Stone of Tears

“You fool. You treacherous fool. No one can help him now.”

“Please, Zedd. You can. Please, help him.”

“Not even I. No one can get to him. I can’t pass the towers. Richard is lost to us. All I had left is lost.”

“What do you mean, lost to us?” With trembling fingers, she wiped blood from the corner of her mouth. She didn’t wipe the tears. “He will be back. He has to come back.”

Zedd’s eyes never left hers as he slowly shook his head. “Not while any of us are alive. The Palace of the Prophets is in a spell of time. Richard will be there for the next three hundred years while they train him. We will never see him again. He is lost to this world.”

Kahlan shook her head. “No. Dear spirits, no. That can’t be. We will see him. It can’t be true!”

“True, Mother Confessor. You have put him beyond any help. I will never again see my grandson. You will never again see him. Richard will not return to this world for another three hundred years. Because of you. Because you made him put on that collar to prove he loves you.”

He turned his back to her. Kahlan fell to her knees. “Noooo!” She beat her fists on the floor. “dear spirits, why have you done this to me!” She cried in choking sobs. “Richard, my Richard.”

“What happened to your hair, Mother Confessor?” Zedd asked in a menacing voice, his back still to her.

Kahlan sat back on her heels. What did it matter anymore. “The council convicted me of treason. I have been sentenced to be executed. To be beheaded. The people all cheered at the pronouncement of sentence. They all wanted to see it done. But I escaped.”

Zedd nodded. “The people shall have their wish.” He grabbed what was left of her hair in his fist and started dragging her from the room. “For what you have done, you shall be beheaded.”

“Zedd!” she screamed. “Zedd! Please, don’t do this!”

He used magic to drag her down the hall like a sack of feathers.

“Tomorrow, at the winter solstice festival, the people shall have their wish. They shall see the Mother Confessor beheaded. As First Wizard, I will see to it. I shall see it done.”

Kahlan went limp. What did it matter? The good spirits had abandoned her. They had stripped her of everything that mattered.

Worse, she herself had condemned Richard to three hundred years of the thing he feared most.

She wanted to die. Death couldn’t come fast enough for her.

Richard stood with his hands on his hips as he watched the dark clouds made by spells in the distance, in the Valley of the Lost. They looked beautiful in the sunrise, with golden edges and striations of glowing rays. But he knew they were deadly.

Du Chaillu put an affectionate hand to his arm. “My husband makes me proud this day. He returns our land to us, as the old words have foretold.”

“I’ve explained it to you a dozen times, Du Chaillu; I am not your husband. You have simply misinterpreted the old words. It only means we must do this together. And we haven’t done it yet. I wish you would have come with me without bringing everyone else. I don’t even know if this will work. We could be killed.”

She patted his arm reassuringly. The Caharin has come. He can do anything. He will return our land.” She left him to his thoughts and started back to the camp. “All our people should be with us. It is their right.” She stopped and turned back. “Will we be leaving soon, Caharin?”

“Soon,” Richard said absently.

She started off again. “I will be with our people when you are ready for me.”

The entire Baka Ban Mana nation was camped behind them. Thousands upon thousands of tents were spread out over the hills, like mushrooms after a month of rain. He hadn’t been able to talk them out of coming, to convince them to wait, so they were all here, with him.

Richard sighed. What difference did it make? If he was wrong, and this failed, he had no reason to worry about all the Baka Ban Mana being disappointed in him. He would be dead.

Warren and Sister Verna quietly came up behind.

“Richard,” Warren said, “can we talk to you?”

Richard continued to stare out at the storms. “Of course, Warren.” He cast a glance back. “What’s on your mind?”

Warren pushed his hands up the opposite sleeves of his robes. Richard thought it made him look very wizardlike when he did that. Warren was going to someday end up being Richard’s idea of what a wizard ought to be: wise, compassionate, and charged with knowledge Richard could only wonder at. If they didn’t all die, that was.

“Well, Sister Verna and I were talking. About what happens after you get through the valley. Richard, I know what you want to do, but we have run out of time. There never was enough time to begin with. Tomorrow is winter solstice. It can’t be done.”

“Just because you don’t know how to do something, that does not mean it can’t be done.”

“I don’t understand.”

Richard smiled at them. “You will. You will understand in a few hours.”

Warren looked away toward the valley. He idly scratched his nose. “If you say so, Richard.”