2 - Stone of Tears

by Goodkind, Terry

  He stared at the cloth parcel in his hand. 'It is too valuable for a gift. A gift of such great value would bind us to an obligation to you.'

  Then it is not a gift, but my payment, to you and Prindin and Tossidin, for guarding me on this journey. You three are risking your lives to protect me. That is a debt I owe you that is greater than this payment. You will owe me no more obligation.'

  With a frown, he studied the bundle a moment, and then bounced it twice in his hand before tucking it in the buckskin pouch at his waist. He tied the flap closed by its rawhide thong and stood. Then this is in trade for what we do. We owe you no obligation beyond this journey.'

  'None,' she said, sealing the bargain.

  The two of them walked on through the silent streets, past the shops and inns of the old city quarter. Every door, every window, was broken in. Shards of glass sparkled in the sunlight, shimmering tears for the dead. The invading horde had swept through every building, searching out anything alive.

  'How do this many thousands, all living in this one place, find land to feed their families? There could not be enough game to hunt, or fields for all to plant.'

  Kahlan tried to see the city through his eyes. It must be a great puzzle to him. 'They don't all hunt, or plant the land. The people who lived here specialized.'

  'Specialized? What is this?'

  'It means that different people have different jobs. They work at one thing. They use silver or gold to buy the things they need that they don't grow or make themselves.'

  'Where do they get this silver or gold?'

  'People who want the thing they specialize in pay for it with silver or gold.'

  'And where do these others get this silver or gold?'

  'They get it from people who pay them for the things they do.'

  Chandalen looked at her skeptically. 'Why do they not trade? It would be easier to trade.'

  'Well, in a way, it is trading. Often, the person who wants what you have has nothing you want, so they give you money - silver or gold made into flat, round disks called coins -instead. Then you can use the money to buy things you need.'

  'Buy.' Chandalen seemed to test the strange word with his tongue as he looked off down a street to their right while shaking his head in disbelief. 'Why would people work, then?

  Why would they not just go and get this silver or gold money?'

  'Some do. They hunt silver and gold. But that is hard work, too. Gold is hard to find and dig out of the ground. That is why it is used for money: because it is rare. If it were easy to find, like grains of sand, then no one would take it in trade. If money were easy to get, or to make, it would become worthless, and then in the end this system of trade, with worthless money, would fail, and everyone would starve.'

  He came to a halt with a frown. 'What is this money made from? What is this silver or gold you speak of?'

  She didn't stop with him, and he had to take a few bounding steps to catch back up with her. 'Gold is ... The medallion, the necklace, that the Bantak gave as a gift to the Mud People, to show they did not wish to make war, that is made of gold.' Chandalen nodded with a knowing grunt. Kahlan halted this time. 'Do you know where the Bantak got that much gold?'

  Chandalen swept his gaze across the slate rooftops. 'Of course. They got it from us.'

  Kahlan gripped his arm covered with his mantle and pulled him around. 'What do you mean, they got it from you?'

  He tensed at her touch. He didn't like her hand - a Confessor's hand - on him. That the fur mantle separated actual contact of flesh was of no consequence; their flesh was close enough. If she relaxed her restraint of the power, that thin piece of hide would be no impediment; Kahlan had loosed her power through armor before. She released her grip and he visibly relaxed. 'Chandalen, where did the Mud People get that much gold?'

  He looked at her as if she were a child asking where you might find dirt. 'From the holes in the ground. In our land, to the north where it is rocky and nothing much will grow or live, there are holes in the ground. They have this gold in them. It is a bad place. The air is hot and bad. It is said that men die if they stay too long in the ground. The yellow metal is in these deep holes. It is too soft to make good weapons, so it is of no use.'

  He dismissed its importance with a wave of his hand. 'But the Bantak say their ancestors' spirits like the look of the yellow metal, and so we let them come onto our land and go in the holes so they may get it to make things their ancestors' spirits may like to look upon when they come to this world.'

  'Chandalen, do others know of these holes in the ground, of the gold that is in them?'

  He shrugged. 'We do not let outsiders come to our land. But I told you, it is too soft to make weapons with, so it is of no use. It pleases the Bantak, and they are good traders with us, so we let them take what they want. They do not take much, though, because it is a bad place to go into. No one would want to go there, except the Bantak, to please their ancestors' spirits.'

  How could she explain it to him? He didn't understand the ways of the outside world. 'Chandalen, you must never use this gold.' He made a face that said he had already explained how useless it was, and no one would want it. 'You may think it is useless, but others would kill to get it. If people knew you had gold on your land, they would swarm over you to get it. The craving for gold makes men crazy, and they would do anything to get it. They would kill Mud People.'

  Chandalen straightened with a smug expression. He took his hand from the bowstring and tapped his chest. 'I, and my men, protect our people. We would keep the outsiders away.'

