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You knew they were there, didn't you?" Kahlan asked in a hushed tone as
she leaned closer.
Against the darkening sky, she could just make out the shapes of three
black-tipped races taking to wing, beginning their nightly hunt. That was
why he'd stopped. That was what he'd been watching as the rest of them
waited in uneasy silence.
"Yes," Richard said. He gestured over his shoulder without turning to
look. "There are two more, back there."
Kahlan briefly scanned the dark jumble of rock, but she didn't see any
others.
Lightly grasping the silver pommel with two fingers, Richard lifted his
sword a few inches, checking that it was clear in its scabbard. A last
fleeting glimmer of amber light played across his golden cape as he let the
sword drop back in place. In the gathering gloom of dusk, his familiar tall,
powerful contour seemed as if it were no more than an apparition made of
shadows.
Just then, two more of the huge birds shot by right overhead. One,
wings stretched wide, let out a piercing scream as it banked into a tight
gliding turn, circling once in assessment of the five people below before
stroking its powerful wings to catch its departing comrades in their swift
journey west.
This night they would find ample food.
Kahlan expected that as Richard watched them he was thinking of the
half brother that until just recently he hadn't known existed. That brother
now lay a hard day's travel to the west in a place so naked to the burning
sun that few people ever ventured there. Fewer still ever returned. The
searing heat, though, had not been the worst of it.
Beyond those desolate lowlands, the dying light silhouetted a remote
rim of mountains, making them look as if they had been charred black by the
furnace of the underworld itself. As dark as those mountains, as implacable,
as perilous, the flight of five pursued the departing light.
Jennsen, standing to the far side of Richard, watched in astonishment.
"What in the world ... ?"
"Black-tipped races," Richard said.
Jennsen mulled over the unfamiliar name. "I've often watched hawks and
falcons and such," she said at last, "but I've never seen any birds of prey
that hunt at night, other than owls---and these aren't owls."
As Richard watched the races, he idly gathered small pebbles from the
crumbling jut of rock beside him, rattling them in a loose fist. "I'd never
seen them before, either, until I came down here. People we've spoken with
say they began appearing only in the last year or two, depending on who's
telling the story. Everyone agrees, though, that they never saw the races
before then."
"Last couple of years ..." Jennsen wondered aloud.
Almost against her will, Kahlan found herself recalling the stories
they'd heard, the rumors, the whispered assertions.
Richard cast the pebbles back down the hardpan trail. "I believe
they're related to falcons."
Jennsen finally crouched to comfort her brown goat, Betty, pressing up
against her skirts. "They can't be falcons." Betty's little white twins,
usually either capering, suckling, or sleeping, now huddled mute beneath
their mother's round belly. "They're too big to be falcons-- they're bigger
than hawks, bigger than golden eagles. No falcon is that big."
Richard finally withdrew his glare from the birds and bent to help
console the trembling twins. One, eager for reassurance, anxiously peered up
at him, licking out its little pink tongue before deciding to rest a tiny
black hoof in his palm. With a thumb, Richard stroked the kids spindly
white-haired leg.
A smile softened his features as well as his voice. "Are you saying you
choose not to see what you've just seen, then?"
Jennsen smoothed Betty's drooping ears. "I guess the hair standing on
end at the back of my neck must believe what I saw."
Richard rested his forearm across his knee as he glanced toward the
grim horizon. "The races have sleek bodies with round heads and long pointed
wings similar to all the falcons I've seen. Their tails often fan out when
they soar but otherwise are narrow in flight."
Jennsen nodded, seeming to recognize his description of relevant
attributes. To Kahlan, a bird was a bird. These, though, with red streaks on
their chests and crimson at the base of their flight feathers, she had come
to recognize.
They're fast, powerful, and aggressive," Richard added. "I saw one
easily chase down a prairie falcon and snatch it out of midair in its
taons."
Jennsen looked to be struck speechless by such an account. Richard had
grown up in the vast forests of Westland and had gone on to be a woods
guide. He knew a great deal about the outdoors and about animals. Such an
upbringing seemed exotic to Kahlan, who had grown up in a palace in the
Midlands. She loved learning about nature from Richard, loved sharing his
excitement over the wonders of the world, of life. Of course, he had long
since come to be more than a woods guide. It seemed a lifetime ago when
she'd first met him in those woods of his, but in fact it had only been
little more than two and a half years.
Now they were a long way from Richard's simple boyhood home or Kahlan's
grand childhood haunts. Had they a choice, they would choose to be in either
place, or just about anywhere else, other than where they were. But at least
they were together.
After all she and Richard had been through--the dangers, the
anguish,the heartache of losing friends and loved ones--Kahlan jealously
savored every moment with him, even if it was in the heart of enemy
territory.
