The Gift of Stolen Time - Part 21
Title: The Gift Of Stolen Time
Author: Dark_Kurai
Pairing: Cara/Kahlan, touches of Cara/Dahlia
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Spoilers: Should be none, plays after 2x22.
Summary: Follow-up to A Tear, A Word, A Smile - When Zedd opens a magical portal to ease their travels after the victory against the Keeper, something goes wrong that forces Cara away from the Midlands for some time...
A/N: Okay, first off: If you ever have the chance... go and see the Cirque du Soleil. We were in the Varekai performance today and I was torn between nearly crying all the time either from awe or laughter. My cousin and I summed it up as that: A dream coming to life. Really, it was this amazing. Ehem... well, back to the topic!
21.
The morning brought more confusion and a tangle of limbs and a figure crashing out of bed with a yelp, as now Cara was unused to not waking up alone and had kicked at the other frame out of instinct when she felt a jolt of pain at her hip.
"What in all the Underworld's caverns was that?!"
Noa scrambled up with a grunt, rubbing the new bump on the back of her head with a wince. "What was what?"
"Did you steal one of my Agiels?" Cara squinted at the confused kid. Having fallen asleep in her leathers, the blanket now stuck to one of her buckles and she fought with the fabric without glancing down.
"Me? What? Naw." Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she finally realized what her mother meant. "Oh! No, I didn't... I have my own."
"You have what?!"
Noa winced again. "I said I have my own." She rolled up her leg and showed Cara the red leather rod that was sticking to her leg in a crude self-made holster. "Otherwise I wouldn't be able to concentrate on some stuff."
"How the heck did you get that Agiel?"
"Uhm, well... I stole it out of the temple, when I tried to convince Triana about the screeling. Without an Agiel she wouldn't have believed that I belonged to them, you know, as a Mord'Sith in training... and I could use it anyway."
Cara could only slap her hand on her face and wonder how fate had provided her with a child naive enough that it would stroll into a Mord'Sith temple without a second thought and get out alive.
"For spirit's sake, don't let Kahlan know about this and the Agiel..." she could only reply with a sense of foreboding.
So when all found themselves together for a very, very late breakfast, with all of them yawning and bleary eyed, Zedd decided to up the confusion even more, because obviously things weren't complicated enough yet.
"I might have stumbled on another problem concerning our dear young girl."
Noa groaned loudly and nearly dunked her forehead into the vegetable soup in front of her with frustration. "Oh, please no. I've had it with the problems."
"After using another strand of her hair..."
"Where does he get that stuff?" Zane stage-whispered to Richard, who could only shrug.
"...I found out that Noa's magic is quite... twisted."
"What did you do?" Cara asked sarcastically, filled to the brim with annoyance and scrapping her spoon through her food without real appetite, "put her hair in a bowl and spit on it?"
The wizard snapped his neck towards her. "Did you spy on me?!"
Cara blinked and did a double-take, dumbfounded.
"Anyway, can we wait with the revelations until we're done with eating? If there are more problems about me on the way, then I'd like to met them with a full belly."
That was at least one thing the girl and the wizard could agree on without doubt. The amount of food they consummated had Zane hug his bowl closer with the dry comment of "If there's ever a famine in the city, lock them up in the dungeons or we're all going to starve."
Later they found themselves in Zedd's room again, the wizard tapping his finger thoughtfully against his jaw, training his eyes on a bored Noa. They had been standing like that since about ten minutes and everyone was getting restless.
"The good news is," he finally opened up, "is that I know how Noa came to be."
Kahlan tilted her head, clearly interested now. "I thought you said you had bad news?"
"One after the other," Zedd replied with a smile, gesturing with one hand. "You do remember the way you came back from Dazrodha? How you walked through the Magical Planes?"
Both unexpected parents nodded with a grim look, the day would be burned into their minds forever with all the sad events that had happened then. Noa shuffled her foot with a guilty frown.
"I watched how you fought your way through it, trying to get to the other side. The Magical Planes are filled with pure, chaotic magic, untamed and raw energy that is neither shapeable nor controllable by human hand, unless it is filtered by pure magical beings. Then and only then it can be used by us wizards when we have the gift and formed into either Good, Dark or.." He held his finger up in a ponderous gesture, opening his mouth wide.
"Powerful magic," Cara, Kahlan and Richard replied with an exasperated eye roll, trying to hurry things up. Noa and Zane shrugged at each other, quite oblivious about the subject.
"Uh...eh, right. Yes, exactly."
After getting back on track, Zedd slowly walked up and down beside them, trying to explain his point further. "Anything can happen in this realm, as the energies are nearly omnipotent. Some think it is the origin of all that lives, taken and shaped by the Creator into what you call existence. In your case, you were assaulted by two currents, simply because you stood in the way of their flow. It connected with the magic that resides in your bodies and in turn with your very substance... and then something happened that could be described as once in a lifetime: Both tempered forces crashed into each other and merged, slipping into a portal that lead to a Dazrodha 12 years prior... and molded the little girl that is now standing before us today."
Five people gaped at him.
"You mean, she was born from... chance?" Richard wondered out loud.
Zedd nodded. "The probability of this occurrence is like... one in an infinite number. Simply because chaos magic is nothing you can control, not with human hands. At least... until today."
"What do you mean?" Cara was skeptic, as the whole thing sounded as if there was a catch. And the wizard had spoken of a problem...
"To make it short: Noa is a being filled to the brim with pure chaos magic. Actually, she is made from chaos magic, it might be the energy that is holding her very substance together."
