The world came back, like a shadow lifting.
Jennsen found herself holding the arm of a dead woman. The Sister toppled to the ground like one of the stone pillars. Jennsen saw her knife jutting from the Sister’s chest.
Richard was already there, holding Kahlan in his arms, slicing through the rope, easing her down. She looked drained, but other than her weakness, she looked fine.
“What happened?” Jennsen asked in wonder.
Richard smiled at her. “The Sister made a mistake. I warned her. The Mother Confessor unleashed her power into Sister Perdita.”
“Did you have to warn her?” Kahlan asked, suddenly quite coherent-sounding. “She might have listened to you.”
“No, it only encouraged her to do it.”
Jennsen realized that the voice was gone. “What happened? Did I kill her?”
“No. She was dead before your knife touched her,” Kahlan said. “Richard was distracting her so I could use my power. You tried, but you were an instant too late. She was already mine.”
Richard put a comforting hand on Jennsen’s shoulder. “You didn’t kill her, but you made a choice that saved your own life. That shadow that passed over us as the Sister died was the Keeper of the dead taking one who had sworn herself to him. Had you made the wrong choice, you would have been taken with her.”
Jennsen’s knees were trembling. “The voice is gone,” she whispered aloud. “It’s gone.”
“The Keeper inadvertently revealed his intent,” Richard said. “Since the hounds were loose, that meant the veil—the conduit between worlds—was open.”
“I don’t understand.”
Richard gestured with the book before he tucked it back into one of the pouches at his belt. “Well, I haven’t had time to read it all, but I’ve read enough to learn a little. You are an ungifted offspring of a Lord Rahl. That makes you the balance to the gifted Rahl—to magic. You not only have none, but you’re not touched by it. In a time of a great war, the House of Rahl was created to give birth to a line of powerful wizards, but in so doing, it also sowed the seeds of the end of magic for the world. It may be the Imperial Order that wants a world without magic, but it is the House of Rahl that may eventually deliver it.
“You, Jennsen Rahl, are potentially the most dangerous person alive, because you, like any truly ungifted Rahl, are the seed that could spawn a new world without magic.”
Jennsen stared into his gray eyes. “Then why would you not want me dead, like every Lord Rahl before you?”
Richard smiled. “You have as much right to your life as anyone else—as any Lord Rahl has ever had to their life. There is no right way for the world to be. The only right is that people be allowed to live their own life.”
Kahlan pulled the knife from Sister Perdita’s chest and cleaned it on the black robes before handing it to Jennsen. “Sister Perdita was wrong. Salvation is not through sacrifice. Your responsibility is to yourself.”
“Your life is your own,” Richard said, “and not anyone else’s. You made me proud, hearing everything you said to Sebastian.”
Jennsen stared down at the knife in her hand, still dazed and confused by everything that was happening. She looked around in the gathering darkness, but didn’t see Sebastian anywhere. Oba was gone, too.
As she looked around, Jennsen was startled to see a Mord-Sith standing not far away. “This is just great,” the woman complained to the Mother Confessor, throwing her hands up. “The girl sounds like Lord Rahl. Now I’m going to have to listen to two of them.”
Kahlan smiled and sat down, leaning back against the pillar where she had been tied, watching Richard, listening, stroking the ears of Betty’s twin kids.
Betty watched her two young ones, then, seeing them safe, peered hopefully up at Jennsen. Her little tail started wagging in a blur.
“Betty?”
Betty happily jumped up on her, eager for a reunion. Jennsen tearfully hugged the goat before standing to face her brother.
“But why would you not do as your ancestors? Why? How can you risk everything in that book?”
Richard hooked his thumbs behind his belt and took a deep breath. “Life is the future, not the past. The past can teach us, through experience, how to accomplish things in the future, comfort us with cherished memories, and provide the foundation of what has already been accomplished. But only the future holds life. To live in the past is to embrace what is dead. To live life to its fullest, each day must be created anew. As rational, thinking beings, we must use our intellect, not a blind devotion to what has come before, to make rational choices.”