In addition to only just finding out that he had a half brother, they
had also learned that Richard had a half sister: Jennsen. From what they had
gathered since they'd met her the day before, she, too, had grown up in the
woods. It was heartwarming to see her simple and sincere joy at having
discovered a close relation with whom she had much in common. Only her
fascination with her new big brother exceeded Jennsen's wide-eyed curiosity
about Kahlan and her mysterious upbringing in the Confessors' Palace in the
far-off city of Aydindril.
Jennsen had had a different mother than Richard, but the same brutal
tyrant, Darken Rahl, had fathered them both. Jennsen was younger, just past
twenty, with sky blue eyes and ringlets of red hair down onto her shoulders.
She had inherited some of Darken Rahl's cruelly perfect features, but her
maternal heritage and guileless nature altered them into bewitching
femininity. While Richard's raptor gaze attested to his Rahl paternity, his
countenance, and his bearing, so manifest in his gray eyes, were uniquely
his own.
"I've seen falcons rip apart small animals," Jennsen said. "I don't
believe I much like thinking about a falcon that big, much less five of them
together."
Her goat, Betty, looked to share the sentiment.
"We take turns standing watch at night," Kahlan said, answering
Jennsen's unspoken fear. While that was hardly the only reason, it was
enough.
In the eerie silence, withering waves of heat rose from the lifeless
rock all around. It had been an arduous day's journey out from the center of
the valley wasteland and across the surrounding flat plain, but none of them
complained about the brutal pace. The torturous heat, though, had left
Kahlan with a pounding headache. While she was dead tired, she knew that in
recent days Richard had gotten far less sleep than any of the rest of them.
She could read that exhaustion in his eyes, if not in his stride.
Kahlan realized, then, what it was that had her nerves so on edge: it
was the silence. There were no yips of coyotes, no howls of distant wolves,
no flutter of bats, no rustle of a raccoon, no soft scramble of a vole--not
even the buzz and chirp of insects. In the past, when all those things went
silent it had meant potential danger. Here, it was dead silent because
nothing lived in this place, no coyotes or wolves or bats or mice or even
bugs. Few living things ever trespassed this barren land. Here, the night
was as soundless as the stars.
Despite the heat, the oppressive silence ran a chill shiver up through
Kahlan's shoulders.
She peered off once more at the races barely still visible against the
violet blush of the western sky. They, too, would not stay long in this
wasteland where they did not belong.
"Kind of unnerving to encounter such a menacing creature when you never
even knew such a thing existed," Jennsen said. She used her sleeve to wipe
sweat from her brow as she changed the subject. "I've heard it said that a
bird of prey wheeling over you at the beginning of a journey is a warning."
Cara, until then content to remain silent, leaned in past Kahlan. "Just
let me get close enough and I'll pluck their wretched feathers." Long blond
hair, pulled back into the traditional single braid of her profession,
framed Cara's heated expression. "We'll see how much of an omen they are,
then."
Cara's glare turned as dark as the races whenever she saw the huge
birds. Being swathed from head to foot in a protective layer of gauzy black
cloth, as were all of them except Richard, only added to her intimidating
presence. When Richard had unexpectedly inherited rule, he had been further
surprised to discover that Cara and her sister Mord-Sith were part of the
legacy.
Richard returned the little white kid to its watchful mother and stood,
hooking his thumbs behind his multilayered leather belt. At each wrist,
wide, leather-padded silver bands bearing linked rings and strange symbols
seemed to gather and reflect what little light remained. "I once had a hawk
circle over me at the beginning of a journey."
"And what happened?" Jennsen asked, earnestly, as if his pronouncement
might settle once and for all the old superstition.
Richard's smile widened into a grin. "I ended up marrying Kahlan."
Cara folded her arms. "That only proves it was a warning for the Mother
Confessor, not you, Lord Rahl."
Richard's arm gently encircled Kahlan's waist. She smiled with him as
she leaned against his embrace in answer to the wordless gesture. That that
journey had eventually brought them to be husband and wife seemed more
astonishing than anything she would ever have dared dream. Women like
her--Confessors--dared not dream of love. Because of Richard, she had dared
and had gained it.
Kahlan shuddered to think of the terrible times she had feared he was
dead, or worse. There had been so many times she had ached to be with him,
to simply feel his warm touch, or to even be granted the mercy of knowing he
was safe.
Jennsen glanced at Richard and Kahlan to see that neither took Cara's
admonition as anything but fond heckling. Kahlan supposed that to a
stranger, especially one from the land of D'Hara, as was Jennsen, Cara's
gibes at Richard would defy reason; guards did not bait their masters,
especially when their master was the Lord Rahl, the master of D'Hara.
Protecting the Lord Rahl with their lives had always been the blind
duty of the Mord-Sith. In a perverse way, Cara's irreverence toward Richard
was a celebration of her freedom, paid in homage to the one who had granted
it.
