Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

His eyes turned to her, filled with smoldering anger. The knuckles of his fists went white.

“I will be heard, now, Mother Confessor. If I stand by my honor, even if it costs me my life, it will be honoring my family, my sister, my queen, and my homeland. A homeland forged by my father, King Wyborn, and my mother, Queen Bernadine. When I was young, my father, my sovereign king, was taken from my mother, my family, and my homeland of Galea, by the Confessors, taken by a Confessor’s power for their selfish desire of a husband for your mother, for her selfish desire for a strong man to father her a child—you. Now, you, Mother Confessor—the daughter of that theft of that beloved man from us when I was but a boy—you would take me from my sister? Take her, too, from our land? Take me from my duty to serve my queen, my land, and above all my people? The last duty my father charged me with before your mother took him from us and destroyed him for no reason but that he was good and she wanted him, was that I should always honor my duty to my sister and my land. I will carry out my father’s last charge to me, even if you think it madness.”

Kahlan stared at him in cold shock.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Harold.”

His face had aged and hardened. “I know that you are not responsible for all that happened before you came to be, and I will always love that part of you that is my father, but I am still the one who must live with it all. Now I must be true to myself, to my own feelings.”

“Your feelings,” she repeated.

“Yes, Mother Confessor. Those are my feelings, and I must put my faith in them.”

Kahlan swallowed past the painful constriction in her throat. Her fingers, lying limply on the table before her, tingled.

“Faith and feelings. Harold, you are as mad as your sister.”

She drew herself up straight and folded her hands. She shared a last look with her half brother, a man she had never known, except in name, as she pronounced sentence on him.

“Beginning at sunrise tomorrow, the D’Haran Empire and Galea are at war. After sunrise tomorrow, if you are seen by me or any of our men, you will be put to death for the crime of treason.

“I will not allow those brave men out there to die for traitors. The Imperial Order will, in all likelihood, turn north up the Callisidrin Valley. You will be alone. They will butcher every man in your army, just as they butchered the people of Ebinissia. Jagang will give your sister to his men, as a whore.

“It will be by your doing, Harold, for refusing to use your ability to think, and instead following your feelings and faith in what does not exist.”

Harold, hands clasped behind his back, chin held up, said nothing as Kahlan continued.

“Tell Cyrilla that she had better hope for the fate I have just described, because if the Order does not come through Galea, I will. I have promised no mercy to the Order. Galea’s treason condemns her to the same fate as the Order. If the Order does not get Cyrilla, then I swear I will, and when I get her, I am going to take her back to Aydindril and I’m going to personally throw her back down into that pit from which you rescued her, and I am going to leave her down there with every criminal brute I can find for as long as she lives.”

Harold’s jaw dropped. “Mother Confessor…you wouldn’t.”

Kahlan’s eyes told him otherwise. “You be sure to tell Cyrilla what’s in store for her. Jebra probably tried to tell her, and was thrown in a dungeon for it. Cyrilla is refusing to see the open pit before her, and you are walking into it with her. Worse, you are taking your innocent people with you.”

Kahlan drew her royal Galean sword. She grasped either end in a hand. Gritting her teeth, she pulled the flat of the blade against her knee. The steel bent, then finally snapped with a loud report. She tossed the broken blade on the floor at his feet.

“Now get out of my sight.”

He turned to leave, but before he took a step, Zedd stood, holding out a hand as if to ask him to remain where he was.

“Mother Confessor,” Zedd said, choosing his words carefully. “I believe you are letting your emotions get in the way.”

Harold gestured to Kahlan, relieved to hear Zedd’s intercession. “Tell her, Wizard Zorander. Tell her.”

Kahlan couldn’t believe her ears. She remained where she was, staring into Zedd’s hazel eyes. “Then would you mind explaining my error of emotion, First Wizard?”

