Soul of the Fire (Sword of Truth 5)

Richard nodded as he watched Chandalen’s approach, seeing that he brought no weapons except a belt knife. As was the custom, he didn’t smile as he trotted up to them. Until proper greetings were exchanged, Mud People didn’t usually smile when they encountered even friends on the plains.

With a grim expression, Chandalen quickly slapped Richard, Kahlan, and Cara. Though he had run most of the way, he seemed hardly winded as he greeted them by their titles.

“Strength to the Mother Confessor. Strength to Richard With The Temper.” He added a nod to his spoken greeting of Cara; she was a protector, the same as he.

All three returned the slap and wished him their strength.

“Where are you going?” Chandalen asked.

“There’s trouble.” Richard said as he offered his waterskin. “We have to get back to Aydindril.”

Chandalen accepted the waterskin as he let out a grumble of worry. “The chicken that is not a chicken?”

“In a way, yes,” Kahlan told him. “It turns out it was magic conjured by the Sisters of the Dark Jagang is holding prisoner.”

“Lord Rahl used his magic to destroy the chicken that was not a chicken,” Cara put in.

Chandalen, looking relieved to hear her news, took a swig of water. “Then why must you go to Aydindril?”

Richard rested the end of his bow on the ground and gripped the other end. “The spell the Sisters cast endangers everyone and everything of magic. It’s making Zedd and Ann weak. They’re waiting back at your village. In Aydindril we hope to unleash magic to counter the Sisters of the Dark, and then Zedd will be strong enough to put everything right again

“The Sisters’ magic made the chicken thing that killed Juni. Until we can get to Aydindril, no one is safe.”

Having listened carefully, Chandalen finally replaced the stopper and handed back the waterskin.

“Then you must soon be on your way to do what only you can.” He checked over his shoulder. Now that Chandalen had identified himself, the others were approaching. “But my men have met strangers who must see you, first.”

Richard hooked his bow back over his shoulder as he peered off into the distance. He couldn’t make out the people.

“So, who are they?”

Chandalen stole a glance at Kahlan before directing his answer to Richard. “We have an old saying. It is best to hold your tongue around the cook, or you may end up in the pot with the chicken that ate her dinner greens.”

It seemed to Richard that Chandalen was trying very hard to keep from looking at Kahlan’s puzzled expression. Although Richard couldn’t fathom the reason, he thought he understood the figure of speech—odd as it was. He thought maybe it was a bad translation.

The approaching people weren’t far off. Chandalen, having had one of his trusted hunters killed by the Lurk, would want Richard and Kahlan to do what they could to stop the enemy; he would not insist they delay their journey unless he had a good reason.

“If it’s important for them to see us, then let’s go.”

Chandalen caught Richard’s arm. “They only asked to see you. Perhaps you wish to go alone? Then you could be on your way.”

“Why would Richard want to go alone,” Kahlan asked, suspicion bubbling up in her voice. She then added something in the Mud People’s language which Richard didn’t understand.

Chandalen lifted his hands, showing her his empty palms, as if to say he held no weapon and wished no fight. For some reason, he seemed to want no part of whatever was going on.

“Maybe I should—” Richard closed his mouth when Kahlan’s suspicious glower shifted to him. He cleared his throat.

“I was going to say we have no secrets.” Richard hefted his gear. “Kahlan is always welcome at my side. We have no time to waste. Let’s go.”

Chandalen nodded and turned to lead them to their fate. Richard thought he saw the man roll his eyes in a don’t-say-I-didn’t-warn-you fashion.

Richard could see ten of Chandalen’s hunters following behind the seven oncoming travelers, with another three hunters winged out distantly to each side, hemming in the strangers without being overtly threatening. The Mud People hunters seemed merely to accompany and guide the strangers, but Richard knew they were ready to strike at any sign of hostility. Armed outsiders on Mud People land were like tinder before a lightning storm.