By free choice, the Mord-Sith had decided to be Richard's closest
protectors. They had given Richard no say in the matter. They often paid
little heed to his orders unless they deemed them important enough; they
were, after all, now free to pursue what was important to them, and what the
Mord-Sith considered important above all else was keeping Richard safe.
Over time, Cara, their ever-present bodyguard, had gradually become
like family. Now that family had unexpectedly grown.
Jennsen, for her part, was awestruck to find herself welcomed. From
what they had so far learned, Jennsen had grown up in hiding, always fearful
that the former Lord Rahl, her father, would finally find her and murder her
as he murdered any other ungifted offspring he found.
Richard signaled to Tom and Friedrich, back with the wagon and horses,
that they would stop for the night. Tom lifted an arm in acknowledgment and
then set to unhitching his team.
No longer able to see the races in the dark void of the western sky,
Jennsen turned back to Richard. "I take it their feathers are tipped in
black."
Before Richard had a chance to answer, Cara spoke in a silken voice
that was pure menace. "They look like death itself drips from the tips of
their feathers--like the Keeper of the underworld has been using their
wicked quills to write death warrants."
Cara loathed seeing those birds anywhere near Richard or Kahlan. Kahlan
shared the sentiment.
Jennsen's gaze fled Cara's heated expression. She redirected her
suspicion to Richard.
"Are they causing you ... some kind of trouble?"
Kahlan pressed a fist to her abdomen, against the ache of dread stirred
by the question.
Richard appraised Jennsen's troubled eyes. "The races are tracking us."
Jennsen frowned. "What?"
Richard gestured between Kahlan and himself. "The races, they're
tracking us."
"You mean they followed you out into this wasteland and they're
watching you, waiting to see if you'll die of thirst or something so they
can pick your bones clean."
Richard slowly shook his head. "No, I mean they're following us,
keeping track of where we are."
"I don't understand how you can possibly know--"
"We know," Cara snapped. Her shapely form was as spare, as sleek, as
aggressive-looking as the races themselves and, swathed in the black garb of
the nomadic people who sometimes traveled the outer fringes of the vast
desert, just as sinister-looking.
With the back of his hand against her shoulder, Richard gently eased
Cara back as he went on. "We were looking into it when Friedrich found us
and told us about you."
Jennsen glanced over at the two men back with the wagon. The sharp
sliver of moon floating above the black drape of distant mountains provided
just enough light for Kahlan to see that Tom was working at removing the
trace chains from his big draft horses while Friedrich unsaddled the others.
Jennsen's gaze returned to search Richard's eyes. "What have you been
able to find out, so far?"
"We never had a chance to really find out much of anything. Oba, our
surprise half brother lying dead back there, kind of diverted our attention
when he tried to kill us." Richard unhooked a waterskin from his belt. "But
the races are still watching us."
He handed Kahlan his waterskin, since she had left hers hanging on her
saddle. It had been hours since they had last stopped. She was tired from
riding and weary from walking when they had needed to rest the horses.
Kahlan lifted the waterskin to her lips only to be reacquainted with
how bad hot water tasted. At least they had water. Without water, death came
quickly in the unrelenting heat of the seemingly endless, barren expanse
around the forsaken place called the Pillars of Creation.
Jennsen slipped the strap of her waterskin off her shoulder before
hesitantly starting again. "I know it's easy to misconstrue things. Look at
how I was tricked into thinking you wanted to kill me just like Darken Rahl
had. I really believed it, and there were so many things that seemed to me
to prove it, but I had it all wrong. I guess I was just so afraid it was
true, I believed it."
Richard and Kahlan both knew it hadn't been Jennsen's doing--she had
merely been a means for others to get at Richard--but it had squandered
precious time.
Jennsen took a long drink. Still grimacing at the taste of the water,
she lifted the waterskin toward the empty desert behind them. "I mean, there
isn't much alive out here--it might actually be that the races are hungry
and are simply waiting to see if you die out here and, because they do keep
watching and waiting, you've begun to think it's more." she gave Richard a
demure glance, bolstered by a smile, as if hoping to-cloak the admonishment
as a suggestion. "Maybe that's all it really is."
"They aren't waiting to see if we die out here," Kahlan said, wanting
to end the discussion so they could eat and Richard could get some sleep.
"They were watching us before we had to come here. They've been watching us
since we were back in the forests to the northeast. Vow, let's have some
supper and--"
"But why? That's not the way birds behave. Why would they do that?"
"I think they're keeping track of us for someone," Richard said. "More
precisely, I think someone is using them to hunt us."