A light went on in the Mord'Sith and she shifted around to look at her daughter, who looked quite lost with all this new information. "That's the reason the Dry Storm didn't affect you... because you're made from the same energy!"
"And I guess it is also the explanation to why the spelled stone didn't connect with our time, when she opened the portal... her magic tempered with it and threw her out in a place that was more than one year apart from our own."
Noa just haggardly dragged her fingers through her short strands, unhappy with everything that had occurred. "This is way over my head..."
"What does that mean for her? This chaos magic situation?..." Kahlan asked with concern for her new-found child.
Zedd sadly spread his arms. "Honestly? I have no idea. This has never occurred before. I'm only convinced of one thing: right now it's the only power that's keeping the opposite forces of Mord'Sith and Confessor in her from attacking each other. There might be a possibility that she is able to control the chaos magic inside of her. The higher chance though is that it will rip her apart if anything tempers too much with it. And there's the issue that even if she can use the chaos magic, practically everything could happen when she lets it out. From painting the walls green to levitating the whole castle to erasing every human being between twenty to thirty... it's unpredictable for a wizard like me."
"Confessor, Mord'Sith and chaos magic?..." Zane paused. "Hey wait, guys, can we name her the Seeker, too? Just for the giggles?" Two hands slapped the back of his head hard and he flinched at Cara's and Richard's reprimanding gaze. "What? Am I the only one that thinks it would be funny?"
The young blonde waved her hands around. "Okay, stop, wait. I don't get it. So what am I now? A Confessor? A wizard? Both? Nothing?" She looked into clueless faces. "So I'm not the only one who has no freakin' idea?"
"You, my dear," Zedd said with a regal tone and while laying a supporting hand on her shoulder, "are something very special."
"Now that's gonna make me feel better when I'm torn into little twitching pieces by that rubbish in my body," Noa retorted dryly, making Kahlan snort quietly at the utterly Cara-like image she presented that second, despite the grave subject.
"You are quite right that the forces in you are a dangerous symbiosis of some of the strongest energies the existence provides," Zedd started to say, only to be interrupted again by the child.
"Which makes me a deformation. Something that's not supposed to exist, because it's unnatural."
"Noa," Cara reprimanded her daughter for the self-discrimination and the girl let her chin sink down on her chest with tightly pressed lips.
They stood not quite sure what to say anymore, as the situation was complicated enough and they all weren't as versatile in magical subjects as Zedd, so no one knew how to ask the correct question.
"Might a Quillion help?" Richard asked as if unsure if one of the two mothers would rip him apart just for suggesting that option.
"What's that?"
Zedd turned to the two youngest people in the room. "It's a stone that sucks off magical energy from all those gifted, or in other words, magic users." At the sudden hopeful gleam in Noa's curious eyes he shook his head with a frown. "But using the Quillion on you would be like pointing an arrow randomly at your flesh, hoping to catch the festering ulcer in you while simultaneously destroying vital organs."
"So I'm stuck with this," Noa forced out, angry tears gathering in her already wet lashes. "I'll keep being a danger to me and everyone else and there's nothing I can do to change it? And you want me to rule a country despite it? On top of it? That's a cruel joke," she spat out, turning and marching out the door before anyone was able to stop her.
For the first few seconds no one made a move to follow her, almost all of them unable to share the pain that Noa went through at this moment and in three cases honest surprise at the dark reaction the happy girl normally showed. But Cara could see that Kahlan was gnawing at her lip in nervous frustration and she placed a hand on her upper arm, nodding into the direction the girl had gone to.
Her eyes told Kahlan all the Mord'Sith didn't speak out loud. Go. Talk to her. She needs you, too.
The brunette was gone in a heartbeat, white dress billowing behind her in her hastened walk.
"Cara, if it would be fine with you, then I'd like to teach Noa some elemental knowledge about magic. And at the same time try out some things, see how her powers influence her, maybe even find out how they work," Zedd offered with the will to help, "it might be instrumental for her health."
"Do that then," Cara accepted, unable to do anything else. She, they, had to know if there was a possibility of Noa's power turning against her. "Do you think the chaos magic influences the Confessor magic somehow?"
Zedd could only hold up his hands in lack of knowledge.
"I see..." The Mord'Sith rubbed the bridge of her nose and shook her head. "It couldn't be easy for once, couldn't it?"
Turning to leave Zane, Richard and Zedd standing behind, the wizard busied the ex-artist with helping him find information, while the Seeker quietly turned to take a ride in the woods, as the events had riled him up just as well.
Cara, while walking, tried to be realistic about the news. The chaos magic might be dangerous... or it might be not. Maybe they were lucky for once and the latter was the case. At least they had some answers after all this guessing about what happened.
Noa had somehow freed herself of the Apothics that had captured her, gotten a hold of the ruby and opened another portal thanks to half her genes being from Kahlan. It explained why Zedd had not been able to find her presence on Dazrodha, because at that moment she had already been in the Midlands and on the road with the Blazing Carnival.
If it was chance or destiny that they had met again, Cara couldn't answer. But she knew that whatever would come, be it good or bad, all three of them were together now and would see it through to the end.
__________________
Kahlan found Noa near one of the staircases, the girl having sat down at the massive stone railing and dangling her legs down over the emptiness, hands gripping the elaborate adornings found everywhere. The glistening wetness on her cheeks and the empty expression, with which she gazed into nothingness, hurt the brunette's heart.
