Fic: Camelot is a Silly Place | LotS | C/D, R/K | PG
Watched the "Legend of the Seeker" finale on Monday 5/24/10, wrote this on Tuesday afternoon in a pitiful attempt to stretch my atrophied fic muscles. This is not GOOD writing, but it's fiction writing, and I'm settling for that today.
Title: Camelot is a Silly Place
Author: liz_estrada
Fandom & Pairing: Legend of the Seeker - Cara/Dahlia, Richard/Kahlan
Rating: PG
Summary: Post-series Cara feels all yucky around the lovebirds, and it’s Zedd to the rescue. No, seriously.
Author’s Note: I used Wiki and my friend Bi!!y (a LotS viewer and Goodkind reader) for resources. Any mistakes are mine for trusting such shady dudes.
*
Richard placed the Stone of Tears at the Pillars of Creation. He took Kahlan in his arms, kissed his love, and the sun set on the Seeker’s quest.
With the simple settling of a milky little rock, the Keeper was defeated.
For Cara, that moment of assured victory was satisfying, if somewhat anti-climactic. The kissing was a nice touch, she supposed, though it went on a bit too long.
She tended to lose her ease when such moments of happiness lingered. Once the ground stilled beneath their feet, Cara’s thoughts strayed to the next potential source of danger.
Barring another miracle, Darken Rahl still lived. He would plan and stew and eventually emerge from seclusion to enact another power play. Cara suggested hunting him down, but Richard wanted to let sleeping dogs lie.
“There is much work ahead for us,” Richard had said. “If my brother moves -”
“When he moves,” muttered Cara.
Richard sighed and continued. “When he moves, we will stand against him. Until then, we will not live in fear.”
His tone was half reassurance, half direct order. Reluctantly, Cara acquiesced. Though she often questioned Richard’s decisions, she never doubted his intentions. This arrangement normally worked quite well.
At great personal cost, she had pledged fealty to the true Lord Rahl, and her assistance repeatedly proved invaluable. Richard never let her forget this. He knew the worth of her loyalty, her friendship, and treasured it accordingly.
Once, soon after the stone was placed, Cara floated the idea of departing. She could never begrudge her friends their happiness, but watching them revel in each other sometimes evoked a strange crush in her chest - a hollow, caved-in sensation which she imagined was akin to losing a lung.
Regarding her flight for lands afar, Richard and Kahlan would have none of it.
“We’ll need you,” Richard had said, grasping her shoulder while Kahlan smiled at her.
For this trust, this affection, Cara had no defense.
Richard asked her to be his right hand in D’Hara, and she agreed. He defended her against detractors who quailed or bristled in the presence of a Mord-Sith, and she subtly terrorized those who questioned his right to rule.
He asked her to stand with him at his wedding to Kahlan, and she agreed. She inquired about appropriate clothing for the joining of Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor. Should she don the traditional garb of the Midlands?
“I suppose I could wear one of those horrible gowns, if you insist.”
“Wear your leathers. Wear a potato sack,” Richard had said, shrugging and grinning as they sparred in the palace courtyard. “Just smile and it won’t matter.”
Contrarily, Cara frowned like death and then swept his legs with a wooden stave. His butt hit the dirt and raised a cloud of dust.
Kahlan laughed from a balcony high above. She blew a kiss, and Richard comically fell backward, tumbled over by the mere breath of her love.
Cara touched her own chest and concentrated on drawing air. She leaned heavily on her stave and looked away, toward the palace gates and beyond.
She imagined there was plenty of clean, uncluttered air out there, high on the mountains, deep in the forest.
*
She thought perhaps her shortness of breath was a symptom of disease. Her fear was not death - that would come in due time, regardless of her health - but Cara would prefer not to pass out or expire during Richard’s wedding.
Distrustful of healers, and hostile toward almost every wizard who ever lived, Cara could only confide in Zedd.
He listened quietly as she sketched up her predicament, then the old wizard scratched his eyebrows and began to theorize.
“Sometimes traumatic experiences slip up and revisit us,” he said. “You and Kahlan nearly suffocated when you were locked in that tomb together. Perhaps you never - ”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cara tiredly interjected.
Zedd patted her arm. “I realize it’s not your nature to acknowledge weakness, but Cormac nearly killed the both of you - and that damnable Nygaax nearly ended me! There’s no shame in talking about it.”