Kahlan had known various people in the Midlands, from simple people
living in the wilds to nobles living in great cities, who hunted with
falcons. This, though, was different. Even if she didn't fully understand
Richard's meaning, much less the reasons for his conviction, she knew he
hadn't meant it in the traditional sense.
With abrupt realization, Jennsen paused in the middle of another drink.
"That's why you've started scattering pebbles along the windblown places in
the trail."
Richard smiled in confirmation. He took his waterskin when Kahlan
handed it back. Cara frowned up at him as he took a long drink.
"You've been throwing pebbles along the trail? Why?"
Jennsen eagerly answered in his place. "The open rock gets blown clean
by the wind. He's been making sure that if anyone tries to sneak up on us in
the dark, the pebbles strewn across those open patches will crunch underfoot
and alert us."
Cara wrinkled a questioning brow at Richard. "Really?"
He shrugged as he passed her his waterskin so that she wouldn't have to
dig hers out from beneath her desert garb. "Just a little extra precaution
in case anyone is close, and careless. Sometimes people don't expect the
simple things and that catches them up."
"But not you," Jennsen said, hooking the strap of her waterskin back
over her shoulder. "You think of even the simple things."
Richard chuckled softly. "If you think I don't make mistakes, Jennsen,
you're wrong. While it's dangerous to assume that those who wish you harm
are stupid, it can't hurt to spread out a little gravel just in case someone
thinks they can sneak across windswept rock in the dark without being
heard." .
Any trace of amusement faded as Richard stared off toward the western
horizon where stars had yet to appear. "But I fear that pebbles strewn along
the ground won't do any good for eyes watching from a dark sky." He turned
back to Jennsen, brightening, as if remembering he had been speaking to her.
"Still, everyone makes mistakes."
Cara wiped droplets of water from her sly smile as she handed Richard
back his waterskin. "Lord Rahl is always making mistakes, especially simple
ones. That's why he needs me around."
"Is that right, little miss perfect?" Richard chided as he snatched the
waterskin from her hand. "Maybe if you weren't 'helping' keep me out of
trouble, we wouldn't have black-tipped races shadowing us."
"What else could I do?" Cara blurted out. "I was trying to help--to
protect you both." Her smile had withered. "I'm sorry, Lord Rahl."
Richard sighed. "I know," he admitted as he reassuringly squeezed her
shoulder. "We'll figure it out."
Richard turned back to Jennsen. "Everyone makes mistakes. How a person
deals with their mistakes is a mark of their character."
Jennsen nodded as she thought it over. "My mother was always afraid of
making a mistake that would get us killed. She used to do
things like you did, in case my father's men were trying to sneak up on
us. We always lived in forests, though, so it was dry twigs, rather
than pebbles, that she often scattered around us."
Jennsen pulled on a ringlet of her hair as she stared off into dark
memories. "It was raining the night they came. If those men stepped on
twigs, she wouldn't have been able to hear it." She ran trembling fingers
over the silver hilt of the knife at her belt. "They were big, and they
surprised her, but still, she got one of them before they ..."
Darken Rahl had wanted Jennsen dead because she had been born ungifted.
Any ruler of that bloodline killed offspring such as she. Richard and Kahlan
believed that a person's life was their own to live, and that birth did not
qualify that right.
Jensen's haunted eyes turned up to Richard. "She got one of them before
they killed her."
With one arm, Richard pulled Jennsen into a tender embrace. They all
understood such terrible loss. The man who had lovingly raised
Richard had been killed by Darken Rahl himself. Darken Rahl had orderd
the murders of all of Kahlan's sister Confessors The men who killed
Jennsen's mother, though, were men from the Imperial Order sent to trick
her, to murder in order to make her believe it was Richard who was after
her.
Kahlan felt a forlorn wave of helplessness at all they faced. She knew
what it was to be alone, afraid, and overwhelmed by powerful men filled with
blind faith and the lust for blood, men devoutly believing that mankind's
salvation required slaughter.
"I'd give anything for her to know that it wasn't you who sent those
men." Jennsen's soft voice held the dejected sum of what it was to have
suffered such a loss, to have no solution to the crushing solitude it left
in its wake. "I wish my mother could have known the truth, known what you
two are really like."
"She's with the good spirits and finally at peace," Kahlan whispered in
sympathy, even if she now had reason to question the enduring validity of
such things.
Jennsen nodded as she swiped her fingers across her cheek. "What
mistake did you make, Cara?" she finally asked.
Rather than be angered by the question, and perhaps because it had been
asked in innocent empathy, Cara answered with quiet candor. "It has to do
with that little problem we mentioned before."
"You mean it's about the thing you want me to touch?"
By the light of the moon's narrow crescent, Kahlan could see Cara's
scowl return. "And the sooner the better."
Richard rubbed his fingertips across his brow. "I'm not sure about
that."
Kahlan, too, thought that Cara's notion was too simplistic.