“Life is the future, not the past,” Jennsen whispered to herself, considering all that life now held for her. “Where did you ever hear such a thing?”
Richard grinned. “It’s the Wizard’s Seventh Rule.”
Jennsen gazed up at him through her tears. “You have given me a future, a life. Thank you.”
He embraced her, then, and Jennsen suddenly didn’t feel alone in the world. She felt whole again. It felt so good to be held as she wept with tears for her mother, and tears for the future, for the joy that there was life, and a future.
Kahlan rubbed Jennsen’s back. “Welcome to the family.”
When Jennsen wiped her eyes, and laughed at everything and nothing while she used her other hand to scratch Betty’s ears, she saw, then, Tom standing nearby.
Jennsen ran to him and fell into his arms. “Oh, Tom. You can’t know how glad I am to see you! Thank you for bringing me Betty.”
“That’s me. Goat delivery, as promised. Turns out that Irma, the sausage lady, only wanted your goat to get herself a kid. She has a billy and wanted a young one. She kept one and let you have the other two.”
“Betty had three?”
Tom nodded. “I’m afraid that I’ve become very fond of Betty and her two little ones.”
“I can’t believe that you did that for me. Tom, you’re wonderful.”
“My mother always said so, too. Don’t forget, you promised to tell Lord Rahl.”
Jennsen laughed in delight. “I promise! But, how in the world did you ever find me?”
Tom smiled and pulled a knife from behind his back. Jennsen was astonished to see that it was identical to the one she had.
“You see,” he explained, “I carry the knife in service to Lord Rahl.”
“You do?” Richard asked. “I’ve never even met you.”
“Oh,” the Mord-Sith said, “Tom, here, is all right, Lord Rahl. I can vouch for him.”
“Why, thank you, Cara,” Tom said with a twinkle in his eye.
“And you knew all along, then,” Jennsen asked, “that I was making it all up?”
Tom shrugged. “I wouldn’t be a proper protector to Lord Rahl if I let such a suspicious person as you roam around, trying to do harm, without doing my best to find out what you were up to. I’ve kept tabs on you, followed you a goodly part of your journeying.”
Jennsen swatted his shoulder. “You’ve been spying on me!”
“As a protector to Lord Rahl, I had to see what you were up to, and to make sure you didn’t harm Lord Rahl.”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t think you were doing a very good job of it then.”
“What do you mean?” Tom asked with exaggerated indignation.
“I could have really stabbed him. You just stood way over there the whole time, too far away to do anything about it.”
Tom smiled that boyish grin of his, but this time it was a little more mischievous than usual.
“Oh, I’d not have let you hurt Lord Rahl.”
Tom turned and heaved his knife. With blinding speed such as she had never seen, the blade flew across the valley, embedding itself with a thunk in one of the faraway fallen stone pillars. Jennsen squinted and saw that it had been driven through something dark.
She followed Tom, Richard, Kahlan, and the Mord-Sith between towering columns and stone rubble to where the knife was stuck. To Jennsen’s ast
onishment, it had impaled a leather pouch—right through the center—being held up by a hand coming from beneath the huge section of fallen stone.
“Please,” came a muffled voice from under the rock, “please let me out. I’ll pay you. I can pay. I have my own money.”
It was Oba. The rock had fallen on him when he ran. It had landed on boulders that kept the main section of stone, big enough that twenty men couldn’t have joined hands around it, from collapsing to the ground, leaving a tiny space, trapping the man alive under the tons of rock.
Tom pulled his knife from the soft stone and retrieved the leather pouch. He waved it in the air.
“Friedrich!” he called toward the wagon. A man sat up. “Friedrich! Is this yours?”
Jennsen was astonished yet again, in this astonishing day, to see Friedrich Gilder, the husband of Althea, climb down from the wagon and make his way over to them.
“That’s mine,” he said. He looked under the rock. “You have more.”
After a moment, the hand began passing out more leather and cloth purses. “There, you have all my money. Let me out, now.”
“Oh,” Friedrich said, “I don’t think I could lift that rock. Especially not for the man who is responsible for the death of my wife.”