Dreier was eager to leave before she could change her mind. In a moment they were gone. The commander fidgeted for a time after the door closed as she stared out the window.
“Kahlan,” Nicci finally asked in a quiet voice, “do you really think what Dreier did was of any use? Do you really think that it gives us any hope at all?”
Kahlan was silent for a time, staring out the window without seeing anything, as tears ran down her face and dripped off her jaw.
“No,” she finally said in a frail voice as she stared out at nothing. “Richard is gone. He took my place in the underworld. I saw the winged demons take him down into the depths of darkness. He is lost to us.”
Nicci stepped closer. “You saw that?” she asked in a soft, fearful voice. She had been a Sister of the Dark and knew full well what such a thing meant. “You saw the dark ones take him down?”
Kahlan nodded without looking back.
“Dear spirits…” Nicci whispered. She covered her mouth with a hand, holding back a cry of anguish at having sent him to that fate.
“Mother Confessor,” Commander Fister said, “there must be some small hope that Lord Rahl will somehow…”
“Come back from the dead?” Kahlan slowly shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “I would love to believe it. I would hold out hope if I could. For a brief time I thought I could. I tried. But my whole life I have been devoted to the truth, no matter how harsh and cold the truth may be. I am the Mother Confessor and I can’t believe in something I know isn’t true.”
The room behind her fell silent again as she stared out the window.
Kahlan wiped tears from her cheek as she turned to one of the men. “May I have your bow, please?”
Puzzled, he handed it over. Nicci, wondering what Kahlan was doing, went to the window beside her.
Kahlan nocked the arrow and drew the string to her cheek. She settled herself and called the target to her the way Richard had taught her.
Nothing else existed.
Time slowed.
She didn’t even feel herself release the bowstring. Like a breath of breeze, the arrow was away.
Kahlan watched its flight, watched it going exactly where she had envisioned it to fly.
The arrow hit Ludwig Dreier square in the back of his head on the left side, exiting his right eye socket. Dreier dropped, dead before he hit the road leading away from the citadel.
“Beautiful shot, Mother Confessor,” the archer said, sounding sincerely impressed when she handed him back his bow.
“Richard taught me to shoot. You wouldn’t believe how good he is … was…” she said, her voice trailing off.
Nicci arched an eyebrow. “Not that I object, but you broke your word. You said you would let him go in exchange for what he did.”
Kahlan met Nicci’s gaze with an iron look. “I kept my word. I told him I would let him go. I never said how far.” She gestured out the window. “I didn’t tell him that that was as far as I ever intended on letting him go.”
Some of the men smiled just a little. That was the Mother Confessor they knew, the Mother Confessor they had fought beside. The Mother Confessor with an iron will and an unwavering sense of justice.
Kahlan softly asked everyone to leave, then. She wanted to be alone with Richard.
She sat on the edge of the bed beside him, looking down at him, as everyone started quietly filing out.
Nicci shared a silent, tearful, sympathetic look with Kahlan before gently closing the doors behind her as she left.
Kahlan didn’t know how she was going to go on, or what she was going to do.
She was lost.
Everything was lost.
She understood how Cara felt.
CHAPTER
91
After crying in desolate solitude for hours as she lay beside Richard’s body, desperately wanting more than anything to have him reach out and hold her in his arms, after being certain that she would die of inconsolable grief, after wishing she could die and have the suffering end, Kahlan finally wiped her tears, straightened her clothes, and emerged from the bedroom.
Nicci, a number of soldiers of the First File, and the three Mord-Sith were standing silent vigil outside the bedroom, but down the hallway a respectful distance, not wanting to appear to be standing by the door, listening to her cry. When Kahlan started off in silence down the corridor to go speak with Commander Fister, they all followed behind her. They were thoughtful enough, though, to give her plenty of space to be alone in her grief. Even Nicci hung back with the others. She could tell that it would be best to give Kahlan some privacy and not ask any questions.
There was no comforting such inner agony and they all knew it. They were grieving, too, but Kahlan’s grief was different.