Wizard's First Rule

"Rachel, you listen to me. If you live to be a hundred years old, you will never again do anything as important as this. You must be brave, braver than you have ever been before. You must not trust anyone. You must not let anyone get the box. I will come get you in a few days, but if something goes wrong, and I don't come, you must hide with the box until winter. Then everything will be all right. If I knew of anyone else to help you, I would get them to do it. But I don't. You are the only one who can do this."

She watched him with big eyes. "I'm just little," she said.

"That is why you will be safe. Everybody thinks you are a nobody. But that isn't true. You are the most important person in the world, but you can trick them because they don't know. You must do this, Rachel. I need your help so much, and so does everyone else. I know you're smart enough, and brave enough to do it." She could see that his eyes were wet. "I'll try, Giller. I'll be brave and do it. You're the bestest man in the whole world, and if you say to do it, I will."

He shook his head. "I have been a very foolish man, Rachel, I have been far from the bestest man in the world. If only I had been wiser before, and remembered the things I was taught, my true duty, the reason I became a wizard in the first place, maybe I wouldn't have to ask you to do this. But just as this is the most important thing you will ever do, it is also the most important thing I will ever do. We must not fail, Rachel. You must not. No matter what happens, you must not let anyone stop you. Not anyone."

He put a finger on each side of her forehead and she felt a safe feeling in her head. She knew she would be able to do it and she would never have to do as the Princess said again. She would be free. Giller suddenly pulled his fingers away.

"Someone comes," he whispered. He kissed her head real quick. "Good spirits protect you, Rachel."

He stood up and put his back to the wall, behind the door. He slipped the loaf of bread into his robes, and put his finger over his lips. The door opened, and Rachel jumped to her feet. It was Princess Violet. Rachel curtsied: When she came back up, the Princess slapped her, then laughed. Rachel looked down at the ground, and while she rubbed her cheek, holding back the tears, she saw a piece of bread between Princess Violet's feet. She took a quick glance at Giller, who stood pressed against the wall behind the door. His eyes went to the bread. Quieter than a cat, he bent down and snatched up the bread, put it in his mouth, then slipped out the door behind Princess Violet's back without her ever seeing him.

–+-

Kahlan held her arms out to him, hands made into fists, the insides of her wrists pressed together, waiting for him to bind them with the rope. Her unblinking eyes stared off at nothing. She had said she wasn't tired, but Richard surely was-his head pounded so hard it made him feel sick-so she was going to take the first watch. What good her watch was, the way she stared blankly, he didn't know.

He held the rope taut between his shaking fist, his mind feeling the last of' his hope finally abandoning him. Nothing was changing, nothing was getting any better, as he had hoped; it was one long endless battle with her-she wanting to die, he trying constantly to prevent it.

"I can't do this anymore," he whispered, looking down at her wrists in the light of the small fire. "Kahlan, you may be the one who wishes to die, but it is me you are killing."

Her green eyes came up to his; the firelight flickered in them. "Then let me go, Richard. Please, if you care at all for me, then show it. Let me go."

He lowered the rope and let it drop. With trembling hands, he slowly pulled her knife from his belt, and looked at it for a minute in the palm of his hand. The glint of the blade was blurred in his vision. He clenched the handle tightly in his fist and jammed the knife in the sheath at her belt.

"You win. Get out of here. Get out of my sight."

"Richard…

"I said get out of here!" He pointed back the way they had come. "Go back and let the gars do the job. You may botch it with that knife! I'd hate to think you slipped and didn't finish it properly. I'd hate to think that after all this, you might not be dead."

He turned his back to her and sat on a windfall spruce that lay in front of the fire. She stood watching him in silence, then moved off a few paces.

"Richard… after all we have been through together, I don't want it to be finished like this."

"I don't care what you want. You have forfeited that right." He struggled to make the words come out. "Get out of my sight."

Kahlan nodded, and looked down at the ground. Richard leaned over, elbows on his knees, his face in his shaking hands. He thought he might throw up.