Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

Kahlan looked again to Verna. “We have an hour before they’re upon us. You have to try, Verna. Do you think you have any chance at making your special glass and then deploying it before the enemy is upon us?”

“I will do my best—you have my word on that. I wish I could promise more.” Verna scrambled to her feet. “I’ll need the Sisters who are tending the wounded, of course. What about the ones working at the front lines? The ones countering enemy magic? Can I have any of them?”

“Take them all,” Kahlan said. “If this doesn’t work, nothing else is going to matter.”

“I’ll take them all, then. Every one,” Verna said. “It’s the only chance we have.”

“You get started,” Adie told Verna. “Go down near the front lines, on this side of the valley where you will be upwind from the attack. I will begin collecting the Sisters and get them down there to help you.”

“We need glass,” Verna said to the general. “Any kind. At least a few barrels full.”

“I’ll have men down there with the first barrel right away. Can we at least help to break it up for you?”

“No. It won’t matter if what you throw in the barrels breaks, but beyond that, it must be done by the gifted. Just bring whatever glass you can collect, that will be all you can do.”

The general promised her he would see to it. Holding her hem up out of her way, Verna ran off to the task. Adie was close on her heels.

“I’ll get the men moving now,” the general told Kahlan as he scrambled to his feet. “The scouts can mark the trail; then we can start moving the heavier supplies first.”

If it worked, they would slip out of Jagang’s grasp.

Kahlan knew that if Verna failed, they could all very well lose their lives, and the war, by morning. General Meiffert paused with one last hesitant look, one last chance for her to change her mind.

“Do it,” she said to the general. “Cara—we have work.”

Chapter 38

Kahlan pulled her horse up short. She felt the heat of blood rushing to her face.

“What are you doing?” Cara asked as Kahlan threw her leg over the horse’s neck and leaped to the ground.

The moon lit a layer of lacy clouds scudding past, giving a faint, serene illumination to the surrounding countryside. The thin layer of snow gathered the muted light of the moon to make it more luminous than it otherwise would be.

Kahlan pointed in the direction of the small figure she could just make out in the dim light. The skinny girl, surely not much past ten years, was standing at a barrel, ramming a metal rod down inside to smash the glass in the bottom. Kahlan handed the reins to Cara as soon as she had dismounted.

Kahlan stalked over to the Sisters working on the snowy ground. Running off in a haphazard line, to keep the wind at their backs, were over a hundred of the women, all focused intently on the work before them. Many had their cloaks tented around themselves and their work.

Not far down that line, Kahlan bent, put a hand under the Prelate’s arm, and lifted her to her feet. Mindful of the serious nature of the work going on, Kahlan at least kept her voice quiet, since she wasn’t able to make it congenial.

“Verna, what is Holly doing down here?”

Verna glanced over the heads of a dozen intervening Sisters kneeling before a long board, breeze at their backs, carefully griding glass chips with pestles in mortars. There being not nearly enough pestles and mortars, many of the women to the other side were using dished rocks and round stones to carefully crunch the glass chips. The concentration showed on each woman’s face. The accident that had blinded a Sister had happened when the wind had changed, and a gust had blown her work back up in her face. The same thing could happen again at any time, although, as darkness had settled in, the wind had at least died down to a steady breeze.

Holly was bundled in an oversized cloak. She had a determined grimace as she lifted the rod and then let it drop down in the barrel set away from the Sisters’ dangerous work. Kahlan saw that the rod had a faint greenish glow to it.

“She’s helping, Mother Confessor.”

“She’s a child!”

Verna pointed off into the darkness, to what Kahlan hadn’t seen. “So are Helen and Valery.”

Kahlan pinched the bridge of her nose between her first finger and thumb and took a purging breath. “What madness would possess you to have children down here near the front helping to—to blind people?”

Verna glanced at the women working nearby. She took Kahlan’s arm by the elbow and led her out of earshot of the others. Alone, where they were less likely to be heard, she folded her hands before herself as she assumed the stern visage that came so naturally to her.

“Kahlan, Holly may be a child, but she is a gifted child, and she is far from stupid besides. That goes for Helen and Valery as well. Holly has seen more in her young life than any child should see. She knows what’s going on tonight, with that attack, and with the attack that’s coming. She was terrified—all the children were.”

“So you bring her to the front—to the greatest danger?”

“What would you have me do? Send her back somewhere to be watched over by soldiers? Do you wish me to force her to be alone at a time like this so she could only tremble in terror?”

“But this is—”

“She’s gifted. Despite how horrific it seems, this is better for her, as it is for the others. She’s with the Sisters, who understand her and her ability as other people can’t. Don’t you recall the comfort you derived from being with older Confessors who knew the way you felt about things?”

Kahlan did, but said nothing.

“The Sisters are the only family she and the other novices have, now. Holly is not alone and afraid. She may still be afraid, but she’s doing something to help us, so that her fear is channeled into something that will assist in overcoming the cause of her fear.”

Kahlan’s brow was still set in a glare. “Verna, she’s a child.”

“And you had to kill a child today. I understand. But don’t let that terrible event make it harder on Holly. Yes, this is an awful thing she is helping to do, but this is the reality of the way things are. She could die tonight, along with the rest of us. Can you even imagine what those brutes would do to her, first? At least that much is beyond the imagination of her young mind. What she can comprehend, though, is fear enough.

“If she wanted to hide somewhere, I would have let her, but she has a right—if she so chooses—to contribute to saving herself. She is gifted and can use her power to do the simple part of what needs doing. She begged me to give he

r the chance to help.”

In anguish, Kahlan gathered her fur mantle at her throat as she glanced back over her shoulder at the little girl using both her spindly arms to lift the heavy steel rod and drop it again to break the glass in the bottom of the barrel. Holly’s features were drawn tight as she concentrated on using her gift while at the same time lifting the weight of the rod.

“Dear spirits,” Kahlan whispered to herself, “this is madness.”

Cara impatiently shifted her weight to her other foot. It wasn’t indifference to the situation, but a matter of priorities. Madness or not, there was little time left, and, as Verna said, they could all die before the night was finished. As cruel as it sounded, there were more important matters than the life of one child, or, for that matter, three.

“How is the work going? Are you going to be ready?”

Verna’s bold expression finally faltered. “I don’t know.” She lifted a hand hesitantly, motioning out over the dark valley before them. “The wind is right, but the valley approach to our forces is quite broad. It’s not that we won’t have some, it’s that we need to have enough so that when the enemy gets close, we can release the glass dust to float across the span of the entire field of battle.”

“But you have some. Surely, what you have will do damage to the enemy.”

“If there isn’t enough, then they may skirt it, or it may not be concentrated enough to do the damage necessary to bring their forces to a halt. Their attack will not be turned back by a small number of casualties.” Verna squeezed one fist in her other hand. “If the Creator will just slow the Imperial Order enough to grant us another hour, at the least, then I believe we may have enough.”

Kahlan wiped a hand across her face. That was asking a lot, but with the darkness, she thought that it just might be possible that the Order would have to go slow enough to give Verna and her Sisters the time they needed.

“And you’re sure we can’t help? There is nothing any but the gifted can do to assist you?”