Soul of the Fire

Chapter 60

Richard was stunned by the sight. The wide thoroughfare was packed with people, nearly all carrying candles, a glowing flood of faces washing up Fairfield’s broad main avenue. They flowed around the trees and benches in the center between the two sides of the road, making them look like treed islands.

It was just turning dark. The afterglow at the horizon in the western sky, behind the peaks of distant mountains showing through a thin gap in the gathering clouds, was a deep purple with a pink blush. Overhead, leaden clouds had been gathering all afternoon. The deep rumble of sporadic thunder could be heard in the distance. The humid air smelled damp while at the same time dust churned up by the hooves of the horses rose to choke the air. Occasionally, there fell an errant drop of rain, fat and ripe with the promise of more to follow.

D’Haran soldiers surrounded Richard, Kahlan, and Du Chaillu in a ring of steel. The mounted men all around them reminded Richard of a boat, floating in the sea of faces. The soldiers skillfully refused to give way without looking like they were forcing people aside. The people ignored them; their attention seemed to be on getting where they were going, or maybe it was just too dark for the people to recognize them, thinking they were part of the Anderith army.

The Baka Tau Mana blade masters had vanished. They did that, sometimes. Richard knew they were simply taking up strategic positions in case of trouble. Du Chaillu yawned. It was the end of a long day of traveling that saw them finally returning to Fairfield.

Richard didn’t like the looks of what he saw, and led everyone with him off the main avenue packed with people to a deserted street not far from the main city square. In the gathering gloom he dismounted. He wanted to get a closer look, but didn’t want people to see him there with all the soldiers. Good as his men were, they were no match for the tens of thousands of people in the streets. A colony of tiny ants, after all, could overpower a lone insect many times their size.

Richard left most of the men behind to wait and watch the horses while he took Kahlan and a few men with him to see what was happening. Du Chaillu didn’t ask if she could come along, she simply did. Jiaan, having scouted the area to his satisfaction and found it reasonably safe, joined them. In the shadows of two-story buildings to either side of a north-south street opening onto the square, they watched unnoticed.

A masonry platform with a squat stone railing across the front sat at the head of the square. From it, public announcements were made. Before they went away, Richard had spoken there to interested, earnest people. Richard and Kahlan had come into Fairfield on their way back, intending to speak again at the square before they went on to the estate. It was urgent to start the tedious task of combing through all the books either by or about Joseph Ander, searching for a key to stopping the chimes, but Richard had wanted to reinforce the positive things he had told these people before.

In the last few days the chimes had grown worse. They seemed to be everywhere. Richard and Kahlan had been able to stop some of their own men, overcome with the irresistible call of death, just before they leaped into fire, or slipped into water. They hadn’t been in time for others. None of them had been getting much sleep.

The gathered multitude started chanting.

“No more war. No more war. No more war.” It was a dull drone, deep and insistent, like the quaking of the distant thunder.

Richard thought it a good sentiment, one he wholeheartedly embraced, but he was disturbed by the anger in people’s eyes, and the tone in their voices as they chanted it. It went on for a time, like thunder booming in from the plains, building, growing.

A man near the platform held up his young girl on his shoulders for the people to see. “She has something to say! Let her speak! Please! Hear my child!”

The crowd called out encouragement. The girl, ten or twelve years old, climbed the steps at the side and, looking determined, marched across the platform to stand at the rail. The crowd quieted to hear her.

“Please, dear Creator, hear our prayers. Keep Lord Rahl from making war,” she said in a voice powered by simplistic adolescent zeal. She looked to her father. He nodded and she went on. “We don’t want his war. Please, dear Creator, make Lord Rahl give peace a chance.”

Richard felt as if an arrow of ice had pierced his heart. He wanted to explain to the child, explain a thousand things, but he knew she would not understand a one of them. Kahlan’s hand on his back was cold comfort.

Another girl, maybe a year or two younger, climbed the steps to join the first. “Please, dear Creator, make Lord Rahl give peace a chance.”

A line was forming, parents bearing children of all ages to the steps. They all had similar messages. Most stepped forward and simply said, “Give peace a chance,” some not seeming to even comprehend the words they spoke before they returned to proud parents.

It was plain to Richard that the children had been practicing the words all day. The words were not the language of children. That hardly softened the hurt, knowing they believed it.

Some of the children were reluctant, some were nervous, but most seemed proud and happy to be part of the great event. By the passion in their voices, he could tell the older ones believed they were speaking profound words that had a chance to alter history, and avert what was, to them, a pointless loss of life, a disaster for nothing of any good.

A young boy asked, “Dear Creator, why does Lord Rahl want to hurt children? Make him give peace a chance.”

The crowd went wild cheering him. At seeing the reaction, he repeated it, and again it was cheered. Many in the crowd were weeping.

Richard and Kahlan shared a look beyond words. It was obvious to them both that this was no spontaneous outpouring of sentiment; this was a groomed and rehearsed message. They had been getting reports of this sort of thing, but to see it made his blood run cold.

A man Richard recognized as a Director named Prevot finally stepped up onto the platform.

“Lord Rahl, Mother Confessor,” the man shouted out over the crowd, “if you could hear me now, I would ask, why would you bring your vile magic to our peace-loving people? Why would you try to drag us into your war, a war we don’t want?

“Listen to the children, for theirs are the words of wisdom!

“There is no reason to resort to conflict before dialogue. If you cared about the lives of innocent children, you would sit down with the Imperial Order and resolve your differences. The Order is willing, why are you not? Could it be you want this war so you might conquer what isn’t yours? So you may enslave those who reject you?

