5 Soul of the Fire

by Goodkind, Terry

  "That's just it. I can't be the magic against magic. Even if it were the Lurk instead of the chimes, magic won't work."

  Cara shrugged. "Then you will figure a way for it to work. You are the Lord Rahl; that is what you do."

  "Richard," Kahlan said, "Zedd told us the Sisters of the Dark conjured the Lurk and that's what's causing magic to fail. You have no proof it's really the chimes instead. We have but to do as Zedd has asked of us, and then he will be able to counter the Sisters' magic. As soon as we get to Aydindril, everything will be back to right."

  Still, Richard could not bring himself to tell her. "Kahlan, I wish it were as you say, but it isn't," he said simply.

  Her veneer of patience began cracking. "Why do you insist it's the chimes when Zedd told us it was the Lurk?"

  Richard leaned closer to her. "Think about it. My grandmother-Zedd's wife-apparently told her little girl, my mother, a story about a cat named Lurk. Just that one time she told me about a cat named Lurk, but Zedd wouldn't know she did. It was a small thing my mother told me once when I was little, like a hundred other little words of com-

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  fort, or phrases, or stories to bring a smile. I never mentioned it to Zedd.

  "For some reason Zedd wanted to hide the truth. 'Lurk,' because he once had a cat by that name, was probably just the first thing that came into his head. Admit it, doesn't the name 'Lurk' strike you as a bit... whimsical, once you think about it?"

  Kahlan folded her arms across her breasts. She made a reluctant grimace.

  "I thought I was the only one who thought so." She mustered her resolve. "But that doesn't really prove it. It could be coincidence."

  Richard knew it was the chimes. In much the same way he could sense the chicken that wasn't a chicken, and had wished Kahlan would believe him, he dearly wished she would trust him in this.

  "What are these things, these chimes?" Cara asked.

  Richard turned away from the others and stared off toward the horizon. He didn't know a lot about them, but what he did know made his hair want to stand on end.

  "Those in the Old World wanted to end magic, much as Jagang does today, and probably for the same reason-so they could more easily rule by the sword. Those in the New World wanted magic to live on. In order to prevail, the wizards on both sides created weapons of inconceivable horror, desperately hoping they would bring the war to an end.

  "Many of those weapons-the mriswith, for example- were created from people by using Subtractive Magic to remove certain attributes from a person, and Additive Magic to put in some other desired ability or quality. Still others, they simply added some ability they wanted.

  "I think dream walkers were such people, people who had a capability added, people who the wizards obviously intended as weapons. Jagang is a descendant of those dream walkers from the great war. Now the weapon is in charge of making war.

  "Unlike Jagang, who only wants to end our magic so he

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  can use his against us, during the great war the people in the Old World truly were trying to end magic. All magic. The chimes were intended to do just that-to steal magic away from the world of life. They were conjured forth from the underworld-the Keeper's world of the dead.

  "As Zedd explained, such a thing conjured from the underworld, once unleashed, not only may end magic but, in so doing, could very well extinguish life itself."

  "He also said he and Ann could take care of it," Kahlan said.

  Richard looked back over his shoulder. "Then why did he lie to us? Why didn't he trust us? If he really can take care of it, why not simply tell us the truth?" He shook his head. "Something more is going on."

  Du Chaillu, long silent, impatiently folded her arms. "Our blade masters will easily cut down these filthy-"

  "Hush!" Richard crossed his finger over her lips. "Don't say another word, Du Chaillu. You don't understand this. You don't know what trouble you might cause."

  When Richard was sure Du Chaillu would remain silent, he turned away from everyone again to stare off toward the clearing skies to the northeast, toward Aydindril. He was tired of arguing; he knew the truth of the chimes being loose. He needed to think what to do about them. There were things he needed to know.

  He remembered that while frantically searching Kolo's journal for other information, he had come across places where Kolo talked about the chimes, among a great many other things. Wizards were continually sending messages and reports back to the Wizard's Keep in Aydindril, not only relaying information concerning the chimes, but also reporting on any number of other frightening and potentially catastrophic events that were taking place.

  Kolo wrote about those communications, at least the ones he found interesting, significant, or curious, but he didn't give complete accounts of them; he would have had no reason to reproduce them in his private journal. Richard doubted Kolo ever intended anyone to read the journals.

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  Kolo's habit was to briefly mention the pertinent information from a message, and then remark on the matter at hand, so the information Richard read on the reports had been frustratingly sketchy-and opinionated.

  Kolo set down more information when he was frightened, seeming almost to use his journal as a way to think through a problem in an effort to find a solution. There was a period of time when he had been very frightened by what the reports were saying in regard to the chimes. In several places Kolo wrote down what he had read in reports, almost as if to justify his fear, to underscore for himself his grounds for concern.

