Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

Standing close to the table, cutting up carrots, she could finally stand it no more. “Richard, I want to come to the site with you and see this statue that you’re carving for the Order.”

He was silent for a moment as he chewed and then swallowed. When he finally did speak, it was with a quiet quality that matched that inexplicable look in his eyes.

“I want you to see the statue, Nicci—I want everyone to see it. But not until I’m finished.”

“Why?”

He stirred his spoon around in his bowl. “Please, Nicci, will you grant me this? Let me finish it, then you will see it.”

Her heart pounded against her ribs. This was important to him.

“You aren’t carving what they told you to carve, are you?”

Richard’s face turned up until his gaze met hers.

“No, I’m not. I’m carving what I need to carve, what people need to see.”

Nicci swallowed. She knew: this was what she had been waiting for. He had been ready to give up, then he wanted to live, and now he was willing to die for this.

Nicci nodded, having to look away from those gray eyes of his. “I’ll wait until it’s ready.”

Now she knew why he seemed so driven, lately. That quality hinted at in her father’s eyes, and blazing in Richard’s, she felt was somehow tied to this. The very idea was intoxicating.

In more ways than one, this was a matter of life and death.

“Are you sure about this, Richard?”

“I am.”

She nodded again. “All right, I will honor your request.”

The next day, Nicci got an early start to buy bread. She wanted Richard to have bread with the stew she was cooking. Kamil offered to go for her, but she wanted to get out of the house. She asked him to keep an eye on Richard’s stew as it simmered on the banked coals.

It was an overcast day, and cool—a hint of the rapidly approaching winter. The streets were crowded with people out looking for work, with carts hauling everything from manure to bolts of coarse dark cloth, and with wagons, mostly carrying building materials for the palace. She had to step carefully to avoid the dung in the road and squeeze between all the people moving as slowly as the sludge of the open sewers as she made her way through the city.

There were crowds of needy people in the street, many come to Altur’Rang for work, no doubt, although there were few people at the workers’ group hall. The lines at the bakeries were long. At least the Order saw to it that people got bread, even if it was gray, tough bread. You had to go early, though, before they ran out. With more people all the time, the shops ran out earlier every week.

Someday, it was rumored, they were going to be able to provide more than one kind of bread. She hoped that this day, at least, they might have some butter, too. Sometimes, they sold butter. The bread, and the butter, were inexpensive, so she knew she could afford to buy a little for Richard—if they had any. They almost never had any butter.

Nicci had spent a hundred and eighty years trying to help people, and people seemed no better off now than they ever were. Those in the New World were prosperous enough, though. Someday, when the Order ruled the world, and those with the means were made to contribute their fair share to their fellow man, then everything would finally fall into place and all of mankind could at last live with the dignity they deserved. The Order would see to it.

The bread shop stood at an intersection of two roads, so the line turned around the corner onto another street. Nicci was around that corner, leaning a shoulder against the wall, watching the passing throngs, when a face in the crowd caught her attention.

Her eyes went wide as she straightened. She could hardly believe what she was seeing. What was she doing in Altur’Rang?

Nicci didn’t really want to find out—not now, when it seemed she was getting close to finding her answers. Matters seemed to be at a critical state with Richard. She felt sure that it would soon come to resolution.

Nicci flipped her dark shawl up over her head of blond hair and tied it snug under her chin. She sank back behind a wide woman and hugged the wall as she peeked out between the people in line.

Nicci watched Sister Alessandra, her nose held high as her calculating gaze swept the faces of all the people on the street. She looked like a mountain lion on the prowl.

Nicci knew who Alessandra was hunting.

Ordinarily, Nicci would have been only too happy to cross paths with the woman, but not now.

Nicci sank back against the rough clapboards, staying low behind the people ahead of her, until Sister Alessandra had vanished into the vast sea of people crowding the street.

Chapter 61

As Kahlan rode out of her home city of Aydindril for the last time, she pulled her wolf-fur mantle up over her shoulders for protection against the bitter wind. She recalled that the last time the weather had been about to close in for the winter was the last time she had seen Richard. With the world in such constant turmoil and the battle burning hot, her thoughts, by necessity, always seemed to be on urgent matters. The unexpected memory of Richard was a welcome, if bittersweet, respite from the worries of war.

