Kahlan remained silent, not knowing what to say.
“The future of everyone may one day depend on him,” Ann finally said. “We must put that ahead of ourselves. That is why I helped him destroy the palace. That is why I follow the man who has seemingly destroyed my life’s work: because my life’s true work is that man’s fight, not my own narrow interests.”
Kahlan hooked a strand of damp hair behind her ear. “You talk about Richard as if he’s a tool newly forged for your use. He is a man who wants to do what’s right, but he has his own wants and needs, too. His life is his to live, not yours or anyone else’s to plan for him according to what you found in dusty old books.”
“You misunderstand. That is precisely his value: his instincts, his curiosity, his heart.” Ann tapped her temple. “His mind. Our aim is not to direct, but to follow, even if it is painful to tread the path down which he takes us.”
Kahlan knew the truth of that. Richard had destroyed the alliance that had joined the lands of the Midlands for thousands of years. As Mother Confessor, Kahlan presided over the council, and thus the Midlands. Under her watch as Mother Confessor, the Midlands had fallen to Richard, as Lord Rahl of D’Hara. At least the lands which had so far surrendered to him. She knew the benevolence of his actions, and the need for them, but it certainly had been a painful path to follow.
Richard’s bold action, though, was the only way of truly uniting all the lands into one force that had any hope of standing against the tyranny of the Imperial Order. Now, they trod that new path together, hand in hand, united in purpose and resolve.
Kahlan folded her arms again and leaned back against the wall, watching the stupid chickens. “If it is your intent, then, to make me feel guilty for my selfish wishes about my first day with my new husband, you have succeeded. But I can’t help it.”
Ann gently gripped Kahlan’s arm. “No, child, that is not my intent. I understand how Richard’s actions can sometimes be exasperating. I ask only that you be patient and allow him to do as he thinks he must. He is not ignoring you to be contrary, but doing as his nature demands.
“However, his love for you has the power to distract him from what he must do. You must not interfere by asking that he abandon his task when he otherwise would not.”
“I know,” Kahlan sighed. “But chickens—”
“There is something wrong with the magic.”
Kahlan frowned down at the old sorceress. “What do you mean?”
Ann shrugged. “I am not sure. Zedd and I believe we have detected a change in our magic. It is a subtle thing to endeavor to discern. Have you noticed any change in your ability?”
In a cold flash of panic, Kahlan wheeled her thoughts inward. It was hard to imagine a subtle difference in her Confessor’s magic—it simply was. The core of the power within, and her restraint on it, seemed comfortingly familiar. Although…
Kahlan recoiled from that dark curtain of conjecture.
Magic was ethereal enough as it was. Through artifice, a wizard had once gulled her into thinking her power gone, when in fact it had never left her. Believing him had nearly cost Kahlan her life. She survived only because she realized in time that she still had her power and could use it to save herself.
“No. It’s the same,” Kahlan said. “I’ve learned it’s easy to mislead yourself into believing your magic is waning. It’s probably nothing—you’re just worried, that’s all.”
“True enough, but Zedd thinks it would be wise to let Richard do as Richard does. That Richard believes, on his own, without our knowledge of magic, that there is grave trouble of some sort, lends credence to our suspicions. If true, then he is already farther in this than are we. We can but follow.”
Ann returned the gnarled hand to Kahlan’s arm. “I would ask you not to badger him with your understandable desire to have him pay court to you. I ask that you allow him to do what he must do.”
Pay court indeed. Kahlan simply wanted to hold his hand, to hug him, to kiss him, to smile at him and have him smile back.
The next day they needed to return to Aydindril. Soon the thorn of mystery over Juni’s death would be shed for more important concerns. They had Emperor Jagang and the war to worry about. She simply wished she and Richard could have one day to themselves.
“I understand.” Kahlan stared out at the clucking, churning, throng of stupid chickens. “I’ll try not to meddle.”
Ann nodded without joy at having gotten what she wanted.
