Temple of the Winds

Kahlan gripped Richard by his wrist as he picked up his pants. "How. . this is Drefan's sword, not yours. It's Drefan's sword!"

Richard took it from her and leaned it against the wall. "They took your power. You have no way to defend yourself. Drefan will be the one near you, now, not me. I gave him the Sword of Truth so that he could protect you." His eyes finally met hers. "I guess this one finds the truth just as well as the other." — Richard stuffed his leg into his pants. Kahlan snatched his arm again. "Richard, don't you see? It was you. It was you in here with me, not Drefan. The spirits mark a distinction-between intent and deed. It wasn't him. it was you all along!"

He pulled his arm away. The spirits might mark a distinction, but he didn't. To Richard, the intent was the same as the deed. "Richard, you don't understand. It wasn't what you think." He shot her a glare of such power that it staggered her back a step. He waited as she stood frozen, unable to find any words to explain. He went back to dressing.

Kahlan pulled on her white Confessor's dress. Outside, the lightning was coming closer. During some of the closer strikes, she could see an immense structure rising up at the edge of the cliff: the Temple of the Winds. When the flash extinguished. the temple vanished again, and she could see the distant mountains beyond, lit by the lightning farther away.

"Richard." she wept as he pulled on a boot, "please, talk to me. Say something. Ask me to explain. Tell me there can be no explanation. Veil at me. Call me a whore. Tell me you hate me. Hit me. Do something! Don't ignore me!"

He turned and picked up his black sleeveless undershirt. As he pulled it on over his head. she scooped up his black shirt and held it to her breast, hoping to halt his dressing. "Richard, please! I love you!"

His gaze again rose to hers. She thought he was going to say something, but instead he turned away and retrieved his belt with the leather packs on it. He snapped on his wristbands.

Kahlan held his shirt to her chest and shook as she watched him hook his belt together. She didn't know what to do. He picked up Drefan's sword and buckled it on.

"Richard, please talk to me. Say something. This is the doing of the spirits. Don't you remember what I told you that grandfather's spirit told me? The winds have decided that you are the path of the price. They did this to us!"

He shot her a look again. The intensity in his eyes extinguished. He saw that she wasn't going to surrender his shirt, so he threw his golden cloak around his shoulders.

As he turned toward the door. Kahlan seized his arm with both her hands and turned him back to her.

"Richard, I love you. You've got to believe me. I'll explain this in here to you later, but for now, you have to believe me. I love you. No other. My heart is yours alone. Dear spirits, please believe me."

Richard gripped her jaw in his hand and wiped a thumb across her lips. He held his thumb up for her to see in the pandemonium of lightning.". . for the one in white, his true beloved, will betray him in her blood." His words ripped her heart.

Kahlan covered her scream with his shirt as he swept out the door. The one thing she had sworn she would never do, she had done: she had betrayed him. It could have been no worse betrayal. It was a betrayal that had destroyed his heart.

Crying hysterically, Kahlan raced after him. out into the wild night. She had to do something to mend that heart. She couldn't let him endure the pain she had caused him. She loved him more than life itself, and she had done the worst thing possible lo him.

Outside, the wind howled across the mountain. She could see his black shape, his bare arms, in the flashes of lightning as he headed for the road.

As he reached the edge of the cliff at the end of the road, Kahlan threw herself on him, dragging him to a halt.

The sky was a savage show of violent discharges. Thunder thumped in her bones. Lightning ripped across the sky followed by deafening booms. Beyond the edge, when the most powerful of those bolts struck, the Temple of the Winds was there- but only during those fierce strikes. Between those strikes, there was nothing but empty space.

"Richard, what are you going to do?" "I'm going to stop the plague."

"When will you be back? I'll wait here. When will you be back?" He stared into her eyes a long moment as the storm raged around them. "There is nothing here for me."

Kahlan clutched at him. "Richard, you have to come back. Come back. I'll be here, waiting. I love you. Dear spirits, I need you. Richard, you have to come back to me!"

"You have a husband. You have given him an oath. . and everything else." "Richard, don't leave me alone," Kahlan wailed, on the edge of hysteria. "If you don't come back, I'll never forgive you." Richard turned to the edge of the cliff. "Richard, you have a wife! You have to come back!" Thunder shuddered the mountain.

He looked back over his shoulder. "Nadine is dead. I am no longer bound by my oath to her. You have a husband, and an oath. There is nothing here for me."

Brutal cords of lightning slammed into the road beyond the edge of the cliff, bringing the Temple of the Winds into full view. Golden cloak billowing out behind, Richard leaped into the lightning. "Richard! I'm here! I'm here for you! We can find a way! Please come back to me!

When the frenetic flash cut off, the temple was gone. Another flash came, and the soaring towers were back for a second, weaker this time, and then gone again.

Kahlan dropped to the ground, clutching Richard's black shirt to herself. She had destroyed him.

From the side, Kahlan saw a streak of red. It was Cara, racing for the edge of the cliff. She leaped just as another flash erupted, lighting the Temple of the Winds into the world of life. She landed on the road in the sky, and when the flash was gone, so was the Temple of the Winds, Richard, and Cara.

Devastated, Kahlan stared silently at the rampaging storm, seeing from time to time the towering, phantom temple in another world. It never looked solid enough again, or she would have jumped across. She should have. She couldn't understand why she hadn't. Why had she just stood here? Because Richard didn't want her. She had betrayed him.

How could he do this to her? He said he would always love her. He said they would be together in the next world. He made her promises. He swore his eternal love. So had she, and she had betrayed him.

From somewhere out in the storm. Kahlan heard the distant sound of laughter. The malevolent chuckle made her skin crawl. Drefan strolled up beside her. He was alone. "Where's Nadine?" Kahlan asked.

Drefan cleared his throat. "When the lightning came. and she saw it was me, and not Richard, she screamed. She went crazy. She leaped over the edge of the mountain."

Kahlan stared up at him. Richard knew. He told her Nadine was dead. Richard was a wizard. She had seen that, too, in his eyes, at the end, before he jumped across. She saw magic in his eyes. "Where's Richard?" Kahlan stared out at the empty air. at the black wall of night. "Gone." On the road to the Temple of the Winds, in the eerie silence, Richard drew his sword. Its alien feel surprised him for an instant, until he recalled whose sword it was.

He was no longer the Seeker of Truth. He had had all the truth he could stand. It wasn't night, here, nor day, yet there was light. It wasn't like sunlight-more like an overcast day, with no hint of exactly where the sun was. But he knew that there was no sun here. This was not the world of life.

This was a part of the underworld-an isolated, remote, obscure niche in the world of the dead. It was as if the wizards had found an out-of-the-way hole in which to hide the Temple of the Winds. It had been similarly hidden when in the world of life.