Losing patience, Cara widened her eyes and hardened her voice.
“I have never been locked in a tomb with Kahlan. I have never heard of anyone called Cormac, and I wouldn’t know a Nygaax from a Turnblad.”
Zedd squinted at her. “What’s a Turnblad?”
“I don’t know,” she hissed. “What’s a bloody Nygaax?”
The wizard’s face fell slack and paled. “You don’t remember,” he whispered.
“I don’t remember because it never happened!”
“It never happened.” Zedd stood and paced the length of his chambers, muttering mostly to himself. “The spell of undoing… not just her… other things, other changes… no way to predict… ”
Cara grabbed his elbow, spun him around to face her. “What spell? What have you done?”
“I- I had to change things, to remove certain obstacles from your path.”
“You removed… ” Cara paused and touched her chest. “Tell it all, wizard, and be quick about it.”
Zedd shook his head; his eyes pleaded for understanding.
“I had no choice, Cara. All was lost. You were lured away from us, broken again by Rahl in a most horrific way, and you gave him the Stone of Tears.”
“Never,” Cara spat. “You’re talking nonsense.”
“I’m afraid it’s true.” The wizard sat and cradled his head in both hands. “That is to say, it was true.”
“Nothing could make me betray Richard,” Cara insisted. She caressed the agiels holstered at her side. Agony skittered through her bones and she didn’t even blink. “There isn’t enough pain in the world to break me again.”
“Pain, amplified by powerful dark magic, was the greater part of Rahl’s method.”
“And the lesser part?” she pressed. “My ‘obstacle,’ which you so considerately removed?”
Zedd let out a heavy sigh. “We were met by a woman, a Mord-Sith of your acquaintance. She deceived you, pulled you away with a promise of rescuing your son.”
For a moment, Cara looked stricken, but she quickly assumed a practiced, false neutrality. Her dry voice reminded Zedd of chalk on stone.
“I have no son,” she said. “Rahl fathered a child with me several years ago, but he ordered the baby killed. Triana drowned it in the river.”
She always understood why Rahl had given the order specifically to Triana - because the two ambitious Mord-Sith were rivals and sometime lovers, their potential amity posed a threat to his dominance - but that understanding didn’t prevent Cara from pulling Triana aside during a pitched battle and slipping a payback dagger into her heart.
Zedd’s apology tugged her out of recollection. Cara waved a gloved hand, as though dispersing his sentiments like so much sweet pipe smoke.
“Who was the woman?” Cara asked.
“Does it matter now?” Zedd wondered. “With the spell of undoing, she never became Mord-Sith, so you never even met her. Any revenge you exact would be undeserved.”
“I wasn’t thinking of revenge. I want to understand this,” she said, slamming a fist against her fallow heart, feeling her lungs go dry. “This weakness is disgusting. I don’t want this.”
“I know, and I want to help you… ”
“Then tell me her name!”
Zedd shook his head. “It won’t change anything.”
Incredulous in light of certain recent revelations, Cara snorted. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your word on that.”
The wizard surrendered; he slumped in his chair and named Cara’s obstacle. The Mord-Sith went silent and still for several moments. She then took a seat, stretched her legs, and crossed her boots at the ankle.
“I have never met anyone called Dahlia,” she admitted.
Zedd breathed a sigh of relief. “I thought as much.”
“And maybe that is the problem,” Cara murmured.
“Eh? What was that?”
Cara cut her eyes toward the wizard. “Shut-up. Just give me a potion to fix this… this… whatever this is.”
“Yes, yes,” he agreed, levering from his comfortable chair and heading toward his potions bench. “Right away.”
“Because I don’t want this.”
“You’ve been quite clear on that point.”
From his window, Zedd caught a glimpse of Richard and Kahlan walking from the gardens toward the temple, where tomorrow they would wed. With their hands linked and their eyes blind to all but each other, their happiness resonated like a song with piercing high note.
The old wizard hadn’t loved in so long that his heart was veritably inured to the song, deaf to those clarion highs. Cara, on the other hand, was newborn to the world of emotion and exquisitely sensitive to every vibration.
He wondered if her palpable ache was nothing more than loneliness, a yearning to deeply connect with someone. Zedd remembered those feelings, and understood how Cara could misinterpret them as a terminal illness.
Zedd ground a few calming roots with a mortar and pestle. He watched Cara as she stared into the middle distance, tapping her chest with one hand and caressing her agiels with the other.