  Richard recalled Kolo mentioning the wizard who had been sent to deal with the chimes: Ander. Somebody Ander-Richard couldn't remember the whole name.

  Wizard Ander proudly bore the cognomen "the Mountain." Apparently, he was big. Kolo didn't like the man, though, and in his private journal often derisively referred to him as "the Moral Molehill." Richard gathered from Kolo's journal that Ander thought a lot of himself.

  Richard clearly remembered at one point Kolo expressing indignation that people were failing to properly apply the Wizard's Fifth Rule: Mind what people do, not only what they say, for deeds will betray a lie.

  Kolo had seemed incensed when he scrawled that by not minding the totality of the actions people were failing to properly apply the Fifth Rule to Wizard Ander. He complained that if they had, they would have easily discovered that the man's true allegiance lay solely with himself, and not with the good of his people.

  "You still have not said what the chimes are," Cara said.

  Richard felt the insistent breeze tug at his hair and his golden cloak, as if urging him onward. To where, he didn't know. Here and there bugs lifted out of the wet spring grass to loop through the air. Far off to the east, backlit by the billowing honeyed storm clouds, the dark dots of geese in an undulating V formation were winging their way north.

  Richard had never given any serious thought to the

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  chimes when the subject came up at the wedding. Zedd had dismissed their concern, and besides, Richard's mind was on other things.

  But later, after the chicken had been killed outside the spirit house, after Juni had been murdered, after the chicken-thing gave him gooseflesh every time it was anywhere near, and after Zedd had filled in some of the details, Richard's rising sense of alarm had caused him to give himself over to recalling everything he could about the chimes. At the time, he had been searching Kolo's journal for solutions to other problems, and hadn't been paying particular attention to the information on the chimes, but nearly constant concentration and occasional trancelike effort had brought back a great deal.

  "The chimes are ancient beings spawned in the underworld. The Grace must be breached to bring them into the world of life. Being from the underworld, they were conjured from the Subtractive side alone, and so create an imbalance once in this world. Magic needs balance. Being totally Subtractive, their mere presence here requires Additive Magic for them to exist in this state, since existence is a form of A
dditive power, and so the chimes drain magic away from this world as long as they're here."

  Cara, never being one with any outward appearance of an aptitude for magic, appeared only more confused than ever by his answer. Richard understood her confusion. He didn't know much about magic, either, and barely had a grasp of what he had just told her. He wasn't even convinced it was accurate.

  "But how do they do that?" she asked.

  "You might think of the world of life as like a barrel of water. The chimes are a hole in that barrel that has just been uncorked, letting the water drain away. Once the water all drains off, the barrel will dry out, the staves will shrink, and it will no longer be the container it once was. You might say it is then a dead shell, only resembling what it once was.

  "The chimes' mere existence here drains magic away from the world of life, like that hole in the barrel, but also,

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  as a way to bring them into this world, they were conjured as creatures. They have a nature of their own. They can kill.

  "Being creatures of magic they have the ability, if they wish, to take on the appearance of the creature they kill- such as a chicken-but they retain all the power of what they truly are. When I shot the chicken with an arrow, the chime fled its phantom form. From the beginning, the real chicken had been lying dead behind the wall; the chime only borrowed its form as a pattern-as a disguise-to taunt us."

  Cara took on the unfamiliar countenance of worry. "You mean to tell me"-she glanced at the people around her- "that anyone here could really be a chime?"

  "From what I gather, they're conjured creatures and have no soul, so they can't take on the appearance of a person- just animals. According to Zedd, the converge is true; Jagang has a soul and so can only enter the mind of a person because a soul is needed.

  "When the wizards created weapons out of people, those things they created still had souls. That was how they could be controlled, at least to some extent. The chimes, once here, could not be governed. That was one of the things that made them so dangerous. It's like trying to reason with lightning."

  "All right"-Cara held up a finger as if making a mental note" for herself-"so it couldn't be a person. That's good." She gestured to the sky. "But could it be that one of those meadowlarks is a chime?"

  Richard glanced up at the yellow-breasted birds flitting past. "I guess so. If it could be a chicken, it surely could kill any animal and take its form. It wouldn't need to, though." Richard pointed at the wet ground. "It could just as easily be hiding in that puddle at your feet. Some apparently have an affinity for water."

  Cara looked down at the puddle and then took a step back.

  "You mean the chime that killed Juni was hiding in the water? Stalking him?"

  Richard glanced briefly at Chandalen and then with a single nod acknowledged his belief that it was so.

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  "Chimes hide, or wait, in dark places," he went on. "They somehow travel along the edges of things, such as cracks in rock, or along the water's edge. I'm assuming so, anyway; the way Kolo put it was that they slip along borders, where this meets that. Some hide in fire, and they can travel on sparks."

  He glanced at Kahlan out of the corner of his eye as he recalled the way the house of the dead-where Juni's body lay-had burst into flame. "When annoyed or angered, they will sometimes burn a place down, just for spite.

