Soul of the Fire

Chapter 7

Splashing through the mud, Zedd, Ann, Cara, and Kahlan chased after Richard as he raced out into the passageways between the stuccoed walls of buildings. Kahlan had to squint to see through the downpour. The deluge was so cold it made her gasp.

Hunters, their ever-present protectors, appeared from the sweeping sheets of rain to run along beside them. The buildings flashing by were mostly single-room homes sharing at least one common wall, but sometimes as many as three. Together, they clustered into a complex maze seemingly without design.

Following right, behind Richard, Ann surprised Kahlan with her swift gait. Ann didn’t look a woman designed to run, but she kept up with ease. Zedd’s bony arms pumped a swift and steady cadence. Cara, with her long legs, loped along beside Kahlan. The sprinting hunters ran with effortless grace. At the lead, Richard, his golden cape billowing out behind, was an intimidating sight; compared with the wiry hunters, he was a mountain of a man avalanching through the narrow streets.

Richard followed the meandering passageway a short distance before darting to the right at the first corner. A black and two brown goats thought the rushing procession a curiosity, as did several children in tiny courtyards planted with rapeseed for the chickens. Women gaped from doorways flanked by pots of herbs.

Richard rounded the next corner to the left. At the sight of the charging troop of people, a young woman beneath a small roof swept a crying child into her arms. Holding the little boy’s head to her shoulder, she pressed her back against the door, to be out of the way of the trouble racing her way. The boy wailed as she tried to hush him.

Richard slid to a fluid but abrupt stop, with everyone behind doing their best not to crash into him. The woman’s frightened, wide-eyed gaze flitted among the people suddenly surrounding her as she stood in her doorway.

“What is it?” she asked. “Why do you want us?”

Richard wanted to know what she was saying before she had finished saying it. Kahlan squeezed her way through to the fore of the group. Blood beaded along scratches and ran from cuts on the boy the woman clutched in her arms.

“We heard your son cry out.” With tender fingers, Kahlan stroked the bawling child’s hair. “We thought there was trouble. We were concerned for your boy. We came to help.”

Relieved, the woman let the weight of the boy slip from her hip to the ground. She squatted and pressed a bloodstained wad of cloth to, his cuts as she briefly cooed comfort to calm his panic.

She looked up at the crowd around her. “Ungi is fine. Thank you for your concern, but he was just being a boy. Boys get themselves in trouble.”

Kahlan told the others what the woman had said.

“How did he get all clawed up?” Richard wanted to know.

“Ka chenota,” the woman answered when Kahlan asked Richard’s question.

“A chicken,” Richard said before Kahlan could tell him. Apparently, he had learned that chenota meant chicken in the Mud People’s language. “A chicken attacked your boy? Ka chenota?”

She blinked when Kahlan translated Richard’s question. The woman’s cynical laughter rang out through the drumbeat of the rain. “Attacked by a chicken?” Flipping her hand, she scoffed, as if she had thought for a moment they were serious. “Ungi thinks he is a great hunter. He chases chickens. This time he cornered one, frightening it, and it scratched him trying to get away.”

Richard squatted down before Ungi, giving the boy’s dark fall of wet hair a friendly tousle. “You’ve been chasing chickens? Ka chenota? Teasing them? That isn’t what really happened, is it?”

Instead of interpreting Richard’s questions, Kahlan crouched down on the balls of her feet. “Richard, what’s this about?”

Richard put a comforting hand on the child’s back as his mother wiped at blood running down his chest. “Look at the claw marks,” Richard whispered. “Most are around his neck.”

Kahlan heaved a chafed sigh. “He no doubt tried to pick it up and hold it to himself. The panicked chicken was simply trying to get away.”

Reluctantly, Richard admitted that it could be so.

“This is no great misadventure,” Zedd announced from above. “Let me do a little healing on the boy and then we can get in out of this confounded rain and have something to eat. And I have a lot of questions yet to ask.”

Richard, still squatted down before the boy, held up a finger, stalling Zedd. He looked into Kahlan’s eyes. “Ask him. Please?”

“Tell me why,” Kahlan insisted. “Is this about what the Bird Man said? Is that really what this is about? Richard, the man had been drinking.”

“Look over my shoulder.”

Kahlan peered through the writhing ribbons of rain. Across the narrow passageway, under the dripping grass eaves at the corner of a building, a chicken ruffled its feathers. It was another of the striated Barred Rock breed, as were most of the Mud People’s chickens.

Kahlan was cold and miserable and soaking wet. She was beginning to lose her patience as she once again met Richard’s waiting gaze.

“A chicken trying to stay out of the rain? Is that what you want me to see?”

