XXV. CONFESSOR

When dawn came soft and golden to light the eastern sky, they climbed the last hill the soldiers had spoke of, and stood staring down into the great, gaping maw of the Underworld. The rift ran far and wide like an ugly gash, splitting open the sand dunes and the wild grassland, leading the way down into endless darkness. Green smoke wafted out of the crevice, and the morning breeze bore a stench like rotting flesh.

"Wait here," said Richard, resting his hand on her shoulder. "I don't want you getting any closer."

"Richard, wait," said Kahlan, reaching for his hand, but he'd already slipped out of her grasp, moving quickly down the hill towards the rift. "Follow him," she said desperately, looking to Cara and Zedd. "Don't let him go down there alone." She wasn't sure what she expected to happen, but she could not bear to watch him walk alone in such a place.

Cara was already following after him, but Zedd stayed beside her. She wanted to argue that there was nothing on the hilltop for her to need protecting from, but the bright sunlight was giving her a headache, and she didn't have the strength. Instead, Kahlan wandered along the hill, watching as Richard walked right up to where the ground began to crumble away like jagged, broken teeth. She rested a hand on her belly and fought the urge to call him back to her. It seemed as if he would walk right in and disappear forever; her only comfort was Cara like a leather shadow at his shoulder.

She walked a little further down the hill when her foot caught in a hole, her ankle twisting and tearing a cry from her lips. Her arms flailed as she lost her balance, Zedd grabbing her before she could fall, steadying her on her uninjured leg.

"I'm all right," said Kahlan, but when she put weight back on her ankle, pain shot through her, and her knee buckled. Zedd grasped her more firmly, lowering her down to sit on the ground.

"Easy there, dear one," he said. "I think you've turned it."

She winced and tried to grab her foot, but her belly got in the way. She surrendered with a frustrated sigh, looking up to see Richard racing towards her, having heard her cry out. "Are you all right?" he asked as he dropped to his knees before her.

"Yes," muttered Kahlan. "Zedd caught me. It's just my ankle." She felt her cheeks heat in a flush of embarrassment. It seemed she couldn't do anything right anymore. She never used to be so clumsy.

"Here, let's see," said Richard. As gently as he could, he eased her boot off, settling her swollen ankle in his lap. She bit her lip to keep from wincing at the pain. "Zedd?" he said, looking to his grandfather.

The old wizard reached out, grasping her foot in his weathered hands. He closed his eyes, and she felt the touch of his magic like a feather tickling along the bottom of her foot. "It's twisted, child," he said. "Give me a moment, and I'll have you back to rights." The current of magic grew stronger, warmer, and as it did, the throbbing pain first eased, and then disappeared. "There," he said. "How's that feel?"

"Better," said Kahlan, rotating her ankle gingerly at first, and then a bit more boldly. "Thank you."

Zedd smiled at her, cautioning her to be careful the rest of the day as her ankle would still be a bit weaker than usual. Richard rested his hand on her foot, looking concerned. "How did you twist it?" he asked.

Kahlan felt her face heat again. "There was a hole, I think." She couldn't be sure as she could no longer see where she placed her feet these days. When she looked down, all she saw was the endless swell of her belly. She reached out a hand, searching the grass absently until her fingers found a sudden dip in the ground. When she turned to peer at it, her heart skipped a beat. "Here," she said faintly.

"That's no hole," said Cara. Kahlan could only nod. Her hand rested inside a giant paw print, like a wolf's tracks, only several times larger, deep and ugly and digging into the dirt. Her hand felt suddenly cold, and she pulled it back, curling her fingers into a tight fist.

"The Keeper's hound walked here," said Richard, voicing what no one had dared to yet, though she knew they had all been thinking it since the night before. A beast of the Underworld had walked where they gathered now. A shudder ran through her, and Kahlan clutched at her belly. It felt as if the Keeper sat right beside her. Richard looked at her, their eyes locking, his dark and troubled. "I need to get you from this place."

"But now that you're here…" They had traveled so long in search of the Great Rift, and now that they'd arrived, she wasn't exactly sure what they were supposed to do. "Did you learn anything down there?" she asked, looking out at the massive rend in the land.

