Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

Kahlan snugged the warm wolf fur up against her ears to protect them from the cold wind. “There’s a good place?”

Richard let his hand drop from his brow. “I guess not.”

Farther up the slope from where Cara had pointed, the forest ended in a place called the crooked wood. Above that, where no trees could grow, the mountain was naked rock ridges and scree. A little farther up, snow, white as sugar, sparkled in the slanting sunlight. Below the snow and bare rock, the crooked wood was exposed to harsh winds and bitter weather, causing the trees to grow in tortured shapes. The crooked wood was a line of demarcation between the desolation where little more than lichen could survive the forbidding weather, and the forest of trees huddled below.

Richard gestured off to their right. “Let’s not waste any time, t

hough. I don’t want to be caught up here come dark.”

Kahlan looked out to where the mountain opened onto a grand vista of snowcapped peaks, valleys, and the undulating green of seemingly endless, trackless forests. A roiling blanket of thick clouds had invaded those valleys, stealing in around the mountains, sneaking ever closer. In the distance, some of the snowcapped peaks stood isolated in a cottony gray sea. Lower down the mountains, below those dense, dark clouds, the weather would be miserable.

Both Richard and Cara awaited Kahlan’s word. She didn’t like the thought of being exposed in the crooked wood when the icy cold fog and drizzle arrived. “I’m fine, let’s go and get it done. Then we can get down lower where we’ll be able to find a wayward pine to stay dry tonight. I wouldn’t mind sitting beside a hearty little fire sipping hot tea.”

Cara blew warm breath into her cupped hands. “That sounds good to me.”

It was on the first day Kahlan met Richard, more than a year before, that he had taken her to a wayward pine. Kahlan had never known about such trees in the deep woods of Westland. Wayward pines still held the same mystic quality for her as they did the first time she saw one silhouetted against a darkening sky, taller than all the trees around it. Such mature trees were a friend to travelers far from any conventional shelter.

A big wayward pine’s boughs hung down to the ground all around. The needles grew mostly at the outer fringe, leaving the inner branches bare. Inside, under their dense green skirts, wayward pines provided excellent shelter from harsh weather. Something about the tree’s sap made them resistant to fire, so if you were careful, you could have a cozy campfire inside while outside it rained and stormed.

Richard, Kahlan, and Cara often stayed in wayward pines when they were out in the mountains. Those nights getting warm around a small fire within the tree’s confines brought them all closer, and gave them time to reflect, to talk, and to tell stories. Some of the stories made them laugh. Some brought a lump to their throats.

After Kahlan’s assurance that she was up to it, Richard and Cara nodded and started down the cliff. She had recovered from her terrible wounds, but they still left it up to her to decide if she was prepared for the effort of such a descent and climb and then descent again before they found a sheltered campsite—hopefully in a wayward pine.

Kahlan had been a long time in healing. She had known, of course, that injuries such as she had suffered would take time to heal. Bedridden for so long, her muscles had become withered, weak, and nearly useless. For a long time, it had been hard for her to eat much. She became a skeleton. With the realization of just how weak and helpless she had become, even as she healed, she had inexorably spiraled down into a state of abject depression.

Kahlan had not comprehended completely the punishing effort that would be required if she was to be herself again. Richard and Cara tried to cheer her up, but their efforts seemed distant; they just didn’t understand what it was like. Her legs wasted away until they were bony sticks with knobby knees. She felt not just helpless, but ugly. Richard carved animals for her: hawks, foxes, otters, ducks, and even chipmunks. They seemed only a curiosity to her. At the lowest point, Kahlan almost wished she had died along with their child.

Her life became a tasteless gruel. All she saw, day after day, week after week, were the four walls of her sickroom. The pain was exhausting and the monotony numbing. She came to hate the bitter yarrow tea they made her drink, and the smell of the poultice made of tall cinquefoil and yarrow. When after a time she resisted drinking yarrow, they would sometimes switch to linden, which wasn’t so bitter but didn’t work as well, yet it did help her sleep. Skullcap often helped when her head hurt, though it was so astringent it make her mouth pucker for a long time after. Sometimes, they switched to a tincture of feverfew to help ease her pain. Kahlan came to hate taking herbs and would often say she didn’t hurt, when she did, just to avoid some horrid concoction.

Richard hadn’t made the window in the bedroom very big; in the summer heat the room was often sweltering. Kahlan could see only a bit of the sky outside her window, the tops of some trees, and the jagged blue-gray shape of a mountain in the distance.

Richard wanted to take her outside, but Kahlan begged him not to try because she didn’t think it would be worth the pain. It didn’t take much convincing for him to be talked out of hurting her. Every kind of day, from sunny and bright to gray and gloomy, came and went. Lying in her little room as time slipped away while she slowly healed, Kahlan thought of it as her “lost summer.”

