Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind [244]
He took a careful peek. With a shock, he saw that it was Kahlan. She was sitting, leaning against the log, watching him. A rabbit was cooking on the fire. He sat up straight.
“What are you doing here?” he asked cautiously.
“Is it all right if we talk?”
Richard slid the knife back into its sheath, stretched his legs, rubbing the cramps from them. “I thought we did all our talking last night.” He immediately winced at his own words. She gave him an unreadable look. “I’m sorry,” he said, softening his tone. “Of course we can talk. What do you want to talk about?”
She shrugged in the dim light. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.” She had a length of birch branch that he had cut the night before for the fire, and was stripping off pieces of white bark. “Last night, after I left, well, I knew you had a headache…”
“How did you know that?”
She shrugged again. “I can always tell, by the look in your eyes, when you have a headache.” Her voice was soft, gentle. “I knew you hadn’t been getting much sleep lately, and that it was my fault, so I decided that before I… before I left, I would stand watch for you while you slept. So I went over there,” she pointed with the branch, “in those trees, where I could keep my eye on you.” She looked down at the branch as she peeled off strips of bark. “I wanted to make sure you got some sleep.”
“You were there the whole night?” Richard was afraid to hope at what this meant.
She nodded, but didn’t look up. “While I was watching, I decided to make a snare, like you taught me, to see if I could catch you some breakfast. While I was sitting there, I did a lot of thinking. Mostly, I cried for a long time. I couldn’t stand it that you thought those things about me. It hurt that you thought of me like that. It made me angry too.”
Richard decided it was best not to say anything while she struggled to find the words. He didn’t know what to say, and was afraid if he said anything it might make her leave again. Kahlan pulled off a curl of birch bark and tossed it in the fire, where it sizzled and flared to flame.
“Then I thought about what you said, and I decided there were some things I needed to tell you, about how to conduct yourself when you are with the Queen. And then I remembered some things I needed to tell you about which roads to avoid, and about where you might go. I just keep thinking about things I needed to tell you, things you need to know. Before I knew it, I realized you were right. About everything.”
Richard thought she looked like she was near tears, but she didn’t cry. Instead, she picked at the branch with her fingernail, and avoided his eyes. Still he kept quiet. Then she asked him a question he wasn’t expecting.
“Do you think Shota is pretty?”
He smiled. “Yes. But not as pretty as you.”
Kahlan smiled and pushed some hair back over her shoulder. “Not many would dare to say that to a…” She caught herself again. Her secret stood between them like a third person. She started again. “There is an old women’s proverb, maybe you have heard it before. ‘Never let a beautiful woman pick your path for you when there is a man in her line of sight.’ “
Richard laughed a little and stood to stretch his legs. “No, I’ve not heard that before.” He half leaned, half sat against the log, as he folded his arms. He didn’t think Kahlan needed to worry about Shota stealing his heart; Shota had said she would kill him if she ever saw him again. Even without Shota’s vow, Kahlan had no cause for worry.
She tossed the branch aside and stood next to him, leaning her hip against the log. She looked into his eyes at last, her eyebrows wrinkled together. “Richard”— her voice was low, almost a whisper—”last night I figured out I was being very stupid. I had been afraid the witch woman would kill me, and all of a sudden, I realized, she was about to succeed. Only I was doing it for her; letting her pick my path for me.
“You were right about it all. I should