Faith of the Fallen (21 page)

Kahlan had been a long time in healing. She had known, of course, that injuries such as she had suffered would take time to heal. Bedridden for so long, her muscles had become withered, weak, and nearly useless. For a long time, it had been hard for her to eat much. She became a skeleton. With the realization of just how weak and helpless she had become, even as she healed, she had inexorably spiraled down into a state of abject depression.

Kahlan had not comprehended completely the punishing effort that would be required if she was to be herself again. Richard and Cara tried to cheer her up, but their efforts seemed distant; they just didn’t understand what it was like. Her legs wasted away until they were bony sticks with knobby knees. She felt not just helpless, but ugly. Richard carved animals for her: hawks, foxes, otters, ducks, and even chipmunks. They seemed only a curiosity to her. At the lowest point, Kahlan almost wished she had died along with their child.

Her life became a tasteless gruel. All she saw, day after day, week after week, were the four walls of her sickroom. The pain was exhausting and the monotony numbing. She came to hate the bitter yarrow tea they made her drink, and the smell of the poultice made of tall cinquefoil and yarrow. When after a time she resisted drinking yarrow, they would sometimes switch to linden, which wasn’t so bitter but didn’t work as well, yet it did help her sleep. Skullcap often helped when her head hurt, though it was so astringent it made her mouth pucker for a long time after. Sometimes, they switched to a tincture of feverfew to help ease her pain. Kahlan came to hate taking herbs and would often say she didn’t hurt, when she did, just to avoid some horrid concoction.

Richard hadn’t made the window in the bedroom very big; in the summer heat the room was often sweltering. Kahlan could see only a bit of the sky outside her window, the tops of some trees, and the jagged blue-gray shape of a mountain in the distance.

Richard wanted to take her outside, but Kahlan begged him not to try because she didn’t think it would be worth the pain. It didn’t take much convincing for him to be talked out of hurting her. Every kind of day, from sunny and bright to gray and gloomy, came and went. Lying in her little room as time slipped away while she slowly healed, Kahlan thought of it as her “lost summer.”

One day, she was parched, and Richard had forgotten to fill the cup and place it where she could reach it on the simple table beside the bed. When she asked for water, Richard came back with the cup and a full waterskin and set them both on the windowsill as he called to Cara, outside. He rushed out, telling Kahlan as he went that he and Cara had to go check the fishing lines and they would be back as soon as they could. Before Kahlan could ask him to put the water closer, he was gone.

Kahlan lay fuming in the silence, hardly able to believe that Richard had been so inconsiderate as to leave the water out of her reach. It was unusually warm for late summer. Her tongue felt swollen. She stared helplessly at the wooden cup setting in the windowsill.

On the verge of tears, she let out a moan of self-pity and smacked her fist against the bed. She rolled her head to the right, away from the window, and closed her eyes. She decided to take a nap in order not to think about her thirst. Richard and Cara would be back by the time she awoke, and they would get the water for her. And Richard would get a scolding.

Sweat trickled down her neck. Outside, a bird kept calling. Its repetitious song sounded like a little girl with a high pitched voice saying “who, me?” Once a “who, me?” bird started in, it was a long performance. Kahlan could think of little else besides how much she wanted a drink.

She couldn’t make herself fall asleep. The annoying bird kept asking its question over and over again. More than once, she found herself whispering “yes, you,” in answer. She growled a curse at Richard. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to forget her thirst, the heat, and the bird and go to sleep. Her eyes kept popping open.

Kahlan lifted her sleeping gown away from her chest, ruffling it up and down to cool herself. She realized she was staring at the water in the window. It was out of her reach—clear over on the other side of the room. The room wasn’t very big, but still, she couldn’t walk. Richard knew better. She thought that maybe, if she could sit up and move to the bottom of the bed, she might be able to reach the cup.

With an ill-tempered huff, she threw the light cover off her bony legs. She hated seeing them. Why was Richard being so inconsiderate? What was the matter with him? She intended to give him a piece of her mind when he got back. She eased her legs over the side of the bed.

