q  both blinked again, and then dropped to a  knee. They
bowed their heads deeply.
     Richard rolled his eyes. "Will you two stop it." He shot Cara a scowl.
     Victor peered up cautiously. "But  we never knew. I'm sorry. You're not
angry I made fun of you?"
     "Victor,  it's  me,  Richard. How many times have  we eaten  your lardo
together?"
     "Lardo?" Kahlan asked. "You know how to make lardo, Victor?"
     Victor rose  up, a grin growing across  his face  as  he peered at her.
"You know of lardo?"
     "Of course. The men who used to come to work on the white marble at the
Confessors' Palace  used  to eat lardo they made  themselves -in  big marble
tubs. I used to sit and eat it with them when I was little. They used to say
I  would grow  up to wear the white  dress of the  Mother Confessor  one day
because I ate their lardo and would grow strong from it."
     Victor  thumped his  chest  with a big  thumb.  "I make lardo in marble
tubs, too."
     "Do  you let it age for a year?" Kahlan asked. "You have  to let proper
lardo age for a year."
     "Of course, a year! I make only proper lardo."
     Kahlan gave him her most beautiful, green-eyed smile. "I would  love to
taste it sometime."
     Victor  draped  his  massive  arm  around  Kahlan's  shoulders.  "Come,
Richard's wife, I will give you a taste of my lardo."

     Cara, a dark look on her face, put a  hand to the blacksmith's chest to
stop him. She lifted his arm from Kahlan's shoulders.
     "No one but Lord Rahl touches the Mother Confessor."
     Victor gave Cara a quizzical look. "Have you ever had lardo?"
     "No."
     Victor slapped Cara on the back as he laughed. "Come, then, and I  will
give you lardo, too. Then you will see-anyone  who eats  lardo with me is my
friend for life."
     Kahlan took Kamil's place under one of Richard's arms, Victor under the
other,  and  they  made  their  way  across  newly  free  ground  up to  the
blacksmith's shop, to have some lardo.


        CHAPTER 71

     Verna pulled the candle close. She  warmed her hands over  it a moment,
then laid the journey book on the table. The sounds of the army camp outside
her small tent were by now so familiar she almost didn't hear them.
     It was  a  cold  D'Haran winter night, but at  least they  and all  the
people they  had helped were  safely over  the mountains.  Verna  understood
their quiet anxiety: it was a new  and mysterious place, D'Hara, a land once
only a source of  nightmares. At least they were safe for the time being. In
the distance  the  wolves'  long plaintive  howls echoed through  the frigid
mountains, off the moonlit snow  blanketing the seemingly endless, desolate,
colossal slopes.
     It was  the proper phase of  the moon, even if it was the moon in a new
land, a  strange and unknown  land. Verna had checked  for months, but there
was never a message. She didn't  really expect one,  since Kahlan had thrown
Ann's twinned journey book in the fire. But still, it was a journey book, an
ancient thing  of magic, and Ann was a resourceful  woman. It didn't hurt to
look.
     Verna opened the little book with no real hope.
     There, on the first page, was a message.
     All it said, was, Verna, 1 am waiting, if you are there.
     Verna drew the stylus from the  spine  and  immediately began  writing.
Prelate!  You  have been  able  to  fix  the  damaged journey  book?  That's
wonderful. Where are you? Are you well? Have you found Nathan?
     Verna waited. Shortly, the reply began to appear.
     Verna, 1 am well. 1 was able  to restore the journey book with the help
of some. . . people. Strange  people. But the important  part is  that it is
restored  for  the most part. 1 am  still searching for the prophet. I  have
some good clues on Nathan's whereabouts, and 1 am looking into them. But how
are you,  Verna? How goes the war? Warren? Kahlan? Is Zedd giving  you  much
trouble?  That man can  try the patience  of  stone. Have  you  had word  of
Richard?
     Verna stared  at words on the page. A tear fell near Warren's name. She
picked up the stylus once more, and slowly began her reply.
     Oh, Prelate, some terrible things have happened.
     1 am sorry, Verna, came the reply. Verna, 1 am here. I am going nowhere
for the night. Take  all the  time you need. Tell me  what happened. Tell me
how you are, first. 1 worry so for you. Verna, 1 love  you  like a daughter.
You know 1 do.
     Verna nodded to the book. She did know it.
     And 1 love you, too, Prelate, Verna began. I fear my heart is broken.
     --]----

