accomplish it. I fear to tell him how to do things, how to use his magic, because such teaching also might suggest to him limits of his powers, thus creating them in reality. What could I teach a war wizard? I know nothing about the Subtractive side of magic, much less the gift of such power.”

“Lacking another war wizard with Subtractive Magic, are you suggesting it would maybe take a Sister of the Dark to teach him?” Warren asked.

“Well,” Zedd mused, “that might be a thought.” He let out a tired sigh as he turned more serious. “I have come to realize that it would not only be useless to try to teach Richard to use his ability, but it may even be dangerous—to the world.

“I would like to go see him, and offer him my encouragement, experience, and understanding, but help?” Zedd shook his head. “I don’t dare.”

No one offered any objection. Verna, for one, had firsthand experience that very likely confirmed the truth of his words. The rest of them probably knew Richard well enough to understand much the same.

“May I help you find a spare tent, Zedd?” Verna finally asked. “You look like you could use some rest. In the morning, after you get a good night’s rest, and we all think this over, we can talk more.”

Warren, who had just been about to ask another question before Verna spoke first, looked disappointed, but nodded in agreement.

Zedd stretched his legs out straight as he yawned. “That would be best.” The thought of the job ahead was daunting. He ached to see Richard, to help him, especially after searching for him for so long. Sometimes it was hard to leave people alone when that was what they most needed. “That would be best,” he repeated, “I am tired.”

“Summer be slipping away from us. The nights be turning chilly,” Adie said as she pressed against Zedd’s side. She looked up at him with her white eyes that in the lamplight had a soft amber cast. “Stay with me and warm my bones, old man?”

Zedd smiled as he embraced her. It was as much of a comfort to be with her again as he had expected. In fact, at that moment, if she had given him another hat with a feather, he would have donned it, and with a smile. Worry, though, ached through his bones like an approaching storm.

“Zedd,” Verna said, seeming to notice in his eyes the weight of his thoughts, “Richard is a war wizard who, as you say, has in the past proven his remarkable ability. He’s a very resourceful young man. Besides that, he is none other than the Seeker himself and has the Sword of Truth with him for protection—a sword that I can testify he knows how to use. Kahlan is a Confessor—the Mother Confessor—and is experienced in the use of her power. They have a Mord-Sith with them. Mord-Sith take no chances.”

“I know,” Zedd whispered, staring off into a nightmare swirl of thoughts. “But I still fear greatly for them.”

“What is it that worries you so?” Warren asked.

“Albino mosquitoes.”

Chapter 18

Panting in exhaustion, Kahlan had to dance backward through the snarl of hobble-bush stitched through with thorny blackberry to dodge the swing of the sword. The tip whistled past, missing her ribs by an inch. In her mad dash to escape, she ignored the snag and tug of thorns on her pants. She could feel her heartbeat galloping at the base of her skull.

As he relentlessly pressed his attack, forcing her back over a low rise of ledge and through the swale beyond, mounds of fallen leaves kicked aloft by his boots boiled up into the late-afternoon air like colorful thunderheads. The bright yellow, lustrous orange, and vivid red leaves rained down over rocky outcrops swaddled in prickly whorls of juniper. It was like doing battle amid a fallen rainbow.

Richard lunged at her again. Kahlan gasped but blocked his sword. He pressed his grim attack with implacable determination. She gave ground, stepping high as she did so in order to avoid tripping over the snare of roots around a huge white spruce. Losing her footing would be fatal; if she fell, Richard would stab her in an instant.

She glanced left. There loomed a tall prominence of sheer rock draped with long trailers of woolly moss. To the other side, the brink of the ridge ran back to eventually meet that rock wall. Once the level ground tapered down to that dead end, the only option was going to be to climb straight up or straight down.

She deflected a quick thrust of his sword, and he warded hers. In a burst of fury, she pressed a fierce assault, forcing him back a dozen steps. He effortlessly parried her strikes, and then returned her attack in kind. What she had gained was quickly lost twice over. She was once again desperately defending herself and trading ground for her life.

On a low, dead branch of a balsam fir not ten feet away, a small red squirrel, with his winter ear tufts already grown in, plucked a leathery brown rosette of lichen growing on the bark. With his white belly gloriously displaye

d, he sat on his haunches at the end of the broken-off deadwood, his bushy tail raised up, holding the crinkled piece of lichen in his tiny paws, eating round and round the edges, like some spectator at a tournament eating a fried bread cake while he watched the combatants clash.

Kahlan gulped air as her eyes darted around, looking for clear footing among the imposing trunks of the highland wood while at the same time watching for an opportunity that might save her. If she could somehow get around Richard, around the menace of his sword, she might be able to gain a clear escape route. He would run her down, but it would buy her time. She dodged a quick thrust of his sword and ducked around a maple sapling into a bed of brown and yellow bracken ferns dappled by glowing sunlight.

Richard, driving forward in a sudden mad rush to end it, lifted his sword to hack her.

It was her opening—her only chance.

In a blink, Kahlan reversed her retreat and sprang ahead a step, ducking under his arm. She drove her sword straight into his soft middle.

Richard covered the wound with both hands. He teetered a moment, and then crumpled into the bed of ferns, sprawling flat on his back. Leaves lying lightly atop taller ferns were lifted by the disturbance. They somersaulted up into the air, finally drifting down to brightly decorate his body. The fierce red of the maple leaves was so vibrant it would have made blood look brown by comparison.

Kahlan stood over Richard, gasping to catch her breath. She was spent. She dropped to her knees and then threw herself across his supine body. All around them, fern fronds, the color of caramel candy, were curled into little fists as if in defiance of having to die with the season. The sprinkling of lighter, yellowish, hay-scented ferns lent a clean, sweet scent to the afternoon air. There were few things that could equal the fragrance of the woods in late autumn. In a spectacular bit of chance, a tall maple nearby, sheltered as it was by a protective corner in the rock wall, was not yet denuded, but displayed a wide spread of leaves so orange they looked tangy against the powder blue sky above.