Temple of the Winds

Chapter 42

Kahlan watched the witch woman disappear back into the gloomy forest. Vines hanging down from craggy branches reached out to touch their mistress as she passed, while tendrils and roots stretched up to brush her leg. She vanished into a shroud of mist. Unseen creatures called in low whistles and clicks from the direction she had gone.

Kahlan turned back to the moss-covered boulder Shota had shown her and, just beyond, found the sliph’s well. The silver face of the sliph rose from beyond the round, stone wall, to watch as Kahlan approached. Kahlan almost wished the sliph hadn’t come, as if somehow, if Kahlan couldn’t get back, none of the things she had learned would come to pass.

How was she going to look into Richard’s eyes and not scream in anguish? How was she ever going to be able to go on? How would she find the will to live?

“Do you wish to travel?” the sliph asked.

“No, but I must.”

The sliph frowned, as if well puzzled. “If you wish to travel, I will be ready.”

Kahlan sank to the ground, put her back to the sliph’s well, and folded her legs under herself. Was she to give up this easily? Was she to submit meekly to the fates? She didn’t have a choice. Think of the solution, not the problem.

Somehow, things didn’t seem as desperate as they had back in the reach. There had to be a way to solve this. Richard would not so easily give in. He would fight for her. She would fight for him. They loved each other, and that was more important than anything else.

Kahlan’s mind felt as if it were in a fog. She tried to focus with more resolve. She couldn’t just give up. She had to face this with her old determination.

She knew that witch women bewitched people. They didn’t necessarily do it out of malice; it was just the way they were. It was like a person not being able to help the fact that they were tall, or short, or the color of their hair. Witch women bewitched people because that was the way their magic worked.

Shota had bewitched Richard, to an extent. Only the magic of the Sword of Truth saved him the first time. The Sword of Truth.

Richard was the Seeker. This was the kind of thing a Seeker did: solved problems. She was in love with the Seeker. He would not so easily give up.

Kahlan plucked a leaf and tore little strips from it as she began to reconsider everything she had been told by Shota. How much of it dare she believe? It was all beginning to seem like a dream, from which she was just coming awake. Matters could not possibly be as desperate as she had thought. Her father had told her never to give up, to fight with every breath, with the last breath if need be. Nor would Richard give in easily. This wasn’t ended yet. The future was still the future, and despite what Shota said, the matter was not yet decided.

Something at her shoulder was bothering her. As she thought, she flicked her hand at it, and then went back to tearing strips off the big leaf. There had to be a way to solve this.

When she swatted at her shoulder again, her fingers hit the bone knife. It felt warm.

Kahlan drew the knife and held it in her lap. The knife was warm. It seemed to pulse and vibrate. It grew so hot that it became uncomfortable to hold.

Kahlan watched, wide-eyed, as the black feathers stood up. They danced and waved and twisted in a breeze. Her hair hung limp. The air was dead still. There was no breeze.

Kahlan shot to her feet. “Sliph!”

The sliph’s silver face was right there, close.

Kahlan backed away a bit. “Sliph, I need to travel.”

“Come, we will travel. Where do you wish to go?”

“The Mud People. I need to go to the Mud People.”

The liquid features contorted in thought. “I do not know this place.”

“It’s not a place. They’re people. People—” Kahlan tapped her chest—“they’re people, like me.”

“I know different peoples, but not these Mud People.”

Kahlan pushed back her hair, trying to think. “They live in the wilds.”

“I know places in the wilds. Which one do you wish to travel to? Name it, and we will travel. You will be pleased.”

“Well, it’s a place that’s flat. It’s a grassland. Flat grassland. No mountains, like here.” Kahlan gestured around, but realized that the sliph could see only trees.

“I know several places like that.”

“Which places? Maybe I’ll recognize them.”

“I can travel to a place overlooking the Callisidrin River—”

“To the west of the Callisidrin. The Mud People are farther west.”