     Kahlan stood silently  beside him  in the warm midday breeze as Richard
looked  out over the river, at the city beyond. The city was  peaceful, now.
Battle had raged  for weeks, various  factions struggling for power, lusting
to  be  the new local incarnation of the Order,  each faction  swearing that
they had the best interest of the  people at heart, each promising that they
would be  compassionate in their  rule,  each  pledging  that  life would be
easier  under  their mandate because they would  see to it that everyone  of
means contributed to the common good.
     After decades of such altruistic tyranny, decay and  death had been the
only product of the business of the common good. Despite graveyards  full of
evidence and a people  left impoverished, these  aspirants to  power offered
only  more of the same, and yet many still believed them simply because they
uttered such good intentions.
     While a great number of brothers  and  officials had  been killed, some
had escaped. Some of  those, who had not fled, thought to take advantage  of
the confusion and establish control, thinking they could rein  in the hunger
for freedom, the ideas loosed, and put things back to the way they were.
     The free  people of Altur'Rang, their numbers growing daily, eradicated
each  of these factions as  they  emerged from under their rocks.  Nicci had
been no  small  aid  in  the  bloody battles.  She  knew the methods of such
people,  where  they  went to  ground,  and pounced on them  like a  wolf on
vermin.
     The  forces lusting to oversee  the  welfare and betterment of  mankind
came to greatly fear that which they had in fact created: Death's Mistress.
     There was  no  telling,  yet, if freedom's  flame,  now ignited,  would
spread through the Old World. It was still a very small  flame in a vast and
dark place, but Richard knew that such a flame burned brightly.
     To the north, matters were not nearly so auspicious. With Nicci's magic
withdrawn, Richard  supposed that the  D'Harans would know where he was, and
send him  messages. Cara was immensely  relieved  to  be able  to  sense his
location again through her bond.
     He had listened quietly as Kahlan and Cara had told him all the details
of  the  war, and how they  had sent the people of Aydindril  on a long  and
difficult journey  to D'Hara before Jagang  could march into the city in the
spring. It would give them  heart to know that Lord Rahl had struck a mighty
blow against the Old World, to know that the Mother Confessor was  with him,
and that they were  well. A  number of men had requested the job of carrying
that invaluable news north.
     Soon,  the  D'Haran Empire  and the people they were protecting who had
fled their homes  would know of  the victory to  the south.  The  messengers
would actually be carrying  a more precious commodity  than that news:  they
would in reality be carrying hope.
     Richard had also sent his grandfather the same word.
     Richard could  hardly believe  that Warren, his friend,  was  gone. The
terrible anguish, he knew, would be slow to fade.
     Richard had sent one other thing north.
     Nicci had told him of Brother Narev's importance to Emperor  Jagang, of
their  long history  together, and  of their shared  vision of the future of
mankind. In the spring when Jagang finally,  triumphantly,  rode in to seize
the  Confessors'  Palace, waiting  for  him there, before his empty victory,
would be his mentor's head on a pike, topped by his creased brown cap.
     Nicci had woven a  spell around it, to preserve it, to keep  scavengers
away. Rich