Training herself against perceived weakness, even now. Inuring herself to the vibration before she’d even heard the whole song.
Shame and guilt burned across the wizard’s heart. It seemed that each version of victory for the Seeker would somehow claim this woman - his friend - as a casualty. He decided then and there that he simply wouldn’t stand for it.
He was Zeddicus Z’ul Zorander, Wizard of the First Order and a first-class busybody. There had to be something he could try…
“Brew this as a pot of tea and drink it all.” Zedd dropped a cloth bundle in Cara’s lap as he lumbered toward the exit at high speed.
Cara fumbled with the tea sachet and called after him. “Will this fix me?”
“Probably not, but drink it anyway!” Zedd shouted back. “A good dump never hurt anybody!”
*
Kahlan, like every bride who has ever lived, resented fate tinkering with her wedding plans at the last minute. When Zedd roared into her chambers with news that the wedding vocalist had mysteriously and suddenly lost her voice - on the very morning of Kahlan’s magical, fated marriage to Richard Rahl - the Mother Confessor became so unhinged that she nearly fell headlong into a Con Dar fury.
Well, not really. But it was a near thing for a few moments, until Zedd assured her that he had found a replacement with a surpassingly beautiful voice.
*
Early morning clouds parted, and the sun smiled brightly as Richard and Cara strode toward the altar - he in a regal (ostentatious) ceremonial robe, and his second clad in cordovan leather.
As a concession to tradition and propriety, Cara was not armed. She seemed oddly relaxed. Richard inquired as to the reason for her repose, and she mumbled something about Zedd and strong tea.
“Hmm. Maybe I should take some on the honeymoon,” Richard said.
“No,” Cara softly recommended. “Wait until you get home. Really.”
Richard pulled a puzzled face and Cara smiled at him with deep and honest regard. The wedding musicians began to play a quiet, sweet song for strings and woodwinds. Richard’s eyes grew soft, and his chin trembled.
“Thank you,” he whispered, even as Cara shook her head to refuse his gratitude. “Despite what you may think, I know with a certainty that this day would not be possible without you.”
“Stop,” she asked, while staring holes in her boots. “This is not the time.”
“This is the perfect time. I can say what I want, and you can’t run away. Or hit me.”
“Don’t test me, Richard.”
“No, Cara, you have to know this. I consider it a blessing from the Creator that you stand here with me, as my friend.”
Cara felt a terrible, ridiculous burning behind her eyes. The wedding vocalist began to sing, and the purity of her voice stung like an agiel over Cara’s heart.
“The only thing that makes me more proud,” Richard continued, “is the fact that she loves me.”
Cara followed Richard’s eyes toward his future bride, and her breath fled in an instant. It wasn’t the first time she had appreciated Kahlan’s beauty, but Cara had never before been struck down by a simply looking at a woman.
She felt like death inside, crushed to pulp by the truth of the day: this was true love… and standing off to one side, observing, was as close as Cara would ever get.
Unseen, the singer trilled on, the bride approached, and the ceremony blurred to a series of images and half-heard sounds. Boisterous applause marked the end of the vows, and laughter resounded as Kahlan kissed Richard and he feigned a convincing swoon.
The joined couple marched as one toward the exit, toward a reception party and a honeymoon and a life of unified, unquestioned value. The fact of their love for each other validated their existence, their purpose in this world beyond missions and duties.
Cara watched them go and she did not follow because, at that moment, everything behind her ribs hurt too much to move.
She waited for the wedding crowd to clear out, and then sat beside the altar to rest and ponder a while before heading to the reception in the palace dining hall.
A stumbling noise from behind her startled Cara from her thoughts - which, strangely, were of eating sweet cake while watching Zedd dance with some anonymous crone. She flinched and banged her elbow against the altar.
“I’m sorry,” a woman said, in a steady, clear voice. “I didn’t mean to alarm you.”
“It’s fine. Go ahead and clean up,” Cara said, without looking.
“I’m not cleaning up. I need to gather my music for the reception performance,” the woman said. “Are you going to the dining hall?”
“Eventually,” Cara confirmed.
“Do you… need help?”
“I am Mord-Sith,” Cara stated, in a mildly murderous tone. “I will fend for myself.”
“You shouldn’t have to.” The woman planted herself directly in front of Cara and offered her hand. “We can go together.”
Cara brushed her hand aside without looking up. “Don’t worry about me.”
