XX. BELOVED
"Here," said Richard, spreading his blanket over her. "You look cold." She had been, and Kahlan welcomed the warmth of the extra blanket. Harsh, wintry wind blew in the open mouth of the cave, and the fire only did so much. Though they had spent nearly two months stuck in the hidden city of Ashkari, spring had yet to soften the air. She snuggled beneath the added layer, watching as Richard pulled his cloak tighter and settled back down beside the fire, the black leather book still open in his hands. She could tell by the lines around his eyes that he was straining to read in the dim light of the cave.
"Richard," she called softly, not wanting to wake Zedd or Cara. "Come here."
She propped herself up on an elbow and beckoned him to her with a tilt of her head. He hurried to her side as swiftly as if she'd cried out in pain, kneeling down on the rough floor of the cave. "What is it?" he asked in a low voice. "Are you still cold? I can give you my cloak."
"Richard," she said again, drawing his name out to get him to listen. "You freezing to death won't do me any good. You need to get some rest." She plucked the book from his hands and closed it. He'd had it open to an illustration of a screeling, and that creature's nightmarish face sent a shiver down her spine.
"I'm all right," he began to protest, but she reached out and pressed a finger to his lips, the dark and the cold making her bolder.
"You need to sleep," she said again. "We hiked all day. I know you've got to be exhausted." The backs of her legs ached from the sunrise to sunset trek down the mountainside. It was a lot harder than she remembered after so many endless weeks doing little more than keeping house in the abandoned city, and they were not yet halfway out of the Rang'Shada Mountains. Another strong gust of wind blew through the cave, and she saw him shiver and try to hide it.
That confirmed it for her. Kahlan peeled back her heavy layers – three blankets and her cloak, which had been spread like another blanket. "You're going to freeze to death without a blanket, so…" She looked at him hopefully, "We'll share and be twice as warm."
He hesitated, studying her face with dark, unsure eyes. "Kahlan, you don't have to…"
"I won't confess you in my sleep," she said. "It doesn't work that way."
"I'm not afraid of you confessing me," he said quickly. "It's just…are you sure you'll be comfortable? We've never…" They'd never fallen asleep in each others arms before. She knew that well.
"I'll be comfortable if you lie down and stop letting the cold in," she said with a pointed look. Richard flushed bright red, but nodded and pulled off his cloak, spreading it over her as yet another layer, before slipping in to lie beside her in the warm cocoon.
Kahlan curled towards him, though her belly only let her get so close. She could feel the cold radiating from him, and was glad she'd insisted he share her blankets. He would have caught a chill had he stayed out like that much longer. She picked up one of his hands, holding it between her own to warm it. Their faces were very close, and Kahlan could see an echo of herself reflected in his eyes. Gently she reached out and touched his frigid cheek.
"Have you learned anything new from the book?" she asked. She was sure he'd read the entire thing from cover to cover at least five times by now.
Richard shrugged and looked away, staring up at the patches of golden light reflected from the fire on the rough, dark walls of the cave. The shadows loomed very long. "Not really," he muttered. Though she could tell that his words were a lie, she took care not to call him on it. Since the day Zedd had accused him of getting her killed, he had stopped mentioning what he learned in the book. He read it still, especially late in the night, but he had never again asked Zedd to draw a Grace.
She wiggled closer, her knees bumping against his. The blankets rubbed soft and warm against her cheek, and only their eyes and the tips of their noses showed above them. "I meant what I said that day," she said quietly. "I know Zedd says there's a risk to calling a spirit through the Veil now that it's torn, but if it's what you really think is best—"
This time, it was he who pressed a finger to her lips. The feel of his finger there surprised and thrilled her, and she smiled a little despite what they spoke of. "No," he said. "Anything that risks your life is not best. And Zedd was right. I don't know what I'd have done if he sent me to the Underworld with the Grace. It would've been an act of desperation," he said with a bitter laugh, and she could hear how lost he felt.
"You will find a way to the stone," she murmured.
