Faith of the Fallen (47 page)

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.

“I figured this wasn’t going to come to any good end,” the young captain said. “Ever since Cyrilla was hurt, Prince Harold just never seemed himself. I always loved the man. It hurt me to have to desert him. But he just wasn’t making sense anymore.”

Kahlan put a comforting hand on his shoulder as they watched the body being carried away.

“I’m sorry, Bradley. Like you, I always thought highly of him. I guess seeing his sister and his queen so long held in the grip of that kind of sickness just brought him to his wits’ end. Try to keep your good memories of him.”

“I will, Mother Confessor.”

Kahlan changed the subject. “I’ll need one of your men to take a message to Cyrilla. I was going to have Harold take it, but now we’ll need a messenger.”

“I will see to it, Mother Confessor.”

She only then realized how cold it was outside, and that she didn’t have a cloak. As the captain went to get his men quartered and to pick out a man to act as a messenger, Kahlan went back inside the lodge.

Cara was putting more wood on the hearth. Verna and Adie had gone. Warren was selecting a rolled map from the basket of maps and diagrams in the corner.

As he was leaving, Kahlan caught Warren’s arm. She looked into the wizard’s blue eyes, knowing they were much older than they appeared. Richard had always said that Warren was one of the smartest people he had ever met. Besides that, Warren’s true talent was said to lie in the area of prophecy.

“Warren, are we all going to die in this mad war?”

His face softened with a shy but impish grin. “I thought you didn’t believe in prophecy, Kahlan.”

She released his arm. “I guess I don’t. Never mind.”

Cara, leaving to find some more firewood, followed Warren out. Kahlan warmed herself before the hearth as she stared at
Spirit
standing on the mantel. Zedd rested a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“What you had to say to Harold about using your mind, about reason, was very wise, Kahlan. You were right.”

Her fingers touched the buttery smooth walnut robes of
Spirit
. “It was what Richard said, when he was telling me what he had finally come to understand about what he had to do. He said the only sovereign he could allow to rule him was reason.”

“Richard said that? Those were his very words?”

Kahlan nodded as she gazed at
Spirit
. “He said the first law of reason is that what exists, exists; what is, is, and that from this irreducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. He said that was the foundation from which life is embraced.

“He said thinking is a choice, and that wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discover them. I guess Harold proved the point. Richard said reason is our only way of grasping reality—that it’s our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking—to reject reason—but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see.”

She listened to the fire crackling at her feet as she let her gaze wander over the lines of the figure he had carved for her. When she heard nothing from Zedd, she looked over her shoulder. He was staring into the flames, a tear running down his cheek.

“Zedd, what’s wrong?”

“The boy figured it out himself.” The old wizard’s voice was the uneasy sum of loneliness and quiet pride. “He understands it—he interpreted it perfectly. He even came to it on his own, by applying it.”

“Came to what?”

“The most important rule there is, the Wizard’s Sixth Rule: the only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason.”

Reflections of the firelight danced in his hazel eyes. “The Sixth Rule is the hub upon which all rules turn. It is not only the most important rule, but the simplest. Nonetheless, it is the one most often ignored and violated, and by far the most despised. It must be wielded in spite of the ceaseless, howling protests of the wicked.

“Misery, iniquity, and utter destruction lurk in the shadows outside its full light, where half-truths snare the faithful disciples, the deeply feeling believers, the selfless followers.

“Faith and feelings are the warm marrow of evil. Unlike reason, faith and feelings provide no boundary to limit any delusion, any whim. They are a virulent poison, giving the numbing illusion of moral sanction to every depravity ever hatched.

“Faith and feelings are the darkness to reason’s light.

“Reason is the very substance of truth itself. The glory that is life is wholly embraced through reason, through this rule. In rejecting it, in rejecting reason, one embraces death.”

By the next morning, about half of the Galean force had vanished, returning to their homeland and queen as ordered by Prince Harold before his death. The rest, like Captain Ryan and his young soldiers, remained loyal to the D’Haran Empire.

Lieutenant Leiden, the former general, and his entire force of Keltish troops had also departed by morning. He left Kahlan a letter, in it saying that with Galea choosing to break with the D’Haran Empire, he had to return to help protect Kelton, as surely the selfish actions of the Galeans meant the Order would be more likely to come up the Kern River Valley and threaten Kelton. He wrote that he hoped the Mother Confessor would realize how grave was the danger to Kelton, and understand that it was not his intention to desert her or the D’Haran Empire, but simply to help protect his people.

Kahlan knew of the men leaving; General Meiffert and Warren had come to tell her. She had expected it, and had been watching. She told General Meiffert to allow them to leave if they wished. War in their camp could come to no good end. The morale of the remaining men was boosted by a sense of being on the right side, and of doing the right thing.

That afternoon, as she was drafting an urgent letter to General Baldwin, commander of all Keltish forces, General Meiffert and Captain Ryan came to see her. After listening to their plan, she granted Captain Ryan permission to go with a like number of General Meiffert’s handpicked D’Haran special forces to conduct raids on the Imperial Order force. Warren and six Sisters were sent to accompany them.

With the Imperial Order having moved so far back to the south, Kahlan needed information on what they were doing and what shape their force was in. More than that, though, with the foul weather in their favor, she wanted to keep pressure on the enemy. Captain Bradley Ryan and his band of nearly a thousand were experienced mountain fighters and had grown up in just such harsh conditions. Kahlan had fought beside the captain and his young Galean soldiers, and had helped train them in the ways of fighting a vastly superior force. If only the enemy force did not number over a million…

General Meiffert’s special forces, which, until Kahlan had promoted him, he had ably commanded, were now led by Captain Zimmer, a young, square-jawed, bull-necked D’Haran with an infectious smile. They were everything Captain Ryan’s young men were, tripled: experienced, businesslike under stress, tireless, fearless, and coolly efficient at killing. What made most soldiers blanch made them grin.

They preferred fighting just such as this, where they were free of massive battlefield tactics and could instead use their special skills. They treasured being let off the leash to do what they did best. Rather than check them, Kahlan gave them a free hand.

Each of those D’Harans collected enemy ears.