“I can travel to Tondelen Vale, the Harja Rift, Kea Plains, Sealan, Herkon Split, Anderith, Pickton, the Jocopo Treasure—”

“The what? What was the last one?”

She knew most of the rest of the places the sliph named, but they weren’t close to the Mud People.

“The Jocopo Treasure. Do you wish to travel there?”

Kahlan held out the warm bone knife-grandfather’s knife. Chandalen had told her how the Jocopo had made war on the Mud People, and the ancestor spirits had guided Chandalen’s grandfather in how to defend his people against the Jocopo. Chandalen had said they used to trade with the Jocopo, before their war. The Jocopo had to be close to the Mud People.

“Say the last place again,” Kahlan said.

“The Jocopo Treasure.”

At the echoing words, the black feathers danced and twisted. Kahlan shoved the bone knife back in the band around her upper arm. She sprang up onto the stone wall.

“That’s where I wish to go: the Jocopo Treasure. I wish to travel to the Jocopo Treasure. Can you take me there, sliph?”

A silver arm swept her off the stone wall. “Come. We will travel to the Jocopo Treasure. You will be pleased.”

Kahlan gasped one quick breath before she was plunged into the quicksilver froth. She let the breath go, and inhaled the sliph, but this time, numbed by troubling thoughts of losing Richard, of his marrying Nadine, she felt no rapture.

Zedd cackled like a madman. Ann was upside down in his vision. He stuck out his tongue at her and blew, making a long, crude sound.

“You needn’t attempt to pretend,” she growled. “It seems to be your natural state.”

Zedd moved his legs as if trying to walk upside down through the air. The blood was rushing to his head.

“Do you wish to die with your dignity?” he asked her. “Or would you rather live?”

“I’ll not play a fool.”

“That’s the word-play! Don’t just sit there in the mud. Play in it!”

She leaned over, putting her head close to his. He was standing on it in the mud.

“Zedd, you can’t possibly think such a thing would work.”

“You said it yourself. You are mucking about with a crazy man. It was your suggestion.”

“I suggested no such thing!”

“Perhaps you didn’t suggest it, but you were the one who gave me the inspiration. I’ll be happy to give you full credit, when we tell people the story.”

“Tell people! In the first place, it won’t work. In the second place, I realize full well that you would be only too delighted to tell people. That’s just one more reason why I won’t do it.”

Zedd howled like a coyote. He stiffened his legs and his spine, letting himself topple like a felled tree. Mud splashed on Ann. Fuming, she wiped a small splat from her nose.

At the tall stick fence, grim-faced Nangtong guards watched the two prisoners, the two sacrifices. Zedd and Ann had sat in the mud with their backs to one another and untied the ropes binding their wrists. The guards, armed with spears and bows, didn’t seem to care; the prisoners couldn’t get away. Zedd knew they were right.

Happy people had begun to stop by the pigpen at dawn. As the morning wore on, the crowd grew as more people stopped by to chatter with the guards and take a look at the fine offerings. Apparently, everyone was in a good mood because they now had a sacrifice for the spirits. Their lives would be safe after the unhappy spirits were appeased.

The guards and the people of the Nangtong village, watching from the other side of the fence, were now looking less pleased. They fidgeted with the cloth covering their faces, making sure it hid enough, and that it was secure. The guards began wiping more ash on their faces and bodies. Apparently, one couldn’t be too careful, lest the spirits recognize them.

Zedd tucked his head down between his knees and rolled himself through the wet, sticky slop. He laughed maniacally as he rolled in a circle around Ann’s squat figure sitting on the cold ground.

“Would you stop that!”

Zedd spread supine in the mud before her. He swept his rigid arms and legs through the mud.

“Ann,” he said in a low tone, “we have important business. I think we might have better success if we attempt to carry out those tasks in this world, rather than in the underworld, after we are dead.”

“I know we can’t help if we’re dead.”

“It would stand to reason, then, that we need to get away, now, wouldn’t it?”

“Of course it would,” she grumbled. “But I don’t think—”

Zedd plopped himself down in her lap. She winced in disgust. Her nose wrinkled when he rested his muddy arms around her neck.