“I know you think—”

“Richard!” she growled under her breath. “Listen to me.”

She paused, not wanting to be cross with Richard, of all people. She told herself he was simply concerned for their safety. But it was misbegotten concern. Kahlan made herself take a breath. She clasped his shoulder, rubbing with her thumb.

“Richard, you’re just feeling bad because Juni died today. I feel bad, too. But that doesn’t make it sinister. Maybe he just died from the exertion of running; I’ve heard of it happening to young people. You have to recognize that sometimes people die, and we never know the reason.”

Richard glanced up at the others. Zedd and Ann were busying themselves with admiring Ungi’s young muscles in order to avoid what was beginning to sound suspiciously like a lover’s spat at their feet. Cara stood near by, scrutinizing the passageways. One of the hunters offered to let Ungi finger his spear shaft to distract the boy from his mother as she ministered to his wounds.

Looking reluctant to quarrel, Richard wiped back his wet hair. “I think it’s the same chicken I chased out,” he whispered at last. “The one in the window I hit with the stick.”

Kahlan sighed aloud in exasperation. “Richard, most of the Mud People’s chickens look like that one.” She again peered across to the underside of the roof. “Besides, it’s gone.”

Richard looked over his shoulder to see for himself. His gaze swept the empty passageway. “Ask the boy if he was teasing the chicken, chasing it?” Under the small roof over the door, as Ungi’s mother soothed his wounds, she had also been warily watching the conversation she didn’t understand going on at her feet. Kahlan licked the rain from her lips. If it meant this much to Richard, Kahlan decided, she could do no less than ask for him. She touched the boy’s arm.

“Ungi, is it true that you chased the chicken? Did you try to grab it?”

The boy, still sniffling back tears, shook his head. He pointed up at the roof. “It came down on me.” He clawed the air. “It attacked me.”

The mother leaned down and swatted his bottom. “Tell these people the truth. You and your friends chase the chickens all the time.”

His big black eyes blinked at Richard and Kahlan, both down at his level, down in his world. “I am going to be a great hunter, just like my father. He is a brave hunter, with scars from the beasts he hunts.”

Richard smiled at the translation. He gently touched one of the claw cuts. “Here you will have the scar of a hunter, like your brave father. So, you were hunting the chicken, as your mother says? Is that really the truth?”

“I was hungry. I was coming home. The chicken was hunting me,” he insisted. His mother spoke his name in admonition. “Well . . . they perch on the roof there.” He again pointed up at the roof over the door. “Maybe I scared it when I came running home, and it slipped on the wet roof and fell on me.”

The mother opened the door and shoved the boy inside. “Forgive my son. He is young and makes up stories all the time. He chases chickens all the time. This is not the first time he has been scratched by one. Once, a cock’s spur gashed his shoulder. He imagines they are eagles.

“Ungi is a good boy, but he is a boy, and full of stories. When he finds a salamander under a rock, he runs home to show me, to tell me that he found a nest of dragons. He wants his father to come slay them before they can eat us.”

Everyone but Richard chuckled. As she bowed her head and turned to go into her home, Richard gently took a hold of her elbow to halt her while he spoke to Kahlan.

“Tell her I’m sorry her boy was hurt. It wasn’t Ungi’s fault. Tell her that. Tell her I’m sorry.”

Kahlan frowned at Richard’s words. She changed them a little when she translated, lest they be misconstrued.

“We are sorry Ungi was hurt. We hope he is soon well. If not, or if any of the cuts are deep, come tell us and Zedd will use magic to heal your boy.”

The mother nodded and smiled her gratitude before bidding them a good day and ducking through her doorway. Kahlan didn’t think she looked very eager to have magic plied on her son.

After watching the door close, Kahlan gave Richard’s hand a squeeze. “All right? Are you satisfied it wasn’t what you thought? That it was nothing?”

He stared off down the empty passageway a moment. “I just thought . . .” He finally conceded with contrite smile. “I just worry about your safety, that’s all.”

“As long as we’re all wet,” Zedd grumbled, “we might as well go over and see Juni’s body. I’m certainly not going to stand here in the rain if you two are going to start kissing.”

Zedd motioned Richard to lead the way and let him know he meant him to be quick about it. As Richard started out, Zedd hooked Kahlan’s arm and let everyone else pass. He held her back as they slogged on through the mud, allowing the others to gain a little distance on them.

Zedd put an arm around her shoulders and leaned close, even though Kahlan was sure his words wouldn’t be heard over the roar of the rain. “Now, dear one, I want to know what it is you think I wouldn’t believe.”

From the corner of her eye, Kahlan marked his intent expression. He was serious about this. She decided it would be better to put his concern to rest.