"We learned where the rift is," said Richard, his expression grim and giving away little. "That's enough for now, at least until we get some rest." He stood, brushing off his hands on his breeches. "We traveled straight through the night. We all need sleep."

But in the end, they walked well over an hour without finding a place to rest. The dunes flattened out into a sweeping expanse of sand, the wind occasionally picking up great clouds of grains and skittering them across the surface. Behind them in the distance, the rift loomed wide. Richard watched her as she walked, as if he doubted her ankle was truly healed. She could feel how it was still weakened from the injury, but the lingering presence of Zedd's magic made it possible for her to keep putting her weight on it, step after weary step. Exhaustion made the sand and sky start to swim before her bleary eyes, and at first she thought she was imagining things when she saw a city rise up on the horizon, golden domed and sprawling.

"Is that D'Hara?" asked Richard suddenly, and she realized she wasn't hallucinating.

"No," said Cara. "We're not far enough east to be in D'Hara."

"Then what place is it?" asked Kahlan, trying to think of the maps that filled Aydindril. All the countless kingdoms and territories she'd had to memorize during her training, names that had once rolled so easily off her tongue. Now her mind felt thick and slow; it seemed she could hold nothing straight inside her head.

"I don't know," said Richard quietly. "It seems temporary, at least in part." When she only looked at him blankly, he went on. His eyes had always been sharper than hers. "It's ringed with tents."

She thought at first it might be a military camp, and that the soldiers they'd encountered the night before might be camped there. But as they crept closer, they found there was no uniformity to the tents. They shared neither shape, nor size, nor materials. Even their arrangement lacked the slightest sense of order. Cara claimed that there was no way it could be a D'Haran camp, disordered as it was, and the people moving about between the tents were both male and female, haggard looking and dressed in rags, a far cry from soldiers.

There was a trickle of people feeding into the city, and others were rising from the tents and moving towards the gates as well. Over it all drifted the sound of voices singing a lilting, wordless song. There was something eerily familiar about the melody that traced a tingle down her spine. It seemed to call to her from some forgotten space in her memories.

"Perhaps it would be wise to turn back," said Zedd quietly, tugging her from her thoughts. "We have no way of knowing if this village is friendly."

"But if it is, we could find an inn to rest at," said Richard. "Kahlan could have a bed." He spoke so hopefully that she had to smile. She pressed a hand against the ache in her back, staring at the sea of tents surrounding the dingy, sand-streaked village. If they found an inn and stayed awhile, it was likely their child would be born there. Kahlan doubted she had more than a fortnight left until her time came. The faint sounds of women singing reached her ears again, and she shivered.

Zedd was shaking his head, the lines on his face settling into a scowl. "A warm welcome so close to the rift? And to D'Hara? I doubt it."

"Whether it's to find a place to rest, or to know what dangers we're facing doesn't matter," said Cara, tapping her Agiel impatiently against her thigh. "Either way, we need to scout the city. We should do it before we sleep."

"Cara's right," said Richard. "Wait here with her," he said to Zedd. "Cara and I will look around."

"No," cried Kahlan, snatching at his arm. The city would swallow him whole, like the rift had threatened to do. "Don't leave me behind. What if you need me to confess someone?"

He turned towards her, closing his fingers around her hand. "We'll manage," he said softly. "It'll be safer for you this way."

She shook her head, fear tightening into a knot in her gut. "I'll be safe so long as I'm with you." He hesitated, and she clutched his hand. She could feel Zedd and Cara's disapproval, but she ignored them. "Please," she whispered, trying to keep tears from filling her eyes. One escaped to trickle down her cheek. The only time she felt safe at all anymore was when she stood beside him. "Don't leave me."

He stared at her with solemn eyes and nodded once, "I could never leave you. We'll all go."

"Richard, are you sure that's wise?" began Zedd. "I don't think—"

But Richard cut him off, "We'll all go," he said again, his voice rough. He didn't meet his grandfather's eyes.

Kahlan drew her cloak and hood close around her despite the warmth of the spring day, hiding her belly and her face from view as best she could. The others slipped inside their cloaks as well, and they joined with the crowd moving towards the tents and the city beyond.

