LOTS - CARA/KAHLAN

No Fate But What We Make

merrykk

Title: No Fate But What We Make

Fandom: Legend of the Seeker

Characters/Pairing: Cara, Kahlan, slight Zedd and Leo, (implied Richard/Kahlan, story will feature Cara/Kahlan)

Rating: PG–13 (story will be R later)

Chapter Length: 3321

Warnings: Multiple character deaths and high-angst in the first couple chapters (but after that it is an adventure/romance fic)

Summary: Kahlan and Cara are the only ones left who know what has to be done to save this universe, but they only met yesterday. An “Unbroken” AU

Notes: mdknight3000 donated for me to write a shippy AU where Cara was never a Mord’Sith, with plot as well as romance133and then Unbroken aired. And then I wrote “A Shared Future” ( http://ivanolix.livejournal.com/158037.html ). Combining both those ideas, and running wild with the epic plot that came to mind, here is an AU of an AU in which schoolteacher!Cara gets to show Kahlan what was hiding under that average-mom persona. beerbad, this is also dedicated to you. There is angst. And redemption. And an exploration of how badasses are made without torture. And kids. And a book–inspired twist on who gets to be Seeker of Truth. And epic hair x2. And hugs and spooning. And girls getting things done to save the world. And it’s all plotted out in detail up to the very end, for your security as readers.

No Fate But What We Make

merrykk

Kahlan bit her lip as she tied the young woman to a tree, watching as Zedd poured out fearful magic onto the dusty ground. Some things were never meant for a Mother Confessor to do.

Cara Mason was fair, muscles made strong by farming visible even on her small frame, and though she was unconscious Kahlan could sense emotional strength. She had a heart that they would be breaking to save the world—for a moment, caressing her soft golden hair, Kahlan closed her eyes and hoped that she would remember Cara on the other side. Then, she might do justice for what they were about to commit.

“I need to remove the wizard’s web in order to release the spell,” Zedd said as he stood up from the drawn lines arranged around Cara.

Kahlan curled back her fingers from Cara’s shoulder, feeling guilty as she knew what would happen. Zedd waved his hand over Cara’s face, but a sharp crack came out of the distance behind them. Kahlan whipped her head around towards the forest, quickly alert.

“Zedd!” she whispered loudly. The four D’Harans jumped at her tone, reaching for weapons.

“Where am I?” Cara stared with bewilderment at her bonds as she didn’t understand what had just happened.

But she had lost Kahlan’s attention for a brief moment of Kahlan knowing what that sound meant. “Someone’s coming,” she said, looking towards the treeline and seeing nothing but wood, but knowing she’d heard something. It would have reminded her of Richard and worry if she’d had no duty.

Zedd frowned, drawing closer to her. “Darken Rahl. Quick, we must get to shelter.”

With a clank of armor and weaponry, the soldiers moved to defensive positions without being asked, crouching behind shrubs. Kahlan, knowing it would be Mord’Sith, set her jaw as she hurried to get Cara out of her bonds.

“What are you doing?” Cara asked, half a gasp, as Kahlan and Zedd started unwinding the ropes. Her body tensed, pulse racing clearly at her throat.

The near–terror in those green eyes went straight to Kahlan’s heart, and the honesty of it was painful at this moment. “Don’t worry, everything is going to be fine,” Kahlan assured her without meeting her eyes, hating this all the more as she freed her wrist and put a hand to the woman’s back.

“Hurry!” Zedd said as they ran towards the house.

“Leo?” asked Cara, turning back for a moment as they came through the doorway. For all the confusion, she looked to Kahlan with clarity. “What did you do with him?”

Kahlan didn’t have an answer other than a worried creasing of her brow about the young man they’d left outside, in a yard that still looked peaceful and quiet.

“Without the wizard’s web…” Zedd began, still frowning.

Cara took a breath to speak as she clenched her hand, but then an arrow shot through the window and tangled in Cara’s golden curls. They all dropped to the floor, Cara with a half–cry, and it was instinct rather than duty that had Kahlan moving close to the other woman.

“Cara Mason?” came the drawl of a woman’s iron voice from the yard.

Cara looked to Kahlan with eyes that were utterly confused, and with no time to explain anything Kahlan didn’t know what else to do other than squeeze her hand. The woman had enough focus to give her a strange look, but not for more than a moment.

“Dahlia…” Zedd said under his breath, as they crouched in Cara’s cottage.

“What do they want with me?” Cara murmured.

Before anyone could answer, though, another bowstring snapped, and there was a cry from the Mord’Sith. Zedd gave Kahlan a look, and leaving Cara in safety she jumped to her feet, expecting an opening. Outside the house, Leo had come out of nowhere and fired an bolt straight into the heart of the lead Mord’Sith, and was doing his best against the other two. Kahlan flipped out her knives, rushing in at the same time as the D’Harans.

Leo was thrown to the dusty ground with bruising force, his head snapping back, but a D’Haran dragged back his attacker by her braid, and she agieled another one of the soldiers but went down by a blade to the throat. The other leather–clad woman killed a D’Haran before Kahlan could get there, and then suddenly she spun around to strike another in the heart before running forward.

It wasn’t what they were prepared for, and Kahlan’s breast heaved. Then she saw the wizard glance back towards fallen Leo for a second, and saw the Mord’Sith at his back. “Zedd!” she called.

There was a second where Kahlan could only hear the beat of her heart, the sun blinding her eyes as she called out warning and yet seemed to be mute, for it did no good. The Mord’Sith drove a knife into Zedd’s belly, and with a whirl turned towards the other attacking D’Haran, leaving the wizard to fall with a thump to the dirt.

Without thinking, Kahlan came up behind as the D’Haran fell from an agiel strike to the face just as Kahlan, rage in her blood, gripped the Mord’Sith just below her chin. A surge of power shot through her, and the woman’s gasp was a scream before her eyes blew out, and she fell in a heap. For the first time in months, Kahlan stumbled as a result of her power, as if swirling in an ocean as she gasped in a breath.

“Leo?”

Kahlan looked around to see Cara rushing to the fallen blacksmith. But it was Zedd who her eyes caught onto, coughing as he cradled his own bloody stomach there in the dirt. Swallowing the acrid taste of fear and anger, Kahlan rushed to his side, calling, “Zedd needs help!”

“Kahlan,” the old wizard croaked, face turning pale.

“Creator,” Kahlan could barely breathe out, seeing the depth and width of the strike, the blood oozing faster than even a physician could stop. Even so, her hands pressed against the wound, holding it closed as her heart was beating nightmarishly fast. She couldn’t lose Zedd, not after what had happened with Richard, not for this.

“Kahlan, the world is wrong,” Zedd said, choking on the words as he reached for her arm with one bloody hand.

Her ears scarcely worked. She saw Leo rise awkwardly to his feet, saw Cara come from the house, still untouched by all the violence around her. “Where is the nearest person with medical knowledge?” Kahlan called wildly.

“I don’t know,” Cara answered. For all the confusion in her tone, Kahlan saw dark worry in her eyes—if only it could make a difference.

“Kahlan!” Zedd’s grip on her arm became almost painful, even as the blood was leaving his face a deathly color. “Listen to me!”

A lump was rising in Kahlan’s throat, as the look on Zedd’s face brought his tellings of horrific memories back to her, of the end of the world in a place where they’d all been tormented. Her eyes stung and she could hardly draw air to breathe. “What is it, Zedd?” she asked shakily.

“The world must be fixed,” the wizard said, just over a whisper. “If I can’t return it to how it was before, then it must be put right now. The boxes—they must be destroyed.”

Kahlan’s eyes were blearing, her heart heavy and mind still grasping for answers. “But Zedd, you said it would tear the world apart, that the Keeper would take advantage of it.”

“It will take time,” Zedd said slowly with wide eyes, holding onto her with all the strength he had. “The Keeper cannot gather his forces immediately, not when the rift first opens. We didn’t know until it was almost too late in the old world. This time…” He coughed, mouth a bloody mess, and Kahlan bit back a sob. She closed her eyes for a second, unable to watch. “You must find Shota and name a new Seeker to destroy the boxes with the Sword of Truth, and then you must find the Stone of Tears and repair the veil before the Keeper can come to power.”

“How?” whispered Kahlan, trying not to see as the light died out of Zedd’s eyes, as her useless hands lost their strength.

“Find the amulet of the Abbot of Ulrich, and use it to find the compass,” Zedd said, his grip on her arm failing. “Leo must be named the new Seeker, and then you must find the Stone of Tears. It is—it—”

“Zedd,” Kahlan cried out.

But his last breath escaped him, face white–grey already, blood pooling and staining the ground and Kahlan’s white dress. He lay lifeless at her knees. She crumpled over, chin tucked to her chest as she held back gulping sobs, doubting no longer that this world could not be how things were meant to happen.

* * * * *

Cara could still feel the pounding adrenaline–fueled energy of her heart, even now that she stood alive and whole. From a quiet joyful day with Leo, violence had arisen like a specter of days past to rip at her life. It had been so quiet since the war, since the loss of her children’s father had sent her away from the resistance, back to the farm. She’d given up that side of herself for the sake of her children—and she’d forgotten it.

Now, she’d been yanked back in like a child dragged home from playing hooky, but so she stood in the center of a bloody chaos of loss with not even Leo providing the grounding she needed to catch her breath. Her eyes glued to the sight of the wizard Zedd and the Mother Confessor, of all people, here for her. Why her? She couldn’t think straight; she wasn’t braced for this. So she just stood frozen in confusion.

The Mother Confessor still cried out her grief in a harsh music, unmoving over the fallen wizard. “Mother Confessor?” Leo finally asked quietly, stepping forward with the boldness that Cara had to assume was always his wont.

The title broke through the Mother Confessor’s grief and she looked up through her tears. Cara felt out of place on seeing the pain in her face, even as Kahlan Amnell wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and rose with an almost visible authority covering up the tragedy on her face. Holding herself to full height as if her dress was not covered in the lifesblood of Zeddicus Zu’l Zorrander, she said in a near–steady voice, “Did you hear the wizard’s words?”

The piercing feeling of wrongness struck Cara again, and the gasped–out words still didn’t make sense. What had she done in this lifetime to bring this upon the great and mighty? “I don’t understand,” she said at last, feeling her brow tighten behind the stray hair that fell about her face.

“Darken Rahl has taken the power of Orden,” Kahlan Amnell said, her tone now steely like her gaze. Were it not for the quiver of her lip, it was as if the immensity of the situation had escaped her. “We must take it from him and then destroy it, but it can’t stop there—all of creation will be in jeopardy no matter what we do.” Her glance fell softer, on Leo and then on Cara, and there was a human aching there that Cara needed to understand. “The Seeker is under the power of Darken Rahl, so I am alone.”

But Cara just froze even further, understanding too much. “Are you asking for my help?” she demanded, thinking that this must be a mistake from the very beginning—choosing her of all people, one of the least of the resistance, and now thinking that she could be anything else. Even more, Cara felt like panicking at the pull of her heart. “I have two children, I cannot—”

“They were coming here to kill you,” Kahlan interrupted swiftly. “Because of what Zedd revealed before, Darken Rahl believes that you are the key to his downfall.”

“But why?” Cara asked immediately back.

Kahlan pressed her lips together for a second, as if closing something off. “It is too much to explain. You must understand, there is not much time.”

Cara shook her head, brushing her hair back and thinking that this couldn’t be a war again—not after everything. “I can take my children away, go into hiding,” she said, but to herself.

Kahlan only shook her head. “Darken Rahl has the power of Orden, he will find you wherever you are. Cara, if you are truly the person who Zedd said you were, you must come with me. For all our sakes.”

“Are you mad?” Cara asked with a wavering voice.

The mess of emotions on Kahlan’s face snapped for a moment. “The entire world is at stake, do you not understand that? Somehow your life is important and I can’t risk that!”

“The only lives I care about are those of my children,” Cara said, with the fire of fear and duty overwhelming everything.

In that moment, Kahlan caught her gaze and held it, and there was a yearning in her eyes as if for things that she could not have. Cara didn’t understand; all she could see in her own mind’s–eye was Sophia and Sam, and how they had all slept soundly on the first night of the peace, to wake with free smiles and gently ruffled hair. But then Kahlan spoke quietly, “You can’t lie to the Mother Confessor.”

Something withered in Cara at that and made her swallow hard. All her life she’d lived for duty to a failing village and to a farm struggling to rise to its feet, to a family thrust together by necessity and to a resistance that was probably hopeless, to her children who had nothing else and to herself to not break under the pressure. And now, the Mother Confessor called to her. Cara wanted to hate herself for feeling the need to answer. Her children or the world—this battle should not be hers.

“I will come with you,” Leo said firmly, taking a step to stand by Kahlan.

Cara laughed, a bitter choking laugh. “I don’t understand any of this,” she admitted, feeling tears well in her eyes.

And the Mother Confessor stepped in like nothing more than a young woman torn by shock and fear, and yet still held together. “I know,” she said, resting her hand on Cara’s arm. Once, Cara might have flinched at a Confessor’s touch; in the moment, Kahlan was the only thing that didn’t scare her, even if her words did. “Cara, right now I am with child, and I would give anything simply to hide away until she is safely borne. But I can’t give up the world to darkness, perhaps doom it forever. I didn’t choose this, and neither did you, but I can choose to do something with it. Please.”

Cara raised a hand to her lips, refusing to let a sound of conflict escape. Briefly her eyes shut, a single tear tracking down her cheek. Words came unwillingly to her lips, despite the cry of her heart. “I don’t know how to fight, not more than to defend myself.”

Kahlan squeezed her hand, and Cara opened her eyes to see her nodding. “That is all you will need to know for now. Please, both of you, we must hurry.”

Just imagine what you’ll grow up to be. Cara heard her father’s voice in her head and remembered childish innocence not imagining the foreboding such words could hold. Her hands trembled as she brushed the tears from her eyes, and caught sight of Leo again, wondering if he could believe it of her. She could barely believe what she was doing, but her mind seemed to work separate from her heart. “I must leave a note for my sister, letting her know that I will be gone for some time,” she said, and with her fate thus sealed she turned towards her house.

“I’ll prepare the horses,” Leo said.

“Thank you,” Kahlan said after them both.

Cara walked in to stand at her kitchen table, resting her hands on the edge as she took in a deep breath. She wished the Creator had given her a harder heart that could hold selfishly onto what little she had left, and let a lone tear fall.

“Cara?”

Leo stood with his kind face looking both confused and concerned. Her foolish plan of this morning to follow the light flutter of her heart had been stripped away, as her indulgences always were, and she should learn better. “What?” she asked.

“I’m sure that something could be done for you, and for Sophia and Sam,” he said, gesturing to her. “The Mother Confessor can’t expect you to leave motherhood, your teaching, to become someone completely different.”

“No, she can’t,” Cara let fall with emphasis. The steel core that she’d lost over the last year would return to her, she could feel it.

Leo stared at her.

“Prepare the horses, Leo,” Cara said as she walked past him. “I know what I’m doing.”

Forcing herself not to think too much, lest warring guilt make her collapse with the pressure, she slipped out of her soft dress. A traveling gown, a strong leather coat, they were the duty she was choosing now. She would not be selfish and lead death to her children.

Even so, her hand shook as she left the note, soft words to her family that Darken Rahl was tearing from her for reasons she still did not grasp. If she could have poured her blood out to show her love more fully, she would have done so in a heartbeat.

As it was, she placed the letter on the table and shut the door to her home behind her without looking back. Her hands shivered even in clenched fists.

* * * * *

Kahlan still stood alone in the courtyard, a blood–stained figure surrounded by fallen enemies and one departed friend.

In all her days, she never thought that she might be forced to face the powers of Orden itself. That she might have to stand by a new Seeker, one whom Zedd had not named, to claim the Sword of Truth and restore justice to the world. That even then her task would not be done, as she would be battling the Keeper himself. Burying her grief for a second longer, she lifted her face to the sky and prayed to the Creator that this was the right thing to do, and that she might be blessed with the impossible gift to bring an end to this disaster.

“Please,” came a low voice at her side.

Kahlan came back to brutal reality to see Cara standing by her. She’d changed into a dark brown dress suitable for a long journey and had pulled her hair back from her face, but she held fists at her side and her eyes were veiled.

“Mother Confessor,” she said, looking Kahlan in the eye with demand, “explain to me why I have just done this for you.”

With a shaky inhale, Kahlan once more put her hand on Cara’s arm. There was so much to relay from Zedd’s earlier explanations, so much that didn’t make sense. A cruel fate now bound them together, both mothers and fugitives and persons around whom the universe seemed inexplicably to rotate.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Cara said under her breath, voice shaky for a moment. “I need to know everything.”

Kahlan did. And in the moment before she gathered the story together to tell, she felt brief faith that they could accomplish this. Determination would destroy impossibilities. Kahlan had to believe it.

Part 2

Though her mind wanted to doubt Zedd’s final words, most of all his urging that they see Shota, Kahlan refused to consider any other mission. And so awkwardly, the three of them set forth. Kahlan rode until she could ride no more, the wind driving the tears from her eyes. The ground fell away before her with every gallop, and she felt that just one stumble would be enough to drop her into an abyss. Zedd was dead. Richard was under Rahl’s control. Only two strangers, two untrained and inexperienced strangers, stood between her and complete solitude.

That first night, they set up a camp and Kahlan held herself together long enough to answer Leo’s question of “Who is Shota and why are we going to her?” By the time she’d finished explaining that they needed her to help them get the Sword of Truth, and then name a Seeker who could use it, the man was stunned into silence and Kahlan had almost distracted herself.

But then he asked, “Where’s Cara?”

Taking on responsibility so that she might forget everything else, Kahlan said, “She must have stepped away for a moment. I’ll make sure she’s safe.”

The moment she stepped into the dark forest she trembled again, heart still broken. Pushing on in spite of it, though, she finally found the young woman sitting on a log. She’d let her hair down, and it spilled around her shoulders—she’d looked strong in the daylight on her horse, but in the moonlight now, Kahlan realized how unimposing she was.

“Cara?” she asked softly.

She turned, the glare shining clear in her wet eyes. “Isn’t it clear that I want to be alone?”

“That’s not safe anymore,” Kahlan said, sitting next to her. She could see Cara’s hands clenched so tightly that it probably hurt.

“I left my children,” Cara said under her breath, refusing to look at Kahlan. “I can’t believe I failed them.”

“You kept them safe,” Kahlan said, even as her hand moved to her own stomach, where new life still grew. “While you are hunted—”

“I abandoned them,” Cara said bitterly. “Nothing that I do from now on will change that. I can only hope that maybe I can do something to convince myself that I was not an idiot. A coward, but not an idiot.”

Kahlan bowed her head for a second. “Cara, once I was holding my sister in my arms. Dying, I thought. And I left her there. Because the fate of the world was more important in my mind. But even though I was sure she was dead, we were reunited, and she did not begrudge me. Your children are safer with your sister, and you have some kind of destiny that affects us all, and they will not begrudge you that when this is all over. I promise.”

Cara gave her a look. “You can’t promise that.” And turning again into the night, as if she didn’t want Kahlan to see her face, she said more quietly, “They are only children, and I am all they have.”

“Are you afraid they will not want you when you return?” Kahlan asked.

Cara bowed her head. “Maybe I don’t want to talk about it. You have badgered me enough, I’ll return to camp.”

Before she could rise, Kahlan reached out and touched Cara’s knee. The lump in her throat was rising again, and it was with a wavering voice that she said with all her intuition, “You came out here to weep for them.”

“What can I do that will make you leave me alone?” Cara asked with a wide wave of her hand. “The more you speak, the more I realize that I shouldn’t be here. I don’t know why you didn’t just leave me to whatever Darken Rahl had planned. I would not know otherwise.”

“Because more than what Zedd told me, I see someone special when I look at you, Cara. You are strong even if you don’t want to believe it, and your love and responsibility are just more proof of that.”

“I panicked when I was fired upon,” Cara admitted.

Kahlan almost smiled a sad smile. “Even trained warriors do so on their first battle.”

“I was raised to plant crops and teach, not retrieve mythical weapons,” Cara said bluntly, raising a hand to wipe her eyes of tears not–quite–shed.

“Look,” Kahlan said, gripping Cara’s knee with one hand and losing a little of her self–control. “Maybe I’m the Mother Confessor, but I’m used to having the Seeker and a Wizard of the First Order at my side. I will never see one again, and as for the Seeker—Cara, I’m not prepared to live like this either. If the world is to be saved, we will have to put much aside.” Tears came unbidden to sting her eyes, and Kahlan turned and brushed them away, swallowing hard.

“I’ll do it,” Cara said quietly into the night.

“I trust you,” Kahlan answered. Silently, tears began to fall, and she didn’t return to camp until no more came.

* * * * *

Cara didn’t understand why Leo had come with them. He offered no reason, other than a clear reverence for the Mother Confessor and a strange caring for Cara herself. But Cara held herself in a tight ball of too–many–emotions, riding with her eyes straightforward and her mouth clenched.

The miles spread out behind them, and yet it could not go too fast for Cara. With each hour, she ran scenarios in her mind of penance to her children. She would not say, ‘I’m sorry, apparently my life was made deadly, and I had to leave to keep you safe’ because it would be cowardly. No, she wouldn’t say a thing, she would just take them into her arms and pay for this with all she had. This journey should go faster, so she might think of anything but that.

It was not quite fast enough. When Leo tried to offer Cara a lift, she snapped that she knew how to ride her own horse. Then after an awful second, they apologized simultaneously. Cara swallowed down the stress, and did not understand the look of nostalgia in Kahlan’s eyes when they began to ride again.

Finally, though, they reached the river in Agaden Reach. Cara had never fully believed in magic, nor accepted it, and seeing Shota for the first time unnerved her more than she wanted. Kahlan held herself on edge as they approached the regal woman in the white fur, but Cara withdrew, hand still on her horse’s neck.

“Kahlan Amnell, I should not be surprised,” the witch began with a humorless smile and a smooth clasping of her hands before her.

“Zedd has been slain,” Kahlan responded, tone icy hard.

Shota visibly flinched, and somehow it helped Cara. “Tell me everything,” the witch ordered in a pale tone, turning to walk towards her dwelling.

Before long it was all too real as they sat in this place of magic, and as Kahlan’s slow words painted a frightening picture. Almost, Cara felt as if the story said she did not belong in this body and this life. It rankled, and she made herself believe the opposite again, that they were forcing an unfamiliar identity on her. And yet…

“Zeddicus changed the past?” Shota said with anger that was clearly a cover. “By erasing that this woman was a Mord’Sith in another time.”

Cara jerked, as always, with that word. She remembered Dahlia again, and loss, and a twelve–year–old girl sobbing against her sister’s chest when a slightly–younger girl had gone missing and Cara’s heart had been broken for the first time. And she wished she could forget the only–days–old sight of Dahlia’s body as it lay on the ground, emotionless in crimson leather with death spread ugly across her older face.

Kahlan nodded to Shota, mouth in a firm line as she waved with her hand. “And he failed to mend his mistake, so now Darken Rahl and the Keeper both know this. She is perhaps more hunted than I or Zedd.”

Shota turned to Leo then, interrogation silent in her eyes.

“Zedd said that he was once the Seeker in the old world,” Kahlan said.

Cara and Leo both glanced up, Leo almost falling from his seat on the stool. “I didn’t know that,” he said, blinking. “That’s not why I came.”

“He came because I asked,” Kahlan said. “But that—that is why we’re here. All of us.”

Shota sat back on her stool, staring at them with clear eyes. Her mouth twitched. “I would not have believed it if I had foreseen this. You do realize how doomed you are.”

Kahlan said what Cara was thinking, “We can’t let doom come quietly, though.”

“You cannot indeed,” murmured Shota, her face falling as she stared at her lap.

* * * * *

Kahlan had to breathe deeply when Shota sent her sharp questions, all of it explained so fast that she hadn’t had time to think. And now, what to do…?

“I can’t just summon the Sword of Truth on my own,” Shota snapped. “That is magic beyond me. Unless one of you,” and she nodded to Cara and Leo, who were drawing closer to Kahlan the longer they stayed at the witch’s house, “has strong magic, there is only one spell left that might combat the Seeker and Orden alike. The Circle of Three.”

Kahlan frowned. “But how? Three generations—”

“It does not have to be bloodline, only the Creator’s magic,” Shota interrupted. “I can be grandmother to your mother, Mother Confessor, if only we have someone to fill in for a child to complete it. Then we may summon the Sword from Richard Rahl and name a new Seeker.”

Shota’s gaze shot to the two others, and Kahlan’s followed, but she bit her lip. They were far too unprepared, and time nagged.

“You, are your parents still alive?” Shota asked Leo. The man frowned, but nodded. “You have no children?” He shook his head. “There, Kahlan.”

Kahlan shook her head swiftly, entirely unsure. “It will not be as strong since he is a man,” she protested. “And if we fail once, we fail for all. Rahl will find out.”

Shota didn’t object, only cocked her head. Cara understood the hint, and burst in incredulously, “I am a mother of my own children!”

Her stomach a knot of insecurity, Kahlan had to agree. This wasn’t right.

“We must make it work,” Shota insisted with fiery eyes, turning from Kahlan to Cara. “If you can but channel yourself as a child again, the magic will work. Or are you too stupid to try?”

The fierce look that crossed Cara’s face reminded Kahlan why she trusted her so instinctively, even after only a short acquaintance. “Why would I want this to fail?”

“Good,” Shota said shortly. “Come, then, before all is failed.”

Kahlan didn’t pause to wish that she had Shota’s kind of strength, to detach from the depths of a situation and look at the larger picture. But while she put her hand comfortingly on Cara’s arm as they followed Shota out, she took a deep breath and just wished that this was right.

* * * * *

Cara paced until Shota bit out that she was going to create a trough in the floor. Leo sat, staring at the Sword of Truth in his hand as if he thought a blink would make it vanish the same way they’d made it vanish from the former Seeker. And Kahlan gazed on him with a bitter longing in her eyes. Cara curled her hands into fists, pulse racing.

“He is on the move,” Shota finally said, taking a deep breath as she lifted her head.

“Darken Rahl?” Kahlan asked, crossing the room in fast steps.

Cara and Leo followed swiftly. The air hung heavy around them in Shota’s riverside glade, bearing down with all the fate and magic entangled around their four bodies now.

Shota nodded, closing her eyes for a second. “He is moving the boxes of Orden to a safer place, keeping only facades in their place at the People’s Palace. Not knowing what kind of magic we could summon, he believes that the caravan is safe and that the magic of Orden will shield it as it did not shield the Sword of Truth. We have only the Creator to thank that he is wrong. He has sent no magicians, only Mord’Sith and the Seeker, even though he no longer has the Sword of Truth.”

“What do we do, then?” asked Cara, arms crossed over her chest.

“Leo must destroy the boxes,” Kahlan said slowly, and Leo tightened his jaw.

Cara found herself nodding. “The Mord’Sith,” she started to say, then paused to clear her throat of the choking stress. She blinked hard, remembering what she was doing this for. “They do not pay mind to those without magic. I can create a diversion they will not see through.”

“You will get killed,” Leo protested, and even Kahlan’s eyes widened.

Cara shook her head slowly, twisting her hair between her fingers as she looked down for a second. “I was in the resistance,” she said slowly, meeting their eyes once again. “I will know when to get out of the way, once you attack.”

“Are you sure?” Kahlan asked.

“I am sure that it is the best plan.” Cara nodded, adding in a low tone, “And the only one that will not make me feel that I am only here because of a rumor from a non–existent world.” When her eyes flitted back up to the others, though, there was no reserve in their faces.

“I cannot use magic against the Mord’Sith,” Shota said.

Kahlan nodded. “Leo and I can take care of them, I’m sure. You may not have been trained in swordsmanship, but the Sword’s magic has power of its own.”

“This is it, then,” Cara said. “If we break the power of Orden…”

Kahlan glanced to Shota, who sighed. “Darken Rahl will still be in power over his men because of the Rahl magic. And we must then focus on finding the Stone of Tears before the Keeper uses the rift to his advantage.”

Cara nodded slowly, ignoring the heavy feeling in her heart. “Then we don’t have time.”

Kahlan and Leo left to prepare the horses, but Shota grabbed Cara’s arm as she went to follow them. “You are sure you have no magic?” the witch asked her, with a close look.

Cara eyed her strangely. “None of my own, no.” Her small laugh was empty. “I was from a very ordinary village, a very ordinary woman.”

Shota’s eyes didn’t pull away from Cara’s, and she clasped her hand for so long that Cara began to freeze. “There is something in you I can feel,” she said quietly. “But maybe it is just your character.”

“Please, I need to go,” Cara said with as much firmness as she could manage. Swallowing, she went to focus on this deadly task they had to perform.

* * * * *

Kahlan crouched in the bushes with her knives drawn, the biting smell of steel and determination fresh in the air. Hair drawn back from her face, all that blocked her view of the road was some dappled green leaves, sunlit with sweet summer beauty. The warm road looked ready for an easy travel, such as the caravan trotting up the road from the left.

Glancing across the well–trodden road, Kahlan could just barely see Leo in place, a slight glitter of the Sword of Truth flashing out as he ducked down into position. And there, half behind a tree–trunk, Kahlan could see Cara’s lithe figure. This was the hour they were waiting for.

She guarded her heart in the last few minutes before the plan would go down to make sure that she would think of more than just Richard. That would be a bad idea in so many ways. What she couldn’t forget, though, was Leo’s face, attempting not to look frightened as he faced the prospect of his first sword battle. Sword of Truth or no, it would not be easy, especially not against Mord’Sith.

And Cara, this strange woman who seemed so soft but who brought up moments of iron and fire when the task required; Kahlan couldn’t set aside the woman’s face as she’d asked Kahlan, “If this fails, promise me you will return to Stowcroft and tell my family.” Kahlan’s answer then had been meaningless—it wouldn’t come to pass.

She watched the caravan draw near. Six Mord’Sith strode alongside a small covered cart, driven by two D’Harans and accompanied by three more on horseback. And all of them led by Richard, sitting upright in his saddle with the Rahl pride falsely displayed across his face. Kahlan’s knuckles whitened in a grip around her dagger handles, hating Darken Rahl for what he’d done.

Then, with a stumble and a choke, Cara darted out in front of them. Hair askew, and with a voice that sounded teary, she called for them to halt. Kahlan wanted to believe that it was a piece of Richard still in there that made him raise his hand.

“Please, I don’t know where else to go,” Cara cried out, wringing her hands. “The resistance is at work in my village, and they will get my family killed if something is not done.”

One of the Mord’Sith advanced as Richard sat on his horse looking conflicted. “Lord Rahl does not send his most trusted servants on minor errands,” she said with a sneer.

Cara visibly gulped down emotion, and Kahlan wondered how much of it was faked. “But please—” she started.

The Mord’Sith growled, angry at her weakness, and stepped to within a few steps of Cara as she drew her agiel. It was the opportune moment.

Then Cara flicked out a dagger and plunged it into the Mord’Sith’s chest, and did it again and again. Kahlan darted from the bushes just as she heard Leo’s cry. It was foolish of him to announce his presence, but with the Sword of Truth it shouldn’t matter. Throwing her first knife into the chest of the next Mord’Sith, Kahlan spun into the mix and had confessed another one before they moved to attack her. Leo had taken out the first two D’Haran guards, and Cara stood back, bloody dagger in hand, as a Mord’Sith approached with vengeance in her eyes.

Kahlan whirled, blocking two agiels with her dagger and her arm, ignoring the pain, and managed to touch a Mord’Sith long enough to confess her. The other became suddenly enraged, and that emotion was her weakness—Kahlan didn’t have enough time to confess or stab her, but she spun and elbowed her in the face. They both went crashing to the ground, and on the way Kahlan managed to stab her through the heart.

Behind her, Cara screamed in pain. Whirling around, Kahlan saw Leo finish off the last D’Haran and move towards Richard, just as the Mord’Sith began agieling Cara. The young woman had blocked the strike to her heart, but she’d been right, she was no fighting match. Gulping down a momentary fear, Kahlan threw her last dagger and hoped it would go true.

* * * * *

Cara’s heart had never beat so fast, staring up into the stone–eyed Mord’Sith as pain wracked her entire body. If this was what death felt like, she almost feared it. Stumbling to her knees, she was almost ready to collapse when the agiel to her arm faltered and the Mord’Sith’s eyes widened. The leather–clad figure crumpled on top of her, crushing Cara to the ground, and before Cara could catch her breath there was a trickle of blood on her chest.

There was no time to pause—Cara heard Kahlan’s cry of, “Leo, no!” and shoved the corpse off of her, not letting herself shiver.

Kahlan was running past to where Leo was matching Richard in a swordfight. Richard, the boxes of Orden giving him power to complete his orders, fought back with the ferocity of a wolverine, the swords clashing and flashing at lightning speed.

“Mother Confessor—” Leo started, catching sight of Kahlan as she frantically rose up.

“Leo!” Cara found herself crying, seeing the opening in his distracted stance.

Richard took it first. The sword went straight through the new Seeker’s heart, and Cara choked on her cry.

“Richard!” Kahlan called with a twisted and broken voice.

Whatever was left of him that still loved Kahlan proved his downfall. He turned, and Leo, crashing to the ground, took the last chance to drive the Sword of Truth into his killer’s abdomen.

Kahlan’s cry of grief split the air until even Cara felt shaken. Both men fell to the ground, dead almost before they hit the earth.

“No, no, Richard,” the Mother Confessor wept, at his side as she’d been at Zedd’s, hands holding Richard’s head as it flopped.

Cara felt frozen, staring as the physical burn of the agiel mingled with the confusing pain in her heart, shadowed by sympathy for Kahlan’s grief and regret for losing Leo who she’d come to like and dread at the realization that all was lost. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move in the covered cart. A D’Haran was scrambling out the back, a pack in his hand. “Mother Confessor!” Cara called, even though she knew Kahlan would not hear.

Still holding onto the weapon that was more than she had ever before used in her life, Cara ran after the soldier who shuffled away as if no one saw him. The mission—duty—it overwhelmed all her senses and gave her one terrifying purpose. Cara crashed into him, stabbing with random determination until he stopped twitching. There were tears in her eyes, but she couldn’t tell where they were from. Wiping them away, pushing the hair back from her face, she saw her hands trembling as she opened the pack the man had been carrying. Inside, though, were the joined boxes of Orden. Cara’s breath of relief covered all of her emotions.

There was no reason to assume they were safe, though. In fact, Cara’s paranoia could see a dozen ways in which they were not. Stuffing the boxes back in the bag, she went back to Kahlan.

The Mother Confessor had never looked so small, frantic sobs coming from her mouth with every breath, her tears mingling with the blood on Richard’s neck as she held his body close. Cara steeled herself, hands tight at her side as she walked up to her. “Mother Confessor,” she said. “Please, we’re not safe. We can’t lose—Mother Confessor, please.”

Kahlan didn’t move, still choking on her own tear–filled breaths. Somehow, even with the adrenaline running, Cara found a part of the mother she’d been deep down. She reached out and gripped Kahlan’s shoulder, forcibly pulling her to her feet. “We have the boxes, we need to go,” she said firmly, pulling the grief–stricken woman away from the scene. “The world isn’t over yet,” she breathed, only in that moment realizing that she believed it.

But her heart beat at a too fast pace, and the pain in her heart was rising to her throat. Before she fell apart, Cara had to get them away. Their prize in one hand, Kahlan guided with the other, she left the disastrous battlefield behind.

* * * * *

Kahlan hadn’t prepared for this. Cara set her down on a log far away from the ambush point and went to get Shota, and Kahlan just sat. She’d feared for Richard, not sure she could save him. Never had she contemplated this.

Time must have gone by. She stared at the blood on her hands, the last of Richard she would ever touch. Her heart had never felt so broken, and so her power had never felt so far away. If there was any surprise at all, it was that she had not gone into Con Dar. She should have. Maybe she’d expected this more than she’d consciously realized. But there was a need for the feel of the blood rage nonetheless.

Cara and Shota stood above her, words flying back and forth, but Kahlan didn’t look up.

“I thought I saw so much more in him.”

“Don’t you dare speak poorly of the dead!”

“The entire world is at stake, Cara Mason, I will speak the bitter truth!”

“What does that help when all our hope is dead?”

“We have the boxes. We have the Sword. We have the Mother Confessor. Open your mind to a wiser hope.”

“Do we have the Mother Confessor?”

“She has lost her husband, not her identity.”

“Do witch women not understand love, then?”

For a moment silence reigned, uncomfortable as the spreading flames of a wildfire. Kahlan still didn’t process the words, only managing to breathe because it happened without her conscious thought. Her eyes were blurred now, but the choking need to sob had faded at last, leaving the remnants of a dull pain. And above her where the two women stood, at last, the tension broke when Shota spoke again.

“Perhaps you speak truth, Cara Mason. You are not simply a mother fighting for her children, nor are you here only out of some automatic loyalty to the Mother Confessor.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There is a truth of spirit that drew you here, with a strength that you have not fully appreciated yet.”

“Do these platitudes help you?”

“Speaking with your heart… Yes, look at me all you want with those frustrated eyes, but you are hiding nothing.”

“Stop talking—this is not helping anything.”

“Only the world, Cara. The Mother Confessor is not our last hope to save the world; you are.”

Kahlan hadn’t realized she’d been listening until that moment when she whipped her head up, saw Cara with mouth–gaping incredulity on her face. Shota stood, arms crossed over her chest with a bright gleam in her eye.

“What?” Kahlan and Cara asked at the same time. Even if the word ‘hope’ could mean little to Kahlan, her mind hadn’t stopped working, and demanded to know what Shota meant by connecting it with this village woman.

“You are a true woman, Cara,” Shota said quietly, with a sad smile as Kahlan rose to stand by Cara. “True enough to bear the Sword with honor.”

“What?” Cara whispered, voice unable to rise above a whisper.

“You would name her as Seeker?” Kahlan asked, aghast, grief forgotten in shock. “A woman as Seeker.”

“There has been precedent,” Shota said with a bristle. She gestured between them, frustration now revealing the desperation in her alongside the determination. “The Power of Orden must be destroyed! And if doing so will destroy a part of the barrier, then the Stone of Tears must be found! For both those steps, a Seeker is required. Very few are born into generations with a suitable spirit—if you had been on another path, perhaps you would not have had it. But you do, and you are needed, and regardless of your belief in your skill I can see the power in you. Cara, you are the world’s last hope for a Seeker of Truth.”

Cara choked and turned away, but Kahlan just stared at Shota. “Has all this disaster and death driven you mad?” she asked, voice clear as if the shock had cleansed the overwhelming sorrow for a moment. Her duty called even now.

“Do you want the Keeper to win?” Shota snapped, stepping closer to Kahlan. “Do you want to meet Richard Cypher in the Underworld for all eternity and explain to him why you did not do all in your power to make his death worth something?”

The leftover pieces of Kahlan’s heart ground against each other, and her breath rasped with the fresh rush of emotion. Her eyes stung again, and she clenched her hands and found no words.

