Soul of the Fire

Chapter 56

“No,” Richard said to Du Chaillu.

She folded her arms in smoldering anger. The way her big round belly stuck out made her pose look almost humorous.

Richard leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “Du Chaillu, can’t you understand I would like to be alone with my—with Kahlan, for just a little while? Please?”

Du Chaillu’s anger faltered. Her frown melted.

“Oh, I see. You want to be intimate with your other wife. This is good. It has been a long time.”

“That’s not—” Richard put his fists on his hips. “And just how would you know, anyway?”

She didn’t answer his question, but smiled. “Well, all right then. If you promise not to take too long.”

He wanted to say it would take as long as it took, but he feared what her answer might be. Richard straightened and said simply, “We promise.”

Captain Meiffert, a big, blond-headed D’Haran officer in charge of the troops sent to escort Richard and Kahlan to Anderith, didn’t like the idea of them being alone any more than did Du Chaillu, but he was more circumspect in expressing his objections. General Reibisch had apparently told the man he could speak his mind to the Lord Rahl, if it was an important matter, without fear of punishment.

“Lord Rahl, we would be too far away to respond should you need us. . . . To help protect the Mother Confessor,” he added as an afterthought, thinking it might sway Richard’s decision.

“Thank you, Captain. There is only this one trail up there. Since no one knew where we were headed, no one could be lying in wait. It isn’t far and we won’t be gone long. You and your men will patrol down here while Kahlan and I go have a look.”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Meiffert said in resignation. He immediately began issuing orders to his men, spreading them out at stations and sending some on scout.

Richard turned to the two messengers who had come from General Reibisch. “Tell the general I’m pleased with the speed he’s making, and I’m pleased to know he believes he can make it before Jagang’s forces arrive. Tell him the same orders he already has are still in effect; I want him to stand off.”

Nearly every day messengers came and went, entering past different Dominie Dirtch at the border so as to be less noticed. Richard had given General Reibisch orders to stay well to the north, well beyond Jagang’s screen of scouts, sentries, and spies. If it came to a fight, surprise was one of the most valuable elements the D’Haran army could possess. The general agreed with that much of it, but was loath to leave Richard with only a thousand men in potentially hostile territory.

Richard had explained, in the letters he’d written the man, that while he understood the general’s concern, they needed to keep his force hidden until and unless they were called. Richard had explained in gruesome detail the horrific and futile death awaiting them at the border if the army tried to breach the Dominie Dirtch. Until they won the agreement of the Anderith people, they dared not approach their border in force.

Moreover, Richard didn’t trust Minister Chanboor. The man’s tongue was too smooth. Truth didn’t wear a tongue smooth; lies did.

The Dominie Dirtch were a spider’s web waiting to claim the careless. The look of easy conquest could be a trap to lure the D’Haran force to their death. More than anything, Richard feared all those brave young men being slaughtered before the Dominie Dirtch. Especially when he knew such sacrifice could accomplish nothing. They would die and the Dominie Dirtch would still stand untouched.

General Reibisch had written back, promising Richard that, once they were in place to the north, they would charge south without pause should Richard call upon them, but he promised to stay put until called.

“Yes, Lord Rahl,” the taller messenger said as he clapped a fist to his heart, “I will tell the general your words.” They both wheeled their horses and trotted off down the road.

Richard checked that his bow and quiver were secure before he climbed into his saddle. Kahlan flashed him her special smile as they turned their horses up the trail. She, too, Richard knew, was relieved to be alone at last, if for only a brief ride up a side trail.

It was wearing to have people constantly around them. When they held hands, eyes took it in. If they did so in front of people while speaking to them, Richard could tell by the looks that it was news that would visit a thousand ears before a few days passed. He knew by the unblinking stares that it would be spoken of for years to come. At least it was a favorable thing for people to gossip about. Better they should talk about the married Lord Rahl and Mother Confessor holding hands than something awful.

Richard watched Kahlan sway in the saddle, spellbound by the taper of her body down to her waist, the flare of her hips. He thought she had just about the most alluring shape he had ever seen. He sometimes found it remarkable to think a woman like that would love him, a man who had grown up in a little place in Hartland.

Richard missed his home. He guessed those feelings had surfaced because the forest trail up the mountain reminded him so much of places he knew. There were hills and mountains to the west of where he grew up, remote places, that were much like the forests and mountains in which they found themselves.

He wished they could return to visit his home in Hartland. He had seen remarkable things since leaving the autumn before, but he guessed none held your heart like the place you grew up.