Cara threw her arms up. "But Lord Rahl, we can't just leave it--"
"Let's get camp set up before it's pitch dark," Richard said in quiet
command. "What we need right now is food and sleep."
For once, Cara saw the sense in his orders and didn't object. When he
had earlier been out scouting alone, she had confided in Kahlan that she was
worried at how weary Richard looked and had suggested that, since there were
enough other people, they shouldn't wake him for a turn at watch that night.
"I'll check the area," Cara said, "and make sure there aren't any more
of those birds sitting on a rock watching us with those black eyes of
theirs."
Jennsen peered around as if fearing that a black-tipped race might
swoop in out of the darkness.
Richard countermanded Cara's plans with a dismissive shake of his head.
"They're gone for now."
"You said they were tracking you." Jennsen stroked Betty's neck when
the goat nudged her, seeking comfort. The twins were still hiding under
their mother's round belly. "I never saw them before now. They weren't
around yesterday, or today. They didn't show up until just this evening. If
they really were tracking you, then they wouldn't be gone for such a
stretch. They'd have to stick close to you all the time."
"They can leave us for a time in order to hunt--or to make us doubt our
suspicion of their true intent--and, even if we keep going, they can easily
find us when they return. That's the advantage the black-tipped races have:
they don't need to watch us every moment."
Jennsen planted her fists on her hips. "Then how in the world could you
possibly be sure they're tracking you?" She flicked a hand out toward the
darkness beyond. "You often see the same kind of birds. You see ravens,
sparrows, geese, finches, hummingbirds, doves--how do you know that any one
of them aren't following you and that the black-tipped races are?"
"I know," Richard said as he turned and started back toward the wagon.
"Now, let's get our things out and set up camp."
Kahlan caught Jennsen's arm as she headed after him, about to renew her
objections. "Let him be for tonight, Jennsen?" Kahlan lifted an eyebrow.
"Please? About this, anyway."
Kahlan was pretty sure that the black-tipped races really were
following them, but it wasn't so much an issue of her being sure of it
herself. Rather, she had confidence in Richard's word in matters such is
this. Kahlan was versed in affairs of state, protocol, ceremony, and
royalty; she was familiar with various cultures, the origins of ancient
deputes between lands, and the history of treaties; and she was con-versant
in any number of languages, including the duplicitous dialect of diplomacy.
In such areas, Richard trusted her word when she ex-pressed her conviction.
In matters about something so odd as strange birds following them, she
knew better than to question Richard's word.
Kahlan knew, too, that he didn't yet have all the answers. She had seen
him like this before, distant and withdrawn, as he struggled to understand
the important connections and patterns in relevant details only he
perceived. She knew that he needed to be left alone about it. Pestering him
for answers before he had them only served to distract him from what he
needed to do.
Watching Richard's back as he walked away, Jennsen finally forced a
smile of agreement. Then, as if struck with another thought, her eyes
widened. She leaned close to Kahlan and whispered, "Is this about magic?"
"We don't know what it's about."
Jennsen nodded. "I'll help. Whatever I can do, I want to help."
For the time being, Kahlan kept her worries to herself as she circled
an arm around the young woman's shoulders in an appreciative embrace and
walked her back toward the wagon.
In the immense, silent void of night, Kahlan could clearly hear
Fried-rich, off to the side, speaking gently to the horses. He patted their
shoulders or ran a hand along their flanks each time on his way by as he
went about grooming and picketing them for the night. With dark-ness
shrouding the empty expanse beyond, the familiar
task of caring for the animals made the unfamiliar surroundings seem a
little less forbidding.
Friedrich was an older, unassuming man of average height. Despite his
age, he had undertaken a long and difficult journey to the Old World to find
Richard. Friedrich had undertaken that journey, carrying with him important
information, soon after his wife had died. The terrible sadness of that loss
still haunted his gentle features. Kahlan supposed that it always would.
In the dim light, she saw Jennsen smile as Tom looked her way. A boyish
grin momentarily overcame the big, blond-headed D'Haran when he spotted her,
but he quickly bent back to work, pulling bedrolls from a corner beneath the
seat. He stepped over supplies in his wagon and handed a load down to
Richard.
"There's no wood for a fire, Lord Rahl." Tom rested a foot on the
chafing rail, laying a forearm over his bent knee. "But, if you like, I have
a little charcoal to use for cooking."
"What I'd really like is for you to stop calling me 'Lord Rahl.' If
we're anywhere near the wrong people and you slip up and call me that, we'll
all be in a great deal of trouble."
Tom grinned and patted the ornate letter "R" on the silver handle of
the knife at his belt. "Not to worry, Lord Rahl. Steel against steel."
