Hateful Things

4

Shale’s smile left as a more serious look took its place. “But I didn’t know that you had such little faith in Richard.”

Kahlan frowned at the woman. “What are you talking about? I have total faith in him.”

“Richard is the protector of the D’Haran Empire, is he not? His bond to his people and theirs to him is part of our world’s protection. He has proven time and time again that he would fight to the death to protect our people.”

“I know that,” Kahlan said. “What’s your point?”

“Well, what means more to him than anything else?”

Kahlan didn’t need to think about it. “I do.”

“And don’t you think he would fight to protect you and your children? Don’t you think he will use his gift and do everything in his power to protect them, even before they are born? Don’t you think he would prevent this witch woman, Shota, from ever getting near you?”

“Yes, but—”

“Your children would be of one blood, yours and Lord Rahl’s together. You must have faith in him to protect you. This is what he was born for. This is his highest calling. We are all in his hands. The Mord-Sith will always be there to protect you. I will be there if you wish it. You need to have faith in him to protect you so that you can worry about those two children.”

Kahlan was baffled at what the woman could be getting at. “I do have faith in him. Complete faith.”

Shale leaned in a little. “Then he needs to know that you are going to bear his children. You have been hiding it from him. He needs to be told that you are pregnant so that he can protect you.”

Kahlan paced to the stone railing, to the very edge of where the rain was falling only an arm’s length away. Lightning danced and darted among the roiling clouds, illuminating them from inside and the barren landscape far below in flickering flashes. Occasional distant, deep rumbles of thunder rolled across the plain.

“I will let you stand with me, help protect me, and if possible be there when I give birth,” Kahlan said. “But there is one condition.”

“What condition?”

“You must not tell Richard that I’m pregnant.”

Shale let out a soft chuckle. “I’m afraid that he is going to find out. It’s not the kind of thing you can hide.”

Kahlan turned back. “For now I can. It won’t begin to show for a while yet.”

Shale looked confused. “Why would you want to hide this from him? I haven’t known Lord Rahl long, but from what I’ve heard and seen, he would be overjoyed by this news. He would do whatever was needed to protect you and those unborn children.”

“That is precisely why he must not know. At least for now. We can’t afford to have Richard distracted from his job of protecting our world. He is a war wizard. He needs to find a way to eliminate this new threat from the Golden Goddess and her kind. All our lives—my children’s lives—depend on him and what only he can do.”

Shale, looking mystified, spread her hands. “But if he knows you are going to have his children, he will fight all the harder to protect them. That’s what you want, isn’t it—for your children to be protected?”

“That’s the point,” Kahlan said.

“What point?”

“You don’t know Richard. He already feels guilty for letting me go alone to question Nolo. He thinks that what happened was because he wasn’t there to protect me, even though he knows that, as a Confessor, a lone man has never been a threat to me before. He wrongly thinks he made a mistake in not protecting me. With me nearly being killed fresh in his memory, he will not want to again make what he feels was a mistake. If I know Richard, I bet that you had a time of it trying to get him to stay out of here so that you could heal me, am I right?”

Shale made a face as she sighed. “That’s the truth.” She looked a bit embarrassed. “As a matter of fact, when I first met him in the great hall, I told him that he was an idiot for letting you go alone to question Nolo.”

“Well, if he knew that I was pregnant, that would only make him more determined to protect me. He would shift his focus away from where it needs to be right now. Protecting me would become his central focus. Don’t you see? We can’t afford that right now.

“Of course he can do both—protect us from this new threat and protect me, and he will—but if he knew I was pregnant, it would unavoidably split his attention. I have no idea how he will be able to solve this new threat from the Golden Goddess and her kind. That is for him to figure out. For our part, we dare not burden him with the additional worry of me being pregnant.”

“But Mother Confessor, sooner or later it is going to become obvious.”

“Yes, later,” Kahlan said as she put a hand over those children. “But for now, it’s not obvious. For now, we must let him do his job of figuring out how to protect our world. Right now, he needs to worry about everyone before it’s too late and our children no longer have a world to grow up in.”

“You realize, of course, that when he finds out he is going to be angry with you for keeping it from him.”

“Better he is angry then, than we all die in the meantime because he is distracted.”

Shale’s smile returned. “And you will do your job of having these children in order to protect our world in the future.”

“Yes, of course.”

Shale thought it over for a moment before finally sighing. “All right. You have my word. I will not tell him. It will be up to you when you feel the time is right.”

Kahlan held up a cautionary finger. “And you can’t tell the Mord-Sith, either. I know how incredibly difficult it is to keep anything from Richard. If one of the Mord-Sith knew, he would soon after find out.”

Shale rubbed her forehead with her fingertips as she turned and paced off a few strides before turning back. “All right. No one will know but you and me until you decide otherwise.”

“Good. Thank you, Shale.”

“But I hope you are prepared for how angry and upset he will be when he learns you have been hiding it from him.”

Kahlan flashed a lopsided smile. “I’m not afraid of the big guy. I will smooth his ruffled feathers when the time comes.”