When the trail passed near a steep decline affording a view, Richard looked off to the northwest, through gaps in the peaks. They were probably closer to where he had grown up than they had been since he left. They had come across those same mountains into the Midlands, through the boundary while it had still been up, at a place called Kings’ Port. It wasn’t very far to the northwest.

Despite how close it might be, because of the weight of his responsibilities, home in Hartland was now a very distant place.

Besides the responsibility of being Lord Rahl and having everyone depending on him, there was Jagang, who, given half a chance, would enslave the New World as he had the Old. People depended on Richard for everything from the bond that protected them from the dream walker, to pulling everyone together into one force to stand against Jagang’s huge armies.

Sometimes, when he thought about it, it seemed he was living someone else’s life. Sometimes he felt like a fraud, as if people were one day going to wake up and say, “Now, wait a minute, this Lord Rahl fellow is just a woods guide named Richard. And we’re listening to him? We’re following him into war?”

And then there were the chimes. Richard and Kahlan were inextricably involved with the chimes. They were responsible for the chimes being in the world of life. Even though it was unintentional, they had brought forth the chimes of death.

In their travels around Anderith to talk to people, they had heard stories of the strange deaths. The chimes were greatly enjoying their visit to the world of life. They were having a marvelous time killing people.

In response to the danger, people had fallen back to old superstitions. In some places people gathered together to pay homage to the evil spirits loosed upon the world. Gifts of food and wine were left in clearings in the woods, or in fallow fields. Some folks thought mankind had violated moral bounds, had become too corrupt, and the avenging spirits had been sent by the Creator to punish the world.

Some people left gifts of stones in the center of roads, and piled yet more rocks at crossroads. No one could explain to Richard exactly why, and were annoyed that he would question the old ways. Some put dead flowers out in front of their door at midnight. Good-luck charms were in great demand.

The chimes killed anyway.

The one thing that made the weight of it all tolerable was Kahlan. She made the effort of the struggle bearable. For her, he would endure anything.

Kahlan raised an arm. “Just up there.”

Richard dismounted with her. Most of the trees were spruce or pine. Richard cast about until he found a young silver-leafed maple and tied the reins of their horses to a low branch. Tying reins to pine or spruce, or worse, a balsam, resulted often as not in sticky reins.

Richard looked up when he heard a snort. Not far off, a horse, its ears perked forward, watched them. Grass hung from each side of its mouth, but it had stopped chewing.

“Well, hello girl,” Richard called. Wary, the horse tossed its head and backed a few steps I to add to its distance. When Richard tried to get closer, it backed away more yet, so he halted. A creamy chestnut, color, the horse had an odd leggy splotch of black on its rump. When Richard called to it again, trying to coax it closer, it turned and ran.

“I wonder what that’s about,” he said to Kahlan. Kahlan held out her hand in invitation. Richard took it. “I don’t know. Maybe someone’s horse has gotten away. It seems to be uninterested in having anything to do with us, though.”

“I suppose,” Richard said as he let her lead him by the hand.

“This is the only way in,” she told him as they walked along the lake shore, around a small clump of spruce.

The clouds had been building all day, threatening thunderstorms. Now, as they walked out onto a nub of rock sticking up at the end of the flat spit of land, the sun emerged between the towering, billowing clouds.

It was a beautiful sight, a shaft of warm sunlight breaking through amber clouds, slanting down between the mountains to touch the still lake. Across the way, water tumbled over a prominence of rock, sending up into the warm air a drifting mist that sparkled in the sunlight above the golden water. Richard took a deep breath, savoring the sweet aroma of woods and lake. It was almost like home.

“This is the place.” She gestured. “Up there, higher up, is the desolate place where the paka plant grows, and the gambit moth lives. These pure waters come from that poisoned area.”

The air shimmered in the afternoon light. “It’s beautiful. I could stay here forever. I almost feel like I should be scouting new trails.”

They stood for a while, hand in hand, savoring the view.

“Richard, I just wanted to tell you that the last couple of weeks as we’ve talked to people . . . I’ve really been proud of you. Proud of the way you’ve shown people hope for the future.

“Whatever happens, I just want you to know that. That I’m proud of the way you’ve handled it.”

He frowned. “You sound like you don’t think we’ll win.”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. What will be will be. People don’t always do what’s right. Sometimes they don’t recognize evil. Sometimes people choose evil because it suits them or because they’re afraid, or because they think they will get something for themselves out of it.