Outside, in the gloom of nightfall, Cara paced. By her chafed expression, Kahlan guessed Richard had ordered the Mord-Sith to remain behind and guard his new wife. That was the one order inviolate for Cara, the one order even Kahlan could not invalidate for the woman.
“Come on,” Kahlan said as she tramped past Cara. “Let’s go see how Richard is doing in his search.”
Kahlan was discontent to find the miserable rain still coming down. If it wasn’t falling as hard as before, it was just as cold, and it wouldn’t be long before she was just as wet.
“He didn’t go that way,” Cara called out.
Kahlan turned along with Ann to see Cara still standing where she had been pacing.
Kahlan lifted a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the other house for evil spirits. “I thought he wanted to go see the rest of the chickens.”
“He started toward the other two buildings, but changed his mind.” Cara pointed. “He went off in that direction.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t say. He told me to remain here and wait for you.” Cara started out through the rain. “Come. I will take you to him.”
“You know where to find him?” Kahlan realized it was a foolish question before she had finished it.
“Of course. I am bonded to Lord Rahl. I always know where he is.”
Kahlan found it disquieting the way the Mord-Sith could sense Richard’s proximity, like mother hens with a chick. Kahlan was envious, too. She pressed a hand to Ann’s back, urging her along, lest they be left behind in the dark.
“How long have you and Zedd had this suspicion about something being wrong,” Kahlan whispered to the squat sorceress, only implying that she meant what Ann had told her about there being something wrong with the magic.
Ann kept her head bowed, watching where she was walking in the near darkness. “We noticed it first last night. Though it is a difficult thing to quantify, or confirm, we did a few simple tests. They did not conclusively verify our impression. It’s a bit like trying to say if you can see as far as you could yesterday.”
“You telling her about our speculation that our magic might be weakening?”
Kahlan started at the familiar voice suddenly coming from behind.
“Yes,” Ann said over her shoulder as they followed Cara around a corner, sounding as if she wasn’t at all surprised that Zedd had come up behind them. “How was the woman?”
Zedd sighed. “Despondent. I tried to calm and comfort her, but I didn’t seem to have as much luck as I thought I might.”
“Zedd,” Kahlan interrupted, “are you saying you’re sure there is trouble? That’s a serious assertion.”
“Well, no, I’m not asserting anything—”
The three of them bumped into Cara when she halted unexpectedly in the dark. Cara stood stock-still, staring off into rainy nothingness. At last, she growled under her breath and pushed at their shoulders, turning them around.
“Wrong way,” she grumbled. “Back this way.”
Cara pushed and prodded them back to the corner and then led them the other way. It was nearly impossible to see where they were going. Kahlan wiped wet hair from her face. She didn’t see anyone else out in the foul weather. In the whispering rain, with Cara out in front and Zedd and Ann carrying on a hushed conversation several paces behind, Kahlan felt alone and forlorn.
The rain and darkness must have confused Cara perceiving Richard’s location by her bond to him; she had to backtrack several times.
“
How much farther?” Kahlan asked.
“Not far” was all Cara had to offer.
As she slogged through the passageways-turned-quagmire, mud had found its way into Kahlan’s boots. She grimaced at the feel of the cold slime squeezing between her toes with each step. She dearly wished she could wash out her boots. She was cold, wet, tired, and muddy—all because Richard feared there was some stupid evil-spirit-chicken-monster on the loose.
She recalled with longing the warm bath of that morning, and wished she were there again.
Remembering Juni’s death, she reconsidered. There were worse problems than her selfish wish for warmth. If Zedd and Ann were right about the magic…
They reached the open area in the center of the village. The living shadow that was Cara halted. Rain drummed on roofs to run in rills from eaves, spattered mud, and splashed in puddles made of every footstep.
The Mord-Sith lifted an arm and pointed. “There.”
Kahlan squinted, trying to see through the drizzle of rain. She felt Zedd press close at her right and Ann at her left. Cara, off to the side just a bit, with the manifest vision of her bond, watched Richard, while the rest of them scanned the darkness trying to spot what she saw.