“I am not a Seeker!” Cara finally broke in, adamant even as her own eyes welled with conflicting emotion. “I have a son and a daughter—I’m all they have. The war is over and I can’t, I can’t do this. Please, just let me go home. I beg you, this will kill me. You can’t need me. Please.” The last word came out gasping, almost a cry.

“I cannot stop you from dooming the entire universe in a desire to save your family for a few miserable months,” Shota said with a cold shrug.

Kahlan stretched out her hand for Cara’s, gripping it so tightly that it might break, feeling the woman grasp back. The cruelty could not be lost on them, but neither could the truth. “She is not lying,” Kahlan whispered, hating her power in that moment.

“How can I leave them?” Cara whispered back, looking at her with full green eyes tormented.

Shota’s jaw was set. She thrust out the sword hilt towards Cara. “Either you take on the mantle of the Seeker, or the Keeper devours the land of the living. Your choice.”

When Cara finally closed her eyes and reached slowly, silently for the swordhilt, for the first time since the horror of the battlefield Kahlan felt sorrow for someone other than herself. Broken hearts would bow before duty to the world for the both of them.

Shota’s face softened, pity in her eyes for them. “Come, let us do this deed,” she said. “Time is still our enemy.”

Part 3

It was like chopping off a chicken’s head, breaking the boxes of Orden. That’s what she told herself. Cara hardly felt in her own body as she sent the Sword of Truth crashing into them and felt the magic barrel outwards in a flash that destroyed her vision for a few seconds before she saw the crumbled blackened shards. It was just like farm life, wasn’t it. The earth trembled, and she could almost feel a shift as if the cracking of some barrier before Shota came forward, satisfaction mingling with worry in her eyes.

“This is just the first step,” the older woman said, putting her hands on Cara’s around the hilt of the Sword as if she was a mother passing on a legacy to her child. Cara thought, still a little detached, that it was all just that ordinary. Shota’s eyes shone with sharp purpose as she continued, “All the Keeper’s might will now be focused on taking advantage of the magical damage, but before he can move far you will already be on your way to finding the Stone of Tears. And if nothing else, Zedd left behind some starting points. You are the Seeker, Cara—you alone, with Kahlan as your Confessor, can do this.”

Cara stared, almost blankly, before asking, “You’re staying behind?”

“Believe me, my skills are better off in the realm of seeking knowledge, not peril,” Shota said with a grave look. “But you—time bears down on the two of you, and you must make your move. Don’t forget that Darken Rahl will know of this as well.”

For a moment, Cara itched to put an iron halt to everything before it began. She could put the Sword down, run, trust that Shota could not force her to do this, and the Mother Confessor would not. But she could be right. Looking into Shota’s eyes was like the first step into a library, seeing how much knowledge is there and not knowing what exactly it is, but knowing that somewhere among the dusty pages will be an answer. Cara felt that in this case, the answer was deadly serious, perhaps even prophetic. She thought about asking Shota if there was a prophecy concerning her, but bit her tongue instead. She’d never put stock in prophecies—either you did something, or you didn’t, and the only thing to blame or praise was choice. And she didn’t want to know in any case. She couldn’t; her entire world was a fresh wound, throbbing, and each pulse of pain reminded her that it was self–inflicted.

Cara sheathed the Sword of Truth across her back just like any ordinary tool, ignoring the pattering of her heart as she walked away. Shota had found trousers and a long leather tunic for her, the latter buckling up the sides in a compact, protective way, fitting snugly with a comfortable weight to the flaps descending from the waist. The soft brown boots, lacing up past her knees, made her stride with longer steps, and the twist of her hair away from her face made her hold her head high. In her mind, though, she was behind a wall of stubborn denial and this was just a part of life, something she would adapt to before moving on with things as normal. Always, she had to adapt.

Kahlan Amnell, Mother Confessor, now Cara’s Confessor, sat by herself among the tree–shadows in her travel leathers, green fabric cowled around her neck and wrapping her armored curves in something more regal. Even softened by the natural light and garments, she seemed like a stone statue—spiritless. She hadn’t spoken since she’d witnessed Cara being named Seeker within the ring of fire, when the tingling ribbon of magic traveled from the Sword to Cara to take permanent dwelling in a flash of lightning that made her feel almost sick.

Now her stomach twisted in a devil’s knot as Cara grimaced and approached the other woman. Fear, reserve, guilt, all of it hit her hard. When she was a child, she’d been shy, caring for people but only showing it when they approached her. Loss, and the constant fear and protection of her parents in her formative years, had stripped some of it away, as she’d felt the need to cling to what she wanted if she was to keep it from being stolen. And her first pregnancy, followed by a quick marriage of stability, had expunged the universal caring. She only cared for a few now, and was cautious about the rest of the world. But she still wanted to do everything right—she wanted to make everyone right. Even this deadly important woman whom she did not know, and whom she felt conflicted about knowing any further.

Cara Mason felt like an impostor in these clothes with a sword swinging against her back with every step. Standing a few feet away, uncomfortable and deep–down a little terrified still, she knew she was supposed to tell Kahlan that they had a mission to attend to. As laughably too–epic as it was. But she couldn’t. She stood stricken.

Then Kahlan’s shoulders trembled with an exhale that was more than a sigh. Even with her back to Cara, Kahlan’s hands were clearly visible in her lap, clenching and unclenching with hopeless repetition. It was random enough to spark a wave of yearning for her children to sweep over Cara, making the emptiness in her arms something that she would give anything to have filled. She pushed forward, taking steps even as she steeled herself to stop short of embarrassing forwardness.

“Mother Confessor?” she asked in a low voice, dropping gently to one knee among the twigs and putting her hand to Kahlan’s knee as she sat.

The dark–haired woman breathed in quickly, and raised her hand to her nose as if to cover a sniffle. “I know,” she said, emotion ragged in her voice, “we have to go, I just—”

This close, Cara could see the tear streaks on her face, freckles all the more obvious in her pallor. The wall around Cara’s heart cracked at the sight of sorrow, and for a moment she let missing her children fall aside because Kahlan was just like them. Unthinking, she swallowed the lump in her throat and put a hand to Kahlan’s shoulder, stroking her grief–tensed muscles. “He’s gone,” she said.

With a half–choking breath, Kahlan turned instinctively into her arm, resting her face in the crook of Cara’s neck. They shouldn’t be this vulnerable so soon, but then again, neither should the world around them fail them so. Cara forgot that she was almost a stranger, and that touch was to be carefully handled in any case, and just wrapped her arms around Kahlan to hold her while she hung in the grip of grief so unadulterated that it might as well be childlike. Kahlan’s arm clung to her, wrapping around Cara for comfort until finally resting on the Sword still strapped to Cara’s back. She flinched at the touch, and then crumbled further into Cara’s arms.

For a minute Cara just shut her eyes and held Kahlan close. For a minute Kahlan rested in her arms as if there was nowhere else she could be.

Then, as Cara instinctively knew would happen, Kahlan pulled herself slowly away. Drawing herself up, even as her hand lingered on the Sword, she swallowed and turned steady eyes to Cara’s. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I will be fine.”

There was nothing to say, so Cara just nodded with pursed lips.

Kahlan glanced down for a second, and then back up. “You survived this; I’m sure that I can manage half as well,” she said as she pulled herself to her feet.

Cara rose, glancing up at her eyes. She didn’t bring up the fact that she’d only married her husband with little more than liking and a stubborn desire to not face parenthood alone. There had been love between them of course, as the years passed and they grew closer with their children and the shared resistance. But even though it had begun with heady attraction, the relationship had never shaken Cara’s foundations. Her grief at his death had been quietly borne as it slowly and steadily faded.

“I did not tell her,” she said finally, indicating Shota with a tip of her head, “but for all that I am the Seeker, I don’t know what the next step is.”

With a flicker, the aura of collectedness returned around Kahlan, enough that she smiled through lingering tears as she stood firm. “I know enough to get us to the first stop.”

“Good,” Cara said, even though as soon as the word came out she flinched at the lameness.

Kahlan just sighed, holding herself incrementally more upright with each second. “The horses and provisions are ready?”

Cara nodded. Kahlan nodded back, and without a further word began walking away.

Yet this time, Cara knew for sure that it was not an ordinary task. They were not just riding to another province on a social errand, they were riding out to save the world. She shivered, again feeling like an impostor in this position. But it had to be done. They had to do it. So she had to try not to regret it.

* * * * *

The broken bits of Kahlan’s heart seemed to rattle around her ribcage, echoing the dull emptiness there. Her mind still worked fully, and she knew exactly what needed to be done, and knew furthermore that nothing else but her mind was needed. But she ached. Spirits, how she ached.

If anything, though, Cara’s slight awkwardness towards her helped. It was distracting, and the other woman seemed to know it and not care, or at least not care more than she cared about her own self–doubt. Each time Cara threw a skeptical look, pressing her full lips tightly together, Kahlan had to wonder how much she was telling. She’d seemed so soft on that first day, and this emotional armor had to be more fragile than she wanted Kahlan to believe.

“Have you ever been this far away from home?” Kahlan tried breaking the ice again, as they set up a straightforward campsite a day’s ride from the Abbey of Ulrich.

Cara frowned. “No. Why would I? All my family was in Stowcroft.”

“I’m sorry,” Kahlan answered instinctively.

“There’s no need to talk about it,” Cara said, lips twisting as she loosened the Sword’s sheath from her back to sit down, brushing stray hair back from her face.

But despite her reticence to cause emotional pain, Kahlan couldn’t stop the words from leaving her mouth, with a mask over the grief she wouldn’t let herself indulge in any longer. “My family has always been on the move. After me and my sister escaped our father, we’ve been separated almost half our time. I thought I lost her two years ago, but after the failed attack on Valleria she returned to Aydindril with me to help me restore rule. She’s there now.”

Cara didn’t pull back, at least not in words. “I always lived near my sister.”

Kahlan didn’t continue after that, reading in Cara the desire to aid Kahlan with words warring with the desire to forget everything she was abandoning from her hometown. She let the night fall silently around them for a while, wrapping them in cool darkness. That Cara wanted to help her, even if it spoke more of Cara’s nature than anything particular to Kahlan, made Kahlan’s heart throb a little less painfully.

But when her eyes fell shut for a second the smell of the campfire reminded her of a journey, over a year ago now, with a wizard and a Seeker who were both now dead. She jerked away, but it was more like a tremor, and she swallowed twice to clear the tightness in her throat. Cara sat across from her and noticed the shiver, and added wood to the fire. Kahlan couldn’t bring herself to explain the true reason, though—it was as if grief had jumbled all her words together, and they came out muddled.

“This doesn’t feel real,” she said.

Cara jabbed a stick into the fire, making it flare up and making her eyes shine. “Don’t question that,” she said under her breath. “Not again.”

“I’m not,” Kahlan said, looking at her and wondering if Cara knew how close Kahlan felt to her, just through reading. Despite the defensive walls, Kahlan felt Cara’s essence like clear water in a desert, now lit with the warmth of magic. She’d been feeling that essence for days now, and it was familiar, but without that power surely Cara would not understand Kahlan at all. Had Kahlan been more in control of herself, she wouldn’t have jumped straight into the middle of things. “Zedd spoke before, he sounded so sure of reality. More sure than I think I’ve ever been of anything. And yet, he said that in that world I'd lost my sister. He wouldn’t say how, but…” Kahlan closed her eyes for a second.

Cara didn’t answer, and so Kahlan’s words kept spilling out, filling the emptiness. “I don’t see how he could just accept a world like that. I can’t even imagine it. And he said you traveled with us, were a close friend, and I can’t imagine that. But today—I almost wanted something that inexplicable.”

The other woman shifted, not saying anything for a moment.

Guilt struck Kahlan as she realized seconds too late what she’d said. “I know that the wish isn’t wise. If I give any thought to it, I see how terrible such a selfish change would be. So many lives different, not by their choice. And you—I’m sure you can’t even imagine a world where you had no children.”

But Cara looked up at her then, with a clarity in her expression that was both hurt and amused. “Yes, I can.” The two emotions twisted, and the hurt squashed the amusement down. She dropped her eyes, jaw tight, as she said, “My children are very dear to me, but I did not spend my childhood imagining the life I had. It just happened. Just like this has. Life is inexplicable, always, and you have to accept that, love it.”

Kahlan swallowed again. “I know,” she said softly. But she still wanted it to go as planned. She still wanted to feel control, or at the very least that it was all meant to be. Right now, full of turmoil, she doubted her own past self, and wondered if she’d just hoped that she and Richard were destined instead of actually believing it. Then she thrust it out of the way, swallowing the harsh lump in her throat. “Tomorrow you should start training, before we reach the Abbey,” she said aloud, and almost surprised herself with the auditory collectedness.

“Training?” Cara sounded equally caught off guard for once out of all their—granted, few—conversations.

“The Sword’s magic will only carry so far,” Kahlan said, though not quite looking up and letting the low flames warm her hands and face too much. “And even though you were a teacher, the skills you learned on your farm will…it will be the same kind of…” Her throat gave out again, freezing up on her as memories of her very first days with a Seeker threatened to strike, but she forced her eyes up.

Cara’s gaze held hers for a moment, then dropped as she said, “This will be a short mission if we hurry; I don’t want to waste time with training.”

Kahlan shook her head, clearing her throat and mind again. It was getting easier with practice. “Your life is more important than mine right now, with finding that compass. You should train if only to give yourself protection.”

Cara let out one long breath, making it plain that she wasn’t going to protest.

The next day, as the sun rolled across the sky, Kahlan flung all the fighting knowledge she had at Cara. Her muscles became fluid, and the slight adrenaline felt good, much better than the tension of riding and grief alike. Cara wasn’t as easily affected—the woman’s movements were stiff and stilted at first, as expected, though the harder Kahlan pushed, the more she thought that maybe it was Cara’s mind that was stopping her from getting in touch with the magic of the Sword.

It was backward, when compared with Kahlan’s own state. Without saying a word, Kahlan let her heart free to pull Cara’s into the open. Spinning faster than Cara could wield the Sword of Truth, Kahlan let her daggers flash, striking this way and that until Cara’s eyes widened in anticipation of failure, even as she blocked hard and sharply. Hoping for Cara’s frustration to give her the agility she didn’t think she had, Kahlan told herself that it was the only reason she was putting so much emotion into this. Nothing about maybe wondering why this woman had to be more important than Richard. Of course not.

Kahlan let loose, finally pressing in until she held her hand against Cara’s bare throat. She felt her eyes narrow in on Cara, but in the woman’s green eyes she saw a burn behind the desperation. “Again,” Kahlan said in a whisper, harsh with her breathlessness.

Cara fought back, and yet Kahlan only half–cared that she was better now that she had stopped overthinking. She realized that none of it was about Cara anymore when Cara knocked her daggers out of the way and elbowed Kahlan’s arm aside, bringing the swordhilt up to Kahlan’s cheek and only stopping just short of knocking her down.

“You’re going easy on me?” the blonde demanded, soft hurt looking dark in her eyes and breathing heavy in her chest.

Kahlan swallowed, and lowered her hands. “I’m sorry, I’m distracted,” she said, taking a deep breath and reaching down to sheathe her knives in her boots again, feeling a quiver. “You’re doing well, though.”

“Mother Confessor,” Cara called after Kahlan had turned away towards the open green field.

She paused, not liking the way the weaker emotions still tugged on her heart, even though she’d given reckless permission.

“I don’t want to be trained by someone I don’t know,” Cara said shortly.

Kahlan turned slowly again, looking back at her. The woman—the Seeker—stood with shoulders slightly hunched, as if denying herself the talent she’d shown in the training, above and beyond what the Sword imbued. But she was just a woman as well, full of feelings that she was trying to control for the sake of this mission. Like Kahlan. Her spirit, with its true concern for Kahlan, shouldn’t be denied. For the sake of many things, but also because Kahlan didn’t want to deny it.

Feeling her face soften a little, she said, “You can call me Kahlan.”

Cara didn’t say anything, just nodded. “I’m sure I can work just fine if you need a break,” she added after a second, with a glance up at Kahlan as she adjusted the Sword in her grasp. “Kahlan.”

Kahlan let her eyes glance towards their campsite in the field, then up at the not–yet–setting sun. She breathed in the warm evening scent, letting it cleanse her lungs a little. There was nowhere else more helpful than here. “No, I’m not leaving yet,” she said, drawing her knives again. “We’ll make this work for you, Cara. And then whatever happens tomorrow, you’ll be safer.”

“So you hope,” Cara said under her breath as Kahlan started the forms again, daggers spinning in a familiar rhythm.

But Kahlan hoped many things, and was sure of none of them.

* * * * *

“If the Abbey was burned down last year, what makes you think we can still find the amulet?” Cara asked as they slowed their horses to cross the stream.

“Cara, that’s our only chance at getting the Stone.” Before Cara could respond with the point that she knew no fact better, Kahlan continued, “And Richard ordered all the D’Haran death camps to be disbanded, and their goods stored to be distributed later. We’ll find it.”

Glancing quickly to Kahlan, Cara wondered if she realized that despite her harsh tone of stubbornness, she’d said Richard’s name without faltering. Cara saw a different woman than the one she’d met five days ago: Hands firm on the reins, eyes burning ahead as she bent over to ride faster now, harder but not brittle. There was great strength of her heart, to already be healing like this, even if scars would likely remain with her for life.

Cara kept her attention on Kahlan, since she was not only the most intriguing, but the most distracting. The Confessor was a mystery in many ways, and Cara held onto that idea to keep the gritty reality of herself from weighing down. Even if every night she crossed her arms tightly over her chest, as if she might hug tightly enough to feel her children again. She wanted and feared the distraction, and so in a way, she wanted and feared to watch Kahlan as this journey shaped her. And she didn’t think about how it was shaping herself.

They stopped at the gates of the town, checking for signs of Darken Rahl and his D’Harans or Mord’Sith. None seemed present, and this town was far from the People’s Palace. Kahlan decided to have them ride openly in, the Sword of Truth clearly visible hanging from Cara’s back.

For the first time in her life, Cara saw surprised faces and joyous faces and skeptical faces all at once. This was nothing like her schoolchildren’s parents. When Kahlan announced her as a Seeker and asked for the villagers’ aid in finding the amulet from Ulrich, the boy who offered to clean her horse was not looking for special grades in return. Cara just stared at the awe on his face for a minute, and then, embarrassed and peeved, wanted to tell him that his mother was probably more a hero than she ever would be.

“Do they have it?” she asked Kahlan, once she’d pulled away, brushing at her cheeks as if that would eliminate the flush.

The relief on the Confessor’s face was answer enough. When she opened the silver locket, and the ink spilled out onto her hand in a magic rune, Cara was a bit glad that it wasn’t her hand—she had enough responsibility.

“Seeker, is it true that Darken Rahl has no powers now?” asked a village woman as Cara mounted her horse to ride out with Kahlan.

Cara stared down at her, frozen. “I don’t know anything.”

“He still has his Rahl magic,” Kahlan said as she rode up next to Cara, taking the question. “But nothing beyond that you will still be able to fight against him, if he tries to gain control over this village again.”

With that, they spurred their way off away and towards the tomb that would give them the compass.

“If you speak so ill of yourself, you’ll believe it,” Kahlan said quietly a little later, without looking from where she was riding.

Cara didn’t tell Kahlan that, under the awkwardness, that was the point. A part of her feared that this role might grow into her skin until she forgot all the mistakes she’d made for the sake of the world.

“I don’t believe it,” Kahlan added then. “We were all right to seek you out.”

Cara looked up, caught her eyes for a second before pulling away. The remark shouldn’t have eased any of her guilt—but it did, a little. “I haven’t failed yet, but…”

“No buts,” Kahlan said, quick and firm.

Cara kept riding, her hair tossed to the wind behind her, the light mirror of Kahlan’s flying dark locks. It struck her that maybe Kahlan was recovering from her torment already, accepting her shattered world as fixable and leaving Cara alone mired in conflict of spirit. It should have been the other way around, she thought, though only for a second. She set her mouth in a straight line and vowed to press on. If she could just seize victory for this mission, she might repay the damages she’d caused her family.

And if anyone was going to be at her side, see her at her worst like this, torn between two loyalties—well, at least it was someone whose judgment she was growing to trust.

* * * * *

“This is insane,” Cara whispered, eyes wide as they looked at the eight guards surrounding the tomb of Pomorra.

Kahlan had a hand on her shoulder as they crouched in the bushes. “The Sword is designed to help you succeed against impossible odds. You’ve been training for over a week, and even against me, someone you know is not your enemy, you are getting proficient.”

Cara shook her head. “I—”

It was a low blow, but Kahlan knew the woman needed the push, and so she said, “It’s our duty to try.”

Cara kept her eyes on the guards and their crossbows, but her hand gripped around her knee, knuckles sharp in the moonlight. “Fine,” she said, voice scarcely wavering.

Kahlan put a hand to her back, not wishing her luck because she knew Cara would wrongly feel that she needed it. Perhaps it was emotionally driven, as everything she did these days seemed to be, but she trusted Cara, more than the woman would probably ever trust herself. Days of riding, sleeping, hunting, cooking, cleaning gear and clothes alike…Cara could clearly handle everything she thought she could, and probably half a dozen things she was unsure about. There was a competence in her born of a stubborn need not to fail. It was different for a Seeker, as far as Kahlan’s experience went, and so she cherished it as she managed her grief.

Taking in a deep breath, she cast one final glance to see if Cara was ready. The Sword of Truth was drawn, and so with a confident cry, Kahlan charged in, daggers flying. She kicked up the first crossbow aimed, ducking and spinning under the next to grab the soldier by the throat. Behind him, as he fell, she saw the curving silver arc of Cara’s strike, but Kahlan was already turning, reaching down to yank her dagger from a corpse before driving it through the heart of another one of Darken Rahl’s former minions.

With a grunting cry, Cara finished off the last soldier, and leaned forward on the sword for a moment.

“We are alive,” Kahlan pointed out.

“I didn’t think death would ever become like this,” Cara muttered, tugging the Sword loose and leaning down to clean it, almost gingerly.

But the mission called, and Kahlan took a deep breath as she stood before the tomb. Hand raised, she felt a rush of relief when the doors parted, and yet another step was accomplished. Another amulet–like device sat on a shelf, silver marked with ancient runes, and Kahlan reached in to take it. When Cara came cautiously up behind her, Kahlan turned, swallowing the lump in her throat. “This is what Zedd spoke of, the compass that will guide the Seeker to the Stone.”

Cara nodded shortly. “We’re not doomed yet.” Biting the inside of her lip, she accepted the compass in her hand. It opened, and a blue glow illuminated her face with a musical hum. “So I am the Seeker after all,” she said dryly.

“Of course you are,” Kahlan said. The more the days passed, the more successfully she avoided thinking about Richard with that word. She was the Mother Confessor—and in a strange way, her duty to the Seeker, no matter who, was helping to quietly heal her heart.

The two of them returned to the glade that would work as a camp site, leaving the battlefield behind. And thinking of that for a moment as they walked in the dark, Kahlan glanced at Cara. “What did you mean when you said that about death?”

Cara’s brow creased in confusion, and she moved in silence for a few paces more before saying, “I never thought I’d kill anyone. When I was a child, I even protected animals.”

Kahlan nodded. A part of her wished that her childhood had been so innocent.

“Then, when I was twelve…” Cara continued, not meeting Kahlan’s eyes, “my—Dahlia—she and I, we always played in the field except that day, when women in red leather came and took her away. I didn’t understand. My parents told me that what had happened to her was worse than death, and so I pictured her as dead. The next time the women came, my parents hid me in the cellar, and I heard the screams and even though I cried, I wanted to run out and save everything. Even if it meant killing the Mord’Sith. Obviously I learned better, but if it had not been for them, I might never have joined the resistance.”

Kahlan, who had shivered for a moment on thinking about the Mord’Sith and picturing Denna, looked at Cara again. “You killed in the resistance?”

Cara turned to her in surprise, eyes wide. “Oh no. But if they’d gone after my family—I think I might have.” She sighed, almost frustrated.

“Ah.” Kahlan didn’t say anything for a few more seconds.

“I just never thought it’d be like this,” Cara said just under her breath, rolling out her bedroll on the forest floor as they stopped.

Kahlan put a hand on her shoulder as she passed by, murmuring, “Neither did I.” Death should never be anyone’s companion, looking over their shoulder. She could only hope that enough fighting, enough questing, would drive it back.

In the night, with the moonbeams dancing through the trees overhead, Kahlan curled onto her side and saw Cara doing the same, both of them with their backs facing away from each other. Losing everything else, being left with only their shared mission, it was making the world feel claustrophobic around them.

Kahlan knew that somewhere out there, Dennee would be worried sick for her, Darken Rahl was on the prowl, and the Keeper was starting to wage war. Cara’s children and her sister probably feared that she was dead, and if her parents were still living, they might as well, not connecting the news of the new Seeker with their daughter. But Kahlan and Cara, they’d left that behind, and for the same reasons they had looked to each other for distraction. They’d let the world shrink to include only them and their mission, and it was working.

Part 4

Cara could point out the spot when Kahlan stopped being a mystery to her—it was the moment when she was bent over, Cara holding her hair back, as she lost her breakfast all over the path. It was a laughably perfect scenario for her life now, all discomfort and awkwardness and yet truth.

“Creator help me,” Kahlan murmured, as Cara handed her a rag to wipe her mouth.

“No, only time,” Cara corrected with dry experience. She glanced at Kahlan’s belly. “How long?”

“A month now,” Kahlan answered. When Cara made a small noise and frowned, it made her ask, “Why? How much more of this—?”

Cara shook her head. “No, you’ll be fine, Kahlan. I just…never mind, let’s move.”

Kahlan’s hand strayed to hers, tugging her back for a second. “What is it?”

She was trying not to think of it—she was trying not to face it. For the past few days she’d almost succeeded in forgetting. There was not a bone left in her body that was as easy with people as her child–self had been, yet traveling with Kahlan and getting to know her had been almost an easy distraction. But now, Cara looked up at Kahlan as she took a slightly–shaky breath. “It’s difficult, that’s all.”

With a nod, though, Kahlan said, “This child is all I have left of the old world, but yours are all you left behind.”

“Why must you say things like that?” Cara snapped bitterly, adjusting her leather and turning to walk away. Pride was such an idiotic thing to hold onto, but she had found some comfort in being “the Seeker” to Kahlan, and not a vulnerable mother to draw pity and make Cara feel helpless.

“Because you don’t, and the truth is important, Cara,” Kahlan said, again reaching out to grab Cara’s hand. “You are the Seeker of Truth, you have to be honest.”

Cara didn’t look back, but nor did she wrench her hand from Kahlan’s. Finally, spinning slowly around, she said flatly, “Honesty hurts.”

Kahlan didn’t have to say anything then, not with the way that Cara saw herself reflected back in those blue eyes. Reality was cruel again. Her exhale came out hitched as pictures she’d denied herself came before her eyes, unwanted but inevitable. Sam tickling Sophia under the covers, Sophia sitting on his head to make him stop, both of them giggling and squealing before she’d called them out of bed and given playful swats to get them dressing faster. “I don’t belong here,” she said, voice wavering even as she tried to drown it with force. “It doesn’t matter how much I learn, I belong back home, with them.”

“And I should be back in Aydindril, in bed on a morning when I feel like this.”

Cara looked up and grimaced. She and Kahlan were just two humans standing on a dusty road, sword and daggers not shined, clothes not perfectly pressed, moving ever further towards an epic war of spirits. “Is there no way to kill the Keeper of the Underworld for forcing us into this?”

She was only half surprised when Kahlan squeezed her hand, even as she shook her head sadly. “When this is all done, I expect you to bring your children to Aydindril and see my daughter born.”

Cara stared up at her. When it was all done. Somehow, when she hoped for a quick ending herself, it seemed more realistic. The hope in Kahlan’s eyes, though, made Cara feel like breaking down and giving up. She couldn’t—it wasn’t her way—but the feeling wore on her.

“I’d really rather just go on, right now,” she said with a glance up at Kahlan, hoping the honesty practice was over.

Again, Kahlan squeezed her hand. It made up for everything she said, Cara was realizing. She wondered what it did for Kahlan, that she repeated the action so often. Cara no longer caught her weeping, or even looking sadly at the Sword or off into the distance, and it seemed like every word of Kahlan’s was designed to focus attention—hers and Cara’s alike—on everything but herself. Perhaps even that almost over–wrought hope that she expressed. And yet it was still genuine; that much, Cara could tell. The thought crossed her mind that a Confessor’s life must be perverse indeed if she sought friendship only when the world was about to be destroyed.

* * * * *

Rumors began circling the Midlands of Darken Rahl and the way he was letting his strength brew and condense, forming an army that was too far off to see and too close to not fear. By now, too, the rumors about Cara had circled around and back again, and bore whispered hints of her deadly magic above and beyond the Sword. Cara’s hands clenched whenever she heard, but she and Kahlan alike had much more to be concerned with than irritating falsehoods.

Darken Rahl wasn’t going after them, yet, because they weren’t affecting his power structure. They weren’t affecting any power structure at all. In a world where war seemed likely, Kahlan and Cara were slipping towards a magic that would only make sure the world lasted long enough to have a war. As the rumors swelled, they stopped addressing them and began trying to avoid them. Kahlan tied up her hair and wore a green hood when they stopped in towns now, pushing Cara forward to order a room with a frown. She was starting to intimidate tavern–keepers, Kahlan noticed, and it wasn’t just because she mastered a mother’s interrogatory stare.

“What do they think of us?” Cara grumbled later, settling her pack down on one side of the large rickety bed.

“That we are clearly not the Seeker and the Mother Confessor,” Kahlan answered, pulling the pin from her hair and teasing the up–do loose with a sigh. Then, retroactively hearing a certain tone in Cara’s voice, she turned. “She doesn’t think I’m your courtesan, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Cara’s lips curled as she took off her cloak and the Sword, leaning back on the bed. “Given that I have no one who would care, that was hardly a concern. Less so, given my clearly incompatible mood.”

Kahlan blinked, and almost smiled. Cara brooded like no one Kahlan had ever met, that was for sure, but though she was most certainly aware of that, Kahlan doubted that she knew how bluntly open her thoughts were when she wasn’t self–flagellating over them. Of course, Kahlan could have guessed with other means, but it was more refreshing that Cara didn’t even try to hide. Yet Kahlan wasn’t sure why she spoke next, “Having played a courtesan before, I doubt they would look at your face long enough to read a mood.”

Cara stared at her, cocking her head as if trying to understand the words. “You’re not the Mother Confessor I heard stories about,” she finally declared, eyebrows raised as she leaned down to unlace her boots.

Looking away to stare at the opposite wall, Kahlan knew herself to be an even more different woman now. Her heart beat faintly, and each crack in it was tied to a thousand memories she didn’t want to touch, but they were healing and only hurt when she thought of them. It was not the way true love worked, and when she looked back on the recent past, she sighed and thought that maybe she was right when she’d first told Richard that he believed in a fantasy. That realization should have had her in deep grief, but instead it felt empty, and there was too much else in her life to hold her attention.

“Kahlan?”

She glanced back. Cara’s hair now fell around her shoulders in soft gold curls, framing a worried frown.

“Don’t pay me mind, Cara,” Kahlan said, drawing her legs up onto the bed and leaning back into the headboard. She rested her hands in her lap, once again finding her emotional state too simple. “I have my troubles, and you do not need them.”

Cara didn’t shift or drop her gaze, and her fingers twitched, something that in Cara could mean so many things.

“I’m fine,” Kahlan said. Whatever Cara didn’t ask out loud, that answer usually covered the options.

“That’s a lie,” Cara retorted, squaring her shoulders and her jaw towards Kahlan.

Kahlan pursed her lips, but had only one response. “Yes. But it is for your good.”

“Just because you can read me doesn’t mean you can judge me,” Cara said. “I’m not here so you can simply tell me what to do, show me where to go. I’m—” She bit back, twisting her head slowly away, as if to hide her eyes.

They both sat facing the far wall instead of each other, but Kahlan shifted a little closer to Cara. For the sake of them both, as well as their mission, she felt like she had to keep them together—not just companions, but a team. Some days it seemed inevitable, but sometimes Kahlan worried that she needed to grasp onto it lest Cara just float away. Now she was sitting almost close enough to feel Cara’s warmth, and appreciated that the other woman’s body was relaxed. “I know,” she said, answering the objection. “But I just…”

“Stop worrying,” Cara ordered her, sounding like an irritated mother. “I’m not as easily broken as you think.”

Making a small hum, Kahlan did smile at that. It would be so easy for them both to be broken, pitiful, torn by the ravages of love so that they wept every night. Instead, they pretended nothing bothered them, and instead berated the other for denial.

“I was looking at a map,” Cara said suddenly. “We’ll have to leave the horses behind soon.”

Kahlan hummed her answer.

“You don’t want to be overexerting yourself then.” Cara nodded towards Kahlan’s abdomen. “Believe me.”

“Oh,” Kahlan said. Her hand went as always to cradle the life that she could still not feel within her other than by magic. “But—” She looked to Cara, and frowned at the scheming look in the woman’s eyes, the wheels turning visibly in her head. “Cara, you are not considering telling me to stay behind then.”

“No,” Cara answered, “I’m considering what means I would have to use to force you to do so. It will not be a joke, Kahlan, your condition.”

Kahlan shook her head. “I’m not using you mindlessly as a tool—I couldn’t bear it if you had to go on your own. Maybe you would succeed, but there’s no need to do so alone when you have a friend.”

“A friend with child.” Cara’s chuckle was more like a snort.

Kahlan pursed her lips to hold back a small smile. “Cara…”

The woman glanced at her, eyes clear. “You would not survive if you lost that child, Kahlan. And I’m not—ready for that.” She withdrew her gaze, letting the unspoken words remain in implication.

Swallowing, Kahlan answered, “Then you know exactly why I won’t ever make you go on your own either.” Gently, she reached over and touched Cara’s hand, not as a Confessor to a Seeker, but as Kahlan to Cara.

Silently and without looking again at Kahlan, Cara gave her fingers a sharp squeeze.

So Kahlan was not surprised to stir awake in the middle of the night and find that Cara had moved to sleeping behind her, arm snugly wrapped around Kahlan’s middle, both protective and clinging. Closing her eyes, Kahlan could have pictured what she most desired and accepted Cara’s presence as a substitute, but she didn’t know anymore what that was. All her planning had been torn away, and what she had, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with.

When Cara murmured her name in the night, Kahlan realized also that the closeness was not just a mothering instinct. Somehow, quietly, Cara had lain her worry for her children to the side so that she could find a devotion to Kahlan. And with that realization, Kahlan also knew that the peace she felt with that devotion was more than just feeling safe with a true Seeker.

* * * * *

A scream tore through the night, and Cara cursed herself for taking two seconds of stunned panic to remember to roll over and reach for the Sword. She didn’t realize that she’d been sleeping wrapped loosely around Kahlan until she felt cold, hopping out of bed and feeling a draft around her. She shivered for more than one reason.

Kahlan had her daggers glittering in hand already, eyes sharp. “That scream came from just outside.”

“Not Darken Rahl?” Cara slid the Sword of Truth from its sheath, feeling the comfortable power pulse through her.

The Mother Confessor shook her head. “He wouldn’t have his soldiers tip their hand like this, at night, if their goal was to get us and the Sword.”

A bloodcurdling scream sounded closer, cut off suddenly at the end. Cara gripped the swordhilt and went for the door, barely reaching it before Kahlan. Slipping silently down the stairs, Cara’s heartbeat pounded loudly in her ears, but at least it wasn’t terrified.

“Take the left,” whispered Kahlan when they got to the door of the inn.

Blade held high, Cara held herself at the door. She could hear nothing outside, and the filtered moonlight through the cloud–cover made the low–lying fog look ominous. The town looked like death, and Cara didn’t know why she shivered at that word so much.

Then, just as Kahlan was turning, there was a scream and a kick and the inn door crashed inwards. Two persons in the dark, limbs flailing and teeth gnashing, attacked at too close a range for Cara to finish hers off in one strike. She stumbled backwards, feeling the rush of a blade nicking past her throat, then jammed the hilt of the sword into the wildman’s face, knocking him off balance enough to slice him in two.

The other one fell to the floor first, choking from Kahlan’s slash to the throat. Cara still wasn’t used to the way corpses looked at her as they died, making it so she had to watch the spirit fade away. She could never regret self–defense, but it hadn’t been a chore once to become a mother and value life above death, and each face of death still made her flinch. Only afterwards, but it was a flinch nonetheless.

Kahlan was kneeling to look at the corpse in the faint moonlight that spilled in from the door. “Zedd said there would be banelings,” she murmured.

“Banelings?” Cara asked.

“The Keeper can send souls back to their dead bodies, and as long as they keep killing for him, they’ll stay alive.” Kahlan stood up and walked across the inn. “We need to burn the bodies.”

Another scream came from the outside, though, and someone rang the town alarm.

Kahlan choked in horror. “There’s only two of us. The banelings are killing the rest of the town to make sure they keep their lives!” She drew the knife she’d sheathed.

“No, Kahlan!” Cara protested, stepping across and grabbing her shoulder. Despite the situation, and the weight of weariness behind her eyes, she knew one thing for sure: “We can’t stay.”

“These people can’t fight for themselves,” Kahlan answered, staring incredulously at her.

“Do you stop on a journey to save the world to focus on just one town?” Cara demanded.

Kahlan tensed, but didn’t pull away even as she said, “Yes. It is the job of the Seeker, of the Mother Confessor, to protect the Midlands.”

“By finding the Stone, you told me,” Cara said sharply, shaking her shoulder. “Kahlan, if the Keeper is intelligent, he will send all that he has against us. The longer we stay, the more likely we are to die, or at the least confirm our position for their trackers. We need to run—run fast.”

Screams began to fill the town outside.

Kahlan sucked in a breath, eyes darting side to side as she thought.

“We can’t stay and die, Kahlan,” Cara said. She was only fighting to save the whole world; she couldn’t bear the thought of choosing a few people over everyone else. Including her own children, and Kahlan’s unborn child, if they fell. It was the right kind of selfishness, she told herself.

“Then quick, we need to get our things and the horses,” Kahlan finally said in a wrenching tone.

A wailing cry rose and died just outside the door, and then they were moving fast, a little scared and—as Cara ran out the back and saw a woman lying in a pool of blood—a little horrified at what had to be done. Cara told herself again that this was about more than individuals, but her fingernails dug into her palm with the force of her clenched hand.

Climbing into the saddle, galloping into the night, Cara wondered if the dead woman had been a mother. And for not the first nor the last time, she hated that she was supposed to deal out justice, and she hated that Shota had ever seen anything in her.

* * * * *

Kahlan refused to stay at the next town, sending Cara in secretly for provisions, and making a camp with her outside the city borders. Banelings attacked them more than once, and eventually the scent of dead burning flesh stopped making her stomach churn. She looked out at the horizon and wondered if it would be worth it in the end. Whether it was or not, all she wanted to do now was throw herself in between the people and this new danger.