The only indication Noa gave when Kahlan sat down beside her, dragging her knees close beneath the dress, was absently dragging the back of her palm over the wet skin.
"Did I miss something? Maybe that I need to give up tumbling because it doesn't befit a Confessor?" Noa asked without looking, but instead of the biting sarcasm there was just an aching tiredness in her voice.
It's not natural for Noa to be this pessimistic. Will we be able to change it? Make her feel unburdened again?..
"No," Kahlan eased her mind, "no, you don't have to give that up. I wouldn't want you to."
Glancing over at her mother, it was clear that Noa was unsure what to say or how to behave. So the brunette took a deep breath and started to speak in her usual calm, captivating tone. She told her daughter about her own childhood, how hard it had been to be forced to learn how to use her Confessions in that way, how she had suffered with and for her sister... and how wonderful it had been to finally join the Sisters of the Light and be trained as a Confessor. Trying to show Noa that her past had not been easy either, if maybe not as much a crazy ride as her daughter's.
"I know that our power is hard to bear most of the time, but I didn't lie when I told you that it can do a lot of good. The people out there rely on us, they trust in us..." She smiled at Noa, who was listening attentively. "I know that you have a good heart that wants to see people smile. Imagine how much stability and safety you can bring the land if you rule fair and just, keeping them from being harmed by other lands and even from the unfairness in their own midst."
"I... didn't think about it that way..." Noa admitted, shifting her eyes to the side. "I thought it was pure evil."
"And I can understand why you did that," Kahlan replied, gently stroking her fingers through the soft, honey blonde strands, still having trouble to understand that this wonderful being beside her was her own flesh and blood. She was happy when the girl didn't flinch away from the affection.
"I was afraid of myself for so long... I still am," Noa admitted softly.
"Using our Confessor power... it's... hard. Hard and yet easy. And I want to tell you how amazing it is that you learned to control it so soon and without help, as it takes a lot of self-discipline and understanding."
Playing with one of her thin braids, Noa shrugged, not overly happy with the compliment. "I had to. Otherwise I don't think I would've survived." Shifting her vision towards Kahlan, the Mother Confessor watched as a blue eye, the very mirror of her own, flickered with fear and trepidation. "Do you really think I'm fit to be a ruler some day? I... don't know anything about it at all. Just the mass of people in this land is... astonishing. Overwhelming."
"You have a lot of time to learn and there are many that will help you along the way. You have a good heart, Noa, and you want to bring happiness even after all that you went through. There's no more important basic prerequisite than that."
Noa nodded with a contemplative look, thinking it through. She wasn't anywhere near fully convinced and it would take a lot of time for the girl to feel fine with the new situation. Time and effort that Kahlan was more than willing to give if it meant spending more time with her child, although she felt guilty for loading such a heavy burden on the young, carefree girl's back.
"Mother?" The hesitant call had Kahlan's heart thundering with blooming love for her daughter. "You're... not afraid of me, aren't you?"
"Never," the brunette answered with a soft smile. Noa's gaze was searching, hopeful. "Not even if you really were a second away from freeing your magic. Not even if you were a wild, savage beast due to your powers."
The girl bit her lip. "Promise?" she whispered.
Kahlan engulfed one of the smaller hands in her own, holding it safely closed between her fingers. "Promise."
"Thank you." The burden on the blonde's shoulder eased notably and they fell into comfortable silence. Kahlan prayed to the Creator that Noa could learn to live with the fate of being the next Mother Confessor and that the duty of it wouldn't break her spirit.
A floor away Cara had a watchful eye over the bonding of daughter and mother, protecting the two most important females in her life with her presence and finding her own thoughts linger on questions she was unable to answer now.
But there was one truth she was sure of.
This is my family.
And she would protect it with every fiber of her being.
____________________
And so began Noa's training. Not only as a future Mother Confessor, but also more-or-less as a wizard.
The very first thing Noa had to learn in both subjects was one simple ability: Composure.
It was also the very first setback they had.
Teaching Noa how to sit still, to listen attentively with calm and serenity and an upright posture, was nearly impossible. There was always something on the girl that started twitching, be it her hands, her feet or even her head that swayed from side to side. After even the most ridiculous exercises that stretched on for days, Kahlan and Zedd stood with a deep sigh a few feet next to the make-shift throne in Zedd's chamber and were at the end of their wits.
"It's the chaos magic," Zedd finally said with a frown. "Whenever she tries to focus on too many things, her concentration starts slipping and the energy that she keeps behind mental walls starts flowing uncontrolled through her limbs. It looks like Noa keeps an unconscious tight control not only on her Confessor power, but also on the chaos magic. That takes a lot of focus."
"And that means she unconsciously concentrates more on her inner workings than the world around her, thus leaving only parts of her mind left to direct to the outside world. Otherwise, if her control slips, the energies in her body go haywire," Kahlan concluded with crossed arms.
"But it only happens when she concentrates on it for a longer time. As we have seen during her artistry, quick, focused decisions based on impulse and logical, subconscious conclusions are working well for her," Zedd added with a nod.
"And it's also connected to distance," Cara added from behind them, causing the wizard and the Confessor to almost jump into the air in surprise. "Make it four or five feet away from her and she'll be sure to overlook it if she's busy doing something else. Or unfocused. Which she's ninety percent of the day."
Kahlan placed a hand over her heart, looking reproachfully at the Mord'Sith. "Cara! Knock first, you're killing me some of these days!"
