'You have responsibilities as a wizard. Those responsibilities are to serve, not to rule. You will report at once to Aydindril, to take your place in that service, or you will answer to me.'
'You?' he said with a derisive sneer. 'You demand that good and decent men whimper and snivel before you, and at the same time you blindly let banelings have a free run of the land.'
'Banelings?' She glowered at Riggs. 'I suppose you would be foolish enough to seek council from the Blood of the Fold.'
'They've already joined with us,' General Riggs said, offhandedly. 'Our cause is theirs, and theirs ours. They know how to expunge those who would serve the Keeper and thus our enemies. We will cleanse the land of all who serve the Keeper. Goodness must triumph.'
'You mean your cause. It is you who would rule.'
'Are you blind, Confessor? I rule here, now, but this is not about me; it's about the future. I simply fill the post for now, furrow the field so it may produce. It's not I who is the focus.
'We offer everyone the chance to serve with us, and every man with me has taken that offer. Others have joined our troops in our battle. We are no longer D'Haran troops. They are no longer troops of their homeland. We are all the Imperial Order. Any of right mind can lead us. If I fall in our noble struggle, another will rise up to take my place, until all the lands are joined under united rule, and the Imperial Order can flower.'
Either the man was too drunk to know what he was saying, or he was mad. She glanced about at the dancing, drunken, singing men at campfires all about. Mad as the Bantak. Mad as the Jocopo.
'General Riggs.' He had been muttering angrily under his breath, but stopped and looked up at her. 'I am the Mother Confessor. Like it or not, I represent the Midlands. In the name of the Midlands I call upon you to to halt this war immediately and either return to D'Hara, or come to the council with your grievances. You may petition the Central Council with any dispute you have, and it will be heard, but you may not visit war upon my people. You will not like the consequence if you choose not to heed my orders.'
He sneered up at her. 'We make no compromises. We'll annihilate all who don't join us. We fight to stop the killing, to stop the murdering, as the good spirits have called upon us to do. We fight for peace! Until we win peace, we will have war!'
She frowned. 'Who told you this? Who told you that you must fight?'
He blinked at her. 'It's self-evident, you stupid bitch!'
'You cannot possibly be so stupid as to think the good spirits tell you to wage war. The good spirits do not act in such overt ways.'
'Ah, well then, we have a disagreement. That is the purpose of war, is it not? To settle such matters? The good spirits know us to be in the right, else they would easily join against us. Our victory will prove they side with us or we could not win in our struggle. The Creator Himself wishes to see us triumph, and our victory will be proof of that.'
The man was a lunatic. She redirected her attention to the Keltish commander. 'Karsh...'
'General Karsh.'
'You demean the rank, General. Why did you slaughter the people of Ebinissia?'
'Ebinissia was given the opportunity to join us, as will all be given the opportunity. Ebinissia chose to fight. We had to make an example of her heathen people, to show others what awaits them if they fail to join us in peace. It cost us nearly half our men, but it was a goal worth the cost. Even now, those lost are being replaced by others joining with us, and we will swell in rank to take in all the known lands.'
This, you call leadership? Extortion and murder?'
General Karsh slammed his mug down on the table. His eyes were fire. 'We visit upon them what they visit upon our people! They raid our farms, our border towns. They kill Keltans as if we were bugs to be stepped on!
'Yet we offered them peace. It is they who chose to shun our mercy. They were offered a chance at peace, a chance to join us; they chose war. In that way, they chose to aid us; they've made an example for others of the folly of fighting us.'
'And what have you done with Queen Cyrilla? Did you slaughter her, too, or is she back there in your whores' tents?'
They all laughed. 'She would be,' Riggs put in, 'if we'd found her.' Kahlan almost sighed aloud with relief.
She looked back to Karsh, who was taking another swig. 'What has Prince Fyren to say of this?'
'Fyren's in Aydindril! I'm here!'
So, perhaps the Crown wasn't a part of this. Perhaps this was little more than a band of murdering outlaws who fancied themselves as more.
Kahlan knew Prince Fyren, knew him to be a reasonable man. Of the Keltish diplomats assigned to Aydindril, he was the one who had done the most to bring Kelton forward into the alliance of the Midlands through the Central Council. He cajoled and persuaded his mother, the queen, to go the route of peace rather than conflict. Prince Fyren was a gentleman, in every sense of the word.
'Besides being a murderer, General Karsh, you are also a traitor to your own land and Crown. To your own queen.'
He hammered his pewter mug down on the table. 'I'm a patriot! A protector of my people!'
