“You didn’t do it intentionally, or to cause harm—no one would believe otherwise. You did it to save me. I was near death and needed your help, so I’m part of this, too. Without my actions, yours would not have been necessary.”
“Don’t forget our ancestors. Had they not borne children, we wouldn’t have been born to commit our crimes. I suppose you’ll want to hold them to account, too?”
He wet his lips as he gently gripped her shoulders. “I’m just saying that giving help is the thing that started this. That does not, however, in any sense, make you guilty of malicious intent. You must understand that. But because you spoke the words completing the spell, that makes you inadvertently responsible. You brought the chimes into this world.
“For some reason, Zedd didn’t want us to know. I wish he would have trusted us with the truth, but he didn’t. I’m sure he had reasons that to him seemed important enough to make him lie to us. For all I know, maybe they were.”
Kahlan put her fingertips to her forehead, closed her eyes, and sighed with forbearance. “Richard, I agree there are puzzling aspects to what Zedd did, and there are matters yet to be answered, but that doesn’t mean we have to leap to a different answer just for the sake of having one. Zedd is First Wizard; we must trust in what he’s asked us to do.”
Richard touched her cheek. He wished he could be alone with her, really alone, and he could try to make up for his foolish forgetfulness. He dearly didn’t want to be telling her these things, but he had to.
“Please, Kahlan, listen to what I have to say, and then you decide? I want to be wrong, I really do. You decide.
“When the Mud People hunters were guarding us in the spirit house, the chimes were outside. One of them killed a chicken just because they like to kill.
“When Juni heard the noise, the same as I heard it, he investigated but found nothing. He then insulted the spirit of the killer in order to bring it out in the open. It came out in the open, and killed him for insulting them.”
“I insulted the chicken thing, so why didn’t it kill me?” Kahlan wearily wiped a hand across her eyes. “Answer me that, Richard. Why didn’t it kill me?”
He gazed into her beautiful green eyes for a moment as he gathered his courage.
“The chime told you why, Kahlan.”
“What?” she said with a squint. “What are you talking about?”
“That chicken thing wasn’t a Lurk. It was a chime, and it wasn’t calling you by your title of Mother Confessor. It was a chime. It said what it meant.
“It called you ‘Mother.’”
Kahlan stared at him in startled wide-eyed shock.
“They respect you,” he said, “to some limited extent, anyway, because you brought them into the world of life. You gave them life. They consider you their life-giver, their mother. You only assumed the chicken thing was going to add the word ‘Confessor’ after it called you ‘Mother’ because you are so used to hearing yourself called by that title.
“But the chime wasn’t calling you by title, Kahlan. It was calling you by the name it meant: Mother.”
He could almost see the truth of his words inundating her carefully constructed fortress of rationale. Some truths, after a certain point, could be felt viscerally, and at that point everything clicked with the finality of a dead bolt on a prison of truth.
Kahlan’s eyes filled with tears.
She pressed closer to him, into the comfort and understanding of his arms. She gasped a sob against his chest and then angrily wiped her cheek as a tear rolled down.
“I think that was the only thing that saved you,” he said softly as he hugged her. “I wouldn’t want to again trust your life to their charity.”
“We have to stop them.” She stifled another sob. “Dear spirits, we have to stop them.”
“I know.”
“Do you know what to do?” she asked. “Do you have any idea how to send them back to the world of the dead?”
“Not yet. To find a solution, the first thing to be done is to recognize the true problem. I guess we’ve done that, now?”
Kahlan nodded as she wiped at her eyes. As quickly as understanding had brought tears, resolve banished them.
“Why would the chimes have been outside the spirit house?”
While they had been together after being married, exulting in their love, something had been outside the door exulting in death. It made him feel sick at his stomach just to think about it.
“I don’t know. Maybe the chimes wanted to be near you.”
Kahlan simply nodded. She understood. Near their mother.
Richard remembered the stricken look on Kahlan’s face when Nissel brought the stillborn baby into the house of the dead. The chimes had caused that, too. It was only the beginning.
“What’s a fatal Grace? You mentioned it before, yesterday, when we went to see Zedd and Ann.”
“Most of the stories about the chimes that I recounted came from an early report. Because Kolo was frightened, he wrote at greater length than usual. The report he quoted said at the end, ‘Mark well my words: Beware the chimes, and if need be great, draw for yourself thrice on the barren earth, in sand and salt and blood, a fatal Grace.”
“And what does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping maybe Zedd or Ann might know. He knows all about the Grace. I thought he might know about this.”
“But do you think this fatal Grace would stop the chimes?”
“I just don’t know, Kahlan. It occurred to me that it might be desperate advice on suicide.”
Kahlan nodded absently as she mulled over the words from Kolo’s journal.
“I could understand if it was advice on suicide. I could feel its evil,” she said as she stared off into her visions. “When I was in the house where the Mud People prepared bodies
for burial, and the chicken thing—the chime—was in there with me, I could feel its evil. Dear spirits, it was awful.
“It was pecking out Juni’s eyes. Even though he was dead, it still wanted to peck out his eyes.”
He pulled her into his arms again. “I know.”
She pushed away with rekindled hope. “Yesterday, with Zedd and Ann, you told us Kolo said they were quite alarmed at first, but after investigating they discovered the chimes were a simple weapon and easily overcome.”
“Yes, but Kolo only reported the relief at the Wizard’s Keep when they discovered it wasn’t the problem to counter they at first thought it would be. He didn’t write down the solution. They sent a wizard they called the Mountain to see to it. Obviously, he did.”
“Do you have any idea if there are any weapons that would be effective against them? Juni was heavily armed, and it didn’t do him any good, but might there be others?”
“Kolo never gave any indication. Arrows didn’t kill the chicken thing, and fire certainly isn’t going to harm them.
“However, Zedd was emphatic that I retrieve the Sword of Truth. If he lied about it being a Lurk, that may have been to keep us away from harm. I don’t believe he would lie about the sword. He wanted me to get it, and he said it might be the only magic that would still work to protect us. I believe him in that much of it.”
“Why do you suppose the chicken thing fled from you? I mean, if they consider me their mother, I could understand them maybe having some kind of… reverence, for me, and being reluctant to harm me, but if they’re so powerful, why would they run from you? You only shot at them with an arrow. You said arrows couldn’t hurt them. Why would it run from you?”