Confessor (Sword of Truth 11)

She didn’t know why she had let her heart get ahead of her head. She didn’t know if her legs were going to hold.

Richard squeezed his temples between a finger and a thumb, his gaze going to the ground for a moment. “Kahlan…listen to me. I’ll explain everything to you—everything—I promise, but I can’t right now. Please, just trust me.”

She wanted to ask why she should trust a man who married her without loving her, but right then she was not sure that she would be able to summon her voice.

“Please,” he repeated. “I promise I’ll explain everything when I can, but right now we have to get to Tamarang.”

She cleared her throat, finally gathering the ability to speak. “We can’t go there. Samuel said that Six was there.”

He was nodding as she spoke. “I know. But I have to go there.”

“I don’t.”

He paused, gazing at her.

“I don’t want anything else to happen to you,” he finally said. “Please, you need to come with me. I’ll explain later. I promise.”

“Why is later better than now?”

“Because we’ll be dead if we don’t hurry. Jagang is going to open the boxes of Orden. I have to try to stop him.”

She didn’t buy the excuse. Had he wanted to, he could have already answered her.

“I’ll go with you if you answer one question. Did you love me when you married me?”

His gray eyes studied her face a moment before he finally answered in a quiet voice.

“You were the right person for me to marry.”

Kahlan swallowed back the pain, the cry wanting to escape. She turned away, not wanting him to see her tears, and started toward where Samuel had been taking her.

It was well after nightfall when they were finally forced to stop. Richard would have kept going but the terrain, thickly wooded, rocky, and becoming uneven as ridgelines rose up around them, was simply too treacherous to negotiate in the dark. The nearly new moon would have come up at sunset but the narrow crescent didn’t provide enough illumination to brighten the inky cloud cover in the least. Even the light that would have been provided by meager starlight was hidden by the thick clouds. The darkness was so complete that it was simply impossible to go on.

Kahlan was tired, but as Richard started a fire in the fluff of cattails he’d broken open for tinder, she could see that he was in far worse condition. She wondered if he’d slept in recent days. After he had a fire going, he set fishing lines and then started to collect enough firewood to last them through the cold night. Up against a rocky rise they at least had some protection from the biting wind.

Kahlan did her best to care for the horses, fetching them water in a canvas bucket among the supplies Richard had with him. When he’d finished collecting firewood he found that they had some brook trout on his lines. As she watched him cleaning the fish, throwing the innards on the fire so they wouldn’t attract animals, she decided not to ask any more questions about the two of them. She couldn’t endure the pain of the answers. Besides, he had already told her what she had asked: she was simply the right person for him to marry.

She wondered if he’d even met her before he agreed to marry her. She realized that it must have been heartbreaking for Nicci to see the man she loved marry someone else for unromantic, practical reasons.

Kahlan forced her mind away from that whole line of thought.

“Why are we going to Tamarang?” she asked.

Richard glanced up from his work at cleaning the fish. “Well, a long time ago, back in the great war three thousand years ago, the people back then were fighting this same war we’re fighting now, a war to defend ourselves against those who want to eliminate magic and all other forms of freedom.

“The people defending against such aggression took a number of extremely valuable things of magic—things they had created over many centuries—and put those things in a place called the Temple of the Winds. Then, to protect it all from falling into the hands of the enemy, they sent the temple into the underworld.”

“They sent it into the world of the dead?”

Richard nodded as he laid out some big leaves. “During the war, wizards on both sides had conjured terrible weapons—constructed spells and such. But some of those weapons were made out of people. That’s how the dream walkers came to be. They were created out of people captured in Caska—Jillian’s ancestors.”

“And that was when they created the Chainfire event?” she asked. “During that great war.”

“That’s right,” he said as he spread a layer of mud on the leaves. “Other wizards were constantly working to counter the things that had been created from magic. The boxes of Orden, for example, were created during that great war in order to counter the Chainfire spell.”

“I remember the Sisters talking to Jagang about that.”