It was the diminutive fire that suddenly caught Kahlan’s attention. Petite languid flames licked up into the wet air. That it burned at all was astonishing. It appeared to be a remnant of their wedding bonfire. Impossibly, in the daylong downpour, this tiny refuge of their sacred ceremony survived.
Richard stood before the fire, watching it. Kahlan could just make out his towering contour. The knife edge of his golden cloak lifted in the wind, reflecting sparkles of the miraculous firelight.
She could see raindrops splattering on the toe of his boot as he used it to nudge the fire. The flames grew as high as his knee as he stirred whatever was still burning in all the rain. The wind whipped the flames around in a fiery gambol, red and yellow arms swaying and waving, prancing and fluttering, undulating in a spellbinding dance of hot light amid the cold dark rain.
Richard snuffed the fire.
Kahlan almost cursed him.
“Sentrosi,” he murmured, grinding his boot to smother the embers.
The chill wind lifted a glowing spark upward. Richard tried to snatch it in his fist, but the kernel of radiance, on the wings of a gust, evaded him to disappear into the murky night.
“Bags,” Zedd muttered in a surly voice, “that boy finds a pocket of rock pitch still burning in an old log, and he’s ready to believe the impossible.”
Civility fled Ann’s voice. “We have more important things to do than to entertain the cockamamy conjecture of the uneducated.”
Aggravated and in agreement, Zedd wiped a hand across his face. “It could be a thousand and one things, and he’s settled on the one, because he’s never heard of the other thousand.”
Ann shook a finger up at Zedd. “That boy’s ignorance is—”
“That’s one of the three chimes,” Kahlan said, cutting Ann off. “What does it mean?”
Both Zedd and Ann turned and stared at her, as if they had forgotten she was still there with them.
“It’s not important,” Ann insisted. “The point is we have consequential matters which require attention, and the boy is wasting time worrying about the chimes.”
“What is the meaning of the word—”
Zedd cleared his throat, warning Kahlan not to speak aloud the name of the second chime.
Kahlan’s brow drew down as she leaned toward the old wizard.
“What does it mean?”
“Fire,” he said at last.
9
Kahlan up and rubbed her eyes as thunder boomed outside. The storm sounded rekindled. She squinted, trying to see in the dim light. Richard wasn’t beside her. She didn’t know what time of night it was, but they’d gotten to bed late. She sensed it was the middle of darkness, nowhere near morning. She decided Richard must have gone outside to relieve himself.
Heavy rain against the roof made it sound as if she were under a waterfall. On their first visit, Richard had used the spirit house to teach the Mud People how to make tile roofs that wouldn’t leak in the rain as did their grass roofs, so this was probably the driest structure in the entire village.
People had been enthralled by the idea of roofs that didn’t leak. She imagined it wouldn’t be too many years before the entire village was converted from grass roofs to tile. She, for one, was grateful for the dry sanctuary.
Kahlan hoped Richard was starting to simmer down now that they knew there was nothing sinister in Juni’s death. He’d had his look at every chicken in the village, as had the Bird Man, and neither man had found a chicken that wasn’t a chicken. Or a feathered monster of any sort, for that matter. The issue was settled. In the morning, the men would turn the flocks loose.
Zedd and Ann were not at all happy with Richard. If Richard really believed the burning pitch pocket was a chime—a thing from the underworld—then just what in Creation did he suppose he was going to do with it if he caught it in his fist? Richard hadn’t thought of that, or else kept silent for fear of giving Zedd more reason to think him lacking in good sense.
At least Zedd was not cruel in his lengthy lecturing on some of the innumerable possible causes for recent events. It leaned more toward educating than castigating, though there was a bit of the latter.