The people camped outside the city looked poor and sickly. Many wore strange talismans, others sat rocking back and forth, muttering to themselves. Kahlan tried not to look, keeping her gaze trained on the back of Richard's head as he walked before her. The air was strong with the stench of human waste and rot and too many bodies living close together.

A few small campfires burned, and people cooked meals in battered pots. Above the din, the voices of the women singing grew louder and louder, still weaving together a familiar, lilting melody that Kahlan couldn't quite place. When at last they had waded through the endless disorder of the tents, they found there was nothing to mark their passage into the village proper save for an archway of crumbling tan stone. The gate stood open and unguarded, and the crowd swept them in.

The city was coated in a layer of sand, its narrow streets as tangled and twisted as the path they'd wove through all the tents. People jostled past, bumping elbows and shoulders and setting her on edge. Here and there she spotted greasy haired men hauling carts and trays, hawking strange talismans like those she'd seen on the people outside. As they shuffled past one such merchant, Kahlan stopped and stared. There, nestled on a tray amidst a selection of dingy amulets, sat three human skulls.

Three of the smallest human skulls she had ever seen.

The merchant caught her staring and leaned closer, his black eyes glittering. "Ripped straight from their mother's bellies by some of the fiercest banelings in all the Midlands," he said with a proud, cruel smile. "Guaranteed to earn the Keeper's favor." Kahlan wanted to scream. But she felt the idle fluttering of the child in her womb, and couldn't speak. Her eyes filled with tears, and a wave of nausea swept over her, hot and dizzying. Richard leaned over her shoulder and said something to the merchant that she couldn't make out, but his tone was rough and jovial, and nothing at all like Richard. The merchant laughed, and then Richard's hand was flat against the small of her back, his voice a low warning in her ear, "Move."

It jarred her from her stupor, and she stumbled forward, wincing at the peculiar feel in her mending ankle as he hurried her away from the merchant and his collection of tiny, unborn skulls. She looked over at Richard and found his face lined with worry. "I need to get you out of here," he said. "Now." He glanced back over his shoulder, but the way was choked off by the throng, all of them pressing in towards the center of the city. Kahlan clutched the edges of her cloak tight, holding them closed around her belly, trying to let the billowing fabric hide her shape. She thought of the tiny skulls and their dead mothers, and felt as obvious as the midday sun burning brightly overhead.

"What place can this be?" she asked in an undertone.

Richard shook his head. "Feels like a wolf's den."

"And we're the fat sheep that wandered in," said Cara sharply.

"We need to turn around," said Richard, but Cara shook her head.

"If we turn around now and try to force our way back, we'll attract too much attention. Keep going, and keep your eyes open. There has to be another way out." The Mord-Sith strode ahead as the crowd carried them down the next turn, and they finally spilled into what looked to be the very center of the city, and the source of all the singing.

A platform rose above the crowd, and on it stood seven women in a circle. All were veiled, their faces obscured by flowing red. Their dress was that of Sisters of the Light, and Kahlan stared up at them, her pulse racing. These could not be the same women who'd raised her. She knew in her heart these women were the ones Sister Isobel and the prophecy had both warned her of. They had finally found the Keeper's elusive daughters, the Sisters of the Dark.

A bell clanged loudly above the city, and the singing stopped. The crowd pushed towards the platform, forcing them closer.

As the sisters turned to face the crowd, they saw they'd been gathered around a tight cluster of men and women, five altogether. Four were chained and terrified, but the fifth stood free, with a wildness in his eyes like Kahlan had never seen before.

One of the veiled sisters stepped forward, flinging her arms wide. "Here are five who live," she cried in a cold voice that carried far. An answering rumble spread through the crowd. "Five who will die for the Keeper." At that, the rumble turned into a roar. The four began to struggle against the chains that bound them, pleading for help and mercy and their lives, but the fifth stood silently waiting, grinning at the cheering crowd.

The veiled woman turned her head. "Bring out the warriors," she commanded, and Kahlan realized she spoke to a Mord-Sith waiting at the far end of the platform. The woman in red leather pivoted, marching down steps and out of sight. She returned moments later leading five men, their faces gruesome masks of rotting flesh. Banelings, all of them, each with a knife unsheathed in a ready hand.

