part v

deep blue ocean / fresh green moss

These mornings which became warmer and warmer brought a small sense of relief in such troubling times. Kahlan had just finished packing up their tent which they had shared, and while she stuffed blankets and provisions into packs, she caught herself recollecting all those nights where she and Cara lay side by side in the night and said absolutely nothing to each other.

Kahlan had been so used to hearing Richard tell her stories or recount his adventures, essentially using their time together to process all the high-stress events they were often prone to, that Cara's lack of conversation at first felt like a lack of interest in Kahlan's company. The more nights they spent in close proximity, however, the faster she learned that Cara's silence was out of comfortability and not irritation. If Kahlan was being entirely candid she quite enjoyed it; with Cara, the moment simply was, and there was nothing to do about that at all.

Cara had gone off to take care of herself, having done a good amount of grumbling about having lacked the proper water and soap to bathe until Kahlan had pointed out a waterfall nearby on their way to camp. Cara's eyes lit up with this knowledge gained, and now she had been gone at the waterfall for nearly an hour. Kahlan was becoming impatient—didn't Cara know they were running out of time?

"Cara?" Kahlan called out as she traipsed around the thick forest in search of the missing Mord-Sith. She knew where she was headed, not far from the road, but perhaps Cara had gone hunting or foraging in the interim. Kahlan was surprised at how good Cara was at finding mushrooms, berries, and assorted vegetables alongside the roads headed down the mountain, and it amused her to watch the Mord-Sith quickly jump off her horse, scurry to the side of the road, and shove something delectable into the muslin pouch she proudly kept.

Kahlan heard the waterfall before she saw it, and without thinking her eyes fell upon Cara's bare form. She drank in all the vulnerable sights Cara had to offer; her taut muscle that pulled and bulged from beneath her skin, her long, unbraided blonde hair which reached down past her waist, and the long, pink and puffed scar which adorned her forearm. When Cara turned to the side, Kahlan noticed that her scar had a twin on the opposite arm.

Kahlan felt her face flourish with heat as more of Cara was revealed to her, and the longer she looked the quicker the sensations of Cara's unclothed breasts pressing on her back returned to her, the warm caress of her heated skin, the agony of closeness with someone you wanted more from.

But what, exactly, did she want of Cara?

"Kahlan," came a wary voice from Cara's lips as she turned around. Immediately embarrassed for having watched her from a silent distance for so long, Kahlan was at a loss for a reasonable excuse. Cara's eyes were beyond her, however, and Kahlan only barely heard a succession of quick thuds in the dirt not far behind them.

"Cara, I—"

"Kahlan, the horses!"

Kahlan whipped her head around just in time to catch a glimpse of her black horse shooting past them on the trail. Cara lept into action before she could, jumping out of the water and sprinting headlong to follow the horse-stealer. Kahlan fell in behind her, not a stranger at all to the fact that Cara's wet, bare body was on full display.

"Cara, wait! You're—"

"He's stealing our horse, Kahlan!"

Kahlan could never imagine arguing with the Mord-Sith's often water-tight logic, and in this case it made sense. Kahlan watched as Cara's legs pulsed with adrenaline, racing forward in an effort to stop the assailant. The thief catapulted himself faster into the distance on Kahlan's beautiful steed, and the two women were forced to accept that their race was all in vain. Cara stopped abruptly and Kahlan had no choice but to stumble into her. Kahlan's hands reached for Cara's shoulders as she steadied herself, looked at Cara for a fleeting instant, then quickly peeled herself away.

"That was foolish of me… I couldn't… I should have…" Cara tried as she gulped for air. Kahlan frowned and for a moment forgot both Cara's out of place nudity and her own sudden exhaustion.

"What on the Creator's green land could you be trying to flagellate yourself for?" Kahlan asked with all the incredulity she could muster.

"Only having one, remaining horse," Cara shot back. "I should have been more vigilant. I was gone too long."

"This is my fault, I was meant to be with the horses."

"And I was meant to be taking care of you."

Kahlan sighed, wondering how she could get Cara to see even a glimpse of her side of things. Cara was so black and white, so one thing or the other, that it was nearly impossible for her to understand any shades of gray.

"I was never under the impression that you let me down. You have been with me through the hard, lean times. This is one of them, don't give up on yourself now," Kahlan said, and Cara remained silent for a moment.

Cara placed her hands on her hips, rolled her shoulders slowly backward, and now she looked much less like a disgruntled servant and much more like a self-assured Mord-Sith. Kahlan saw it for the mask it was, but the mask was neither leathers nor agiel; it was simply Cara, regardless of circumstance. In an instant, even completely naked and dripping with river water, Cara not only looked intimidating but also indelibly inexorable.

It was everything about Cara that made it nearly impossible for Kahlan to pull her eyes away.