Richard sighed at the oft-repeated maxim involving the bond of the
D'Haran people to their Lord Rahl, and he to them. Tom and Friedrich had
promised they wouldn't use Richard's and Kahlan's titles around other
people. A lifetime's habits were difficult to change, though, and Kahlan
knew that they felt uncomfortable not using titles when they were so
obviously alone.
"So," Tom said as he handed down the last bedroll, "would you like a
small fire for cooking?"
"Hot as it is, it seems to me we could do without any more heat."
Richard set the bedrolls atop a sack of oats already unloaded. "Besides, I'd
prefer not to take the time. I'd like to be on our way at first light and we
need to get a good rest."
"Can't argue with you there," Tom said, straightening his big frame. "I
don't like us being so out in the open where we could easily be spotted."
Richard swept his hand in a suggestive arc across the dark vault above.
Tom cast a wary eye skyward. He nodded reluctantly before turning back
to the task of digging out tools to mend the breeching and wooden buckets to
water the horses. Richard put a boot on a spoke of the cargo wagon's stout
rear wheel and climbed up to help.
Tom, a shy but cheerful man who had appeared only the day before, right
after they'd encountered Jennsen, looked to be a merchant who hauled trade
goods. Hauling goods in his wagon, Kahlan and Richard had learned, gave him
an excuse to travel where and when he needed as a member of a covert group
whose true profession was to protect the Lord Rahl from unseen plots and
threats.
Speaking in a low voice, Jennsen leaned closer to Kahlan. "Vultures can
tell you, from a great distance, where a kill lies--by the way they circle
and gather, I mean. I guess I can see how the races could be like
that--birds that someone could spot from afar in order to know there was
something below."
Kahlan didn't say anything. Her head ached, she was hungry, and she
just wanted to go to sleep, not to discuss things she couldn't answer. She
wondered how many times Richard had viewed her own insistent questions in
the same way she now viewed Jennsen's. Kahlan silently vowed to try to be at
least half as patient as Richard always was.
"The thing is," Jennsen went on, matter-of-factly, "how would someone
get birds to ... well, you know, circle around you like vultures over a
carcass in order to know where you were?" Jennsen leaned in again and
whispered so as to be sure that Richard wouldn't hear. "Maybe they're sent
with magic to follow specific people."
Cara fixed Jennsen with a murderous glare. Kahlan idly wondered if the
Mord-Sith would clobber Richard's sister, or extend her leniency because she
was family. Discussions about magic, especially in the context of its danger
to Richard or Kahlan, made Cara testy. Mord-Sith were fearless in the face
of death, but they did not like magic and weren't shy about making their
distaste clear.
In a way, such hostility toward magic characterized the nature and
purpose of Mord-Sith; they were singularly able to appropriate the gifted's
power and use it to destroy them. Mord-Sith had been mercilessly trained to
be ruthless at their task. It was from the madness of this duty that Richard
had freed them.
It seemed obvious enough to Kahlan, though, that if the races really
were tracking them it would have to involve conjuring of some sort. It was
the questions raised by that assumption that so worried her.
When Kahlan didn't debate the theory, Jennsen asked, "Why do you think
someone would be using the races to track you?"
Kahlan lifted an eyebrow at the young woman. "Jennsen, we're in the
middle of the Old World. Being hunted in enemy territory is hardly
surprising."
"I guess you're right," Jennsen admitted. "It just seems that there
would have to be more to it." Despite the heat, she rubbed her arms as if a
chill had just run through her. "You have no idea how much Emperor Jagang
wants to catch you."
Kahlan smiled to herself. "Oh, I think I do."
Jennsen watched Richard a moment as he filled the buckets with water
from barrels carried in the wagon. Richard leaned down and handed one to
Friedrich. Ears turned attentively ahead, the horses all watched, eager for
a drink. Betty, also watching as her twins suckled, bleated her longing for
a drink. After filling the buckets, Richard submerged his waterskin to fill
it, too.
Jennsen shook her head and looked again into Kahlan's eyes. "Emperor
Jagang tricked me into thinking Richard wanted me dead." She glanced briefly
over at the men engaged in their work before she went on. "I was there with
Jagang when he attacked Aydindril."
Kahlan felt as if her heart came up in her throat at hearing firsthand
confirmation of that brute invading the place where she'd grown up. She
didn't think she could bear to hear the answer, but she had to ask. "Did he
destroy the city?"
After Richard had been captured and taken from her, Kahlan, with Cara
at her side, had led the D'Haran army against Jagang's vast invading horde
from the Old World. Month after month, Kahlan and the army fought against
impossible odds, retreating all the way up through the Midlands.
By the time they lost the battle for the Midlands, it had been over a
year since Kahlan had seen Richard; he had seemingly been cast into
oblivion. When at last she learned where he was being held, Kahlan and Cara
had raced south, to the Old World, only to arrive just as Richard ignited a
firestorm of revolution in the heart of Jagang's homeland.