The mattress was a pliable woven mat stuffed with grasses and feathers and tow padding. It was quite comfortable, and Kahlan was pleased with her snug bed. With a great effort, she pushed herself up. For a long time, she sat on the edge of the bed holding her head in her hands as she caught her breath. Her whole body throbbed in pain.

It was the first time she had sat up all by herself.

She understood very well what Richard was doing. Still, she didn’t appreciate his way of forcing her to get up. It was cruel. She wasn’t ready. She was still badly hurt. She needed to rest in bed in order to recover. Her oozing wounds had finally closed up and healed over, but she was sure she was still too injured to be getting up. She feared to test broken bones.

Accompanied by a lot of groaning and grunting, she worked herself to the bottom of the bed. Sitting there, one hand holding the footboard to steady herself, she was still too far from the window to reach the water. She was going to have to stand.

She paused for a while to have dark thoughts about her husband.

After a day many weeks before, when she had called for a long time and Richard hadn’t heard her weak voice, he had left a light pole beside her so she would be able to use it to reach out and knock on the wall or door if she was in urgent need of their help. Now, Kahlan worked her fingers around the pole lying alongside her bed and lifted it upright. She planted the thicker end on the ground and leaned on the pole for support as she carefully slid off the bed. Her feet touched the cool dirt floor. Putting weight on her legs made her gasp in pain.

She half stood, half leaned on the bed, prepared to cry out, but realized she was gasping more at the brutal pain she expected than from the actual pain. It did hurt, but she realized it wasn’t too much to endure. She was a bit disgruntled to learn it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been; she had been planning on reducing Richard to tears with the torturous suffering he had so cavalierly forced upon her.

She put more weight on her feet and pulled herself up with the aid of the pole. Finally, she stood in wobbling triumph. She was actually on her feet, and she had done it by herself.

Kahlan couldn’t seem to make her legs walk the way she wanted them to. In order to get to the water, she was going to have to make them do her bidding—at least until she reached the window. Then, she could collapse to the floor, where Richard would find her. She luxuriated in her mental picture of it. He wouldn’t think his plan to get her out of bed so clever, then.

With the aid of the stout pole for support and her tongue poked out the corner of her mouth for balance, she slowly shuffled to the window. Kahlan told herself that if she fell, she was going to lie there in a heap on the floor, without any water, until Richard came back and found her moaning through cracked lips, dying of thirst. He would be sorry he had ever tried such a pitiless trick. He would feel guilty for the rest of his life for what he had done to her—she would see to it.

Almost wishing every difficult step of the way that she would fall, she finally made it to the window. Kahlan threw an arm over the sill for support and closed her eyes as she panted in little breaths so as not to hurt her ribs. When she had her wind back, she drew herself up to the window. She snatched the cup and gulped down the water.

Kahlan plunked the empty cup down on the sill and peered out as she caught her breath again.

Richard was sitting on the ground just outside, his arms hooked around his knees, his hands clasped.

“Hi there,” he said with a smile.

Cara, sitting right beside him, gazed up without emotion. “I see you’re up.”

Kahlan wanted to yell at him, but instead she found herself trying with all her might not to laugh. She felt suddenly and overwhelmingly foolish for not trying sooner to get up on her own.

Tears stung her eyes as she looked out at the expanse of trees, the vibrant colors, the majestic mountains, and the huge sweep of blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds marching off into the distance. The size of the mountains, their imposing slopes, their luscious color, was beyond anything she had ever encountered before. How could she possibly not have wanted more than anything to get up and see the world around her?

“You know, of course, that you’ve made a big mistake,” Richard said.

“What do you mean?” Kahlan asked.

“Well, had you not gotten up, we’d have kept waiting on you—at least for a time. Now that you’ve shown us that you can get up and move on your own, we’re only going to keep doing this—putting things out of your reach to make you start moving about and helping yourself.”

While she silently thanked him, she was unwilling, just yet, to tell him out loud how right he had been. But inside, she loved him all the more for braving her anger to help her.

Cara turned to Richard. “Should we show her where she can find the table?”

