Severed Souls(103)

“Is it your responsibility to save everyone from them?”

Richard searched for words. “It kind of is, Zedd. I’m Lord Rahl. I’m the head of the D’Haran Empire. I took on that responsibility because I want people to be able to live in peace and safety. I am the Lord Rahl who is the magic against magic, the holder of the bond, the one who is duty-bound to protect those people.”

“Your duty.” Zedd sadly shook his head. “Duty is overrated. And as for your bond, that sickness in you has taken that away.”

Richard ran his fingers back through his hair. “I know, but if I don’t—”

“What did Magda Searus tell you?” He rolled a finger. “In that second emblem, what did she tell you?”

Richard thought a moment and then repeated the words. “Know that you are the only chance life has, now. Know, too, that you are balanced between life and death. You have the potential to be the one to save the world of life or end it. You are not destined for anything. You make your own destiny.”

Zedd arched an eyebrow at Richard. “It seems to me she is giving you the same advice I’m giving you. You have the potential to be the one to save the world of life or end it. You are not destined for anything. You make your own destiny. That means that by interfering, trying to help, since you have the touch of death in you, you might inadvertently be the one who causes the world of life to be ended. When she said that you are the only chance life has now, maybe she meant that you must walk away in order to give the world of life that chance.”

“I had that same thought,” Richard admitted. “But I could also be the one to save it. What if it means that by giving up, and not trying, then life will be destroyed. That would make it my fault.”

Richard recognized the mistake before he’d finished saying it.

Zedd didn’t miss it either. “Don’t blame the victim for the crime. It is not your fault for what others choose to do. Don’t let people hang guilt on you if you decide, after all you have done for everyone, after all the sacrifices you have made, to finally live your own life.”

Richard nodded. “I know. But if I have the ability to help and I don’t, then I don’t know how I could live with myself.”

“Look, Richard,” his grandfather said with a sigh, “it’s not like I don’t understand. I’ve been in your place, where half the world depended on me to save them while the other half was trying to kill me and those I loved. I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders, much as you do now.”

Richard shared a long look with his grandfather. “So what did you do?”

“After the world had knocked some sense into me, I did the same as I’m advising you to do. I left—quit everything—and went off to live my own life.”

“You mean when you fled to Westland and let everyone think you were dead?”

Zedd nodded as he stared off into the memories. “I gave it all up and took your mother to Westland where we lived our lives in peace and happiness. We had a good life until she died. Then, after that, I mostly had the joy of raising you, away from that call of duty and those who would harm you, away from those who needed me.

“We had a good life, didn’t we? Didn’t we have the best time?”

Richard couldn’t help smiling at the memory. “We did. The best life ever. At least until the boundary failed and Darken Rahl came after me. I miss it, that time when it was you and me. I miss Hartland.”

With his bony fingers, Zedd gripped Richard’s shoulder. “My advice is that you do the same, now, Richard, as I did. Take your precious wife and go off somewhere all alone with her. Find a safe place where you can be lost to everyone else. Leave the world to work out its own problems while you love Kahlan, maybe raise a family of your own. Leave mankind to work it out, to either survive or drive itself into oblivion.

“Maybe your destiny, your way of saving everyone, is to have children and teach them as I have taught you.”

Richard felt a tear rolling down his cheek at such a thought. He remembered when Kahlan had been hurt so badly that he didn’t know if she would live. She had lost her child to those brutes. She had almost lost her life. How could he live without her? Life would not be worth living without her.

When she had been hurt so terribly, he had quit everything and taken her back deep into Westland, where no one lived, and built a small home where they could live in peace as she recovered. It was one of the happiest times of his life. It had been life as Zedd was telling him to live it now.

He wondered if Zedd could be right, if he was not only throwing away his own life on a hopeless quest to save mankind from itself, but was also throwing away Kahlan’s life. After all, Cara had eventually found happiness, and while she and her husband had been doing their duty, fighting those who lusted to destroy life, she had lost him and lost her chance at happiness. And for what? Was the world any better off?