Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind [36]
“I believe in you, Confessor Kahlan. Help Richard.” Shar came closer. “Please. Before I die. Touch me?”
Kahlan pushed herself away from the wisp until her back was against the trunk of the tree. “No… please… no,” she implored, shaking her head. “Don’t ask me to do that.” Her eyes filled with tears again. She put her trembling fingers to her lips, trying to hold back the crying.
Shar came forward. “Please, Mother Confessor. I feel such pain of aloneness away from the others. I will never share their company again. It hurts so. I pass now. Please. Use your power. Touch me and let me drink in the sweet agony. Let me die with the taste of love. I have forfeited my life to help you. I have asked nothing else of you. Please?”
Shar’s light was growing dimmer, fainter. Kahlan, crying, held her left hand over her mouth. At last, she reached out with her right hand, until her trembling fingers touched the wisp.
All about there was thunder but no sound. The violent impact to the air jolted the wayward pine, causing a rain of dead needles, some flaring when they touched the fire. Shar’s dim silvery color changed to a pink glow, growing in intensity.
Shar’s voice was faint. “Thank you, Kahlan. Good-bye, my love.”
The spark of light and life faded and was gone.
After the thunder without sound, Richard waited for a time before he returned to her. Kahlan sat with her arms around her legs and her chin resting on her knees as she stared into the fire.
“Shar?” he asked.
“She is gone,” came the answer in a distant voice.
He nodded and, taking her arm, led her to the mat of dry grass and laid her down. She went without resistance or comment. He put the blanket over her and piled on some of the dry grass to help keep her warm through the night, then burrowed himself into it next to her. Kahlan turned on her side, away from him, and pushed her shoulders back against him the way a child would put its back to a parent when peril approached. He sensed it, too. Something was coming for them. Something deadly.
Already, she was asleep. He knew he should feel cold, but he didn’t. His hand throbbed. He felt warm. Richard lay there, thinking about the thunder without sound. He wondered what she would do to make the great wizard do what she wanted. The idea frightened him. Before he could worry more he, too, was asleep.
CHAPTER 6
By noon the next day, Richard knew the bite of the vine was bringing on a fever. He had no appetite. At times he was unbearably hot, sweat making his clothes stick to his skin; then he would shiver with chills. His head pounded in a way that made him sick to his stomach. There was nothing he could do about it, except seek Zedd’s help, and since they were nearly there he decided not to tell Kahlan. Dreams had troubled his sleep, whether from the fever or the things he had learned, he didn’t know. What Shar had told him was the most disturbing: seek the answer or die.
The sky was thinly overcast, the cold gray light foretelling the coming of winter. Trees grown large and close held back the breeze and its chill, making the trail a quiet sanctuary filled with the aromatic fragrance of balsam fir: a refuge from winter’s breath above.
Crossing a small brook near a beaver pond, they came upon a patch of late wildflowers, their yellow and pale blue blossoms blanketing the ground in a sparsely wooded hollow. Kahlan stopped to pick some. Finding a scoop-shaped piece of dead wood, she started arranging the flowers within the hollow of the wood. Richard thought she must be hungry. He found an apple tree he knew to be nearby and filled his pack half full while she bent to her task. It was always a good idea to bring food when going to see Zedd.
Richard finished before Kahlan, and waited, leaning against a log, wondering what she was doing. When she was satisfied with the arrangement, she lifted the hem of her dress and knelt beside the pond, floating the wood out onto the water. She sat back on her boots with her hands folded in