Cara would stand by her, sometimes not saying anything, sometimes telling her quietly that they had to go. Kahlan didn’t know how to appreciate that kind of support, the way Cara was always just there even if she dared not come closer—except at night, when for the first time in weeks Kahlan thought of Richard again, and thought of the town left ravaged by banelings with only a few survivors, who would have given anything for the Mother Confessor or the Seeker’s counsel. Knowing that without Cara, she wouldn’t have heard the argument for the greater good, Kahlan rolled over on her blanket and leaned up against her companion. With a sleepy murmur, Cara settled closer, hand stroking Kahlan’s hair before falling around her waist.

The last time it had happened, Cara had stopped Kahlan’s explanation in the morning with a shrug of ‘It was a cold night’, but this morning she just nodded to Kahlan as they rolled up the blankets. Refusing to define the closeness that had grown between them made Kahlan’s heart flutter, unsure and feeling that there was a danger of misunderstanding, and yet liking how simple it was to just live at each other’s sides.

“Sometimes I hope I’ll wake up and this is all a dream,” Cara said one morning as they ate leftover rabbit from the night before. “But I’m not sure what I would be waking up to anymore. I wonder if your old wizard was right, that I was always supposed to do something.”

Kahlan smiled sadly to herself, and nodded. It might as well be precedent for this. Maybe the only explanation needed for how they worked so quickly together.

Cara had a guilty look on her face, though.

“This isn’t a disaster,” Kahlan assured her. “You’re needed. You don’t need to feel guilty for that.”

“I don’t,” Cara muttered.

Kahlan almost advised her that she should also not feel guilty about not missing her loved ones every moment of the day—but she held back. She liked Cara too much to give that kind of piercing advice. Instead, she rubbed Cara’s shoulder, and that night she curled up next to her before they went to sleep, and let themselves both find comfort in the proximity.

But after the third town they saw plagued by banelings, and moved on from for the sake of the greater good, Cara always left Kahlan’s side before she woke. Kahlan would jerk awake, alone and slightly chilled, and see Cara away on her own. Sword in hand, she did the same ten forms that Kahlan had taught her, over and over with more force and speed each time. Her style was blunt, focused, no sweeping curve, and with a strangling grip on the hilt.

It could be improved, but this time as Kahlan watched, she didn’t think of that. Over two months since their journey began, and Kahlan had had to loosen the laces of her dress and corset on both top and bottom. The changes in her body, the uncomfortable rushes of hormones as well as the growing contours, made her somehow more aware of Cara. The woman had given birth to two children, but her body was hard. Each time she spun with the sword, the leather flaps of her travel coat clung to her strong legs. Each breath she inhaled and exhaled pressed the fitted torso of the garment against her breasts and narrow waist. Whenever they’d bathed at the same time, Kahlan had noticed multiple small scars on Cara’s body, and that with the sharply–defined muscles beneath each curve told of a history that encompassed far more than a schoolteacher. And this journey was turning her into a warrior.

Yet when Kahlan rose and retrieved her daggers to join Cara and give her an opponent to work with, she saw the same dark emotions swirling in Cara’s eyes as they sparred. There was no self–assurance of skill and authority. Instead, the same doubt, the same outward–facing worry, the same adamant need to get it right. And the same frustration when she slipped and Kahlan took the opening to bring a dagger to her neck. Cara paused a second to close her eyes and grit her teeth in frustration, then slipped the weapon aside before Kahlan could notice, hooking her foot behind Kahlan’s and lowering her to the ground with a quick but gentle throw.

Kahlan made an oof sound, but Cara had been cautious as always, and she offered an arm to pull Kahlan back up to her feet. “You’re doing better,” Kahlan told her, even though unable to keep a protective hand from cradling her stomach.

“Than what, an infant?” Lips in a tight line, Cara threw her head sharply to the side to knock the loose hair from her face.

Kahlan didn’t know why hearing that tone pained her. Reaching out, she ran her hand down Cara’s forearm, wrapping her hand around Cara’s as it held the sword. “Cara.” Conflicted green eyes rose to meet Kahlan’s, and suddenly Kahlan wished they’d shared more words that she could draw on, so she could know if she could embrace Cara and—well, it did not matter, Kahlan though that there were probably only three living people who Cara would accept that level of comfort from, all of them with the last name of Mason. So instead, Kahlan hid the wish, smiled and squeezed Cara’s hand. “I don’t like it when you talk like that.”

Cara’s gaze narrowed a moment, even though her hand relaxed beneath Kahlan’s. “Does it matter how I talk, as long as I get it done?” she challenged.

“If I was simply your mentor, no, it probably wouldn’t,” Kahlan said quickly.

For a second, Cara’s eyes seemed caught by Kahlan’s, and something made Kahlan want to hood her own as if it would hurt to reveal too much. She didn’t understand it, nor the heavy feeling in her belly. But Cara broke away first, sliding her hair behind one ear with a ducking of her chin.

Kahlan swallowed and told herself that she’d focused too much on the mission, and perhaps forgot to deal with all of the loss she’d suffered. Grief had never felt quite as unsure as this, though. She managed a light smile and just said, “Everything is worse on an empty stomach.”

“I don’t need breakfast to judge my own skills,” Cara argued under her breath as they walked back.

Following her instincts without quite meaning to, Kahlan reached out and put her arm around Cara’s waist. For a second the touch conveyed exactly everything that Kahlan couldn’t name. Then, though Cara hadn’t flinched, she pulled back and thought about a meal and the day ahead and the fact that she shouldn’t ever forget what was at stake.

* * * * *

The compass pointed to a path that wound thinly up the cliff, just enough so that their horses couldn’t ride side by side. There was no breeze, though, and so Cara kept talking. Her heart always nagged at her to keep its true secrets hidden, to not bother the Mother Confessor just because they’d been stuck together for this long and she seemed to like her. But silence wasn’t good for either of them, and so she talked semi–meaningful talk.

“What are we going to do with the Stone once we get it?” Cara had queried.

Kahlan paused on the path. “Are there any markings on the compass, other than the runes that explain its purpose?”

Cara tipped her head and tossed the device to Kahlan. “Have a look.” She glanced down at the river valley to her right and grimaced, guiding her horse as close to the hill on the other side of the path as possible.

After a moment Kahlan sighed. “I don’t know,” her answer came back, and Cara saw her start riding forward again, absently slipping the compass into her saddlebag.

But Cara knew that tone, and pressed on as they rode forward. “Let’s just say it’s obvious once we have it, what do we do after that? Sealing the rift won’t solve all the problems of D’Hara and the Midlands. It won’t stop Darken Rahl.”

“I know that,” Kahlan answered darkly, pulling up her horse and making Cara do the same.

“What is it?” Cara asked, hopping off and casting a brief glance down the cliff side, and the river far enough below it, before moving nearer to the hill for safety.

“A stranglevine blocks the path,” Kahlan said with a frown. “I will need the Sword to cut through it.”

Cara slipped the weapon from its sheath and walked up to where Kahlan stood by her horse to hand it to her. She looked over her shoulder, seeing the dull–olive colored vine as it shimmied back and forth ominously. The spiky leaves didn’t look inviting, nor did the buds on the ends of some of the thinner ropy strands. It reminded Cara of snakevine, and, heart–twistingly as always, of her children—of Sam’s injury when he was three years old, and how sick she’d felt until he was well. Her husband had destroyed that vine before she got to it, much to her frustration, but she’d burnt its corpse with dark revenge.

Kahlan swung the sword down, and it sliced smoothly through the first tangle of the vine. The plant recoiled, but the Sword came back for another quick bite. Cara could have sworn that the vine hissed, and a piece of it went flying. It landed on the back of Kahlan’s horse, and the animal bucked and whinnied as the plant dug in with its death throes.

“Hey, hey,” Cara said, stepping in with a worried brow. But when she touched the horse’s flank, he snapped in terror, and suddenly she lost all breath in her air as she caught a sharp hoof to the chest. Her feet stumbled backwards over the uneven edge of the path and then everything slowed down for an awful second as, air gone from her lungs, the solid ground vanished beneath her feet as she was kicked off the path.

She was falling, falling, the midday sun shining in her eyes as the air and cliffside rushing past her, and she still couldn’t draw a breath as she heard Kahlan’s panicked cry of her name. But only a second more, and Cara hit the river below. Her head snapped under the waves and she lost consciousness.

Time didn’t pass in the darkness, and when Cara woke again, she was not in the Underworld but achingly in reality. She coughed, water in her throat and chest hurting, and realized that she was lying mostly on her stomach, her legs still in the river but the rest of her flopped on the riverbank. Clumsily, just tossed aside by the current that roared behind her. Cara coughed again, most of the pain feeling like bruising. She felt something warm and sticky on her temple and gingerly brought one arm up to her face. Blood—of course it was blood—but thankfully not too much.

She didn’t bother to move, despite the sun shining down the river valley and straight into her eyes, even though she lay flat on the ground. It had been at least six hours since she’d fallen, she guessed from the height of the sun. With that, her heart sunk, and she closed her eyes and let the rays beat against her lids. She’d failed. She’d failed Kahlan, she’d failed the world. A horse had kicked her off a cliff, and that was that.

It surprised her to find herself even alive. From that fall, she should have had much worse than aches and bruises, not to mention how she should have drowned. She hadn’t, but there wasn’t much pleasure in that. Kahlan had in all likelihood ridden back down the cliff, looked for her body just in case—but Cara could see from the landscape that she was lying many miles down the river. Kahlan, in the most bitter irony, wouldn’t have needed to look more than that. She had the compass, she had the Sword of Truth. Most of all, she had a time–sensitive mission.

Cara lay soaked and battered on a riverbank, and realized that there was not one person alive who had reason to assume she was not dead. And even if she managed to last the night without being attacked by wild creatures or plants, even if she managed to avoid banelings, she would have to survive a trip across the Midlands without a weapon just to make it back home. So she might as well be dead.

Closing her eyes, she clenched her hand in a fist and struck the mud beneath her. She’d never said goodbye to her children—she’d just left. Her throat tangled up with emotion as she missed them. And she missed Kahlan. Now that she didn’t have her at her side, everything seemed ten times as heavy, and she knew it wasn’t just the head wound. But she likely deserved this for failing them all.

Then suddenly she heard the sound of hoofbeats, and before she could get up, she heard footsteps and a voice that made her heart leap from its sunken place in her chest—”Cara? Cara!”

The pain didn’t seem like anything for that brief moment as Cara had to catch her breath. Kahlan was at her side in a second, rolling her face–upwards with trembling fingers. “Cara?” she asked, voice wavering, hands gently cradling Cara’s shoulders.

All Cara could do was cough again, a little water still rattling in her throat, and she grimaced as her chest hurt. The thought of moving didn’t cross her mind when she looked up into that exquisite face, strength and delicacy in a hypnotic combination.

“Thank the spirits you’re alive,” Kahlan whispered. She found Cara’s cold wet hand and gripped it tightly, leaning down to press her forehead against Cara’s.

The sharpness in Cara’s eyes faded at the now–familiar touch, and a rush of relief swept through her. Maybe she didn’t deserve it, but the concern in Kahlan’s voice and the tight grip on her hand were indescribably just what could push all her guilt and worries aside. Too grateful, she focused on breathing and the warmth of Kahlan’s skin on hers.

Then Kahlan drew back with a quick intake of breath, murmuring, “You’re freezing, and hurt.”

“I’m fine,” Cara said automatically, voice a little raspy. In an attempt to lessen the discomfort, she tried to push up.

Kahlan’s arms were around her then, helping her stand. “I thought you must be dead,” she said, her hand at Cara’s head to push the wet hair aside, and then bit her lip at what she saw.

Cara winced as Kahlan’s fingers brushed against the wound on her temple, but meeting Kahlan’s eyes, even knowing just how glad she was to see her, there was a piece missing. The concern in Kahlan’s eyes made her say before she could think better, “Why didn’t you leave?”

Kahlan paused, one hand around Cara’s waist in case she fell, the other brushing fingertips through Cara’s hair as if to make sure she was really there. Her eyes darkened. “What?”

Cara swallowed, grimacing and glancing down for a second. “If I had died you might never have found me, and it would have been a waste of time. A new Seeker had to be named—there was no time.”

“Cara…” Kahlan said quickly, and Cara looked back up in time to see Kahlan swallow down something. Just for a second, though, and then Kahlan held onto her. “I would never just be able to move on like that,” the Mother Confessor said with a shaky voice as she embraced her closely.

Even though she had enough strength to stand on her own, Cara felt the need to cling to Kahlan for a second as her eyes blurred with stinging tears again. Her breathing hurt, not just with the pain of the kick, but with the final crumbling of the shell that she’d placed around herself. She relied on Kahlan—and could admit in a cracked whisper, now, “I’m glad.”

Kahlan squeezed her back for a few seconds more. “I should have said it, then. I thought you knew.” She pulled back a little, a teardrop shining on her cheek but a smile gracing her face. Glancing down at Cara’s river–shaken form, she said, “I need to get you to a fire and some dry clothes.”

“What?” Cara asked, still not quite sure, still a bit lost in emotion. “What didn’t you say?”

Kahlan glanced back up, but though soft her admission felt more solid than the ground they stood on. “That I care for you.”

Cara’s heart flipped over in her chest, and she didn’t know what to say. It was Kahlan—and she was talking to Cara. Guilt tried to surge back up as she held onto Kahlan, but as they made it to the horses, she realized that despite guilt she knew exactly what she wanted to say. Eyes slightly to the side, she said, “I care about you too.”

Kahlan breathed out as she helped Cara up into the saddle, but Cara thought she caught a smile still on the other woman’s face as they rode back together. Later as she’d gingerly dismounted with a slight dizziness, Kahlan helped her patch her wounds the same way she’d done after the battle with the banelings the week before. Yet even though their eyes didn’t meet, Cara felt a new peace in her touch that she hadn’t realized was missing, and a craving for more of it that made her heart ache. It felt right that Kahlan was the one to sleep wrapped around Cara that night.

Part 5

Despite Cara’s assurances that her leftover cough would heal on its own, Kahlan saw the poorly–hid grimaces of pain and set her jaw tightly. After another day, she put her foot down and said that Cara needed a healer. They were within a few leagues of Kerys, one of the larger hubs in the Midlands, so Kahlan said that they would probably have some anonymity. Forsaking their quest for a short side–trip, then, they rode into the city.

With Kahlan’s sharp sense of intuition, it wasn’t hard to find the part of the city that was more strongly in favor of resisting Darken Rahl than the rest. The crowds mingled closer, more quietly, but broad enough for Kahlan and Cara to avoid suspicion. Even in hooded garments, and with Kahlan not in her Mother Confessor garb, though, they watched the streets cautiously.

As it turned out, the first healer they happened upon knew Kahlan from Aydindril. Despite the careful camouflage of the Sword of Truth, she made the connection with Kahlan and Cara as well. Kahlan felt no danger, though—they merely got a hot meal and clasped hands of gratitude as well as a physical examination of Cara. Despite the blonde’s protesting grumbles, she did not push away the tonic that the old woman gave her after poking and prodding at her chest until she admitted that it was probably a cracked rib. And when they curled to sleep in the one old bed that was provided, and the bed stopped creaking, Kahlan gave a small smile as she realized that Cara’s breathing was already more easy.

Cara slept like a log, a heavy one that crushed against Kahlan, but she didn’t mind. Kahlan didn’t wake her in the morning as she dressed and refreshed herself. Then, as she sat down to breathe deeply at the slight contraction of her pregnant belly, she watched how peace played across Cara’s face in sleep. She wanted to reach out and capture that peace, to carry it for the unavoidable moment when Cara woke to let guilt take its place again. Instead, with a brush of her fingertips to Cara’s cheek and a quick prayer, Kahlan woke her and they made ready to return to their mission again.

Packs over their shoulders again, they started to leave civilization yet again. It was with some shock that, as they walked through the streets, Kahlan heard a voice call out behind them: “Cara!”

She and Cara both jerked, but it could be any name, any trick. All around were carts and shops, vendors shouting, friends calling to friends. Cara wasn’t an uncommon name.

“Cara Mason!” The voice called again, urgent, more clearly a woman’s voice this time.

Kahlan froze for a brief second, unsure of what to do. No one had ever called for Cara by name. By “Seeker”, occasionally, but even that was rare. Catching Cara’s eyes for a second, Kahlan decided to stop the conspicuous shouting, whether it was a trap or not. Reaching subtly for her dagger, she turned around, and saw a middle–aged woman running up to them.

“Oh Cara, thank the Creator,” the woman said, grabbing Cara’s hands tightly. “I had no idea.”

“Meira?” Cara asked, looking stunned. Unlike with most other people they happened upon, she didn’t push her away, and that soothed some of Kahlan’s fears in an instant.

“You know her?” Kahlan asked, still ready to reach for her weapon. But the woman looked to her, and her thin worn face bore eyes that were clear and truthful. Kahlan trusted her powers’ judgment.

“She lived by my sister in Stowcroft,” Cara explained, but shaking her head and with her voice seeming distant. Her back was tight in a stance that Kahlan knew meant that she didn’t know what to think, and Cara always liked to know what she was doing.

Meira, however, made up for that. “You must come, now,” she ordered, tone a little breathless. She pulled at Cara’s hand.

Cara flinched and pulled back. “What are you—”

“Please, it’s about your children,” Meira said, looking straight into her eyes and then to Kahlan’s.

There were some things one didn’t question. Before Kahlan knew, the two of them were being dragged out of the bustling street and down a short alley. Kahlan’s eyes had just adjusted to the light when up ahead a door opened. Two children came barreling down the way and Cara gasped.

“Mama, mama!” came the eager cries.

Kahlan was unsure until she saw Cara’s knees buckle, dropping down as the children ran into her arms and giving out a choked whisper of, “Sophia? Sam?” The children gripped onto her tightly, more like grasping a lifeline than a hug as the boy cried a little, and then Cara asked in a steadier tone, burying her fingers in their soft red–gold curls, “What are you doing here? Where is your aunt?”

“I’m sorry,” Meira said, glancing down as she wrung her hands. “That is the problem.”

“Grace is not dead,” Cara half asked, half insisted, eyes wide with worry as she stood up. The children clung to her legs, and in her ‘Seeker’ outfit of practical brown leather it looked strange.

“Not as far as I know,” Meira hastened to say. She swallowed. “But Cara, Stowcroft was burned to the ground.”

Kahlan bit back a gasp, and saw Cara’s hands scramble to wrap around her children as they still held onto her. It tore at her heart, though, how much Meira’s words made everything make sense. She glanced at Cara, wondering if she had failed in not warning her of what could happen. Wondering if maybe it was her fault for assuming that Darken Rahl would only focus on the Seeker and not try to find out where she had come from.

“Grace and her husband had to get out quickly, with their family,” Meira said, gulping hard and looking stressed. “I don’t know where they went, or if they made it, or…I just…they didn’t have room for your children, and I knew they wouldn’t make it if they tried to take them anyway. So I did.”

Cara made a nondescript noise, reaching out a hesitant hand to Meira’s arm and then pulling it back. Emotion distorted her face as she said, “So you brought them here?”

“Yes,” Meira said, and then Kahlan saw her eyes well up. “I had nowhere else to go, and I didn’t think that you, or they—Cara, a quad is here, asking for any who know the Seeker. They’re making their way through the whole city.”

Kahlan tensed, and Cara quick looked to her, the same worry in both their eyes. “If they find us,” Kahlan said.

“If they find my children,” Cara corrected sharply, eyes flitting back and forth like she was searching for an answer.

“I don’t know what to do, I don’t know anyone,” Meira said, gulping back a cry. “I was going to run, but…”

Cara’s children whimpered as they clung to her, tousled hair and short limbs looking all the more vulnerable even in these ‘safe’ shadows. They didn’t go with the efficiency of the Sword on its belt and the leather coat serving for armor and warmth. Cara looked to Kahlan with desperation on her face and Kahlan shook her head, answerless. But when she looked to Meira, her heart sunk as she realized that there was no way that this could end well for her.

“Kahlan, I don’t know anyone who was not from Stowcroft,” Cara said in a low voice. Her fingers combed through her children’s hair in short motions that spoke of self–reproach and concern.

“I don’t know of any place that we could get to,” Kahlan had to answer. Of all the people she had known before the war, they were all either far away or out of contact, and by this point…who knew. Nothing was secure, nothing was sure. Looking at Cara, Kahlan realized that Zedd’s deeds had doomed an entire village, and suddenly the burden of their mission was twice as heavy. Disaster wasn’t confined to Cara and Kahlan’s personal lives.

“They can’t find out we were here,” Cara finally said. “The soldiers. We can’t—”

Kahlan nodded, remembering the quads who had chased her when she tried to breach the boundary. She had killed them eventually, but, “Who knows what magic Rahl has sent with them for contacting him.” She looked at Cara, saw the look on her face. “Cara, your children.”

“Kahlan, I can’t,” Cara said, barely above a whisper. “Meira, I…”

“No, she understands,” Kahlan said, taking a step forward and nodding to the woman who looked about ready to fall apart. Meira breathed out, tears coming from her eyes in relief; there were dangers beyond what some hearts could handle, and Kahlan didn’t begrudge Meira that. But looking to Cara, to the person she was closest to in all the world, never had the conflict in her heart been more plain but there was no escape, and Kahlan could feel the lack. She reached out and touched Cara’s shoulder, making sure her support was clear. “We’re the only protection they have.”

The children looked up at her now with eyes just like Cara’s, and Kahlan’s heart ached for what had happened to their previously–straightforward lives. Cara nodded, though, taking a deep breath and visibly steeling herself. “We need to get out now, get back to the horses. Sophia and Sam can ride along until we’re far enough away.”

Kahlan nodded without another word and stooped down to scoop Sam in her arms. “Quickly, then,” she said in a firm voice, even as the boy wrapped his arms tightly around her neck. It had been a long time since a child had touched her so fearlessly.

With Sophia on her waist, her other arm free to grab the Sword of Truth if she had to, Cara looked one last time to Meira who had brought such unavoidable troubles.

“I’ve had their things always packed, just in case,” Meira said, wiping her eyes. She darted into the house and came out with two packs.

Cara swung one over her shoulder, Kahlan took the other, and then Cara started striding out towards the street with the determination that came partly from fear. Kahlan looked one last time to Meira, suddenly worried that this was a trap, but the truth she saw there yet again only alleviated one concern. She had never felt such danger as now, walking through the streets with the children. If they were attacked now…

Loudly clopping horse hooves sounded behind them as they neared the city gates, and Kahlan refused to look back. “Soldiers,” Sam whimpered in her ear, holding on tighter.

Cara must have heard, glancing to Kahlan with a set jaw. They didn’t need to say it out loud—if the quad had come that far through the city, they could have met any number of people who knew Cara as the Seeker because of the healer, and could give out her description. The gates were so close, but the horses were a half mile off in a glade.

The riding came up louder behind them, and Kahlan suddenly realized they were going nowhere fast enough. “Cara!” she called, then set Sam down and told him with a straight look, “Run through the gate, take your sister, hide!”

“Mama!” Sophia cried as Cara set her down.

“Listen to Kahlan, run!” Cara shouted as she drew the sword, all vulnerability gone from her stance as soon as her hands gripped around the hilt. “I’ll be back, I promise. Run!”?

The children darted away, stumbling through the grass. Kahlan had her daggers drawn, backing up as she saw the horses charging through the streets, knocking peasants aside, and she saw the glint of Darken Rahl’s insignia on their gear. Thank the Creator there were only two for now. She and Cara were running backwards through the gates before the terrified guards knew to stop them, but the horses were on top of them.

One reared and a sword came slicing towards Kahlan’s head. She ducked to the side, throwing her dagger into the man’s unarmored neck. The horse lowered, his rider fell off, and with his foot caught in the stirrup the horse spooked and ran off, dragging the dying soldier behind. Kahlan turned around. Cara had slit the saddle from the other rider, but he’d gotten to his feet after his fall, charging at her with two swords in hand. Cara kicked out and her boot collided with his hip, getting him offset just enough to slide her sword through his block, and when she’d locked up his blades Kahlan came from behind and slit his throat.

The second enemy fell choking as he bled to death. Cara whipped around and pointed to the city that might or might not be bustling because of them. Kahlan nodded, heart still racing. While she hurried to retrieve her dagger, Cara ran to the bushes, grabbed Sophia and took Sam’s hand and started running for the horses. Half a minute later, Kahlan was running up behind, scooping Sam into her arms as his young legs stumbled. Lungs aching with the sudden exertion, and Cara with a hand to her ribs as if they pained her again, they rushed into the glade.

Their horses stamped their hooves, sensing the irritation. Throwing the bags around the saddlehorns, Cara leapt onto hers and reached down for Sophia. Kahlan lifted her up, lifted Sam after her, and got onto her own horse. Passing Sam over to sit in front of her on the saddle, they started to gallop away. Kerys lay behind them, and not even as they rode up and over the far hill did Kahlan see any followers when she looked back. The spirits had guided luck to them more than once this day.

Still, it was with a clenched jaw and a fiercely worried heart that they galloped for miles without stop. Their mission was not any closer to being completed, but Darken Rahl was on their trail. And they had two more mouths to feed, and two more bodies that could not defend themselves.

* * * * *

Cara didn’t tell Kahlan that the tonic the healer had given her was making her dizzy the tireder she got, as they rode back up into the hills and away from Kerys. It wasn’t a matter of keeping an appearance intact, it was a matter of her daughter, now sleeping slumped against the horse’s neck. Cara’s heart had never felt so tight with fear, and she would ride until they could ride no longer.

Finally the sun fell, and Kahlan drew up her horse, riding off the trail just far enough to find a cave in the hills. Cara didn’t move for a few seconds, light–headed, as Kahlan dismounted and scooped Sam down from her saddle. She came up to Cara next, and Sophia was lowered without waking, curling into Kahlan’s arms.

Cara got down slowly, leaning against her horse for a minute before walking slowly into the cave.

“You’re not well,” Kahlan said softly, bringing in the packs.

“I’m alive,” Cara answered firmly. After slinging the Sword from her back, she sat down against the cave wall and reached out to scoot Sophia closer. In her exhaustion, her daughter’s head fell into her lap, curls all in a mess. Yawning, Sam stumbled across from where Kahlan had set him to hug Cara’s arm on the other side. “Hey,” Cara whispered, feeling all her strengths falling apart in the darkness and weariness, leaving only raw worry and a love she’d buried for months.

“I thought you were dead,” Sam said, burying his face in her arm.

Cara had to swallow the fierce lump in her throat before she could whisper back, “I’m sorry.” Sam didn’t say anything, just gripped her tighter, and so she leaned her head down to rest on his, her other hand resting on Sophia’s shoulders.

“What happened to Mr. Leo?” Sam asked a minute later, while Kahlan was getting the horses ready for nightfall. “Did he kidnap you?”

Cara choked at the sudden memory, shaking her head. She was too tired for anything but blunt words. “No. No, Sam, Darken Rahl had the Seeker kill him. I left—” She couldn’t bring herself to make an excuse. “I chose to leave.”

“Meira said you were the Seeker now, but it made Sophie cry,” Sam said, dropping her arm so he could duck under it and wrap his arms around her waist. “I thought—I thought you couldn’t be, if you were our mother.”

“I shouldn’t be,” Cara admitted in a whisper. Sam said nothing, neither accusation nor forgiveness nor even a question. All Cara could do was hold her children close and breathe, and it was more than a cracked rib that made her ache. This wasn’t her life, but she was realizing that she didn’t have one anymore. From the moment Darken Rahl knew of what Zedd had said, her life in Stowcroft was over, even before Kahlan came and Cara woke tied to a tree. And this mission with Kahlan was no life anyway, which had nothing to do with the lack of children. It was a placeholder, but Cara realized with a dead feeling that there was nothing to fill it once the mission was over.

Kahlan finally came into the cave and lit a fire. Once it was softly glowing, she moved silently to sit on the opposite side of Sam as he slept smooshed against Cara. The moonlight drifting in from the outside mingled with the gold of the fire, making Kahlan’s skin almost glow, making her look peaceful and regal. Cara looked up at her, vainly wished for a moment that she could drop her very identity and lose herself in Kahlan’s comforting strength. Then, noticing the swell of Kahlan’s belly yet again, she bit back the urge and remembered—neither of them were free.

“I’m sorry this had to happen,” Kahlan said quietly. “But at least…”

“It could have been worse, yes,” Cara finished for her. She held tighter onto her children as she thought of all the fates Darken Rahl could have had planned for them, had they been discovered.

“If it helps,” Kahlan said with a sigh, “this is the strangest mission I have been on, but perhaps the luckiest.”

Cara stared at her and thought of what had happened so far. “No, that doesn’t help at all.”

“I didn’t think it would.” Kahlan smiled softly, and then reached her arm to wrap around Cara’s shoulders and give a squeeze. “We’ll make this work.”

“I know,” Cara said. Somehow it had never crossed her mind that they wouldn’t. The flames crackled, and Cara shifted her weight to bring her children closer. It gave her a security she hadn’t realized she’d been without, and yet she frowned. Kahlan’s arm around her, and her hand close to Cara’s on Sam, made the kind of sense that didn’t belong here. “This is all wrong,” she said.

“What is?” Kahlan asked.

Cara felt blunt words coming to her tongue, and twitched with the discomfort of her thoughts. As always and yet—this was Kahlan. Her teacher, companion, friend, and yet something beyond all that that Cara couldn’t explain. She didn’t want to explain, even though she couldn’t stop herself now. “What do you mean, ‘what is’?” she answered back, giving Kahlan a piercing look. “I’m not familiar with the prophecies, or even all of the histories, but I’m no idiot. The Mother Confessor should be in Aydindril, and if she is with child then another should be performing her duties. The Seeker should not have a family until after the Sword has been given up. This is—” She let a moment of silence do most of the work of her frustration. “Wrong.”

Kahlan’s eyes dipped down for a moment, and Cara couldn’t tell if the shadows in her face were all from the firelight. But she spoke at last. “Histories are about heroes and their armies. People on their own—or the masses. Nothing in between. Even though we all know life doesn’t work like that, we reshape our past and believe as if it did back then.” Her eyes turned to Cara’s again. “Life is about family. Perhaps you are correct about the Mother Confessor, but that doesn’t make it right. And just because a Seeker is renowned as one name doesn’t mean that the quests were accomplished alone.”

Cara remembered that just running a farm had been a war of distractions, one eye on a scythe and the other on the sungold heads bobbing above the tall grass. This would require drastic measures, and she doubted that epic deeds were accomplished under such terms. She glanced to Kahlan with flat sarcasm, if a little less bitter than it could have been, “You’re saying they all had children in tow?”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Kahlan answered with a dry, quiet laugh. “But Cara, I’ve given up on expecting the world to work according to, well, expectations. We hold heroes in esteem because they did what was right. That’s all we can do. Even if loyalties are divided, all we can do is what seems right.”

Incredulous, Cara didn’t have any words. She sighed, fingers tapping with an inability to accept that.

“Oh Cara, you have to learn that you can’t control everything,” Kahlan breathed out and stroked her fingers through Cara’s hair until her fingertips brushed softly against her neck.

“I know that,” Cara protested, even as she wanted to lean into Kahlan’s soothing touch. She’d been craving touch for months, maybe more, and yet Kahlan’s both satisfied and intensified the longing she didn’t want to think about.

“In your head, maybe,” Kahlan said. “But someday you’ll have to feel it in your heart, or you will break under the pressure.”

Cara flinched. “I won’t break.”

Kahlan pressed a kiss against her hair, unexpected and yet warm and almost familiar. “I didn’t mean the kind of breaking that you can will to not happen.”

Yet again, Cara didn’t have words. She had her children in her arms, she had Kahlan so close that she might as well be lying in hers, and yet her heart wasn’t comforted. But as the night wore on, pulling at her weary mind, she was forced to admit that it was only her own doing. Defenses kept her safe, but there was a limit to the goodness of safety, and she’d crossed it. She’d crossed that line long ago.

* * * * *

Kahlan was not surprised at anything Cara did the following day. Alternating between gruff and soft, she showed no weakness as they made ready for the continuing mission. Which, after a well–ordered breakfast, and efficient washing and combing of the two children, mostly consisted of conveying overwhelmingly honest information about what was at stake.

“So if you fail, everyone will die?” asked Sophia with the widest eyes Kahlan had ever seen.

“Yes,” Cara said with a short nod. Sam chewed on his lip, in just the way Kahlan had noticed Cara doing. And all of them accepted the knowledge, owned it, as if their lives had always dealt with the fate of the world. Knowing some of their past as well as their heritage, Kahlan couldn’t be astonished.

“What do we do, then?” Sophia asked, hands wringing in her lap as she sat cross–legged by her brother. Cara had pulled her daughter’s soft curls back, and Kahlan pitied the long–suffering marks on the face of a child who should be fresh and full of all hope.

“We ride,” Cara said, shrugging slightly. “You and Sam will share a horse, and Kahlan and I will walk.”

“Will it be dangerous, Mama?” Sam asked, tapping his foot on the ground in front of him. “Like with the soldiers?”

“The whole world is dangerous, Sam,” Cara sighed. “I can’t promise anything.”

“Then we need to go before they find us,” Sophia said, her small brow wrinkling in worry. “Please Mama?”

“That’s my children,” Cara said with barely concealed pride, even if it was marked by hard reality. “I’m sure Kahlan appreciates it.” A frown gracing her face as if it had never left, she gestured with her hand for them to follow.

Kahlan had finished rearranging all their equipment to fit on the one horse, setting her own white steed loose with quiet words of gratitude. They would have had to leave riding behind in a short time anyway, given the rough pass and how difficult it would be to continually lead the horses. But one was more doable if neither of them rode, and in the case of battle especially, it was better for Kahlan and Cara to not have to worry about drawing weapons so near to the children’s heads.

Despite the chirping of birds in the trees and a breeze that smelt of pine and sage, the air hung heavy with a silence that added to the gravity. Every noise made was distinct, meaningful. “Is Kahlan the Mother Confessor?” Sam whispered as Cara lifted him up into the saddle.

Kahlan glanced over, and saw Cara nod without words. Sam’s eyes widened, but not in fear, and he nudged Sophia as she was put in front of him on the saddle.

“And you listen to her as if she were me, understand?” Cara said with a direct look.

“Is she like our aunt?” Sophia asked, firmly gripping the saddlehorn.

Cara’s mouth pressed together, twisted, and did not open for a few seconds in which she looked up at her children and not to Kahlan. “I trust her more than anyone, that’s all you need to know,” she finally said.

That almost surprised Kahlan, as they started walking further up into the hills that the compass was leading them towards. Before she could question Cara, though, it struck her that ‘sister’ was the entirely wrong word for Cara. It even rankled like a note struck out of tune in an otherwise crisp melody. It was not surprise that held Kahlan’s mind after that, though, but confusion instead.

Cara took the lead, compass in hand and eyes on the narrow rocky road, stubborn as ever about the mission. With no knowledge of what was ahead or when the compass would indicate their final destination, the threats were looming indeed. Kahlan walked behind and held the reins of Cara’s horse, feeling as if the other woman had placed herself ahead as a shield for them all. Kahlan was no less determined even if her mind was distracted.

To any forest eyes they must have looked sad and inept. Makeshift, ragtag, whatever the word, it was not ideal when facing opposing forces both above and beneath the world they traveled on. Kahlan could only hope with all her heart that they continued to stay inconspicuous, even if they couldn’t be secret.

“You can’t confess the Seeker, right?” Sam suddenly asked her without preface.

Kahlan looked up. “Oh no, I would never confess your mother,” she said, horrified by the very suggestion.

“I told you,” Sophia murmured, even though she still frowned.

“Mama taught about you at school,” Sam explained, with a near perfect rendition of Cara’s matter–of–fact tone. “She said you were smart, and that you wouldn’t have to use your magic to rule most of the time. She said we could all grow up to be leaders who didn’t need power either.”

“Oh?” Kahlan glanced back up ahead, again not surprised. But she couldn’t escape a curiosity, and decided to appreciate the amount of honest talking that the children seemed to be offering. “I’m sure your mother taught many good things.”

“We brought swords to school, and she let us,” Sam said. “All of us. Except Sophie.”

“Swords are stupid,” Sophia said with a glare. “Slings are sneakier, and I’m smart enough to have one.”

“I’ve never used a sling,” Kahlan admitted. “But where I went to school, there were no weapons allowed.”

“Mama says we have to learn someday, in case there’s more fighting,” Sophia said, with the kind of sigh that should never touch a child’s tone.

Kahlan made a small noise in her throat, but had no words to answer. She watched Cara stride up ahead with a strength that she’d had even before learning how to handle the Sword of Truth, and yet she remembered Cara’s shock at those first deaths. Some innocence, if it could be called that, had been lost. Kahlan had seen it, and both regretted and been grateful for it, feeling guilty for wanting to have more in common with Cara. But shock though it might have been, it seemed that Cara’s unconscious worries had been put to work long before taking on this mission. And in hindsight, Kahlan was not surprised. She wondered when Cara’s last moment of true peace had been.

It was a little more difficult to travel on foot, and Kahlan was especially noticing her growing pregnancy now. Her dress scarcely fit at all, and all her instincts frequently told her to rest. After a while, Cara had traveled far ahead, and had to then stop and wait for them to catch up. For the next few miles, they traveled a little slower and side by side. The children were grim and quiet, and as sad as that was, it provided one less worrying interference.

Except for Cara, whose lips were still tight. “It is good that the Creator has no physical form, or I would feel a dangerous urge to strike,” she muttered. “And the Sword agrees with me.”

“The Sword always agrees with you,” Kahlan pointed out. “You are the Seeker.”

Cara gave her a look, but it was one that came from closeness, even when her tone held a bit of a suspicious demand, “Do you delight in always having an answer for me?”

Kahlan stared at her for a second. The softness that wrapped around her heart when Cara was safe, and especially when speaking to her, was not just from trust. Not even just friendship. She answered with the first honest words that came to her mind, “Since I laid grief aside, yes.”

If Cara looked surprised at those words, Kahlan was no less so. The losses that had broken her heart twice over were no longer shadowing her mind. Her heart seemed not only healed, it seemed whole. The care she’d grown to feel for Cara was all she could find when she searched for feelings above and beyond duty. And confusing as it was to her, the mix of emotions on Cara’s face affected her more, and she couldn’t help but smile.

“Well,” Cara said at last, wrapping the entire situation in that one flat word. But when she looked to Kahlan, her eyes had rarely been so open and vulnerable.

They walked on until night, and after the children were laid to sleep, Cara stood by Kahlan’s side and watched them in the dark with arms loosely crossed.

Minutes passed in silence before Cara leaned her head towards Kahlan and spoke in a low tone, “I don’t want there to be secrets between us.” She paused until Kahlan met her eyes, then said, “I… I’m afraid. Of too many things, and only a few of them deserve it.”

Kahlan swallowed. “Do you fear me?” The cool night air brushed by her skin, and yet she knew the goosebumps on her arms to be from worry for Cara’s answer.

Cara breathed in, then shook her head. “I don’t. I just don’t know what else—” She fell silent before murmuring, “I have too many worries.”