She leaned the slightest bit forward. 'You're a treasonous bastard and an outlaw cutthroat without conscience. I leave to Prince Fyren the honor of condemning you to death. It will, of course, be a posthumous sentence.'
Karsh pounded his fist. 'The good spirits know of your treachery against the people of the Midlands! This proves their words true! They've told us we cannot be free as long as you live! They've called upon us to kill all those like you! All those who blaspheme! The good spirits will not abandon us in our struggle. We shall defeat all who do the Keeper's bidding.'
'No real officer,' she said, contemptuously, 'would listen to the babbling of the Blood.'
The wizard had made an angry-looking ball of liquid fire, and was slowly juggling it back and forth between his hands while he watched her. The flames spit and hissed, dropping little sparks. General Riggs belched and then put his knuckles on the table as he leaned toward her.
'Enough talking. Get down here, you little wench, so we can start the party. Us brave freedom fighters need a little fun.'
General Karsh at last smiled.. 'And then tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, you will be beheaded. Our men, our people, will rejoice at your death. They will exult in our triumph over the Mother Confessor, the symbol of oppression by magic.' His smile left as he turned red-faced once more, 'The people must see your punishment to know that good can prevail! To have hope! When we have your head, our people can rejoice!'
'Rejoice that all you brave freedom fighters are strong enough to kill a single woman?'
'No,' General Riggs said. He appeared for the first time sober as he looked up at her. 'You miss the true meaning of what we do. You fail to see its significance.'
His voice lowered, his tone softened. 'It's a new age we enter, Confessor. An age that has no place for your old religions. The line of Confessors and their wizards is at an end.
There was a time, three thousand years ago, when nearly everyone was born with the gift. Magic held sway over all things. That magic was used to vie for power. Wizards abused their power. In their greed, they killed one another. They killed others who had the gift, and so fewer lived to pass it on. Over time, those with the gift were culled from the race of men.
'Yet those left still contested for rule, and further thinned the ranks of those born with the gift. The magic, the other creatures of magic who were their charges, such as you, have been steadily stripped of their protection and fount of magic. Today there are almost none born with the gift. Magic itself is dying with them. They have had their chance to rule, just as did Darken Rahl with his magic, and they have failed. Their time, the time of wizards, is past.
'Their protection of the twilight beings is at an end, and so the age of magic is at an end. The time of man is upon us now, and there is no place in that world for the ancient, dying religion you call magic. It is time for man to take his place as inheritor of the world. The Imperial Order is upon the world, now, and if it were not them, it would be man by another name. It is time for man to rule, for magic to die.'
Kahlan felt a sudden hollowness. An unexpected tear ran down her cheek. A choking feeling of true panic clawed at her throat.
'Do you hear that, Slagle?' she whispered hoarsely. 'You have magic. The ones you aid would put an end to you, too.'
He tossed the little ball of fire to his other hand, the light of its flames dancing across his grim face. 'It is as it must be. Magic, chaste or foul, is the Keeper's conduit to this world. When I have helped extinguish magic in all its forms, then I, too, must die. In that way, I will serve the people.'
Riggs gazed up to her, almost sorrowfully, as he went on.
'Our people must see the last living embodiment of that religion die. You are its symbol, the last creature of magic created by wizards. With your death, they will be filled with hope for the future, and be emboldened to extinguish all the remaining pockets of filth and perversion that are magic.
'We are the plowshare. Those lands now infested with magic will be freed of its taint, and can be resettled by pious people. Then, at last, we shall all be free of your dogmas, which have no part in the glory of the future of man.'
He straightened, taking a drink from his mug. The harshness returned to his voice. 'After we finish with you, then we'll bring Galea to heel, and the rest of the lands.' He slammed the mug down. 'Until complete and total victory is ours, we demand war!'
Rage swelled in her, banishing the momentary sensation of loss and panic, swelled on behalf of all those beings, the twilight beings, who depended upon her for voice and protection.
She nodded slowly as she held the general's gaze.
'In my capacity as Mother Confessor, the highest rank of authority in the Midlands, to whose mandate all must bow, I grant your wish.' She leaned forward and spoke in a hiss. 'Let there be war. On my word and office, not one of you shall be granted quarter.'
Kahlan's fist came up to the wizard. It was for him she had come.
Her chest heaved with wrath, and with terror at the madness of these men. She let the magic surge within her, demanding release, demanding this wizard's death.
It was for him she had come. She must not fail. The Blood Rage screamed through her.
She called the lightning forth.
Nothing happened.
She froze for an instant in the panic of the failure of the magic. Then Riggs lunged for her leg.
