Soul of the Fire (Sword of Truth 5)

Richard raked back his hair. “I’ve wondered about that myself. The only answer I’ve been able to come up with is that they’re creatures of Subtractive Magic, and I’m the only one in thousands of years born with that side of magic. Maybe they fear my Subtractive Magic can harm them—maybe it can. It’s a hope, anyway.”

“And the fire? That one lone bit of our wedding bonfires that was still burning that you snuffed out? That was one of them, wasn’t it?”

Richard hated that they had been in their wedding bonfire. It was a defilement.

“Yes. Sentrosi—the second chime. It means ‘fire.’ Reechani, the first, means ‘water.’ The third, Vasi, means ‘air.’”

“But you put out the fire. The chime didn’t do anything to stop you. If they would kill Juni for insulting them, it certainly seems they would be angered by what you did. The chicken thing, too, ran from you.”

“I don’t know, Kahlan. I don’t have an answer.”

Peering into his eyes, she hesitated for a moment. “Maybe they didn’t harm you for the same reason they didn’t harm me.”

“They think I, too, am their mother?”

“Father,” she said, unconsciously stroking the dark stone at her throat. “I used the spell to keep you alive, to keep you from crossing over into the world of the dead. The spell called the chimes because they were from the other side and had the power to do that. Maybe, since we were both involved, they think of us as father and mother—as their parents.”

Richard let out a long breath. “That’s possible, I’m not saying it isn’t, but when I felt them near, I just got the sense of something more to it—something that made my hair stand on end.”

“More? More like what?”

“It was an overwhelming sense of their lust whenever they were near me, and at the same time monstrous loathing.”

Kahlan rubbed her arms, chilled by such obscene wickedness among them. A humorless smile, bitter with irony, crossed her face.

“Shota always said we would together conceive a monstrous offspring.”

Richard cupped her cheek. “Someday, Kahlan. Someday.”

On the verge of tears, she turned from his hand, his gaze, to stare off at the horizon. She cleared her throat and gathered her voice.

“If magic is failing, at least Jagang will lose its help He controls those with magic to help his army. At least if he could no longer do that, there would be that much good in all this.

“He used one of those wizards to try to kill us. He was able to use one of the Sisters of the Light to bring the plague from the Temple of the Winds. If magic fails because of the chimes, at least it will fail for Jagang, too.”

Richard pulled his lower lip through his teeth. “I’ve been thinking about that. If the chicken thing was afraid of me because I have Subtractive Magic, Jagang’s control over those with magic might very well no longer work, but—”

“Dear spirits,” she whispered, turning back to look up at him. “The Sisters of the Dark. They may not have been born with it, but they know how to use Subtractive Magic.”

Richard nodded reluctantly. “I fear that Jagang, if nothing else, might still have the Sisters of the Dark. Their magic will work.”

“Our only hope, then, is with Zedd and Ann. Let’s hope they will be able to stop the chimes.”

Richard couldn’t force a smile for her. “How? Neither of them is able to use Subtractive Magic. The magic they do have is failing along with all other magic. They will be just as helpless as that unborn child that died. I’m sure they’ve gone, but where?”

She gave him a look, very much a Mother Confessor look. “Had you remembered your first wife when you should have, Richard, we could have told Zedd. It might have made a difference. Now that chance is lost to us. You picked a very bad time to become negligent.”

He wanted to argue with her, tell her it wouldn’t have made any difference, tell her she was wrong, but he couldn’t. She wasn’t wrong. Zedd would have gone off alone to battle the chimes. Richard wondered if they might go back and track his grandfather.

She at last took his hand in hers, gave it a brave pat with her other, and then marched them back to where the others waited. She held her head erect. Her face was a Confessor’s face, devoid of emotion, full of authority.

“We don’t yet know what to do about them,” Kahlan announced, “but I’m convinced beyond doubt: the chimes are loose upon the world.”