“The most important thing is that we’ve done our best, and you’ve shown people the truth. You put their well-being, their safety, before all else, so if we do triumph, it will be for the right reasons. You’ve given them the chance to prove their heart.”

“We’ll win.” Richard gazed out over the still water. “People will see the truth in it.”

“I hope so.”

He put his arm around her neck and kissed the top of her head. He sighed with the pleasure of the mountain lake, the quiet.

“There are places deep in the mountains to the west of where I grew up that I don’t think anyone but me has ever visited. Places where the water falls from the rocks high overhead, higher than here, and makes rainbows in the afternoon air. And after you swim in the clear pools, you can curl up on the rocks behind the waterfall and watch the world through the falling water.

“I’ve often dreamed of taking you there.”

Kahlan slipped her arm around his waist. “Someday, Richard, we’ll visit your special places.”

As they stood close, watching the waterfall, Richard was reluctant to break the spell of the dream, especially to talk about their purpose, but at last he did.

“So, why is it called the Ovens?”

Kahlan lifted her chin to point. “Behind the waterfall is a cave that’s warm. Sometimes hot, I’m told.”

“I wonder why Joseph Ander mentioned the place?”

Kahlan rested a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe even Joseph Ander appreciated a beautiful place.”

“Maybe,” he mumbled as he searched the scene for a sign of why the wizard would have been interested in this spot. Richard didn’t think much of Joseph Ander’s sensibilities or that he had a keen appreciation of such natural beauty. While the man spoke at length about the beauty of nature, it was always in regard to the orderly makeup of a society.

Richard noted that all the rock of the mountains around them was a peculiar greenish gray, except the rock of the cliff across the lake, where the waterfall was. That rock was darker. Not a lot, but it was definitely different. It had more gray than green in it, probably because the grain of the granite had black flecks, although from the distance, it was hard to tell.

Richard raised his arm, pointing across the lake to the wall from which the water cascaded in a majestic downward arc.

“Look at that rock, and tell me what you think of it.”

Kahlan, her white Mother Confessor’s dress glowing in the sunlight, almost looked like Richard’s dream-image of a good spirit. She blinked at him.

“What do you mean? It’s a rock.”

“I know, but look at it. Tell me what strikes you about it.”

She looked at the cliff and back at him. “It’s a big rock.”

“No, come on, be serious.”

Kahlan sighed and studied the cliff for a time. She looked around at the mountains, especially the nearest to the left a little, the one rising up so prominently from the water’s edge.

“Well,” she said at last, “it’s darker than the rock of the mountains around here.”

“Good. What else strikes you about it?”

She studied the wall a while longer. “It’s an unusual color. I’ve seen it before.”

She suddenly looked up at him. “The Dominie Dirtch.”

Richard smiled. “That’s what I think, too. The Dominie Dirtch have that same shade of color as that rock over there, but none of the mountains around have it.”

Her face screwed up in an incredulous frown. “Are you saying that the Dominie Dirtch were cut from this stone—way up here in the mountains—and hauled all the way down to where they are today?”

Richard shrugged. “Could be, I guess, although I don’t know much about moving stonework on such a large scale. I studied the Dominie Dirtch; they looked to be carved of one piece of rock. They weren’t assembled. At least the one we saw.”

“Then . . . what?”

“Joseph Ander was a wizard, and the wizards of his time were able to do things even Zedd would find astounding. Perhaps Joseph simply used this rock as a starting place.”

“What do you mean? How?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know as much about magic as you—maybe you could tell me. But what if he simply took a small rock from here for each Dominie Dirtch and then when he got to where they are today, made them big.”

“Made them big?”

Richard opened his hands in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. Used magic to make the rock grow, or even used the structure of the grain in the rock as a sort of guide to reproduce it with Additive Magic into the Dominie Dirtch.”

“I was thinking you were going to come up with something silly,” Kahlan said. “That actually makes sense, as far as I know about magic.”

Richard was relieved not to have embarrassed himself. “I think I’ll take a swim over to the cave, and see what’s there.”

“Nothing, from what I learned. Just a hot cave. It doesn’t go in far—maybe twenty feet.”

“Well, I don’t particularly like caves, but I guess it can’t hurt to go have a look.”

Richard pulled off his shirt. He turned to the water.

“Aren’t you going to take off your pants?”

Richard glanced back to see her sly grin.

“I thought I’d wash the smell of horse off them.”

“Oh,” Kahlan said in exaggerated disappointment.

Smiling, Richard turned back to the water to jump in. Just before he could, a raven came screeching down at him. Richard had to leap back lest the big black bird hit him.