The woman gathered the folds of her white gown and knelt down. “I seem to recall you saying that to me once before, Cara Mason, a long time ago.”
“Excuse me? Do I know - ” Cara looked up, into the face of the wedding singer, and her breath was stolen by a woman for the second time that day. “- you?”
Fine of feature, with hair that flowed down her shoulders like golden sand, the singer fluttered her lashes and quirked her full lips into a smile. “I didn’t expect you would remember me, but you… you look the same as when we were children. Perhaps slightly taller.”
“Oh,” Cara managed to say. “Are you from Stowcroft?”
“I was born there,” the singer confirmed. “When the Mord-Sith came, they captured us the same day.”
“You were taken for training,” Cara said, fearing the worst, that she had done something terrible to this woman, to her family, once they reached the temple.
“Yes. But I didn’t even last one night.”
Cara knit her brows in confusion. Judging by the singer’s persistent grin, Cara thought she might be insane. Surely a violent, well-deserved rebuke was forthcoming.
“Near midnight, our convoy stopped to water the horses by the river. You were so little, you slipped out between the cage bars, and I followed you,” she recounted. “We found a hollow log near the treeline, but there was only room for one of us.”
Cara barely remembered a silly, short-lived escape attempt. Humiliation burned anew over her failure to evade re-capture.
“You pushed me inside the log and covered me in moss. You said not to cry out, not to make a sound, or they would find me,” the woman continued. “I heard them calling your name for a while, before they caught you and dragged you away. I bit my hand trying not to scream.”
Unable to clearly recall any of this, Cara affected skepticism. “Why would I do that?”
“I was small then, and very afraid. Even as a child, you were brave… and kind. Evidently, the Mord-Sith couldn’t steal that from you.” She smiled again. “I mean, here you are, all these years later, standing by the Seeker of Truth and crying at his wedding.”
Cara bristled. “I did not cry.”
“Of course not,” the singer agreed. “Only you did, a little. People saw. I saw.”
On any other day, under any other circumstances, Cara might have let her hand fly. As it was, she gazed up wearily through her lashes. “And?”
“And nothing. It’s not the end of the world.”
“No. Apparently, that requires green light and sulfur fumes,” Cara confirmed, as she curled a fist against her thigh.
“I mean, your reputation may improve, and people may regard you with less suspicion and hostility, but you’ll live,” the singer cannily observed. “And they say that which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
“That which does not kill me has made a tactical error,” Cara retorted.
The woman laughed, and it sounded like wood chimes, like clean, uncluttered wind dancing through tall branches. Cara took a slow, careful breath and was pleasantly surprised. For the first time in recent memory, she truly felt the air firing through her blood.
“Walk over with me,” the woman said, again offering her hand. “I’ll buy you a drink."
“I believe the drinks are free.”
“In that case, I’ll buy you two drinks.”
Cara smiled a bit, almost snickered.
“Then I’ll grant you a song. Any song you like,” she promised. “It’s the least I can do for someone who saved my life. After those two drinks take hold, perhaps I could convince you to accompany me?”
“I don’t sing,” Cara warned, even as she grasped the woman’s cool, fine-boned fingers and pulled up to her feet. They walked toward the temple doors side by side, falling into an easy matched cadence.
“That doesn’t mean you can’t sing.”
Cara canted an eyebrow and smirked. “Oh, I believe it does.”
“I will shore up your weaknesses,” she said, looping her arm around Cara’s elbow as they approached the dining hall. “Ask anyone in the Midlands - they’ll tell you Dahlia can teach a cat to sing Bollendorf.”
On hearing those words - and that name - Cara’s eyes bulged and she stumbled violently across the entryway threshold.
Dahlia’s arms snaked around her waist as they plunged forward into the hall in a clumsy, twirling mash of limbs and hair, cream silk and dark leather. Even after they regained their balance, Dahlia held on and Cara let her, because it felt like the thing to do.
All eyes fell on them, and the room went silent. Guests seemed unsure if they were witnessing an inept assault, or just particularly idle choreography.
Entwined at the edge of a dance floor, they were tucked in a bottomless pocket of time, snug as a hollow log big enough for two. Cara reflected on the resilience of destiny, and the craftiness of old wizards. She felt a single tumbler within her locked heart click open.
“The bride and groom get the first dance, Cara,” Richard called out in rescue from the head banquet table. “Don’t upstage me.”