One day, she was parched, and Richard had forgotten to fill the cup and place it where she could reach it on the simple table beside the bed. When she asked for water, Richard came back with the cup and a full waterskin and set them both on the windowsill as he called to Cara, outside. He rushed out, telling Kahlan as he went that he and Cara had to go check the fishing lines and they would be back as soon as they could. Before Kahlan could ask him to put the water closer, he was gone.

Kahlan lay fuming in the silence, hardly able to believe that Richard had been so inconsiderate as to leave the water out of her reach. It was unusually warm for late summer. Her tongue felt swollen. She stared helplessly at the wooden cup setting in the windowsill.

On the verge of tears, she let out a moan of self-pity and smacked her fist against the bed. She rolled her head to the right, away from the window, and closed her eyes. She decided to take a nap in order not to think about her thirst. Richard and Cara would be back by the time she awoke, and they would get the water for her. And Richard would get a scolding.

Sweat trickled down her neck. Outside, a bird kept calling. Its repetitious song sounded like a little girl with a high pitched voice saying “who, me?” Once a “who, me?” bird started in, it was a long performance. Kahlan could think of little else besides how much she wanted a drink.

She couldn’t make herself fall asleep. The annoying bird kept asking its question over and over again. More than once, she found herself whispering “yes, you,” in answer. She growled a curse at Richard. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to forget her thirst, the heat, and the bird and go to sleep. Her eyes kept popping open.

Kahlan lifted her sleeping gown away from her chest, ruffling it up and down to cool herself. She realized she was staring at the water in the window. It was out of her reach—clear over on the other side of the room. The room wasn’t very big, but still, she couldn’t walk. Richard knew better. She thought that maybe, if she could sit up and move to the bottom of the bed, she might be able to reach the cup.

With an ill-tempered huff, she threw the light cover off her bony legs. She hated seeing them. Why was Richard being so inconsiderate? What was the matter with him? She intended to give him a piece of her mind when he got back. She eased her legs over the side of the bed.

The mattress was a pliable woven mat stuffed with grasses and feathers and tow padding. It was quite comfortable, and Kahlan was pleased with her snug bed. With a great effort, she pushed herself up. For a long time, she sat on the edge of the bed holding her head in her hands as she caught her breath. Her whole body throbbed in pain.

It was the first time she had sat up all by herself.

She understood very well what Richard was doing. Still, she didn’t appreciate his way of forcing her to get up. It was cruel. She wasn’t ready. She was still badly hurt. She needed to rest in bed in order to recover. Her oozing wounds had finally closed up and healed over, but she was sure she was still too injured to be getting up. She feared to test broken bones.

Accompanied by a lot of groaning and grunting, she worked herself to the bottom of the bed. Sitting there, one hand holding the footboard to steady herself, she was still too far from the window to reach the water. She was going to have to stand.

She paused for a while to have dark thoughts about her husband.

After a day many weeks before, when she had called for a long time and Richard hadn’t heard her weak voice, he had left a light pole beside her s

o she would be able to use it to reach out and knock on the wall or door if she was in urgent need of their help. Now, Kahlan worked her fingers around the pole lying alongside her bed and lifted it upright. She planted the thicker end on the ground and leaned on the pole for support as she carefully slid off the bed. Her feet touched the cool dirt floor. Putting weight on her legs made her gasp in pain.

She half stood, half leaned on the bed, prepared to cry out, but realized she was gasping more at the brutal pain she expected than from the actual pain. It did hurt, but she realized it wasn’t too much to endure. She was a bit disgruntled to learn it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been; she had been planning on reducing Richard to tears with the torturous suffering he had so cavalierly forced upon her.

She put more weight on her feet and pulled herself up with the aid of the pole. Finally, she stood in wobbling triumph. She was actually on her feet, and she had done it by herself.

Kahlan couldn’t seem to make her legs walk the way she wanted them to. In order to get to the water, she was going to have to make them do her bidding—at least until she reached the window. Then, she could collapse to the floor, where Richard would find her. She luxuriated in her mental picture of it. He wouldn’t think his plan to get her out of bed so clever, then.

With the aid of the stout pole for support and her tongue poked out the corner of her mouth for balance, she slowly shuffled to the window. Kahlan told herself that if she fell, she was going to lie there in a heap on the floor, without any water, until Richard came back and found her moaning through cracked lips, dying of thirst. He would be sorry he had ever tried such a pitiless trick. He would feel guilty for the rest of his life for what he had done to her—she would see to it.

Almost wishing every difficult step of the way that she would fall, she finally made it to the window. Kahlan threw an arm over the sill for support and closed her eyes as she panted in little breaths so as not to hurt her ribs. When she had her wind back, she drew herself up to the window. She snatched the cup and gulped down the water.