Wizards First Rule   ::   Goodkind Terry

He retrieved what was left of her shirt, ripping it into strips, which he wet with water from a skin. As she sat without protest, he cleaned the blood off her, applied salve to some of her wounds and magic to others. She endured it without comment. When he finished, he put his fingers under her chin, lifting her eyes to his

Zedd spoke softly. "He did not die for nothing, dear one. He found the box, he has saved everyone. Remember him for doing what no other could have."

Light mist from the thick clouds that hugged the ground began to dampen their faces. "I will remember only that I love him, and that I could never tell him."

Zedd closed his eyes against the pain, the burden, of being a wizard.

Chase returned, offering her the bowl of poison berries. She asked for something to crush them with. With a few quick strokes, Chase whittled a stout stick into a shape that satisfied her and she went to work.

She stopped as if she thought of something and looked up at the wizard, her green eyes ablaze. "Darken Rahl is mine." It was a warning. A threat.

He nodded to her. "I know, dear one."

She went back to crushing, a few tears running down her face.

"I'm going to bury Brophy," Chase said softly to Zedd. "The others can rot."

Kahlan crushed the red berries into a paste, adding a little ash from the fire. When she was finished, she had Zedd hold a little mirror for her while she applied it in the pattern of the Con Dar, twin lightning bolts, the magic guiding her hand. Starting from the temple on each side, in a mirror image of each other, the top part of each bolt zigzagged over the eyebrow, the center lobe of each passed over an eyelid, with the bottom zigzag over the cheekbones, finally terminating in a point at the hollow of each cheek.

The effect was frightening-and meant to be. It was a warning to the innocent. A vow to the guilty.

After she had brushed the tangles from her hair, she pulled her Confessor's dress from her pack, took the cloak off, and slipped on the dress. Chase returned. Kahlan handed him his cloak, thanking him.

"Wear it," Chase said, "it's warmer than yours,"

"I am the Mother Confessor. I will wear no cloak."

The boundary warden didn't argue. "The horses are gone. All of them." She gave him an indifferent look. "Then we will walk. We will not stop at night, we will keep going. You may come if you wish, if you do not slow me down."

Chase raised an eyebrow at the unwitting insult, but let it drop. Kahlan turned and started off without. picking up any of her things.