Chapter 8

"Man, why you still standing here looking like she just kicked your puppy?" Crichton couldn't believe that guy. Aeryn runs off like that he's after her in point seven seconds. This guy just watches his woman go.

"She doesn't want me with her." Richard growled in frustration. He didn't know why he was making her wait anymore. Last night he could have lost her. He wouldn't have been able to taste her, feel her move beneath him, experience her pure passion if she hadn't been able to fight the sickness the sword had wrought.

Sentia picked this as the perfect time to wake up. Everyone had forgotten about him during all the excitement. He popped up and startled the three people in camp.

"Where is my mistress? I need my mistress!" He jumped to his feet and tried to walk to Richard to ask him specifically. He was still very unsteady on his feet but the burning desire to find his mistress and to please her drove him passed what he would normally be able to handle. He gripped Richard's shirt and pulled him closer. "Tell me where she is! I need to find my mistress!"

"Is he crazy?" He was getting on Aeryn's nerves with his begging for his mistress. "Do I need to knock him cold again?" She tried to sit up but John's hand pressed back on her shoulder stopping her from getting up.

"You won't be doing anything just yet."

"She's that way." Richard pointed sending him off into the woods after Kahlan. He was feeling petulant at her leaving him and he'd let her deal with the man who'd brought all the trouble upon them.

"Mistress! There you are!" He ran to Kahlan when he found her sitting on the rotting stump in the woods. He fell to his knees before her and kissed the edges of her dress.

"What's your name?" Kahlan had learned patience with the confessed men over the years. They couldn't help that they were propelled by overwhelming love for her. She knew how they felt now. She felt a powerful need to know where Richard was at all times and to do as he desired.

"Sentia, mistress." His head was still bowed and when she placed a hand upon his balding head he thought he'd die fro the joy of her touch.

"What is your occupation?"

"Oh mistress… I was a thief, I am so sorry! I stole many things from so many people. I'm a terrible man. I don't deserve your forgiveness." Sentia burst into body wracking sobs as he bent lower so his forehead touched her toes.

"Are you remorseful, Sentia?"

"I am. I am very eager to make things right. Tell me how to please you. I must please you."

"I want you to go to the next tow-"

"I can't leave you, my mistress, don't send me from you. I love you!" Kahlan stroked his shoulder and pulled him up from the ground, letting him look into her eyes. She'd found, over the years, that if she could make eye contact with the confessed they were easier to convince to leave her. She could calm them with her magic if she could look into their soul. The soul that belonged to her.

"You can. You will go." His eyes turned sad as her orders continued. She felt terrible sending them all away. Sometimes she felt it was better if they were killed in battle so she didn't have to tear them apart. "You'll find honest work and help as many people as you can rebuild from the war." He nodded almost imperceptibly. "Do you understand?"

"I do, mistress, I do." Tears slipped from his eyes, streaking his face as he stood on shaking legs.

"Go now. You're forgiven if you help people in need."

"I promise, I shall help them." Sentia walked away, back towards camp. He shot a look back at her when he was almost out of range and she waved him along with her hand and a smile on her face.

"Go do good, Sentia."

"Must do as she says, must please my mistress." He chanted it over and over as he walked back the way he'd come.

Aeryn noticed him return first.

"Hey, what are you doing back here?" He just ignored her and kept talking to himself. Making sure he kept on task as his mistress wanted. "I'm talking to you!"

Sentia stopped then and looked at Aeryn, but not really seeing her.

"Must do good. My Mistress has sent me away."

"Are you crying." She looked at John and then to Richard. "He's weeping!"

"Kahlan's sent him away. Probably off to help people." Richard knew how his fiancée worked and with men she'd confessed who lived she tried to encourage a life of service to others. Some were a lot harder than others to send away. He looked like he was one of the worst. Great… He'd caused her to go off alone and then sent the confessed man after her for her to deal with.

"Yes!" Sentia looked at Richard before walking into the woods on his way to the closest town, which was in the oppose direction of they way they were traveling. "My mistress has sent me away! Going to help people. Yes sent away, helping people…" His voice faded into the forest as he just repeated his words.

"Are they all like that?" Aeryn felt bad for Kahlan it must tear up her heart to do that all the time. She looked pointedly at Richard telling him to answer her.

