“So what happens now?” he asked warily. “What happens when a Confessor bears a male child?”

She cleared her throat again, swallowing back her sobs.

“When a boy is born to a Confessor, he is brought to a special place in the center of Aydindril, where his mother places him on the Stone.” She shifted her weight—she was clearly having difficulty telling him about this. He took her soft hand in both of his and rubbed the back of it with his thumbs, even though he felt for the first time that he had no business touching her in a familiar manner. “As I told you, a man touched by a Confessor will do whatever she tells him.” He could feel her hand trembling. “The mother commands her husband in what she is to do… and he… he places a rod over the baby’s throat… and… and he steps on both ends.”

Richard released her hand. Running the fingers of both hands through his hair, he turned to the fire. “Every boy child?”

“Yes,” she admitted in a voice he could hardly hear. “No chance can be taken that any male Confessor lives, because he might be one who could not handle the power, and would use it to gain dominance for himself, bring back the dark times. The wizards and the other Confessors watch carefully any Confessor who is with child, and do everything they can to comfort her if it is a boy, and therefore must be…” Her voice trailed off.

Richard suddenly realized that he hated the Midlands—hated it with a vengeance second only to what he felt toward Darken Rahl. For the first time, he understood why those in Westland had wanted a place to live without magic. He wished he could be back there, away from any magic. Tears came to his eyes when he thought of how much he missed the Hartland Woods. He vowed to himself that if he stopped Rahl, he would see to it that the boundary was put back up. Zedd would help with that, there was no doubt. Richard understood now why Zedd, too, had wanted to be away from the Midlands. And when the boundary went back up, Richard would be on the other side. For as long as he lived.

But first, there would be the matter of the sword—he would not give back the Sword of Truth. He would destroy it.

“Thank you, Kahlan,” he forced himself to say, “for telling me. I wouldn’t have wanted to hear this from another.” He felt his world withering to nothing. He had always seen stopping Rahl as the beginning of his life, a point from where he went forward and anything was possible. Now stopping Rahl was an end.

Not only of Rahl, but of him, too—there was nothing beyond that, everything beyond was dead. When he stopped Rahl, and Kahlan was safe, he would go back to the Hartland Woods, alone, and his life would be over.

He could hear her crying behind him. “Richard, if you want me to leave, please do not be afraid to tell me so. I will understand it. It is something a Confessor is used to.”

He looked down at the dying fire for a moment and then closed his eyes tight, forcing back the lump in his throat, the tears. Pain seared through his chest as it sank with his labored breathing.

“Please, Kahlan, is there any way,” he asked, “any way at all… that we could… for us…”

“No,” she moaned.

He rubbed his shaking hands together. Everything was lost to him.

“Kahlan,” he managed at last, “is there any law, or rule or something, that says we can’t be friends?”

She answered in a whining cry. “No.”

He turned numbly to her and put his arms around her. “I could really use a friend right now,” he whispered.

“Me too,” she cried against his chest as she hugged him back. “But I can be no more.”

“I know,” he said as tears ran down his cheeks. “But Kahlan, I love…”

She put her fingers to his lips to silence him. “Don’t say that,” she cried. “Please, Richard, don’t ever say that.”

She could stop him from saying it out loud, but not in his mind.

She clung to him, sobbing, and he remembered when they had been in the wayward pine after they first met, and the underworld had almost reclaimed her—she had clung to him, and he had thought at the time that she was not used to having anyone hold her. Now he knew why. He laid his cheek against the top of her head.

A small flame of his anger flickered in the ashes of his dreams. “Have you picked your mate yet?”

She shook her head. “There are more important things to worry about right now. But if we win, and I live… then I must.”

“Make one promise for me.”

“If I can.”

His throat felt so hot he had to swallow twice to talk. “Promise me you won’t pick him until I’m back in Westland. I don’t want to know who it is.”

She sobbed for a moment before she answered—her fingers clutching tighter at his shirt. “I promise.”

After a time of standing, holding her, trying to get control of himself, fighting back the blackness, he forced a smile. “You’re wrong about one thing.”

“And what would that be?”

“You said no man can command a Confessor. You are wrong. I command the Mother Confessor herself. You are sworn to protect me, I hold you to your duty as my guide.”

She laughed a painful little laugh against his chest. “It would appear you are right. Congratulations—you are the first man ever to have done so. And what does my master command of his guide?”

“That she doesn’t give me any more trouble about ending her life—I need her. And that she gets us to the Queen, and the box, before Rahl, and then sees us safely away.”

Kahlan nodded her head against his chest. “By your command, my lord.” She separated from him, put her hands on his upper arms, and gave them a squeeze as she smiled through her tears. “How is it that you can always make me feel better, even at the worst times of my life?”

He shrugged, forcing himself to smile for her, even though he was dying inside. “I am the Seeker. I can do anything.” He wanted to say more, but his voice failed him.

Her smile widened as she shook her head. “You are a very rare person, Richard Cypher,” she whispered.

He only wished he were alone so he could cry.

Chapter 35

With his boot, Richard pushed little piles of dirt over the dying embers of the fire, snuffing out the only heat in the dawn of the cold new day. The sky was brightening into an icy blue, and a sharp wind blew from the west. Well, at least the wind would be at their backs, he thought. Near his other boot lay the roasting stick that Kahlan had used to cook the rabbit—the rabbit she had caught herself, with a snare he had taught her to make.

He felt his face flush with the thought of that, the thought of him, a woods guide, teaching her things like that. The Mother Confessor. More than a queen. Queens bow to the Mother Confessor, she had said. He felt as foolish as he had ever felt in his life. Mother Confessor. Who did he think he was? Zedd had tried to warn him, if he had only listened.

Emptiness threatened to consume him. He thought of his brother, his friends Zedd and Chase. Though it didn’t fill the void, at least he had them. Richard watched Kahlan shouldering her pack. She had no one, he thought—her only friends, the other Confessors, were dead. She was alone in the world, alone in the Midlands, surrounded by people she was trying to save, who feared and hated her, and enemies who wanted to kill her, or worse, and not even her wizard to protect her.

He understood why she had been afraid to tell him. He was her only friend. He felt even more foolish for thinking only of himself. If her friend was all he could be, then that’s what he would be. Even if it killed him.

“It must have been hard to tell me,” he said as he adjusted the sword at his hip.

She pulled her cloak around herself, against the gusts of cold wind. Her face had resumed once more the calm expression that showed nothing, except that, as well as he knew her, he could now read the trace of pain in it. “It would have been easier to have killed myself.”