Stone of Tears

As she started to learn to block the world out as she aimed, he began to do things to try to distract her. At first he just rubbed her stomach. It made her smile until he told her to stop thinking about what he was doing and think only about what she must do. After a few hours, she could shoot while he tickled her. Sometimes. It was an exhilarating feeling to be able to feel where the arrow needed to be. She couldn’t do it very often, but when it happened it felt wonderful. Addictive.

“It’s magic,” she told him. “That’s what you’re doing. Magic.”

“No, it’s not. Everyone can do it. Chandalen’s men are doing it when they shoot. Everyone who gets good enough does it. It’s your own mind doing it. I just helped by showing you. If you had practiced long enough, you would have learned it by yourself before now. Just because you don’t know how something is done doesn’t make it magic.”

She gave him a sidelong glance. “I’m not so sure. You shoot. Let me tickle you while you try to shoot.”

“After we have something to eat. And you practice some more.”

They flattened a circle of grass, like a nest, and lay on their backs, watching the birds wheel in the sky as they ate tava bread wrapped around greens, handfuls of kuru, and drank water from a skin. The surrounding grass protected them a little, so the wind didn’t feel quite so cold. She laid her head on his shoulder as they watched the sky in silence. She knew they were both wondering what they were going to do.

“Maybe,” Richard said at last, “I could partition my mind again, to control the headaches. Darken Rahl said that was what I had done.”

“You talked to him? You talked to Darken Rahl?”

“Yes. Actually, he did most of the talking. I mostly listened. He told me a lot of things. I don’t believe all of them. He told me George Cypher wasn’t my father. He told me I had partitioned my mind, and that I have the gift. He told me I had been betrayed. Because of what Shota said—that you and Zedd would both use your magic against me—I thought one of you had betrayed us. I never thought of my brother.

“Maybe if I could figure out how to partition my mind again, I could control the headaches so they wouldn’t kill me. Maybe that’s what the Sisters teach. I’ve already done it once, so if I could do it again, I might be able to save myself without…”

He rested an arm over his eyes, not wanting to finish the thought out loud. “Kahlan, maybe I don’t have the gift. It could just be the Wizard’s First Rule.”

“What do you mean?”

“Zedd told us that much of what people believe is wrong. The First Rule can make you believe something is true either because you want it to be true, or because you’re afraid it might be. I’m afraid of having the gift, and that fear makes me accept the possibility that what the Sisters say is true. It could be there are other reasons the Sisters want me to think I have the gift, and that it isn’t true. Maybe I don’t have it.”

“Richard, do you really think you can dismiss all the other things that have happened? Zedd said you have the gift, Darken Rahl said you have the gift, the Sisters say you have the gift, even Scarlet says you have the gift.”

“Scarlet doesn’t know what she is talking about, I don’t trust the Sisters, and do you think I would believe anything Darken Rahl said?”

“And what about Zedd? Do you think Zedd is lying? Or that he doesn’t know what he is talking about? You have told me you think he is the smartest man you know. Besides, he is a wizard of the First Order. Do you really think a wizard of the First Order wouldn’t know the gift when he saw it?”

“Zedd could be wrong. Just because he’s smart, that doesn’t mean he knows everything.”

Kahlan thought a while about his reluctance to accept that he had the gift. She wished, for his sake, that it could be the way he wanted it, but she knew the truth.

“Richard, at the People’s Palace, when I touched you with my power, and we all thought it had taken you, and didn’t know you had figured out how not to be consumed by the magic, you recited the Book of Counted Shadows to Darken Rahl, didn’t you?” He nodded. “I couldn’t believe you did that. How did you know it? Where did you ever learn the book?”

Richard sighed. “When I was young, my father took me to a place where he had it hidden. He told me it was being guarded by a beast sent by covetous hands, to watch over it, until that person could come for the book. So he rescued it. I know now that they were the hands of Darken Rahl, but at the time we didn’t know that; my father said he had to take it because otherwise it would be stolen by those hands.