Warheart

Tom Doherty Associates

Feeling hot and light-headed, Kahlan stiffened her back as she stood at the head of the funeral pyre, staring down at Richard's body laid out before her. The light mist and fitful drizzle felt cold on her face, like ice against the grief burning inside her. Wet cobblestones glistened in the late-day light. Irregular pools of standing water reflected parts of the citadel rising up beyond and the stone guard tower nearby, with the occasional tears of rain distorting those reflections.

Although the mist and bouts of rain had soaked the neatly stacked wood of the pyre, she knew that it would burn. Thick layers of pitch had been slathered over the lower planks so that once the torches were tossed in, the entire stack would ignite and burn hot, even in the drizzle, and Richard's worldly remains would be consumed in the flames.

Kahlan's hopes and dreams would be consumed in them as well.

Everyone's hopes and dreams would be turned to ashes.

The dozen men ringing the funeral pyre had but to toss their torches into the wood and it would be over.

Everything would be over–for her, and for everyone.

The dozen grim soldiers gripping the torches all stood at attention, but their gazes were on her. None of these men of the First File, the Lord Rahl's personal guard, would be the one to decide to toss his torch and ignite the funeral pyre. It was up to her alone, the Mother Confessor–Richard's wife–to give the order.

The morning was dead silent but for the low hiss of those torches. Their flames spit and popped as they wavered gently in the damp breath of a breeze, as if waiting impatiently for her to give the word so they could be freed to get on with their grisly work.

Beyond the soldiers holding the torches, no one in the gathered crowd made a sound. Most shed tears silently.

Kahlan, standing at Richard's head, stared down at the handsome face of the man she loved. She hated seeing him still in death. She had feared for his life any number of times, but she had never once imagined one day standing over him laid out on a funeral pyre.

They had dressed him in a black shirt and over that a black, open-sided tunic bordered with a gold band decorated with symbols. The wide, multilayered leather belt that cinched the magnificent tunic at his waist bore the same sort of symbols, many in what she now knew to be the language of Creation. At each wrist crossed over his stilled heart he wore wide, leather-padded silver bands engraved with yet more of the ancient symbols. A cape hooked to his broad shoulders, appearing to be nothing so much as spun gold, lay spread under him so that it looked as if he were an offering being presented to the good spirits.

Where had those good spirits been when she needed them most?

Even as she asked the question, though, she knew that the concerns of the world of life were not the concerns of the spirits. The concerns of the living were those of the living alone.

A glimmer of light reflected off the bloodred stone in the center of the ancient amulet Richard wore on a chain around his neck. Intricate lines of silver surrounding the stone represented the dance with death. The amulet had been made by Baraccus, the war wizard at the time Emperor Sulachan had started the great war. The amulet, like the dance with death itself, had meaning to a war wizard. Richard, likely fated to be the last war wizard, was now laid out in the same, traditional outfit of that calling.

The only thing missing was the tooled-leather baldric with the magnificent gold-an