“Ann, if we do nothing, we die. If we try to fight these people, we will die. Without the use of our magic, we can’t escape them. Our only option is to convince them to let us go. We can’t speak their language, and even if we could, I doubt we would be able to persuade them.”

“Yes, but—”

“We have only one chance, as I see it. We must convince them that we are quite loony. This sacrifice is a sacred service to their spirit ancestors. Look at the guards behind my back. Do they look happy?”

“Well, no.”

“If they believe that we’re crazy, then they just might think twice before sacrificing us to their spirits. Wouldn’t the spirits be insulted to receive a lunatic as a sacrifice? Wouldn’t that be disrespectful? We have to make them fear insulting their spirits with two loony people.”

“But that’s . . . crazy.”

“Look at it this way. A sacrifice is something like a treaty wedding between two peoples. The bride is the sacrifice of one people to another, in the flesh of the new husband, all in the hope for a peaceful and productive future. The bride’s new people treat her with respect. The bride’s people treat the husband and his people with respect. It’s all an arrangement symbolizing unity, continuity, and hope for the future.

“We are like the bride, being offered to the spirits. How would it look if the Nangtong offered an unworthy, demented bride? If you were one of the spirits, wouldn’t you be offended?”

“If I got you in the bargain, I would be.”

Zedd howled at the sky. Ann winced and pulled away from him.

“It’s our only chance, Ann.” He leaned close, whispering in her ear. “I swear an oath as First Wizard that I will never tell anyone how you behaved.”

He drew back and grinned at her. “Besides, it’s fun. Remember how much fun it was as a child to play outside? To play in the mud? Why, it was the grandest of things.”

“But it might not work.”

“Even if it doesn’t, wouldn’t you rather die having fun on the last day of your life, instead of sitting here, afraid and cold and dirty? Wouldn’t you rather have some childlike fun one last time? Let yourself go, Prelate, and recall what it was to be a child. Let yourself do anything that comes into your head. Have fun. Be a child.”

With a serious expression, Ann considered his words. “You won’t tell anyone?”

“You have my word. You can act with childish glee, and no one but I will ever know—and the Nangtong, of course.”

“Another of your acts of desperation, Zedd?”

“The time for desperation is upon us. Let’s play.”

Ann smiled a sly smile. She stiff-armed him in the chest, knocking him back into the mud. With a riot of laughter, she leaped on top of him.

They wrestled like children, rolling through the slop. After a half dozen turns, Ann was a mud monster with arms, legs, and two eyes. The mud split, revealing a pink mouth as she howled with him at the sky.

They made mudballs and used the pigs as targets. They chased the pigs. They flopped onto the hard, round backs of the squealing creatures, riding them around until they were tossed off into the mud. Zedd doubted that Ann had ever been this dirty in her nine centuries of life.

He realized, while they were having a one-legged game of tag that involved more falling in the mud than hopping progress, that her laughter had changed.

Ann was having fun.

They stomped through puddles. They chased the pigs. They ran around the enclosure rattling sticks against the fence.

And then they hit upon the idea of making faces at the guards. They drew whimsical expressions on each other’s faces in mud. They made every rude noise they could think of. They jumped and laughed and pointed at the solemn guards.

Ann and Zedd got to laughing so hard that they couldn’t stand, and like two drunks, they rolled on the ground, holding their sides.

The crowd grew. Worried whispers swept through the onlookers.

Ann stuck her thumbs in her ears and wiggled her fingers as she made faces at them. Zedd stood on his head and sang a few lewd ballads he knew. Ann laughed hysterically as he mispronounced key words.

Zedd fell to laughing, and then fell in the mud, and then Ann fell on him. She sat on his stomach, pinning him to the ground as she tickled him under his arms, while he gasped for breath between laughter and tickled her ribs. The two of them had never had so much fun. The pigs cowered in the corner.