Cara simply smirked, then walked closer to Noa, who was keeping herself entertained by doing acrobatic acts on the seat. When her blonde mother approached, she plopped back down on her backside and brightened.
"Mom! Can we go outside and do some training?"
"First you're finishing your lesson with those two here. Catch." Slipping an Agiel out of her belt, that was not one of the two in the holsters, she threw it straight to the girl. "I found it in your room. Better keep it with you, otherwise you won't get anything done here today."
"Ha, thanks!" Noa grinned and pinned the Agiel into her own belt.
Well, and here goes nothing.
The Mord'Sith turned around to a dumbfounded Kahlan and before she could open her mouth to try and explain, an angry, red color spread on the brunette's cheeks.
"You... you taught our daughter how to use an Agiel?!" she shouted incredulously.
"She wanted to learn it, I didn't force her to anything!" Cara shot back defensively.
"She was just a kid at that time!"
"And I was nine when I learned it," the blonde replied, wisely keeping the information hidden that Noa had been eight when she had gotten Cara to leave the Agiel behind in camp.
"It's fine, mother," Noa tried to ease the tension from afar. "I really wanted to learn it, it's not Mom's fault."
"And it helps her," Cara added imploringly, trying to calm the upset Mother Confessor down. "It might safe her life some day. She is much more focused and concentrated when she holds an Agiel close to her skin."
Kahlan exhaled heavily, thrumming her fingers on her arm in unhidden frustration. But the acceptance was already finding its way into her blue eyes, turned pale with anger. "I guess... you speak from experience," she finally gave in. Although she could only shake her head in astonishment. "She... shouldn't know such pain. How sad is it that agony can keep her safer than we can?"
Cara could only gaze down at the floor, clenching her jaw.
It was the wizard that found the whole situation quite interesting from a professional stand-point. "It seems like the power of the Agiel either fulfills the role of controlling the chaos or the Confessor magic. I'd pick the latter, but I'm not very sure. It would leave Noa more concentration to focus on other topics."
"Like catching note of arrows and throwing knifes before they find their mark," Cara grumbled.
And so they ended the first lesson, which closed much more satisfying after Noa was able to concentrate correctly, and went on to another. Even with the Agiel Noa found it hard to learn certain sections, which was no wonder considering that the girl had grown up in a rural village, then lived in the woods and had then spend over a year accompanying a performer troupe. Alone teaching her how to handle numbers with more than two digits was something that would have caused Zedd to go gray if his hair wasn't white already.
But there were things more complicated than learning how to be a Confessor or even a Mother Confessor.
Many days later Kahlan and Cara came into the older man's room, only to see several servants including Zane trying to catch a few dozen books that were levitating through the air, Noa apologizing desperately to a group of guards covered in bee stings over in the corner and with Zedd... well.
The two mothers could hardly contain a smirk.
"Laugh all you want, I know I do appear quite amusing," the wizard prompted with a raised eyebrow... colored in a delightful pink. His hair had a matching baby blue color and his robes were a light pastel green.
"Creator's Breath, what did you make her do? Conjure up an army?" Kahlan asked with a laugh at the unusual coloring the wizard sported.
"Actually I tried to teach her how to get a candle flame burning. I thought I'd start small... just that chaos magic doesn't do small."
"And what did you do after that?" Cara asked with an amused quirk of her lips. At Zedd's confused look she indicated the different scenes. "Flying tomes, the guards... your... new look." Next to her Kahlan pressed a hand on her lips to hide a giggle. It raised the Mord'Sith's amusement even more when she could get the brunette to laugh.
"We didn't do anything else. All of that happened at the same time," Zedd answered dryly.
"Looks like you have quite the obstacle to clear." She shared a mirthful glance with the other part of the parentage.
"I guess that means the two of you need to train harder, eh?" Cara smirked. At least it appeared that operating the magic didn't seem to influence Noa's health. Just the one of the people around her, if they were unlucky.
Two weeks later the whole castle inhabitants stood in the throne room and complained of vanishing laundry, burning water, strangely colored animals, floors with upturned gravity, people appearing ten miles from where they were supposed to be and so on. Once Kahlan had managed to calm their nerves, they found themselves back with Zedd and Noa.
"All right, I give in. The chaos magic is uncontrollable outside of Noa's body," Zedd admitted with an exhausted sigh. He had been the one forced to redo all that had gone wrong in the past days. Thankfully the mayhem done from the wild energy didn't block itself from being spelled back to how it was supposed to be, causing everyone affected to be content again.
Noa scratched the back of her neck in embarrassment.
"So what does that mean?" Kahlan asked from where she had her hands planted on the girl's shoulders, easing her with a squeeze. Concerning to Zedd's words the girl was thirteen and ten months now, so it didn't look like comforting a kid anymore. Noa was slowly becoming a young woman.
"It means no wizard's fire, no blasts, no outright influencing magic..." Zedd began.
Cara smirked with an evil glint in her eye. "Doesn't sound so bad. It's like a controlled, harmless version of you, wizard."
Zedd glared at her. "Very funny. At least it seems like her Confessor power isn't influenced by the chaos magic by what you told me. Maybe I overlooked something, but I can only assume that all things a wizard can do are closed off to her, as it isn't in my power to teach her how to use this energy."
"At least one thing less I need to worry about," Noa replied with a smile.
And with that ended her magical lessons for the time being. Not that anyone minded. Least of all the poor cow they found on the highest castle tower one day later.
__________________
A/N: Mucho Zedd talking here, but he's the only one who can make sense of the whole magic business. Anyway, there's another surprise.... iiiin about five minutes!