But there was something else bubbling below that Kahlan could not place. It did not strike her as they returned to the waterfall to collect Cara's leathers. It did not spark when they decided what they could and could not take using only one horse. It only festered when Cara pulled her up onto the horse and Kahlan did not wrap her arms around Cara's waist as they rode away from the path and towards the thinning of the trees.

"I want to tell you something, and I want you to listen to it," Kahlan said after a few, quiet hours. It was ordinary for them to be so silent, they very rarely had the propensity to speak for long stretches of time unless either of them were roused to do so. It was only in the night, when they were close, that they truly spoke.

"We are on a horse together, so I have little choice in the matter," Cara attempted. When she was not met with a bemused laugh from Kahlan, Cara turned her head to the side ever so slightly. "What do you want to say?"

"The way you speak about me sometimes gives the impression that you believe me to be a little statue on a shelf that needs protecting."

"To protect the Lady Rahl is a Mord-Sith's duty."

Kahlan felt that sentiment sting in her chest and she was not entirely sure why.

"I thought we were closer than that. I thought we were friends. Equals."

Cara was silent, and in the silence Kahlan could practically hear the wheels turning in Cara's mind.

"We are friends, but I am also Mord-Sith. One does not have to cancel out the other. I can be two things at the same time."

"It's just when you act like you were the only one who could stop the horse-thief, I felt—"

"As though I was infringing on your power?" Cara said in her usual, curt fashion.

Kahlan stopped for a moment. She would have never expected Cara to finish her sentence so perfectly and absolutely. It caught her completely unawares.

"Yes. I feel as though you did not think I could take care of myself. Or us."

Cara pulled up on the reins and turned in the saddle to face Kahlan.

"I know you can take care of yourself, Kahlan. I have seen it myself. Why would I follow you to such terrible, treacherous places if I did not trust your intuition?"

"Because it's your duty, and you wish to die a valiant death?"

"That is not all I am," Cara told her. "When I chastised myself at the river it was not because I thought you could not handle the situation on your own. I merely believed that I should have done better. My strength is not contingent on your weakness. I do not see you as a threat to my own power; I see you as a companion to it."

"So when you wanted to come with me, it was not only to protect me, but…"

"It was to bear witness to all the strength you contain, and to help you whenever you needed it. You are a strong woman, Kahlan Amnell, but no one can be strong always and in everything."

Kahlan could not speak for fear of her melting heart leaking out from her mouth. There was so much she wanted to say that Cara deserved to hear, but if she spoke any of it then this tenuous companionship they had built would surely be in ruin. It was all too much, this complete and utter understanding of her being. It was as if Cara's eyes looked directly into her soul and sought out every insecurity not to gain leverage on her, but rather to snuff the weaknesses out like candle flames which had burned for too long. For the first time in so long, Kahlan felt seen on her own terms. Completely, truly, and unequivocally seen.

The most confounding piece of the cipher, however, was that Cara seemed to want nothing at all from her. The Mord-Sith, completely content with what she had said, merely smiled quickly at Kahlan, turned back around in the saddle, and kicked their horse into a gallop.

Without words, Kahlan slipped her arms around Cara's waist and rested her head on the Mord-Sith's back as they rode away from the past and into the future. To Richard, to rescue, to a resolution to all of these odd feelings that kept rolling in her belly when she looked at Cara.

"Did you hear that?"

From the bedroll nearby, Cara grumbled in the darkness and shifted to pull the fur over her head.

"Cara…"

"I don't hear anything, I'm trying to sleep."

"It sounds like a bear."

"Then it is surely a bear. Good night."

"Did you tie up the food?"

"Of course I did. If I did not, there would be a bear."

Kahlan attempted to be content with the answer, but unfortunately she had worried herself awake with all this speculation. She sighed, knowing it would be a few hours until she eased her mind enough to allow herself to be lulled back to sleep. Kahlan rolled over to her side, and in the nearly-dead embers of last night's campfire she caught the faint outlines of Cara's prone form as she lay on her stomach, face turned away from Kahlan. Her long, blonde hair was still tight in her braid, and her smooth, curved form was hidden under the blankets and furs. Kahlan moved again, readjusting the blankets so they were not trapping her arms.

Cara sighed and sat up.

"I once knew a woman who fought a bear. She was nearly as large as the bear. It kept overfishing the river for salmon, so she took an arrow to it one day."

Kahlan rolled over to look at Cara, completely perplexed by what she had just heard.

"What are you talking about?"

"I am trying to tell you a story so you go to sleep."

"That's what you think a story is?" Kahlan asked, a hint of bemusement curling around her words like smoke. "Now I know why Mord-Sith rarely speak to one another."

"Berdine is a great tale-teller, but I have forgotten all of her stories."

"Don't you remember any from when you were little?" Kahlan said, sitting up to look at the Mord-Sith. "Surely your mother or father told you stories."