Suddenly, buckets of water were dumped over the both of them as they were furiously engaged in trying to find each other’s most ticklish spots. They looked up. More water rained down on them.

As fast as the mud was washed off them, they dived back into it. Ash-covered guards seized them by the arms and held them at spearpoint while they were once again washed off. Zedd peered over at Ann. She peered back. She looked ridiculous, her face emerging from streamers of slop. He giggled and made a face at her. She giggled and made a face back. The men yelled.

Zedd’s cheeks puffed with attempts to halt his laughing. The guards shoved them forward, spears poking in their backs. It reminded him of being tickled, and they both laughed.

It was as if once uncorked, the laughter had a life of its own. If they were to be sacrificed, what difference did it make? They might as well have the last laugh.

The crowd of shrouded figures parted as the two prisoners were led out of the pigs’ pen.

Giggling, Zedd held his arm high and waved. “Wave at the people, Annie.”

She made faces instead. Zedd liked the idea and imitated her. People shrank back, as if seeing a horrifying sight. Some of the women wept and wailed. Zedd and Ann laughed and pointed at them as the women ran from the crowd, seeking refuge from the lunatics.

The tents and onlookers were soon left behind as their captors prodded them on with spears. Before long, the two dirty, smelly, happy sacrifices were out in the hills. Thirty-five or forty Nangtong spirit hunters, all holding ready spears or bows, followed behind. Zedd noticed that some of them had brought packs and provisions.

First Wizard Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander and Prelate Annalina Aldurren skipped along ahead of the spears, laughing and making outrageous, ever-increasing claims as to how many onions they could eat without producing tears.

Zedd hadn’t a clue where they were going, but it was a fine morning to be going there, wherever it was.

“It’s kind of funny, Lord Rahl,” Lieutenant Crawford said.

Richard gazed out over the boulder field. “What’s funny about it?”

The lieutenant bent his head back to peer up the cliff. “Well, I meant it’s odd. I grew up in rugged mountains, so I’ve seen places like these mountains my whole life, but this place is odd.” He turned and pointed. “See that mountain over there? You can see where the rockslide came from.”

Richard put a hand over his brow to shield his eyes from the low afternoon sun. The mountain the lieutenant was pointing to was rugged and covered with trees, except for the uppermost reaches. On the steep side facing them, a part of it had given way, leaving naked rock to scar the mountain where the rock had broken off. At the bottom of the barren scar lay a boulder field.

“What about it?”

“Well, look at all the rock at the bottom. That’s the portion that broke off the face of the mountain.” He gestured to the boulder field they stood atop. “This isn’t the same.”

Another soldier approached and saluted with a fist to his heart. He cast a wary glance at Ulic and Egan, who were standing with their arms folded, while he waited silently.

“Nothing, Lord Rahl,” he said when Richard acknowledged him. “Not so much as a flake of rock that’s been worked with tools.”

“Keep looking. Try the outer fringes of the boulder field. Look for places where you can crawl down under some of the larger boulders and check under there, too.”

The soldier saluted and hurried off. There wasn’t much of the day left. Richard had told them that he didn’t want to stay the next day. He wanted to get back to Aydindril. Kahlan would probably be back that night, or possibly tomorrow. He wanted to be there. If she came back. If she was still alive.

He broke out in a sweat at the very thought. His knees felt weak. He banished the thought. She would be back. That was all there was to it. She would be back. He made himself quit thinking about it, and put his mind to the problem at hand.

“So what do you think, lieutenant?”

Lieutenant Crawford pitched a stone, watching it bounce first off one boulder, and then another. The sharp sound echoed off the cliff behind them.

“It could be that the face of this mountain broke off much longer ago. Then, over all that time, things started growing in, dying, making soil for larger things to grow, and then they died, making yet more soil. It could be that it’s been covered over.”

Richard knew what Lieutenant Crawford was talking about. He knew how a forest, in time, could cover over rockslides. If you dug in the forest at the bottom of a cliff, you often encountered the bones of the fallen mountain. “I don’t think so, in this case.”

