Terry Goodkind: Faith of the Fallen

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.