Author: Dark_Kurai
Pairing: Cara/Kahlan, touches of Cara/Dahlia
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Spoilers: Should be none, plays after 2x22.
Summary: Follow-up to A Tear, A Word, A Smile - When Zedd opens a magical portal to ease their travels after the victory against the Keeper, something goes wrong that forces Cara away from the Midlands for some time...
A/N: Okay, first off: If you ever have the chance... go and see the Cirque du Soleil. We were in the Varekai performance today and I was torn between nearly crying all the time either from awe or laughter. My cousin and I summed it up as that: A dream coming to life. Really, it was this amazing. Ehem... well, back to the topic!
21.
The morning brought more confusion and a tangle of limbs and a figure crashing out of bed with a yelp, as now Cara was unused to not waking up alone and had kicked at the other frame out of instinct when she felt a jolt of pain at her hip.
"What in all the Underworld's caverns was that?!"
Noa scrambled up with a grunt, rubbing the new bump on the back of her head with a wince. "What was what?"
"Did you steal one of my Agiels?" Cara squinted at the confused kid. Having fallen asleep in her leathers, the blanket now stuck to one of her buckles and she fought with the fabric without glancing down.
"Me? What? Naw." Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she finally realized what her mother meant. "Oh! No, I didn't... I have my own."
"You have what?!"
Noa winced again. "I said I have my own." She rolled up her leg and showed Cara the red leather rod that was sticking to her leg in a crude self-made holster. "Otherwise I wouldn't be able to concentrate on some stuff."
"How the heck did you get that Agiel?"
"Uhm, well... I stole it out of the temple, when I tried to convince Triana about the screeling. Without an Agiel she wouldn't have believed that I belonged to them, you know, as a Mord'Sith in training... and I could use it anyway."
Cara could only slap her hand on her face and wonder how fate had provided her with a child naive enough that it would stroll into a Mord'Sith temple without a second thought and get out alive.
"For spirit's sake, don't let Kahlan know about this and the Agiel..." she could only reply with a sense of foreboding.
So when all found themselves together for a very, very late breakfast, with all of them yawning and bleary eyed, Zedd decided to up the confusion even more, because obviously things weren't complicated enough yet.
"I might have stumbled on another problem concerning our dear young girl."
Noa groaned loudly and nearly dunked her forehead into the vegetable soup in front of her with frustration. "Oh, please no. I've had it with the problems."
"After using another strand of her hair..."
"Where does he get that stuff?" Zane stage-whispered to Richard, who could only shrug.
"...I found out that Noa's magic is quite... twisted."
"What did you do?" Cara asked sarcastically, filled to the brim with annoyance and scrapping her spoon through her food without real appetite, "put her hair in a bowl and spit on it?"
The wizard snapped his neck towards her. "Did you spy on me?!"
Cara blinked and did a double-take, dumbfounded.
"Anyway, can we wait with the revelations until we're done with eating? If there are more problems about me on the way, then I'd like to met them with a full belly."
That was at least one thing the girl and the wizard could agree on without doubt. The amount of food they consummated had Zane hug his bowl closer with the dry comment of "If there's ever a famine in the city, lock them up in the dungeons or we're all going to starve."
Later they found themselves in Zedd's room again, the wizard tapping his finger thoughtfully against his jaw, training his eyes on a bored Noa. They had been standing like that since about ten minutes and everyone was getting restless.
"The good news is," he finally opened up, "is that I know how Noa came to be."
Kahlan tilted her head, clearly interested now. "I thought you said you had bad news?"
"One after the other," Zedd replied with a smile, gesturing with one hand. "You do remember the way you came back from Dazrodha? How you walked through the Magical Planes?"
Both unexpected parents nodded with a grim look, the day would be burned into their minds forever with all the sad events that had happened then. Noa shuffled her foot with a guilty frown.
"I watched how you fought your way through it, trying to get to the other side. The Magical Planes are filled with pure, chaotic magic, untamed and raw energy that is neither shapeable nor controllable by human hand, unless it is filtered by pure magical beings. Then and only then it can be used by us wizards when we have the gift and formed into either Good, Dark or.." He held his finger up in a ponderous gesture, opening his mouth wide.
"Powerful magic," Cara, Kahlan and Richard replied with an exasperated eye roll, trying to hurry things up. Noa and Zane shrugged at each other, quite oblivious about the subject.
"Uh...eh, right. Yes, exactly."
After getting back on track, Zedd slowly walked up and down beside them, trying to explain his point further. "Anything can happen in this realm, as the energies are nearly omnipotent. Some think it is the origin of all that lives, taken and shaped by the Creator into what you call existence. In your case, you were assaulted by two currents, simply because you stood in the way of their flow. It connected with the magic that resides in your bodies and in turn with your very substance... and then something happened that could be described as once in a lifetime: Both tempered forces crashed into each other and merged, slipping into a portal that lead to a Dazrodha 12 years prior... and molded the little girl that is now standing before us today."
Five people gaped at him.
"You mean, she was born from... chance?" Richard wondered out loud.
Zedd nodded. "The probability of this occurrence is like... one in an infinite number. Simply because chaos magic is nothing you can control, not with human hands. At least... until today."
"What do you mean?" Cara was skeptic, as the whole thing sounded as if there was a catch. And the wizard had spoken of a problem...
"To make it short: Noa is a being filled to the brim with pure chaos magic. Actually, she is made from chaos magic, it might be the energy that is holding her very substance together."