Even as she replied, Cara didn’t take her eyes off Dahlia.
“Dance, then, woodsman. No one is stopping you.”
END
Title: Camelot is a Silly Place
Author: liz_estrada
Fandom & Pairing: Legend of the Seeker - Cara/Dahlia, Richard/Kahlan
Rating: PG
Summary: Post-series Cara feels all yucky around the lovebirds, and it’s Zedd to the rescue. No, seriously.
Author’s Note: I used Wiki and my friend Bi!!y (a LotS viewer and Goodkind reader) for resources. Any mistakes are mine for trusting such shady dudes.
*
Richard placed the Stone of Tears at the Pillars of Creation. He took Kahlan in his arms, kissed his love, and the sun set on the Seeker’s quest.
With the simple settling of a milky little rock, the Keeper was defeated.
For Cara, that moment of assured victory was satisfying, if somewhat anti-climactic. The kissing was a nice touch, she supposed, though it went on a bit too long.
She tended to lose her ease when such moments of happiness lingered. Once the ground stilled beneath their feet, Cara’s thoughts strayed to the next potential source of danger.
Barring another miracle, Darken Rahl still lived. He would plan and stew and eventually emerge from seclusion to enact another power play. Cara suggested hunting him down, but Richard wanted to let sleeping dogs lie.
“There is much work ahead for us,” Richard had said. “If my brother moves -”
“When he moves,” muttered Cara.
Richard sighed and continued. “When he moves, we will stand against him. Until then, we will not live in fear.”
His tone was half reassurance, half direct order. Reluctantly, Cara acquiesced. Though she often questioned Richard’s decisions, she never doubted his intentions. This arrangement normally worked quite well.
At great personal cost, she had pledged fealty to the true Lord Rahl, and her assistance repeatedly proved invaluable. Richard never let her forget this. He knew the worth of her loyalty, her friendship, and treasured it accordingly.
Once, soon after the stone was placed, Cara floated the idea of departing. She could never begrudge her friends their happiness, but watching them revel in each other sometimes evoked a strange crush in her chest - a hollow, caved-in sensation which she imagined was akin to losing a lung.
Regarding her flight for lands afar, Richard and Kahlan would have none of it.
“We’ll need you,” Richard had said, grasping her shoulder while Kahlan smiled at her.
For this trust, this affection, Cara had no defense.
Richard asked her to be his right hand in D’Hara, and she agreed. He defended her against detractors who quailed or bristled in the presence of a Mord-Sith, and she subtly terrorized those who questioned his right to rule.
He asked her to stand with him at his wedding to Kahlan, and she agreed. She inquired about appropriate clothing for the joining of Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor. Should she don the traditional garb of the Midlands?
“I suppose I could wear one of those horrible gowns, if you insist.”
“Wear your leathers. Wear a potato sack,” Richard had said, shrugging and grinning as they sparred in the palace courtyard. “Just smile and it won’t matter.”
Contrarily, Cara frowned like death and then swept his legs with a wooden stave. His butt hit the dirt and raised a cloud of dust.
Kahlan laughed from a balcony high above. She blew a kiss, and Richard comically fell backward, tumbled over by the mere breath of her love.
Cara touched her own chest and concentrated on drawing air. She leaned heavily on her stave and looked away, toward the palace gates and beyond.
She imagined there was plenty of clean, uncluttered air out there, high on the mountains, deep in the forest.
*
She thought perhaps her shortness of breath was a symptom of disease. Her fear was not death - that would come in due time, regardless of her health - but Cara would prefer not to pass out or expire during Richard’s wedding.
Distrustful of healers, and hostile toward almost every wizard who ever lived, Cara could only confide in Zedd.
He listened quietly as she sketched up her predicament, then the old wizard scratched his eyebrows and began to theorize.
“Sometimes traumatic experiences slip up and revisit us,” he said. “You and Kahlan nearly suffocated when you were locked in that tomb together. Perhaps you never - ”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cara tiredly interjected.
Zedd patted her arm. “I realize it’s not your nature to acknowledge weakness, but Cormac nearly killed the both of you - and that damnable Nygaax nearly ended me! There’s no shame in talking about it.”
Losing patience, Cara widened her eyes and hardened her voice.
“I have never been locked in a tomb with Kahlan. I have never heard of anyone called Cormac, and I wouldn’t know a Nygaax from a Turnblad.”