  Kahlan swept her arm around, taking in the hundreds upon hundreds of dead around her. 'Against this many? Against thousands?' Chandalen had never seen this many people. He understood little of the numbers that lived outside his lands. Thousands who would never stop coming until they swept you aside?'

  His eyes followed the arc her arm had taken. His brow wrinkled with the frown of a worry unfamiliar to him, his arrogance evaporating as he took in the dead. 'Our ancestors' spirits have warned us not to speak of the holes in the ground with the bad air. We only let the Bantak go there, no one else.'

  'See that it stays that way,' she said. 'Or they will come and steal it.'

  'That would be wrong, to steal from a people.' He put renewed tension to the bowstring as she let out a noisy breath of frustration. 'If I make a bow to trade, everyone knows it is the work of Chandalen, because it is such a fine bow. If anyone steals it, everyone knows what it is and where it came from, and the thief would be caught, and be made to give it back. Maybe he would be sent away from his people. How do these people tell who the money belongs to, if it is taken by a thief?'

  Kahlan's mind reeled from the effort of trying to explain such things to Chandalen. At least it was keeping her from having to think about the dead all about her. She started walking again through the snow, having to step over a man's back because there was no way around, they were fallen so close.

  'It is difficult. Because of this, people guard their money. If anyone is caught stealing, the punishment is severe, to discourage thieving.'

  'How are thieves punished?'

  'If they didn't steal much, and are lucky, they might be locked in a small room until their family can make reparations for what they stole.'

  'Locked? What is this?'

  'A lock is way of barring a door. The stone rooms that thieves are placed in have a door they are not able to open from the inside. It has a lock on it, and you must have a key, the right key, to open it, so they cannot get out.'

  Chandalen checked the side street beyond a silversmith's shop as they continued up the main road. 'I would rather be put to death than be locked in a room.'

  'If the thief stole from the wrong person, or is unlucky, that is what happens to him.'

  Chandalen grunted. She didn't think she was doing a very good job of explaining things to him. He seemed to think the whole scheme unworkable.

  'Our way is better. We make what we wan
t. Everyone makes what they need. This specializing way is not our way. We trade only for a few things. Our way is better.'

  'You do the same as these people, Chandalen. You may not realize it, but you do.'

  'No. Each person knows many things. We teach all our children to know how to do everything they need.'

  'You specialize. You're a hunter, and more than that, you're a protector to your people.' She nodded once again to the dead around her. Some stared back with flat eyes. 'These men were soldiers. They specialized at protecting their people. They gave their lives trying to protect their people. You're the same as they: a soldier. You're strong, you are good with a bow and a spear, and you are good at discovering and preparing to thwart the various ways others would try to harm your people.'

  Chandalen thought this over a moment as he stopped briefly to knock a heavy clump of snow from the binding of his snowshoe. 'But that is only me. Because I am so strong, and wise. Others of my people do not specialize.'

  'Everyone specializes, Chandalen. Nissel, the healer, she specializes at helping sick or injured people. She spends most of her time helping others. How does she feed herself?'

  Those she helps give her what she needs, and if there is no one to help so she can be offered food by them, then others who have enough offer some of theirs so Nissel will be well fed and ready to help us.'

  - 'You see? Those she helps pay her with tava bread, but it's the same thing almost as they do here with money. Because she specializes in a service to the village, everyone helps a little so she will be there for the village when there is need of her. Here, that's called a tax, when everyone pays a little toward the good of the group, to help support those who work for all the people.'

  'Is this how you get your food? The people all give for you, like we do when you come to make trouble for us?'

  She was relieved that for the first time he didn't say it with enmity. 'Yes.'

  Chandalen eyed empty second-floor windows as they walked on among buildings that were becoming larger and more ornate. The double, iron-strap-hinged doors to an inn on their left were broken in, and tables, chairs, pots, dishes, and linen embroidered with red roses - apparently to echo the inn's name, the Red Rose - had been thrown into the street, where they were half covered over with the snow. Through the empty doorway she could see the body of an apron-clad kitchen boy sprawled on the floor, his eyes staring up at the ceiling, frozen with the terror of his last vision. He couldn't have been over twelve.

  'But that is just the hunters, and Nissel,' Chandalen added, after some thought. 'Others of us do not do this specializing.'

  'Everyone does, to some degree. The women bake the tava bread, the men make the weapons. Nature is that way, too. Some plants grow where it is wet, some where it is dry. Some animals eat grass, some leaves, some bugs, and some other animals. Every thing plays its part. Women have the babies, and men ...'

  She halted, fists at her sides, staring at the countless bodies fallen all around her. She swept her arm out.

  'And men, it would seem, are here to kill everything. You see, Chandalen? Women's specialty is to bring forth life, and men's specialty is to take it away.'

  Kahlan clenched her fist against her stomach. She was dangerously close to losing her composure. Nausea swept through her. Her head spun.

