XXXII. GONE

Richard knew before he opened his eyes. Something was wrong. Sleep left him uneasily, and he shivered, cold and wary. The cramped tent felt vast and empty around him, as if he lay at the very center of an abyss. His hand crept for his sword as he opened his eyes, only to stop and reach for Kahlan's bedroll instead. It was empty of her, and a scrap of neatly folded parchment had been placed there, waiting for him right below the balled up cloak she used for her pillow. He picked it up with a trembling hand.

It was only just daybreak, so he lifted one of the tent's heavy flaps, letting in a faint, pale light. Richard squinted at the dark marks on parchment, words written in Kahlan's elegant hand. He read her letter three times over, and when he was finished he felt ill.

Kahlan was gone. Taken off in the dead of night like a mad woman. A part of him wanted to shout at her for being so senseless, for so needlessly putting herself and their child in danger. But far more than that, he wanted to hold her close again, and feel with his own two hands that she was safe.

He wasted no time readying himself for the day, but flew from the tent, the letter clutched in his fist, his hair still wild from sleep. The first person he saw was Cara, seated side by side next to the mammoth form of General Nox, the two of them silently chewing their way through a handful of hard, dry biscuits. They looked up at his sudden appearance.

"She's gone," he blurted out. He didn't know what to say beyond that. All his thoughts had been replaced by constant thrumming fear.

Cara's biscuit slipped through her gloved fingers and fell to the sand at her feet. "What do you mean gone?"

He clutched the letter tightly. "She wrote, she wrote…" He gulped in a deep breath of air and held her letter tighter still. "She left in the night for Isham, to keep me safe. She said she took a guard."

Nox got to his feet, shaking his huge, blonde head. His brow pulled down into a frown. "My men should know better than that."

"She's a Confessor," said Cara, the implication of her words hanging unsaid in the air. The man she chose may have had no choice.

Richard tried not to think about that, and clamped down on the swell of grief and fear rising in his chest. There was no time for such emotions now. He turned towards the general. "Find out if any of your men are missing. And then I need your three fastest horses. Cara and I leave for Isham at once. We'll need a guide."

Nox nodded. "Ill take you there myself, Lord Rahl."

What followed was a blur of motion. It seemed only moments since he'd awoken to find a scrap of parchment lying where Kahlan should have been, before he was seated on a horse, Cara grimfaced beside him and ready to ride. Only one man turned up missing from Nox's army, a boy just barely of age named John Rile. He'd been standing watch with the night guard. Also missing were two horses. The tale practically wrote itself.

Lieutenant Gurt, commanding officer of the night guard, was red faced and bursting with apologies. Richard barely heard him. He turned towards Zedd, who'd joined them in the commotion, and asked him to use his magic on a careful search of the area surrounding the campsite. There was no telling if or when Kahlan and Rile had been led astray.

"Is that the polite way of telling me I'm too slow to come along?" Zedd asked with a wink, trying to ease the tension with a bit of humor.

Richard couldn't bring himself to smile back. It was true. Zedd was too old. He couldn't keep to the pace Richard intended to set. When he said nothing, Zedd rested a weathered hand over his grandson's. "You'll find her, my boy."

Richard dug his heels into the horse's sides. "I have to."

xxx

Richard rode all morning with a sense of growing unease. Cara was a red blur on her horse beside him, and Nox a giant, blonde mass of hurtling steel and strength. They rode faster than he could remember ever riding before, but found no sign of Kahlan. The endlessly shifting sands left no tracks for them to follow. And as the sun climbed higher, so did his dread. Richard couldn't explain the feeling, but it felt like they were going the wrong way. Yet Kahlan hadn't lied. He carried her letter tucked inside his vest, close to his heart; its words were ingrained in his head, and he knew. She had done countless infuriating things by leaving the way she had, but she had not lied to him. Of that he was certain. Kahlan was headed for Isham.

At least, that had been her intention.

Abruptly, Richard wheeled his horse around. His thoughts tumbled through his mind so fast his skull ached. The morning sun blazed overhead, sand glinting like gold in all directions as it rushed outward to meet the blue of the day. He was vaguely aware of Cara and Nox reining in their horses, asking questions as they came to a halt beside him.

It felt too simple; a desperate ride to Isham to find Kahlan sitting there waiting, hands folded over her enormous belly. If she really did make it safely to the D'Haran stronghold, then an extra day of her waiting there would not bring her to harm. Richard pushed back his sweaty hair, growing furious with himself. He'd been in such a panic that he'd neglected to think things through. A guard could have been dispatched to Isham to ascertain whether she'd made it there, and he should have started working on all the what-ifs that could have happened to Kahlan. That might be happening to her now.

It was Cara finally reaching out and touching his arm that jarred him from his thoughts. "Richard, what is it?"

"She's not at Isham," he said, his voice dull and heavy. "Or if she is, she's safe. The desert is crawling with the Keeper's servants. If they've found her…" And hadn't killed her on the spot- that was a possibility he was refusing to acknowledge – then they would have taken her somewhere.

When he finally allowed himself a chance to breathe and think, the answer seemed as obvious as a great, gaping wound on otherwise unblemished skin. And in fact, that was what it was. A wound in the earth itself. "The rift," he said breathlessly. "We have to go to the rift." Nowhere in this world was the Keeper's power stronger or more insidious. It couldn't be coincidence, so many sisters amassing there, and now Kahlan alone and vulnerable. There had to be a reason. A prophecy at work. He tried to remind himself that he didn't believe in prophecy, but the knot in his gut tightened all the same.

Richard turned towards Nox. He'd been trained as a wood's guide back in Hartland. It was turning out to be a wholly different matter keeping his bearings in the desert.

"What's the fastest way to the rift?"

The general pointed. "Back the way we came. We've been riding the wrong way all morning."

Richard wasted no words. He nodded and his horse sprang forward.

They'd been traveling a little over an hour when he spotted a figure approaching from the west. Whoever it was rode at a breakneck pace to match their own. It was Nox who first identified him as a fellow D'Haran, shouting a gruff, "He's ours."

As they drew nearer, Richard could make out the engraved R's on the man's boiled black leather. It was still dizzying to think that the R referred to him now; these were his men now.

The soldier leapt from his horse as soon as they halted, clamping a fist to his heart. "Lord Rahl," he cried out. "General Nox." He had the small, compact body of a messenger, ideal for traveling fast with as little extra burden as possible to slow the horse. He was barely as tall as Cara, and standing beside his mountain of a general he would have looked comical, if not for the grim light shining in his pale green eyes.

Nox turned to him, "Why have you come, Brant? You have news?"

"Kahlan," interjected Richard, unable to stop himself. "Have you found her?"

"I'm sorry, my lord. We've found no trace of her yet. It's Rile's body that we found." He dug a hand into his saddlebag and drew out an object that glinted silver in the light. "Stuck in the chest with this," he said. "It's one of those odd knives the witches like to use."

Richard recognized the weapon at once, and Brant relinquished the dacra into his outstretched hand. It was a blade he'd come to know quite well since he met his first one embedded in the skull of an Ashkari scholar. This one was still crusted red with poor Rile's blood. He curled his fingers around the elegant blade to keep from dropping it. The Sisters of the Dark had done away with Kahlan's only guard.

His tongue felt thick in his mouth. "They've found her."