She took a last look before cresting the hill, to see the splendor of the Confessors’ Palace on the distant rise. It made her ache with the sense of home whenever she saw the soaring white marble columns and rows of tall windows. Other people were stricken with awe or fear at the sight of the palace, but Kahlan’s heart was always warmed by it. She had grown up there, and it was a place of many happy memories for her.

“It won’t be forever, Kahlan.”

Kahlan glanced over at Verna. “No, it won’t.”

She wished she could believe that.

“Besides,” Verna said, offering a smile, “we will be denying the Imperial Order the people, and that is what they are really after. The rest is just stone and wood. What matters stone and wood, if the people are safe?”

Kahlan, despite her desolate tears, was overcome with a smile. “You’re right, Verna. That really is all that matters. Thank you for reminding me.”

“Don’t worry, Mother Confessor,” Cara said, “Berdine and the rest of the Mord-Sith, along with the troops, will watch over the people and see them safely to D’Hara.”

Kahlan’s smile widened. “I wish I could see Jagang’s face when he finally gets here next spring to be greeted by ghosts.”

The season of war was drawing to an end. If the summer with Richard in their mountain home had been a wonderful dream, then the summer of endless warfare had been a nightmare.

The fighting had been desperate, intense, and bloody. There were times when Kahlan thought she and the army could not go on, that they were finished. Each of those times, they had managed to pull through. There were occasions when she almost welcomed death, just to have the nightmare end, just to stop seeing people in agony and pain, to stop seeing all the precious lives in ruins.

Against the seemingly indomitable millions of the Imperial Order, the forces of the D’Haran Empire had managed to slow the enemy enough to keep them from taking Aydindril this year. With thousands of lives lost in the fighting, they had bought the hundreds of thousands of people of Aydindril and other cities that lay along the path of the Order the time they needed to escape.

As autumn had turned bitter, the immense force of the Imperial Order had reached a broad valley at a convergence of the Kern River and a large tributary, where the lay of the land provided space to accommodate their entire force. With winter closing in, Jagang knew better than to be caught unprepared. They had dug in while they had the opportunity. The D’Haran forces had set up their defensive lines to the north, bulwarking the way to Aydindril.

Just as Warren had forecast, Aydindril was more than Jagang’s army could take in this season of war. Jagang, once again, had proven his prudent patience; he had chosen to preserve the viability of his army so he would be able to press on successfully when conditions allowed. In the short run, it gave Kahlan and her forces breathin

g room, but in the long run, it would spell their doom.

Kahlan felt sweet relief that Warren’s prediction, of Aydindril falling the following year, at least would not be at the cost of a slaughter of the city’s citizens. She didn’t know what hardships the people would have to endure escaping to D’Hara, but it was better than the certain slavery and widespread death of remaining behind in Aydindril.

Some people, she knew, would refuse to leave. In cities along the Order’s march up the Midlands, some people put their faith in “Jagang the Just.” Some people believed that the good spirits, or the Creator, would watch over them no matter what. Kahlan knew they couldn’t save everyone from themselves. Those who wished to live, and were willing to see reason, stood a chance. Those who saw only what they wished to see, would, at the least, fall under the pall of the Order’s domination.

Kahlan reached back and touched the hilt of the Sword of Truth sticking up behind her shoulder. It was comforting, sometimes, to touch it. The Confessors’ Palace was no longer her home. Home was wherever Richard and she were together.

The fighting was often so intense, the fear so palpable, that there were times—days at a stretch—when she never thought of him. Sometimes, she had to devote all her physical and mental effort to just staying alive one more day.

Some men, feeling the war was hopeless, had deserted. Kahlan could understand the way they felt. All they ever did, it seemed, was to fight for their lives against overwhelming odds as they backed their way up through the Midlands.

Galea had fallen. That there was no word from any city in Galea probably said it all.