Richard Rahl, the Master of the D’Haran empire, the man to whom kings and queens bowed, the man to whom nations had surrendered, stood mute as his grandfather paced back and forth admonishing, preaching, and teaching, at times speaking as First Wizard, at times as Richard’s grandfather, and at times as his friend.
Kahlan knew Richard respected Zedd too much to say anything; if Zedd was disappointed, then so be it.
Before they’d retired for the night, Ann told them she’d received a reply in her journey book. Verna and Warren knew the book Richard had asked about, Mountain’s Twin. Verna wrote that it was a book of prophecy, mostly, but had been in Jagang’s possession. At Nathan’s instructions, she and Warren had destroyed it along with all the other books Nathan named, except The Book of Inversion and Duplex, which Jagang didn’t have.
When they had finally gotten to bed, Richard seemed sullen, or at least distracted with inner thoughts. He was in no mood to make love to her. The truth be known, after the day they’d had, she wasn’t unhappy about it.
Kahlan sighed. Their second night together, and they were in no mood to be intimate. How many times had she ached for the chance to be with him?
Kahlan flopped back down, pressing a hand over her weary eyes. She wished Richard would hurry and come back to bed before she fell asleep. She wanted to kiss him, at least, and tell him she knew he was only doing as he thought best, doing what he thought right, and to tell him she didn’t think him foolish for it. She hadn’t been angry, really—she’d simply wanted to be with him, not out in the rain all day collecting chickens.
She wanted to tell him she loved him.
She turned on her side, toward his missing form, to wait. Her eyelids drooped, and she had to force them open. When she went to put a hand over the blanket where he belonged, she realized he’d put his half of the blanket over her. Why would he do that, if he would be right back?
Kahlan sat up. She rubbed her eyes again. In the dim light from the small fire she saw that his clothes were gone.
It had been a long day. They hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. Why would he be out in the rain in the middle of the night? They needed sleep. In the morning they had to leave. They had to get back to Aydindril.
Morning. They were leaving in the morning. He had until then.
Kahlan growled as she scurried across the floor to their things. He was out looking for proof of some sort. She knew he was. Something to show them he wasn’t being foolish.
She groped through her pack until her fingers found her little candle holder. It had a conical roof so it would stay dry and burn in the rain.
She retrieved a long splinter from beside the hearth, lit it in the fire, and then lit the candle. She closed the little glass door to keep the wind from blowing out the flame. The holder and candle were diminutive and didn’t provide much light, but it was the best she had and better than nothing on a pitch black night in the rain.
Kahlan yanked her damp shirt from the pole Richard had set up beside the fire. The touch of cold wet cloth against her flesh as she poked her arms through the sleeves sent a shuddering ache through her shoulders. She was going to give her new husband a lecture of her own. She would insist he come back to bed and put his arms dutifully around her until she was once again warm. It was his fault she was already shivering. Grimacing, she drew her frigid soggy pants up her bare legs.
What proof could he be going to look for? The chicken?
Drying her hair by the fire, before bed, Kahlan had asked him why he believed he had seen the very same chicken several times. Richard said the dead chicken outside the spirit house that morning had a dark mark on the right side of its upper beak, just below its comb. He said the chicken the Bird Man had pointed out had the same mark.
Richard hadn’t made the connection until later. He said the chicken waiting above the door to where Juni’s body lay had the same mark on the side of its beak. He said none of the chickens in the three buildings had such a mark.
Kahlan pointed out that chickens pecked at the ground all the time and it was raining and muddy, so it was probably dirt. Moreover, dirt and such was probably on the beaks of more than one bird. It simply washed off as they were being carried through the rain to the buildings.
The Mud People were positive they had collected every chicken in the village, so the chicken for which he was searching had to be one of the chickens in the three buildings. Richard had no answer for that.
She asked why this one chicken—risen from the dead—would have been following them around all day. To what purpose? Richard had no answer for that, either.
Kahlan realized she hadn’t been very supportive. She knew Richard was not given to flights of fancy. His persistence wasn’t really bullheaded, nor was it meant to rile her.
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