“It’s nothing. He had a passing wild idea, but I got him to see reason. He’s over it.”

Zedd narrowed his eyes at her, a disconcerting sight, coming from a wizard. “I know you’re not stupid enough to believe that, so why should you think I am? Hmm? He’s not buried this bone. He’s still got it between his teeth.”

Kahlan checked the others. They were still several strides ahead. Even though Richard was supposed to be leading, Cara, ever protective, had put herself ahead of him.

Although she couldn’t understand the words, Kahlan could tell that Ann was making cheery small talk with Richard. As much as they seemed to nettle each other, when it suited them Zedd and Ann worked together as effortlessly as teeth and tongue.

Zedd’s sticklike fingers tightened on her arm. Richard wasn’t the only one with a bone between his teeth.

Kahlan heaved a sigh and told him. “I suspect that Richard believes there is a chicken monster on the loose.”

Kahlan had covered her nose and mouth against the stench, but dropped her hands to her sides when the two women looked up from their work. Both smiled to the small troop shuffling in the door, shaking off water, looking like they’d fallen in a river.

The two women were working on Juni’s body, decorating it with black-and-white mud designs. They had already woven decorative grass bands around his wrists and ankles and had fixed a leather fillet around his head with grass positioned under it in the manner of hunters going out on a hunt.

Juni was laid out on a mud-brick platform, one of four such raised work areas. Dark stains drooled down the sides of each. A layer of fetid straw covered the floor. When a body was brought in, the straw was kicked up against the base of the platform to absorb draining fluids.

The straw was alive with vermin. When there were no bodies, the door was left open so the chickens could feast on the bugs and keep them down.

Off to the right of the door was the only window. When no one was attending a body, supple deerskin shut out light so the deceased might have peace. The women had pulled the deerskin to the side and hooked it behind a peg in the wall to let the gloomy light seep into the cramped room.

Bodies were not prepared at night, so as not to strain the peace of the soul going over to the other side. Reverence for the departing soul was fundamental to the Mud People; these new spirits might someday be called upon to help their people still living.

Both women were older and smiling as if their sunny nature could not be masked with a somber facade even for such grim work. Kahlan assumed them to be specialists in the task of insuring that the dead were properly adorned before they were laid in the ground.

Kahlan could see the fragrant oils that were rubbed over the body still glistening where the mud was yet to be applied. The oils failed to shroud the gagging stink of the tainted straw and platforms. She didn’t understand why the straw wasn’t changed more often. But then, for all she knew, perhaps it was; there was no escaping the consequence of the process of death and decay.

Probably for that reason the dead were buried quickly—either the day they died or at the latest the next. Juni would not be made to wait long before he was put in the ground. Then his spirit, seeing that all was as it should be, could turn to those of his kind in the spirit world.

Kahlan bent close to the two women. Out of reverence for the dead, she whispered. “Zedd and Ann, here”—she lifted a hand, indicating the two—“would like to look at Juni.”

The women bowed from the waist and stepped back, with a finger hooking their pots of black and white mud off the platform and out of the way. Richard watched as his grandfather and Ann put their hands lightly to Juni, inspecting him, no doubt with magic. While Zedd and Ann conferred in hushed tones as they conducted their examination, Kahlan turned to the two women and told them what a fine job they were doing, and how sorry she was about the young hunter’s death.

Having had enough of looking at his dead guardian, Richard joined her. He slipped an arm around her waist and asked her to relate his sentiments. Kahlan added his words to hers.

It wasn’t long before Zedd and Ann nudged Richard and Kahlan to the side. Smiling, they gestured the women back to their chore.

“As you suspected,” Zedd whispered, “his neck is not broken. I could find no injury to his head. I’d say he drowned.”

“And how do you suppose that could have happened?” A scintilla of sarcasm laced Richard’s voice.

Zedd squeezed Richard’s shoulder. “You were sick once, and you passed out. Remember? There was nothing sinister to it. Did you crack your skull? No. You slumped to the floor, where I found you. Remember? It could be something as simple as that.”

“But Juni showed no signs—”

Everyone turned as the old healer, Nissel, shambled in the door cradling a small bundle in her arms. She paused for an instant at seeing everyone in the small room, before she turned to another of the platforms for the dead. She laid the bundle tenderly on the cold brick. Kahlan put a hand over her heart as she saw Nissel unwrap a newborn baby.

“What happened?” Kahlan asked

“Not the joyous event I expected it would be.” Nissel’s sorrowful eyes met Kahlan’s gaze. “The child was born dead.”

“Dear spirits,” Kahlan whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

Richard brushed a shiny green bug off Kahlan’s shoulder. “What happened to the baby?”