Richard sighed and gave a slight shake of his head. "The librarian…in my dream," she heard the way he added that on, and knew he still wasn't sure what to believe about the old woman. Neither was she. "She told me the Creator made the stone out of her grief. I've searched the entire book, but there's no mention of how the Stone of Tears was made. You told me you grew up hearing stories of the Creator and the Keeper…"
"So you want me to tell you the story of the Stone of Tears?" asked Kahlan.
Hope kindled in his eyes. "You know the story?"
She smiled at his astonishment and said, "It's no secret in the Midlands. It's so well known they probably saw no need to record it." Her mother had first told her of the Stone of Tears when she was very young, and later Sister Isobel had turned it into a bedtime story at Thandor.
"Will you tell me?" he asked.
"Of course," said Kahlan. She curled towards him so their foreheads almost touched, her womb pressing against the hard plane of his stomach. The fire popped and crackled, sending up a shower of golden sparks into the dark belly of the cave. The cadence of that ancient story rose to the forefront of her mind, and she spoke the words that had colored her childhood, "It was a time before remembering," she murmured. "When there was only a great nothingness. Into that void came the Creator like a light into darkness, and the Keeper, who loved her. She grew to love him too, and from their love came the world. Their children filled it, and they were like to them, beautiful and perfect and immortal. They knew no pain, no death, no suffering. For a time, they were happy. The Creator filled the world with beauty to delight their children, and she doted on them day and night."
"But the Keeper grew jealous of her love for their children and made us mortal, that he might murder their firstborn." Kahlan hesitated, her hand drifting down to settle along the curve of her swollen belly. "Into the world came loss and pain and death, and the Creator wept over the body of her child. Her grief was so great that it took shape and became the Stone of Tears. She used the stone to imprison her beloved in the Underworld for all eternity – never to see him again – so that their children might know life and peace and joy once more. But alone, she could not undo what had been done to the world." She looked into Richard's eyes, "And so we come from her, but all are given to the Keeper in the end."
"Beloved Mother, give us gently unto our Father," he murmured.
"What?"
"It was painted onto the bottle of poison that the scholars drank," he said quietly. "I didn't understand what the words meant then. The Creator and the Keeper were lovers?"
"Yes," said Kahlan. "How else do you make new life?" She felt suddenly very aware of the child curled inside her womb. Richard nodded, but said nothing, just lay there looking into her eyes a long time. "What are you thinking?" she asked at last.
Instead of answering, he reached out and brushed a strand of hair back from her face, his palm curling around her cheek. Kahlan leaned into his touch, savoring it. She loved how he did not fear to touch her. She doubted he knew what a gift that was to her, or how much she missed it when he filled up with guilt and kept to himself. But right now, she could see the desire in his eyes, and she stared back at him, calm and peaceful and wildly awake all at the same time.
Tucked away in the dark belly of the mountain, it seemed rather like they were the only two people left in the entire world.
"You are so beautiful," he said in a low, reverent voice. He rose up on his elbow a little, so his face hovered just above hers, and pressed a kiss to her cheek, soft and fleeting like the touch of a butterfly's feet. When he lifted his mouth from her skin, she turned her face so her lips were where her cheek had been, staring up at him. Every breath shivered its way from her lungs, and the icy wind that moaned in the cave only made the space between them burn all the brighter.
Richard kissed her then as she'd hoped he would, his lips meeting hers this time. His fingers combed through her hair as he tasted her, and she melted into his embrace, twining her arms around him. There came a moment when he could have deepened the kiss or pulled away, and the sweet ache building inside her was left to grow cold when he broke from her mouth. Kahlan ignored it. It would always be this way with them.
He settled back down in their makeshift bed, still running his fingers through the long ends of her hair.
"I want you to feel something," she whispered, tugging his hand down until it rested against her belly. She flattened his fingers, pressing them to the spot where the child in her womb kept kicking her. "Can you feel her?" she breathed the question, and saw the answer in his eyes.
"Kahlan," he said. "That's incredible." His eyes began to water, and he beamed at her. "She's so strong."
Kahlan nodded, her heart beating faster. It was getting harder and harder to tell herself that she would be a mother someday, instead of a mother very soon. Her voice shook when she spoke, "She'll be here by late spring. Or a little earlier."
He smiled as if that wasn't terrifying and said, "I always liked the spring."
