Soul of the Fire

Chapter 9

Kahlan set 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.

She should have listened more receptively, more tenderly. She was his wife. If he couldn’t count on her, then who? No wonder he hadn’t been in the mood to make love to her. But a chicken . . .

Kahlan pushed open the door to be greeted by a sodden gust. Cara had gone to bed. The hunters protecting the spirit house spotted her and rushed over to gather around. All their eyes stared up at her candlelit face floating in the rainy darkness. Their glistening bodies materialized like apparitions whenever lightning crackled.

“Which way did Richard go?” she asked.

The men blinked dumbly.

“Richard,” she repeated. “He is not inside. He left a while ago. Which way did he go?”

One of the men looked at all his fellows, checking, before he spoke. All had given him a shake of their heads.

“We saw no one. It is dark, but still, we would see him if he came out.”

Kahlan sighed. “Maybe not. Richard was a woods guide. The night is his element. He can make himself disappear in the dark the same way you can disappear in the grass.”

The men nodded with this news, not the least bit dubious. “Then he is out here, somewhere, but we do not know where. Sometimes, Richard with the Temper can be like a spirit. He is like no man we have ever seen before.”

Kahlan smiled to herself. Richard was a rare person—the mark of a wizard.

The hunters one time had taken him to shoot arrows, and he had astonished them by ruining all the arrows he shot. He put them in the center of the target, one on top of the other, each splitting apart the one before.

Richard’s gift guided his arrows, though he didn’t believe it; he thought it simply a matter of practice and concentration. “Calling the target” was how he termed it. He said he called the target to him, letting everything else vanish, and when he felt the arrow find that singular spot in the air, he loosed it. He could do it in a blink.

Kahlan had to admit that when he taught her to shoot, she could sometimes feel what he meant. What he had taught her had even once saved her life. Even so, she knew magic was involved.

The hunters had great respect for Richard. Shooting arrows was only part of it. It was hard not to have respect for Richard. If she said he could be invisible, they had no reason to doubt it.

It had almost started out very badly. At the first meeting out on the plains, when Kahlan had brought him to the Mud People, Richard had misunderstood the greeting of a slap, and had clouted Savidlin, one of their leaders. By doing so he had inadvertently honored their strength and made a valuable friend, but had also earned him the name “Richard with the Temper.”

Kahlan wiped rain water from her face. “All right. I want to find him.” She signaled off into the darkness. “Each of you, go a different way. If you find him, tell him I want him. If you don’t see him, meet back here after you have looked in your direction, and we will go off in new places, until we find him.”

They started to object, but she told them she was tired and wanted to get back to bed, and she wanted her new husband with her. She pleaded with them to just please help her, or she would search alone.

It occurred to her that Richard was doing that very thing: searching alone, because no one believed him.

Reluctantly, the men agreed and scattered in different directions, vanishing into the darkness. Without cumbersome boots, they didn’t have the time she did navigating the mud.

Kahlan pulled off her boots and tossed them back by the door to the spirit house. She smiled to herself at having outwitted that much of the mud.

There were any number of women back in Aydindril, from nobility, to officials, to wives of officials, who, if they could have seen the Mother Confessor at that moment, barefoot, ankle-deep in mud, and soaked to the skin, would have fainted.

Kahlan slopped out into the mud, trying to imagine if Richard would have any method to his search. Richard rarely did anything without reason. How would he go about searching the entire village by himself in the dark?

Kahlan reconsidered her first thought, that he was searching for the chicken. Maybe he realized that the things she, Zedd, and Ann said made sense. Maybe he wasn’t looking for a chicken. But then what was he doing out in the middle of the night?

Rain pelted her scalp, running down her neck and back, making her shiver. Her long hair, which she had so laboriously dried and brushed, was now again loaded with water. Her shirt clung to her like a second skin. A miserably cold one.

Where would Richard have gone?

Kahlan paused and held up the candle.

Juni.

Maybe he went to see Juni. She felt a stab of heartache; maybe he had gone to look at the dead baby. He might have wanted to go grieve for both.

That would be something Richard would do. He might have wanted to pray to the good spirits on behalf of the two souls new to the spirit world. Richard would do that.

Kahlan walked under an unseen streamlet of icy cold runoff from a roof, gasping as it caught her in her face, dousing the front of her. She pulled back wet strands of hair and spat some out of her mouth as she moved on. Having to hold up the candle in the frigid rain was numbing her fingers.

She searched carefully in the dark, trying to tell exactly where she was, to confirm she was going the right way. She found a familiar low wall with three herb pots. No one lived anywhere near; they were the herbs grown for the evil spirits housed not far away. She knew the way from there.

A little farther and then around a corner she found the door to the house for the dead. Fumbling with unfeeling fingers, she located the latch. The door, swollen in the rain, stuck enough to squeak. She stepped through the doorway and eased closed the door behind her.

“Richard? Richard, are you in here?”

No answer. She held up the candle. With her other hand she covered her nose against the smell. She could taste the stink on her tongue.

Light from her candle’s little window fell across the platform with the tiny body. She stepped closer, wincing when she felt a hard bug pop under her bare foot, but the tragedy lying there on the platform before her immediately deadened her care.

The sight held her immobilized. Little arms were frozen in space. Legs were stiff, with just an inch of air under the heels. Tiny hands cupped open. Such wee little fingers seemed impossible.

Kahlan felt a lump swell in her throat. She covered her mouth to stifle the unexpected cry for the might-have-been. The poor thing. The poor mother.

Behind, she heard an odd repetitious sound. As she stared at the little lifeless form, she idly tried to make sense of the soft staccato smacking. It paused. It started. It paused again. She absently dismissed it as the drip of water.

Unable to resist, Kahlan reached out. She tenderly settled her finger into the cup of the tiny hand. Her single finger was all the palm would hold. She almost expected the fingers to close around hers. But they didn’t.

She stifled another sob, feeling a tear roll down her cheek. She felt so sorry for the mother. Kahlan had seen so much death, so many bodies, she didn’t know why this one should affect her so, but it did.

She broke down and wept over the unnamed child. In the lonely house for the dead, her heart poured out for this life unlived, this vessel delivered into the world without a soul.

The sound behind at last intruded sufficiently that she turned to see what disturbed her prayer to the good spirits. Kahlan gasped in her sob with a backward cry. There, standing on Juni’s chest, was a chicken. It was pecking out Juni’s eyes.