Nissel shrugged when Kahlan spoke his question. “I have watched the mother for months. Everything had seemed to point to a joyous event. I foresaw no problem, but the child was stillborn.”

“How is the mother?”

Nissel’s gaze sank to the floor. “For now she weeps her heart out, but the mother will soon be well.” She forced a smile. “It happens. Not all children are strong enough to live. The woman will have others.”

Richard leaned close after the exchange appeared to be finished. “What did she say?”

Kahlan stamped twice to dislodge a centipede wriggling up her leg. “The baby just wasn’t strong enough, and was stillborn.”

Frowning, he looked over at the heartbreaking death. “Wasn’t strong enough . . .”

Kahlan watched him stare at the small form, still, bloodless, unreal-looking. A new child was a uniquely beautiful entity, but this, lacking the soul its mother had given it so that it might stay in this world, was naked ugliness.

Kahlan asked when Juni would be buried. One of the two women glanced at the small death. “We will need to prepare another. Tomorrow, they will both be put to their eternal rest.”

As they went out the door, Richard turned and looked up into the waterfall of rain. A chicken perched in the low eaves overhead fluffed its feathers. Richard’s gaze lingered a moment.

The reasoning that had been so clearly evident on his face turned to resolution.

Richard peered up the passageway. He whistled as he beckoned with an arm. Their guardian hunters started toward them.

As the hunters were jogging to a halt, Richard grasped Kahlan’s upper arm in his big hand. “Tell them I want them to go get more men. I want them to gather up all the chickens—”

“What!” Kahlan wrenched her arm from his grip. “Richard, I’m not going to ask them that. They’ll think you’ve gone crazy!”

Zedd stuck his head between them. “What’s going on?”

“He wants the men to gather up all the chickens just because one of them is perched above the door.”

“It wasn’t there when we arrived. I looked.”

Zedd turned and squinted up in the rain. “What chicken?”

Kahlan and Richard both looked for themselves. The chicken was gone.

“It probably went searching for a drier roost,” Kahlan growled. “Or one more peaceful.”

Zedd wiped rain from his eyes. “Richard, I want to know what this is about.”

“A chicken was killed outside the spirit house. Juni spat at the honor of whatever killed that chicken. Not long after, Juni died. I threw a stick at the chicken in the window, and not long after, it attacked that little boy. It was my fault Ungi got clawed. I don’t want to make the same mistake again.”

Zedd, to Kahlan’s surprise, spoke calmly. “Richard, you’re bridging some yawning chasms with gossamer reasoning.”

“The Bird Man said one of the chickens wasn’t a chicken.”

Zedd frowned. “Really?”

“He’d been drinking,” Kahlan pointed out.

“Zedd, you named me the Seeker. If you wish to reconsider your choice, then do it now. If not, then let me do my job. If I’m wrong you can all lecture me later.”

Richard took Zedd’s silence for acquiescence and again grasped Kahlan’s arm, if a little more gently than the first time. Conviction ignited his gray eyes.

“Please, Kahlan, do as I ask. If I’m wrong, I’ll look a fool, but I’d rather look a fool than be right and fail to act.”

Whatever had killed the chicken had done it right outside the spirit house, where she had been. That was the skein from which Richard had woven this tapestry of threat. Kahlan believed in Richard, but suspected he was merely getting carried away with concern over protecting her.

“What is it you would have me say to the men?”

“I want the men to gather up the chickens. Take them to the buildings they keep empty for the evil spirits. I want every last chicken herded in there. Then, we can have the Bird Man look at them and tell us which one is not a chicken.

“I want the men to be gentle and courteous as they gather the chickens. Under no circumstances do I want anyone to show disrespect to any of the chickens.”

“Disrespect,” Kahlan repeated. “To a chicken.”

“That’s right.” Richard checked the waiting hunters before locking his gaze on her. “Tell the men I fear one of the chickens is possessed by the evil spirit that killed Juni.”

Kahlan didn’t know if that was what Richard believed, but she knew without doubt that the Mud People would believe it.

She looked to Zedd’s eyes for counsel, but found none. Ann’s visage had no more to offer. Cara was sworn to Richard; although she routinely disregarded orders she thought trifling, were Richard to insist, she would walk off a cliff for him.

Richard would not give up. If Kahlan didn’t translate for him, he would go find Chandalen to do it. Failing that, he would gather up the chickens by himself, if necessary.

The only thing to be accomplished by not doing as he asked would be to display a lack of faith in him. That alone persuaded her.

Shivering in the icy rain, Kahlan took in Richard’s resolute gray eyes one last time before she turned to the waiting hunters.