"I don't remember my childhood except the day I was taken. I remember that well," Cara said softly, as if she were being pulled back to those early days. Kahlan felt a tinge of guilt for having brought the subject up, knowing what she knew about the training of Mord-Sith. Cara's hands gripped each other as if she could bring solace to herself.

"I have never asked you what you think about being Mord-Sith," Kahlan ventured, and for a quiet moment she worried that she had gone too far again. But Cara continued to surprise her.

"What is there to think about? I am Mord-Sith."

Kahlan raised an eyebrow. "I think about being a Confessor often. It's a hard life we lead, Cara."

"I do not entirely know what I think about it," Cara reasoned, her eyes finally meeting Kahlan's intentional gaze. "I used to think it was honorable, noble, my preordained purpose in life. But then Richard became our Lord Rahl, and although he has taught me so much…" Cara stopped herself. Kahlan waited a long time for Cara to begin again.

"You are allowed to conditionally devote yourself to Richard. He admires your individuality."

"Although he has taught me so much," Cara began again, newly invigorated by Kahlan's reassurance, "the way he used to look at us made me feel so small. He was afraid of us in a way I have never seen before—I suppose it is because most people do not come back from being Denna's pets. But when we would speak about him, call him Lord Rahl, show our devotion to him and what we could do for him… I could always tell he hated it, deep down, even if it was useful. He made me question if I was a good person."

"It's a very different way from what he knows. Richard wants everyone to have a choice."

"Mord-Sith do have a choice," Cara said curtly. "We live as Mord-Sith, or we die as little girls."

"That doesn't seem like much of a choice, Cara."

"Perhaps not to you. But that day I was taken… I hesitated. I could have screamed or ran or bit my captors, but I didn't. And so I was left with those two choices. And I chose the one which I knew would greatly benefit me. In those days, I was not ready to accept defeat. I knew I wanted to live, and if I wanted to live there was no other path than that of a Mord-Sith."

"You didn't have the luxury of choice, your choices were given to you," Kahlan said summarily, thinking about all the terrible, one-sided decisions she had been forced to make over the last two years. "I don't think Richard would fault you for that."

"He wouldn't, but he will never understand, and that colors his world a different shade than mine. I am not sure he has entirely thought over what has been done to Mord-Sith, the violence we are subject to, and the violence we invoke. But there is power in all of it, and the making of a Mord-Sith cannot be reversed. Our destinies are inevitable. And it does not make a monster of me to accept this."

"Being a Mord-Sith led you to this," Kahlan said so quietly she practically expected Cara not to hear. "Being a Mord-Sith led you to me."

With all the conviction in the world, Cara's eyes met hers again; deep blue ocean, fresh green moss. Kahlan did not know why she felt so beholden to Cara's gaze, to her perception, to her knowing. But she was, and this thing, these creatures within them that reached out desperately to one another, once done could not be undone.

Kahlan would have never imagined that she would bear the hand which slayed the Seeker of Truth. Such a destiny fettered people to their beds and assured them that death would be better than life. But Kahlan did not have the luxury of prophets to warn her of the doomed race to Altur'Rang, or how the city stank of evil and death and a lifetime of wondering what she could have done better. Time, it seemed, had always been against Richard and Kahlan.

Kahlan had seen an opening and, like Richard had taught her, dove for it as though her life depended on the success of this killing blow. All of it was in Kahlan's head, and after the fact she would lay in bed with agonizing thoughts of what she could have done differently. If she had been paying closer attention, would she have recognized the only man she had ever loved? His smell, his form, his movements?

Shouldn't she have known?

But tragedy always comes in aching gasps and rarely to those who deserve it; sweeter when it takes heroes over villains. So Kahlan drove her sword into Richard's belly and cried out in horror as the hood fell from his head and he crashed backwards onto the ground. There was a glistening red spot where he held himself, his beautiful brown eyes wide and gushing with fear. Kahlan sank to her knees and held her small hand over his large one as the blood kept coming. The Sword of Truth had long ceased its clattering as it fell to the wet, marble floor.

"Richard—"

"Kahlan…"

"Don't speak. Don't speak," Kahlan said under her breath as if it were a secret. As if speaking any louder than this would have a curse come upon him. Kahlan's other hand came to cradle the back of Richard's head as he stared at her like she would be the last sight he would ever take in. Against everything that was happening, in his fleeting, final moments, Richard smiled at her like he always had.

"I'll be all right," Richard assured her, taking Kahlan's hand in his bloody one and squeezing it so tightly that Kahlan thought he would break her bones. "Nicci can't heal me unless the Maternity Spell… is broken."

"Cara will—" Kahlan began, but her words were cut off by a terrible, sharp pain in her abdomen, as if someone had landed a square kick there. "It seems… she's already found Nicci."

Richard had the courage to laugh, but the sound of that joy only brought more crimson mess.