"But what are we going to do?" she asked. "Once she's born?"
Richard seemed to realize her worry then because his tone turned soothing. "We'll raise her wherever you want to raise her. We'll make sure she's happy." He rubbed his hand in a circle right above the spot on her belly where the baby kept kicking, soothing her aching side and their restless child. "She'll be perfect and you'll be wonderful, and I'll adore you both."
Kahlan grinned at that; she didn't remember how she'd ever lived before without him in her life. It hadn't really been living, she was sure of that. When she'd been young, she had thought that duty made up for love, but it didn't. It failed to even come close. She had no idea how she would ever find the strength to one day tell her daughter that she was not to seek this for herself.
"Maybe I'll make her a cradle," continued Richard, sounding suddenly shy. "Do you think she'd like that?"
"She'd love it," said Kahlan as tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. He made it all sound so simple, and she wanted to let her thoughts run away with his and paint a picture of a perfect life, the two of them together like husband and wife. She remembered the morning she told him she carried his child, and how Richard immediately wanted to wed her. He'd always wanted that, she knew, but he had imagined for a moment that it could truly be.
Her heart still ached that she hadn't been able to agree then; that even now she could not bring it up again and say yes. She wanted nothing more than to live with him in some tiny cabin in the woods he loved, and raise their daughter, and sleep in each other's arms every night. Though the most she could share with him would be a few rounds of breathless kisses before bed, she knew she could call her life content. But she was the only Confessor left, save for those that came from her womb, and one would not be enough.
Every time she tried to convince herself that she could stop at just one daughter, she saw her sister's face in her mind. Her mother's face. All the dead Confessors who'd been massacred and hunted into extinction. If her kind was truly to have a chance to return from what had been done to them, she would have to bear more children someday, and Richard could not father them.
Kahlan wondered how she would bear it when the time came to tell him. When their daughter was old enough that she could come up with no more excuses to delay the inevitable. She would rather endure a thousand times what had happened when he was confessed than take another man as a mate, but she could not. She would have to lie with a man she did not love and bear his children, and she could not be Richard's wife when it happened.
Deep in a secret part of her heart, she feared that she would never be able to love her other daughters as dearly as she did Richard's.
"Kahlan?" His worried voice broke through her mind. "You're weeping."
She nodded, gripping his hand fiercely. "I don't ever want to lose you," she whispered.
"Hey," he murmured, and somehow found a way to ease her closer still. Her head fit into the curve of his neck, and his fingers danced a secret pattern down her spine. She could not stop weeping. "Hey," he said again. "Kahlan, I'm right here. You have me."
"Promise me you'll always love me, no matter what." She could not stop the words from coming; she didn't know when she'd become so selfish. If he couldn't stand to look at her after she took a mate, that was his right.
"That's not a promise," said Richard as he smoothed his hand down the back of her head. "That's the truth."
She smiled bitterly. The skin on his neck was slick with her tears. "I'm sorry," she whispered in a thready voice. "I don't know- I don't mean to cry."
"It's okay," he said and kissed her brow. "It's all right." He pulled back a little to look into her eyes. He smiled at her, his hands still busy soothing her. They trailed through her hair and down her arm, across her swollen belly. After a moment, Richard spoke in a quieter voice, "There is nothing you could do to make me stop loving you. I want you to know that." She wondered if he'd guessed her thoughts. The lump in her throat was too great to speak around, so she nodded instead. "Can you sleep now?" he asked gently.
"Don't go…" Her words wobbled when she finally forced them out.
"I'll stay here with you," he promised. "But you need to rest. For you and for her."
Kahlan pursed her lips together. Past the sudden grief, the day's exhaustion still lurked, and sleep seemed a wonderful thing. "I think I can sleep," she said. Slowly, awkwardly, she turned over onto her other side, and he eased her back so she lay snug against his chest. Richard's breath was warm on her neck, and he pressed a kiss to her shoulder blade.
"Sleep, Kahlan," he murmured. "I love you."
She tugged his hand down so it rested over her belly. The last thing she remembered before sleep took her was watching the stars shining through the mouth of the cave, while Richard's fingers traced idle patterns over their growing child.