Faith of the Fallen Read Online Free

The special places I’ve always wanted to show you? I’m going to take you there, where we’ll be safe.”
    “D’Harans are bonded to you, Lord Rahl,” Cara reminded him, “and will be able to find you through that bond.”
    “Well, our enemies aren’t bonded to me. They won’t know where we are.”
    Cara seemed to find that thought agreeable. “If people don’t go to this place, then there won’t be any roads. How are we going to get the carriage there? The Mother Confessor can’t walk.”
    “I’ll make a litter. You and I will carry her in that.”
    Cara nodded thoughtfully. “We could do that. If there were no other people, then the two of you would be safe, at least.”
    “Safer than here. I had expected the people here to leave us to ourselves. I hadn’t expected the Order to foment unrest this far away—at least not this quickly. Those men usually aren’t a bad lot, but they’re working themselves up into a dangerous mood.”
    “The cowards have gone back to their women’s skirts. They won’t be back until morning. We can let the Mother Confessor rest and then leave before dawn.”
    Richard cast Cara a telling look. “One of those men, Albert, has a son, Lester. Lester and his pal, Tommy Lancaster, once tried to put arrows into me for spoiling some fun Tommy was about to have hurting someone. Now Tommy and Lester are missing a good many teeth. Albert will tell Lester about us being here, and soon after, Tommy Lancaster will know, too.
    “Now that the Imperial Order has filled their heads with talk of a noble war on behalf of good, those men will be fancying what it would be like to be war heroes. They aren’t ordinarily violent, but today they were more unreasonable than I’ve ever seen them.
    “They’ll go drinking to fortify their courage. Tommy and Lester will be with them by then, and their tales of how I wronged them and how I’m a danger to decent folks will get everyone all worked up. Because they greatly outnumber us, they’ll begin to see the merit in killing us—see it as protecting their families and doing the right thing for the community and their Creator. Full of liquor and glory, they won’t want to wait until morning. They’ll be back tonight. We have to leave now.”
    Cara seemed unconcerned. “I say we wait for them, and when they come back, we end the threat.”
    “Some of them will bring along other friends. There will be a lot of them by the time they get here. We have Kahlan to think about. I don’t want to risk one of us being injured. There’s nothing to be gained by fighting them.”
    Richard pulled the ancient, tooled-leather baldric, holding the gold-and-silver-wrought scabbard and sword, off over his head and hung it on the stump of a branch sticking out of a log. Looking unhappy, Cara folded her arms. She would rather not leave a threat alive. Richard picked his folded black shirt off the floor to the side, where Kahlan hadn’t seen it. He poked an arm through a sleeve and drew it on.
    “A vision?” Kahlan finally asked again. As much trouble as the men could be, they were not her biggest concern just then. “You’ve had a vision?”
    “The sudden clarity of it felt like a vision, but it was really more of a revelation.”
    “Revelation.” She wished she could manage more than a hoarse whisper. “And what form did this vision revelation thing take?”
    “Understanding.”
    Kahlan stared up at him. “Understanding of what?”
    He started buttoning his shirt. “Through this realization I’ve come to understand the larger picture. I’ve come to understand what it is I must do.”
    “Yes,” Cara muttered, “and wait until you hear it. Go ahead, tell her.”
    Richard glared at Cara and she answered him in kind. His attention finally returned to Kahlan.
    “If I lead us into this war, we will lose. A great many people will die for nothing. The result will be a world enslaved by the Imperial Order. If I don’t lead our side in battle, the