"It's an execution," whispered Kahlan. She clutched Richard's arm, her fingers digging in to try and steady herself as she looked up at the open fear on the captives' faces. "We have to do something."

"We have to watch," said Cara in a low voice. "And cheer. Unless we wish to be hoisted up onto that platform and killed alongside them."

She looked to Richard at that, and saw only boundless sorrow in his eyes. It was almost imperceptible, but she caught the slight nod of his head. He agreed. They would have to watch these innocents die and do nothing about it. Worse than nothing for she could not even weep for them.

The sister was still speaking, but Kahlan could only hear a buzzing in her ears. Fear and dread grew inside her until she could barely breathe, and the first baneling shuffled his weary death walk to where his prisoner waited, chained and trembling, his green eyes so very wide. It seemed she spent a lifetime watching the rotting hand grasp the man's head and yank it back, exposing the pale expanse of his throat to the bright day.

The man let out a strangled wail, and then the blade flashed and his blood flowed freely down like rain to stain the wooden boards of the platform. The crowd roared and surged forward, and her stomach churned.

The next two died in quick succession, the banelings shouting triumphantly as, blood spattered yet whole again, they faced the cheering crowd. Kahlan forced a smile. It wasn't until the fourth victim fell that she felt the tingling of magic like a strong wind buffeting her back, even as the crowd tried to push her forward. She looked up at the seven sisters standing calmly among the corpses and the banelings; each of the women seemed to nearly hum with power. She realized in a flash that they were using their gift to hold the people back, and keep them from storming the platform in their frenzy.

A veiled sister came to stand at last before the fifth captive; the unchained one who waited without a fight. "You die willingly?" she asked. The mad-eyed man nodded and grinned at her, a gaping, senseless grin. He touched something that hung on a thong around his neck. Kahlan shuddered when she saw it was another infant skull. "Who do you die for?" asked the sister.

"The Keeper," cried the man, and the crowd cheered.

She nodded, trailing a long finger along the hollow of his cheek. "Your blood will help to make his army strong. May you find your reward in his dark embrace." She stepped back, and when the baneling came forward, the man greeted death with hands clasped in supplication, a look of rabid bliss upon his face. But he still fell with a red splat all the same, and then there were five dead upon the stage.

The crowd was wild now, screaming and surging towards the platform like a tidal wave. A man forced his way between her and Richard, and then another and another. Jostled by the crowd, Kahlan stumbled, her weakened ankle turning beneath her for a second time that day. She cut off her yelp of pain just as it started to escape, arms reaching wildly in an attempt to keep her balance. Her dark cloak fell open, her swollen belly suddenly, horribly obvious in her white dress.

Before she could snatch it shut, the man nearest her noticed. His fingers gripped her wrist like iron, biting into her flesh hard enough to leave bruises. The hand that held her was covered with rot, and she realized in a dull wash of horror that he was a baneling too. He grinned at her, grabbing at her belly as he spoke, "This one has the Creator's blight upon her. I will free her from it." He laughed loudly and went for his knife.

Kahlan's eyes swung to where she could hear Richard screaming her name. She could just see him trying to force his way back to her in time. He'd never reach her. Already, people were beginning to notice and bar his way. Banelings, she corrected herself with a hollow laugh inside her head, glimpsing another patch of rotting flesh. They were all banelings. Even if this one didn't kill her, the next one would. They stood alone in a city of the dead, and they were all going to die.

She released her power anyway, swifter than the baneling's blade could ever be. As her magic snapped through the air like a thousand whips all cracked in unison, the baneling crumpled into ashes, pouring through her open hand. It left her dizzy, like use of her magic hadn't in a long time, reminding her of her girlhood when her power had been weaker. Far too sluggishly, she turned around, surprised she wasn't dead yet. She was surrounded by a ring of banelings, the ashes of one of their own in a heap at her feet, and yet they all stood like statues, gaping at her. Not one moved to end her life.

Moments before, the roar of the mob had been deafening. Now there was near silence, and only one word racing like wildfire through the city.

"Confessor."