Faith of the Fallen

Kahlan was joyous to be out of the bed and that helped her to ignore the pain. The world was again a wondrous place. She was more than joyous to be able at last to go out to the privy. While she never said so, Kahlan was sure Cara was happy about that, too.

As much as she liked the snug home, going outside felt like finally being freed from a dungeon. Before, Richard had frequently offered to take her outside for the day, but she had never wanted to leave her bed, fearing the pain. She realized that because she was so sick, her thinking had slowly become dull and foggy. Along with her summer, she had for a time lost herself. Now, at long last, she felt clearheaded.

She discovered that the view outside her window was the least impressive of the surrounding sights. Snowcapped peaks towered around the small house Richard and Cara had built in the lap of breathtaking mountains.

The simple house, with a bedroom at either end, one for Richard and Kahlan, and one for Cara, with a common room in the middle, sat at the edge of a meadow of velvety green grasses sprinkled with wildflowers. Even though it was late in the season when they had arrived, Richard managed to start a small garden in a sunny place outside Cara's window, growing fresh greens for the table and some herbs to add flavor to their cooking. Right behind the house, huge old white pines towered over them, sheltering them from the full force of the wind.

Richard had continued his carving, to pass the time as he sat by Kahlan's bed, talking and telling stories, but after she had at last gotten out of bed, his carvings changed. Instead of animals, Richard began sculpting people.

And then one day he surprised her with his most magnificent carving yet in celebration, he said, of her getting well enough to finally come out into the world.

Astonished by the utter realism and power of the small statue, she whispered that it could only be the gift that had guided his hand in carving it. Richard regarded such talk as nonsense.

"People without the gift carve beautiful statues all the time," he said. "There's no magic involved."

She knew, though, that some artists were gifted, and able to invoke magic through their art.

Richard occasionally spoke wistfully about the works of art he'd seen at the People's Palace, in D'Hara, where he had been held captive. Growing up in Hart land, he had never before seen statues carved in marble, and certainly none carved on such a grand scale, or by such talented hands.

Those works had in some ways opened his eyes to the greater world around him and had made a lasting impression on him. Who else but Richard would remember fondly the beauty he saw while held captive and being tortured?

It was true that art could exist independent of magic, but Richard had been taken captive in the first place only with the aid of a spell brought to life through art. Art was a universal language, and thus an invaluable tool for implementing magic.

Kahlan finally stopped arguing with him about whether the gift helped him to carve. He simply didn't believe it. She felt, though, that, having no other outlet, his gift must be expressing itself in this way. Magic always seemed to find a way to seep out, and his carvings of people certainly did seem magical to her.

But the figure of the woman that he carved for her as a gift stirred profound emotion within her. He called it, an image nearly two feet tall carved from buttery smooth, rich, aromatic walnut, Spirit. The feminity of her body, its exquisite shape and curves, bones and muscle, were clearly evident beneath her flowing robes. She looked alive.

How Richard had accomplished such a feat, Kahlan couldn't even imagine.

He had conveyed through the woman, her robes flowing in a wind as she stood with her head thrown back, her chest out, her hands fisted at her sides, her back arched and strong as if in opposition to an invisible power trying unsuccessfully to subdue her, a sense of. . spirit.

The statue was obviously not intended to look like Kahlan, yet it evoked in her some visceral response, a tension that was startlingly familiar. Something about the woman in the carving, some quality it conveyed, made Kahlan hunger to be well, to be fully alive, to be strong and independent again.

If this wasn't magic, she didn't know what was.

Kahlan had been around grand palaces her whole life, exposed to any number of pieces of great art by renowned artists, but none had ever taken her breath with its thrust of inner vision, its sense of individual nobility, as did this proud, vibrant woman in flowing robes. The strength and vitality of it brought a lump to Kahlan's throat, and she could only throw her arms around Richard's neck in speechless emotion.

CHAPTER 19