"Not all. Most of them are killed in battle…" Richard didn't want to talk about this. It wasn't really his place, but he'd chased Kahlan away and the foreigners were curious. He knew how they felt. He remembered the first time he'd seen her confess someone. It had frightened him. "Some are worse than others. It seems like the more crimes they've committed when they are taken by her the worse off they are when they are sent away. Sometimes I think it would be less cruel for her to just kill them."

"I'd do that if I could bear killing someone that had already had their soul stolen." Kahlan hadn't expected them to be discussing her when she returned. She'd felt her heart sink when she heard Richard say that she should kill them. "Maybe you're right…. I should start just telling them that the only way to please me is to die. Would you like to stand by me after that? I'm already a monster that rips away their chance of any sort of future. I may as well command their hearts to stop beating for me. They would. I just need to utter the words that I wish them to die and they can do nothing but obey my wishes."

Her head was pounding from the stress and fatigue. She had wanted to apologize to Richard for being to emotional. She halfway had expected him to follow her, but instead he'd sent Sentia to get his orders. Maybe… No she knew he loved her and she loved him more than anything. Something was coming between them. Or the lack of something.

"I'm sorry… I know that you mean well, Richard. I just can't bear to kill them." He was next to her suddenly. His arms encircling her and pulling her against his chest. "I see too much death… too much."

"Shhhh, Kahlan, I know. I'm sorry for saying those things. I know you just want to preserve life." He held her to him kissing the top of her head. He was going to have to take the tension away. It was clear that waiting wasn't going to work. But he didn't want to take her in the woods. That wasn't acceptable. The next town they came to they'd get a nice room in an inn and there he'd join with her.

"I never thought of tears. She's totally going to get laid soon." John had laid down and was whispering into Aeryn's ear as he kept peeking over his shoulder at the other two.

"They will both be less tense." Aeryn tipped her head and captured his lips with hers again. "I wanna get laid too."

"You're still sick." He scolded her for even thinking about it. "We create too much heat together. You can't handle that right now." He kissed along her neck and down her shoulder. Her skin was returning to it's normal temperature. He could feel the extreme chill leaving and the cool surface felt good, it was her again. When she was burning up he'd been scared. He'd seen her in the grips of heat delirium a couple times but this was close to that virus she'd contracted when she had returned to him. He didn't like close calls where she was concerned.

"But you feel very ready to make me feel very good." She moved her thigh outwards and pressed against him. He was half hard still from earlier she hadn't given him time to cool off completely.

"I should go check on the module before you convince me to do something that you're not ready for." He laughed at her pout and got up. He reached for his pants and tugged them on. Then pulled his gray t-shirt over his head. He walked over to Richard and Kahlan to tell them where he was going.

"I should go with you." Richard looked down at Kahlan and kissed her forehead before pulling away. "You'll stay with her?" She nodded and leaned up to kiss his lips gently before walking over to sit next to Aeryn.

"I need to do a overall evaluation and then hope I can find something on this planet to manufacture into fuel." He let Richard take the lead, still unsure about the lay of the land.

They walked in silence the short distance to the spaceship. John cringed when he saw the dents from bouncing along trees and rocks while descending. He ran his palm along her hull thinking about everything that he'd been through with this ship. Every ding, dent, scrape and scratch had a memory that went with it. Overall it looked like it was flyable. One of the wings was a little bent but that wasn't anything he could fix with a few basic tools.

"I'm guessing that you don't have electricity?"

"I have no idea what that is, so you'd be correct." Richard just gave him a shrug. He'd never heard the word before and he didn't think that the translation was quite right. "Can I help?"

"Right now I need to make a list of what needs to be done. After that I need to decide where to try to make the repairs. I don't really want to leave her sitting in the woods like this…" John sighed trying to think about how they would even be able to transport it anywhere.

"We could send it to Aydindril by cart." He looked it over and thought about how much it must weigh and then reconsidered that plan. "If we had a cart that could hold it."

"All we need to do is fashion a way for the horses to pull it. I can make larger wheels to attach through the places that have the landing gears. That's not an issue, it's a bit of an inconvenience but not impossible. It will probably take a big team, eight horses, maybe?"

"Getting horses won't be an issue. I'm the Seeker, Kahlan is the Mother Confessor, people bend over backwards to get us anything we need." Richard walked to the other side and started gathering pine bows. "We should hide it though, we'll have to go to town to arrange everything."

John started to help him cover the module with the branches.

"How long will it take to get it to Aydindril?"

"The way they would take and the speed they could travel at... probably a day or two. How long to fashion the wheels to move it?"