     and wanted to be  sure that when Jagang finally  saw  it, he  would not
mistake who it was.
     In  the teeming city of  Altur'Rang, peace  had  returned,  along  with
freedom. Life had returned. People  had  begun to open new businesses.  In a
matter  of weeks,  there was already  a  variety  of  bread  available.  New
enterprises were  starting  every day.  Ishaq was making  a fortune  hauling
goods, but already had competitors vying for the business. Nabbi had gone to
work  for him.  Ishaq had begged Richard to come work for him  when  he  was
strong enough. Richard had only laughed.
     Faval, the  charcoal maker, had beseeched Ishaq to  ask Richard to come
to  visit and have dinner  with him and his family. Faval had bought a cart,
and his sons now delivered charcoal.
     Richard leaned with his forearms on the railing at the edge of the pier
and  gazed down over  the edge, to the swirling water below, as if trying to
divine what the future held.
     The piers out into  the river and the walkway atop them, along with the
plaza, were about all that remained of  the palace. Richard had  seen to  it
that the  spellforms were removed from  the tops  of  the columns around the
grounds, and had Priska melt them down.
     Richard had  regained most  of his  strength. Kahlan was strong, and as
beautiful as he  remembered her. She had changed, though. Her face had grown
more  mature  in the year they had been apart.  When  he  gazed  at  her, he
hungered for a piece of marble and his chisels so he could carve her face in
stone.
     Flesh in stone.
     He turned  and looked  back along the pier, toward the plaza,  with its
semicircle of  columns behind  it. The fallen column had been  restored. The
plaza had been renamed "Liberty Square," Victor's idea.  Richard asked if it
shouldn't be  called "Liberty Circle," since it  was round,  and not square.
Victor thought it sounded better  as  Liberty  Square, so  Richard called it
Liberty Square. After all, the first man to declare himself free, there, had
been Victor.
     Kahlan gazed with him back toward the plaza.
     "What do you think?" Richard asked her.
     She shook her head, looking at  best  a  little  uneasy. "I don't know,
Richard. It just seems so strange to see it so . . . big. So . . . white."
     "You don't like it?"
     She quickly put a  hand on his arm to dispel the notion.  "No, it isn't
that,  it's  just that  it's so. . ."  her uncertain gaze returned down  the
pier-"big."
     The center  of  the plaza, where  the  statue  Richard  had  carved had
briefly stood, now held a towering marble statue being worked on by a number
of stone carvers  who used  to  work  at the site carving misery and  death.
Kamil was down there, learning the craft of stone carving from masters.  His
education started with a broom.
     Richard had hired the carvers. With the fortune he had made helping the
Order build its palace, he could easily afford it. The carvers were glad for
such work-to exchange value for value.
     The expert carvers  were  working  on scaling  up the  small statue  of
Spirit, which Richard had carved for Kahlan, way back in their mountain home
when  she needed  to witness vitality, courage,  and  indomitable spirit. It
emerged anew in the best white Cavatura marble.
     The bronze ring of the sundial had survived intact, and was being added
to the

     piece.  The statue rising in  the center would cast  its shadow  on the
curved dial plane. The words so many had touched that day would be there for
all to see, now.
     Kahlan  had been enthusiastic about the concept, but had  spent so many
months with  the carving Richard had done, that it  was disorienting for her
to see  it on such a  massive  scale.  She was  eager for the  day when  the
carvers  were  finished  scaling  it up and she could have her own statue of
Spirit back.
     "I hope you don't mind sharing it with the world," he said.
     Kahlan smiled wistfully. "No, not at all."
     "Everyone loves it," he assured her.
     Her wonderful lilting laugh  drifted out across the warm afternoon air.
"I'll just have to get used to you showing people my body and soul."
     Together, they  watched  as the carvers  working  on the flowing  robes
checked their work with calipers against the  statue Richard had carved  and
the reference points from wooden braces used to scale up the work.
     Kahlan rubbed his lower back. "How are you feeling?"
     "I'm fine. Now that you're with me, I couldn't feel better."
     Kahlan laughed, then. "As long as I don't run you through?"
     Richard's laugh fell in easily  with hers. "You know, when we tell  our
children how their mother  ran their father through with a sword, it's going
to look pretty bad for you."
     "Are we going to have children, Richard?"
     "Yes, we are."
     "Then I'll risk the tale."
     As the warm breeze ruffled her hair, he kissed her brow.
     Glancing along  the line  of  trees,  their leaves  shimmering  in  the
sunlight,  Richard watched  birds cavort  above the riverbank, sweep  into a
group, and then soar together up over the semicircle of white marble columns
standing in the expanse of green grass.
     Kahlan  leaned  contentedly  against his shoulder as they  watched men,
filled with pride, smiling while they worked on  the statue  standing before
those columns.
     In Altur' Rang, there was a new spirit.
     In the former heart of the Order beat freedom.