A light went on in the Mord'Sith and she shifted around to look at her daughter, who looked quite lost with all this new information. "That's the reason the Dry Storm didn't affect you... because you're made from the same energy!"
"And I guess it is also the explanation to why the spelled stone didn't connect with our time, when she opened the portal... her magic tempered with it and threw her out in a place that was more than one year apart from our own."
Noa just haggardly dragged her fingers through her short strands, unhappy with everything that had occurred. "This is way over my head..."
"What does that mean for her? This chaos magic situation?..." Kahlan asked with concern for her new-found child.
Zedd sadly spread his arms. "Honestly? I have no idea. This has never occurred before. I'm only convinced of one thing: right now it's the only power that's keeping the opposite forces of Mord'Sith and Confessor in her from attacking each other. There might be a possibility that she is able to control the chaos magic inside of her. The higher chance though is that it will rip her apart if anything tempers too much with it. And there's the issue that even if she can use the chaos magic, practically everything could happen when she lets it out. From painting the walls green to levitating the whole castle to erasing every human being between twenty to thirty... it's unpredictable for a wizard like me."
"Confessor, Mord'Sith and chaos magic?..." Zane paused. "Hey wait, guys, can we name her the Seeker, too? Just for the giggles?" Two hands slapped the back of his head hard and he flinched at Cara's and Richard's reprimanding gaze. "What? Am I the only one that thinks it would be funny?"
The young blonde waved her hands around. "Okay, stop, wait. I don't get it. So what am I now? A Confessor? A wizard? Both? Nothing?" She looked into clueless faces. "So I'm not the only one who has no freakin' idea?"
"You, my dear," Zedd said with a regal tone and while laying a supporting hand on her shoulder, "are something very special."
"Now that's gonna make me feel better when I'm torn into little twitching pieces by that rubbish in my body," Noa retorted dryly, making Kahlan snort quietly at the utterly Cara-like image she presented that second, despite the grave subject.
"You are quite right that the forces in you are a dangerous symbiosis of some of the strongest energies the existence provides," Zedd started to say, only to be interrupted again by the child.
"Which makes me a deformation. Something that's not supposed to exist, because it's unnatural."
"Noa," Cara reprimanded her daughter for the self-discrimination and the girl let her chin sink down on her chest with tightly pressed lips.
They stood not quite sure what to say anymore, as the situation was complicated enough and they all weren't as versatile in magical subjects as Zedd, so no one knew how to ask the correct question.
"Might a Quillion help?" Richard asked as if unsure if one of the two mothers would rip him apart just for suggesting that option.
"What's that?"
Zedd turned to the two youngest people in the room. "It's a stone that sucks off magical energy from all those gifted, or in other words, magic users." At the sudden hopeful gleam in Noa's curious eyes he shook his head with a frown. "But using the Quillion on you would be like pointing an arrow randomly at your flesh, hoping to catch the festering ulcer in you while simultaneously destroying vital organs."
"So I'm stuck with this," Noa forced out, angry tears gathering in her already wet lashes. "I'll keep being a danger to me and everyone else and there's nothing I can do to change it? And you want me to rule a country despite it? On top of it? That's a cruel joke," she spat out, turning and marching out the door before anyone was able to stop her.
For the first few seconds no one made a move to follow her, almost all of them unable to share the pain that Noa went through at this moment and in three cases honest surprise at the dark reaction the happy girl normally showed. But Cara could see that Kahlan was gnawing at her lip in nervous frustration and she placed a hand on her upper arm, nodding into the direction the girl had gone to.
Her eyes told Kahlan all the Mord'Sith didn't speak out loud. Go. Talk to her. She needs you, too.
The brunette was gone in a heartbeat, white dress billowing behind her in her hastened walk.
"Cara, if it would be fine with you, then I'd like to teach Noa some elemental knowledge about magic. And at the same time try out some things, see how her powers influence her, maybe even find out how they work," Zedd offered with the will to help, "it might be instrumental for her health."
"Do that then," Cara accepted, unable to do anything else. She, they, had to know if there was a possibility of Noa's power turning against her. "Do you think the chaos magic influences the Confessor magic somehow?"
Zedd could only hold up his hands in lack of knowledge.
"I see..." The Mord'Sith rubbed the bridge of her nose and shook her head. "It couldn't be easy for once, couldn't it?"
Turning to leave Zane, Richard and Zedd standing behind, the wizard busied the ex-artist with helping him find information, while the Seeker quietly turned to take a ride in the woods, as the events had riled him up just as well.
Cara, while walking, tried to be realistic about the news. The chaos magic might be dangerous... or it might be not. Maybe they were lucky for once and the latter was the case. At least they had some answers after all this guessing about what happened.
Noa had somehow freed herself of the Apothics that had captured her, gotten a hold of the ruby and opened another portal thanks to half her genes being from Kahlan. It explained why Zedd had not been able to find her presence on Dazrodha, because at that moment she had already been in the Midlands and on the road with the Blazing Carnival.
If it was chance or destiny that they had met again, Cara couldn't answer. But she knew that whatever would come, be it good or bad, all three of them were together now and would see it through to the end.
__________________
Kahlan found Noa near one of the staircases, the girl having sat down at the massive stone railing and dangling her legs down over the emptiness, hands gripping the elaborate adornings found everywhere. The glistening wetness on her cheeks and the empty expression, with which she gazed into nothingness, hurt the brunette's heart.