Feeling a brief pain before reaching out, Kahlan untangled one of Cara’s hands from where it lay over her chest, and held it. When Cara gripped it back, no pretense in her actions even if her words got caught up in her overthinking, Kahlan knew what it meant. And with the memory of Richard that the feeling brought to mind, Kahlan suddenly realized that she was scared. Cara breathed out, and the tightening of her grip said more than any words or fears of Kahlan could. Even so, even with Kahlan’s heart running too fast, she couldn’t bear to release her.

Part 6

Ever since she was a child, Cara’d had nightmares. One of her sister’s friends had been watching over Cara when she was not even six years’ old, and when Cara had run away, the Mord’Sith appeared to capture her and use her to lure the other girl into their grasp. Terrified, Cara had run home when they let her. Grace did not cast blame, and her mother and father just held her close, but Cara burned with shame and guilt and for weeks had been plagued by nightmares of giving Constance over to them of her own volition. She would bury her face in the covers when she woke until she almost suffocated to keep her tears from rousing anyone.

Those had gone away when she made friends with Dahlia, especially the times when she had come to sleep over and they’d curl together in Cara’s bed. The dark–haired girl was quiet and straightforward, and when she smiled at Cara and stroked her face, Cara had felt a flutter in her stomach and had smiled back. They lay wrapped in each others’ arms long before they were sleepy, and Cara always gave Dahlia a quick kiss before falling to sleep, warm and safe. Dahlia would wake her with giggles the next morning at how fuzzy Cara’s hair had gotten while they slept, and Cara would bat irritatedly at her, trying not to yawn. But what she remembered most was that Dahlia had woken her, and not a nightmare.

Cara was nearing thirteen, and Dahlia was halfway to eleven, when she didn’t come home from school. Cara didn’t need to be there to have a picture in her mind of what had happened when the Mord’Sith came for her Dahlia. She’d cried her eyes out that night as she clutched onto Grace, feeling an ache from a loss of more than friendship, but it was nothing compared to the nightmares. If only she had warned Dahlia, stayed with her always, she could have seen the warning signs and could have protected her. It was her fault, and her nightmares played that belief vividly out almost every night for the next five years. Her father said that she was a quiet little thing now, and invited her to help him with the farm instead of going to town with her mother. She liked that—work made her feel safe.

Andrew was a nice young man, just a year older than her, when she started sleeping with him. He was never supposed to be anything more, but when she skipped her moon cycle one month and then two, she clenched her hands and sighed. There was only one way this was going to happen, and it didn’t involve him getting off free. He stared at her with fast–blinking eyes when she explained everything, and they held awkward glances before he stammered out a proposal, and she accepted with an inescapable grimace. But when he leaned in to kiss her cautiously, she told him that just because they were getting married didn’t mean that he had to pretend like he didn’t want her. He kissed her again for real and wrapped her in his arms with a genuine smile, and she kissed back and decided it wasn’t bad. Andrew was nice, even if he didn’t keep the nightmares away.

It hadn’t been easy for either of them, and by the time Sophia followed Sam into the world and Cara was twenty–one, they both had a dozen more concerns than sleeping well, if they even slept at all. Cara eventually dreamed of a thousand ways her children could die, waking each time in a cold sweat, and when she and Andrew joined the resistance against Darken Rahl the nightmares only got more creative. Andrew died when Sophia was two but after a couple months, Cara stopped having nightmares about him. Just her children, and occasionally one of Dahlia, the first loss.

The peace was bliss, and made everything fall into place. Teaching no longer involved secret messages to the parents, nor disguised lessons of resistance for the children. She got the farm running smoothly, watched her children grow up strong, and found that one morning Sophia rolled on top of her and she woke realizing that she’d had no nightmare.

It wasn’t until Kahlan came to her on that fated day that she realized that with the loss of nightmares, she’d let all her defenses down. She’d grown soft, not as a byproduct but as a choice, changing herself as if she wanted that. But traveling with Kahlan, her nightmares did not return and yet the strength did. She mounted defenses for more tangible things, and the strength ran through her limbs in a way that she couldn’t deny felt right.

Then—fate had cut her down from behind, put her children in danger and gave her no way out. The nightmares returned. Just not of Kahlan or her children, not when Cara could sleep sandwiched between them, once even waking with her head resting on Kahlan’s chest. Instead, she dreamed of things that could not be comforted, like handing over the Stone of Tears to the Keeper. It didn’t matter that in the dreams, the Stone was a head–sized lump of granite, which made no sense at all. She still woke unnerved.

Yet it did matter that things had changed. Cara woke, shaking off the insecurity and squinting up into the sky. She groaned, hating early mornings, and then heard Kahlan’s voice from far off. Nightmare forgotten, she sat up from the wrinkled blankets.

“And two. And three. And four.” With slow directions, Kahlan spun with her knives, blocking each side of her body in turn from phantom strikes. Sam and Sophia stood by her, looking up as they tried to mirror her moves with sticks. “Good, good,” Kahlan said in a light voice. “And five. And six.”

Cara stretched as she got to her feet, tension leaving her mind as her muscles loosened. She was enraptured by the sight of the three of them in motion, a little awkward, even Kahlan as she navigated around her pregnancy now more than three months along, but all of them together. She walked over, arms twined over her chest, forgetting for a second that these light moments were dangerous distractions.

“And eight,” Kahlan finished lightly. Her smile was better than a ray of sunshine at the children, and then she looked up. “And your mother’s awake, good.”

“You would make a good teacher,” Cara told her, although after the words came out she felt slightly awkward.

Kahlan smiled a little lopsided, and Cara sensed that it was for everyone’s benefit instead of what she likely felt. “That’s good to know. But truthfully, I wasn’t trying to be their teacher.” She rubbed at her rounded belly through the taut white of her dress, drawn out almost to its limit.

Cara told herself that it was because she was talking to the Mother Confessor that she tucked her chin just slightly, self–conscious at saying anything in response, but speaking anyway. “Mothers are teachers too,” she said with a slight shrug.

Kahlan breathed out, looking back at where Sam and Sophia were poking at each other with serious expressions. “I almost wish that they—” She sighed.

Cara told herself again that the skip of a beat in her heart at the implication was just because it was coming from the Mother Confessor, of all people. Nothing else. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from Kahlan as she walked towards the horse, Sam following her with a wave of his stick–sword.

Sophia tugged at her dress until she glanced down, saw her gravely thoughtful face. “Mama, I need your help.”

“What is it?” Cara asked, Kahlan’s image gone from her mind at the sight of that look in her daughter’s eyes. It had far too much intent for a child barely more than five years old.

Sophia grabbed her hand and pulled her towards where their packs were all lined up. She lifted hers towards Cara. “I wanna get rid of my toys.”

Cara stared, more stricken than she would have expected to be. Sometimes she forgot that the baby girl she’d cradled was long gone, stolen by her enemies’ plans on all their lives. She dropped to one knee and reached out with her fingertips to brush at the grim expression on Sophia’s face. “What is this?”

But the girl pressed her lips together and didn’t soften. “Mama, what if my pack is too heavy and the horse slows down and we all die?”

“Oh Sophie,” Cara said, frowning and drawing her child into her arms. “No one is going to die, and not because of your toys.”

“But—but you don’t know that,” Sophie protested, not softening in her mother’s embrace. She twisted around so she could look up into Cara’s face. “I don’t want them now. I’m not a baby anymore.”

Cara’s throat contracted, and she had to swallow hard as she ran her fingers through Sophia’s hair. The mother in her longed to just say that she should play with toys as long as she wanted to, but the rest of her knew that it would be a falsehood. She couldn’t promise that there would be time or freedom like that, and if Sophie was on the right path, Cara couldn’t bring herself to dissuade her.

“It’ll help, right?” Sophia asked then, in a smaller voice. “I just wanna help.”

“Yes, yes it’ll help,” Cara answered once she’d found her voice, giving a firm nod. “The less we have, the easier to keep track of.”

Sophia leaped from her arms then, face clearing of momentary concern. “Then can we burn them, so nobody can track us?”

Cara bit back the simultaneous choke and laugh, just nodding as she watched her child take her pack over to the fire. She wanted to be amused and proud of the ingenuity—but at the same time she wanted to weep for what this mission was still doing to her children’s innocence.

“And then,” Sophia added, as Cara joined her by the fire as she threw her ragdoll in, “I will have room to put rocks for my sling. So I can protect myself.”

By the time Kahlan walked over to finish the last preparations, Cara’s only thought was that she hoped the Mother Confessor was not taking notes. She smiled at Sophia when they loaded the pack on the horse, and the look of appreciation in the little girl’s eyes was real and heart–tugging enough. But its cause was not the kind of motherhood anyone should strive for.

* * * * *

Kahlan had never liked being alone; there was something about helping others that drowned out her own troubles until they faded away at last. With Cara, though, she had stopped being able to think of her as someone to help, and could only think of her as Cara. Which meant that Kahlan could in return only be herself with her—and there was no one else there to help. Until they’d had to bring the children along, the weight of Kahlan’s concerns had colored every action. Now, she could be a caretaker again.

But when Cara looked at her when she was with the children, it struck her that she felt more like a mother than the Mother Confessor. The two roles were never the same, not for her. Maybe it was just the child growing in her that gave her that impression, but all her intuition told her otherwise. Caring for Sophia and Sam made the world seem freer for them all, as if they had not just heard in the latest stop in a village that Darken Rahl was narrowing his search for the Seeker and the Mother Confessor, sending quads ahead of his army. They didn’t have enough resources, emotional or physical, to worry the proper amount. So they didn’t.

And in that free feeling, Kahlan didn’t feel grief, only want. Want for this family, with Sam and Sophia and the unborn daughter she hadn’t chosen a name for. For moments, alone with the children, she could imagine herself their mother. Then Cara would return, and Kahlan’s heart would flip over, and it wasn’t just because Kahlan realized that the children couldn’t ever be hers. They were another mother’s, and the more Kahlan told herself that, the more guilty she felt for loving the times that Sophia climbed on her lap around the campfire at night.

Cara never showed any signs of jealousy, though. If anything, she seemed to draw nearer with every day, bringing her family along with her. They slept together for safety but it was something else that made Cara press herself full against Kahlan, and something even more that made Kahlan hold her until her limbs relaxed in sleep.

When morning came, Kahlan’s sleepy mind always wished that she was waking with her family, not just companions on a deadly mission. The yearning throbbed in her chest until she hid it with a small smile and went about the days as normal.

The land stretched out before them, seeming endless, and not for the first time Kahlan looked over Cara’s shoulder at the pulse of the compass point and wished there was any indication of an end to it. This mission was going on too long, and it seemed like things were gathering together to strike. There hadn’t been a baneling attack in far too long, and not that Kahlan minded, given their new charges, but she didn’t trust that they’d passed out of all danger entirely. Their weary feet just kept on marching.

This day, Kahlan was taking up the rear of the group through the wooded hills, marking each moment in her mind. Sometimes when she heard Cara speak with her children, blunt quiet talk that was yet always sincere, she pressed one hand to where she was with child and told herself that this could be hers someday. Even if she wanted more than just herself and her daughter.

They kept walking, and for a while Kahlan didn’t notice that the birds stopped chirping. Brush crackled slightly beneath their feet, and the horse’s hooves plodded along, and then all at once there was a roar in Kahlan’s ear.

The children screamed as two gars charged out from behind the trees, fangs slavering and eyes dangerously bright with hunger. Kahlan’s heart leaped in her chest as she tried to grab her daggers, watching the beasts move too fast. But Cara had spun, hair flying out behind her as she whipped out the Sword of Truth. With a look on her face that would stop many a warrior in his tracks, the blade starting to glow, she took a step forward and slammed it down the throat of the first gar. It crumpled with a whine as blood started to gush.

Kahlan threw her dagger into the second, but even though he reared with a growl of pain, Cara couldn’t pull the sword out fast enough. It swiped at her, and she ducked so that it only nicked her arm. Yet before Kahlan could throw out a suggestion, or come in with her second dagger, Cara inexplicably ran forward and slammed herself into the gar’s chest. It stumbled backwards, just as surprised as Kahlan, and then with a war–cry Cara drove her sword into its lower belly. It roared again, but even in its spasms of death she was too close for it to see and strike, and it crumpled to earth just as Kahlan came up, catching Cara so she wasn’t tangled in the falling corpse.

They stood for a moment, panting for breath as the attacking creatures died, black blood soaking the earth beneath them.

“Spirits, Cara,” Kahlan exclaimed, turning to her with all the shock she felt. “What made you do that? I never taught you such close combat—with a war sword it’s incredibly risky.”

Cara stared at her for a second, catching her breath. “Gars’ eyesight is limited at that range. It was just…instinct.” When Kahlan blinked, her lip twitched a little and she waved her free hand slightly as she explained, “There used to be a clan of them that would attack Stowcroft. Andrew—my husband—and I would hunt them down.” She exhaled shortly. “I didn’t think of it as similar to warfare, but I suppose even then…” Cara shook her head.

Kahlan was left speechless, but then she saw a tear in the leather on Cara’s arm, and a long scratch on her cheek, both bleeding. “We need to clean those up; gars’ venom leaves scars if it’s not cleaned.”

“It took me a full year to learn that,” Cara admitted as they walked back to the horse. Kahlan remembered seeing the scars on Cara, and wondered how much of her life had been spent in denial. The Mord’Sith had left her behind as a child, but that experience had planted something; a need for strength in a world that didn’t expect it of a farmer’s daughter. Like so many, she’d appreciated a quiet peaceful life with love and family…but hunting gars, joining the resistance, they couldn’t be accidents. Even if the reality of war had caught her off guard, Cara had been ready for these possibilities since childhood.

“Mama,” Sam choked, reaching for her from the saddle with fear all over his face.

“Everything’s fine,” Kahlan assured him, putting up her hand. “Your mother’s fine.”

“It barely even hurts,” Cara said, even though she reached up and squeezed his and Sophia’s knees.

“Will there be more of them?” Sophia asked as Kahlan wet a cloth and handed it to Cara to clean the gash in her arm.

Cara glanced to Kahlan, who shook her head and said, “Not in this territory. I thought we were far from any place where they might be; perhaps the rift in the underworld has changed their habits.”

“We’re safe,” Cara said firmly, looking her children in the eye. “Trust me.”

“You looked like Maros the Dragonslayer, almost,” Sophia said with a wavering voice.

Cara flushed. “Don’t be foolish, they’re gars.”

“No, Sophie’s right,” Sam said. “It was scary, mama, but you were…”

“Don’t, don’t think about it,” Cara insisted, looking up at him. “Forget it happened, I don’t want you two to have nightmares later. They weren’t anything special. Come now, you look like you thought I was in true danger.”

Kahlan watched as Cara reached up, giving firm swift hugs to each of her pale–faced children. Almost she told Cara that there was something incredible in what she did, even if it was just against forest monsters, but the woman was wounded—Kahlan decided to humor her. With a sigh of relief, and a bit of awe still hanging around her, Cara patched up the small wounds and they continued on. It was just another day on this quest.

But by that evening, as Cara tried to distract her children from the morning’s adventure, Kahlan was once again watching with a wistful feeling in her chest.

Two mornings later, she slipped away from those who slept to wash her face with cool water, and it felt like common sense wiping away emotions. Kahlan took a deep breath as she dabbed her face dry, praying yet again for an easy and quick journey to the end of this mission.

“I would expect the Mother Confessor to have a better guard.”

Gasping, Kahlan turned, hands rising defensively towards the voice she didn’t recognize. It was Shota that stood there, hands at her side and eyes glittering, dark hair falling in an undisturbed curtain around her stern face. Perhaps Kahlan shouldn’t have been surprised, knowing the determination of the woman, but she was.

“You don’t even sleep with a weapon,” the witch–woman commented, with a sharp quirk of one eyebrow.

Kahlan stared. “How did you get here?”

“Is that what matters?” Shota countered.

Out of the corner of her eye, Kahlan saw Cara jerk awake at the noise, quickly rising to her feet. Kahlan pressed her lips together. “No, perhaps not. Why are you here, then?”

Cara walked to Kahlan’s side, hand gripping the hilt of the Sword that she’d automatically swung over her shoulder. Kahlan met her gaze for a brief second to convey that this was all it seemed to be.

Shota eyed them both with chill. “I would hope by now you’ve at least thought of your mission.”

“If we haven’t, I’m sure you’ve considered all that’s meaningful,” Cara said with the short snark of early morning. Kahlan had learned to be cautious of it if not in a good–humoring mood.

Shota glared. “Well, Seeker, it is good that I do not trust in the heroes that legends give authority to.” She flicked a panel of her dress aside to reveal a long pocket, and pulled forth a long black tube. “You will not understand how much effort and risk was put into recovering this, but if you succeed, there will be plenty of time to tell you everything. This is the scroll of Valdere.”

Cara looked to Kahlan with plain ignorance, but Kahlan could only offer confusion back.

“No, of course you don’t know,” Shota intoned to them both. After a pause to let her disdain spread just a little further, she said, “It provides the instructions for how to use the Stone of Tears.”

“That would be useful,” Cara said, loosening her grip on the hilt and settling her weight to one side.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Shota said, raising one eyebrow high. “Now, it can only be read with a night wisp, and they will not come for me…” Her voice trailed off as her sharp eyes glanced back where Cara had come from, dark green blankets on the leafy turf marked by two child–sized lumps, red–gold curls peeping out from the wrinkles. Shota’s breath hissed in, and she pointed with one long–nailed finger. “What is this?”

Cara bristled. “My children.”

“What are they doing here?” Shota demanded.

“There was nowhere else for them to go,” Cara answered, eyes flashing just as sharply and one hand on her hip.

“Darken Rahl almost captured them,” Kahlan said, instinctively reaching out her hand to Cara’s as a representation of her support. By now Cara was quite capable of defending herself, no matter the circumstance, but Kahlan still felt a protective urge and as long as Cara didn’t push her away she would express it.

Shota’s eyes widened and rolled heavenward. “And this is the state of the world.”

Cara frowned, her brow wrinkling. Kahlan bit her lip, realizing that Shota’s words were not untrue. She looked at Cara as she wondered what explanation could be given for their situation. It wasn’t ideal, no, but it didn’t make sense unless one had lived it either.

“So next time, I should value intelligence in the Seeker,” Shota snapped. “You have the entire world counting on you, and yet you bring children and do not keep guard? This is out of the question—I will not be leaving you again.”

“We did not do it on purpose,” Cara started after a surprised blink, clearly ruffled.

Kahlan stepped in instead, arms taut at her sides. “With only the two of us, keeping watch would require that both of us lack sleep every day, which would be just as dangerous.”

“Well, that will be changed,” Shota snorted.

Kahlan opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it tightly. What could she be objecting to? Wasn’t this the way things had been before—a Seeker, a Confessor, and a student of magic? She felt no pain at the comparison, just a selfish twinge to not have their set–up disturbed when it was exactly what Kahlan wanted. But her duty, as always, won out, and so she did not object.

Neither did Cara. “Well, we have a journey to get back to,” she said, giving Shota a long glare. “If you’ve no more delays…”

“Delay? Certainly not,” Shota said. She made no move, standing straight and aloof.

Kahlan couldn’t help but be a little grateful. Shota might attack in words, but her actions were staunch when it mattered. Cara was already moving away to wake her children, and Kahlan followed. Cara had a small frown on her face and a twitch in her hands, but she, like the rest of them, could put aside small emotions for the sake of the greater good. The children were always fairly quiet and self–contained, but those inhibitions took a while to be found in the early morning.

“Who’s that?” Sophia asked, pointing sharply towards Shota and shifting closer to Cara.

Cara mumbled something and Sophia and Kahlan gasped at the same time. “Cara,” Kahlan demurred.

“I said witch,” Cara protested, but her dark eyes said otherwise.

Sophia had a objecting face on as well until Sam giggled. Cara pressed her lips tighter with a frown, and yanked the blankets off of him before he had adjusted his nightshirt. “There’s nothing amusing about this morning,” she declared.

Despite knowing that it was true, all Kahlan saw was the half–smile on Sophia’s face as she looked up at her mother with unconditional interest. Kahlan’s lips quirked, and when Cara noticed and deepened her frown, Kahlan’s attempt to hold in a smile failed utterly.

“Spirits save me from whatever has taken over you three,” Cara said, and tossed the blanket to Kahlan. “We need to go. I’ll fill the water canteens; you can take care of them, since you’re all allied together in any case.” She wiped her hands symbolically down her thighs as she stood.

Kahlan watched Cara walk off sighing, passing by Shota and causing the older woman to get a sharp look on her face. Then Kahlan turned to the necessary task. “Get cleaned up quickly,” she told Sophia and Sam. “That is Shota, and she’ll be traveling with us now, so behave.” Sam yawned, and Sophia dug around in Cara’s pack for her brush. Kahlan stood up and breathed out, knowing that this sense of safety wasn’t good to indulge in.

Shota then walked across the campsite in three long strides, looking incensed, and Kahlan assumed she had the same objection to the little scene. But not when the sorceress opened her mouth and said, “What have you done, you foolish woman?”

Kahlan’s spine straightened automatically at the insult, and yet she sensed something deeper in Shota’s anger than an objection to the moment of happiness. “Excuse me?”

“You compromised the Seeker once again,” Shota said with eyes like burnt coal, too dark to even flash with anger. “After that first quest you did not learn anything. If I had not already checked to make sure you were not spelled, I would think that the Keeper had gotten to you, given how you seem determined to bring his victory.”

Kahlan bit her tongue to keep from saying something drastic to their new ally, especially in front of the children. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Cara is not compromised.”

“You made her fall in love with you,” Shota hissed. “Did you lose your mind?”

Kahlan blinked, anger shaken loose for a second in shock. “What?”

“It was bad enough that she had a family, but she left that behind to take on this duty, so I thought things were secure,” Shota said, shaking her head. “But you—you had to make things worse. Now she loves you, and with you and her children here, she is as unsteady a weapon as a child with a stick.”

It would have been easier if Kahlan had just been confused—instead, a flush of understanding mingled with the shock, leaving her speechless for a few seconds. No one was supposed to say things like that. It had to stay disguised under another word, like ‘caring’ or ‘friendship’, something that could safely describe a Mother Confessor and a Seeker. Kahlan didn’t know what words to grasp for to answer Shota’s bold honesty.

“So, did you tell yourself it was something else?” Shota asked with scorn. “How wise, Kahlan Amnell. It doesn’t exist if you pretend otherwise, of course.”

“Who I love has nothing to do with this mission,” Kahlan said without thinking, but too flustered to care.

Shota stared at her. “I could care less about your feelings at the moment, given as you are not the significant party where the Stone of Tears is concerned. I was speaking of the Seeker.”

Kahlan realized her mistake, and could feel the flush deepen on her face. She wanted to hate Shota for bringing this up in such a confusing way, but there was no hate, only frustration with herself for being so confused in the first place. “Cara is,” she started to say after a deep breath.

“In love, plainly,” Shota finished for her. “If it is mutual, I am not surprised that you’re not aware of it, but there is no argument. And it is infuriating, Kahlan Amnell, given how easily all life could be destroyed if you but falter for one second.”

But despite the sharp eyes on her, Kahlan’s heart flipped at the words. Cara loved her? And it was obvious? This was a shock, yes, but not the kind that Shota believed it to be. Closing her eyes for a second, Kahlan could feel the word resonate through her, the final harmony in the song she’d been singing for weeks now. It shouldn’t have, but she wouldn’t have denied it for the world. Cara, with all her vulnerabilities and hard strengths twisted too tightly together to untangle, was a part of Kahlan’s heart now.

She opened her eyes again, and swallowed as she glanced to the side and saw Cara approaching from far off. Shota was right, she’d opened herself to Cara and Cara had come irrevocably in. Love was sneaky this time, and until now, somehow Kahlan had avoided everything direct enough to make her flush. And now, now was not the time to start. “Shota, you have no authority to speak on this. Criticize our deeds on the quest if you must, but if you dare speak anything else.” A rush of protectiveness for Cara made her step in, narrow her gaze.

Shota didn’t answer, nor did she back down, but Kahlan saw in her eyes that she had no intention of making a scene. Not yet, at the very least.

Cara walked past them to chastise her children for being slow, and Kahlan turned with a deep breath. In a few minutes they would be back to duty, and she needed to gather the Mother Confessor part of herself. But her heart fluttered, and she watched every move of Cara’s, smooth and efficient, with full realization of all the emotions twisting in her throat. She didn’t just want Cara safe, she wanted to hold her and kiss her and share everything and anything. More than Cara’s happiness, Kahlan wanted Cara, and wanted them to be blissfully together. It made her tremble, but it was such a perfect explanation for all her confusion that she couldn’t let it go.

All she could do was bring duty back to the forefront, as always. A piece of her heart felt pain for Richard, just as gone and broken off from her as that part of her heart seemed to be; it even clouded the rest, that without her knowledge she’d gifted so fully to Cara, but it wasn’t enough to guilt her.

Shota grabbed her arm then, whispering tightly, “Remember this, if nothing else: no matter what the outcome of the mission, you two can never be. You are a Confessor. You cannot love, for all our sakes.”

Kahlan watched Cara set Sophia with Sam up in the saddle, watched her turn around for no reason except to look at Kahlan, not breaking her gaze even when she saw the stare returned. It was something Shota could not be allowed to discover, but Kahlan knew without doubt that love was her lifesblood. And this quest with all its danger and uncertainty and heartbreak needed her fully alive.

“Why do you look like that?” Cara asked, brow slightly furrowed as she led the horse alongside Kahlan and indicated that they should start moving. “She may be here, but nothing has changed.”

“Everything has changed,” Shota countered.

But though Cara gave her a look, even as she refused to answer, Kahlan said the same words to herself. They still walked with the same determination, the same mixture of silence and speech. Yet Kahlan’s eyes were fully opened and the world was not the same.

* * * * *

Cara would have preferred to take the horse and ride ahead of them all. She told herself that the witch–woman made her uncomfortable, and it was true enough that she didn’t feel guilty about saying it, but magic wasn’t the answer to every awkward question. Cara felt like she needed a moment on her own, and the more she felt it, the more it grew on her that she hadn’t had one since this journey began. She hated that that fact unsteadied her, and then knew why it did.

Walking side–by–side with Kahlan, with her children, and with Shota, nothing would change. Cara had placed all of herself in this mission and these people, pouring out everything she had with more than just duty in mind. The emotions might drive her insane if she kept giving in, but she kept doing it, again and again, more than fighting or eating or breathing or anything else she did in a day. She’d told herself it was for their sakes, because her life had always been about others and not herself. She’d been lying.

Boiling up inside of Cara now was a fear that she’d sabotaged herself, that she’d done all this with an expectation of something, and for some reason it was a something that wouldn’t come with Shota along. Deepest down was the fear that what she’d wanted was family, a full family, where Kahlan was closer than a sister. It choked at her throat, for more reasons than she could possibly face. Were it something smaller she would use the Sword she’d been gifted to channel her fear into an anger she could express, but it was too overwhelming for that, and so all she could do was clench her hands and want to leave, to breathe by herself.

Instead, the horse kept plodding forward, with Sophia and Sam on his back counting the various kinds of trees alongside them. Shota walked behind, silent and judging. Kahlan was at her side, and if ever her vibrancy had been this distracting before, Cara could not remember. The Mother Confessor seemed brimming with thoughts and feelings, and Cara knew she couldn’t handle them all, not with her own about ready to burst forth disastrously. She kept putting one foot after the other, jaw clenched, hoping for the first time in her life that some outward trouble would arrive to give them something cathartic. A fight would be better than this. Oh how much she had changed, and how little capacity she had to judge whether it was good or not. Gripping tightly to the reins as she walked, she focused on breathing and trying not to think.

The compass kept a steady bearing as always, and Cara prayed to all the spirits that they were getting close. They were nearing the borders of the settled lands, almost to the last large city before the wilds. Thinking about that, and of all the possible places the compass would send them next, kept Cara going until night fell and they finally stopped. Shota made herself useful for one thing at least—setting a fire quickly.

Cara quickly claimed first watch and walked to the border of the site, facing the silent trees. She allowed the darkness to envelop her in a few minutes of oblivion while behind her everyone was preparing for sleep. They would not sleep all together tonight, and it was for safety’s sake, but Cara was grateful to it for something more. Something she couldn’t name, even though she knew it was what had her arms crossed tightly.

It seemed like barely more than a couple minutes after silence fell that there was a rustling, and she heard Kahlan’s familiar footsteps coming up behind her. “Cara, may I speak to you.”

Dread hit her heart. She wasn’t ready for any talk at all. Yet aloud, all she said was, “What is it?”

Kahlan’s hand lightly touched her forearm, and she was like a glimmer of white in the dark as she moved to face Cara. Her face was clear in the moonlight, her eyes deep and full. She was beautiful—and deadly. Sometimes Cara could forget the magic, but she could never look past just how strong Kahlan’s heart and tongue were for breaking down walls. “I can’t sleep another night in silence,” she said quietly, leaving her hand on Cara’s arm, warm and relaxed.

“You are not silent often enough to be worried about that,” Cara pointed out only half–seriously, not gauging her words but just filling the gap before Kahlan could see or hear something that she could latch onto. Cara couldn’t do this right now, whatever it was.

“I know,” Kahlan said, and her hand dragged down to Cara’s, wrapping around her tight fingers. Her eyes rose, gaze as firm as Cara’s felt flighty. “I’ve never said, though, the right words. Even when I almost lost you for good, I didn’t know myself enough to answer with the full truth. But, be against her for any other reason, Shota said it. Today, when she spoke to me, I knew that if I didn’t say them myself it would be a lie. For both of us.”

Cara tried not to draw her hand away or shake with tension, but panic was rising in her chest as she realized that this was important, and that meant succeed or fail. Cara couldn’t let herself fail. It wasn’t the right time—maybe it wasn’t the right life—for a conversation like this, but even saying that would be out of place. As much as she longed for more of Kahlan’s touch, she felt trapped by it in this moment, and couldn’t even say a word.

Kahlan’s face was soft and open as she gave Cara’s hand a slight squeeze. “Cara,” she said, voice trembling for a second. “I love you.”

Cara froze, but didn’t have enough control to keep from a slight gasp, even through her clenched jaw.

“This world is such a dark place,” Kahlan continued, earnest and longing as her eyes didn’t leave Cara’s, even though Cara wanted to look everywhere else but back into such dangerous sincerity. “But I can’t feel guilt or denial anymore. I am not sorry that I left grief behind, but more than anything, I am not sorry that I let my heart lead the way again. It found you, Cara, even though I didn’t plan it. And every time you looked at me, and I saw something mirrored in your eyes, I told myself that it was nothing—but I can’t, now. It will tear me apart, now that I know it for sure. I’m terrified…but Cara, this dance we do isn’t enough for me anymore.”

Cara’s breaths were coming too fast the more Kahlan spoke, and when she stopped and Cara realized that that was it, she broke. Telling herself that any more emotion would be too much was not anything like feeling it as a fact. All the darkness and confusion that had wrestled over her heart still lurked, not moving aside for all this emotion that Kahlan was bringing to the table.

And Kahlan had just declared her love. “Kahlan, no,” Cara said, barely above a whisper, feeling her hand shake as she wouldn’t pull it back from Kahlan’s. “This can’t be, I can’t—” Her heartbeat pounded away at her chest, and a thousand thoughts slammed her mind to tell her that this was her dream come true and the start of another nightmare all at once. It couldn’t be love—not that word—not like this—and she couldn’t explain why, even to herself. “I can’t,” she whispered harshly.

Whatever it was that faltered in Kahlan’s eyes then, it finished the break in Cara’s composure. Before all her walls collapsed and she was left defenseless to all her feelings, Cara turned on a heel and walked away. She gulped in air and tried to focus on the heavy weight of the Sword on her back, telling herself that she was the Seeker, and the Seeker was the master not the victim. None of this was making sense, and nothing she was doing was making sense, but the panicked impulses felt good as she followed them. Even leaving Kahlan standing in the dark with words of love still fresh on her lips. Cara was lost.

* * * * *

Cara found just enough focus to last out her watch, and then forced herself to sleep in hopes that everything would clear up on its own. It didn’t. She woke with a heart tightly bound, and yet no desire to untangle it. Kahlan didn’t look at her in the morning, and didn’t even speak to Sophia or Sam, and for some reason Shota looked more satisfied than Cara had ever seen her.

But worst of all, Cara’s impulse was to run to Kahlan. She just couldn’t let herself do it without knowing why, and she wasn’t ready to think all it through, and even considering that much made her feel sick with guilt. What a pathetic being she was, and to think that Kahlan could ever… If there was an answer to all of it, it wasn’t easy. Not with the pain that had been caused last night. Today, Cara was giving in and taking the easy route.

After a few hours of deadly silent walking, Cara turned around and halted, lips in a tight line before she spoke. “Lansted is only an hour’s walk away by this point, and we’ll need supplies. Since Shota is here to guard in my absence, there is no need for anyone but me to go.”

She wasn’t expecting an objection, and when she didn’t get one, life became as simple as planned. Cara swung her pack down from the saddle and over her back, half disguising the Sword of Truth, and then began walking away. There was no looking back.

In the green solitude of the forest as she trekked down from the mountains towards the last city on their apparent path, there was a guilty peace, but peace nonetheless. Twigs cracked beneath her feet and birds twittered overhead, but of all that mattered there was just Cara. She took deep breaths of the fragrant air, filling her lungs. Her chest ached with the tension of the night before, but she ignored it. She’d always been good at ignoring enough to adapt, regardless of how much she proclaimed to hate denial.

And as her steps led her further and further away from Kahlan, the woods disappearing and turning into a road towards a stone–walled city, Cara wanted nothing more than to go back. Maybe it was the Sword, maybe it was just her own wits, but she knew that somewhere there was a part of her that just wanted to burst for joy in Kahlan’s arms. It was her own history that was holding her back, guilt and loss repeated so many times that she feared it was all she was allowed. She just hadn’t realized how overwhelming it was.

Lansted loomed up at last, and Cara drifted through the streets gathering supplies. The focus felt good for a moment, pushing all emotion out of the way, but a sneaking worry found its way in and asked, what if it was already decided? What if Kahlan would never open up again, after what Cara had done? Cara told herself that such desperate fears would only make everything worse, but a pained look didn’t leave her face. She stuffed her purchases fiercely into her pack and pushed errant curls out of her eyes, vowing that she had to at least speak to Kahlan, even if it was no more than to say that she wasn’t ready to speak.

She didn’t notice the people around her in the market square. With dried food and flint and leather grease and a sharpening stone all gathered together, it was time to go back to the lonely wilds, no matter how stormy the emotions waiting would be. She was the Seeker—she shouldn’t be afraid.

“Excuse me, madam?”

Cara whipped her head around when a hand brushed her shoulder, and found herself looking up into a strikingly beautiful face. The woman who had touched her was slender, but her face was strong, blue eyes and cascading white–blonde hair marking her as something extraordinary even clothed in a simple black robe. “Yes?” Cara asked, turning with caution.

“Your leather is exquisite for its type,” the woman purred, with a voice like raw honey, even if more cool than warm. Her fingers stroked down sun–warmed tan leather of Cara’s arm.

Cara frowned, feeling a tingle of wrongness but not sure if it was from the Sword or just her own (possibly faulty) intuition.

“I’m a bit of a connoisseur,” the woman said with a slight shrug of her shoulders. At least half a lie, but possibly no more than any salesperson in these streets, and then she continued, “But even more so, your weapon…”

Unsure suddenly, Cara tensed.

The woman leaned in, gaze narrowing. “It is the Sword of Truth, right?” she said in a voice barely above a whisper. “I would hope my trackers did not lead me astray when they identified you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cara said tightly, pulling away.

“No, from all I hear, you do not.” Surprised on hearing such dry words, Cara paused in her retreat and stared at the strange woman. Her lips, surprisingly red against her pale skin and hair, curved coolly. “But you need not, as long as you have the Sword. And I should know that object well, given how often I held it in my hands so long ago…”

Recognizing threat in the glitter now in those cold blue eyes, Cara reached for the Sword, her body shifting to fighting stance. Her training came almost instinctively, even with all the personal conflict of before. But her fingers were not halfway around the hilt before she felt a sudden burn to her side and a silent scream escaped her throat. The limb–stopping pain was familiar—an agiel. Her body spasmed as she tried to fight it and strike back.

“Pathetic,” the woman whispered above her head, then swung her arm.

Something collided with Cara’s temple, and then the world went black.

Part 7

Kahlan had never been devastated quite like this. Any pain worse than death had not crossed her mind, and yet she had found it: seeing the panic in Cara’s eyes and the way she pulled away. All the tender emotions that she’d finally surrendered to couldn’t give her strength if she was so wrong in thinking them returned. She’d been so sure—Shota had been sure—but Cara had shut her down without even a pause.

Walking the trail, Kahlan felt emotion mingling with her magic, a swelling pain that was like the opposite of the Con Dar. Instead of the emptiness of grief, or the overwhelming rage sprouting from danger to love, there was a swirling mess of having a loved one close off all doors. Every breath came shakily, every moment Kahlan wondered if she could handle it.

“What ails you?” Shota asked without true concern as they waited for Cara to come back from Lansted.

“Now is not the time,” Kahlan snapped, hands in tight fists at her sides. She kept asking herself what signs she’d missed. Cara had felt so understandable, even with her complicated mixture of softness and gruffness, the mother and the warrior and the woman, strength and vulnerability. Kahlan thought she’d understood her yearning looks. She thought their awkwardness came from the same place.

“This is exactly why relationships are inappropriate for those in your position,” Shota commented.

Kahlan gritted her teeth and did not answer. Her heart was broken along an entirely new line, one that logic and ‘I told you so’ could not fix. As if such things had ever been able to fix love, and yet it had seemed more successful with grief.

Minutes passed and seemed like hours, and Kahlan was almost ready to weep with frustration when hours finally passed. Sam and Sophia had grown restless, and with Shota not in the mood, and Kahlan seeing only dashed hopes in them, the air was growing charged with unrest. And despite everything, what Kahlan wanted most was to have Cara back. It was the stupidest, weakest thing she had ever felt, and as a Mother Confessor she should reproach herself for it. But she missed her, even if she knew her heart could break more with her present.

But by the time the sun started dipping down towards the horizon, worry started battling heartbreak for the prime place in Kahlan’s heart, and won overwhelmingly. Cara should have been long back. When even Shota frowned and expressed concern, fear bloomed fully in Kahlan. This was not the way things were supposed to go.

* * * * *

Cara jerked awake with a sharp intake of breath and immediately flinched. Cold metal dug into her wrists as she hung from chains in the center of a dark room, stripped down to the thin shift that offered no protection from the chill draft making every inch of her skin tense. Her mind jumped to worrying for her children—for Kahlan—before remembering just how she’d gotten here.

She twisted, clenching her hands to feel for a weakness in the chains that held her, trying to see anything in the almost–complete dark of her prison. She couldn’t see the rest of her clothes, her pack, her Sword, anywhere. Fear tasted bitter in the back of her throat at the exposure she felt then, and she let her breath out, trying to relax. She shivered anyway.

It couldn’t have been more than few minutes before she walked through the door. She. The woman in red leather, white–blonde hair now pulled back into a tight braid. She stalked in, and Cara could hear the scream of the agiel at her waist as she slowly paced the room. It made Cara’s heart freeze up just moments before the chaos of her previous emotions split right down the middle, to bring up something clear and distinct and flooding: anger, Long–buried but still potent.