  Chandalen stole a glimpse at her from the corner of his eye. 'The Bird Man would say not to judge all by what some do. And women do not make life alone. Men are part of that, too.'

  Kahlan gulped cold air. With a struggle, she started off again, shuffling her snowshoes ahead. Chandalen let her set a quicker pace as he walked beside her. She turned them up a street lined with fine shops. As she moved up and then down a snowdrift, he pointed with his bow, seeming to look for an excuse to change the subject.

  'Why do they have wooden people here?'

  A headless mannequin rested at an angle against a window-sill, tipped halfway out of a shop. The elaborate blue dress the mannequin wore was trimmed with white beads draped in layers about the waist. Glad to have a diversion from the thoughts swirling in her head, Kahlan changed direction a little, toward the mannequin in the blue dress.

  This is a tailor's shop. The people who owned this shop specialized in making clothes. This wooden person is simply a form to display what they make, so others may know the fine work they do. It's a demonstration of pride in their work.'

  She stopped before the large window. All the panes of glass were broken out. A few of the yellow-painted mullions hung crookedly from the top of the frame. The shade of blue of the gorgeous gown reminded Kahlan of her wedding dress. She could feel the blood pounding in the veins of her neck as she swallowed back a cry. Chandalen watched both directions up and down the street as her hand slowly reached out to touch the frozen, blue fabric.

  Her vision focused past the mannequin, into the shop, where a square of sunlight fell across the snow-dusted floor and up and over a low work counter. Her hand faltered. A dead man with a balding head was pinned to the wall by a spear through his chest. A woman lay sprawled facedown over the counter, her dress and underskirts bunched up around her waist, exposing blue flesh. A pair of tailor's scissors jutted from her back.

  In the gloom at the far end of the room stood another mannequin, in a fine man's coat. The front of the dark coat was shredded with hundreds of small cuts. The soldiers had evidently used the mannequin as a target for knife throwing while they waited their turn on the woman. Apparently, when they were finished with her, they stabbed her to death with her scissors.

  Kahlan twisted away from the shop to find herself face-to-face with Chandalen. His was red. There was menace in his eyes.

  'Not all men are the same. I would cut the throat of any man of mine if he did such a thing.'

  Kahlan had no answer for him, and suddenly wasn't in the mood to talk. As she started off again, she loosened the mantle at her neck, needing the feel of cold air.

  In silence, but for the low, baleful moan of the breeze between the buildings, they slogged past stables of horses, their throats all cut, and past inns and grand houses, their cornices high overhead shading them from the bright, slanting sunlight. Fluted, wooden columns to each side of one door had been hacked at with a sword, seemingly for no purpose but to deface the elegance of the home.

  It was colder in the shade, but she didn't care. They stepped over corpses that lay facedown in the snow with wounds in their backs, and around overturned wagons and coaches and dead horses and dead dogs. It all melted into a meaningless madness of destruction.

  Eyes cast to the ground before her, she trudged on through the snow. The cold air bit into her flesh, and she pulled her mantle closed once more. The cold was sapping her of not only warmth, but strength. With grim determination she put one foot in front of the other, continuing on toward her destination, hoping, somehow, that she would never reach it.

  With the frozen dead of Ebinissia all about, she filled her crushing loneliness with a silent prayer.

  Please, dear spirits, keep Richard warm.

  CHAPTER 28

  Naked under the sun's fury, the parched, dead flat ground stretched endlessly before them, in the distance offering up shimmering images to waver and dance in the sun's furnace glare, like phantom hostages surrendered to an omnipotent foe. Behind, the fractured hills ended in a bank of rocky rubble. The silence was as oppressive as the heat.

  Richard wiped sweat from his brow on the back of his sleeve. The leather of his saddle creaked as he shifted his weight while he waited. Bonnie and the other two horses waited, too, their ears pricked ahead, as they occasionally pawed the cracked, dry earth and voiced apprehensive snorts.

  Sister Verna sat motionless atop Jessup, scrutinizing the nothingness of the distance as if viewing an event of great import. Except for the way her brown curls hung limp, she didn't appear to be affected by the heat.

  'I don't understand this weather. It's winter; I've never heard of it being hot like this in winter.'

&n
bsp; 'The weather is different in different places,' she murmured.

  'No it's not. When it's winter, it's cold. It's only hot like this in high summer.'

  'Have you ever seen snow on mountaintops in the summer?'

  Richard reversed the positions of his hands resting on the pommel. 'Yes. But that's just on mountaintops. The air is colder up there. We're not on a mountaintop.'

  Still she did not move. 'Not just mountaintops have different weather. In the south the weather is not so cold as it is in the north. But this place is different still. It's like an inexhaustible well of heat.'

  'And just what is this place?'

  'The Valley of the Lost,' she whispered.