"Lie still, don't be so stubborn," Kahlan chastised, taking his big hand to his wound again.

"I taught you well."

"I already knew how to handle a sword before you showed up," Kahlan told him, a small smirk spitefully cracking across her face.

"Good, you'll need it."

"I have so much to tell you that you wouldn't believe, Richard," said Kahlan, keenly aware that Richard's drooping eyelids were a sign of shadows to come.

"I am sure you and Cara have done what I asked. Stayed in the mountains. Protected yourselves," Richard said, and although he sounded weak and small, Kahlan could tell he knew what they had done.

"Cara and I did what we thought was best. But that's not for here, I need you to—"

"Trust Nicci," Richard told her, and Kahlan bit back the urge to laugh in his face.

"What are you talking about? Trust Nicci?"

Richard winced, twisting his eyes shut as the blood slipped between his fingers.

"She is a different woman than she was a year ago. Please… she can be on our side."

Kahlan did not wish to reason with a dying man, so she simply acquiesced and nodded. They would have time to argue, time to sort things out, time to negotiate. Even if Richard was rarely one to compromise, surely she could avoid having to pull the vile Nicci along with them. Kahlan wondered if Richard knew what Nicci had done to her.

"Kahlan," he whispered, magic on his lips. "I love you, no one else."

"Richard, don't do this."

"Just you. I'm glad we had our time together."

"No…"

"I wouldn't trade it for anything."

And so passed Richard Cypher Rahl, ruler of D'Hara, Seeker of Truth, War Wizard, Pebble in the Pond, husband to the Mother Confessor. In an alleyway, in a commoner's cloak, by the hand of the one he loved most dearly in this world.

"Kahlan!"

Cara came roaring down the hallway but it was difficult to look at anything but Richard's limp form. Kahlan cradled his head to her chest, unable to weep, unable to speak, unable to rationalize what had just gone on. What she had done. What it was too late to do.

"Richard!" Nicci shrieked, and in an instant she was on her knees beside Kahlan, grasping at Richard's shirt in a desperate effort to bring him back to life. "No… he can't be…"

"He's dead," Cara said lifelessly, her hand holding the grip of her agiel. From the way her face stayed placid, plain, and unaffected, Kahlan knew exactly what was racing through her mind.

"Lord Rahl is dead. And it's your fault, you miserable bitch."

Kahlan's heart stopped, jolted back to life by Cara's incendiary words. They cut her to the core—how could Cara turn on her so quickly? It was Kahlan's sword that lay there bloody, it was not a mystery what had happened, but for Cara to say that to her hurt more than if she had been the one run through.

In an instant, time began again. Cara was wrestling with Nicci on the ground, blindly driving her fists down onto her chest, pinning the sorceress's hands over her head. Without time to call out, Kahlan was flung on her back in the same position, destined to follow whatever fate had in store for Nicci.

"Kahlan—" she heard Nicci wheeze out. "You're hurting her."

The pain stopped at once, Cara practically leapt off Nicci's prone form.

"Undo what you have done, now," Cara commanded, much in the same voice she had used for Gadi. Nicci laid there in terror for a moment, Kahlan caught her breath. "Now!"

Nicci scrambled to her feet and hurried to Kahlan. Pale, lifeless, blue eyes met green, Nicci laid a hand on Kahlan's shoulder, and immediately a floodgate of pain broke open between them. Within herself Kahlan not only felt a physical, burning sensation, but her heart seemed nearly worn down to nothing. It expelled everything she had ever felt for Richard; all the delight and worry and agony that came with being in love with someone who had never really belonged to her. Richard was always elsewhere, always just outside of her reach.

"I'm glad we had our time together."

A white, milky light stretched out from the center of her chest and drove into Nicci's, the two of them caught up in this excess of anguish. Kahlan grabbed hold of Nicci's throat, ready without question for whatever came next. The sorceress looked her in the eye, and for the first time Kahlan saw someone who was entirely bereft of a soul. There was nothing there, nothing inside of Nicci.

"The spell is broken. You are free."

Cara landed a swift kick to the side of Nicci's head before Kahlan could stop her. Kahlan was not entirely sure she wished to stop Cara from what she was about to do. Forgetting what had been taken from them, Cara pulled out her agiel and, in the absence of its screams, held it miserably in her hand.

"It's… he's really…"

Kahlan stood up shakily, wishing to see the fear in Nicci's eyes. This had all been her doing. Without her violence, Richard would still be alive. Instead, all she saw was Cara's deep, blue eyes welling up with tears, looking back at Kahlan as if she had any solace left to give. They were both so empty, and nothing could be done now.

Kahlan bent down, grasped the Sword of Truth, and lifted the pommel towards Cara. A cruel offering, still stained with Richard's blood. Kahlan did not wish to make any more choices. It was up to Cara now to decide what must be done with Nicci.