“So, you wake quickly. That is good.” The Mord’Sith moved close to Cara, her smile crooked. “I know, it should not surprise me in someone so renowned as a Seeker of Truth. But you must forgive me, you looked like a soft little thing.” She reached out a finger, brushing a limp blonde curl off Cara’s shoulder.

“What do you want with me?” Cara demanded, breathless in a heady mixture of fear and rage. Constance and Dahlia flashed before her eyes, embodiments of her impeccable childish guilt.

“You’re not asking the questions here,” the woman said with a tightening of her smile. She drew out her agiel and pressed it against Cara’s side until she couldn’t hold in her scream. “If you speak to me, you will call me Mistress, or Mistress Denna at the very least.”

Cara heaved in breaths to ease the pain in her body, making her legs tremble where they hung. “What do you want with me, Mistress Denna,” she coughed out, not believing in the words.

Denna withdrew her agiel and looked at her with a grimace. “At first, I thought nothing. You’re just the Seeker, and what I need is a Lord Rahl. You’re just bait to me, even if Darken Rahl sees fit to put a bounty on your pretty head. But then—I almost had a Seeker pet once. It would ensure my success, and—” her jaw clenched “—I cannot fail again.”

Staring at her with wide eyes, Cara was sure she saw a madwoman more than a torturer. “Darken Rahl?” she burst out in sharp confusion. The agiel drove confusion from her mind with a burst of intense pain, and she choked and couldn’t breathe. “Mistress,” she added in a gasp, just to stop the pain. The word meant nothing.

“I cannot train him, granted, but I can resurrect a trained soul into his body once he is dead by my hands,” Denna said with a burning light in her eyes. “You will just be the extra security then. No one will want to stand against both Lord Rahl and the Seeker.”

Cara was unable to hold her gaze steady as she realized with a pang that Denna might be right. She twitched at the thought of losing herself to this woman, leaving behind not only world–wide disaster but an abandoned family.

“But before anything, I need to know…who you are,” Denna said slowly, raising her fingers to brush hair out of Cara’s face. Cara pulled away, making the Mord’Sith’s gaze tighten. “Are you angry, Cara Mason?” she asked incredulously.

Keeping her lips tightly together, Cara didn’t answer. Her body would probably shiver on touch, but somehow she needed to keep a focus as long as she could. If she lasted long enough, it would only be her life she lost, as Kahlan and her children escaped far away. She stared through Denna and bit down tightly.

Denna scrutinized her face, though she drew her fingers back. Her brow furrowed before she chuckled lowly. “Such a thorough storm of different feelings…you will be grateful to me when I purge you of them. Fear, guilt, worry, caring, all of them are weak. The anger, I admit, is a surprise to me. Do you not know what I am, like the last Seeker?”

Cara’s eyes snapped up then, and her lips parted as she sucked in a breath. “I know who you are,” she said, voice trembling with the force of emotion. The anger flowed through her blood, begging for the Sword of Truth to give it focus, but all she had was words. “I was there when they took Constance, and then Dahlia, to those tombs that you call temples. I shaped my life to be the opposite of what you are.”

The Mord’Sith blinked, leaning her weight slightly on her heels. “Is that so.”

The cool in her captor’s stance pushed Cara to foolishness. She spat at Denna’s face. The agiel was drawn before the sound stopped its slight echo in the room, and dug into the small of her back. Cara cried out with the pain, but she only regretted that she hadn’t saved the action for a better moment. Every part of her throbbed with the stabbing sensation, and her body twitched before Denna drew her agiel back again.

“This makes things so much easier,” Denna said, looking straight into her eyes as Cara panted for an easy breath. “Anger already in place. And though I must always combat the Mother Confessor, at least this time I need not deal with foolish love.”

Cara couldn’t help it—she twitched at that, and bit the inside of her lip. The memory of Kahlan hurt more than the agiel, as it should.

Denna leaped to understanding. “Oh? Then there is love?” When Cara refused to answer, shutting her eyes for a second, she heard Denna’s quick intake of breath. “It is more complicated than that, I see. She loves you, you think, but you don’t love her back? No, more than that. That pain in your eyes…”

“I am not ashamed to love her,” Cara interrupted, incapable of not being defensive.

“No, just terrified,” Denna purred, not breaking her stride. “Of her touch, and all that love means when it comes to Kahlan Amnell.”

Cara shouldn’t have met her gaze and held it with such failure to understand. She always revealed too much, even with every muscle tight in her expression.

“Oh…” Denna said with exaggerated revelation. A darkness flooded her cool blue eyes. “So this fear comes from self–pity then? Oh, Cara Mason had a difficult life, she’s afraid of losing love. How touching.”

The gnawing in Cara’s heart made it all too plain that, frustrating as it was, Denna was right again. She was trying to be right, trying to rip into Cara’s mind before moving on to her body. And it would have worked, except that this was the wrong topic to have picked when facing the Seeker. Cara couldn’t help but see the twisted truth flashing out of Denna’s eyes, and it pierced straight to the memories at the root of all her anger. Mord’Sith were not born. For a minute, breathing hard, she looked on Denna and wondered bitterly and against her will where she had come from.

Denna hissed at her. “Don’t look at your mistress like that,” she snapped, backhanding Cara.

Cara hated how much the action showed that something was under the outward violence that could be affected. “Why do you do this?” she asked recklessly, not knowing what else to do with the conflicting anger. She remembered Dahlia, how sweet she’d been, and couldn’t help but picture Denna as a child being tortured. To hide the pain such an image caused, she was bold like she never had been. “Do you think that you will somehow gain respect by ruling over D’Hara as an apparent sidekick?”

“Silence,” Denna demanded, hitting her again, splitting Cara’s lip. But her eyes were awash with self–hatred for a long enough moment, betraying too much.

“You were cast out,” Cara said, licking the blood from her lip. It made her shiver, but all she could see in her head was Dahlia, and the wish that someone could have done the same to her before she’d been sent to her death. Done that and more, perhaps, enough to save her. “And yet you’re…using tricks to get back in? Isn’t that the equivalent of begging?”

The rage on Denna’s face, making her tremble, was apparently too much for any direct action. “You cannot possibly understand,” she finally answered.

Cara stared at her, and hated that she did. “Simple duty. They took it from you, and your whole life was upturned.”

Denna tipped her head to one side, bringing the agiel closer to Cara and refusing to answer her words. Each choice only proved the points that Cara had never wanted to make. More so, she had never wanted to identify with a creature like that, and could hardly bear the parallels that she could make—duty to Darken Rahl, duty to family, it was not the same, but worse, because it had not been forced on Cara. The loss of that first duty had been replaced with something else for Cara, but not for Denna, and it was impossible not to imagine what that would feel like. A need for duty was a harsher mistress than Denna could ever be. The Mord’Sith eyed her the closer she placed her agiel.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Cara snapped, even though her belly clenched at the thought of the intense agony of it.

“No, just the Mother Confessor,” Denna said, touching the tip of the agiel to Cara’s belly.

Cara shut her eyes as the pain flooded her body, and she gasped. Kahlan. Why did it all draw back to Kahlan? All Cara’s fears from childhood, confirmed by death after death and tragedy after tragedy, made her not want to even come close to her in that way. So little of her life was left intact, she was terrified that she’d ruin it if she tried to change things. And then Kahlan had done it first, and it made Cara remember just how much she needed to direct certain things.

The pain wracked her mind just as she realized what exactly she’d done, and she bit the inside of her lip with a moan. She was a fool, a weak fool who had lashed out in her panic out of an instinctive need for control. And she’d hurt the woman she loved. Now she was in chains, at the whim of one who thought that control was what she needed as well. Cara realized that she hated the way fear worked like this.

“Stop,” she choked out, body spasming.

In astonishment, Denna did. “What did you say?”

“I said stop,” Cara said. Looking at the woman before her, a Mord’Sith on the surface, Cara saw what she hadn’t wanted to see. And as much as she wanted to stay silent, words were the most effective language now. “They tried to take away who you were with your title, but they didn’t. You don’t need to be on their side again to have it back—you already do. You can’t fool me, even if you can break me.”

Denna’s grip tightened around the agiel, but she whispered, “Why is it always a Seeker? What is it about that bit of steel that makes you look for something better? As if a Mord’Sith could be a better person.”

Not caring if she had meant it to be a sarcastic declaration of her elitism, Cara held her gaze with all the force of will she had. “No one can just be. You have to choose. And spirits, you’d better be strong.”

Denna snarled. “How dare you say I’m weak.”

“I’m not,” Cara shot back with a glare. Her hands clenched in the shackles, waiting for the attack to hide the vulnerability and not caring. Everything she cared about was far away from here, beyond her reach because she’d put it there, as if she’d tried to destroy any chance of happiness before the universe did it for her. She was a fool.

But Denna stared at her like she was foreign, and the lack of control on her face made it look almost soft. Almost childlike. And Cara ached without wanting to. “Why do you waste your words?” Denna demanded, pretending that there was no tremble in her voice.

“Because I don’t give up,” Cara answered, feeling her arms clench up as she stared at the woman who had once been an innocent child.

“Except on love?” Denna offered back, a barb to lessen the impact of truth on herself.

“Except love,” Cara admitted, bitterly. “No one fails to make mistakes. Titles don’t fix that. Even if you become a true Mord’Sith again, it won’t change the fact that you hate that you’ve failed and don’t want to do it again.”

“This is not about me,” Denna retorted, but her voice was tight, as if holding back a scream.

Cara laughed bitterly. “I wish. But we aren’t different enough, are we? If I hate you too much, I will be hating myself. Give it up, Denna, and stop trying to train yourself to be someone you don’t want to be.”

“This has been quite enough for our first session,” Denna said under her breath, hands clenching and unclenching. “I know you now—I can plan your training in full.”

“You don’t need to serve anyone to have what you want,” Cara threw at her. “Why don’t you understand that?”

“Because it’s not true,” Denna snapped back. Then her eyes flashed with anger at herself, and she drew the agiel, about to punish Cara instead.

Suddenly a blast came through the wall and sent Denna flying, head cracking against the pavement. Cara’s lungs felt knocked out of her chest and she swung on the chains. She’d barely caught breath when the door was kicked open and Kahlan came in, daggers drawn. Cara stared at her like she was a dream—again, she’d come for Cara.

“Cara!” Kahlan cried on seeing her, as Shota moved behind her to Denna’s side, mumbling words of magic while the Mord’Sith was not able to block them. Kahlan sheathed her daggers, swiftly coming to Cara’s side with aching worry on her face. “Oh Cara, you’re safe.”

“What are you doing here?” Cara asked, frowning. “You should have expected a trap if you heard who’d taken me. You should have run.” Cara didn’t say it aloud, but she was afraid that Kahlan should always run, and the biggest fear of all was that Kahlan would never run, no matter how much it hurt to stay. Cara could see the marks of pain on Kahlan’s face, more sharp than any physical wounds, and despised herself for putting them there.

“Don’t say that,” Kahlan murmured. “The children are safe, so we could not do otherwise than this.

Her lips were tight as she loosened Cara’s chains, releasing her to drop down, falling into Kahlan’s arms because she was standing there. The soft feel and smell of her made Cara want to cling tightly and never let her go, and wished that she had the right. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, breath hitching as she looked up at Kahlan.

The pained eyes looked confused. “This isn’t your fault, Cara.”

“No, it is,” Cara said, finding the strength to stand, grip Kahlan’s arm as she fought for the honest words. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. I do love you, but I was afraid of what it would do to us. I didn’t know if I had the strength to gamble what we had on something…” She shook her head, swallowing the choking pain in her throat. “I was a coward, like so many times before. I should not have hurt you.”

“Cara, no,” Kahlan protested, suddenly pulling her closer, crushing Cara to her chest with a fierce hug. Cara could hear the choke in Kahlan’s voice, almost on the brink of tears. “Oh Cara, don’t think I don’t understand,” she whispered. “I thought—”

“You thought I wasn’t an idiot who didn’t know how to handle a simple conversation,” Cara murmured, even as she wrapped her arms around Kahlan’s waist. “Understandable, but so very wrong, Kahlan.”

Kahlan laughed through brimming tears and held on tighter for a second.

“I’m sorry,” Cara whispered again, feeling her eyes burn with the guilt of accepting this.

“I forgive you, with all my heart,” Kahlan answered.

“I love you,” Cara then murmured. “Spirits save me from disaster, but I love you.” Standing there, she forgot everything else, shivers running up her spine when Kahlan’s fingers tangled in her hair and she held her back and knew that there was nothing more perfect in the entire world. A moment longer, and she might forget fear entirely.

“I should have known,” Shota’s dry voice drifted across the chamber.

They both pulled slightly away at the same time, though Kahlan left her arm around Cara’s waist.

“This probably means doom for us all,” the witch–woman said with a sharp look. “Foolish women!”

“Who is being foolish?” Cara demanded. “Those who acknowledge the truth? I expect more of you, Shota.”

“You have a duty to keep your focus on the mission,” Shota snapped at her.

“Duty is not enough,” Cara retorted. She looked to Kahlan, saw her eyes damp but clear again, and felt her expression soften. “Duty will kill us from the inside out if we ignore certain truths.”

“Don’t flatter yourself on your newfound wisdom, Cara Mason,” Shota declared. “We will see who is proven right in the end, if there is any life left to bear witness. Now, Mother Confessor, you should confess this woman to make sure she has not given us away.”

But as Kahlan stepped forward toward Denna, who had not yet stirred, an urge to speak leaped in Cara’s chest again. “Wait,” she said, jaw tight as she raised a hand.

Kahlan and Shota looked to her in shock.

Cara, staring back at them, didn’t know quite what she was doing. Except that she had just received forgiveness she didn’t earn, and all she could see in Denna was someone who needed it far more. She couldn’t hate her, not knowing what she was and certainly not with her own twisted past. “Don’t confess her yet,” she finally said.

“What are we supposed to do with her, then?” Kahlan asked with a frown. “If we let her go, she could follow us.”

“What are you doing here?” Shota asked suspiciously.

“Giving her the chance I would have wanted to give Dahlia,” Cara said sharply, suddenly realizing that that was the answer. And it felt only as awkward as it should, but she chose to stay firm. “She serves no one, and—” She broke off.

“And what, you want to recruit her?” Kahlan asked, hard confusion on her face.

“I don’t know,” Cara admitted, glancing down at the woman in red leather. Looking back up, she waved her hand at the other two. “But—maybe there is something else. I thought I saw something, maybe we should try.”

Shota and Kahlan shared a look that seemed worried, but Kahlan nodded. “Very well.”

“Not here, though,” Shota said. “We should get as far from here as possible.” With that, she dragged Denna’s unconscious form and starting moving towards the door, leaving the other two standing together.

Cara breathed out, and then felt Kahlan’s hand on her shoulder. She looked up, for a moment feeling defenseless, and even more when she saw the relief finally prominent on Kahlan’s face. Her hand slipped around to the back of Cara’s shoulder as if to walk by her side out of the chamber, but there was something Cara needed to do first. Something that would put the final nail in fear’s coffin.

“Kahlan,” she murmured, and then reached up to pull her in for a kiss.

It felt like a small explosion, the catharsis of everything, and they both gasped. But then Kahlan’s hands cradled Cara’s face, and Cara’s lips were frantic and greedy, and they let the kiss drown out everything. Touch had never been this precious before; Cara breathed Kahlan in like she was air itself, and felt a hole inside her fill after more than thirteen years of holding nothing.

A few seconds more and she had to catch her breath, chest heaving, heart pounding. The hint of a smile crossed her face when she looked up into Kahlan’s eyes, realized that they were each other’s now. Kahlan’s smile was wide enough to brighten the world, and Cara felt like she knew for the first time that they would succeed with everything.

* * * * *

Despite burdens both physical and mental, Kahlan could have flown or sung as they left Lansted. Sam and Sophia were waiting in the place they’d been left, and flew into Cara’s arms as soon as she appeared. As they hugged her, Cara reached out a hand for Kahlan, and she felt like laughing as she was pulled in to join in the embrace. They were to be her family at last.

As always, though, Shota pointed out necessities. Cara had her brown leather coat on again, and the Sword of Truth strapped across her back, and Kahlan was struck by the way she looked at Denna then. Shota had cast a dark spell over her, blocking all her abilities, but she had not woken yet. And there was firm pity on Cara’s face that Kahlan didn’t know how to place.

“She wants her own life,” Cara said quietly, arms crossed as Kahlan approached her with an unspoken question. “She all but said it, and when I repeated it to her, she couldn’t strike back.”

“So she is conflicted,” Kahlan said with a frown. “But Cara, Mord’Sith…”

“I know, their training is extreme,” Cara said, jaw tight. “Believe me, Kahlan, I was told many times.”

Kahlan bit her lip on remembering what Cara had once told her of her history. The look on her face now was not wishful thinking, though. It was hard, and somehow Kahlan felt that it was born of the truth of spirit in her.

“We have the advantage,” Cara said with a sigh, gripping her own arms. “If there is anything truthful in her, we will see it. If not, you can carry out her sentence without fear. Since she is no match for you, and certainly not Shota, it is a risk worth taking. For the sake of the person she was before they broke her.”

Though she wanted to have some response to that, Kahlan didn’t. Instinct had no good judgment here, and Cara might be right. Kahlan had seen what Mord’Sith did to break their slaves, and even though Denna had had Cara for only a few hours, there were still only the slightest marks on her. She’d been soft on her—and it would not be just to ignore that entirely.

Yet Shota was right when she said this was foolish. Cara, her spine straight, paid her no mind anyways and moved towards Denna. She crouched by her side where she was propped up against a tree trunk with bound hands, and put out her hand with only slight hesitance to nudge the white–blonde’s shoulder.

Denna came to faster than most, shifting her bound hands to her side before her eyes had opened. There was no agiel, of course. With a gasping grimace, Cara had removed it and put it in the bottom of a saddlebag. “What are you doing?” the Mord’Sith asked now, with careful words.

“Helping you not fail,” Cara said bluntly, cocking her head.

Denna’s eyes darted around. “What can you possibly mean?”

“The Keeper of the Underworld is trying to destroy all life,” Cara said. “I don’t think your ambitions took that into account. So, instead of allowing you to fail at them yet again, or even let Kahlan confess you, I’m giving you your only other option. If you are who I think you are…well, it’ll be better for all of us.”

Denna ground her teeth, still looking about.

Cara reached out and tugged the bindings on her hands free. “Thankfully, we have a witch–woman who is not afraid of black magic. Not only are your powers inhibited, but a barrier has been placed over you so that you cannot cause any harm towards me, Kahlan, Shota, or my children.”

Denna’s eyes widened. “What?”

Cara held her gaze for a long moment without speaking, and Kahlan could see the worries running through her head before she pushed them aside with stubbornness. “I’ve let you go. You can leave, do what you wish. If we succeed, you’ll have all the time you need. Just no powers. Or…you can stay with us, help us on the mission, and if you prove yourself or at least fool us for long enough, we’ll give you back what you want.”

“This is some sort of mockery,” Denna declared, back straightening.

Cara rose to her feet slowly, still looking down at Denna. “I have no interest in mocking you. You were right about one thing—I was pathetic to be afraid. Well, I should be afraid that I’m imagining what I see in you, but I’m choosing not to be. I’ve no physical reason to fear you now, so I’m going to take the chance and do what I think is right, even if it may not be the sharpest choice.”

“I am not going to serve you,” Denna spat. “No matter what spell you’ve placed on me.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Cara said, crossing her arms. “Just serve yourself, Denna. Figure out what that actually means. It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but it matters to me, and I’m not going to give up on that.”

Denna got to her feet, simmering. “I am not your lost friend,” she said, with unhealthy emphasis on the final word.

“Oh, I know that,” Cara answered, not breaking her gaze. “She’s dead. Just like everyone else. But everyone matters—that’s the truth that I’m not allowed to forget.”

Kahlan had been watching with slight astonishment, both at the evasive responses of Denna and at Cara’s strange stubbornness about this issue. But as Cara turned her back on Denna, with a determination on her face that came from a task carried out well, Kahlan felt a strange kind of pride in the woman she loved. She had no idea the extent to which Cara would carry this out…but in an odd way, she thought it might work.

They all stood. Kahlan with Sam and Sophia by her side. Shota standing with hands ready just in case Denna tried to test her new magical boundaries. Cara looking at Kahlan as if there was nowhere else to look. And Denna—just standing and looking lost. Mord’Sith were never supposed to look that, and Kahlan was starting to see what Cara thought she saw.

Denna’s breath was coming a little too heavy, a little too fast. However much her training might have supressed them, emotions still dwelt in the heart of every Mord’Sith, and they were appearing now. Her eyes darted around, calculating and desperate all at once, before she finally spoke, making Cara turn around to meet her gaze. “Given that I have nowhere else to go, since I can have no Seeker to bribe Lord Rahl into appearing with,” she said, with a shrug that was meant to be nonchalant, “I suppose I should take up your idiotic offer.”

“Good,” Cara said shortly. She turned with a quick sigh to Kahlan. “We can go now.”

Kahlan watched Shota and Denna give each other the evil eye, and then looked back at Cara and the children—her family. For some reason, it all felt safe again. “This will be interesting,” she said, with a bit of a smile.

Cara’s business–filled gaze softened a bit. “I hope so,” she said with a slight smirk and a look that made Kahlan long to be alone with her.

For now, though, she took her hand and helped Sophia and Sam onto the horse. Despite the hodgepodge that was their team, as soon as Cara walked ahead, open compass in her hand again, Kahlan felt that it was somehow right. It was not like old times—but neither better nor worse, just different. So strangely different that she could hardly believe it, but she did believe in love and strong will and hope. The Keeper would fall by their hands, even if it was never meant to happen quite like this.

Part 8

The first night with her new captors, Denna tried to knock out the sorceress as soon as they’d all gone to sleep and the Mother Confessor on watch was looking the other way. She’d hoped that the barrier was simply pain that, as a Mord’Sith, she could work through. But she swung downwards with a small log and the hand holding it just stopped short as if she’d hit a wall. No pain, just impossibility. Denna lowered herself back to the bedroll that had been provided and calmly brooded.

This would be the material of nightmares, if she’d ever had them.

After a sufficient amount of sleep, Denna sat with her back against a tree and scrutinized. The Mother Confessor was just how she remembered in character, but her appearance was far too rounded to be intimidating. She bore the heavy weight of grief and extra responsibility as well, and it kept her from seeing entirely clearly. But what was really her problem was the overlay of love. Just as before. The Seeker, on the other hand, was entirely new to Denna. She was a fireball always waiting to explode, always burning beneath the surface, held down by guilt and fear that fed into her dangerous passion. And she thought too much and too little; her love was volatile but secure.

The children were irrelevant, and the witch was only there to secure the success of the broader mission. Denna had been skeptical of the truth of that mission at first, but she was no fool, and nothing added up to indicate delusion. Especially not the banelings that had attacked Lansted weeks ago.

The Seeker and the Mother Confessor woke early and sparred, weapons flashing and crashing at lightning speeds, with a flip here and there and fabric swirling with every move. Denna sat and watched, disgusted, eventually unable to continue when they got too close for necessity, adding teasing affection to something that should remain pure and untainted by such weakness. Denna knew she could just walk off and forget the spell and settle for a life without her magic–deflection powers. She could. They’d made it perfectly clear.

But that would admit defeat. Denna was still a Mord’Sith, and she would not walk off with anything less than her due, even if it meant attaching to such a group as this. This deal with them would give her both powers and pride back in the end, and then she’d carry on. Patience would give her success.

When the Mother Confessor and the Seeker finished whatever physical intimacies they considered an appropriate end to their sparring session, they returned to the camp and roused everyone. Denna had already freshened herself and redone her braid, at dawn as always. She had no need for breakfast, certainly not this late, and did not sit by the fire while the quick meal was held.

The Mother Confessor watched her whenever the Seeker was not looking. It amused Denna, much more than the Seeker’s reckless nonchalance and the witch’s irritating dismissal. Kahlan knew who Denna was, who she’d had been and who she’d always be. She trusted her new Seeker too much, but her blue eyes still had the same edge. Her hands were always ready to plunge a dagger into Denna’s heart.

With more efficiency than Denna would have expected, the group gathered camp together and began their journey again. Kahlan walked ahead, her pregnancy setting the pace as she led the horse. Shota took up the rear, unsurprisingly, and Denna found herself walking alongside the Seeker. When she saw Seeker’s face stay grim, Denna decided to be amused. After all, out of all of them, Denna had the least to fear. No one was hunting her, not even Rahl at this point, and she had no handicap when it came to fighting, either physical or emotional.

After an hour of hiking over stony hills, though, the silence vanished all in a frustrating moment. “Why all of D’Hara?” Cara asked her suddenly, with a furrowed brow.

“Excuse me?” Denna answered, blinking with slight offense at being spoken to.

Cara looked at her from under her brows, dark stubbornness there. “You thought I would ignore you?”

“Given that you don’t have the authority to do otherwise, yes,” Denna answered with barely a pause. She hid any suspicions about what possible motivation the Seeker could have.

“You planned on torturing me,” Cara pointed out as she walked with long strides, one eyebrow slightly raised. “Given that I didn’t kill you for it, that does give me some allowance to speak.”

Denna felt a little simmer of anger at the dryness of her tone, something no one in Cara’s low position should have, but mingled with it was a sense of challenge. “I did not care enough to torture. I intended to break you.”

“Then you planned poorly,” Cara said shortly, with a slight snort. “And your plan to take over D’Hara, I don’t see the reason for it.”

“You can’t understand how a Mord’Sith thinks,” Denna said steelily.

Cara looked at her with sharp eyes. “So explain it. You and your sisters have been on the borders of my life since I was a child, and I’m not one to just shrug it off. I plan on understanding—first of all, why D’Hara? If you wanted power, a village is much less likely to revolt.”

“Cara,” Kahlan called back from up ahead, with slight surprised reproach.

Denna smirked instead of clenching her teeth in irritation. “You would have approved?”

Cara pressed her lips together, glared slightly. But all she said was a firm, “Answer the question, hypothetical as it clearly is. Kahlan told me what you were, how much power you once had. How was that not enough?”

Denna’s body demanded for her to hold her agiel and make the Seeker pay for her insolence—or more so, for her almost pity–filled desire to understand Denna. “I could have gone back to the Mord’Sith,” she mused out loud, voice emotionless. “After Darken Rahl was defeated and Richard Rahl left them be, they were without a strong leader. I had ruled them before, I could have taken my place again. But I knew it would not be for long. Darken Rahl would return, or Richard would become just like him, and my power would have little behind it compared to our childhood training to believe in the might of the Lord Rahl.”

Cara’s face was tight as she walked, hands clenched and brow heavy. Denna remembered what she’d said about her childhood friends, and hated her for her worry and attempted sympathy. If that was all the reason she’d “saved” Denna, Denna swore that it would not end well for her.

“So you planned for the Lord Rahl so that you might have authority with no worries.” Cara shrugged slightly.

“I’m sure that’s how it looks to the simple–minded,” Denna said coldly.

Cara met her eyes with a look that was not so much defiance as fearlessness. She refused to see Denna as a challenge, either on this mission or ever. Her solid stance, her clear outlook, they didn’t allow for intimidation except of her own making. Only Cara, and perhaps Kahlan or her children, could bring Cara down. Denna would have been impressed by her will, had not Denna’s ambitions been trapped by this group.

At least they kept the children away from her. The day when no one feared for their children, their daughters, around Denna, was the day that life ceased to be worth living.

* * * * *

Days later, Kahlan didn’t want to think about getting out of the cool stream. With the first fluttering kick in her womb, the next stage of her pregnancy had been marked. Her body was swelling more than anticipated with the physical exertion, and her clothing could not be let out any more. Kahlan generally felt weary, and here, suspended in the water, she felt free again. With one hand on her bare water–cradled belly, she closed her eyes and focused on life and the hope that their journey might end soon.

She opened her eyes on hearing an approach, and saw Cara walking down the bank, folded dark cloth in her hands. Even with her leather coat and boots discarded, leaving her in a simple shift, she looked beautiful. Kahlan found that the days passed easier when she could acknowledge that simple fact, and know it was welcomed. Cara could never replace any of Kahlan’s losses, but Kahlan wasn’t looking for a replacement. Cara was something unique, and just what Kahlan wanted. As she came closer, Kahlan smiled.

“Are you coming in?” she asked, moving slightly closer to the riverbank.

Cara cocked her head and took a breath, pausing before she spoke. “I trusted Shota to watch the children for a time—and I brought you this.” She held out the fabric in her arms. “We don’t have time to alter any of your garments, but this should make up for it. It’s a maternity gown.”

Kahlan stared at her for a second, a moment of complete surprise capturing her attention before a rush of warm affection spread through her entire body and made her flush. “Oh Cara…”

“I knew you’d be thinking about it,” Cara said with a shrug. “I picked it up at the last town.”

Kahlan couldn’t hold in a wide smile. “I would be a mess without you, wouldn’t I?” When Cara’s natural gravity broke for a second and she had to bite back a smirk, Kahlan beckoned with her hand, saying laughingly, “Come here, you.”

With a smile that was intoxicating to Kahlan in its reserve, Cara slipped out of her shift, leaving her body curtained only by her soft hair. Had circumstances been different, both personal and environmental, such a glorious sight would have been beheld by Kahlan much more often. But she could not imagine ever growing tired of Cara.

The Seeker moved smoothly into the water, a grin catching her face when she caught the look in Kahlan’s eyes. Cara reached for her hands, pulling her in a loose embrace in the stream, warm hands splayed at the base of Kahlan’s back. “You know I would do anything for you,” Cara murmured, pressing her forehead against Kahlan’s.

“I do,” Kahlan answered, savoring the feel of their bodies pressed together and breathing in Cara’s incredible presence. “And no, you don’t need to say it, but I love to hear you speak. Especially when it’s with words that seem born of my own heart.”

“You will spoil me with such affection, you know,” Cara said, with the hint of a chuckle in her voice as she cupped Kahlan’s face.

Kahlan didn’t bother answering such insecurities with words, knowing that to Cara the actions would mean more. She kissed her with all she had, ignoring whatever dangers lay with even such a declaration. Too much of her life had been spent worrying about love—until the question had to be answered, Kahlan refused to angst.

Cara’s side of the kiss was a little more eager, almost clinging to Kahlan. Not like she feared Kahlan would be pulled away, but as if she feared she could not hold on long enough. Her desire was almost trembling, complete and yet with a tiny portion always unsure. Until their journey was completed, until they had time, until all other worries could be set aside, this was all they could have.

“We shouldn’t leave them any longer,” Kahlan murmured after she broke the kiss, still pressed against Cara and feeling the tingling warmth all over.

Cara merely hummed, kissed her lightly again, and stepped out of the river all gleaming and perfect to offer a hand to help the slightly–more–awkward Kahlan.

While being helped into the dress, in between distracting thoughts about the lightly–calloused pads of Cara’s very talented fingers, Kahlan couldn’t help but think of the future. Four months had already passed by—four months for them to grow complacent, for Kahlan’s pregnancy to grow more serious, for Darken Rahl to gather armies, for the Keeper to defeat them. Each little change in their lives was added to the tally, and Kahlan worried about how long it could grow.

“Do you regret this?” Kahlan asked as she and Cara sat slightly aside from the rest of the camp.

“Regret what?” Cara asked, with a sudden slight worry on her face and a flinch in her hand that had been resting on Kahlan’s.

“Oh, not us,” Kahlan assured swiftly, realizing her ambiguity. Although she wasn’t sure how Cara could have jumped to the conclusion, given that morning alone. “I meant what our mission has become.” She nodded towards the rest.

Cara frowned, but moved slightly closer to Kahlan on the log. “I don’t see that we had a choice for how it turned.”

Kahlan didn’t answer at first. She saw all the choices laid out as if in a map, but they were impossible ones. They could have chosen not to draw close, but how that could have happened, Kahlan couldn’t picture. Just as they could have left Cara’s children with someone else, which would have kept them from attracting Shota’s sharp attention. If that had all happened, Kahlan had to think, Denna would have been confessed. She sighed, forcibly drawing her eyes away from the blonde Mord’Sith, who with her every move reminded her of Richard begging just to be confessed.

“What is it?” Cara asked.

Kahlan turned to her, feeling the conflict of emotion burning in her eyes. “Why her?”

Cara didn’t look surprised at the question, which Kahlan had half suspected. But she withdrew her gaze to stare at her hands as they lay in her lap. Her fingers clenched for a moment before she said quietly, “I can’t hate her.”

Kahlan almost said without thinking ‘I can’, but what she read in Cara made her stop. Not for Cara’s sake, but for her own. If anything, she and Cara should know how life could catch one up in an inescapable torrent, and in her mind Kahlan knew that the Mord’Sith were no different. They were stolen as children, trained against their will, and Kahlan should have been able to see that even in them now. But with her ability to read a person thwarted, Denna felt hard as stone as if her training had made her unbreakable. Even though Kahlan knew that that couldn’t be possible.

“She doesn’t regret everything she’s done,” Kahlan pointed out, after all other words failed her.

“As if that isn’t obvious,” Cara said, with a bit of a snort to break up the tension. “But she wants to. Freedom, goodness, a part of her wants them achingly. But she was not trained to lead herself, and so she stumbles.”

Cara’s words were so simple that Kahlan looked at her with astonishment. “Then you believe…?”

“I see potential,” Cara said shortly, turning again to meet her eyes. Indicating the Sword of Truth with a shrug of one shoulder, she added, “I cannot help but see.”

Kahlan lowered her eyes, biting her lip. The only thought that kept nagging at her was that they might not have time for potential. Time—it was always time. Misuse of it, not only with Denna but with every indulgent touch and kiss that she and Cara shared, just begged for disaster.

* * * * *

Denna grew swiftly weary of hate. Two weeks of her predicament, trapped here by no more than her own pride, and she couldn’t see how these pathetic people were worth anything that resembled emotion. Life was cruelly ironic—none of them were the chosen ones, they had only just happened into their positions after a trail of bodies left no other option, and hobbled their way through the roles with insane stubbornness.

She kept waiting for them to trip and fall flat on their faces, and grew weary of that when they failed to lower themselves to her expectations. So she decided to stick to ambivalence, and keep her own part of this mission as full of ease as she could make it. She deserved it.

“Have you always been accustomed to such slop?” she asked with a smoothly raised eyebrow, lifting a spoon from the stew and watching the thick meal glop off of it.

“I cook for necessity, not taste,” Cara muttered. Sam giggled at that, and Sophia added a superfluous, “Yeah.” The two of them were stupidly optimistic about everything.

Kahlan and Shota never had anything to say to Denna, but in this case it was not hard to read in their expression that they also could care less about food. Denna refused to finish the stew, and as soon as they all settled down and Shota took watch, she slipped away from the camp armed only with her boot dagger. Finding a rabbit warren was not difficult, and Denna relished carefully slitting its throat. She skinned the beast, cooked its flesh over the embers, and ate well before sleeping.

The next morning, when Kahlan awoke with a mumbled question for what could possibly smell so good, Denna hid the quirk of her lip as she realized the subtle dominance it gave her. Her talents were far beyond theirs, but if this was the only way she could show it now, she would find a way to make it work. The days were not strenuous, and when they settled down again at dusk, Denna was quick to prepare the meal. The children complimented her; the others did not throw their meals away, which was enough.

But when Cara tossed her pack across the camp to Denna in the morning, nodding for her to load up the horse, Denna decided that things could go too far. She set the pack down and went off to do her own business. The next day, Cara did the same. So did Denna. And it happened again. And again. Denna suspected that the Seeker thought of it as a game at first, but those hard green eyes kept telling her otherwise. Finally, because it was a distraction that neither of them needed, she said no word and loaded the pack onto the horse herself with a purse of her lips.

Then she took up the night watch. After all, if her thoughts kept her from sleep some of the time, she might as well do something more productive. Even if it was only her own skin that she cared about, of course.

Cara was still the only one of them to speak to her, and even that was mostly in short, curt sentences. Yet Denna lived in fear of the longer questions and the piercing looks, that somehow she could not force herself to ignore. She hated the institution of Seekers and how well they poked at truth.

“You trust us,” Cara pointed out one day, as they entered a river valley.

“You’re an idiot,” Denna answered as a biting jab.

“Not even remotely,” Cara answered without blinking. “But you do, if only to keep a guard over you while you sleep.”

Denna refused to let Cara see the itching up her spine when they had “conversations” like these, and instead answered coolly, “Believe me, anyone coming for this group would not even see past the three of you to me.”

Cara’s answer was a direct look up and down Denna’s leathers, and the unspoken point was taken as such.

“I have time,” Denna told her, but didn’t know why she bothered. Her thoughts drifted to the agiel she didn’t have, to her white leathers that she’d prepared for her success, to the people of D’Hara and their easily swayed minds. They were weak—they needed her just as she needed to rule them. As she took the next step, though, she realized bitterly that Cara had been right. She trusted them to remove the spell on her when they were “done”, give her all her powers back. “Where is my agiel?” she asked with tight words.

Cara raised an eyebrow.

Denna’s grating breaths came with each strike of her boot against the soil. Wherever they had stashed it before they dragged her along, she could find it someday. And kill. Preferably Darken Rahl, but she wasn’t picky either. Seething at the situation she was in, Denna focused on the compass they were following, as if she could will it to bring them to the Stone of Tears faster.

They’d left the hills behind and were traveling through a forest in a valley, the sun failing to peep through the loosely populated trees because of the cloud cover. It was all frustratingly quiet until the rain started. Denna’s tongue twisted methodically inside her mouth as the fat droplets started peppering both them and the soil. For her and Cara, the water just rolled from hair to leather and then splashed onto the ground, but Kahlan didn’t even have her leather corset any longer, just a dark blue gown surrounded by her white Confessor garb, widely laced to accommodate her form. She and the children pulled out cloaks as the sprinkling turned into a dark storm.

The sky went dark, even though it was midday. These sparse trees offered very little cover to the rain, and it crashed down in waves of water drops, turning the ground into mud and their hair into loose strings. Denna had water running down into her eyes, but she kept walking, the slick mud no match for her boots. But it was loud and chilly, and plastered everything against the body, and as puddles started appearing in front of Denna, she sighed out.

In the white noise of the rain, they didn’t hear the banelings coming. Suddenly Denna heard a break of twigs behind her, and whirled on her feet just in time to duck a thrown dagger. “Ambush!” she snapped out, reaching for her boot dagger and missing her agiel more than ever.

Forty of the undead came out of the trees, and with a crash of lightning the scene turned to chaos almost at once. Shota sent out a wave of magic before Cara and Kahlan had drawn their blades, but the storm and the trees got in the way. Denna gritted her teeth as water kept running in her eyes, and as the crash of thunder distracted her from battle preparation. The banelings ran in, shouting war cries now that they were discovered, silhouetted in another lightning strike.