Kahlan hauled back on the reins. The ferocious warhorse sprang into battle. He bellowed as he reared, kicking his front legs. Kahlan grasped his mane for dear life. A lashing hoof caught Riggs across the face, throwing him back. The thrashing hooves crashed down on the table, shattering it to splinters. Men in chairs toppled backward. Nick's front hooves crushed the head of one of the D'Haran officers, the leg of another.
The horse spun and kicked at the men. Kahlan gave him her heels, and he leapt into a gallop as the wizard was rising to his feet. Surprised men threw themselves out of the way. She took a quick glance over her shoulder to see the wizard throwing his hands out. A ball of wizard's fire exploded to life before him, turning in the air, awaiting command. He threw his arms out again, sending the fire on its way toward her.
The warhorse leapt over fires and men, kicking up both snow and flaming firewood. His legs caught tent lines, yanking them down. Kahlan spotted what she wanted, what she wanted more than life itself, and maneuvered the horse for it.
She could hear the wail of the wizard's fire coming for her. She could hear the screams of men unexpectedly caught up in it. She stole another glance to see the blue and yellow ball of flame tumbling through the tents and men, growing all the time, taking a course as drunken as the wizard. Wizard's fire had to be guided, and in his state, the wizard was having difficulty controlling what he had wrought. Were he sober, she would be dead by now.
Dear spirits, she prayed, if I'm to die, let me have time enough first to do what I must.
Kahlan reached her goal. As she galloped past, she yanked a lance from a snowbank and wheeled her horse. She dug her heels in, and Nick leapt ahead at a full gallop.
The ball of fire wailed toward her, setting tents and men afire. It grew and tumbled as the distance closed.
The lance was unexpectedly heavy, made for men who had more muscle than she, and she had to carry it upright to save her strength. The warhorse didn't flinch as he galloped, not at the noise, the confusion, the running men, or the wizard's fire. She pulled to one side and then the other, Nick's hooves digging into the packed snow. She dodged obstacles, weaving her way toward the wizard's fire at full speed. Toward the wizard.
Slagle tried to change the course of the fire, to block her advance, each time she wove in her headlong rush. His reactions were slow, but as the distance closed, she knew he wouldn't need to be fast to catch her up in it.
At the last instant, she wheeled her horse around to the right. The fire roared by so close she could smell burnt hair, and then she was racing again.
As she charged the horse ahead, the wizard's fire exploded behind, cascading across the ground like a burst dam. The horrifying death screams of man and beast caught in the conflagration filled the night air. Dozens of men, all afire, rolled through the snow, trying to put out the flames. But wizard's fire was not so easy to extinguish; it was alive with purpose.
The howls of pain panicked those around who didn't know what was happening. Men screamed in fear of spirits they thought were setting upon them. Swords were drawn and wielded, hacking at those running for their lives from the fire. Battle erupted out of nothing. The air carried not only the choking stench of burning flesh, but now blood.
She ignored the screams and sought the silence within.
The wizard stumbled backward and fell. He came to his feet whirling his arms. Fire formed in the air at the arc of his fingertips.
Though there was confusion all about, only one thing filled her vision. The wizard.
She couched the lance, tucking the base under her right armpit, jamming her grip tight against the leather stop. Gritting her teeth, she used all her strength to lift the heavy lance over Nick's bobbing head, to the left side, so as not to unbalance herself in the saddle.
Nick took her direction as if he could read her mind. She steered him at full speed, but it seemed to her that the last ten yards took hours, a race between her charge and the wizard calling forth fire.
Wizard Slagle looked up to direct the fire just as her lance caught him in the chest. The impact shattered the lance to splinters at midlength and nearly tore the wizard in half. She and her horse flew through a spray of blood.
Kahlan swung the half lance at a man lunging for her, catching him across the head. The impact tore the lance from her grip. She wheeled the horse and leaned forward over his withers as she galloped at full speed back through the confusion around the command tents. Her heart pounded as fast as the horse's hooves.
One of the D'Haran officers from the table was up and screaming for a horse. Men leapt onto horses bareback. As she began putting distance between them, she could hear him yell that if they failed to catch her they would be drawn and quartered to a man. A quick glance showed a good three dozen riders joining the chase.
Away from the command tents, back the way she had come, men didn't know what was happening, and saw a galloping rider as simply part of the drunken festivities. None moved to stop her. Men, tents, fires, polearms and lances stuck upright in the snow, stacks of pikes, horses, and wagons all flashed by in a blur.
Nick jumped anything he couldn't dodge. The threat of him not jumping or dodging had men diving for cover. Men at games tumbled out of the way, coin and dice flying into the air. Tents pulled up when Nick's legs caught their lines, flew up and billowed in a tangle behind, snaring her pursuers. Horses and riders crashed to the ground. Others ran over their own men in their frenzied attempt to keep her in sight.
