Temple of the Winds

Denna lifted an arm. "I can make you remember-remember and make it real again. You and I have a past." Richard spread his hands. "And to what purpose?" Denna spread her luminous arms. "That is for you to decide, Richard." With a flash of light in his mind, the Temple of the Winds was gone, fading from his consciousness, and he was in a place he remembered: the castle in Tamarang. He was there again.

He could taste the terror. Denna had captured him. She had tortured him for days. He was delirious and weak. Every step was painful as he followed Denna through the grand dining hall. His wrists were cut and swollen from the manacles she used to shackle him up to a beam. When Denna stopped and spoke to people, Richard kept his eyes to her braid as he silently waited behind her.

Denna controlled his life. his destiny. He was allowed only that which she granted. He hadn't eaten since she had captured him. He longed to eat something. Anything.

All around, the jumble of talking and laughter from the queen's guests droned in his head. Denna, too, was a guest of the queen. Richard, at the end of a chain running from his mistress to a collar around his neck, was Denna's prisoner.

She hadn't let him eat during those days of torture, and he needed food. As she sat at the dining table, Denna snapped her fingers, pointing at the floor behind her chair. Richard sank to the floor, relieved to be allowed that small comfort. He could rest. He wasn't hanging from the shackles; he wasn't being made to stand all night; he wasn't being tortured.

All of the guests were eating. The varied aromas tormented him. He ached with hunger. Everyone else was eating, but he had to sit on the floor behind Denna. watching what others enjoyed-what he was denied.

Richard thought about the times he had been with Kahlan, at camp, eating rabbit cooked over the fire or porridge sweetened with berries. He licked his lips thinking about the succulent, hot, tender meat, brown and crunchy on the outside from the fire. He had so enjoyed those meals with her. The food and the company were the best.

Now, he was denied that life, and was yoked to another. After everyone else had been eating for a while, a server brought a bowl of gruel. Denna had him hand it down to Richard. He held it in trembling hands. Almost any time before, he would have cast it aside in disgust, but now. it was all he had.

He was made to put it on the floor and to eat it like a dog. while laughter from the guests filled his ears. He didn't care. He was being allowed to eat at last.

Gruel was all he was allowed, but at that moment, in his state of tormented need, it was wonderful-it was freedom from the ache of hunger, freedom from the misery of seeing others eat while he starved, fulfillment of a simple but long denied need.

He slurped at it, relishing it, gulping it down. He could not escape his imprisonment in his new life, over which he had no say, and so he decided that if gruel was all he would be allowed, then he would have to accept that fact, and sate his hunger with what he was given. The light flashed in his head.

Color bled from his sight, vanishing almost painfully, and he saw again the muted mists of the Temple of the Winds around him.

Richard was on his hands and knees on the floor, panting in terror. The glowing white spirit of Denna lowered over him.

Denna was right. She could hurt him, still. This pain, though, she had given him out of love.

Richard staggered to his feet. How could he have thought he was ignorant before, and that the knowledge of the Temple of the Winds had brought him new sight? He had had sight all along, but had failed to see. Knowledge without heart was empty.

Wizard Ricker had left, with the sliph, a message for him, but he had ignored it.

Ward left in. Ward right out. Guard your heart from stone. He had failed to guard his heart from stone, and it had almost cost him everything.

"Thank you, Denna, for that gift of pain." "It has taught you something, Richard?" "That I have to go home, back to my world." "Thank you, Richard, for living up to what I expect of you." Richard smiled. "Were you not a spirit. I'd kiss you." Denna smiled a sad smile. "The thought is the gift, Richard." Richard shared a gaze with her for a moment, a gaze between worlds. "Denna, please tell Raina that we all love her." "Raina knows this. Feelings of the heart cross the boundary." Richard nodded. "Then you know how much we love you, too." "That is why I came to vouch for you in your quest to the winds." Richard held his arm out. "Would you escort me to the passageway? I would find peace in your company before I leave this empty place. The worst is yet ahead of me."

Denna glided along at his side as he headed for the passageway out, striding the Hall of the Winds for the last time. They didn't speak; words were too paltry to touch what was in his heart.

Near the great doors, the spirit of Darken Rahl waited.

"Going somewhere, my son?" The sound of his words echoed painfully through the hall.