“Listen to the wise words of all these children and please, in the name of all that is good, give peace a chance!”

The crowd took up the chant, “Give peace a chance. Give peace a chance. Give peace a chance.” The man let it go on for a time, and then started in again.

“Our new Sovereign has much work to do for us! We desperately need his guiding hand. Why must Lord Rahl insist on distracting our Sovereign from the work of the people? Why would Lord Rahl put our children at such great peril?

“For his greed!” the man shouted in answer to his own questions. “For his greed!”

Kahlan put a comforting hand on Richard’s shoulder. He felt little comfort. He was watching all his work being consumed by the heat from the flame of lies.

“Dear Creator,” Director Prevot called out, lifting his clasped hands to the sky, “we give thanks for our new Sovereign. A man of peerless talent and unrivaled devotion, the most ethical Sovereign ever to reign over us. Please, dear Creator, give him strength against the wicked ways of Lord Rahl.”

Director Prevot spread his arms. “I ask you, good people, to consider this man from afar. A man who took the Mother Confessor of all the Midlands to be his wife.”

The crowd grumbled in growing displeasure—the Mother Confessor, after all, was their Mother Confessor.

“Yet this man, this man who shouts for all to hear of his moral leadership, of his desire for what is right, already has another wife! Wherever he goes, he takes her, too, fat with his child! Yet as this other wife still carries his unborn child, he marries the Mother Confessor, and drags her with him, too, as his concubine! How many more women will this sinful man take to sire his wicked offspring? How many bastard children has he created here, in Anderith? How many of our women have fallen to his boundless lust?”

The crowd was genuinely shocked. Besides the moral implications, this was a disgrace to the Mother Confessor.

“This other woman proudly admits being Lord Rahl’s wife, and further confirms it to be his child! What kind of man is this?

“Lady Chanboor was so shocked by this uncivilized conduct she took to her bed, weeping, to recover her senses! The Sovereign is beside himself with the scandal of such behavior being brought into Anderith. They both ask that you reject this rutting pig from D’Hara!”

Du Chaillu pulled on Richard’s sleeve. “This is not true. I will go explain it to them, so they may see it is not evil, as this man says. I will explain it.”

Richard put a restraining hand on her. “You’re doing no such thing. These people wouldn’t listen.”

Jiaan spoke in heated words. “Our spirit woman is not a woman who would be immoral. She must explain that she has acted by the law.”

“Jiaan,” Kahlan said, “Richard and I know the truth. You and Du Chaillu and the others with you, you all know the truth. That is what matters. These people have no ears for the truth.

“This is how tyrants win the will of the people: with lies.”

Having seen enough, Richard was about to turn to go when a bright orange whoosh of fire erupted out in the crowd. A candle, presumably, ignited a girl’s dress. She let out a piercing scream. Her hair caught fire.

By the speed of the fire, Richard realized it was no accident.

The chimes were among them.

Not far away, a man’s clothes caught flame. The crowd went into a terrible fright, screaming in fear that Lord Rahl was using magic against them.

It was a frightening, sickening sight, seeing the girl and the man flailing as crackling flames raced up their clothes, the sizzling fire catching as if they had been dunked in pitch, as if the fire were a thing alive.

The crowd scattered in panic, knocking both old and young sprawling. Parents tried to cover the burning girl with a shirt to put out the fire, but it, too, ignited, adding fuel to the conflagration. The burning man crumbled to the ground. He was little more than a dark stick figure in the center of an intense yellow-orange blaze.

As if the good spirits themselves could no longer stand it, the skies opened up in a downpour. The roar of the rain drumming the dry ground covered the roar of the fire and the shouts and cries of the people. Darkness descended as the candles were extinguished by the rain. In the square, two fires continued to burn: the girl and the man. The chimes danced over their flesh in liquid light. There was nothing to be done for the two souls lost.

If Richard didn’t do something, there would be nothing to be done for anyone; the chimes would consume the world of life.

Kahlan pulled Richard away. It required little effort. They ran back through the darkness and rain and gathered up their horses and the rest of the men. Richard, leading his horse by the reins, guided them to a side route through Fairfield.

“The reports were accurate,” Richard said as he leaned toward Kahlan. “It’s clear these people have been turned against us.”

“Fortunately the vote is only a few days off,” Kahlan answered back through the din of rain. “We may lose some people here, but at least we have a chance with the rest of Anderith.”

As they walked their horses through the rain, Richard moved the reins to his other hand and put an arm around Kahlan’s shoulders. “Truth will win out.”

Kahlan didn’t answer.

“The important thing is the chimes,” Du Chaillu said. She looked both saddened and frightened. “Whatever else happens, the chimes must be stopped. I do not want to die again by them. I do not want our child to die by them.

“Whatever happens here, this is only one place. The chimes, though, are everywhere. I do not want to bring my baby into a world with the chimes. There will be no safe place if they are not stopped. That is your true job, Caharin.”

Richard put his arm around her shoulders. “I know. I know. Maybe I can find the thing I need in the library at the estate.”

“The Minister and Sovereign have taken the other side,” Kahlan said. “They may not be interested in allowing us to use the library any longer.”

“We’re using it,” Richard said, “one way, or another.”

He guided them down a street that paralleled the main avenue, a street that once out of the city would turn to join into the main road toward the Minister’s estate. It was on that road, closer to the estate, that their troops were stationed.

Richard noticed Kahlan staring off at something. He followed her gaze in the rain and darkness to a small sign visible in the lamplight coming from a window beneath it.

The sign offered herbs for sale and the services of a midwife.

Du Chaillu was huge. Richard supposed that she must be near to having her baby—whether she wanted it to be born into such a world or not.