The lieutenant looked over at him.

“May I ask why you think not, Lord Rahl?”

Richard stared across the rift to the next mountain.

“Well, look at that cliff. The face of it is rough and uneven, yet the rock of the mountain left behind after the face fell away is weathered now, so much of it isn’t sharp. It’s been worn by time.

“Some of it is sharp, though. Water gets in the cracks, freezes, and breaks off more of the rock with time. You can see some of those sharp places; but most of it has a softer look.

“It has the look to me that it happened long before this slide here, yet you can still see most of the rock lying at the bottom of the cliff. Here, there’s much less scree.”

Egan unfolded his arms and brushed back his blond hair. “Could just be the lay of the land. This cliff faces south, letting the sun in to help things grow, whereas that one faces north, so it’s in shade most of the time. The forest wouldn’t grow in as well over there, and that would leave the scree exposed.”

Egan had a point.

“There’s more to it.” Richard tilted his head back and looked up the thousands of feet of sheer cliff face towering above them. “Half this mountain is gone. That one over there is just a small slide, in comparison.

“Look up at this mountain, and try to imagine what it would have looked like before this happened. It’s cleaved from the very top all the way down, like a log round split in half. All the rest of the mountains around here are more or less cone-shaped. This one is only half a cone.

“Even if I’m wrong, and half the mountain isn’t gone, and it used to be shaped much as we see it now, there would still be an immense amount of rock down here. I mean, even if it used to be much this shape, and only a shell of rock ten or twenty feet thick collapsed, by the towering height alone there would have to be a huge pile of rubble.

“This rock is sharp, so it might be pieces broken off by the working of water freezing, but probably, since I can’t see any time-worn places, it happened more recently. Yet I just don’t see any evidence of the mass of rock that would have had to come off this mountain. Even if it had been covered over in time. I’d think that where we’re standing would be a huge mound.”

The lieutenant glanced about. “You have a point. This is pretty much level with the bottom of the rift. If all that rock broke off, there’s no mound under the forest down here.”

Richard watched the soldiers all about searching through the rock and woods for any sign of the Temple of the Winds. None looked to be finding anything.

“I can’t see that it’s down here. I just don’t see any reason to believe that the mountain fell down here.”

Ulic and Egan folded their arms again, the matter settled as far as they were concerned.

Lieutenant Crawford cleared his throat. “Lord Rahl, if the half of Mount Kymermosst that used to be there isn’t down here, then where is it?”

Richard shared a long look with the man. “That’s what I’d like to know. If it isn’t down here, then it must be someplace else.”

The blond-headed lieutenant shifted his weight to his other foot. “Well, it didn’t just get up and walk away, Lord Rahl.”

Richard turned his scabbard out of the way as he started climbing down off the rocks. He realized he was frightening the man; Richard seemed to be suggesting something that hinted at magic.

“It must be as you say, lieutenant. It must have fallen and grown over. Perhaps the cleft between the mountains was deeper back then, and the fall simply filled it in, rather than making a mound.”

The lieutenant liked the idea. It gave him a rock solid reality. Richard didn’t believe it. The cliff face looked peculiar to him. It was too smooth, as if cleaved with a huge sword. Yes, there were jagged places, but that would explain the rock that was at the bottom. It looked to him as though the mountain had been cut off and taken away, and over time water and ice had worked at the smooth face of the cliff, breaking off pieces and making it more craggy; but it was nowhere near as rough as the other cliffs round about.

“That might explain it, Lord Rahl,” the lieutenant said. “If that’s true, though, that would mean that the temple you’re looking for must be buried deep underground.”

With his two huge guards right at his heels, Richard made for the horses. “I want to have a look up on top. I want to see the ruins up there.”

Their guide, a middle-aged man named Andy Millett, was waiting with the horses. He wore simple wool clothes of browns and greens, much like Richard used to wear. His shaggy brown hair hung past his ears. Andy was immensely proud that Lord Rahl had asked him to guide them to Mount Kymermosst. Richard felt a bit sheepish about that; Andy was simply the first person Richard found who knew where it was.