Richard hoped this storm, too, would move away and leave sunny skies to follow. Kahlan, Cara, and Richard hurried behind Chandalen through the wet new grass.

Chandalen’s men were the first line of defense for the Mud People. That the Mud People’s land was given a wide berth by almost everyone spoke to their fighting ferocity.

Yet Chandalen’s skilled and deadly hunters, now turned escorts, elicited no more than detached indifference from the six men in loose flaxen clothes. Something about that indifference at being surrounded tickled at Richard’s memory.

As the approaching group got close enough for Richard to suddenly recognize them, he missed a step.

It took a few moments of scrutiny before he could believe what he was seeing. He at last understood the strangers’ fearless indifference to Chandalen’s men. He couldn’t imagine what these people were doing away from their own homeland.

Each man was dressed the same and carried the same weapons. Richard knew only one by name, but knew them all. These people were dedicated to a purpose laid down by their lawgivers thousands of years before—those wizards in the great war who had taken their homeland and created the Valley of the Lost to separate the New World from the Old.

Their black-handled swords, with their distinctive curved blades that widened toward clipped points, remained in their scabbards. One end of a cord was tied to a ring on the pommel of each man’s sword; the other end of the cord looped around the swordsman’s neck as a precaution against losing the weapon in battle. Additionally, each of the six carried spears and a small, round, unadorned shield. Richard had seen women clothed and armed the same, and committed to the same purpose, but this time they were all men.

For these men, practice with their swords was an art form. They practiced that art by moonlight, after the day did not provide them all the time they wished. Using their swords was near to a religions devotion, and they went about their bladework with pious commitment. These men were blade masters.

The seventh, the woman, was dressed differently, and not armed—at least not in the conventional sense.

Richard wasn’t good at judging such things by sight, but a quick calculation told him she had to be at least six months pregnant.

A thick mass of long black hair framed a lovely face, her presence giving her features, especially her dark eyes, a certain edginess. Unlike the men’s loose outfits of simple cloth, she wore a knee-length dress of finely woven flax dyed a rich earth color and gathered at the waist with a buckskin belt. The ends of the belt were decorated with roughly cut gemstone

s.

Up the outside of each arm and across the shoulders of the dress was a row of little strips of different-colored cloth. Each was knotted on through a small hole beneath a corded band and each, Richard knew, would have been tied on by a supplicant.

It was a prayer dress. Each of the little colored strips, when they fluttered in the breeze, meant to send a prayer to the good spirits. The dress was worn only by their spirit woman.

Richard’s mind raced with possibilities as to why these people would have traveled so far from their homeland. He could come up with nothing good, and a lot that was unpleasant.

Richard had halted. Kahlan waited to his left, Cara to his right, and Chandalen to the right of her.

Ignoring everyone else, the men in the loose clothes all laid their spears on the ground beside themselves as they went to their knees before Richard. They bowed forward, touching their foreheads to the ground, and stayed there.

The woman stood silently regarding him. Her dark eyes bore the timeless look Richard had often seen in others; Sister Verna, Shota the witch woman, Ann, and Kahlan, among others. That timeless look was the mark of the gift.

As she gazed into Richard’s eyes with a look that seemed to hint at wisdom he would never grasp, a ghost of a smile touched her lips. Without a word, she went to her knees at the head of the six men accompanying her. She touched her forehead to the ground and then kissed the toe of his boot.

“Caharin,” she whispered reverently.

Richard reached down and tugged on the shoulder of her dress, urging her up.

“Du Chaillu, it pleases my heart to see you are well, but what are you doing here?”

She rose up before him, a heartening handsome smile widening across her face. She bent forward and kissed his cheek.

“I have come to see you, of course, Richard, Seeker, Caharin, husband.”

27

“Husband?” Richard heard Kahlan say in a rising tone of concern.

With a jolt of astonished shock that nearly took him from his feet, and did take his breath, Richard abruptly recalled Du Chaillu’s account of her people’s old law. The dire implications staggered him.