Stone of Tears

Kahlan could hear the pop of horses” legs breaking, as thousands of pounds of muscle moving at full speed could not be stopped by hooves catching in crevices. The bareback riders were helpless passengers.

The men shouted encouragement to their mounts, and the ones behind didn’t recognize quickly enough the change in shrieking from anger to fright. Those behind crashed into those ahead, tumbling over and past each other. Bareback, with only halters and no aggressive battle bits, the riders didn’t have the control they were accustomed to, and were carried helplessly forward.

Some leapt from their mounts as they came through the trees, and could see what lay ahead, but their momentum was too great, the distance too short, their fate beyond retrieval. The horses behind, their leg bones snapping, crashed down atop the ones already fallen, who were desperately grasping for a hold. There was none. It became a waterfall of living flesh, cascading over the edge.

Kahlan sat still, wearing her Confessor’s face, as she listened to the screams of men and horses mingled together into one long wail as they disappeared over the mountainside. In the span of mere seconds, it was finished; more than fifty men and their mounts had plunged to their deaths.

When the night had been silent for a time, she dismounted and circled around, to keep her false trail free of any off-leading tracks, to the edge of the ice flow. In the dim light she could see the dark stains of blood over the ice mounds. Blood from broken legs, blood from cracked skulls. There were none of the enemy left on the cliff.

As she turned to leave, she heard low grunts of desperation. Kahlan pulled her knife and carefully inched her way to the source of the sounds, toward the edge. Grasping a stout limb, she leaned out over the slanting ice flow. Forest debris was frozen in the ice; sticks and leaves had made a small dam at the edge, to be covered over as the ice grew. It left a few branches sticking out of the wall of ice.

Around one of these branches were clutched fingers. A man clung by his fingertips to the branch, his legs dangling over a drop of close to a thousand feet. He was grunting with effort as he tried to catch his feet up on the ice, but it was too slippery to give him any toehold.

Kahlan stood at the edge, holding the branch for support, as she watched him shivering. Dribbles of water bubbled over the ice, over his face, matting his hair and soaking his Keltish uniform. His teeth chattered.

He looked up to see her standing over him in the moonlight. “Help me! Please help me!” He couldn’t have been past her age.

She regarded him without emotion. He had big eyes, the kind of eyes young women would surely have swooned over. But the young women in Ebinissia would not have swooned when they saw those eyes.

“In the name of the good spirits, help me!”

Kahlan squatted down, closer to him. “What is your name?”

“Huon! My name’s Huon! Now please help me!”

Kahlan lay down on the ice, hooking a foot around a tangled root, taking a good grip on the stout spruce limb with one hand. She extended her other hand partway out, but not far enough for Huon to reach.

“I will help you, Huon, on a condition. I have sworn no mercy, and none shall be granted. If you take my hand, I will release my power into you. You will be mine, now and forever. If you are to live, it will be as one touched by a Confessor. If you would think to pull me over the edge with you before I can release my magic, let me assure you I would not make the offer were there that chance. I have touched more men than I can count. You will have no time. You will be mine.”

He blinked icy water dripping down on him from his eyes, shook it from his face, and stared up at her.

Kahlan extended her hand toward him. “From now on, Huon, either way, your old life is ended. If you live it will not be as who you are now. That man will be gone forever. You will be mine.”

“Please,” he whispered, “just help me up. I won’t hurt you. I swear to let you be on your way. It would take me hours to make it back to camp on foot, and you’ll be long gone by then anyway. Please, just help me up.”

“How many people in Ebinissia did you hear beg for their lives? To how many did you grant mercy?” Her words came as cold as the ice she lay on. “I am the Mother Confessor. I have proclaimed war without quarter on the Imperial Order. The oath stands as long as one of you lives. Choose, Huon. Death, or to be touched by my power. Either way, who you are dies.”

“The people of Ebinissia got what they deserved. I’d rather take the hand of the Keeper himself than be touched by your filthy magic. The good spirits would never accept me to them if I were touched by your dark and profane magic.” His lip curled in a sneer. To the Keeper with you, Confessor!”

Huon threw his arms open and silently dropped away into the darkness.