Terry Goodkind - The Pillars of Creation

The beasts leaped at the three from all sides, the fierce battle raging on with frightening intensity. As fast as the animals attacked, they were dispatched decisively—beheaded, stabbed, or rent open with mighty swings of a sword.

With sudden finality, the dark figure swung upward, lopping the head off a beast as it leaped through the air toward the second person. The night finally fell silent, but for the heavy breathing of the three people up on the trail.

The three stepped out of the pile of unmoving carcasses, to sit wearily on the bank, exhausted, heads hanging as they caught their breath.

“Are you all right?” the first of the three, the one who had saved Friedrich’s life, asked. His voice was still filled with the terrible rage of battle. His blood-slick sword, still in his hand, glinted in starlight.

Friedrich, stunned and shivering, suddenly weak with relief, took several steps toward the shore, water sluicing off him, until he was standing waist-deep in the lake before the man.

“Yes, thanks to you. Why’d you throw me in the water like that?”

The man raked his fingers back through thick hair. “Because,” he said between deep breaths pulled not just from exertion, but driven by wrath, “heart hounds won’t go in water. It was the safest place for you.”

Friedrich swallowed as his gaze played over the dark heaps of hounds. “I don’t know how to thank you. You saved my life.”

“Well,” the man said, still catching his breath, “I happen not to like heart hounds. They’ve scared the wits out of me on more than one occasion.”

Friedrich feared to ask where the man would have seen such fearsome creatures before.

“We were way back up the trail when we saw them come out after you.” It was a woman’s voice. Friedrich stared at the figure in the middle who had spoken as she caught her breath. He could just make out her long fall of hair. “We were worried that we wouldn’t reach you before the heart hounds had you,” she added.

“But . . . what are heart hounds?”

The three figures stared at him.

“The more important question,” the first man said at last in a quiet, measured, but commanding voice, “is why were heart hounds here at all. Do you have any idea why they might have been after you?”

“No, sir. I’ve never seen such creatures before.”

“It’s been a long while since I’ve seen heart hounds,” the man said, sounding troubled. Friedrich almost thought that he’d been going to say more about the hounds, but instead he asked, “What’s your name?”

“Friedrich Gilder, sir, and you have my undying gratitude—all of you do. I haven’t been that scared since—well, since I don’t know when.” He looked to the three faces watching him, but it was too dark to clearly make out their features.

The first man put an arm around the woman, in the middle, and in a whisper asked if she was all right. She answered with the kind of nod against his shoulder that Friedrich knew conveyed true concern and intimate familiarity. When his fingers reached past, touching the shoulder beyond her, the third figure nodded.

These weren’t at all likely to be Imperial Order soldiers. Still, there were always other risks in such a strange land. Friedrich took a chance.

“May I ask your name, sir?”

“Richard.”

Friedrich took a cautious step closer, but, for some reason, by the way the silent third person watched him, he feared to step up out of the water any closer to Richard and the woman.

Richard swished his blade clean in the water, then stood. After wiping both sides dry on his leg, he slid the sword home into its scabbard at his hip. In the dim light, Friedrich could see that the lustrous silver-and-gold-wrought scabbard was secured with a baldric over Richard’s right shoulder. Friedrich was pretty sure that he remembered the look of that baldric and scabbard. Friedrich had carved for nearly his whole life and also recognized a certain effortless grace with a blade—no matter what kind of blade. Artful control was required to wield edged steel with mastery. When it was in Richard’s hands, he truly seemed in his element. Friedrich well remembered the sword the man was wearing that day. He wondered if this could possibly be that same remarkable weapon.

With a foot, Richard prodded at parts of heart hounds, searching. He bent and lifted a severed hound head. Friedrich saw then that the beast had something clenched in its teeth. Richard tugged at it, but it was impaled on the fangs. As he worked it out of the hound’s mouth, off the fangs, Friedrich’s eyes went wide when he realized that it was the book. The hound had torn it out of the backpack.

“Please.” Friedrich lifted a hand, reaching. “Is it . . . is it all right?”

Richard tossed the heavy head aside, where it thumped down and rolled into the trees. He peered closely at the book in the dim light. His hand lowered and he looked over at Friedrich standing in waist-deep water.

“I think you had better tell me who you are, and why you’re here,” Richard said. The woman rose up at the dark tone in Richard’s voice.

Friedrich cleared his throat and swallowed back his worry. “Like I said, I’m Friedrich Gilder.” He took a terrible chance. “I’m looking for a man related to a very old fellow I know named Nathan.”

Richard stood staring for a moment. “Nathan. Big man? Tall, long white hair to his shoulders? Thinks a lot of himself?” He sounded not just surprised, but suspicious as well. “Born-for-mischief Nathan?”

Friedrich smiled at the last part, and with relief. His bond had served him well. He bowed, as best he could standing in the water.

“Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

Lord Rahl watched as Friedrich finally straightened, and then extended a hand down. “Come out of the water, Master Gilder,” he said in a gentle voice.

Friedrich was somewhat confounded to be offered a helping hand by Lord Rahl himself, and yet didn’t know how he could refuse what could be judged an order. He took the hand and pulled himself up out of the water.

Friedrich went to a knee, bowing forward. “Lord Rahl, my life is yours.”

“Thank you, Master Gilder. I’m honored by your gesture, and value the sincerity, but your life is your own, and belongs to no one else. That includes me.”

Friedrich stared up in wonder. He had never heard anyone say anything so remarkable, so unimaginable, least of all a Lord Rahl. “Please, sir, would you call me Friedrich?”

Lord Rahl laughed. It was a sound as easy and pleasant as any Friedrich had ever heard. It made a smile well up through him, too.

“If you’ll call me Richard.”

“I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, but . . . I’m afraid that I just couldn’t bring myself to do such a thing. I’ve spent my whole life with a Lord Rahl, and I’m too old to change it, now.”

Lord Rahl hooked a thumb behind his wide belt. “I understand, Friedrich, but we’re deep in the Old World. If you utter the words ‘Lord Rahl’ and anyone hears you, we’re all likely to have a great deal of trouble on our hands, so I would greatly appreciate it if you would do your best to learn to call me Richard.”

“I’ll try, Lord Rahl.”

Lord Rahl held out an introductory hand. “This is the Mother Confessor, Kahlan, my wife.”

Friedrich went to a knee again, bowing his head. “Mother Confessor.” He wasn’t sure how to properly greet such a woman.

“Now, Friedrich,” she said with as much of a scolding tone as Lord Rahl’s, but in a voice that he thought revealed a woman of rare grace, command, and heart, “that title, too, will serve us ill, here.” It was as lovely a voice as Friedrich had ever heard, its lucid quality holding him spellbound. He had seen the woman once, in the palace; the voice fit his memory of her perfectly.