Denna had seen Kahlan fight before—it was nothing like this. She stayed in a defensive stance, spinning less, finding ways to be lethal that were effective if not graceful. Denna treated her dagger like an agiel, blocking the wild strikes of baneling blades and slamming the point into faces and hearts of the undead. Shota had switched to more sharply aimed spells, going after one at a time with a good rate of success. Denna spun into a group of four banelings all attacking her at once, and with a smooth smile dispatched them. She saw the Sword of Truth flashing in the next lightning strike, slicing a baneling down the center, as Cara ducked under an arm and rammed her shoulder into one of them. Kahlan guarded the horse where the two children clung, and the banelings saw her as the weak link, crowding in with all their fervor. Denna saw Cara and Shota draw back around Kahlan, magic and blade doing all they could against the ever–fewer foe.

Denna was about to strike from the outside, push in offensively towards the middle of the baneling “army” that was now trying to surround the allied forces around the children and the horse, when a cry caught her ears and a blade sliced into her right hip. The rush of hot pain made her enraged for the first time in weeks, and the baneling was dead before she turned around and saw twenty more like him coming from the flank as reinforcements. With a cry of satisfaction and rage that should have stilled their hearts, Denna cut through them like a whirlwind in the flashing pouring storm.

They weren’t soldiers in their previous lives, and one by one they fell, and their blood soaked Denna’s gloved hands just as much as her dagger. But there were many of them, all with a feverish need for killing, and as much as Denna enjoyed battle she was grateful when she saw Cara burst in beside her, kicking a baneling in the chest and stabbing another as he charged her.

Then suddenly Denna was standing with her knife in a baneling’s face, seeing the point of the Sword of Truth come bursting from his stomach where Cara stood behind. A crack of thunder burst around the scene, but then the body fell with a splash into the red–tinted mud, and all that could be heard was the hammering rainfall.

Cara stood breathing heavily, tangled hair stuck to her neck and torso as the blood on her leather tunic was washed away by the rain. All around them were the baneling corpses, and already Shota was setting them alight with magical flame. The battle was over, and Denna had never felt so alive.

Then Cara looked at her, still gripping the gore–stained sword, and nodded. “Thank you. We were almost caught by the second wave.”

It sucked the happiness from Denna as she stared at the other woman. Before the words could grate further, though, throbbing like the wound in her hip, she heard a cry from Kahlan.

Turning around, she saw the Mother Confessor collapse to a kneel in the mud, face twisted in pain as her hands flailed at her pregnant stomach. Cara was across the steps between them in half a second, just in time to keep Kahlan from falling backwards with a scream of pain. Denna didn’t know how, but somehow there she was as well.

“What is it?” Cara asked urgently, as Kahlan spasmed in her arms.

“Cara,” Kahlan gasped, exquisite pain bright across her wet face, “I can’t breathe, it hurts.”

“What? What hurts?” Cara demanded, chest heaving even more as she tried to hold Kahlan up.

Kahlan’s mouth curved in an agonizing grimace, her eyes rolling up into her head. “My child—Cara—I—”

Denna watched in confusion, but then Shota was pushing her aside with a “Move!” and pressing in with sharp eyes. Kahlan sobbed for breath as she seemed wracked by another pain, jerking into Cara’s grip on her, even as the Seeker just stared with eyes wide in frozen shock. Shota knelt by her side, placing one hand across Kahlan’s belly, but it was not her touch that had the Mother Confessor crying out again.

“This isn’t the right pain,” Shota said, turning to Cara.

Cara’s face held only worry. “I know—but what?”

“Magic,” Shota answered gravely. “I can feel it.”

“A spell?”

The witch shook her head unhesitatingly as she placed her other hand on Kahlan’s belly, breathing out even as Kahlan’s hitched breathing sucked air into her lungs. One of Cara’s hands gripped Kahlan’s tightly, the other wrapped around her back. Denna had no idea what was happening, but for some reason she stood stock still as if it mattered to her.

“Lie her back,” Shota ordered.

Cara let Kahlan slowly down into the mud, pushing her stray hair from her face, the hand that was not holding Kahlan’s now white–knuckled with fear and concern. She didn’t seem to notice the rain dripping down her face. Shota looked to the heavens with her eyes closed, hands on Kahlan’s belly and she breathed in and out at a safe pace.

A soft cry escaped Kahlan as her body jerked, then stilled, and Shota’s hands drew back as if flames had touched them. Both relief and worry seemed to shine from the witch–woman’s face.

“Shota,” Cara snapped, as Kahlan whimpered.

“Kahlan Amnell, listen to me,” Shota said, placing her hands on either side of Kahlan’s face and looking her straight in the eyes. “Do not fight. Breathe. Think of your child, and think of your powers, and let those thoughts spread through your body. You must do this now.”

Kahlan’s eyes closed, her breathing still weighted, and as Shota stepped back with a light in her eyes she flung her hands to the sky to place a shield over them to keep out the rain. Denna watched all of it, not sure what was happening, not sure if she cared beyond an inexplicable fascination with the chaos. She had one hand to her hip, holding the wound there until it could be dealt with.

“Here,” Shota said bluntly, reaching out her hand for Denna.

Denna hissed at her, but had no way to stop the witch woman’s magic from closing the wound, knitting the inflamed flesh. She refused to thank her, however. Then, ironically almost in response, she felt a tingling at her core. A gasp left her throat before she could stop it, as something in her magic changed—and at the same time, Kahlan breathed out a quiet exhale.

“What is it?” Cara and Denna demanded at the same time.

“The pain is gone,” murmured Kahlan, eyes clear and open.

Denna stared at her, as the feeling stopped but did not return to the one she’d born her entire Mord’Sith life. Something had changed. “What has she done to me?”

“You can sense her?” Shota asked, stepping back towards Kahlan.

Kahlan tried to sit up, and Cara was there to help her. Her eyes shone brightly, the agony gone from her face. “My daughter,” she whispered.

Shota nodded. “Kahlan, you have no idea what this means. Your unborn daughter has come to an awareness at last, and like all children of magical parents she sensed your magic and did not know it at first, did not connect it with you. But she was no ordinary child, and her fear could have hurt you gravely before her instinct told her she was wrong. You had to reach out and make the connection first.”

“What do you mean?” Cara asked, still holding Kahlan’s hand tightly, face still drawn.

“She is not only a Confessor child, she is of Rahl blood,” Shota explained. “And the magic of the Seeker ran through her father’s veins, and more than that…Orden.”

Kahlan stared for a moment before a frown crossed her face. “But Orden is not magic borne on the blood, Richard could not have passed that to her.”

“Unless he was using the power of Orden on you when you conceived,” Shota said in a low voice.

Kahlan choked on a breath, but a moment later all she said was, “It wasn’t like that, not like the others. He couldn’t have meant to.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Shota breathed out. “Kahlan, your child is a never–before–heard–of combination of powerful magic. She will be a legend if she lives.”

“And the first Lady Rahl,” Denna said, not intending to speak it aloud, but caught off guard by all that had been said.

They all turned to her.

“I just felt the bond change,” Denna said. “The bond that tells Mord’Sith that not only is a Rahl alive, but that he requires her. It has been compared to love, but it is not that strong, merely an instinct. Mine changed—it is more tangible than it ever has been, and it is not the same as it was.”

“But Darken Rahl is still alive,” Kahlan said, confused.

Denna shook her head. “Your child’s Rahl blood is more powerful.”

For a moment no one spoke, and the rain that pattered against Shota’s magical shield battered the facts home to their minds. Denna felt her own thoughts start to run again, looking at Kahlan to where her child dwelt, and for the first time in months she felt confidence. No need to use Darken as a puppet to bring the masses together when there was a Rahl who could not even rule in name only. And she would need Mord’Sith protectors, and she would need advisers, and suddenly Denna realized that despite all her former wishes she had to stay and protect Kahlan’s child.

“We don’t have time for this,” Kahlan said, worry on her face. “I’m fine, and we need to get going again.”

Cara helped her to her feet, looking at the mud that had soaked into her dress.

“The rain will wash it off,” Kahlan said to her with a small smile. “We will worry about it later.”

Returning once again to the children on the horse, the journey began again. But Denna was invested, and thought that her future might even look bright.

* * * * *

They found a cave that evening, and even though the rain had stopped, the dry ground and insulation from sight and cold helped. Cara went to bring in firewood that Shota could dry and light for them, and was slightly surprised that Denna joined her without even being asked. The Mord’Sith had done strange things over the past weeks, but Cara did not take them as sincere, and it was nothing like this.

Once the fire was raging and Denna had begun to prepare a meal, Cara helped Kahlan strip out of her wet gown, and couldn’t help but let her hands linger on her skin—not indulgently, but just to assure herself that Kahlan was whole. Kahlan noticed and kissed her forehead as Cara helped her into a dry shift, making Cara hum under her breath as a mild protest to the public display. Yet she couldn’t help but be glad at the smile on Kahlan’s face.

They both sat down on a log that Denna had dragged into the cave, and Sam and Sophia scrambled onto her lap and Kahlan laid an arm around her shoulder; Cara closed her eyes and let out a long breath of almost–peace. But when she opened her eyes and saw Denna watching from across the flames, she felt a twinge of discomfort and realized that she was seeing things with Kahlan’s eyes. Kahlan thought of the big picture and of family, while Cara had always found it difficult not to lose herself in individual loyalties one after the other. Here, safe in these arms, she worried about the calm look on Denna’s face and what it might mean for the big picture of mission and family.

The children fell asleep on her lap, and after several minutes of pillowing her head on Cara’s shoulder, Kahlan yawned and squeezed her arm. “Shota has first watch; come to bed.”

Cara swallowed at the simplicity of the words, so deceptive in this cozy atmosphere they’d created. She couldn’t pull her eyes away from the signs that pointed to their deadly mission that had been threatened only hours before. But she leaned her cheek against the top of Kahlan’s head for a second and murmured, “If I can wake my limbs from these,” as she indicated her children flopped against her. Even so, Kahlan removed herself to where they’d set up the bedrolls, and Cara followed, hefting each sleeping child in her arms. It was easier that night to put the children in between them both, so Cara could curl towards them all with her back to everything else.

It was some closure to watch Kahlan’s eyes drift closed, safe and calm, and the banelings had yet again to leave their mark. No, what Cara feared most of all was the enemy that was known. Once they were all sound asleep, and all she could hear was the crackling of the fire, Cara slipped away from the bed. As she expected, Denna sat alone by the fire while Shota took watch outside. Cara took a deliberate seat across from her and met her gaze unflinchingly.

“I suppose I should expect a speech, given how silent you’ve been?” Denna asked, leisurely leaning back as if nothing mattered.

“If you dare touch Kahlan’s child once we remove the spell from you, I will kill you with my bare hands,” Cara said coldly.

Denna didn’t raise an eyebrow—a more sure sign than anything that she was truly surprised. “Why Cara, you hid your wits very well. I did not think you would catch that.”

“I don’t trust you,” Cara told her pointedly. “I never have, and since you seem determined to use an infant for your own means, I may never do so.”

Denna’s eyes flashed momentarily. “Let’s set aside the matter that your trust is the least concern of mine, and focus on your extreme ignorance, especially disappointing after your brief shining moment of insight.” When Cara automatically bristled, the Mord’Sith leaned forward. “Everyone will be planning to use that child, have no doubts on that matter. There is no way to hide such unique talents. You should be glad that my only wish is for her to be completely safe, and for all our sakes, content.”

Cara met her stare without blinking, even as she was lost for words. There was no answer to that, with all its hard truths. Bitterness swirled around her mouth as she hated what the universe kept doing to Kahlan.

“It need not be a problem for either of you,” Denna pointed out. “Your desire was to defeat Darken Rahl in any case, and you would have had no means to do it. Now you can restore order to the Midlands and D’Hara in one step, if you do it properly. Give me command as a regent, and all our problems will be solved.”

Cara answered her with a flat look before she managed words. “Don’t be an idiot.”

Denna smirked. “I’m not. If everything goes that far, you and your Confessor will weary of all the struggles of D’Hara. I will not. And you will see, I do not carry the Mord’Sith policies to the masses. I’m no idiot.”

But Cara wasn’t ready for this conversation, and she was weary, and it was all too much in any case. Where was the life where her largest goal was keeping the farm running? Why did every piece of her present life involve power and danger and stakes higher than anyone should ever have to face? She stood again, and didn’t look at Denna as she walked back towards her bedroll.

“I’m not evil,” Denna said softly behind her.

Cara didn’t turn, but paused for a second, taking in a deep breath. Her mouth twisted as she sighed, moving on before she could face that. Such words were only tantalizing, and for the moment, all Cara could focus on was her family.

Part 9

They pushed harder, as if that would help anything. Kahlan walked by Cara as Shota guided the horse behind them, Denna holding up the rear. The one thing they knew for sure was that Denna wasn’t leaving now, but whatever kind of change that was, it didn’t feel good. Kahlan walked with weary, swollen feet, and every time she looked at Cara she both knew that she could get through this and wished that she didn’t have to. Shota had been right about one thing—love was tempting. Kahlan had rarely felt such a desire to belong to someone like she did to Cara.

But Cara had the gift of keeping focus; even with long strides at a quick pace, she managed to talk and gesture at the same time. “We have the scroll, we will have a night wisp soon enough, and then we will collect the Stone of Tears and repair the rift. And then…we breathe a sigh of relief and wait for Darken Rahl to kill us? Probably not even knowing we saved him and his entire army from eternal destruction?”

Kahlan’s breath wasn’t coming as easily, and she held one hand to her belly as she matched pace with Cara and kept her sentences shorter. “No, of course not. But, we have no army. Our next step will have to be simple. Perhaps go underground, gather a resistance.”

Cara frowned, fingers twisting around the ends of her hair. “Time. Too much time. And—I’m not letting that man take away my entire life with my family, with you.” She glanced at Kahlan. “He’s taken too much already.”

“I can’t confess him,” Kahlan pointed out. “You cannot match him in battle. Even Shota, most likely, cannot face him. So what other option do we have?”

She didn’t like the look in Cara’s eyes, or how long it took before she spoke. “Denna…made a point about the power of your child.”

Kahlan didn’t like the words any more than the pause. “My child?” she exclaimed, defensive immediately.

“Her magic will be desired,” Cara pointed, flipping her hand upwards as she offered her point, even with a drawn expression. “And that on its own will give us a foothold in D’Hara if we use it.”

Because it was Cara, Kahlan took a second to wrap her mind around the picture. She’d spent a year in the Midlands dutifully setting it to rights, but she had no idea if the similar changes in D’Hara had been because of Richard or because of Orden. And she wasn’t sure what she ached for in that picture: Richard, or the time when she could not imagine him using Orden when it was not absolutely necessary. Now, all she knew about was the armies of Darken Rahl, and perhaps with the destruction of Orden the people were joining him willingly because they could.

She shook her head, and then felt a contraction in her belly and stopped short, breath catching. There was a thump against her ribs and she looked up, giving Cara half a smile before she had time to ask if something was wrong. “Here,” she said, glad for the distraction as she grabbed for the woman’s hand and splayed her fingers across the swell of her abdomen.

Cara’s face drew in with concentration as if this moment was the most important thing in the world, then her lips twitched in half a smile as Kahlan’s daughter kicked right against her fingers. She glanced up, eyes a swirl of unutterable love, even though she tipped her head and murmured, “The others are impatient.”

Kahlan glanced back to see Shota and Denna standing with almost matching looks of frustration, and she wrapped her fingers around Cara’s hand as she began walking again. “I just want this, Cara,” she said softly. With the release of words, her thoughts became clearer, and she continued. “I want my daughter to grow up loved only by her family, no matter what the circumstances. Even if we’re living in some dirty hovel as a part of a hopeless resistance. I don’t want her to have to be some queen, always in danger.”

Cara’s fingers traced Kahlan’s palm as they walked, making her shiver slightly. Then, with a face that expressing all of Cara’s duty in one difficult picture, she spoke. “We may not have that choice. Sometimes life doesn’t let us be selfish.”

“Selfish?” Kahlan couldn’t help but ask, yet feeling her heart twist with a sense that she knew it to be true.

“I’m not here, with you, to protect my family,” Cara said. “The best way to do that would have been to run and hope for the best. I’m not losing track of us…but I’m here because you said a Seeker was needed to save the world. And that’s more than just patching up a hole. You know that, Kahlan.”

But it shouldn’t involve my daughter, Kahlan wanted to answer. She kept walking, and bit by bit, pieces of her old life filtered through the chaotic haze of recent memories. Once Kahlan had known exactly what her life would hold: service to the good of the Midlands in the form of a Confessor and eventually mating for the sake of their continuance. She would spend her days ruling, and her nights trying for a child until she had one, and then they would be spent worrying about her training. None of it had happened like that, and somehow Richard had tempted her into seeing the world through the people’s eyes, where life was meant to be spent in love and companionship.

Though she couldn’t quite regret opening her heart to the possibilities, she knew that she’d not been completely wrong before. She couldn’t erase the Confessor from her thoughts on life any more than she could erase it from her blood. Now she bore a daughter who would know that hard truth more than any other—and perhaps Cara was right. Maybe what her daughter needed more than a pretend–ordinary family was a mother who would do the right thing and not hold back from struggles. She would face them no matter what, so Kahlan shouldn’t even try denial.

Yet when she looked at Cara and thought that for the other woman, the simple duty–free life had been so close to reality, Kahlan’s heart threatened treachery. Maybe it was true, that you always wanted what you hadn’t had. And maybe Cara knew best that you couldn’t cling onto daydreams like that, not if you had a destiny like theirs.

* * * * *

“It is the greatest misfortune in the world for the Mother Confessor to be with child, no matter what advantage it will bring later,” Shota muttered as Kahlan and Cara finally moved on from their ‘tender’ moment.

Denna didn’t like agreeing with the witch–woman, but she longed for the grounding touch of her agiel to wipe the discomfort from her memory. The Seeker and the Mother Confessor were, in some ways, worse than the last set. They knew exactly how wrong and ill–timed their relationship was, and yet kept committing the same stupidity. “I have to wonder if there will even be an advantage, given Kahlan’s sentimentality over that child,” she drawled as they walked.

“Hey,” chimed in Sophia Mason from the back of the horse, “you can’t say mean things about Kahlan.”

“Yeah, mama loves her and will hurt you,” chimed in Sam.

Under normal circumstances, Denna would have driven the random irritation from her mind—but after weeks of unending distractions of the most idiotic kind with these children, she could not stand stoically. “It is not mean,” she said with a bite, “to object to such a weak display of emotions.”

“She’s not weak,” Sam retorted.

Denna didn’t pause to find his lack of fear annoying, too quickly did an equally sharp answer come to her lips. “All feelings are weak and should be governed, that is sensible.”

For a moment the children were silent and gave her false hope. Then, “That’s boring,” Sam mumbled.

Denna took a deep breath and tried to remain calm—she was Mistress Denna, not easily roused to anything, even righteous indignance.

“Do you have any fun?” Sophia asked then, curiously.

Turning cool eyes on her, Denna decided that the best way to end this was through unindulgent answers. “There are some pleasures, yes…”

“What?” Sophia asked, meeting her gaze with open green eyes.

It was so very pathetic. Denna gave a self–deprecating chuckle of irony, turning her eyes back on the path and wishing she was anywhere but here. But she said anyway, “Your mother would kill me if I explained such things to you.”

“Well, she said we weren’t supposed to listen to you anyway,” Sophia added, with a tone of superiority that made Denna cringe. Yet her hopes that the statement meant the conversation was over were too hasty, as Sophia continued after a minute, “Do you really want to take over the world?”

Had there been a wall, or even a suitably wide tree nearby, Denna would have gladly slammed her head into it until blood came. Truly, any pain would be better than this. If only she had never sensed a true Rahl in Kahlan’s womb, she would never have been forced to face this much insanity. Almost ready to rip her hair out in despair at the hopeless situation they’d dragged her into, she gave in with as much harshness as she could manage. They wanted her here, well, they would have to deal with her. “I would be happy with power, yes,” she said coldly.

“But everyone would want to kill you,” Sam said, frowning.

Denna caught a look of almost amusement on Shota’s face as she continued leading the horse, pace still slow so as not to overtake Cara and Kahlan up ahead. Denna answered the boy, “That would not be new.” She even smirked to herself at the understatement in the wanting part. It had already happened once.

“Why?” Sophia asked.

There was a pause as Denna opened her mouth to speak, but no sound escaped it, and no sound pierced the waiting other than the hooves and footfalls of their ragtag group. How did one explain Mord’Sith to a child? Her life had always seemed so simple, and yet no words seemed appropriate for such a young understanding. Why not? Why couldn’t it make just as much sense to a child?

She continued walking, but the annoyances wouldn’t go away. The fact that she didn’t have an answer, still, made her start to fume. She was a proud Mord’Sith, so why couldn’t she find a way to say that? Why did she care that she didn’t have an answer to give a child, a stupid child, that would make her identity clear?

If they did not find the Stone of Tears soon—if Kahlan did not give birth to that child soon—Denna would lose her touch entirely, she could feel it. There was a reason the Mord’Sith temples were distant and exclusive.

* * * * *

Cara had started taking more and more first watches so that she could stay up longer and let Kahlan sleep. Not only was the Mother Confessor’s body quicker to grow weary, but she kept worrying about her child. Denna had said nothing further, and neither had Cara, but Kahlan’s mind didn’t let go easily. Cara let her fingers do the soothing with backrubs, digging in to release even the hardest of knots in Kahlan’s muscles, but she could still taste the worry on Kahlan’s lips when they kissed and the hesitance in her touch as she stroked Cara’s cheek down to her neck. She was always asleep quickly, and Cara chose to lose more of her own to let Kahlan stay in that restful state as long as possible.

The stars shone brightly overhead, and Cara appreciated the feel of the blaze at her back as she stared out into the night. They’d barely avoided another baneling attack only yesterday, and Cara wondered what they’d done to deserve the end of their weeks–long reprieve. The endpoint was cruelly inappropriate for Kahlan’s condition, she’d informed the universe on many a long night.

Now, she felt the weight of the chill air, even though the slight shivers up her arms were just as much from her thoughts as the weather. She had her arms crossed tightly beneath her breasts, presenting a determined front to whatever might wait out there.

So she did not expect a familiar presence to approach her from the side, hair tousled in a way that just made her want to straighten it. “Mama?”

“Sam, you should be sleeping,” she told him, even as her hand strayed to rub his shoulder as he walked to her side.

“I can’t,” he said as he leaned against her leg. “I want you.”

Cara exhaled, not leaning down but wrapping her arm around him. Soft words never came to her, and even when the children were smaller she’d stuck to smiles and hugs, but this journey had offered few opportunities for that. Children could lift burdens just as much as add them, and she missed that. Even now, she couldn’t just settle down and snuggle her son into her lap unless she wanted to invite guilt. She settled for stroking his shoulder and hoping he understood.

“Mama,” he said after a moment of holding onto her, “can you teach me to fight, really fight?”

“What?” Cara looked down, brow suddenly creasing in worry.

He looked up, eyes big in the bit of starlight that illuminated the scene. “Sophie won’t ask you, but…I’m scared, mama.”

Cara swallowed, fingers stilling from her motherly caress. “What about?”

“I wanna go home,” he mumbled into the flap of her leather coat. “I don’t like the monsters, and I’m afraid they’re gonna get me. They’re everywhere.”

Focus completely shifted from any greater good, as it always did without her permission, Cara knelt with a twisting of her heart. She put her hand to Sam’s head so she could look him in the eye. “Sam,” she said, managing to speak without her voice cracking, “nothing is going to happen to you. I will always keep you safe, I promise. You don’t need to be afraid.”

His eyes were wet, though, and his lip trembled—Cara couldn’t bear it, and enveloped him in her arms, holding him to her chest. “I’m still scared,” he whispered into her chest even as he clung to her.

“I know,” she whispered back. Her breath came out shakier than she’d wanted to let him hear, but her embrace remained firm, and she kept saying the words with the determination that she’d be able to bring them to pass. “I’m here, Sam. I won’t let anyone hurt you or Sophie.” Swallowing down the lump of guilt that always rose, she cocked her head, went for the irony that hopefully he would take as confidence. “I am the Seeker, after all. I can do anything.”

He made a little noise and held on tighter, and Cara gathered him further into her arms, giving a comfort that she didn’t know she had any more of to give. Her fingers untangled his curls, and she wiped the wet streaks off his cheeks. He breathed out and rested his head against her chest, right above her heart. Cara looked up to the sky and closed her eyes tightly for a second.

But nothing attacked in her moment of laxness. Soon Sam slumped and yawned enough that she brought him back to tuck next to Sophia and Kahlan, and then she returned to watch. Pacing didn’t soothe the conflict raging in her, but vigilance almost did, the duty reminding her that she was not a complete failure yet. She stayed up through not only Kahlan’s watch but Shota’s, and the night was near morning by the time she heard anything but her own breathing.

“You’re being foolish,” Denna pointed out smoothly as she stepped beside her, barely glimmering in the light but with a stance as authoritative as ever.

“And you would suggest, as an alternative?” Cara responded, meeting her cool look.

Denna’s lips twisted downwards for a second as she didn’t have a ready answer. “It would be just as foolish of me, I see, to suggest you stop worrying. You must have learned the word only seconds after catching your first breath.”

Cara grunted, arms crossing more tightly. “Someone must.”

“So it seems.”

Cara was choosing, at this moment, not to pay the Mord’Sith any mind. A part of her regretted ever putting out any effort when all their lives were complicated enough. The other part of her grudgingly forced the continual realization that she could never have quite done otherwise. Denna was the part of their group that Cara had no plans for, and yet had no plans for not having.

“I wasn’t asleep,” Denna said after a couple minutes. “I saw your son.” The way she said the words, it was as if they pained her. Cara was getting used to that. “He doesn’t have much of a heart. Unlike his sister.”

Cara turned to her with sharp eyes and direct words. “My children are off limits, Denna.”

“I’m not dismissing them, much as their presence is out of place on this mission,” Denna responded with a glitter of her eyes. “For all our sakes I’m suggesting that you give him something to do. He is weak enough as it is, but giving him no output for it is foolishness at its extreme.”

Cara found herself looking at Denna and not knowing quite what she was looking at. The Mord’Sith’s figure and profile alike was not softened by the starlight, but she seemed to feel freer in the safety of the dark. Cara had not noticed any walls breaking down in Denna over the weeks, but now she narrowed her eyes and wondered what could possibly be behind such words. They were not the pragmatism Denna claimed to embrace. Yet all Cara said was, “I can handle my own children.”

“I think you would be surprised at what they say about you, when you are busy considering the fate of the world, even though you are ill equipped to take care of it,” Denna said, but more quietly than was required.

Cara flinched for more than one reason, but she tried not to think on it, even if she couldn’t avoid saying, “Such as?”

“You can’t guess?” Denna purred in response.

Turning away for a second, Cara bit down on the inside of her lip and the emotions she felt were like a burning in her throat. Kahlan was right, that Cara was trying to hold onto too many things. Motherhood, being the Seeker, care for Kahlan, and all of them tied into a mission that was never sure. She kept trying anyway, and if she felt angry, she knew that at least some of it was directed at herself. But she was weary, and so she said, frowning, “They speak to you?”

Denna chuckled, almost sounding as if it mattered. “They are foolish, as all children are. And I am forced to be beside them. Perhaps they sense the desperation and latch on.”

Cara clenched one hand at her side and breathed out, trying to thrust useless feelings out of the way as she turned back. “Desperation. Denna, who is being foolish now?”

“You’re right,” Denna answered, turning a little to face her. “I want what I’ve always wanted, Cara Mason, and I will get it only by remaining here. Such is my punishment in life, so it seems, but desperation it is not.”

Cara just looked at her, mind heavy. The other woman was almost like a child in the dark, even though her words were as bright a disguise as any. Cara didn’t have the will to look beneath them, but she felt the shift, and it was another mess waiting just out of her hands. “Kahlan’s child will not get you what you truly want.”

Denna’s lips twisted. “We will see.”

Cara was done. She ached to be done with so much more, but at least with this, she was done. Brow still narrowed, Cara left Denna to stand watch now that it was her shift, and moved across the camp to lie down at Kahlan’s back. Exhaling softly, she leaned her head against the Mother Confessor’s shoulder, soaking up a little of her warmth. Every moment of her day was spent trying to get everything right, but just being close to this woman made her feel like she already had.

Her love for her children had a depth that was unmeasurable, more solid than the earth they traversed. Every day was more cherished because they were in her life, and because her life was theirs. But her love for Kahlan made her feel as if she could claim the very heavens, freely, with no guilt or fear or doubts ever again. A part of her worried for Kahlan’s safety, and the chance that someday she would fail, but as long as she was near—Cara believed as she had never believed that things would go right.

She set aside the worries that such a thing was impossible, tangled her fingers with Kahlan, and fell asleep with what felt like peace.

* * * * *

Kahlan managed to crouch down even in her state, holding the map as she looked out over the low valleys. Every scouting mission she feared that the road ahead would hold a sprawling army where Darken Rahl had managed to scry their goal, but there was still nothing. “It looks clear,” she said, pausing as her unborn daughter kicked her stomach.

“You should not have come,” Cara murmured, offering a hand to help her stand now that the coast was assessed.

Kahlan gave a half–serious frown. “This was my task; I know what I’m looking for. If anything, you should have stayed behind.”

“I’m not leaving you alone,” Cara said, tugging Kahlan a little closer than necessary once she was on her feet. She raised an eyebrow as she leaned in a little. “If you choose to risk this much, I cannot stop you, but I don’t need to approve of it.”

Kahlan smiled briefly at her. Almost, she made the world stop spinning in her mind, pushing aside the chaos of banelings, gars, the Keeper, Darken Rahl, the compass, the children always in danger just for being away from home. Almost, she moved in for a kiss, seizing the safe moment alone since it was there for the taking. But she was just tired enough to think before acting, and her eyes moved from the tempting curve of Cara’s lips to her caressing gaze. Instead of this moment, her mind thought of the previous ones that had nothing to do with selfish pleasure. “Cara,” she said softly, “did you notice who volunteered to stay behind.”

Cara frowned. “No volunteer was required, I was going.”

“But before you did,” Kahlan said, even as she let Cara tangle their fingers together, “Denna chose to stay behind.”

“She does not like us,” Cara pointed out with a tip of her head.

“But she says more often that she does not like the children,” Kahlan responded. A bit of a frown crossed her face. “She has spent much more time with them than necessary.”

Cara tensed. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Neither had I,” Kahlan admitted. “But…” Cara’s children had not proven an easy addition to their group, despite the natural tendencies to tolerate much hardship. Alongside every moment where they stayed safe and out of trouble, there was a moment where the entire group was tripped up because of a childish mistake. It had been a piercing worry for Kahlan and Cara alike not long ago. Yet the past week had seemed easier, and not because of any change in the children themselves.

“They talk to her,” Cara said after a moment, her expression turning brooding. “And she talks back. Not dismissingly, or tauntingly, or…”

“Oh Cara, you don’t think your plan might have worked, do you?” Kahlan asked, though she felt no amusement. Cara was right, now that she thought of it. And it was offputting, the way Denna had given in grudgingly to this task, and had yet taken on the challenge of Cara’s children despite no benefits to herself. It had freed Cara and Kahlan to be closer, and after all the struggles they had not stopped to question it.

“She is strange,” Cara muttered. “I don’t trust her yet.”

“I don’t know if I do either,” Kahlan answered. “But she has not proved false.”

Cara shifted her weight, frowning. “I wonder if it is their lack of distrust in her that draws her…”

For a moment Kahlan watched the wheels turn in Cara’s head, the twitch of her lip, the finger twisting in her hair. Then she regretted what she’d started and grasped for any resolution. She leaned in, brushing her forehead against Cara’s. “I don’t think it’s a cause for true worry, Cara, I’m just glad we’re not alone.”

“Mm,” Cara hummed, leaning up just enough to touch her lips to Kahlan’s. “I think the Underworld would have gotten its hands on us long ago if we were.”

Kahlan sighed, even as she kissed back. “That’s not amusing.”

“I know,” Cara murmured against her lips. “I don’t care.”

For a moment, Kahlan didn’t either. She wrapped her arms around Cara as the other woman’s lips trailed down her cheek and to her neck, dangerous and distracting. Every moment they might be in the eye of the storm of destiny, but every moment the storm could break in a disaster that might rip apart all the fragile structures they counted on. They might regret love then, and Kahlan feared the worst, that it might be all they had left.

“Cara, we can’t,” she breathed out, her hands firm on Cara’s hips to keep them still. “We can’t forget.”

Cara didn’t quite meet her eyes, but Kahlan saw her swallow before nodding, eyes shaded for a moment as she seemed to gather herself together. It would be so easy to damn the world and just take what they wanted—they kept teasing at it, but would always refuse in the end.

But for a moment, as they descended back towards the camp with news that the path was free again, Kahlan was caught in a moment of aching regret. She hated this mission more than she loved what it had given her, and she wasn’t afraid to think it. Cara was changing because of it, adopting these warrior ways and leaving behind so much of the simple woman who didn’t know how to hold a sword. They walked side by side through the trees, Kahlan’s back swayed because of her unborn child, and somehow Cara seemed to be the born soldier. She wasn’t—there was still softness there, and Kahlan hoped there always would be—but it was a change ironic enough that Kahlan wasn’t sure if it was amusing.

Then the brush rustled ahead. Her hands were to her knives, and Cara’s to her sword, before Denna charged out, braid swinging in her haste.

“The witch’s chant was disturbed,” she declared. “Darken Rahl is barely miles away.”

Kahlan’s heart rose in her chest. “They are that near?”

Denna’s eyes were hard, and that was answer enough.

Breath catching in her throat, Kahlan left awkwardness aside and almost ran the rest of the way. Shota’s eyes were blazing with anger as they came back, and despite the conversation it captured Kahlan’s attention more than the way Sam and Sophia looked to Denna to help them onto the horse.

“He has been clouding his steps,” Shota ranted, pacing as they gathered camp together. So many belongings had been shed over the weeks, and it took less and less time with each morning. “I suspected, but could not know. There were hints, and I thought they were enough. I was clouded in prophecy when my mind found his and I had to withdraw.”

“Prophecy?” Kahlan asked, still slightly breathless as she handed her pack to Cara.

Shota stared at her for a moment, a sudden depth in her eyes. “We will not need that scroll after all.”

“What, what is it?” Kahlan demanded. Cara tossed the packs to Denna and moved quickly to her side at the tone.

“The one in white will stand with the Stone at noon, alone at the Pillars of Creation,” Shota said grimly, not even looking at Cara. “For that which is most precious will be lost to embrace the darkness.”

Kahlan could see nothing but Shota, the reveal of the Pillars of Creation as their final destination slipping as quickly out of her mind as it had entered. The word ‘alone’ rang in her ears, bouncing about as the final sentence clawed onto her heart and wouldn’t leave. She forgot to breathe for a moment as she clung desperately to ambiguity.

“What does it mean?” Cara grated out, a harsh whisper as her hands fisted at her sides.

“Nothing,” Denna suddenly snarled, breaking the triangle of tension by stepping in. Her stance held all the sharp readiness of a Mord’Sith, but it wasn’t aggressive. Her eyes shone with pure determination as she shattered the shocked moment. “Prophecy means nothing, and even less when we are in such danger. If you care about your lives, you will move now.”

Kahlan didn’t look back at Shota, or Cara, as she turned away with a nod. She heard Shota tell Cara to pay heed to the compass, and before anything else could happen they were moving down the path again. Behind them lay armies that they could not face, before them…Her mind threatened to worry about even that, but somehow she managed to focus on the trail ahead. One step, and then another, and another, and somewhere at the end the Stone of Tears. She was the Mother Confessor and it was all she would allow herself to consider for now.

Part 10

Cara believed Kahlan when she said that there was nothing to fear in Shota’s prophecy. Even though her smile was tight, there was very little that she meant more than those words. Prophecies were never exactly what they seemed, and interpretations could easily be flawed. Without any knowledge otherwise, and with a trust in Kahlan that was not easily shaken, Cara believed that everything would work out fine.

The sun rose, and without laughter or smiles they would rise with it, moving through the forest as fast as possible, until some days Cara would have to force Kahlan to sit and catch her breath while wincing with the contraction in her belly. Darken Rahl’s troops could any minute come up behind them, even though Shota tried to cover up their tracks. The forests grew less thick as the mountains rose up, the path before them always hard and rocky.

None of them were getting enough sleep. The fear that drove them in the day kept them from wanting to sleep at night, and when they succumbed for necessity, the fear still dragged them away. After the third day since Shota had glimpsed their trackers, Sam burst into tears when woken at dawn, and did not stop for most of the day. Cara’s heart pained her more than her feet did, and the bone–weary weeping threatened to tear pieces from her soul. She kept her eyes on the path and reminded herself why. When Kahlan touched her arm for comfort, or held onto it for support, she managed to remember.

Two more days passed, and lines started to eat away at the freshness on all their faces. They plodded up winding paths into the hills, and as the air grew thinner it was more difficult to find food, and there was no time for bathing. But running ragged would be worth it if they stayed one step ahead of the bloodhounds in pursuit. Cara expected any moment to turn a corner and see a flash of D’Haran armor, red and black.

“Do you remember when we first began?” Kahlan asked on the sixth day of their hard pace, already breathless when barely two hours past daybreak had gone by.

Cara kept a hand at Kahlan’s broadened waist, but shook her head, memories of safe grief striking hard at her sleep–bleared vision. “I could hardly forget.”

“Do you remember saying that you should force me to stay behind at some point, that being with child was no joke?” Kahlan paused for a second, breath almost like a wheeze, a mirthless smile on her pale lips. “You were right.”

Cara’s heart twinged. “Then I’m sorry I didn’t have more courage.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t pay attention. But Cara, I’m not sorry that I can help bear this burden in any way.”

With no words at her command, Cara sent all her love in a look, and hoped that Kahlan would understand. From the beginning, there had been desperation in this mission. It was only through some cruel twist of the universe that they’d found enough peace to cultivate love, that which tormented them now even though it had brought all of them together.

Cara and Kahlan led the way, as always. Sometimes, Cara half expected Denna to tout her Mord’Sith strength by offering to support Kahlan—it was no longer a matter of pride, as Cara suspected the other woman had given up on that idea. But she never did, always staying by Shota and the children. Sam and Sophia seemed to appreciate Denna as if they felt the effects of her strong presence, and though Cara’s guilt tormented her that they had to feel it from a Mord’Sith she would not deny them. And almost, she was grateful to Denna.

By the end of the seventh day, the compass had led them high up into the hills. The horse could pass through no longer, and with quiet words Kahlan released him. After that Sophia seemed lost in her own world, not speaking to anyone, merely trudging along with reluctant feet and bowed head. But Sam would not walk alone. Sometimes he would grab onto Cara’s hand, but when Cara had all her attention focused on Kahlan during the tough moments, he would drift behind. Shota, as lost in her own world as Sophia, tolerated him when he clung to her long robes. He never tried with Denna, and they were all grateful to remain unaware of what the outcome of that would have been.