“Andy, I’d like to go up to the ruins on top.”

Andy handed Richard the reins to the big roan. “Sure enough, Lord Rahl. There’s not much up there, but I’d be glad to show you, just the same.”

Big as his two guards were, they mounted lightly, their horses hardly moving under the sudden weight. Richard swung up into the saddle and wiggled his right boot into the stirrup.

“Can we get up there before dark? Most of that spring snowstorm is melted. The trail should be open.”

Andy glanced at the sun, which was just about touching a mountain. “With the way you ride, Lord Rahl, I’d say long before. Usually, important people slow me down. I think I’m the one slowing you down.”

Richard smiled. He remembered the same thing himself. The more important the person he guided, the slower they went, it seemed.

The sky was streaked with golds and reds by the time they reached the ruins. The surrounding mountains were cast in deep shadow. The ruins seemed to glow in the honeyed light.

There were some once elegant structures, now crumbling, that looked to have been a part of a larger place, just as Kahlan had said. Here and there on the barren mountaintop, parts of walls still stood, their stones not covered by vine and wood, as they would have been down below, but covered with a rust of lichens instead. Richard dismounted and handed his reins to Lieutenant Crawford. The building to the left of the broad road was large by any standards Richard had grown up with, but compared to castles and palaces he had seen since, it was an insignificant structure.

The doorway stood empty. Crumbling evidence of a doorframe remained, still partly covered with gold leaf. Inside, the walls echoed with his footsteps. A stone bench sat in one room of the roofless building. In another room a stone fountain held snowmelt.

A twisting hall with most of its barrel ceiling still in place led Richard past a warren of rooms. The hall split, leading, he surmised, to rooms at either corner of the building. He followed the left branch to the room at the end.

Like all the rooms on this side, it faced the cliff. Hollow rectangles gaped where windows once shielded the room from wind and rain. Beyond, through the openings, was a view past the edge of the cliff to the blue haze of the mountains beyond.

This was the place where visitors and supplicants to the temple would have awaited admittance. During their wait, they would have had a glorious view of the Temple of the Winds. If they were turned away, they left with at least that much. He could almost see what those who had stood in this very spot had seen.

It was his gift, he knew, that was telling him this, much the way the spirits of those who once held the Sword of Truth guided him when he used that magic.

As he stood staring, he could almost imagine it there, just beyond the edge, a place of grandeur and might. This was where the wizards had taken things of powerful magic for safekeeping. The wizards of old, some of them Richard’s ancestors, had probably stood where he stood, looking out at the Temple of the Winds.

Richard strolled around outside in the fading light, past the stately columns, peering into guard huts and once magnificent garden structures, touching the deteriorating walls. Even though it all was now crumbling, it was easy for him to imagine the majestic scene it must once have been.

He stood in the center of the broad road that ran through the crumbling ruins, feeling his gold cloak billowing out behind in the wind, trying to visualize the place as it had been, trying to get the feel of it. The road, more than the buildings, gave him the eerie feeling of the presence of the temple beyond. This road had once led right into the Temple of the Winds.

He strode the wide roadway, imagining striding toward the Temple of the Winds, the winds that had said they were hunting him. He passed along part of a wall, and between the hollow stone buildings, feeling the timeless quality of the place, feeling the life that once was here.

But where had it gone? How was he to find it? Where else could he look? It had been here, and even now, Richard could almost see it, feel it, sense it, as if his gift were pulling him onward, pulling him home. Abruptly, he was jerked to a halt.

Ulic on one side of him, and Egan on the other, had seized him under his arms and pulled him back. He looked down, and saw that another step would have taken him out into thin air. Vultures soared in the updraft not twenty feet straight in front of him.

He felt as if he was standing at the edge of the world. The view was dizzying. The hair on the back of his neck stiffened.

More should lie beyond the edge at his feet; he knew it should. But there was nothing there. The Temple of the Winds was gone.