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Chapter 1

She didn’t re

With an obscure sense of apprehension, she wondered if the distant angry voices drifting in to her ain about to experience that transcendent ending: death

There was absolutely nothing she could do about it if she was

While she didn’t re, she di that she had, saying that death had taken her, but that he had pressed his s with his breath, his life, and in so doing had rekindled hers She had had no idea who it was that spoke of such an inconceivable feat, or who “he” was

That first night, when she had perceived the distant, diserasped that there were people around her who didn’t believe, even though she was again living, that she would reht But now she knew she had; she had rehts, perhaps in answer to desperate prayers and earnest oaths whispered over her that first night

But if she didn’t re into that great oblivion The pain, she never forgot She reainst all thosetheir teeth like a pack of wild hounds with a hare She reround, heavy boots sla into her once she was there, and the sharp snap of bones She remembered the blood, so much blood, on their fists, on their boots She reasp at the agony, no breath to cry out against the crushing weight of hurt

Sometime after—whether hours or days, she didn’t knohen she was lying under clean sheets in an unfaray eyes, she knew that, for some, the world reserved pain worse than she had suffered

She didn’t know his nauish so apparent in his eyes told her beyond doubt that she should have More than her own name, more than life itself, she knew she should have known his na had ever shamed her more

Thereafter, whenever her own eyes were closed, she saw his, saw not only the helpless suffering in theht of such fierce hope as could only be kindled by righteous love So her uished by her failure to will herself to live

At some point, she remembered his name Most of the time, she remembered it Sometiot even her own name

Now, as Kahlan heardhis name, she knew it, she knew hi to that name—Richard—and to herhe meant to her

Even later, when people had feared she would yet die, she knew she would live She had to, for Richard, her husband For the child she carried in her womb His child Their child

The sounds of angry ed Kahlan’s eyes open She squinted against the agony that had been tempered, if not banished, while in the cocoon of sleep She was greeted by a blush of aht wasn’t bright, she reasoned that there ht, or maybe it was dusk Whenever she woke, as now, she not only had no sense of ti she had been asleep

She worked her tongue against the pasty dryness in herslumber She was as nauseated as the tireen apples before a boat journey on a hot, windy day It was hot like that now: suled to rouse herself fully, but her awaking awareness see in a vast shadowy sea Her stomach roiled She suddenly had to put all herup She knew all too well that in her present condition, few things hurt ain, and she foundered to a place darker yet

She caught herself, forced her thoughts to the surface, and willed her eyes open again She reave her herbs to dull the pain and to help her sleep Richard knew a good deal about herbs At least the herbs helped her drift into stuporous sleep The pain, if not as sharp, still found her there

Slowly, carefully, so as not to that felt like double-edged daggers skewered here and there between her ribs, she drew a deeper breath The fragrance of balsa to settle her sto other s damp dirt and toadstools and cinnamon ferns, but the redolence of trees freshly felled and liht and saw beyond the foot of the bed a wall of pale, newly peeled ti sap from fresh axe cuts The wood looked to have been split and hewn in haste, yet its tight fit betrayed a precision only knowledge and experience could bestow

The roorown up, a room this small would not have qualified as a closet for

linens Moreover, it would have been stone, if not marble She liked the tiny wooden room; she expected that Richard had built it to protect her It felt al arnity, never comforted her in that way

Beyond the foot of the bed, she spotted a carving of a bird in flight It had been sculpted with a few sure strokes of a knife into a log of the wall on a flat spot only a little bigger than her hand Richard had given her so around a campfire, she had watched him casually carve a face or an anis spread wide as it watched over her, conveyed a sense of freedom

Turning her eyes to the right, she saw a broool blanket hanging over the doorway Fro voices

“It’s not by our choice, Richard… We have our own families to think about…wives and children…”

Wanting to knoas going on, Kahlan tried to push herself up onto her left elbow Somehow, her arm didn’t work the way she had expected it to Like a bolt of lightning, pain blasted up the h her shoulder

Gasping against the racking agony of atteed to lift her shoulder an inch off the bed Her panting twisted the daggers piercing her sides She had to will herself to slow her breathing in order to get the stabbing pain under control As the worst of the torment in her arm and the stitches in her ribs eased, she finally let out a soft moan

With calculated calth of her left arm The arm was splinted As soon as she saw it, she remembered that of course it was She reproached herself for not thinking of it before she had tried to put weight on it The herbs, she kneereto make another careless movement, and since she couldn’t sit up, she focused her effort on forcing clarity into her mind

She cautiously reached up with her right hand and wiped her fingers across the bloom of sweat on her broeat sown by the flash of pain Her right shoulder socket hurt, but it worked well enough She was pleased by that triu then why it had hurt to look toward the door Gingerly, her fingers explored a foreign landscape of swollen flesh Her iers brushed cuts on her cheek, hot embers seemed to sear raw, exposed nerves

She needed no ht She knew, too, how bad it henever she looked up into Richard’s eyes She wished she could look good for hi frohts, he would say, “I’ better”

With a bittersweet longing, Kahlan recalled lying with Richard, their liainst hers, his big hand resting on her belly as they caught their breath It was agony wanting to hold hi unable to do so She reminded herself that it was only a ether and that hat mattered His mere presence was a restorative