Soul of the Fire

Chapter 28

Despite how valid he thought his reasoning, it didn’t at all look to Richard that Kahlan was convinced. She didn’t even look amenable to reason. What she looked was angry.

“Did you tell Zedd about . . . her?” Kahlan gestured heatedly at Du Chaillu. “Did you? You had to have said something to him.”

He could understand her feelings. He wouldn’t like to discover she had another husband she had neglected to mention—no matter how innocent she might have been—even if it was as tenuous as was his connection with Du Chaillu.

Still, this was about something considerably more important than some convoluted condition that contrived to make Du Chaillu his first wife. It was about something dangerous in the extreme. Kahlan had to understand that. She had to see that they were in a great deal of trouble.

They had already wasted valuable time. He prayed to the good spirits that he could make her see the truth of what he was telling her without having to reveal to her the full extent of why he knew it to be true.

“I told you, Kahlan, I didn’t even remember it until now because at the time I didn’t consider it authentic and so I didn’t realize it could have any bearing on this. Besides, when would I have had time to tell him? Juni died before we had a chance to really talk to him, and then he made up that story about the Lurk and sent us on this fool task.”

“Then how did he know? In order to be tricking us, he would have had to know about it first. How did Zedd know I am in fact your third wife—even if only by some . . .” Her fists tightened. “. . . some stupid old law you artfully forgot?”

Richard threw up his hands. “If it’s raining at night, you don’t have to be able to see the clouds in the dark to know the rain has to be falling from the sky. If Zedd knew the fact of something and knew it was trouble, he wouldn’t worry about the how of it, he would worry about fixing the leak in the roof.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose as she took a breath. “Richard, maybe he really believes what he told us about the Lurk.” Kahlan cast a cool glance at his first wife. “Maybe he believes it because it’s true.”

Richard shook his head. “Kahlan, we have to face it. We make it worse if we ignore the truth and invest hope in a lie. People are already dying.”

“Juni’s death doesn’t prove the chimes are really loose.”

“It’s not just Juni. The chimes’ presence in this world caused that stillborn baby.”

“What!”

In frustration, Kahlan ran her fingers back into her hair. Richard could understand her wishing it to be the Lurk, and not the chimes, because unlike the chimes they had a solution for the Lurk. But wishing didn’t make it so.

“First you forget you already have another wife, now you rush off down some road of fancy. Richard, how could you come to such a conclusion?”

“Because the chimes being in this world somehow destroys magic. The Mud People have magic.”

Though the Mud People were a remote people living a simple life, they were unlike any others; only they had the ability to call their ancestors’ spirits in a gathering and talk to the dead. While they didn’t think of themselves as having magic, only—the Mud People could call an ancestor from beyond that outer circle of the Grace, bringing them across the boundary of the veil and into the inner circle of life, if only for a brief time.

If the Imperial Order won the war, the Mud People, among many others, would eventually all be slaughtered for possessing magic. With the chimes loose, they might not live long enough to face that possibility.

Richard noticed Chandalen, not far off, listening intently. “The Mud People have the unique magical ability of the gathering. Each is born with this ability, this magic. That makes them all vulnerable to the chimes.

“Zedd told us, and I also read it in Kolo’s journal, that the weak are affected first.” Richard’s voice softened with sorrow. “What could be weaker than an unborn child?”

Kahlan, touching the stone of her necklace, looked away from his eyes. She dropped her hand to her side, and looked to be trying to veneer her ire with patient logic.

“I can still feel my power—just as always. As you said, if the chimes were loose, they would be causing the failure of magic. We have no proof that’s happening. If it were true, don’t you think I would know? Do you think me woefully inexperienced in knowing my own power?

“Richard, we can’t leap to conclusions. Newborns die all the time. That is no proof magic is failing.”

Richard turned to Cara. She was standing not far off, listening as she watched the grasslands, the Mud People hunters, and in particular, the Baka Tau Mana.

“Cara, how long has your Agiel been useless?” he asked.

Cara quailed. She could hardly have looked more startled had he unexpectedly slapped her. She opened her mouth, but no words came.

She lifted her chin, thinking better of admitting such defeat. “Lord Rahl, what makes you think—”

“You pulled Chandalen’s knife. I have never before seen you forsake your Agiel in favor of another weapon. No Mord-Sith would. How long, Cara?”

She wet her lips. Her eyes closed in defeat as she turned away.

“In the last few days I have begun to have trouble sensing you. I don’t feel any difference, except I have increasing difficulty sensing your location. At first, I thought it was nothing, but apparently the bond grows weaker by the day. The Agiel is powered by the bond to our Lord Rahl.”

When the Mord-Sith were within a reasonable distance, they always knew precisely where he was by that bond. He imagined it had to be disorienting to suddenly lose that sense.

Cara cleared her throat as she stared off at the distant storm clouds. Tears glistened in her blue eyes.

“The Agiel is dead in my fingers.”

Only a Mord-Sith would anguish over the failure of magic that gave her pain every time she touched it. Such was the nature of these women and their unqualified commitment to duty.

Cara looked back at him, the fire returning to her expression. “But I am still sworn to you and will do what I must to protect you. This changes nothing for the Mord-Sith.”

“And the D’Haran army?” Richard whispered as he considered the spreading extent of their troubles. The D’Haran people were charged to purpose through their bond. “Jagang is coming. Without the army . . .”

The bond was ancient magic he had inherited because he was a gifted Rahl. That bond was created to be protection from the dream walkers. Without it . . .

Even if Kahlan believed it was the Lurk, and not the chimes, Zedd had told them that, too, would cause magic to fail. Richard knew Zedd would have had to make whatever story he invented relate closely to reality in order to fool them.

Either way, Kahlan would understand the rotting fruits of the dying tree of magic. Her reassuring fingers found his arm.

“The army may not feel their bond like before, Richard, but they are bonded to you in other ways. Most in the Midlands follow the Mother Confessor, and they are not bonded to her by any magic. In the same way, soldiers follow you because they believe in you. You have proven yourself to them, and they to you.”

“The Mother Confessor is right,” Cara said. “The army will remain loyal because you are their leader. Their true leader. They believe in you—the same as I.”

Richard let out a long breath. “I appreciate that, Cara, I really do, but—”

“You are the Lord Rahl. You are the magic against magic. We are the steel against steel. It will remain so.”

“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 comfort, 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 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.

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 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 Additive 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, 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.

“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 restiveness 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 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.