Kahlan spotted a sword hanging in a scabbard that was fastened to the side of a wagon, and as she ran past, she pulled it free. Galloping past picket lines, she swung the sword, cutting the lead lines. She hacked the rump of one horse as she charged past. He kicked and screamed in fright and pain, panicking the rest of the horses. They bolted headlong in every direction. Lanterns on poles toppled onto tents, setting them afire.
The horses in pursuit balked at the fires, rearing and bucking, throwing their riders to the ground. A man lunged suddenly into her path, avoiding Nick's flying hooves and grabbing for her. Kahlan drove the sword home through his chest as she flew by. The hilt tore from her hand. She leaned forward and held on as Nick raced through the endless camp. The men chasing weren't as close, but they were still coming.
Suddenly, she was free of the camp, galloping through the open snow. Kahlan followed her own tracks across the flat by the waning light of the moon. The muscular horse plowed through the snow almost as if it weren't there.
She reached the trees at last, and before plunging in and ascending the steep slopes, she checked over her shoulder.
A good fifty men were not three minutes behind. She would be able to open the lead as she went up along the forest trail, but they would still catch her.
She would see to that.
CHAPTER 39
Easy now,' she cautioned. One hesitant hoof slipped. 'Back, back, back. Come on boy, back.'
From down the slope behind, she could hear the sounds of the chase; a man, probably one of the D'Haran officers, yelling angrily at the top of his lungs not to let her get away, and others urging their horses up the steep trail. When they reached the flat where she was, they would be in a full gallop again.
Kahlan tugged gently on the reins. Nick lifted his hoof from the ice and backed up, into the tight gap between the snow-crusted pines, back along his trail.
She found the long branch, with the forked end she had whittled to a pushing pole, stuck upright in the snow where she had left it beside the twin trunked spruce. She hefted it up, and started pushing the heavy, snow-laden branches. Her shoulder ached from having the lance shattered as she held it under her arm.
As she backed Nick between the trees, off her trail, she held the long push-stick out over his head, jostling the limbs. Relieved of their loads, they sprang up, partly screening the gap between the trees. More importantly, the snow tumbled to the ground, piling over her tracks. She pushed at a branch here, another there, sprinkling their snow over Nick's backing trail, covering it in, making it look natural, as if wind had simply freed the branches of their load.
She said a silent thank-you to Richard, for teaching her about tracks. He had said he would make a woods woman of her. She ached for Richard. She was sure he wouldn't approve of the desperate risk she was undertaking with the aid of what he had taught her.
But she couldn't allow these men to track her back to the Galean boys. There was a chance that some would carry word of what they had seen back, and then the Galeans would be slaughtered. If none of these men returned, it would be a long while before any more were sent, if ever.
Even if they were, by then it would be too late; she would have long been up and over the passes from which she had come, where the wind howled and drifted the snow constantly, and her tracks would be lost to them. They would not know where she had gone. From there, the mountains and forests went on in endless tracts, and her trail would have been last seen leading steadily away from her true destination. Those back at camp would have confidence that these soldiers would have her sooner or later, and with the prospect of plunder only days away, they would turn their attention to it instead.
The snow-muffled thundering of hooves brought her mind back to what she was doing. The men had reached the flat, and were charging at full speed again. Steadily, she worked her way back into the trees, shaking branches, covering her trail, backing toward the way she had come on her way to the army of the Imperial Order. The sounds of chase were almost upon her.
Kahlan leaned almost all the way over, stroking an arm along her horse's neck. She whispered toward his ears, and they swiveled back to the sound of her voice.
'Quiet now, Nick. Please don't move or make a sound.' She stroked his sweaty neck again. 'Good boy. Quiet now.'
It sounded, to her, as if anyone would be able to plainly hear her heart beating in her chest.
The pursuers had reached her. As they charged along her trail, right in front of her, they broke through the screen of trees to her left, not ten yards away, at full speed. Kahlan held her breath.
She heard the clop of hooves as they hit the sloping ice hiding in the moon shadows beyond those trees, beyond her false trail. She had led her tracks between those trees, to the edge of a steep, rocky stream, where its water would tumble, were it not frozen, over a cliff.
It was a small stream, but as it froze, more water had bubbled and frothed over that which was already frozen, growing the area into an ice palace. Snow had been washed away as it fell, leaving the rounded, downward-sloping humps of ice bare and slick.