The only indication Noa gave when Kahlan sat down beside her, dragging her knees close beneath the dress, was absently dragging the back of her palm over the wet skin.
"Did I miss something? Maybe that I need to give up tumbling because it doesn't befit a Confessor?" Noa asked without looking, but instead of the biting sarcasm there was just an aching tiredness in her voice.
It's not natural for Noa to be this pessimistic. Will we be able to change it? Make her feel unburdened again?..
"No," Kahlan eased her mind, "no, you don't have to give that up. I wouldn't want you to."
Glancing over at her mother, it was clear that Noa was unsure what to say or how to behave. So the brunette took a deep breath and started to speak in her usual calm, captivating tone. She told her daughter about her own childhood, how hard it had been to be forced to learn how to use her Confessions in that way, how she had suffered with and for her sister... and how wonderful it had been to finally join the Sisters of the Light and be trained as a Confessor. Trying to show Noa that her past had not been easy either, if maybe not as much a crazy ride as her daughter's.
"I know that our power is hard to bear most of the time, but I didn't lie when I told you that it can do a lot of good. The people out there rely on us, they trust in us..." She smiled at Noa, who was listening attentively. "I know that you have a good heart that wants to see people smile. Imagine how much stability and safety you can bring the land if you rule fair and just, keeping them from being harmed by other lands and even from the unfairness in their own midst."
"I... didn't think about it that way..." Noa admitted, shifting her eyes to the side. "I thought it was pure evil."
"And I can understand why you did that," Kahlan replied, gently stroking her fingers through the soft, honey blonde strands, still having trouble to understand that this wonderful being beside her was her own flesh and blood. She was happy when the girl didn't flinch away from the affection.
"I was afraid of myself for so long... I still am," Noa admitted softly.
"Using our Confessor power... it's... hard. Hard and yet easy. And I want to tell you how amazing it is that you learned to control it so soon and without help, as it takes a lot of self-discipline and understanding."
Playing with one of her thin braids, Noa shrugged, not overly happy with the compliment. "I had to. Otherwise I don't think I would've survived." Shifting her vision towards Kahlan, the Mother Confessor watched as a blue eye, the very mirror of her own, flickered with fear and trepidation. "Do you really think I'm fit to be a ruler some day? I... don't know anything about it at all. Just the mass of people in this land is... astonishing. Overwhelming."
"You have a lot of time to learn and there are many that will help you along the way. You have a good heart, Noa, and you want to bring happiness even after all that you went through. There's no more important basic prerequisite than that."
Noa nodded with a contemplative look, thinking it through. She wasn't anywhere near fully convinced and it would take a lot of time for the girl to feel fine with the new situation. Time and effort that Kahlan was more than willing to give if it meant spending more time with her child, although she felt guilty for loading such a heavy burden on the young, carefree girl's back.
"Mother?" The hesitant call had Kahlan's heart thundering with blooming love for her daughter. "You're... not afraid of me, aren't you?"
"Never," the brunette answered with a soft smile. Noa's gaze was searching, hopeful. "Not even if you really were a second away from freeing your magic. Not even if you were a wild, savage beast due to your powers."
The girl bit her lip. "Promise?" she whispered.
Kahlan engulfed one of the smaller hands in her own, holding it safely closed between her fingers. "Promise."
"Thank you." The burden on the blonde's shoulder eased notably and they fell into comfortable silence. Kahlan prayed to the Creator that Noa could learn to live with the fate of being the next Mother Confessor and that the duty of it wouldn't break her spirit.
A floor away Cara had a watchful eye over the bonding of daughter and mother, protecting the two most important females in her life with her presence and finding her own thoughts linger on questions she was unable to answer now.
But there was one truth she was sure of.
This is my family.
And she would protect it with every fiber of her being.
____________________
And so began Noa's training. Not only as a future Mother Confessor, but also more-or-less as a wizard.
The very first thing Noa had to learn in both subjects was one simple ability: Composure.
It was also the very first setback they had.
Teaching Noa how to sit still, to listen attentively with calm and serenity and an upright posture, was nearly impossible. There was always something on the girl that started twitching, be it her hands, her feet or even her head that swayed from side to side. After even the most ridiculous exercises that stretched on for days, Kahlan and Zedd stood with a deep sigh a few feet next to the make-shift throne in Zedd's chamber and were at the end of their wits.
"It's the chaos magic," Zedd finally said with a frown. "Whenever she tries to focus on too many things, her concentration starts slipping and the energy that she keeps behind mental walls starts flowing uncontrolled through her limbs. It looks like Noa keeps an unconscious tight control not only on her Confessor power, but also on the chaos magic. That takes a lot of focus."
"And that means she unconsciously concentrates more on her inner workings than the world around her, thus leaving only parts of her mind left to direct to the outside world. Otherwise, if her control slips, the energies in her body go haywire," Kahlan concluded with crossed arms.
"But it only happens when she concentrates on it for a longer time. As we have seen during her artistry, quick, focused decisions based on impulse and logical, subconscious conclusions are working well for her," Zedd added with a nod.
"And it's also connected to distance," Cara added from behind them, causing the wizard and the Confessor to almost jump into the air in surprise. "Make it four or five feet away from her and she'll be sure to overlook it if she's busy doing something else. Or unfocused. Which she's ninety percent of the day."
Kahlan placed a hand over her heart, looking reproachfully at the Mord'Sith. "Cara! Knock first, you're killing me some of these days!"
Cara simply smirked, then walked closer to Noa, who was keeping herself entertained by doing acrobatic acts on the seat. When her blonde mother approached, she plopped back down on her backside and brightened.
