Wizard's First Rule

He gave her a sidelong glance. "I can." He reached to his breast. "I found this in my shirt pocket." He lifted an eyebrow. "By my heart." He pulled out the lock of Rachel's hair, tied with the vine. He twisted it in his fingers. "To remember her by."

Kahlan's face was ashen as she rose. "This is my fault." She pushed out of the wayward pine. He tried to grab her arm, but she tore away from him.

Richard set his pack aside and followed. Kahlan stood off a ways, her arms folded below her breasts, her back to him. She stared off into the woods.

"Kahlan, it isn't your fault."

She nodded. "It was my hair. Didn't you see the fear in her eyes when she looked at my hair? I have seen that look a thousand times. Do you have any idea what it's like to frighten people, even children, all the time?" He didn't answer. "Richard? Cut my hair for me?"

"What?"

She turned to him, pleading in her eyes. "Cut it off for me?"

He watched the hurt in her eyes. "Why haven't you just cut it yourself?"

She turned away. "I cannot. The magic will not allow a Confessor to cut her own hair. If we try, it brings pain so great, it prevents us from doing so."

"How could that be?" "Remember the pain you suffered, from the magic of the sword, when you killed a man the first time? It is the same pain. It will render a Confessor unconscious before the task can be accomplished. I tried only once. Every Confessor tries once. But only once. Our hair must be cut by another when it needs trimming. But none would dare to cut it all of." She turned to him once more. "Will you do it for me? Will you cut my hair?"

He looked away from her eyes, to the brightening slate blue sky, trying to understand what it was he was feeling, what it was she must be feeling. There was so much he didn't know about her, still. Her life, her world, was a mystery to him. There had been a time when he wanted to know it all. Now he knew he never could; the gulf between them was filled with magic. Magic, designed, it seemed, explicitly to keep them apart.

His eyes returned to her. "No.".

"May I know why?"

"Because I respect you for who you are. The Kahlan I know wouldn't want to fool people by trying to make them think she is less than she is. Even if you did fool some, it would change nothing. You are who you are: the Mother Confessor. We all can be no more, or less, than who we are." He smiled. "A wise woman, a friend of mine, told me that once."

"Any man would leap for the chance to cut a Confessor's hair."

"Not this one. This one is your friend."

She gave a nod, her arms still folded against her stomach. "She must be cold. She didn't even take a blanket."

"She didn't take any food either, other than that loaf of bread she's saving for some reason, and she was starving."

Kahlan smiled at last. "She ate more than you and me together. At least her belly is full. Richard, when she gets to Homers Mill…"

"She isn't going to Homers Mill."

Kahlan came closer. "But that's where her grandmother is."

Richard shook his head. "She doesn't have a grandmother. When she said her grandmother was in Homers Mill, and I told her she couldn't go there, she didn't even falter. She simply said she would go somewhere else. She never gave it a thought, never asked about her grandmother, or even raised an objection. She's running from something."

"Running? Maybe from whoever put those bruises on her arms."

"And on her back. Whenever my hand touched one, she flinched, but she didn't say anything. She wanted to be hugged that badly." Kahlan's brow wrinkled with sorrow. "I'd say she was running from whoever cut her hair like that."

"Her hair?"

He nodded again. "It was meant to mark her, maybe as property. No one would cut someone's hair like that, except to give a message. Especially in the Midlands, where everyone pays so much attention to hair. It was deliberate, a message of power over her. That's why I cut it for. her, to remove the mark."

Kahlan stared at nothing in particular. "That was why she was so happy to have it cut even," she whispered.

"There is more to it, though, than simply running away. She lies easier than a gambler. She lies with the ease of someone who has a powerful need."

Her eyes came to his again. "Like what?"

"I don't know." He sighed. "But it has something to do with that loaf 'of bread."

"The bread? Do you really think so?"

"She had no shoes, no cloak, nothing but her doll. It's her most precious possession, she's devoted to it, yet she let us touch it. But she wouldn't let us get within an arm's length of that loaf of bread. I don't know much about the magic in the Midlands, but where I come from, a little girl will not value a loaf of bread more than her doll, and I don't think it's any different here. Did you see the look in her eyes when you reached for the bread, and she snatched it away? If she had had a knife, and you hadn't backed off, she would have used it on you."

"Richard," she admonished, "you can't really believe that about a little girl. A loaf of bread couldn't be that important to her."