Zedd glanced at Harold and then back to Kahlan. “Mother Confessor, Queen Cyrilla is obviously deranged. Prince Harold is not only doing her a disservice, but enabling her to bring only the specter of death to her people. If he chose the side of reason, he would be protecting his people, and honoring his sister’s past admirable service when she was of sound mind.

“Instead, he has betrayed his duty to his people by embracing what he wishes to be true about her instead of facing what is true. In this way, he is embracing death, and in this case, embracing death for his people, too.

“Prince Harold has been justly found guilty of treason. Your emotions for him are interfering with your judgment. Obviously, he is now a danger to our cause, to the lives of our people, and to the lives of his own people. He cannot be allowed to leave.”

Harold looked thunderstruck. “But Zedd…”

Zedd’s hazel eyes, too, were a terrible pronouncement of guilt. He waited, as if challenging the man to further prove his treason. Harold’s mouth moved, but he could offer no words.

“Does anyone disagree with me?” Zedd asked.

He looked at Adie. She shook her head. Verna likewise shook her head. Warren stared at Harold for a moment, then shook his head.

Harold’s expression turned indignant. “I’m not going to stand for this. The Mother Confessor has given me until dawn to withdraw. You must honor her sentence.”

He took two strides toward the door, but then paused, clutching his chest. Twisting slowly as he started to sink, his eyes rolling up in his head. His legs folded and he crashed to the floor.

Kahlan sat stunned. No one moved or said anything. General Meiffert went down on one knee beside the body, checking Prince Harold for breath or pulse. The general looked up at Kahlan and shook his head.

She passed her gaze from Zedd, to Adie, to Verna, to Warren. None revealed anything in their expression.

Kahlan stood and spoke softly. “I don’t ever want to know which one of you did this. I’m not saying you were wrong… I just don’t want to know.”

The four gifted people nodded.

At the door, Kahlan stood in the bright sunlight a moment, feeling the cold air on her face, searching, until she saw Captain Ryan leaning against a stout young maple tree. He stood at attention as she strode out to him through the snow.

“Bradley, did Prince Harold tell

you why he was coming here?”

Calling him by his given name, rather than his rank, changed the nature of the question. His rigid posture slackened.

“Yes, Mother Confessor. He said he had to tell you that he had been ordered back by his queen to defend Galea, and that he was further ordered to bring his men serving with you back to Galea with him.”

“Then what are you doing here? Why did you and your men come along, if he was to take everyone back?”

He lifted his square jaw and looked at her with clear blue eyes. “Because we deserted, Mother Confessor.”

“You what?”

“Prince Harold gave me his orders, as I just reported them. I told him that it was wrong, and could only harm our people. He said it was not for me to decide such things. He said it was not for me to think, but to follow orders.

“I’ve fought with you, Mother Confessor. I believe I know you better than Prince Harold does—I know you are devoted to protecting the lives of the people of the Midlands. I told him that what Cyrilla was doing was wrong. He was angry, and said it was my duty to follow my orders.

“I told him that, in that case, I was deserting the Galean army and was going to stand with you, instead. I thought he was going to have me put to death for disobeying him, but he would have had to put all thousand of us to death because all the men felt the same way. A good many came forward to tell him so. The fire seemed to go out of him, then, and he let us ride down here with him.

“I hope you aren’t angry with us, Mother Confessor.”

Kahlan couldn’t force herself to be the Mother Confessor at that moment. She put her arms around him.

“Thank you, Bradley.”

She gripped his shoulders and smiled at him through her watery vision. “You used your head. I couldn’t be angry with that.”

“You told us once we were a badger trying to swallow an ox whole. Looks to me you’ve taken to trying to do the same thing. If there ever was a badger who could swallow an ox whole, it would be you, Mother Confessor, but I guess we wouldn’t want you to try it without us to help you do it.”

They turned then and saw General Meiffert directing some of his men. They were carrying Prince Harold’s limp body out of the lodge, holding him by the shoulders and feet. His hands dragged through the snow.