Zedd squinted at her. “What’s a Turnblad?”
“I don’t know,” she hissed. “What’s a bloody Nygaax?”
The wizard’s face fell slack and paled. “You don’t remember,” he whispered.
“I don’t remember because it never happened!”
“It never happened.” Zedd stood and paced the length of his chambers, muttering mostly to himself. “The spell of undoing… not just her… other things, other changes… no way to predict… ”
Cara grabbed his elbow, spun him around to face her. “What spell? What have you done?”
“I- I had to change things, to remove certain obstacles from your path.”
“You removed… ” Cara paused and touched her chest. “Tell it all, wizard, and be quick about it.”
Zedd shook his head; his eyes pleaded for understanding.
“I had no choice, Cara. All was lost. You were lured away from us, broken again by Rahl in a most horrific way, and you gave him the Stone of Tears.”
“Never,” Cara spat. “You’re talking nonsense.”
“I’m afraid it’s true.” The wizard sat and cradled his head in both hands. “That is to say, it was true.”
“Nothing could make me betray Richard,” Cara insisted. She caressed the agiels holstered at her side. Agony skittered through her bones and she didn’t even blink. “There isn’t enough pain in the world to break me again.”
“Pain, amplified by powerful dark magic, was the greater part of Rahl’s method.”
“And the lesser part?” she pressed. “My ‘obstacle,’ which you so considerately removed?”
Zedd let out a heavy sigh. “We were met by a woman, a Mord-Sith of your acquaintance. She deceived you, pulled you away with a promise of rescuing your son.”
For a moment, Cara looked stricken, but she quickly assumed a practiced, false neutrality. Her dry voice reminded Zedd of chalk on stone.
“I have no son,” she said. “Rahl fathered a child with me several years ago, but he ordered the baby killed. Triana drowned it in the river.”
She always understood why Rahl had given the order specifically to Triana - because the two ambitious Mord-Sith were rivals and sometime lovers, their potential amity posed a threat to his dominance - but that understanding didn’t prevent Cara from pulling Triana aside during a pitched battle and slipping a payback dagger into her heart.
Zedd’s apology tugged her out of recollection. Cara waved a gloved hand, as though dispersing his sentiments like so much sweet pipe smoke.
“Who was the woman?” Cara asked.
“Does it matter now?” Zedd wondered. “With the spell of undoing, she never became Mord-Sith, so you never even met her. Any revenge you exact would be undeserved.”
“I wasn’t thinking of revenge. I want to understand this,” she said, slamming a fist against her fallow heart, feeling her lungs go dry. “This weakness is disgusting. I don’t want this.”
“I know, and I want to help you… ”
“Then tell me her name!”
Zedd shook his head. “It won’t change anything.”
Incredulous in light of certain recent revelations, Cara snorted. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your word on that.”
The wizard surrendered; he slumped in his chair and named Cara’s obstacle. The Mord-Sith went silent and still for several moments. She then took a seat, stretched her legs, and crossed her boots at the ankle.
“I have never met anyone called Dahlia,” she admitted.
Zedd breathed a sigh of relief. “I thought as much.”
“And maybe that is the problem,” Cara murmured.
“Eh? What was that?”
Cara cut her eyes toward the wizard. “Shut-up. Just give me a potion to fix this… this… whatever this is.”
“Yes, yes,” he agreed, levering from his comfortable chair and heading toward his potions bench. “Right away.”
“Because I don’t want this.”
“You’ve been quite clear on that point.”
From his window, Zedd caught a glimpse of Richard and Kahlan walking from the gardens toward the temple, where tomorrow they would wed. With their hands linked and their eyes blind to all but each other, their happiness resonated like a song with piercing high note.
The old wizard hadn’t loved in so long that his heart was veritably inured to the song, deaf to those clarion highs. Cara, on the other hand, was newborn to the world of emotion and exquisitely sensitive to every vibration.
He wondered if her palpable ache was nothing more than loneliness, a yearning to deeply connect with someone. Zedd remembered those feelings, and understood how Cara could misinterpret them as a terminal illness.
Zedd ground a few calming roots with a mortar and pestle. He watched Cara as she stared into the middle distance, tapping her chest with one hand and caressing her agiels with the other.
Training herself against perceived weakness, even now. Inuring herself to the vibration before she’d even heard the whole song.
