Faith of the Fallen

It was unnerving to contemplate an attack by such men when she could do nothing but lie there waiting to be killed. Kahlan envisioned a grinning, toothless Tommy Lancaster leaning over her to cut her throat while all she could do was stare helplessly up at him. She had often been afraid in battle, but at least then she could fight with all her strength to survive.

That helped counter the fear. It was different to be helpless and have no means to fight back; it was a different sort of fear.

If she had to, she could always resort to her Confessor's power, but in her condition that was a dubious proposition. She had never had to call upon her power when in anything like the condition in which she now found herself. She reminded herself that the three of them would be long gone before the men returned, and besides, Richard and Cara would never let them get near her.

Kahlan had a more immediate fear, though, and that one was all too real. But she wouldn't feel it for long; she would pass out, she knew. She hoped.

She tried not to think of it, and instead put her hand gently over her belly, over their child, as she listened to the nearby splashing and burbling of a stream. The sound of the water reminded her of how much she wished she could take a bath. The bandages over the oozing wound in her side stank and needed to be changed often. The sheets were soaked with sweat. Her scalp itched. The mat of grass that was the bedding under the sheet was hard and chafed her back. Richard had probably made the pallet quickly, planning to improve it later.

As hot as the day was, the stream's cold water would be welcome. She longed for a bath, to be clean, and to smell fresh. She longed to be better, to be able to do things for herself, to be healed. She could only hope that as time passed, Richard, too, would recover from his invisible, but real, wounds.

Cara finally returned, grumbling about the horses being stubborn today.

She looked up to see the room was empty. "I had better go look for him and make sure: he's safe."

"He's fine. He knows what he's doing. Just wait, Cara, or he will then have toy go out and look for you."

Cara sighed and reluctantly agreed. Retrieving a cool, wet cloth, she set to mopping Kahlan's forehead and temples. Kahlan didn't like to complain when people; were doing their best to care for her, so she didn't say anything about how much it hurt her torn neck muscles when her head was shifted in that way. Cara never complained about any of it. Cara only complained when she believed her charges were in needless danger-and when Richard wouldn't let her eliminate those she viewed as a danger.

Outside, a bird let out a high-pitched trill. The tedious repetition was becoming, grating. In the distance, Kahlan could hear a squirrel chattering an objection to something, or perhaps arguing over his territory.

He'd been doing it for what seemed' an hour. The stream babbled on without letup.

This was Richard's idea of restful.

"I hate this," she muttered.

"You should be happy-lying about without anything to do."

"And I bet you would be happy to trade places?"

"I am Mord-Sith. For a Mord-Sith, nothing could be worse than to die in bed." Her blue eyes turned to Kahlan's. "Old and toothless," she added. "I didn't mean; that you-"

"I know what you meant."

Cara looked relieved. "Anyway, you couldn't die-that would be too easy.

You never do anything easy."

"I married Richard."

"See what I mean?"

Kahlan smiled.

Cara dunked the cloth in a pail on the floor and wrung it out as she stood. "It` isn't too bad, is it? Just lying there?"

"How would you like to have to have someone push a wooden bowl under yours. bottom every time your bladder was full?"

Cara carefully blotted the damp cloth along Kahlan's neck. "I don't mind doing it for a sister of the Agiel."

The Agiel, the weapon a Mord-Sith always carried, looked like nothing more; than a short, red leather rod hanging on a fine chain from her right wrist. A Mord~. Sith's Agiel was never more than a flick away from her grip.

It somehow functioned: by means of the magic of a Mord-Sith's bond to the Lord Rahl.

Kahlan had once felt the partial touch of an Agiel. In a blinding instant, it could inflict the kind of pain that the entire gang of men had dealt Kahlan. The touch of a, Mord-Sith's Agiel was easily capable of delivering bone-breaking torture, and just as easily, if she desired, death.

Richard had given Kahlan the Agiel that had belonged to Denna, the Mord-Sith who had captured him by order of Darken Rahl. Only Richard had ever come to understand and empathize with the pain an Agiel also gave the Mord-Sith who °' wielded it. Before he was forced to kill Denna in order to escape, she had given. him her Agiel, asking to be remembered as simply Derma, the woman beyond the appellation of Mord-Sith, the woman no one but Richard had ever before seen a understood.