Before she'd left, Kahlan had evacuated Aydindril and left the
Confessors' Palace empty of all those who called it home. Life, not a place,
was what mattered.
"He never got a chance to destroy the city," Jennsen said. "When we
arrived at the Confessors' Palace, Emperor Jagang thought he had you and
Richard cornered. But out in front waited a spear holding the head of the
emperor's revered spiritual leader: Brother Narev." Her voice lowered
meaningfully. "Jagang found the message left with the head."
Kahlan remembered well the day Richard had sent the head of that evil
man, along with a message for Jagang, on the long journey north. "
'Compliments of Richard Rahl.'"
"That's right," Jennsen said. "You can't imagine Jagang's rage." She
paused to be certain Kahlan heeded her warning. "He'll do anything to get
his hands on you and Richard."
Kahlan hardly needed Jennsen to tell her how much Jagang wanted them.
"All the more reason to get away--hide somewhere," Cara said.
"And the races?" Kahlan reminded her.
Cara cast a suggestive look at Jennsen before speaking in a quiet voice
to Kahlan. "If we do something about the rest of it, maybe that problem
would go away, too." Cara's goal was to protect Richard. She would be
perfectly happy to put him in a hole somewhere and board him over if she
thought doing so would keep harm from reaching him.
Jennsen waited, watching the two of them. Kahlan wasn't at all sure
there was anything Jennsen could do. Richard had thought it over and had
come to have serious doubts. Kahlan had been amply skeptical without
Richard's doubts. Still...
"Maybe" was all she said.
"If there's anything I can do, I want to try it." Jennsen fussed with a
button on the front of her dress. "Richard doesn't think I can help. If it
involves magic, wouldn't he know? Richard is a wizard, he would know about
magic."
Kahlan sighed. There was so much more to it. "Richard was raised in
Westland--far from the Midlands, even farther from D'Hara. He grew up in
isolation from the rest of the New World, never knowing anything at all
about the gift. Despite all he's so far learned and some of the remarkable
things he's accomplished, he still knows very little of his birthright."
They had already told Jennsen this, but she seemed skeptical, as if she
suspected there was a certain amount of exaggeration in what they were
telling her about Richard's unfamiliarity with his own gift. Her big brother
had, after all, in one day rescued her from a lifetime of terror. Such a
profound awakening probably seemed tangled in magic to one so devoid of it.
Perhaps it was.
"Well, if Richard is as ignorant of magic as you say," Jennsen pressed
in a meaningful voice, finally having arrived at the heart of her purpose,
"then maybe we shouldn't worry so much about what he thinks. Maybe we should
just not tell him and go ahead and do whatever it is Cara wants me to do to
fix your problem and get the races off your backs."
Nearby, Betty contentedly licked clean her little white twins. The
sweltering darkness and vast weight of the surrounding silence seemed as
eternal as death itself.
Kahlan gently took ahold of Jennsen's collar. "I grew up walking the
corridors of the Wizard's Keep and the Confessors' Palace. I know a lot
about magic."
She pulled the young woman closer. "I can tell you that such naive
notions, when applied to ominous matters like this, can easily get people
killed. There is always the possibility that it's as simple as you fancy,
but most likely it's complex beyond your imagination and any rash attempt at
a remedy could ignite a conflagration that would consume us all. Added to
all that is the grave peril of not knowing how someone, such as yourself,
someone so pristinely ungifted as to be forewarned of in that ancient book
Richard has, might affect the equation.
"There are times when there is no choice but to act immediately; even
then it must be with your best judgment, using all your experience and
everything you do know. As long as there's a choice, though, you don't act
in matters of magic until you can be sure of the consequence. You don't ever
just take a stab in the dark."
Kahlan knew all too well the terrible truth of such an admonition.
Jennsen seemed unconvinced. "But if he doesn't really know much about magic,
his fears might only be--"
"I've walked through dead cities, walked among the mutilated bodies of
men, women, and children the Imperial Order has left in their wake. I've
seen young women not as old as you make thoughtless, innocent mistakes and
end up chained to a stake to be used by gangs of soldiers for days before
being tortured to death just for the amusement of men who get sick pleasure
out of raping a woman as she's in the throes of death."
Kahlan gritted her teeth as memories flashed mercilessly before her
mind's eye. She tightened her grip on Jennsen's collar.
"All of my sister Confessors died in such a fashion, and they knew
about their power and how to use it. The men who caught them knew, too, and
used that knowledge against them. My closest girlhood friend died in my arms
after such men were finished with her.
"Life means nothing to people like that; they worship death.
"Those are the kind of people who butchered your mother. Those are the
kind of people who will have us, too, if we make a mistake. Those are the
kind of people laying traps for us--including traps constructed of magic.