Richard shrugged. “If she gets hungry, she’ll come out of the bedroom and find it.”

Kahlan threw the cup at him, hoping to wipe the smirk off his face. He caught the cup.

“Well, glad to see your arm works,” he said. “You can cut your own bread.” When she started to protest, he said, “It’s only fair. Cara baked it. The least you can do is to cut it.”

Kahlan’s mouth fell open. “Cara baked bread?”

“Lord Rahl taught me,” Cara said. “I wanted bread with my stew, real bread, and he told me that if I wanted bread, I would have to learn to make it. It was easy, really. A little like walking to the window. But I was much more good-natured about it, and didn’t throw anything at him.”

Kahlan could not help smiling, knowing it must have been harder for Cara to knead dough than for Kahlan to get up and walk. She somehow doubted that Cara had been “good-natured” about it. Kahlan would like to have seen that battle of wills.

“Give me back my cup. And then go catch some fish for dinner. I’m hungry. I want a trout. A big trout. Along with bread.”

Richard smiled. “I can do that. If you can find the table.”

Kahlan did find the table. She never ate in bed again.

At first, the pain of walking was sometimes more than she could tolerate, and she took refuge in her bed. Cara would come in and brush her hair, just so Kahlan wouldn’t be alone. She had no power in her muscles, and could hardly move by herself. Brushing her own hair was a colossal task. Just getting to the table was exhausting, and all she could accomplish at first. Richard and Cara were sympathetic, and continually encouraged her, but they pushed her, too.

Kahlan was joyous to be out of the bed and that helped her to ignore the pain. The world was again a wondrous place. She was more than joyous to be able at last to go out to the privy. While she never said so, Kahlan was sure Cara was happy about that, too.

As much as she liked the snug home, going outside felt like finally being freed from a dungeon. Before, Richard had frequently offered to take her outside for the day, but she had never wanted to leave her bed, fearing the pain. She realized that because she was so sick, her thinking had slowly become dull and foggy. Along with her summer, she had for a time lost herself. Now, at long last, she felt clear-headed.

She discovered that the view outside her window was the least impressive of the surrounding sights. Snowcapped peaks towered around the small house Richard and Cara had built in the lap of breathtaking mountains. The simple house, with a bedroom at either end, one for Richard and Kahlan, and one for Cara, with a common room in the middle, sat at the edge of a meadow of velvety green grasses sprinkled with wildflowers. Even though it was late in the season when they had arrived, Richard managed to start a small garden in a sunny place outside Cara’s window, growing fresh greens for the table and some herbs to add flavor to their cooking. Right behind the house, huge old white pines towered over them, sheltering them from the full force of the wind.

Richard had continued his carving, to pass the time as he sat by Kahlan’s bed, talking and telling stories, but after she had at last gotten out of bed, his carvings changed. Instead of animals, Richard began sculpting people.

And then one day he surprised her with his most magnificent carving yet—in celebration, he said, of her getting well enough to finally come out into the world. Astonished by the utter realism and power of the small statue, she whispered that it could only be the gift that had guided his hand in carving it. Richard regarded such talk as nonsense.

“People without the gift carve beautiful statues all the time,” he said. “There’s no magic involved.”

She knew, though, that some artists were gifted, and able to invoke magic through their art.

Richard occasionally spoke wistfully about the works of art he’d seen at the People’s Palace, in D’Hara, where he had been held captive. Growing up in Hartland, he had never before seen statues carved in marble, and certainly none carved on such a grand scale, or by such talented hands. Those works had in some ways opened his eyes to the greater world around him and had made a lasting impression on him. Who else but Richard would remember fondly the beauty he saw while held captive and being tortured?

It was true that art could exist independent of magic, but Richard had been taken captive in the first place only with the aid of a spell brought to life through art. Art was a universal language, and thus an invaluable tool for implementing magic.

Kahlan finally stopped arguing with him about whether the gift helped him to carve. He simply didn’t believe it. She felt, though, that, having no other outlet, his gift must be expressing itself in this way. Magic always seemed to find a way to seep out, and his carvings of people certainly did seem magical to her.