30

For the benefit of the hunters, Kahlan repeated her announcement in the Mud People’s language. Richard wished she had been right that it was the Lurk and not the chimes. They would have had a solution for the Lurk.

Everyone looked understandably disquieted to hear Kahlan, after having been so steadfast in her arguments it was the Lurk, now tell them she accepted beyond doubt the fact that they were confronted with nothing less than the full threat of the chimes.

It didn’t look to Richard, once she had said she agreed with him, that anyone still harbored doubts of their own. With Kahlan’s words, it seemed the world had for everyone just changed.

Uneasy silence enveloped the plains.

Richard needed to get on with trying to figure out what to do next, but didn’t really have any idea how to do that. He didn’t even know where to start. He now realized what he should have done, when he had the chance. He had been so intent on the danger he had ignored everything else.

He was a long way from the woods he knew. He wished he were back in those woods. At least when he had been a guide, he never forgot what path he was on, or led anyone over a cliff.

He turned his attention to the Baka Tau Mana’s dark-haired spirit woman.

“Du Chaillu, why have you came all this way? What are you doing here?”

“Ahh,” Du Chaillu said as she folded her hands before herself with deliberate care. “Now the Caharin wishes me to speak?”

The woman was bottled ire. Richard didn’t really see why, and he didn’t really care.

“Yes, why have you come?”

“We have traveled many days. We have suffered hardship. We have buried some of those who started with us. We have had to fight our way through hostile places. We have shed the blood of many to reach you.

“We left our families and loved ones to bear warning to our Caharin. We have gone without food, without sleep, and without the comfort of a safe place. We have faced nights where we all wept for we felt afraid and sick at heart away from our homeland.

“I have traveled with the child the Caharin asked me to bear when I would have gone to an herb woman and shed it—shed the dreadful memories I carry with it. Yet he does not even acknowledge that I chose to honor his words and accept the responsibility of this child thrust upon me.

“The Caharin does not even recognize that I must every day be reminded, by the child he asked me to bear, of the time I spent chained naked to a wall in the stinking place of the Majendie. Reminded of where I came to be with this child. Reminded of how those men used me for their pleasure and then laughed at me. Reminded of where I daily endured the fear that would be the day I was to be butchered and sacrificed. Reminded of where I wept my heart out for my own babies who would be left without their mother, and wept that I would never again see their little smiles or have the joy of watching them grow.

“But I honored the Caharin’s words and carry the child of dogs, because the Caharin asked it of me.

“The Caharin pays his own people, who have journeyed all this way, little more than passing notice, as if we were no more than fleas at which he must scratch. He asks not how we do in our homeland. He does not invite us to at long last sit with him that we might rejoice to be together. He asks not if we are at peace. He inquires not if we are fed, or if we are thirsty.

“He only shouts and argues that we are not his people because he is ignorant of the sacred laws by which we have lived for countless centuries, and dismisses those same laws solely because he was not taught their words, as if that alone makes

them unimportant. Many have died by those laws so that he might learn by them and live another day.

“He gives his people no more thought than the dung beneath his boots. He turns his wife by our law away from his mind without a second thought. He treats his wife by law as a pest, to be put aside until he has want of her.

“The old laws promised us a Caharin. I admit they did not promise us one who would honor his people and their ways and laws that have joined us in purpose, although I thought any man would honor those who have suffered so much for him.

“I have suffered the loss of my husbands by your hand and grieved out of your sight so that you might not suffer for it. My children have endured with brave sorrow the loss of their fathers by your hand. They weep at bed for the man who kissed their brow and wished them good dreams of their homeland. Yet you do not bother to ask how I fare without those husbands who I and my children loved dearly, nor do you even ask how my children fare in their heartache.

“You do not even ask how I fare without my new husband by our law while he is off acquiring other wives. You think so little of me that you bother not to mention my existence to your new wife.”

Du Chaillu’s chin rose with indignation.

“So, now I am permitted to speak? So, now you wish at last to hear my words after my long and difficult journey? So, now you wish to hear if I have anything worthy of your lofty ears?”