"As for Richard not knowing about magic, there are times when he is so
ignorant of the simplest things that I can scarcely believe it and must
remind myself that he grew up not being taught anything at all about his
gift. In those things, I try to be patient and to guide him as best I can.
He takes very seriously what I tell him.
"There are other times when I suspect that he actually grasps
complexities of magic that neither I nor anyone alive has ever before
fathomed or even so much as imagined. In those things he must be his own
guide.
"The lives of a great many good people depend on us not making careless
mistakes, especially careless mistakes with magic. As the Mother Confessor
I'll not allow reckless whim to jeopardize all those lives. Now, do you
understand me?"
Kahlan had nightmares about the things she had seen, about those who
had been caught, about those who had made a simple mistake and paid the
price with their life. She was not many years beyond Jennsen's age, but
right then that gulf was vastly more than a mere handful of years.
Kahlan gave Jennsen's collar a sharp yank. "Do you understand me?"
Wide-eyed, Jennsen swallowed. "Yes, Mother Confessor." Finally, her
gaze broke toward the ground.
Only then did Kahlan release her.
Anyone hungry?" Tom called to the three women.
Richard pulled a lantern from the wagon and, after finally getting it
lit with a steel and flint, set it on a shelf of rock. He passed a
suspicious look among the three women as they approached, but apparently
thought better of saying anything.
As Kahlan sat close at Richard's side, Tom offered him the first chunk
he sliced from a long length of sausage. When Richard declined, Kahlan
accepted it. Tom sliced off another piece and passed it to Cara and then
another to Friedrich.
Jennsen had gone to the wagon to search through her pack. Kahlan
thought that maybe she just wanted to be alone a moment to collect herself.
Kahlan knew how harsh her words had sounded, but she couldn't allow herself
to do Jennsen the disservice of coddling her with pleasing lies.
With Jennsen reassuringly close by, Betty lay down beside Rusty,
Jennsen's red roan mare. The horse and the goat were fast friends. The other
horses seemed pleased by the visitor and took keen interest in her two kids,
giving them a good sniff when they came close enough.
When Jennsen walked over displaying a small piece of carrot, Betty rose
up in a rush. Her tail went into a blur of expectant wagging. The horses
whinnied and tossed their heads, hoping not to be left out. Each in turn
received a small treat and a scratch behind the ears.
Had they a fire, they could have cooked a stew, rice, or beans;
grid-died some bannock; or maybe have made a nice soup. Despite how hungry
she was, Kahlan didn't think she would have had the energy to cook, so she
was content to settle for what was at hand. Jennsen retrieved strips of
dried meat from her pack, offering them around. Richard declined this, too,
instead eating hard travel biscuits, nuts, and dried fruit.
"But don't you want any meat?" Jennsen asked as she sat down on her
bedroll opposite him. "You need more than that to eat. You need something
substantial."
"I can't eat meat. Not since the gift came to life in me."
Jennsen's wrinkled her nose with a puzzled look. "Why would your gift
not allow you to eat meat?"
Richard leaned to the side, resting his weight on an elbow as he
momentarily surveyed the sweep of stars, searching for the words to explain.
"Balance, in nature," he said at last, "is a condition resulting from the
interaction of all things in existence. On a simple level, look at how
predators and prey are in balance. If there were too many predators, and the
prey were all eaten, then the thriving predators, too, would end up starving
and dying out.
"The lack of balance would be deadly to both prey and predator; the
world, for them both, would end. They exist in balance because acting in
accordance with their nature results in balance. Balance is not their
conscious intent.
"People are different. Without our conscious intent, we don't
necessarily achieve the balance that our survival often requires.
"We must learn to use our minds, to think, if we're to survive. We
plant crops, we hunt for fur to keep us warm, or raise sheep and gather
their wool and learn how to weave it into cloth. We have to learn how to
build shelter. We balance the value of one thing against another and trade
goods to exchange what we've made for what we need that others have made or
grown or built or woven or hunted.
"We balance what we need with what we know of the realities of the
world. We balance what we want against our rational self-interest, not
against fulfilling a momentary impulse, because we know that our long-term
survival requires it. We use wood to build a fire in the hearth in order to
keep from freezing on a winter night, but, despite how cold we might be when
we're building the fire, we don't build the fire too big, knowing that to do
so would risk burning our shelter down after we're warm and asleep."
"But people also act out of shortsighted selfishness, greed, and lust
for power. They destroy lives." Jennsen lifted her arm out toward the
darkness. "Look at what the Imperial Order is doing--and succeeding at. They
don't care about weaving wool or building houses or trading goods. They
slaughter people just for conquest. They take what they want."
"And we resist them. We've learned to understand the value of life, so