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CHAPTER 64
The balmy breeze lifted Je
"Thinking about your brother?" Tom asked as he walked up to her, bringing her out of her memories.
She smiled up at her husband as she hugged him with one arm. "Yes, but only good thoughts."
"I miss Lord Rahl, too."
He pulled out his own knife to gaze at it. It was the twin of Je
Je
"You know," he said, smiling as he slipped his knife back in its sheath, "I rather like my new life with my new wife."
She hugged her arms around the bear of a man. "You do, do you?" she asked in a teasing way.
"I like my new name, too," he added. "I'm finally used to it. You know, comfortable with it."
When they married, Tom had taken her name, Rahl, so that they could carry it on in the new world. It seemed only fitting that the man who had given them their new life should be remembered in some fashion.
In every other way he was vanishing from memory.
It was surprising to Je
For the most part, magic had become no more than superstition. Wizards and sorceresses were even less important. They had become no more than tales told around campfires to scare people for a good laugh. Dragons were becoming only folklore. In this world there were no dragons.
Any who possessed magic were fading away. Their ability was dying out, smothered by the taint from the chimes. Day by day they became more powerless. Eventually they would merely be old hags living by themselves in swampy places and considered crazy by most folk.
Any trace of the gift that survived, if not withered away by the taint of the chimes they'd brought with them into their world, would eventually be completely eliminated by descendants of the pristinely ungifted. It would be only a matter of generations before there was no trace of the gift left in mankind-just the way the Order had once said they wanted it.
Everyone was concerned with more important things now. Their lives now revolved around the hard work of survival when there was no one who accomplished anything worthwhile. People had forgotten how to do things, how to create things. Even what had once seemed the most common of things, such as construction methods, was being lost. The people here never knew how to create-they had depended on others to build and create. It would take future generations to discover them all over again.
Those from the old life, those who created, who invented, who made life easier for everyone, and who were the object of such hatred, were not in this world to help make life better. The people left, for the most part, were left to eke out an existence as best they could.
For most, living in such a dark age, sickness and death were their constant companion. As they had in the world they had been banished from, they turned to superstition and a grim, fatalistic acceptance of the misery of life and its accompanying devotion to their faith.
It seemed that everywhere Tom and Je
Je
Je
Unknowingly, they carried the pristinely ungifted trait. It would continue to spread to the far corners of the world.
"How is the garden coming?" she asked Tom as he knocked mud off his boots.
He scratched his head of blond hair as he gri
"And I think the sow is going to have her litter any time now. I tell you, Betty is beside herself. The way her tail is wagging, I have the feeling that she thinks the piglets are going to be hers."
Betty, Je
Tom leaned his shoulders back against the wall and folded his arms as he gazed out appreciatively at the beautiful spring countryside. "I think we'll do just fine, Je
She rose up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. "Good, because I'm going to have a baby."
He looked thunderstruck for a moment; then he leaped in the air with a wild hoot.
"You are! Je
Je
She wished that Richard and Kahlan knew, that they could come visit once she eventually had her baby.
But Richard and Kahlan were in another world.
She had come to love the broad sunlit fields, the trees, the beautiful mountains beyond, and the cozy house they had built. It was home. A home filled with love and life. She wished that her mother could see her place in the world. She wished Richard and Kahlan could see her new home, the place Tom and she had built out of nothing. She knew how proud Richard would be.
Je