"Mom! Can we go outside and do some training?"
"First you're finishing your lesson with those two here. Catch." Slipping an Agiel out of her belt, that was not one of the two in the holsters, she threw it straight to the girl. "I found it in your room. Better keep it with you, otherwise you won't get anything done here today."
"Ha, thanks!" Noa grinned and pinned the Agiel into her own belt.
Well, and here goes nothing.
The Mord'Sith turned around to a dumbfounded Kahlan and before she could open her mouth to try and explain, an angry, red color spread on the brunette's cheeks.
"You... you taught our daughter how to use an Agiel?!" she shouted incredulously.
"She wanted to learn it, I didn't force her to anything!" Cara shot back defensively.
"She was just a kid at that time!"
"And I was nine when I learned it," the blonde replied, wisely keeping the information hidden that Noa had been eight when she had gotten Cara to leave the Agiel behind in camp.
"It's fine, mother," Noa tried to ease the tension from afar. "I really wanted to learn it, it's not Mom's fault."
"And it helps her," Cara added imploringly, trying to calm the upset Mother Confessor down. "It might safe her life some day. She is much more focused and concentrated when she holds an Agiel close to her skin."
Kahlan exhaled heavily, thrumming her fingers on her arm in unhidden frustration. But the acceptance was already finding its way into her blue eyes, turned pale with anger. "I guess... you speak from experience," she finally gave in. Although she could only shake her head in astonishment. "She... shouldn't know such pain. How sad is it that agony can keep her safer than we can?"
Cara could only gaze down at the floor, clenching her jaw.
It was the wizard that found the whole situation quite interesting from a professional stand-point. "It seems like the power of the Agiel either fulfills the role of controlling the chaos or the Confessor magic. I'd pick the latter, but I'm not very sure. It would leave Noa more concentration to focus on other topics."
"Like catching note of arrows and throwing knifes before they find their mark," Cara grumbled.
And so they ended the first lesson, which closed much more satisfying after Noa was able to concentrate correctly, and went on to another. Even with the Agiel Noa found it hard to learn certain sections, which was no wonder considering that the girl had grown up in a rural village, then lived in the woods and had then spend over a year accompanying a performer troupe. Alone teaching her how to handle numbers with more than two digits was something that would have caused Zedd to go gray if his hair wasn't white already.
But there were things more complicated than learning how to be a Confessor or even a Mother Confessor.
Many days later Kahlan and Cara came into the older man's room, only to see several servants including Zane trying to catch a few dozen books that were levitating through the air, Noa apologizing desperately to a group of guards covered in bee stings over in the corner and with Zedd... well.
The two mothers could hardly contain a smirk.
"Laugh all you want, I know I do appear quite amusing," the wizard prompted with a raised eyebrow... colored in a delightful pink. His hair had a matching baby blue color and his robes were a light pastel green.
"Creator's Breath, what did you make her do? Conjure up an army?" Kahlan asked with a laugh at the unusual coloring the wizard sported.
"Actually I tried to teach her how to get a candle flame burning. I thought I'd start small... just that chaos magic doesn't do small."
"And what did you do after that?" Cara asked with an amused quirk of her lips. At Zedd's confused look she indicated the different scenes. "Flying tomes, the guards... your... new look." Next to her Kahlan pressed a hand on her lips to hide a giggle. It raised the Mord'Sith's amusement even more when she could get the brunette to laugh.
"We didn't do anything else. All of that happened at the same time," Zedd answered dryly.
"Looks like you have quite the obstacle to clear." She shared a mirthful glance with the other part of the parentage.
"I guess that means the two of you need to train harder, eh?" Cara smirked. At least it appeared that operating the magic didn't seem to influence Noa's health. Just the one of the people around her, if they were unlucky.
Two weeks later the whole castle inhabitants stood in the throne room and complained of vanishing laundry, burning water, strangely colored animals, floors with upturned gravity, people appearing ten miles from where they were supposed to be and so on. Once Kahlan had managed to calm their nerves, they found themselves back with Zedd and Noa.
"All right, I give in. The chaos magic is uncontrollable outside of Noa's body," Zedd admitted with an exhausted sigh. He had been the one forced to redo all that had gone wrong in the past days. Thankfully the mayhem done from the wild energy didn't block itself from being spelled back to how it was supposed to be, causing everyone affected to be content again.
Noa scratched the back of her neck in embarrassment.
"So what does that mean?" Kahlan asked from where she had her hands planted on the girl's shoulders, easing her with a squeeze. Concerning to Zedd's words the girl was thirteen and ten months now, so it didn't look like comforting a kid anymore. Noa was slowly becoming a young woman.
"It means no wizard's fire, no blasts, no outright influencing magic..." Zedd began.
Cara smirked with an evil glint in her eye. "Doesn't sound so bad. It's like a controlled, harmless version of you, wizard."
Zedd glared at her. "Very funny. At least it seems like her Confessor power isn't influenced by the chaos magic by what you told me. Maybe I overlooked something, but I can only assume that all things a wizard can do are closed off to her, as it isn't in my power to teach her how to use this energy."
"At least one thing less I need to worry about," Noa replied with a smile.
And with that ended her magical lessons for the time being. Not that anyone minded. Least of all the poor cow they found on the highest castle tower one day later.
__________________
A/N: Mucho Zedd talking here, but he's the only one who can make sense of the whole magic business. Anyway, there's another surprise.... iiiin about five minutes!