Shame and guilt burned across the wizard’s heart. It seemed that each version of victory for the Seeker would somehow claim this woman - his friend - as a casualty. He decided then and there that he simply wouldn’t stand for it.
He was Zeddicus Z’ul Zorander, Wizard of the First Order and a first-class busybody. There had to be something he could try…
“Brew this as a pot of tea and drink it all.” Zedd dropped a cloth bundle in Cara’s lap as he lumbered toward the exit at high speed.
Cara fumbled with the tea sachet and called after him. “Will this fix me?”
“Probably not, but drink it anyway!” Zedd shouted back. “A good dump never hurt anybody!”
*
Kahlan, like every bride who has ever lived, resented fate tinkering with her wedding plans at the last minute. When Zedd roared into her chambers with news that the wedding vocalist had mysteriously and suddenly lost her voice - on the very morning of Kahlan’s magical, fated marriage to Richard Rahl - the Mother Confessor became so unhinged that she nearly fell headlong into a Con Dar fury.
Well, not really. But it was a near thing for a few moments, until Zedd assured her that he had found a replacement with a surpassingly beautiful voice.
*
Early morning clouds parted, and the sun smiled brightly as Richard and Cara strode toward the altar - he in a regal (ostentatious) ceremonial robe, and his second clad in cordovan leather.
As a concession to tradition and propriety, Cara was not armed. She seemed oddly relaxed. Richard inquired as to the reason for her repose, and she mumbled something about Zedd and strong tea.
“Hmm. Maybe I should take some on the honeymoon,” Richard said.
“No,” Cara softly recommended. “Wait until you get home. Really.”
Richard pulled a puzzled face and Cara smiled at him with deep and honest regard. The wedding musicians began to play a quiet, sweet song for strings and woodwinds. Richard’s eyes grew soft, and his chin trembled.
“Thank you,” he whispered, even as Cara shook her head to refuse his gratitude. “Despite what you may think, I know with a certainty that this day would not be possible without you.”
“Stop,” she asked, while staring holes in her boots. “This is not the time.”
“This is the perfect time. I can say what I want, and you can’t run away. Or hit me.”
“Don’t test me, Richard.”
“No, Cara, you have to know this. I consider it a blessing from the Creator that you stand here with me, as my friend.”
Cara felt a terrible, ridiculous burning behind her eyes. The wedding vocalist began to sing, and the purity of her voice stung like an agiel over Cara’s heart.
“The only thing that makes me more proud,” Richard continued, “is the fact that she loves me.”
Cara followed Richard’s eyes toward his future bride, and her breath fled in an instant. It wasn’t the first time she had appreciated Kahlan’s beauty, but Cara had never before been struck down by a simply looking at a woman.
She felt like death inside, crushed to pulp by the truth of the day: this was true love… and standing off to one side, observing, was as close as Cara would ever get.
Unseen, the singer trilled on, the bride approached, and the ceremony blurred to a series of images and half-heard sounds. Boisterous applause marked the end of the vows, and laughter resounded as Kahlan kissed Richard and he feigned a convincing swoon.
The joined couple marched as one toward the exit, toward a reception party and a honeymoon and a life of unified, unquestioned value. The fact of their love for each other validated their existence, their purpose in this world beyond missions and duties.
Cara watched them go and she did not follow because, at that moment, everything behind her ribs hurt too much to move.
She waited for the wedding crowd to clear out, and then sat beside the altar to rest and ponder a while before heading to the reception in the palace dining hall.
A stumbling noise from behind her startled Cara from her thoughts - which, strangely, were of eating sweet cake while watching Zedd dance with some anonymous crone. She flinched and banged her elbow against the altar.
“I’m sorry,” a woman said, in a steady, clear voice. “I didn’t mean to alarm you.”
“It’s fine. Go ahead and clean up,” Cara said, without looking.
“I’m not cleaning up. I need to gather my music for the reception performance,” the woman said. “Are you going to the dining hall?”
“Eventually,” Cara confirmed.
“Do you… need help?”
“I am Mord-Sith,” Cara stated, in a mildly murderous tone. “I will fend for myself.”
“You shouldn’t have to.” The woman planted herself directly in front of Cara and offered her hand. “We can go together.”
Cara brushed her hand aside without looking up. “Don’t worry about me.”
The woman gathered the folds of her white gown and knelt down. “I seem to recall you saying that to me once before, Cara Mason, a long time ago.”