Arm extended behind him, Richard backed Kahlan off the rock.

The bird cawed. The loud cry echoed off the mountains. The raven swooped down before them again, narrowly missing Richard’s head. Gaining height, the bird circled. The air whistled through its feathers as it dove at them, driving them back from the water.

“Is that bird crazy?” Kahlan asked. “Maybe it’s protecting a nest? Or do all ravens behave like that?”

Richard had a grip on her arm, ushering her back to the trees. “Ravens are intelligent birds, and they will protect their nest, but they can be odd, too. I fear this one is more than a raven.”

“More? What do you mean?”

The bird settled on a branch and ruffled its glossy black feathers, looking pleased with itself, as ravens were wont to do.

Richard took his shirt when she held it out. “I’d say it’s a chime.”

Even at the distance, the bird seemed to hear him. It flapped its wings, hopping back and forth on the branch, looking quite agitated.

“Remember at the library? The raven outside the window, making such a fuss?”

“Dear spirits,” she breathed in worry. “Do you think this could be the same one? You think it followed us all this way?”

Richard glanced back at her. “What if it’s a chime, and heard us, and came up here to wait for us?”

Kahlan now looked genuinely frightened. “What should we do?”

They reached their horses. Richard yanked his bow off the saddle. He pulled a steel-tipped arrow from the quiver.

“I think I should kill it.”

The instant Richard came out from behind the horse, the bird spotted the bow and leaped—almost flinched—into the air with a loud squawk, as if it hadn’t expected him to resort to a weapon.

When Richard nocked the arrow, the bird took wing, fleeing with frantic calls and screeches.

“Well,” Richard murmured, “wasn’t that weird.”

“At least we now know it was a chime. The one you shot back at the Mud People’s village—the chicken that wasn’t a chicken—must have let the other chimes know.”

Perplexed, Richard shook his head. “I guess.”

“Richard, I don’t want you swimming that lake. There could be chimes waiting in it. It would be foolish to swim when the chimes are loose.”

“But they seem afraid of me.”

She put her hand on the side of his neck to keep his gaze.

“What if they’re just lulling you into overconfidence, and want to get you out into the middle of deep water? Can you imagine? Zedd told us to stay away from water.”

She rubbed her arms, looking suddenly chilled.

“Richard, please, let’s get out of here? There’s something about this place . . .”

Richard threw on his shirt and then drew her close.

“I think you’re right. There’s no need to push our luck, not after a run-in with that raven-that-isn’t-a-raven. Besides, Du Chaillu would be so angry we got killed she’d have her baby before it was time.”

Kahlan clutched his shirt in her fists. She had a suddenly stricken look. “Richard . . . do you think we could . . .”

“Could what?”

She released his shirt and patted his chest. “Could get out of here.”

“I think we should.”

They rushed back, both now eager to be away from the lake. He helped her up onto her horse. “I think we found what we came for, anyway—the rock the Dominie Dirtch was made from. I think that we need to change our plans.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think we better get back to Fairfield and look through all those books again, in the light of what we now know.”

“But what about the vote? The places we’ve yet to visit?”

“We were going to have to divide up the men anyway and send them out to watch over the voting and counting and then return the results to Fairfield. We can send them now and have the men speak to the people in each place first. There are men among them I would trust to speak for us. They’ve heard what we’ve had to say enough times.

“We might as well divide them up here and get them on their way while we get back to the estate. Besides, we wouldn’t do wrong to see to making sure we convince all the people in Fairfield to vote to join us.”

Kahlan nodded. “Our first responsibility is the chimes. It won’t do us any good to win the vote if the chimes kill everyone.”

Richard’s eye was caught by something. He swung down from his saddle and tossed Kahlan the reins to his horse. He crossed the grass back to the clump of spruce.

“What is it?” Kahlan called, eager to be off.

Richard lifted a drying bough. “A saddle. Someone’s left their things here, and covered them to keep them dry.”

“Probably from that horse we saw,” she said.

“Maybe it belongs to a trapper, or something,” Richard said. “But it looks to have been here for a while.”

“Well, unless you plan on stealing somebody’s things, Richard, let’s get out of here.”

When the raven let out a call, Richard hurried back to his horse. “Just seems strange, that’s all.”

As they started down the trail, Richard looked over his shoulder. He saw several ravens circling far up in the sky. He didn’t know which one was the raven-that-wasn’t-a-raven. Maybe they all were.

He took his bow from its place on the saddle and hooked it over his shoulder instead.