"Just a couple hours if I have some metal and a forge, hammer and anvil." John knew he'd be able to do it pretty quickly if he had the aid of a blacksmith. He was used to making everything from scratch for that ship. Nothing in his universe seemed to fit it everything was customized on it now.

"You can work on that while Kahlan and I take care of making the arrangements. We should hurry and cover this and make our way there. We'll want to go to Repeffel that's the larger of the neighboring villages." He hurried and kept covering the ship. They worked together in silence and soon the ship looked like a large pile of tree branches.

"It doesn't look very hidden…" They both chuckled at it.

"No if you were looking at it you'd think 'Oh someone covered something that they don't want people to find.' then you'd go over and look. But if people are just passing close it will blend in and just look like a mound or hill with some downed branches on it." Richard knew that most of the people around didn't pay too close of attention to the woods only to the animals and people that passed through it.

"Alright lets got get the women." John started walking back towards camp with Richard right behind him.

"You feeling better?" Aeryn surprised Kahlan with her question. She was the one laying on the ground recovering from almost slipping into a heat induced living death and she was worried about her.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" She sat on the log that was next to Aeryn and reached down to help her sit up against it.

"You almost died."

"So did you." Kahlan raised her eyebrows at her. "But yes I'm feeling almost good as new. There are some lingering things that just aren't right, but I can feel it fading slowly."

"I've been a lot closer to death than that… I did die once." She didn't know why she'd said it, she hated reliving that time in her life. Zhaan had given her a gift by bringing her back then she'd thrown her own life away. "It's not fun."

"I've lost Richard once to the underworld." She scooted down and sat on the ground to be level with the Peacekeeper. "I didn't know if I'd get him back. I couldn't even think about what I would do without him."

"We're both lucky. I'm waiting for the day our luck runs out."

"Richard always says,'a man who relies on luck better have a lot of it.' I know better than to rely on it, but it's nice to have a little bit now and again." Kahlan put the back of her hand against Aeryn's forehead checking her temperature. "You feel like you're normalizing."

"Yeah I feel pretty good. I should put some clothes back on." She stood and collected her pants from the area by the fire. They were dry enough but hot so she set them away while she found a clean shirt to put on.

"We'll probably be heading into town. There isn't anything we can do without supplies. We'll need horses and food before we head to Aydindril."

"Don't you and Richard have plans?"

"We did. But we can go home first, get married then go back and help people…" As she spoke the words she knew that they would never get that time. Once they were back in the city she'd be busy. They'd been without the true Mother Confessor for far too long. Her sister had been working to put things back to rights and to keep order, but she knew that her abilities were limited. They were all waiting for her return. Waiting for her to take a mate. They would be done waiting when she was back and she knew it was going to be impossible to slip free of the council and the palace again.

"You're giving up a lot to help us." Aeryn tried to understand the desire for a woman that she just met to sacrifice that much to help them. "I don't have to be a confessor to know that you just lied to me."

"At least I'll have Richard. He'll be bonded to me for life. Body and soul."

"He's not going to make it to Aydindril before binding his body with yours." There was an amused gleam to Aeryn's eyes as she spoke of their desire for each other. It was clear to anyone who saw them for a microt.

"I can only hope that a little of that luck rains upon me and you're right about that." Kahlan's smile was big and lovely as the men returned from the module.

"I'm going to have to keep you girls away from each other if she's putting that kind of smile on your face." Richard walked over to her and knelt down in front of her. "We have to go back to Aydindril."

"I thought as much." She put her hands on his cheeks and rubbed her thumbs along the bones. "Are you terribly disappointed?"

"No." He grabbed her hands and cupped them between his. "We're going to be married. I'd never feel anything but joy about that. The people will get help a different way. Instead of physical labor we'll help by changing laws and sitting through boring councils meetings."

She knew it wasn't what he planned for them, but she was overjoyed to be making their way to her home earlier.

"I've got most of this stuff packed up." John called from across the campsite.

"That was quick."

"I"m used to being on the run. You learn to pack fast when Scorpy is after you."

"Scorpy?" Kahlan and Richard said in unison.

"It's… It's a long story." He threw a look to Aeryn and she just smiled at him as she pulled on her pants. "You guys ready to head out? I have no idea how to get to this town."

"Yes." Kahlan stood and gathered the rest of her things, help Aeryn with hers and then swung her pack onto her back. "Okay, lets walk."