As the men broke through the trees, they had not twenty feet to halt their headlong rush before the cliff's edge, before the rock and ice halted, and only thin air lay beyond. And they had to do it on cascading mounds of ice. Were it flat ice, like a lake, the horses could have dug their iron shoes in, and tried to skid to a halt. But this was not flat, it was water slicked tumble-down ice, and as they slipped and slid and tripped and fell at a charge, they had no chance.
Kahlan could hear the pop of horses' legs breaking, as thousands of pounds of muscle moving at full speed could not be stopped by hooves catching in crevices. The bareback riders were helpless passengers.
The men shouted encouragement to their mounts, and the ones behind didn't recognize quickly enough the change in shrieking from anger to fright. Those behind crashed into those ahead, tumbling over and past each other. Bareback, with only halters and no aggressive battle bits, the riders didn't have the control they were accustomed to, and were carried helplessly forward.
Some leapt from their mounts as they came through the trees, and could see what lay ahead, but their momentum was too great, the distance too short, their fate beyond retrieval. The horses behind, their leg bones snapping, crashed down atop the ones already fallen, who were desperately grasping for a hold. There was none. It became a waterfall of living flesh, cascading over the edge.
Kahlan sat still, wearing her Confessor's face, as she listened to the screams of men and horses mingled together into one long wail as they disappeared over the mountainside. In the span of mere seconds, it was finished; more than fifty men and their mounts had plunged to their deaths.
When the night had been silent for a time, she dismounted and circled around, to keep her false trail free of any off-leading tracks, to the edge of the ice flow. In the dim light she could see the dark stains of blood over the ice mounds. Blood from broken legs, blood from cracked skulls. There were none of the enemy left on the cliff.
As she turned to leave, she heard low grunts of desperation. Kahlan pulled her knife and carefully inched her way to the source of the sounds, toward the edge. Grasping a stout limb, she leaned out over the slanting ice flow. Forest debris was frozen in the ice; sticks and leaves had made a small dam at the edge, to be covered over as the ice grew. It left a few branches sticking out of the wall of ice.
Around one of these branches were clutched fingers. A man clung by his fingertips to the branch, his legs dangling over a drop of close to a thousand feet. He was grunting with effort as he tried to catch his feet up on the ice, but it was too slippery to give him any toehold.
Kahlan stood at the edge, holding the branch for support, as she watched him shivering. Dribbles of water bubbled over the ice, over his face, matting his hair and soaking his Keltish uniform. His teeth chattered.
He looked up to see her standing over him in the moonlight. 'Help me! Please help me!' He couldn't have been past her age.
She regarded him without emotion. He had big eyes, the kind of eyes young women would surely have swooned over. But the young women in Ebinissia would not have swooned when they saw those eyes.
'In the name of the good spirits, help me!'
Kahlan squatted down, closer to him. 'What is your name?'
'Huon! My name's Huon! Now please help me!'
Kahlan lay down on the ice, hooking a foot around a tangled root, taking a good grip on the stout spruce limb with one hand. She extended her other hand partway out, but not far enough for Huon to reach.
'I will help you, Huon, on a condition. I have sworn no mercy, and none shall be granted. If you take my hand, I will release my power into you. You will be mine, now and forever. If you are to live, it will be as one touched by a Confessor. If you would think to pull me over the edge with you before I can release my magic, let me assure you I would not make the offer were there that chance. I have touched more men than I can count. You will have no time. You will be mine.'
He blinked icy water dripping down on him from his eyes, shook it from his face, and stared up at her.
Kahlan extended her hand toward him. 'From now on, Huon, either way, your old life is ended. If you live it will not be as who you are now. That man will be gone forever. You will be mine.'
'Please,' he whispered, 'just help me up. I won't hurt you. I swear to let you be on your way. It would take me hours to make it back to camp on foot, and you'll be long gone by then anyway. Please, just help me up.'
'How many people in Ebinissia did you hear beg for their lives? To how many did you grant mercy?' Her words came as cold as the ice she lay on. 'I am the Mother Confessor. I have proclaimed war without quarter on the Imperial Order. The oath stands as long as one of you lives. Choose, Huon. Death, or to be touched by my power. Either way, who you are dies.'
'The people of Ebinissia got what they deserved. I'd rather take the hand of the Keeper himself than be touched by your filthy magic. The good spirits would never accept me to them if I were touched by your dark and profane magic.' His lip curled in a sneer. To the Keeper with you, Confessor!'
Huon threw his arms open and silently dropped away into the darkness.
----------
As she rode back to the Galean recruits, she thought about the things Riggs, Karsh, and Slagle had told her. She also thought about the creatures of magic living in the Midlands.
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