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 rainwater 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.
10
Kahlan wanted to chase the chicken away from the body, but she couldn’t seem to make herself do so. The chicken’s eye rolled to watch her as it pecked.
Thwack thwack thwack. Thwack. Thwack. That was the sound she had heard.
“Shoo!” She flicked a hand out toward the bird. “Shoo!”
It must have come for the bugs. That was why it was in there. For the bugs.
Somehow, she
couldn’t make herself believe it.
“Shoo! Leave him alone!”
Hissing, hackles lifting, the chicken’s head rose.
Kahlan pulled back.
Its claws digging into stiff dead flesh, the chicken slowly turned to face her. It cocked its head, making its comb flop, its wattles sway.
“Shoo,” Kahlan heard herself whisper.
There wasn’t enough light, and besides, the side of its beak was covered with gore, so she couldn’t tell if it had the dark spot. But she didn’t need to see it.
“Dear spirits, help me,” she prayed under her breath.