But after the sun blazed down on them for the last few hours of the day, leaving all of them sunburnt and weary, they settled at last and had never been so of one mind. Cara took on the duty of hunting, despite Denna’s tendency to do so since joining their company. She hated the task, and only by thinking of the small boar as Darken Rahl could she maintain enough focus to bring it down. By the time she dragged it back to camp, though, it was clear that something had taken place in the general exhaustion. Kahlan poked at the fire, with Sophia feeding it handfuls of small twigs, but Shota and Denna sat on a log broodingly. And leaned up against one of Denna’s leatherclad legs was Sam, face squashed in sleep against it. For a moment Cara had to stand and stare, and wonder why Denna’s face looked only absently brooding. Things had changed.

At dawn the next day, like every morning before, Cara did not want to wake. With her neverending fatigue, she could no longer feel the urgency, no matter how strongly she knew it. She wanted to tear up along with her children as she forced them awake, half dragging them from the blankets because they might all be caught if they didn’t get on their feet, and she didn’t even have the energy to want to kiss the weariness away from Kahlan’s face. What she did have was a dark hatred for Darken Rahl once again, and a readiness to kill anything that stood in the way of them putting an end to this mission.

When they finally reached a long dark cave, and the compass still blinked its humming signal, they stood without speaking for a minute. Cara looked to Kahlan, then Shota, then Denna, and back into the darkness.

“I sense no magic,” Shota said. “But I will not go inside. Too much is bound up in this mission.”

Kahlan nodded, but Cara swallowed and turned to Denna. “You will stay with her and my children.”

Denna’s lower lip trembled with anger. “Is that what you dare think of me, as some glorified child–minder? Cara Mason, I assure you—”

“I don’t give a damn,” Cara snapped, meeting the rage with some of her own. For a moment she was about to explain, and then she chose not to. “If you want any chance of seeing your precious Rahl child born, you will stay.” Without waiting to hear a response, she spun around and, holding the compass in front of her, strode headlong into the dark cave.

Kahlan followed, and once again it was just the two of them. Only this time their baggage—and there was no less of it—was the same kind.

* * * * *

In the cool darkness and silence of the cave system, with only the torch to break both, Kahlan managed to catch her breath. She knew she was being hard on her body; she could feel the stress pass into her womb, and winced at the distress she could feel from her child. Kicking at her ribs, sending tendrils of her magic into Kahlan’s blood, already the little one fought against the cruelty of fate.

“What if the Stone of Tears is just an ordinary stone,” Cara said suddenly. “What if that’s why the compass led us here? Maybe the tears are the ones we had to shed on our way.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.” Cara shook her head. “My mind is nearly gone from all this, all this past week. And this darkness reminds me of the cellar, waiting for the Mord’Sith to break through; my skin itches with it.”

“I’m sorry,” Kahlan said, almost tripping over a stone in the dark. Sometimes she forgot how well Cara hid her troubles to help others, and her mind jumped to anything that might distract her. “I was just thinking of my child—I have not given her a name yet.”

“Oh,” Cara said. The swift change seemed to have worked, and Kahlan saw a bit of stiffness leave her limbs.

Kahlan breathed out slowly, remembering all the plans she’d had in only a few hours after realizing her condition. The future she’d pictured, full of ruffles and toy swords and blue eyes. “I’d thought of naming her Sonja, but that was before I’d met Sophia.”

Cara gave her a quick look, as if the unspoken assumption behind that statement surprised her, even after so much evidence to give her clues. Had Kahlan had more energy, she would as usual have found Cara’s insecurities about their relationship’s future both endearing and frustrating. Instead, she waited until Cara spoke, “My children were named on the day they were born. Before that, I had many other concerns on my mind, especially with Sophia.”

It was perhaps not the time, but Kahlan felt that any talk at all would help them get through this. “Oh?”

“For a while it seemed like Sophia might be twins, she was so large,” Cara explained, apparently latching onto the need for distracting words, or perhaps just talking because her worn–out mind didn’t have its usual strength to stop her. “I may have been…irrationally upset about the matter. I informed Andrew that if he had indeed inflicted twins on me, there would be certain pleasures and certain pleasures alone that he would have to perform for all eternity to make it up to me.” For the first time, a look that resembled fond remembrance crossed Cara’s face, with almost a smirk. She hefted the torch a little higher as she continued dryly, “He replied that that didn’t sound so bad, and I might have thrown something at him. Probably not entirely true in any case, but it helped.”

Kahlan smiled a weary smile. “Sophie was worth the struggle.”

Cara’s expression was strangely deep then as she said quietly, “Yes.” Then, shaking her head, “Your child, though.”

“Perhaps Sara?” Kahlan offered. “Then she will match the others.” But the look on Cara’s face was unreadable and then she stopped short, looking ahead. Kahlan glanced upwards and saw a heavy stone wall in front of them. There was no path either to the left or the right. She wanted to collapse and burst into tears for a moment, before remembering to look for more than the obvious defeat. Shaking her head and gathering herself together, she asked incredulously, “The Stone is here?”

“No,” Cara said. But she frowned and reached out one hand hesitantly, closing her eyes and moving to touch the wall. To Kahlan’s shock it seemed to give. She turned with eyes now alight with purpose. “I think this is it?”

Kahlan reached for her hand and took it, and with both eyes closed they stepped forward with a trust in the compass. No stone hit their face and they opened their eyes to a sunny forest valley. Magic sung in the air, and Kahlan forgot all her worries and aches for the moment as she realized that Cara was right. This was the end of the line.

* * * * *

Denna paced in front of the cave entrance, no longer tired as emotion flooded her system. This was insanity, and she had failed her own tests. Far from gaining dominance over Kahlan, she had let the Mother Confessor become the dominant one, the one whose life all theirs revolved around. All Denna needed was the child, and yet somehow she wanted more.

“Why are you mad?” Sam asked from where he sat loosely cross–legged on the ground.

“Why should I tell you?” Denna retorted. She immediately regretted saying it, and immediately after that wondered why. This mission was turning feet–upwards faster than she would have imagined.

A pebble rolled down the mountain from up above, and Denna, as always, reached for the agiel that was not by her side. It was nothing, but she grimaced anyways as she glanced around the small plateau they stood on above the mountain cliffside. She walked a few steps away, standing by Shota.

“I’d hoped I would not get this foolishness from you, of all people,” the witch–woman said steelily.

“What foolishness?”

“Worry, denial,” Shota said with a wave of her arm.

“I have neither,” Denna shot back before thinking.

Shota opened her mouth, but there was a flutter of black wings and suddenly Darken Rahl materialized. Denna had enough time to see a smug look on his face, sleeveless red robes looking immaculate compared to their travel–worn appearances. Sam and Sophia jumped to their feet, startled, but before Denna could move there was a flash of light and Shota had shouted a word.

Denna gasped and blinked in her shock, but suddenly she was staring at an empty forest glade. Whipping around, she saw Shota standing, orange powder in her hand.

“Did you spell us away?” she cried out, rage mounting in her.

“Rahl would not have appeared without knowing what he was doing,” Shota answered with a wave of her hand. “We could not risk the unknown.”

“But the children!” The words shot from Denna’s lips before she realized she’d thought them. Turning on her heels she clenched her fists as she realized just what a disaster they were in.

“I’m sorry, but I could only bring the two of us in such short notice,” Shota said as if it was just a neutral fact.

Denna had never longed so much for her old self, so that she might bring down the old woman and force them to return. Not only did she want to rip Darken Rahl’s head from his neck, but despite the grinding of her teeth she knew that she couldn’t bear the thought of him getting his hands on Sam and Sophia. They were at his mercy, and she was helpless.

She cursed the air, but could do nothing.

* * * * *

Cara stared at the inhabitants of the valley, hands on her hips. “What?”

“This is not the Creator’s plan,” protested the man in old fashioned robes. He and the other similarly–dressed denizens had the most innocent looking faces Cara had ever seen, as if they had never seen trials of any kind in their whole lives.

They’d seen Kahlan first, after only a few steps into the valley. When their eyes fell upon the bulge of her dress, it looked to Cara like bliss passed over their faces, and she’d immediately felt the urge to draw her sword. She doubted, though, that it was her frown that made them all then recoil at the sight of her.

“We were told by the Creator,” said a woman, stepping in to speak when the other man looked too shocked, “that a Seeker and a Confessor would come to us when the Keeper threatened all life, and that together they would restore it.”

“But that’s what we’re here to do,” Kahlan said, shaking her head in confusion. “Cara is the Seeker.”

“No, no!” the man finally burst out. His eyes were wide, his hands spread. “The two were supposed to father the next generation, once the world was destroyed!”

Out of the corner of her eye, Cara saw Kahlan’s jaw drop. For herself, she just flinched, as if the pure outlandishness was as bad as pain. They turned their heads, eyes meeting in confusion.

“That’s not possible,” Cara said, waving her hand at them. “Are you mad?”

“This world was not to be saved!” the man said. “It was time for a fresh beginning!”

“Asa, something must have gone wrong,” said the woman who had spoken before, putting a hand to his arm. “Prophecy must have changed since we were enclosed from the rest of the world.”

“Yes,” Cara spoke up, still stunned by their lunacy. Many people in Stowcroft had been overly superstitious for Cara’s practical tastes, but this…had these people not been locked away like this, they surely would have perished before reaching even these tender young ages. And she wasn’t remaining silent just because they said they spoke for the Creator. “Prophecy says that Kahlan will take the Stone of Tears to repair the rift.”

“But you cannot leave,” Asa protested, looking like his world had been shattered. “The Creator—”

“The Creator is not keeping me from my children,” Cara snapped. She had lost her patience, this was insane, and there was no accepting it. Stepping forward, she pointed behind her as she stared down Asa. “We’ve been on a long journey. My children are waiting out there, and they will be the next generation, as will Kahlan’s daughter once she is born. This fantasy, wherever it may have come from, is useless.”

“Cara,” Kahlan chided softly, stepping forward.

But Cara was weary and angry and worried, and there was no way she was letting anything happen to destroy their mission now. She shook her head. “No. No, Kahlan, I don’t care. I don’t care anymore. I want to get the Stone and be done, understand? Where is the Stone of Tears?”

Asa swallowed and stepped aside, and looking past him Cara saw a fountain. Kahlan gasped just at the moment when she saw a glittering object in the center, barely more than an inch high. The breath was knocked from Cara’s lungs as she realized that, right there, almost within’s arms’ reach, was their salvation. Despite the people of the valley, she said a quick silent prayer to the Creator as she walked forward with quick strides, thanking her for reaching the goal with no more obstacles.

It was light and cool in her hand, but there was no doubt in Cara’s mind that it was right. The compass light dimmed, and Cara smiled as she held them both up to Kahlan. Her eyes shone, and Cara felt her own sting momentarily. “We’ve done it,” she whispered.

“I knew we would,” Kahlan answered, reaching out to clasp her hand.

Cara took a shaky breath and gripped back. They still had to reach the Pillars of Creation, but now they no longer had to worry about time because they knew their destination. “Let’s go then, quickly.”

* * * * *

It seemed like they had only been the valley for a few minutes. Heart pounding with joy instead of worry, Kahlan and Cara rushed back through the cave. Kahlan’s feet and back ached, but she didn’t slow down. Cara had given her the stone, and it was curled in her hand—she almost thought it was giving her strength.

The light shone at the far end, and Cara stepped ahead to burst out first, only to then stand stock still. Kahlan followed, and her arms went tight at her sides when she saw what Cara had seen. Nothing.

“This is the way we came,” Cara said, eyes widening as she turned. “Sam? Sophia? Denna!”

Kahlan’s heart skipped a beat when she saw none of them, even more so when she heard a tiny cry escape Cara’s throat. The plateau was completely bare of life, only the backpacks left behind, abandoned but looking undisturbed. Surely this was not possible; that was why they’d left Shota and Denna.

“Well well well, so this is the Cara Mason I’ve heard so much about,” came a drawl from behind them that sent shivers down Kahlan’s spine. That voice.

She and Cara turned at the same moment and Kahlan stood stunned before she could draw her daggers. Darken Rahl walked up the path, exorbitantly proud as always, a smile playing across his lips as he stroked them with one fingertip; the other hand held on tightly to Sam’s curls, keeping him from running. A Mord’Sith stood at his side holding an agiel towards Sophia—Kahlan saw a red mark on the side of Cara’s daughter’s face and tears spilling from her eyes, and she felt sick with hatred.

The slick sound of the Sword of Truth coming from its sheath sliced the tension in the air. “Get your hands off them, you son of a bitch,” Cara said, voice wavering with half a dozen emotions.

Darken Rahl casually glanced back, and Kahlan saw four Mord’Sith further down the path. It was narrow enough to keep his army back, but he had the advantage, no doubt about it. “You can’t honestly expect such a foolish request to bring you what you want. Or perhaps you can; no Seeker I’ve met has had much in the way of wits, but I’d hoped for your sake to find something more.”

Kahlan’s hands clenched into fists, and she would have risked death itself if she could have confessed him, if he hadn’t long ago spelled himself clear of that fate.

Cara’s breath came out shakily, and she lowered the tip of the Sword. “They’re not dead. That means you want something.”

“Clever girl,” Rahl purred, yanking a little on Sam’s hair. The boy’s face was locked in a panic too overwhelming for tears. “Most of all I want the Sword of Truth, after all I did before to obtain it from the former Seeker. And I want your reputation, and its resistance–making powers, eliminated. I could just kill you, and leave the Mother Confessor for another time, so that she can spread the word of my abilities…but…I did rather enjoy having Richard Rahl under my control for a time. Having a Seeker on my side, devoted to me—that would be worth the training.”

“What training?” Cara asked in a tight voice.

“You’ll find out,” Rahl said, smile broadening. “If you care for your children to survive.”

“Cara,” Kahlan started, her voice no more than a whisper as the situation bore heavily down. But the woman she loved didn’t turn around, her back rod–straight, and slowly the Sword lowered even further.

“That’s it?” Cara’s voice was small and empty.

“Of course,” Rahl answered smoothly. “I do think it will serve better to have them alive out there somewhere, just never safe from me. I spared their lives; you will have no choice but to serve me in gratitude.”

Kahlan knew the chill in that voice, the way it could sink to the very bone. With no one else at hand, burdened as they were, and not only with the Stone of Tears and the saving of the universe, she knew there was truth that even Rahl could not know. Truth that there was no other choice, with the responsibility they had.

“Kahlan,” Cara said then, but without turning her head. Her voice sounded strangled.

“Cara no,” Kahlan started, hopelessness turning to fear, and yet keeping her limbs from moving. There was nothing she could do.

“You don’t need me anymore,” Cara’s words drifted back to her, as she slid the Sword back into its sheath with aching slowness. “I’m sorry I have to fail you now. Forgive me.”

“Cara!” Kahlan cried out, as she saw the Seeker take a step forward.

Darken Rahl barely nodded to the most forward Mord’Sith before it was all over. He flung Sam aside as Sophia was let loose, and the Mord’Sith ran forward and gripped Cara’s arm. Then all of them spun out of control and in a swirl of black magic turned into birds that flew off into the blinding sun.

It felt like the air was punched from Kahlan’s chest as she stood, hand outstretched for a woman who no longer stood there. The children screamed. Time seemed halted in the cruel shock. Darken Rahl had taken Cara. For that which is most precious will be lost to embrace the darkness.

A wracking sob escaped Kahlan’s throat before she felt the tears running down her face. She felt her magic burn deep within her, and only her will kept the Con Dar from striking and possibly taking away the children abandoned in her care. “Cara,” she cried out, the word falling brokenly from her lips. She was alone. The Stone of Tears and all it stood for was still in her grasp, but she was alone.

There was a flash behind her, and Denna materialized already marching forward, eyes ablaze. “Where are they?” she demanded, before seeing the children on the ground, weeping as they’d never wept before. She turned to Kahlan, rage halted for a second. “Confessor?”

“Do you have the Stone?” Shota asked, having followed the Mord’Sith, eyes hard with worry.

Kahlan just stared. “Darken Rahl took Cara. He used the children—he took her.” She shuddered, hand gripping more tightly around the Stone as a desperate whisper escaped her, “Spirits help me, there are not even tracks left by his magic.”

Five of them were left unharmed. Their mission lay before them, clear and open. The world shouldn’t have felt any more split in two, any smaller, any more dangerous. But Kahlan felt like she was a stray bit of ash tossed on the wind, all resources stolen. Cara was gone.

* * * * *

The moon shone over them as they stood alone and sleepless, and it demanded truth. “How can I do this, Cara?” Kahlan whispered into the night, a single silver tear sliding down her cheek. She rubbed at her belly as if it hurt, as if there was nothing more frightening than her child.

Cara did not have words automatically—she stretched out her hand to find Kahlan’s and stroke it softly. But Kahlan pulled her close, arms wrapping tightly around Cara’s waist as she embraced her closely. Cara could hear the tears in Kahlan’s voice, smell the softness in her scent, and with a deep breath she held the Mother Confessor in a strong tight grip.

Her life had never been lacking in responsibilities, yet all Cara could murmur, in the cover of darkness, was an earnest, “I’ll be here, Kahlan.” The Mother Confessor held on a little tighter, as if she could soak up peace from Cara that even the Seeker did not truly feel. All Cara had to give was promises, though. “I’m not leaving you alone.”

The fact that Kahlan didn’t say thank you, just breathed in and out as she held onto Cara, spoke more than Cara could ever have asked for. She vowed even more to herself, that she would do anything and everything to stay with this woman until she was no longer wanted or needed. Even though she prayed that day would never come.

It seemed like they had barely landed before Cara felt the agiel strike her at the top of her spine, and for all that Denna had done, it had never been like this. She fell to her knees as pain shot through her mind, against all odds more potent than the pain of what she had just done. She cried out because it was all she could do, seeing nothing but white light, feeling nothing but pain.

“That is enough,” Darken Rahl’s voice broke through the screaming in her mind, and the agiel was withdrawn.

Her body shook as she knelt, fists in her lap, breathing hoarse and heavy. For so many reasons she didn’t care what fate lay before her, and even when Rahl seized hold of her hair, tipping her face back so that she had to look up into his, she felt nothing. The days of putting herself through fire to become the Seeker that everyone needed were all made useless by this. Duty had finally made her make the ultimate choice, to let her life be taken so that others would be saved. It hurt more than she had ever told herself it might. Her failure to keep more than one promise hurt.

“What do you think, Garen?” Darken asked slowly. “I’m thinking that a pet is too simple, too uninspired. I don’t have Orden, or confession, but perhaps…she has a good body for leather, don’t you think?”

Cara’s jaw was tight, eyes blank, as she saw the dark–haired Mord’Sith raise her eyebrows. “She is too old to be a proper Mord’Sith, Lord Rahl. It will not be the usual training.”

“No, of course not,” Darken said, but the bit of smile returned as he looked at Garen, then once again at Cara. Eyes dark with strong purpose. “Well, Cara Mason. Little woman from a tiny town, dragged into this by wizards and confessors. You are the Seeker of Truth, and soon you will be my right hand, the steel against steel.”

Somehow, she found the moisture to spit at his feet, body refusing to lose its hard tension.

“Don’t act so offended,” Darken purred, raising a hand to keep Garen from striking her with an agiel. “You’ll come willingly soon enough. After all, remember what I have done for you already.”

But Cara’s life was over, and neither gratitude nor defiance ran through her veins as Darken Rahl nodded once again to Garen. The chains were locked around her neck and wrists, the agiel applied to get her body moving jerkingly forward, and she was taken away to become a pawn once again. Head bowed as she was dragged through the temple gates, no escape in sight, a moment of weakness crossed her face. She felt her heart quietly broken by her own hand as much as by Darken Rahl’s, and she cradled it in a moment of aching emotion before burying it away. Burying it forever. She’d failed everyone for her last time.

I’m sorry, Kahlan. I loved you.

Part 11

Minutes passed during which Kahlan knew that Shota was speaking, but she couldn’t hear; strategy wouldn’t cross her mind when her family was lurching towards tragedy. Some things she’d held for sure, and one was the eternal danger and yet impossibility of failure. They’d dared disaster at every point, but Kahlan had never thought it would strike. No matter who was caught in it—but more than anything, the loss of Cara was a shock. Gone like a leaf on the wind, and it ripped open Kahlan’s heart in a way that she hadn’t suspected. The shock ruled nearly all her instincts. Kneeling on the rocky soil, dress crumpled around her, she just held out her arms for Sam and Sophia.

Kahlan couldn’t forget Darken Rahl. A whole year of exposure to an Orden–altered personality hadn’t wiped years and years of memories of horrific deeds from her mind, even if she’d only lived them from afar. He was a master of torture and breaking, shrewd and determined, and Kahlan knew there was no way he did not have a plan for Cara. There were certain limits that even the strongest will had, and Kahlan had not doubt that Darken Rahl would find them. He had all the time, all the power, in the world.

Sophia had her arms wrapped around Kahlan’s belly, her cheek pressed against it with silent tears soaking through her dress, and Kahlan felt the shaking when she rested her hand on Sophia’s back. “It’s all right,” she said, through tears that flowed without sobs. She reached for Sam who was curled up at a slight distance, but she couldn’t meet his eyes, just say again, “It’s all right.”

The prophecy rang around Kahlan’s head, threatening more tears even though she knew she couldn’t spare them. She so wanted to believe that it only referred to Cara giving herself up, but she knew just how easy another alternative could be. Weeks from now, mission completed, she might meet a Cara scarred and utterly devoted to her Mord’Sith mistress. There was a reason they were infamous, and it wasn’t because they had a habit of failing. Tortured enough, even Cara would give in, embrace the darkness.

Gripping onto the children that were just as much hers now as before, Kahlan feared the worst. It was all she felt, fear and dismay, for much too long before her Confessor training brought her back to the world. Breathing shakily, she closed her eyes and came to reality.

“You are not even worth my attention,” Denna was saying in her coldest tone, hand clenched around where the agiel should have been at her side.

If Shota could have sprouted flames from her eyes, she would have. “So that is your response to all reason? Pretend to ignore? If that is all the touted strength of a Mord’Sith, I am not impressed.”

Denna spun sharply, raising a hand to lash out before seeming to realize that she still couldn’t. “You caused this to happen. You. We had one goal, witch, and yet you completely overlooked it for the sake of…what, exactly?”

Kahlan frowned, seeing two different kinds of anger, both piercing her own strong emotions with the sense of being out of place.

“Our lives!” Shota spat at Denna. “Did you really think you could stand against Darken Rahl? Against his Mord’Sith? I have no interest in your death, with or without the Seeker here to disapprove. Against such stupidity as I have to deal with, you were once an ally. The children were not going to be killed; you and I would have been.”

“You don’t know Rahl,” Denna said through clenched teeth. “Those children…” Again, her fist clenched.

“And you actually care for their lives?” Shota asked, stunned.

Kahlan rose to her feet, just as confused when Denna wheeled to face her, and there was shame in her eyes. For the first time, she looked like a person more than a construct of brutal training. Kahlan saw the war between her two sides as clearly as if they were two separate people, and would have stared longer had not Denna broken the silence to avoid the questions: “The Stone of Tears?”

Kahlan flinched. She glanced down at the jewel–like object in her hand, and the lump grew in her throat as she realized all that she and Cara had brought to pass—only too late for one of them. Even without the children, her heart still would have cried for her not to give up. “But Cara.”

Denna shook her head tightly. “There is nothing we can do.” Regret and dark truth shone from her eyes more than indifference.

Kahlan caught sight of Sam looking up at Denna, devastation on his face. She bit down on her lip before saying fiercely, “You don’t know that there’s nothing. Look at what we’ve accomplished…”

“Kahlan!” Shota broke in. Her arms were at her sides, her stance determined, as if once again she’d captured the bigger picture while the rest of them flailed from within it. “She is right. You cannot abandon your mission for a fool’s errand, not when we are so close, and so even closer to utter failure.”

“Are you going to explain that to them?” Kahlan demanded, waving her hand to the children at her feet. Her heart longed for Richard as it had not longed for months, because he would understand. He always had—he’d taught her the importance of individuals—he would have fought for Cara.

“They already know,” Shota answered, and left it at that.

Kahlan had to swallow hard. It was so easy to picture Cara saying something like that, eyes swimming in guilt for what had become of her innocent young ones. They cried, as every child would, but they didn’t ask where Cara had gone. They didn’t ask what they were going to do to get her back. They didn’t even ask why. So much had befallen them that they saw asking questions as pointless. Kahlan met their grey–green eyes, broken and weary, and saw that even they were waiting for what would happen next. It was so wrong, and Kahlan wanted to weep and smile and tell them that they shouldn’t give up on their mother—but maybe this heart–breaking was all that would keep them alive if Kahlan was wrong. A double guilt clawed onto her heart.

But she was used to pain by now. They all stood waiting, knowing that logic alone was not going to do anything if Kahlan didn’t choose. This grief wasn’t final yet; she could master it. She wrapped the pain up, and placed a hand on her belly as she forced resolve to the front of her mind. Taking a deep if shaky breath, she met Denna’s eyes first. “I swear to you, as soon as the rift is fixed, I won’t stand around a second longer than necessary before doing everything in my power to find Cara.”

Even though Denna’s eyes held something like pity, she nodded once. “I’m glad that you choose well.”

Shota moved with impatience. “We still have no time, then. Now.”

Kahlan took another deep breath, looking down towards the children. But only Sophia stood there; Sam had moved towards Denna, and now stood with his arms wrapped around her leg. Denna stared down at him, and then slowly her hand descended to his head and awkwardly brushed his curls. It had felt as if Cara’s loss had driven a knife deep into Kahlan’s heart, and this action only twisted it, because more than an almost–human Mord’Sith Sam needed his mother.

“That’s it?” Sophia asked in a small voice.

“No,” Kahlan told her without needing to think, dropping to one knee and putting a hand to Sophia’s cheek. Despite seeing how time and trial had left a child’s round cheeks hollow and dark circles beneath her eyes, there was not a hint of omission or mere comforting in Kahlan’s words as she said firmly, “This is not the end. We’ll get your mother back before it’s too late, Sophie, I promise.”

Eyes welling a little yet again, Sophia nodded.

Kahlan needed to believe her own words. She gripped Sophia’s hand as she rose back to her feet, focusing all her determination on the Stone of Tears in her other hand. Sam had pulled away from Denna, who reverted to her usual stance, and Kahlan latched onto the warrior in her. Forcing a quick steel–like quality into her being that Confessors knew all too well, she decided that something needed to be done now. She walked over to the saddlebags they now carried with their packs, reaching for the bottom and the small rag–wrapped bundle. “Denna,” she said. With lips tight, she turned and handed it to the woman.

A strange relief dawned over the Mord’Sith’s face as she let the folds of cloth fall to reveal her agiel, softly wailing its powers to the air. Her eyes darted up to Kahlan’s for a brief second of gratitude before being covered by emotionless appreciation. “You’re not as foolish as I thought.”

It was as much as a ‘thank you’, and Kahlan knew it. But with her jaw set, what mattered more was that they all had all their resources at hand. “We need to succeed. Quickly.”

To Kahlan’s surprise, Denna reached out her hand. “Yes,” she said as Kahlan accepted it. “But if you wish to survive, you will not be hasty, especially since no one can promise a happy ending.”

Kahlan’s eyes were dropped, adjusting the saddle so that they might get started on the mission, and Denna’s words hit hard. She merely murmured, “I know,” and tried not to think of Cara. The Pillars of Creation were all they should focus on.

* * * * *

“What assignment is this?” Triana asked Garen from across the training room, standing beside her almost like a twin with her long dark braid and slim form in the red leather.

Cara lay on the floor, one eye half swollen shut, breathing heavy with the several cracks in her ribs, unable to find a way to rest that did not accentuate the bruises along her entire body. They’d stripped her of the garb that she associated with being the Seeker, putting her in the black–leather undergarments of the Mord’Sith as the first step on an intended journey. She’d been silent, calm, refusing to respond, choosing to feel dead instead.

“We are to train her as a new recruit,” Garen said, glancing coldly back at Cara from where she stood. “Break her heart, but not all of her will. Teach her to control pain as if she were a child. You are good at that, are you not?”

Triana gave a smug smile. “I am glad that you and Lord Rahl have chosen to notice that at last.”

“She was a mother,” Garen added with disdain. “She chose willingly to come.”

Triana raised an eyebrow. “That would explain the behavior. It will make it useful.”

Cara heard it all, but her mind had nothing to offer. Dull pain flowed through her body from the initial beating she’d been given, just an introduction to what waited. Rahl had watched with a dark light in his eyes as her body had been pummeled, as she spat out blood, and yet didn’t even look at him with hate. She wouldn’t have given him the satisfaction in any case, but she couldn’t seem to summon the emotions—and it felt like fear again of an entirely different kind. As her fingers clenched around nothing, she couldn’t help but hear Kahlan’s words on the subject, and the combination of love and regret threatened to tear her in two all in an instant.

Now, Triana walked over, looking like any other Mord’Sith, and Cara had seen so many now that she was numb to the childhood triggers. “You,” she said, in a crisp tone. “Normally I would bash in your jaw for daring to look up at me like that, instead of licking my boots as you groveled before your mistress. But as entertaining as that might be, you have more important lessons to learn.”

Cara dropped her eyes, not feeling any urge to look at the woman who intended to break her.

“Not defiant?” Triana sounded shocked.

“I have nothing to say,” Cara murmured, closing her heavy swollen lids for a second. She was not going to make this easy, but neither would she fight for a non–existent exit. The best she could hope for was a decent ending, and no words would help create that. Words were useless.

She felt a sharp pain at the back of her neck as Triana’s gloved hand came down and yanked her up by it. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll have plenty of screams, though,” she said with a twisted smile.

There was no point in denying it as Cara was forced away, limbs scraping against the rough floor. Cara found out for the first time just how soft Denna had been the last time Cara had been chained and vulnerable. Triana spent no time with manipulation, and instead let pain do the talking. Through gritted teeth, and the inevitable screams when Triana found new places to rest the agiel, the beating in Cara’s head spelled out that this was the point. Drowning her in pain until they could make her accept it. The burning through her entire body told her that maybe it wasn’t far off as she wanted it to be.

Garen took over when Triana wore Cara raw, and she wasn’t allowed any sleep as new lines were drawn, and welts became bloody as the agiel pressed against them for a second time. Cara screamed until her throat was hoarse, and then she bit down hard enough that she was trying to feel the pain, anything specific to focus on to draw away from the agony in the rest of her. She could still think of nothing—Garen kept striking her with the agiel, until it felt like she would be beaten to death, but she was still alive and there was nothing to do but absorb the pain.

Triana returned even later. Her touches with the agiel became whispery soft, tendrils of pain instead of rivers, refraining from spilling any more of Cara’s blood on the training room floor. Still, even as each breath felt forcefully ripped from her lungs with the pressure in her chest, Cara was buried down deep under her own guilt. More and more, it was her mind that seemed to burn with fever more than her body could burn with pain. After the second day with no sleep, they decided that they were bringing her too close to the edge. She was returned to a prisoner’s cell, feeling as if she was nothing more than a tapestry of wounds.

As soon as her head hit the floor a ragged cough escaped her throat. It seemed to take everything with it, and the wall that she’d felt as a lack of emotions was the first to go. In the fevered delusion of her mind it felt like Kahlan was sitting just across the cell, laughing easily as Sophia and Sam curled up in her lap, smiling to Cara with bright eyes that said ‘Why don’t you come join us?’. Cara wept before managing to lose herself in sleep.

She had stubbornness when they dragged her up again, and her breaths came fast and sharp with the fresh pain even just hanging from the chains—but it wasn’t something she could hope in, or that they could fear. There was no rescue to count on, no sense that there was any way to cheat the training. All she knew was that she was Cara Mason, she was not born a Mord’Sith, and she would not fold over to their will. They would have to rip her apart and put her back together if they wanted that. They would do it, she had no doubt. But her will was all she had left.

Tears, sweat, and pain, were all the legacy that the Mord’Sith gifted to her. Days of agony, nights of an emptiness that felt worse. Because she’d left all she loved behind, willingly, she couldn’t use them for strength now. She’d given up that right, and Kahlan and Sam and Sophie were all forbidden to her even in memories—she’d forced her mind to accept that. So she had nothing. Nothing more the Mord’Sith could take away; she was raw to them already, and unyielding but also prepared. Triana might not realize it yet, but Cara felt the dreadful truth waiting underneath, and if she could have looked past the pain she would have hated it.

Little by little, the agiel made pain her new world. Triana and Garen had no style, but they didn’t need it. Cara knew exactly what they were doing, and no manipulation would change that. Pain was force, and it would bring her around well enough. Cara could no longer scream after the seventh day, only gasp, and she’d forgotten what being a mother and a lover felt like. All she was could be described with two words, pain and guilt, and the latter was being beaten viciously into oblivion by the former.

She had bruises on top of bruises, and criss–crossing red lines of healing and fresh welts, when Darken Rahl came to the temple. If her arms ached from hanging so long in chains, she couldn’t discern a difference from where they ached from the torment of the agiels.

“Well,” he said in an almost whisper, running his hand down her left cheekbone where Garen had left a deep mark. Cara could barely flinch, the pain making her breath sound aching. “I have heard such interesting stories. You do not call for your loved ones, Cara?”

“What good would it do?” Cara rasped, raising her stinging blurry eyes to meet his.

Darken’s lips curved in an amused smile. “None whatsoever. But I wonder, do you call for them in your head? Do you still cling to anything, no matter how much you give off the impression that your soul has already died?”

And Cara shivered, because she didn’t know what he meant. Mind stretched and exhausted, there was no recourse for anything other than instinct. Somewhere she knew, with thoughts, that she didn’t belong here. It just didn’t matter.

“How long?” Darken Rahl turned and asked Triana.

“It’s hard to judge the process if she will not speak, my lord,” Triana said with a slight huff.

“Then make her speak,” Darken Rahl answered with dangerous smoothness.

* * * * *

They made good time. The long miles between the Stone of Tears and the Pillars of Creation had little to distinguish them from unimportant unnamed fields all over D’Hara and the Midlands, and after a week their group was halfway there.

Kahlan woke in the early morning, Sophia curled on her chest as best she could, and despite the throbbing ache in her head Kahlan’s first thought was that they were only a week from their true journey’s end. But she missed Cara’s warm presence at her back, nearby at the very least. It was stupid—of course she missed her. But after long days and not–nearly–long–enough nights, her thoughts were no more complicated than that.

She just wanted Cara again. To tangle fingers in hair or with fingers; to brush skin against skin, or skin against the fabric at her belly so that Cara could feel Sara’s kicking; to sense the warmth that the sound of her voice created, like a soothing rush over her entire body, stimulating and calming in the beautiful paradox of love. She wanted them to be safe. The wish always lingered, but now it hurt with impossibility.

Despite the fact that Shota and Denna were more than usually cooperative, Kahlan felt the weight of everything on her, and not just because of the prophecy. Sam and Sophia looked to her as their mother, and with her unborn Sara still growing inside her, just as restless as Kahlan most days, sometimes Kahlan longed to ask Cara how she’d done it. How she managed to be Seeker, mother, companion, and herself, and still sometimes smile. Kahlan could barely manage Mother Confessor and mother, but she did.

“Sophie,” she murmured now, swallowing the automatic lump in her throat. Too many tears had been shed for her to spare any more. Cara’s daughter raised her head, awake almost in an instant despite the short night, as all nights were. She blinked bleary eyes. “I need to get up,” Kahlan said, stroking her hair.

“Sorry,” Sophia mumbled, shifting.

“No, it’s fine,” Kahlan assured her, pulling herself slowly upright and rubbing the girl’s back. So much of her strength was given to the children these days, born and unborn. It helped and didn’t all at the same time. She let her face be soft when she looked at Sophia. “I’m glad you sleep next to me.”

Kahlan managed to get to her feet, despite being off–center with her pregnancy. She caught a breath at the awkward movement, and saw Sophia swallow and stand up as well. “We have to go now?” the girl asked. “Do I need to wake Sam?” But before Kahlan could answer with advice about her slow–rising brother, there was a rustle in the leaves.

“Banelings,” Denna declared before she had fully entered the clearing, sliding her agiel into its sheath with a hard face. “Almost upon us. Too many for now. We have to move on, now.”

It was a too familiar pattern. Heart skipping a beat as always, wishing she were not even a little incapacitated, and wishing as always to have Cara’s support, Kahlan hurried to gather everything together. Emotions were swept away by the push to run.

Denna reached down to scoop up the still–slumbering Sam in one gloved hand, swinging him up over her shoulder instead of trying to ease him awake. Sophia was quick on her feet, grabbing her bag as Kahlan grabbed hers, and Shota was awake and up in too little time considering her age. The witch sent a wave of green magic to disguise their tracks and campsite, but it was with no less urgency that they darted off into the pathless woods.

Kahlan held Sophia’s hand as she went, and noticed that Sam was still asleep, drooling down Denna’s back as she carried him. Without Cara to hold her attention, Kahlan found herself distracted by the Mord’Sith and her odd behavior. Part of her wondered if Denna did everything simply to keep people from bothering her, but Kahlan’s intuition told her that it couldn’t be everything. Denna was the only thing around that reminded Kahlan of Cara’s stubborn will to do everything right, and so she told herself it was not denial of loss to keep wondering.

She’d chosen the name Sara for her unborn daughter, and as if with that alone, the pregnancy had grown more dramatic. Sara rolled and kicked, and the more Kahlan moved the more she battered at Kahlan from the inside, making her displeasure known. Several times a day, it seemed, a particular contraction would make Kahlan have to drop to a log. No one was surprised any more. In an old painful pattern, Kahlan bowed her head and tried to breathe slowly.

When Denna lowered herself to a seat next to her, though, something that only Cara used to do, Kahlan for a pulse couldn’t tell the difference. Yet it wasn’t Cara—and Kahlan tried not to think any more on the insanity of wishing otherwise. The vision of green and brown trees around her spun and blurred a little with the intensity of the pressure on her womb. Women in her position shouldn’t be on adventures, it all seemed to yell at her.

“Confessor?” Denna asked, in her usual smoothly cool tone.

“It’s nothing,” Kahlan said, even if half a gasp. But her body shuddered a little involuntarily, and she flinched a little to feel Denna’s hand between her shoulder–blades. “What?”

“It’s not a threat,” Denna explained slowly, leaving her hand in place. When Kahlan glanced up, she saw Denna’s mouth move as if the words were coming slowly, being analyzed on their way out just so she wouldn’t say something hasty. “The Mord’Sith sometimes bore children. We were well aware of the dangers of stress on a woman’s body. You’ve had very little release of that, without the Seeker’s touch. I thought the simple sensation might be beneficial. After all, you’re necessary to end this.”

Kahlan looked at her, saw the unassuming expression plain across her face, and relaxed her flinch. “I’m sorry.” Casting her glance down again as she focused on keeping her breathing steady, she did frown momentarily, almost wanting to ask Denna what act she was trying to pull. Then, looking up and seeing the others some way off, she sighed.

“You shouldn’t worry.”

Kahlan was surprised to hear the words. “Are you giving me advice?”