“Well, the whole thing is quite complicated but, basically, a traitor named Lothain went to the Temple of the Winds where it was hidden away in the underworld. He secretly did things to one day aid the basic cause of the Order when it eventually rekindled.”

“They thought the war would reignite?”

“There have always been, and always will be, those who are driven by hate and want to blame those who are happy, creative, and productive for their misery.”

“What sort of things did this Lothain do?”

Richard looked up. “Among other things, he made sure that a dream walker would one day again be born into the world of life. Jagang is that dream walker.”

Richard finished wrapping the fish in leaves and mud and set the little bundles in the glowing coals at the edge of the fire.

“After that, the people on our side sent the First Wizard to the Temple of the Winds. His name was Baraccus. He was a war wizard. He made sure that another war wizard would be born to try to stop the forces trying to take mankind into a dark age.”

Kahlan pulled her knees up and drew her blanket around herself to keep warm as she listened to the story. “You mean that there haven’t been any war wizards since that time?”

Richard shook his head. “I’m the first one in nearly three thousand years. Baraccus, though, did something at the temple to insure that another would one day be born to carry on the struggle. I’m the one born because of what he did back then.

“Realizing that such a person wouldn’t know anything about his ability, Baraccus came back and wrote a book called Secrets of a War Wizard’s Power. He had his wife, Magda Searus, who he loved very much, take that book away and hide it for me. He was very careful to make sure that no one but me would get ahold of the book.

“While Magda Searus was on that journey to hide Secrets of a War Wizard’s Power, Baraccus killed himself.”

Kahlan was astonished to hear this news. “But why would he do such a thing? If he loved Magda Searus, why would he do that and leave her all alone?”

Richard looked over in the flickering firelight. “I think that he had just seen so much pain and suffering in the war, as well as treason and betrayal, to say nothing of the experience of traveling through the underworld, that he just couldn’t stand it any longer.” His eyes looked haunted. “I’ve been through the veil. I can understand what he did.”

Kahlan rested her chin on her knees. “After spending time in the Order’s camp,

I guess I know how disheartened a person can get about everything.” She looked over at him. “So, you need this book to help stop the Imperial Order?”

“I do. I found it, but I had to hide it again when I was taken to the Order’s camp.”

To rescue her. “Don’t tell me, the book is in Tamarang.”

He smiled. “Why else would we be going there?”

Kahlan sighed. Now she could see why it was so important. She stared into the flames, thinking about Baraccus.

“Do you know what ever happened to Magda Searus?”

Richard used a stick to drag a wrapped fish out of the fire. He opened it and tested it with his knife. When he saw that it was flaky and done, he set it beside her.

“Careful, it’s hot.” He dragged out the other baking bundle. “Well, Magda Searus was heartbroken. After the war they needed to get the truth out of Lothain, the traitor who had betrayed them. A wizard at the time, Merritt, came up with a way to do that.”

Richard stared into the flames for a moment before he went on. “He created a Confessor to get the truth.”

Kahlan paused at nibbling at the fish. “Really? That was where the Confessors came from?” When he nodded, she asked, “Do you know who she was?”

“Magda Searus. She was so heartbroken about her husband being dead that she volunteered for the experiment. It was extremely dangerous, but it worked. The Confessors were created. She was the first. Eventually she fell in love with Merritt and they married.”

Being a Confessor was the only part of her past to which Kahlan felt connected. Now she knew where Confessors had come from. They had come from a woman who had lost the man she loved.

Richard picked up a fat piece of wood and was about to toss it into the fire, but instead he paused and held it in a hand, turning it around, staring at it. He finally set it aside and tossed a different piece in the fire.

“You’d better get some sleep,” he said when they’d finished. “I want to be out of here as soon as it’s light enough to see.”

Kahlan could tell that he was more exhausted than she was, but she could also tell that something was deeply troubling him, so she didn’t argue. She wrapped herself in her blanket close enough to the fire to stay warm.