Confessor Read Free Page A

fingers on the knife paused. It had spoken hisreal name. No one in the camp knew his real name. Richard’s heart hammered against his chest.
    With as dark as it was, and the hood, the face inside was hidden from view. Richard could see only blackness, like death itself, staring out at him.
    It crossed his mind that that just might be exactly what it was.
    He reminded himself not to let his imagination get carried away. He summoned his courage.
    “What did you say?”
    An arm beneath the dark cloak rose toward him. He couldn’t see the hand, just the drape of the cloth over it.
    Your time starts this day, Richard Rahl, the first day of winter. You have one year to complete the cleansing.
    An unsettling image of something all too familiar came to mind: the boxes of Orden.
    As if reading his mind, a thousand whispers of the dead spoke.
    You are a new player, Richard Rahl. Because of that, the time of the play is now reset. It starts anew from this day, the first day of winter.
    Until a little more than three years before, Richard had been living a peaceful life in Westland. The entire chain of events had started when his real father, Darken Rahl, had finally gotten his hands on the boxes of Orden and first put them in play. That had been on the first day of winter four years ago.
    The key to telling the three boxes of Orden apart and knowing the correct box to open was The Book of Counted Shadows. Richard had memorized that book as a young man. Because he had lost his link to his gift he could no longer remember the words of the book; to be able to read or remember books of magic required magic. But while he didn’t recall the words, he did know from remembering his own actions some of the basic principles laid out in the book.
    One of the most important elements of using The Book of Counted Shadows was verifying if the words Richard had memorized were spoken true—verifying if that key component to opening the boxes of Orden was genuine. The book itself stipulated the means of verification.
    The means of verification was the use of a Confessor.
    Kahlan was the last living Confessor.
    Richard summoned his voice only with the greatest of difficulty.
    “What you say is impossible. I have put nothing into play.”
    You are named as the player.
    “Named? Named by who?”
    That you have been named as a new player is what matters. You are forewarned that you have one year from this day—and not one day longer—to complete the cleansing. Use your time well, Richard Rahl. Your life will be the price if you fail. All life will be the price if you fail.
    “But it’s impossible!” Richard cried out as he lunged, locking both hands around the throat of the figure.
    The cloak collapsed.
    There was nothing inside it.
    He heard a small, soft sound, like a doorway into the world of the dead closing.
    He could see the little clouds of his panting breath rising into the black winter night.
    After what seemed an empty eternity, Richard finally lay back down, using the cloak to cover his trembling body, but he could not force himself to close his eyes.
    To the west distant lightning flickered at the horizon. To the east the dawn of the first day of winter fast approached.
    Between lightning and dawn, in the middle of an enemy numbering in the millions, Richard Rahl, leader of the D’Haran Empire, lay chained to a wagon thinking about his captive wife, and the third child of trouble.

CHAPTER 3
    Kahlan lay on the floor in the near darkness, unable to sleep. She could hear Jagang’s even breathing in the bed above her. On an ornately carved wooden chest against the far wall a single oil lamp, its wick turned down low, cast a weak glow through the gloom of the emperor’s inner sanctum.
    The burning oil helped, if only to a small degree, to mask the stench of the encampment: the smells of soot from fires, fetid sweat, rancid refuse, the latrines, the horses and other animals, and manure all mingled together into a ubiquitous stink. In