Denna’s lips bent in her unique quirk. “I don’t hate you anymore, Mother Confessor. I just hold no fondness for you.” But then her mouth went back to the firmer shape of before. “I thought, though, that you were worrying for the children. You needn’t. Through some luck of parentage or pure chance, they are stronger than most girls received into Mord’Sith temples. I find their lack of weakness…refreshing.”

Kahlan blinked several times, not speaking because she knew her words would come out hasty and ill–advised. It wasn’t her imagination creating the warmth in Denna’s actions, nor the truth in her recent deeds. Sam and Sophia had somehow provided Denna with objects of affection that she neither asked for nor realized she had. It was disturbing, but given Kahlan’s life, there was something bittersweet as well. She found herself saying the strangest words she had never imagined. “They look to you.”

Denna’s face tightened. “They miss Cara. As do you. Their actions are tied to grief, it’s not surprising.”

Kahlan opened her mouth, but then shut it. It didn’t matter if Denna refused to acknowledge that she liked the children, even Sam with his strange attraction to the distant woman. All that mattered was that she was there, not like Cara, but something new and not unwanted.

“I’m fine now,” Kahlan said, preparing to stand up. When Denna offered a stiff hand, not meeting her eyes as if there was something on the path ahead more worth her attention, Kahlan pictured Cara’s hypothetical raised eyebrow in the corner of her eye and had to shut them for a moment. The Stone of Tears—it rested against her bosom as the reminder of what Cara had left in her charge. Kahlan wasn’t allowed to think past it, to think of what might be waiting when the mission was over, what remnants of Cara there might be left to find.

Yet again, she focused on the way Denna and Sam strode side by side along the path as they moved forward again. It was real, and she would let it distract her for as long as was necessary. If there was fear, biting at her heels, that ‘necessity’ would demand the rest of her life, then she was running from that just as surely as from the pursuing banelings.

* * * * *

“Speak!” Triana demanded as she whipped her agiel across Cara’s face. Blood spattered audibly in the following silence. “Don’t be a fool, Cara! You can’t destroy emotions with nothing, you have to purge them, let them go. And you know it, so why do you hold on. Even you have said there’s nothing for you to hold onto.”

They didn’t have her in the chains. Cara knelt on the floor, arms shaking as they held her from falling forward, with the pain and with the remembrance of them being broken. It seemed like every bone in her body had been broken before being healed again, wounds still burning after only half a breath of life. Her long hair was damp and bedraggled around her face as she couldn’t lift it to Triana’s. But she heard the words.

“Speak!” Triana ordered again, striking the back of her head.

They were breaking through the emptiness. Two weeks of this, and Cara discovered she hadn’t lost everything. Giving up hadn’t worked, and the continual onslaught of pain started brewing something in her chest. She couldn’t think of it, but just felt it, like a dragon’s breath mine about to explode, and even with no strength she wanted to strike back. Cara’s mind throbbed with one desire—to take Triana down, take the agony and master it, agiel or not, and end the lesson that had gone on too long. It was seeping into her bones, this need to release herself into the world of pain.

“I can see it,” Triana said, almost a hiss with the force she put in the words, lowering herself to Cara’s level. Her agiel came in contact with Cara’s chin, sending waves and waves of the excruciating madness through her mind, even as Triana’s words were still distinct. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself like this, Cara, I want you to become the hurt. It’s the only way any of us can truly live; it’s the beauty of the Mord’Sith.”

Cara gasped and choked on the agiel’s magic forcing its way through her veins, hands shaking so much that she slipped down further, despite her will to stay upright at the very least. With disappointment, Triana withdrew the device. Then, with a quick strike, she snapped it against Cara’s temple, knocking her onto her side so that a grunt escaped her.

Triana’s smirk as she stood above her, back arched with the pure control she felt over the system, gave an impression that made Cara have to suck in a quick breath. Even then, it was not fast enough, and the lump of indescribable feelings in her stomach swelled and rose to her throat, bringing words that she didn’t think she just said. “May the Keeper damn you!” she grated, eyes blurring with the sudden anger first of all, just a taste of what was starting to fill her chest with the throbbing of emotion.

“Eventually, yes,” Triana answered, with almost glee, leaning down towards Cara again. “Is that why you’re here, Cara?”

Fingers clenched and shaking, Cara managed to push herself almost to a seated position, breath painful as she stared without blinking and spoke without thought. “I have nothing,” she spat at Triana, stomach rolling. “I never have and I never will. I told myself I could keep what little I had left, a family, safe from the universe. I was wrong. It was impossible. I was an idiot, and in the end I just gave in before I could destroy the last pieces. It was the right decision.”

“Your family didn’t protect you,” Triana fed back to her with a firm nod. “You could only count on yourself, and you gave yourself to the wrong purpose, and so the universe brought you only an end to it.”

Cara choked on the words, on the anger and the guilt that caused it, while the former started to burn away the latter as pain had once done before. The pain instead was her language now, of self–hatred and a need for something that she could control that could not break her like love. How could she have thought that they would break her with pain, when just the faces of the ones she’d failed had kept her on the verge of breaking for months before this. Her breath was a harsh sob.

“They failed you,” Triana said, moving closer to her as Cara clenched and unclenched her fists, ignoring the splitting wounds on her knuckles. “All human families are inadequate, greedy, even if they don’t try to be. Love is pointless, Cara—it has brought you nothing but disaster.”

In a sharp burst of rage that managed to cover up everything else in the sea of Cara’s built–up supply of emotion, she found the strength to strike out at Triana’s knees. Her eyes were focused on the target of her hatred—she fell short anyways, too weak.

Triana drove her agiel into Cara’s back as a response. “Don’t fight it, Cara! The pain will give you life, and you will have sisters here who will not drain you dry, who will be there to keep you strong, who will serve at your side instead of requiring your presence merely to survive. You will thrive in the strength.”

A strangled noise escaped Cara’s throat as she lay, torment weaving through her body. But it was too much and yet enough. She found the strength to reach out, grab Triana’s boot, and yank hard enough to bring the Mord’Sith crashing to the ground. Triana’s head cracked loudly, and she lay for a moment in a stunned heap of leather–clad limbs.

With a wheezing breath that sent stabbing sensations through her cracked ribs, rage flowed through Cara’s veins instead of blood—blind rage that had no plan, only instinct, born of all these two weeks of endless torture. Her hand found the fallen agiel, wrapped around it, and she screamed so that the pain in her voice mingled with the anger. Crawling, limbs trembling as if they would fall apart, she managed to make it to Triana’s body and slam the weapon into her belly. The Mord’Sith writhed, a surprised whimper escaping her, and Cara’s scream trailed away as she shook so hard that the agiel wobbled from her hands and fell to the floor. She gasped for breath, feeling alive and yet bitter for it.

As soon as the agiel fell aside, Triana’s hand shot up and gripped Cara’s throat, choking her of air. “Who do you hate, Cara?”

Lights danced before Cara’s eyes as she was choked, and yet she managed to say through broken lips, “No one.” This time she felt pierced to the heart, and knew exactly what she wanted to say. “Hatred isn’t worth the emotion.”

Triana’s eyes shined as she loosened Cara’s throat just a little, letting in enough air for her to breathe. “And this anger?”

It was cold, as Cara took the moment’s hesitation and grabbed her wrist that held the agiel, flipping it around and slamming it into Triana’s heart so that they both fell to the floor. Tension broke like a wave with Cara finally controlling the screaming pain of the agiel in her hands. “It’s mine,” she said with all the intent she had. The Mord’Sith gasped out a last breath and lay still. And with that, took the last of Cara’s heart, and the last of the tangled emotions in the pit of her stomach.

Cara had lost—she’d given in to fear and anger, and had taken control of them—and this was who she was, what was left over. It was all she felt.

Before she could gather together the unsteady pieces of her battered body, Garen rushed into the room to give Triana the breath of life. Cara barely noticed the agiel still in her hand, making her arm shake with the force of holding so much pain, and yet she was holding it. It took all her focus, standing for the first time in two weeks but frozen without any sense of what to do with this new self.

Triana gasped in a breath, and almost immediately grabbed for Garen’s hand to pull her to her feet. Cara couldn’t respond in time when she walked over, and with cold methodical skill grabbed the agiel from Cara’s hand, turned it around, and pressed it right against the bare skin above Cara’s heart. With a flash of agony, Cara felt her life stop, and didn’t stay alive long enough to feel herself hit the floor.

* * * * *

“Run now!” Shota shouted across the battlefield, as her blue lightning flew into a dozen of the banelings in the bright sunlight.

Denna’s agiel cut through another one of the undead as she spun, braid flying in the chaos as the Keeper’s minions kept charging. No blood soaked the grey–brown sand beneath their feet, before the rocky hillside that led to the Pillars of Creation, because they weren’t fighting men. She turned in a moment of free space, saw Kahlan hesitate, glance to where Sophia and Sam hid behind the boulder. Denna knew she wouldn’t go.

The last week had revealed far more than the Mord’Sith had ever wanted to know about herself or Kahlan. She didn’t have to like the woman, she just had to understand what drove her, even if sometimes it felt like Kahlan would drag Denna into her insanity just with that understanding. But for now, she clenched her jaw and did what was necessary, running across the battlefield before the banelings could strike again. The sun was almost at noon–height.

“Confessor!” she grated out, grabbing Kahlan’s shoulder and pushing her towards the rocks. “You’re feeling again. Do. Or we are all doomed.” Kahlan’s head whipped back for a second, her hair caught in the warm wind, and Denna pushed her sharply again. “I will keep them safe—you haven’t forgotten, you know it. Go! Do!” As Kahlan swallowed and ran off, Denna’s heart twisted for a second.

Then with a hiss, and a return to war once again, Denna spun back into combat with her agiel flailing. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that no one had yet approached Sam and Sophia, and their safety gave her the reason to push on so purposely against the right flank of the approaching horde. Sun in her eyes, baking her form, the sweat of battle pouring from her skin, she cut through them like bread.

All at once the world seemed to stop spinning, and an earthquake shook the plain they all stood upon. Denna paused mid strike, agiel still wailing, and looked skyward to see the flash in the atmosphere. The air went heavy and she had to draw in another breath with more hardness—but it was no storm. She turned, jaw slightly agape, and saw the Pillars of Creation burning even in the noon–sun.

The air hissed with power and the earth shook. Green flames shot out of cracks in the very hills, steaming up, before with a shudder a wave of golden light sprang from the pillars as if shot from a bow. It flung itself across the land in a glitter of power, passing through the banelings and making them drop into dust where they stood, making Denna’s breath catch in her throat, and then shooting on past where they all stood into the very Midlands and D’Hara themselves.

Denna didn’t realize for a minute, drawing breath once again, that the tear running down her cheek was hers. She wiped it harshly away, but it had been there, because Kahlan had done it. As the prophecy had foretold, as will and determination had decided, they had done the impossible. Standing breathless, Denna saw Kahlan’s white and black figure standing illuminated among the Pillars.

Kahlan had won.

Part 12

Darken Rahl had been standing, forefinger to lower–lip, as Cara Mason was brought back with the breath of life. Lurking in the shadows throughout her training, he’d seen her defenses fall, the guilt of the morally burdened woman transformed into the determined rage of a warrior, with just a hint of bitterness to add to her fire. “She has been punishing herself with vigor all her life,” he’d told Triana before, sharing his intuition. “Push forward; she will embrace this as well.” And the softness of love had disappeared as he saw Cara’s hard eyes determined on ending Triana’s life—no more, no less. Then, gasping, she’d come to life on edge, tense as a bowstring.

They ripped that tension from her with a beating that left even Rahl impressed. The breath of life had not even healed all her wounds and yet they provided her with more, Triana’s pointed words into Cara’s ears so obvious to understand. She’d denounced love once; doing it again was just building a pattern. Just like life and death. An agiel to the heart was excruciating, he knew, in a way that the mind couldn’t quickly bounce back from. Cara was killed seven more times in that day alone. And Triana was always there, persistent and effective, whispering just the right emotional words to set the limits for the life they’d gifted Cara.

Darken Rahl had been standing in the shadows at the end of the day, at the last regeneration, when Cara stared, breasts heaving and eyes sharp, at the Mord’Sith all around her. Despite the way they’d overwhelmed her with the torture, and despite red streaks and yellowing bruises even after the healing breath, there was a visible strength emanating from her mostly bare and compact form. They’d handed her an agiel at last, and she’d wrapped her hands around it with not even a flinch, shutting her eyes and holding it close. That was torture enough to finish the job.

After giving her access to the bath room, Darken Rahl had sent Triana in after her. He didn’t hear the words she spoke, but Cara had responded by beating Triana into a pulp, not seeming to realize how much Triana relished it—for her own pleasure as well as for the unspoken task. There was an honesty about Cara that made it so easy to take her wherever they wanted. Granted, two weeks was a significant amount of time, Darken Rahl had to admit as he cocked his head, watching even a soaked and naked Cara nearly drown a fully–geared Triana in the Mord’Sith pool. Garen came to break it up, and Cara hissed at her, and Darken Rahl saw her eyes blaze. She was well on her way to attaining what Mord’Sith spent years training for, and if he was a little surprised, it was a good one. He hoped.

Berdine and Raina were ordered to begin the easier transition. Cara allowed their touch after only a moment’s shudder, and Darken Rahl knew they were murmuring words of sisterhood into her ears as they washed her long golden hair. Trained and clean, the remaining marks of torture were only barely visible. They helped her into the supple red leather of her new family, lacing it up tight, and Darken Rahl deeply approved of the change. Cara stood with her hand resting on the agiel as if already it was holding her steady, as Berdine braided her hair. When the final knot was set in place, Darken Rahl saw Cara say something short, and saw the other Mord’Sith slink away to leave her standing solo.

He took a moment before walking in, looking at the changes in her figure. There was a sleek catlike look with the way the leather wrapped around her curves, marking just how still she stood. Her face, when no longer framed by soft curls, had a strength that read just as powerful as any sister raised in the temples. Even with her fingers constantly wrapped around the agiel, she didn’t move an inch. She was extraordinary, this Cara Mason, and Darken Rahl could not have been more pleased with his improvisation. Even if she was never fully trained enough that he might trust her with his life, that did not matter.

She turned slowly as he crossed the floor, looking at him with preparation in her full green eyes.

“Well. Cara.” A small smile crossed his lips as her eyes alone followed him as he circled her, his robes trailing the floor. “What do we have here?”

“A weapon ready to serve you,” she answered. “What you wanted, I have no doubts.”

He eyed her expression closely, marking the insolence in her gaze, a blunt disregard for everything. Everything except, perhaps, exactly what he’d intended. “You need not cling to the agiel. It will not fly away.”

There was a flinch, a bit of offense in her eyes. “If I am to inflict it, I must be intimate with it,” was all she answered, yet in a tone that wasn’t harsh.

Darken Rahl was pleased. Pleased with himself, pleased with her, wondering just how more perfect this could have been if he’d discovered her sooner. Her village had been a prime target; it must have been sheer determination that kept her away from his valiant Mord’Sith’s clutches. Moving up behind her, he ran his finger down the long braid hanging at her back. “That is not your only role, I hope you know.”

Cara didn’t turn, just gave a slight grunt. “But I hope I’ll be allowed battle—this pain gives me life.”

“So it will,” Darken confirmed softly, tracing his touch along her shoulder as he walked around to face her. “Your desires will be strong for now, and believe me, I will be grateful. But it will not last. You will learn to control…everything.” He could see from the flicker in her eyes that she longed for control—she still felt like she didn’t have it, of course. It was the right drive for a new Mord’Sith.

“I can’t bear weakness,” she murmured under her breath, still meeting his eyes.

“Good.” And with that, Darken left her to the sisters of the agiel. She was not without her disadvantages, of course. Even if they’d scourged her past from being of importance to her, it had existed. Even if she was no blind pet and was something more directed and forged, there were still huge cracks from the haste. But he believed in her will, and with it fully directed to this new life, he had no doubts of her eventual successes. And by default, his.

Cara Mason was no more, as far as he was concerned. He believed in the unique future of Mistress Cara.

* * * * *

Kahlan had indeed stood alone at noon, Stone of Tears in her hand at the Pillars of Creation. Tears of regret and joy had fallen together from her eyes as the entire world was repaired, and yet not her heart. Prophecy was cruelly honest in this case. The stresses were gone, and the lack of them hurt no less.

They all came rushing up to see her, as the sun spread its beams over a complete world. Shota seemed glowing with pride—and offensive surprise—as she put her hand on Kahlan’s shoulder. Denna looked relieved and content only, even with Cara’s children around her feet.

“You will be renowned through the ages, Kahlan Amnell, Mother Confessor and savior of the world,” Shota said in a slow voice.

Kahlan laughed through her tears, and reached out to touch Sophia and Sam. The catharsis of the day was so painful, she didn’t know what to do other than hold her family close. Then Denna’s eyes met hers, and she held onto what was missing.

“Kahlan,” the Mord’Sith said, with flat intonation that wasn’t supposed to imply anything. A slight cock of her head did all that.

“Shota,” Kahlan started, turning around to look at the sorceress. “Can you…” she nodded towards the children. Before the woman had time to answer, Kahlan was walking away, Denna on her heels. The first thought that raced through her head was that she wanted to lie down, rest for at least a year, until her body was no longer swollen and aching and protesting every movement. The physical was starting to overwhelm the emotional, but all that went away when Denna put a hand to her arm. Kahlan glanced up, surprised.

“You looked ready to faint,” Denna said, lips twisted.

“I’m not,” Kahlan answered, but took a deep breath in any case. “Cara.” She met Denna’s blue eyes and saw cool understanding, and it only brought back too many memories. She’d tried so hard not to think of her these past few days, but on seeing Denna, remembering how they’d found Richard, images had leaked through. Images that Kahlan never needed to have—ones that made her stomach roll, made Sara kick at her ribs as if she saw along with Kahlan. She swallowed now. “How do we get her back?”

“It’s unlikely that we can,” Denna said swiftly, jaw tight. “You should know that.”

“I don’t care,” Kahlan said. “You should know that.”

“You are,” Denna began, and Kahlan braced herself, but after a pause the Mord’Sith only said, “impossibly with child.”

“I have more than three months.”

“If it was in my power to do so, I would tie you down and the children to you while I went to get your Cara myself,” Denna said with a slight flash of her eyes. “You should see how you endanger all of us with this reckless behavior.”

“Denna,” Kahlan started, but found no words. She dropped her eyes, biting her tongue. Her mind nagged at her that she was being stupid and narrow–minded, and she clenched her hands into fists.

“Don’t try,” Denna said, with a hint of bitterness. Kahlan glanced up and saw an emptiness in her eyes as she said again, “Don’t try to control your heart, Kahlan Amnell, we all know how futile it is. You will throw it off a cliff if it will do anything for the ones you love. I should not try to tell you otherwise.”

Kahlan’s lips pressed together for a second, even as she caught a tone of near–regret in Denna that would need closer attention later. The only duty that called her was the one to her people, and Sophia and Sam just as much as Cara. She didn’t believe herself too weak yet; she still had strength. “There’s a way to do this. You have more knowledge, Denna, tell me. What can we do.”

The Mord’Sith lowered her head for a second, lips pursed, then raised it. “Nothing in my powers, or yours, but if the witch–woman is still on our side, perhaps she can trace the Rahl magic. Darken has made himself immune, but what little resides in our agiels is not covered under that.”

The words hit Kahlan like a blow, and she felt the blood drain from her face. “Then—Cara—?”

Denna met her eyes swiftly. “Regardless of what exactly has become of her, she will either be by his side, or the side of one of his Mord’Sith, or both. That is all we can go on.”

Kahlan nodded. “And the children, what will we do with them?”

Denna let out a long frustrated sigh. “I still cannot believe they are with you…it is a marvel they are not dead. I don’t mean it harshly, it’s just the inescapable truth.” A tiny flame leaped in her eyes for a second, then faded. “For now, we will be traveling as we always have, with no added danger. For now.”

Gritting her teeth, Kahlan turned back to where Shota was lightly fuming over being stuck alone with the children. This was the last chance Kahlan had to put her family back together, and she would not rest until she had turned over every stone Rahl laid claim to, tried every spell that would not destroy the world. Cara had given up everything; Kahlan didn’t just need her, she owed her. Selfish as it might be, compared to the rest of the world, she had to do this. And of all the strange thoughts to follow those ones, the one that crossed her mind was that it was Denna she was glad to have at her side. A Denna who had not spoken a word about her own ambitions, and whether out of duty or forbidden feelings seemed to feel obligated to protect them all.

Even more shocking was the realization that with Denna at her side, Kahlan’s confidence was lifted. If there was anyone who could help her save Cara—well, it was hardly the strangest occurrence on this long journey. But as she asked for Shota’s aid and saw hope shining in the children’s eyes, she couldn’t forget that she had no idea what state they would find Cara in at the end of this new journey.

* * * * *

Cara hoped that somehow her training had destroyed her ability to cry tears. Of all the memories she’d been able to shove out of the way, now useless to her life, she couldn’t erase the muscle–memory of the physical feelings. She could only hope there would be no repetition so that they would fade with time. It made the twisted anger in her heart burn and rage, and she’d learned that the other sisters of the agiel did not react well to random snaps of frustration. Yet fighting to avoid being forced into submission and compliance solved too many problems for her to want to avoid.

She knew she was still flawed. She could see it in Triana’s face, in Garen’s, in Darken Rahl’s. It made her seethe, train harder, fight harder, live harder. Her life had not been a total waste—it had taught her determination. They had taught her the pain she could use with it, and she would give back that training in a thousand battles if they would only let her. If she could only prove herself.

When there was not a task at hand, Cara paced the Mord’Sith temple. With all her weak memories willingly buried under the iron strength of this new life, she had very little left. Clinging to the remembered sensations of the agiels and whips on her skin made the tension rise in her, but it was better than the threat of emptiness. Even with a frustrating rage that would not ever fully dissipate, Cara felt the emptiness. She didn’t want it. She didn’t need it. It was weak, and every time Darken Rahl looked at her, she could see the tiny reservation in his eyes that meant that she had not been born to this.

She told herself that she wished she had. They had given her so much, made her see so much, and sometimes she could only throb with regret that she’d not been chosen among all the girls in her village. She also wished Dahlia had survived so that she might have someone she could look to, base her every move off of. Fourteen years could not have destroyed her ability to control her being—she wouldn’t believe it.

Three days after they’d given her the leather, long enough for its smell to seep into her unconscious and soothe enough of the angry tangles in her new mind for her to sleep more than an hour at a time, Darken Rahl approached her. Sometimes the frustration, the wish for control and pain, ate at her like desire that she could almost taste in his aura. It wasn’t comfortable yet and it kept striking her as wrong, and those more than her knowledge of duty kept her from doing anything but standing motionless at her place.

“When the boxes of Orden were destroyed,” Rahl began, walking around her as he always did while Cara held her hands at the small of her back and looked straight ahead. It was easier to hide the trembling tension in her hands, the need for something to do. “Some of those who opposed me managed to escape. I’ve gathered my forces together and will be traveling to meet them. I will take Garen and half a quad for protection, but I’ve seen you, Cara, itching for a chance to prove yourself.” He paused in front of her with a slight smirk. “Don’t worry, I don’t disapprove. Which is why you may also accompany us.”

Cara didn’t move a muscle, but her heart skipped a beat. “I’m grateful, my lord,” she said smoothly.

“Of course you are,” Darken said as he moved towards the door. “Have your agiel and your horse ready at dawn. Mistress Cara.”

A shiver ran through her at the name, and Cara swallowed, feeling the excitement in her every vein. It almost felt like fear—she could almost mistake it for fear, or disgust, and had to close her eyes to clear her mind.

She slept well that night. No nightmares, as there had been none for a while now. Four days since her first training was completed, and it didn’t cross her mind to mark the date. Sun shone off her red leather as she swung up onto her horse, braid swinging, feeling a moment of exhilaration at the lack of stiffness in her limbs. The many wounds she bore had stopped being an inconvenience at last, leaving only the dull pain that told her who she was. She clasped onto it as she spurred her horse forward, taking up the rear as Garen and the two soldiers took the lead just ahead of Darken.

No words passed between them during the day, as was expected. They’d almost reached the waiting garrison when Darken pulled up short. “My lord?” Garen asked with a frown.

“If we ride on tonight, it will be past dark before we arrive,” he answered. “I’ve no intention of presenting myself in such a manner. Garen, have the men set up camp.”

Cara dismounted, absently stroking the sweat–beaded neck of her steed before catching Rahl’s glance. They’d stopped in the middle of a forest, and he was walking towards the nearest clump of trees, beckoning with his eyes. Of course, Cara followed.

“My lord?” she asked, once they’d walked enough paces away, the ability to say the words almost a needed reinforcement of her identity.

He turned, face lacking the cool reserve worn for business, leaving a strange mix of interest and purpose. “Cara. I have been thinking today of your conduct since joining your sisterhood, and of the control you have shown already.” His voice was twisting, tantalizing, and Cara found her eyes meeting his. “Though your body screams a thousand words, you have kept from saying them. I’ve not yet given you a chance to atone for all that you feel you should—and since I’m not a cruel master, I acknowledge your desire to please.” He raised a finger to brush against her lips, and the skin–on–skin distracted Cara from her own control. “And I am quite ready, tonight, to be pleased. Come.”

The idea of thinking before she moved had been expunged from Cara, and she stepped forward, meeting him where they stood in a bare glade in the twilight. Her senses churned with a war she couldn’t label, didn’t have the thoughts to label, as he raised his hand to reach around the back of her head. It was what she might have asked for, if she’d had the words, and yet when he brought her lips to his in a kiss, the touch was like a shock. Her breath hissed through her nostrils, body freezing even as Darken brought his other hand to her waist, pulling her in.

The part of Cara that needed to please her lord, wanting the pleasure she’d earned after mastering so much pain, was angry at the part that was stunned at the feel of lips on hers. There was an automatic rush of feeling, and once again she hated her memories, even as she turned her head to let him deepen the kiss.

He broke it, hands still firm on her as he murmured, “Distracted?” It was not an indulgent question, it was a challenge.

She kissed back with determination, trying to drown out the weak part of herself that threatened to the surface. But his fingers along her spine reminded her that they were not like any of the fingers that had lingered there before. The feel of stubble around his lips as he darted his tongue into her waiting mouth reminded her that she’d once grown used to silk–smooth skin. Cara trembled, hoping to drown in finally doing more of what she’d been made as a Mord’Sith to do.

But Darken Rahl pulled her closer, mistaking her hesitancy for anticipation, and let his fingers dig into her hair towards her scalp. “I am glad to have you tonight, Cara. And just think—perhaps before the week is through we will have caught the traitorous Mother Confessor, and I will let you end her yourself.”

A noise escaped Cara’s throat that could be heard as pleasure, but that Cara felt with despair to be something more akin to shock. Eyes tightly shut, she knew that name should mean nothing to her. She was supposed to have stripped all emotion, not just buried them away. She was supposed to have bled them out onto the temple floor. Because she couldn’t admit failure, she refused to break away, but as the kiss deepened Cara’s mind couldn’t be stopped from comparing.

Kahlan’s kisses had more warmth. Kahlan’s feelings had given her touches an effect that could not be gained any other way. Kahlan had come to Cara with so much more than just a need for pleasure, and each time was burned onto Cara’s memory. She could bite back the whimper at the weak, discomforting memories, but she couldn’t send them back where they belonged. Breaking the kiss just slightly for breath, as Darken’s hand strayed on her body, Cara repeated a mantra in her head. She was a Mord’sith. Sister of the agiel. The steel against steel in the hands of Lord Rahl. She was pain and pleasure, power and submission, command and devotion. She’d been born of blood, and blood she would take.

Then Darken’s fingers at the back of her neck brushed downwards, and with her eyes closed it was too perfect an imitation of what Kahlan had done long before they admitted feelings. Cara thought there was nothing else to break—she realized now that was wrong.

They’d assumed that she had no prior training, failing to take into account what she’d done to herself all her life. Day after day, month after month, sectioning parts of herself away to keep them safe and to keep her from wanting them. Instead of falling apart in their hands like they’d assumed, she’d done what she’d always done, what they hadn’t dreamed to expect. She’d shut herself away. And Darken had just opened the door.

Her heart started beating in an almost panic as his lips were on hers, but Kahlan flooded her thoughts again. I love you she heard, I’m here for you. In her voice, in Kahlan’s, and against her will she remembered two other more dangerous faces. Sophia. Sam. It all filled her heart with a pain worse than the torture, and threatened to burst out of the false leather they’d given her. But Cara Mason could not be killed even at her own will, and now fought Mistress Cara to come back to the surface with the force of a whirlwind.

Darken pulled her close—Cara suddenly wanted push him away. Yet she’d learned one thing from these past two and a half weeks, and the disgust rising with bile in her throat could not overcome the understanding that this was a war scene. And she was a combatant, forced or not. Entire body shivering, she used the cold detachment they’d given her and reached for her agiel. Memories throbbing in her head made her choke, and clashed with the sharp pain of the Mord’Sith weapon. She raised it and drove it into Darken Rahl’s temple.

It was a gamble, but he didn’t make a sound as he fell senseless to the ground. Lying in a heap, leaving no distraction for her. Cara’s knees betrayed her, mind bursting with trying to hold two beings as she sunk down after him. The agiel dropped from her fingers, and she clenched her fists over her knees.

A strangled sob came from her throat as the memories beat at her head, screaming at her over the paradox. How had she broken herself? How had she ripped herself to shreds? How had she given in? The pain ached, even as she still appreciated it, but she couldn’t bear the memories in her head. “Kahlan,” she whispered. “Sophie, Sam.”

The confusion in her mind, between her own thoughts and the ones she’d forced on herself, was too tangled for her to handle. Bare feelings broken forth could not fill the emptiness in her soul, especially as the anger died down to impotent embers. She didn’t know what to do. Both purposes in her life had been left behind, and she felt cold and fragile. She reached for the agiel because at least the pain made sense—it always had, somehow, and she could still cling to that, even if it was only meant for the Mord’Sith.

Gasping over the agony as it ran through her body, only one thought was strong enough to break through the storm in her mind. Her family. Not the Mord’Sith, her family. She might wear the leather and braid, she might wield an agiel, but mere weeks had not been enough to wipe any of that away. It was why young girls were forced to kill their own, and it was not something Darken Rahl had achieved.

Jerking up to her feet, Cara slid the agiel away at her side. Darken still lay unconscious, and Cara could have killed him, if her hands had not been shaking and her mind been clear. Breathing hitched and difficult, she knew only one thing. Run. Back to Kahlan, back to Sophia and Sam. Run.

Determination like an unleashed whirlwind, Cara didn’t even go back for her horse. She just took one step, two steps, four, into the woods. She ran before they noticed their mistake and dragged her back to break her for good.

* * * * *

It took four days for Shota to find something more than vague in her magic bowl, as she scried for the Rahl magic. Just as Kahlan was about ready to bow her head and swallow defeat, she’d one day looked up with a light in her eyes. “Someone is headed towards the Pillars of Creation.”

“Scouts. Looking for us.” Denna’s tone was dry, but her words made sense.

“That is not a sign of defeat,” Shota responded snappily. “Kahlan still has her Confessor powers, and we will get a final destination from her if nothing else.”

Denna’s lips twisted. “True. I keep forgetting that.”

Kahlan eyed her with a bit of astonishment, wondering how the Mord’Sith could think of anything else, stuck with them. But the more Denna astonished, the more Kahlan had to wonder if it was her own worldview that was too rigid. She was just so worn, like butter scraped over too much bread, that she had nothing to do about it.

“Come then,” Shota said crisply, waving her hand. “We have our direction.”

Sophia and Sam had stopped asking questions. Denna carried Sam when he grew too weary, Shota took Sophia, and Kahlan was feeling useless. Only months ago she would have charged across the Midlands, daggers in hand, eyes ablaze. But only months ago, Cara would have been at her side, frustrated with herself over a tiny thing that would make Kahlan laugh and nudge her shoulder and forget Richard.

The fifth night since they’d saved the world—and Kahlan truly wondered if anyone had noticed—she was glad to kneel on the brush floor and tuck Sam in. A yawn threatened to split his face, and she gave him a slight smile and a kiss to the forehead. She had prayers to the Creator to offer, more devout in these past weeks than ever in her life, before she could even hope to rest.

“Kahlan?”

But she looked back at his voice. “Sam?”

“You’re not lying, right?” he asked. “We’re not just gonna—gonna run around forever? Mama’s really out there?”

Kahlan felt her eyes well up against her will, but she forced a strong look on her face as she slowly lowered herself back to the forest floor, reaching to put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I believe so, Sam,” she whispered to hide the breaking in her voice. “She’s strong, and amazing, and she doesn’t ever give up.” Kahlan wouldn’t ever, ever tell him that she feared Cara might have for the first time on the day Darken whisked her away. “Maybe we’ll be running around a long time, but I believe Cara’s out there. We’ll bring her back.”

He believed her, so it seemed, and lay his head back on the pillow. Rising to her feet slowly, Kahlan walked to the edge of the woods and sat, stroking her belly as it ballooned out over her lap. The black maternity gown that Cara had purchased for her, so long ago now, had once smelled of her sandalwood and musk as it had lain in her pack. It had sent little thrills down Kahlan’s spine whenever she’d put it on. Many a washing had cleansed all scent from it, but if she focused hard, Kahlan could lay her fingers on its familiar texture and remember Cara’s smell vividly. Pregnancy helped with that, and for that she was grateful to Sara.

“Oh baby,” she whispered, rubbing her hands over her tense muscles. “You won’t be born all alone on the run, I promise. Even if it’s just me and Dennee and memories. I promise.” A tear fell from her eye and she left words behind, chin falling to rest on her chest. Late at night, defenses lowered, sometimes a part of her just waited for Cara to slide up behind, crooking her chin between Kahlan’s neck and shoulder to kiss her cheek. Most of her wasn’t ready for the idea that maybe it would never happen again.

Though Shota was on watch, Denna came by a few minutes after Kahlan had sat. The creak of her leathers on approach was growing familiar, especially over the past days. Kahlan had thought so many times of telling Denna how much she appreciated her quiet cool actions, somehow always appropriate. But she knew the Mord’Sith would give her a disdainful look, and in a way cared enough to not want to see it.

Denna sighed and began to speak. “Kahlan, do you know what sisters of the agiel tell each other? That we are there to protect ourselves from our weaknesses. That if we stray a little, we must be broken until the weakness is purged and we’re strong again.”

Even though her heart lurched at the Mord’Sith words, Kahlan knew that Denna wasn’t speaking of Cara. “And?” she asked softly.

“It’s not always suitable,” Denna said with short finality. “Some weaknesses must be borne, until the mind can handle them. This situation. You. Even a Mord’Sith would fall prey to weakness. Since I have no sisters, I bear your burdens, because I have nothing else to do. I am simply glad to not always see pity in your eyes.”

Squeezing her eyes shut for an instance, Kahlan nodded. “I’m glad to hear it,” she murmured into the dark. If she was more glad to know how Denna justified her human behavior, she wouldn’t say.

By the end of the next day, all thoughts that did not concern Cara refused to hold in Kahlan’s mind. They were drawing near to what Shota had sensed in her pool, the Mord’Sith scout that would lead them to a more solid trail. Here, the forest faded away for the most part, leaving a green expanse both inviting and dangerous. In the heat of the sun, though, Kahlan was glad to feel the cool breeze wisping through her garments. She was overheated almost all the time, and had begun tying her hair up away from her neck to keep it from sticking there.

The sun was setting straight ahead when Kahlan caught something out of the corner of her eye, and the hairs at the back of her neck stood straight upright. Denna, at her side, seemed to sense it first from Kahlan, but it took only a split second before her red agiel was out and making noise. The children, conditioned by now, ducked behind Kahlan and Shota as those two prepared their equivalent weapons.

The figure became obviously a Mord’Sith only moments later, walking perpendicular to their trail and clearly not seeing them, still walking on the path ahead. Kahlan could see the sunlight glimmer in a loose blonde braid. Glancing to Denna, she was about to send her in to distract their foe long enough to confess, but then the Mord’Sith caught sight of them. Denna needed no order to march forward, hissing as her agiel screamed, ready to defend and take down.

But the Mord’Sith didn’t come aggressively forward in response—she ran, as if wolves were chasing her towards them, and Denna froze. It was not even the run of an attack, it was one of urgency. She didn’t seem to see Denna as she ran forward, finally stumbling short only twenty yards away, looking towards Kahlan as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.

Kahlan couldn’t. She stared, gripping her dagger until her knuckles were bloodless, looking at that face. The bone structure, the eyes, were her Cara’s. The blonde hair was hers. The tight body was hers. Kahlan stared in shock and horror at the Mord’Sith who was her Cara before her eyes trailed upwards again to take in everything.

Cara didn’t move until Kahlan’s eyes met hers, and Kahlan realized why when she saw how lost those eyes were. Kahlan’s voice cracked as her emotions became too much for silence, and her foot stepped forward before she knew what had happened. “Cara?” she whispered, eyes stinging.

There was no time for worry or protest. Cara was shattered and coming forward before anything could happen, wrapping her arms around Kahlan as if she didn’t care if she cracked, squeezing the air from her lungs and burying her face in her neck. It was so unreal that a sobbing laugh escaped Kahlan as she clung to her, as she could smell Cara again, and felt hot tears splash onto her neck. Cara’s sudden ragged cries fell against her, her entire body shaking as she held onto Kahlan, as Kahlan held her too tightly for any understanding of what had happened.

“Cara,” she murmured, running her hands around the leather that held her Cara, feeling the muscles taut with stress. She choked on her tears to feel Cara alive in her arms, changed but not gone, here with her again. Beyond her wildest hopes yet in the trappings of her nightmares.

“Kahlan,” Cara whispered against her, gripping her so tightly it almost hurt. “I—” Kahlan barely had time to hear the vulnerable tremble in that voice before Sophia and Sam, finally recognizing what had happened, came forward with heartbreaking cries.

“Mama,” Sam wailed, flinging himself against her leg. Sophia didn’t have words, tears streaming down her face as she came right after.

Cara dropped to the ground silently, and the children embraced her. It seemed like she could barely move her arms to wrap around them, eyes wet and hurt too much. When Denna came up behind, agiel back at her side, and whispered an astonished, “Cara?”, Kahlan realized what she—and Shota, hands still raised—was seeing.

The Mord’Sith leather, the braid, the agiel. They’d broken Cara. Dear Creator. Kahlan’s heart broke again, and somehow she managed to kneel by where Cara didn’t move, her children burying themselves in her arms.

“Kahlan,” she whispered again, and there was an emptiness in her eyes.

Kahlan’s throat closed in on itself, and she just reached for Cara’s hand, squeezing it tightly. Cara’s eyes fell shut, her arm wrapped tighter around Sophia, and her body was then wracked with another sob. Somehow Kahlan moved forward as Cara broke more potently, as if with finding them all her strength was gone, and she fell forward before Kahlan caught her upon her breast. Sophia and Sam there, refusing to lose contact, and they were all pressed together. And Cara sobbed, as Kahlan had never heard anyone cry before, as she could never have imagined Cara crying.

Flowing tears stung down Kahlan’s face as she just prayed that her prayers had not been answered in some perverse fashion.

TBC…