“Excuse me? Do I know - ” Cara looked up, into the face of the wedding singer, and her breath was stolen by a woman for the second time that day. “- you?”
Fine of feature, with hair that flowed down her shoulders like golden sand, the singer fluttered her lashes and quirked her full lips into a smile. “I didn’t expect you would remember me, but you… you look the same as when we were children. Perhaps slightly taller.”
“Oh,” Cara managed to say. “Are you from Stowcroft?”
“I was born there,” the singer confirmed. “When the Mord-Sith came, they captured us the same day.”
“You were taken for training,” Cara said, fearing the worst, that she had done something terrible to this woman, to her family, once they reached the temple.
“Yes. But I didn’t even last one night.”
Cara knit her brows in confusion. Judging by the singer’s persistent grin, Cara thought she might be insane. Surely a violent, well-deserved rebuke was forthcoming.
“Near midnight, our convoy stopped to water the horses by the river. You were so little, you slipped out between the cage bars, and I followed you,” she recounted. “We found a hollow log near the treeline, but there was only room for one of us.”
Cara barely remembered a silly, short-lived escape attempt. Humiliation burned anew over her failure to evade re-capture.
“You pushed me inside the log and covered me in moss. You said not to cry out, not to make a sound, or they would find me,” the woman continued. “I heard them calling your name for a while, before they caught you and dragged you away. I bit my hand trying not to scream.”
Unable to clearly recall any of this, Cara affected skepticism. “Why would I do that?”
“I was small then, and very afraid. Even as a child, you were brave… and kind. Evidently, the Mord-Sith couldn’t steal that from you.” She smiled again. “I mean, here you are, all these years later, standing by the Seeker of Truth and crying at his wedding.”
Cara bristled. “I did not cry.”
“Of course not,” the singer agreed. “Only you did, a little. People saw. I saw.”
On any other day, under any other circumstances, Cara might have let her hand fly. As it was, she gazed up wearily through her lashes. “And?”
“And nothing. It’s not the end of the world.”
“No. Apparently, that requires green light and sulfur fumes,” Cara confirmed, as she curled a fist against her thigh.
“I mean, your reputation may improve, and people may regard you with less suspicion and hostility, but you’ll live,” the singer cannily observed. “And they say that which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
“That which does not kill me has made a tactical error,” Cara retorted.
The woman laughed, and it sounded like wood chimes, like clean, uncluttered wind dancing through tall branches. Cara took a slow, careful breath and was pleasantly surprised. For the first time in recent memory, she truly felt the air firing through her blood.
“Walk over with me,” the woman said, again offering her hand. “I’ll buy you a drink."
“I believe the drinks are free.”
“In that case, I’ll buy you two drinks.”
Cara smiled a bit, almost snickered.
“Then I’ll grant you a song. Any song you like,” she promised. “It’s the least I can do for someone who saved my life. After those two drinks take hold, perhaps I could convince you to accompany me?”
“I don’t sing,” Cara warned, even as she grasped the woman’s cool, fine-boned fingers and pulled up to her feet. They walked toward the temple doors side by side, falling into an easy matched cadence.
“That doesn’t mean you can’t sing.”
Cara canted an eyebrow and smirked. “Oh, I believe it does.”
“I will shore up your weaknesses,” she said, looping her arm around Cara’s elbow as they approached the dining hall. “Ask anyone in the Midlands - they’ll tell you Dahlia can teach a cat to sing Bollendorf.”
On hearing those words - and that name - Cara’s eyes bulged and she stumbled violently across the entryway threshold.
Dahlia’s arms snaked around her waist as they plunged forward into the hall in a clumsy, twirling mash of limbs and hair, cream silk and dark leather. Even after they regained their balance, Dahlia held on and Cara let her, because it felt like the thing to do.
All eyes fell on them, and the room went silent. Guests seemed unsure if they were witnessing an inept assault, or just particularly idle choreography.
Entwined at the edge of a dance floor, they were tucked in a bottomless pocket of time, snug as a hollow log big enough for two. Cara reflected on the resilience of destiny, and the craftiness of old wizards. She felt a single tumbler within her locked heart click open.
“The bride and groom get the first dance, Cara,” Richard called out in rescue from the head banquet table. “Don’t upstage me.”
Even as she replied, Cara didn’t take her eyes off Dahlia.
“Dance, then, woodsman. No one is stopping you.”
END