  "It was said that some are of such beauty that to see them is to take your breath away-forever. They are only vaguely visible, unless you catch their attention. Kolo's journal made it sound like once the victim sees them, they're partially shaped by the victim's own desire, and that desire is irresistible. That must be how they were able to seduce people to their death.

  "Maybe that's what happened to Juni. Maybe he saw something so beautiful that he abandoned his weapons, his judgment, even his common sense and followed it down into the water where he drowned.

  "Yet others crave attention and like to be worshiped. I guess, because they came from the underworld, they share the Keeper's hunger for veneration. It was said that some even protected those who uncritically revered them, but it's a dangerous balancing act. It lulls them, according to what Kolo said. But if you stop worshiping them, they will turn on you.

  "They enjoy most the hunt, never tiring of it. They hunt people. They are without mercy. They enjoy especially killing with fire.

  "The full translation of their name from High D'Haran roughly means 'the chimes of doom,' or 'the chimes of death.' "

  Du Chaillu was scowlingly silent. The Baka Tau Mana blade masters for the most part managed to continue to look indifferent, aloof, and relaxed, but they had a new restive-

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  ness in their posture that to Richard was inescapable.

  "Either way," Cara said with a sigh, "I think we can grasp the idea."

  Chandalen, listening attentively, finally spoke up. "But you do not believe this, Mother Confessor? You believe what Zedd had to say, that it is not these chimes of death?"

  Kahlan met Richard's gaze before addressing Chandalen. Her tone wasn't harsh.

  "Zedd's explanation of the problem is in many ways similar, and so could just as easily account for what's happened, but being similar, it- would be no less dangerous. The important difference, from what he told us, is that when we get to Aydindril we will be able to halt the trouble. I reluctantly hold Zedd was right. I don't believe it's the chimes."

  "I wish that were the case, I really do, because as you said when we get to Aydindril we could counter it," Richard said. "But it's the chimes. I would guess Zedd simply wanted to get us out of harm's way while he saw to trying to solve the problem of sending the chimes back to the underworld."

  "Lord Rahl is the magic against magic," Cara said to Kahlan. "He would know best about this. He believes it is the chimes, so it must be the chimes."

  Sighing in frustration, Kahlan pushed her long hair back over her shoulder.

  "Richard, you're talking yourself into believing this is the chimes. By talking about it as being true, you're starting to convince Cara, just as you've convinced yourself. Just because you're afraid of it being true, you're giving it more credence than it deserves."

  She was obviously reminding him of the Wizard's First Rule, suggesting that he was believing a lie.

  Richard weighed the fiery determination so evident in her green eyes. He needed her to help him. He couldn't face this alone.

  He finally decided he had no choice. Asking everyone to wait, he put an arm around her shoulders and walked her

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  away so he could be sure the others wouldn't hear.

  He needed her to believe in him. He no longer had any choice.

  He had to tell her.

  C H A P T E R 29

  KAHLAN WENT WILLINGLY AS he walked her off through the wet grass, more content to argue with him alone than in front of everyone else. For Richard's part, he didn't want to tell her what he had to say in front of others.

  Over his shoulder, Richard saw Chandalen's hunters leaning casually on their spears, spears dipped in poison. They looked to lazily wait for Richard and Kahlan to finish their talk and return. He knew there was nothing lazy about them. He could see they were strategically positioned to keep the Baka Tau Mana under guard. This was their land, after all, and despite them knowing Richard, the Baka Tau Mana were outsiders.

  The Baka Tau Mana, for their part, looked completely indifferent to the Mud People hunters. The blade masters spoke a few nonchalant words to one another, looked out at the storm clouds on the horizon, or stretched and yawned.

  Richard had fought Baka Ban Mana blade masters; he knew they were anything but indifferent. They were poised to kill. Having lived a tenuous existence surrounded by en-

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  emies bent on destroying them, their nature, by training, was to be prepared to kill at any moment.

  When Richard had been with Sister Verna and they had first encountered the blade masters, he had asked her i
f they were dangerous. Sister Verna told him that when she was young, she had seen a Baka Ban Mana blade master who had gotten into the garrison in Tanimura kill nearly fifty well-armed soldiers before he was taken down. She said they fought as if they were invincible spirits, and that some people believed they were.

  Richard wouldn't like some small lapse in judgment or misstep in understanding to bring the Mud People and the Baka Tau Mana to a fight. They were all too good at fighting.

  Cara, looking anything but dispassionate, painted them all with her glares.

  Like the three sides of a triangle, the Mud People, the Baka Tau Mana, and Cara were all part of the same struggle. They were all allied to Richard and Kahlan, and to their cause, even though each looked at the world differently. They all valued most of the same things in life. Family, friends, hard work, honesty, duty, loyalty, freedom.