5 Soul of the Fire

by Goodkind, Terry

  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 commit-

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  ted 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 religious 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 gemstones.

  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.

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  The woman stood silently regarding Mm. 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."

  CHAPTER 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

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  Du Chaillu's account of her people's old law. The dire implications staggered him.

  At the time, he had dismissed her adamant assertions as either irrational conviction or perhaps misconceptions about their history. Now, this old ghost had unexpectedly returned to haunt him.

  "Husband?" Kahlan repeated, a little louder, a little more insistently.

  Her dark eyes turned to Kahlan, as if annoyed she had to take them from Richard. "Yes. Husband. I am Du Chaillu, wife of the Caharin, Richard, the Seeker." Du Chaillu rubbed her hand over her pronounced belly. Her look of annoyance passed and she beamed with pride. "I bear his child."

  "Leave it to me, Mother Confessor," Cara said. There was no mistaking the resolute menace in her voice. "This time, I will take care of it."

  Cara yanked the knife from Chandalen's belt and lunged for the woman.

  Richard was quicker. He spun to Cara and shoved the tips of his stiffened fingers against her upper chest. It not only halted her forward progress, but drove her back three paces. He had enough problems without her causing more. He shoved her again and drove her back another three, and then another three, away from the group of people.

  Richard twisted the knife from her grip. "Now, you listen to me. You don't know the first thing about this woman."

  "I know-"

  "You know nothing! Listen to me! You are fighting the last war. This is not Nadine. This is nothing like Nadine!"

  His quiescent fury had at last erupted. With a cry of unleashed rage, Richard heaved the knife at the ground. The force drove it beneath the grass mat, burying it completely into the soil of the plains.

  Kahlan laid her hand on the back of his shoulder.

  "Richard, calm down. What's this about? What's going on?"

  Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. Clenching

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  his jaw, he glanced about and saw the men still on their knees.

  "Jiaan-the rest of you-get off your knees! Get up!"

  The men rose up at once. Du Chaillu waited passively, patiently. Chandalen and his men backed off. The Mud People had named him Richard with the Temper and, while not surprised, looked to think it best to give ground.

  Chandalen and his men had no idea his anger was for what had killed one of them-had most likely, he realized, killed two of them-and would surely kill more.

  Kahlan regarded him with a look of concern. "Richard, calm down and get ahold of yourself. Who are these people?"

  He couldn't seem to slow his breathing. Or his heart. Or unclench his fists. Or stop his racing thoughts. Everything seemed to be reeling out of control. Fears laid to rest seemed to have unshackled themselves and suddenly sprung up to snare him. He should have seen it before. He cursed himself for missing it.

  But there had to be a way to stop it. He had to think. He had to stop fearing things that had not yet happened, and think of a way to prevent them from coming to be.

  He realized it had already happened. He now had to think of the solution.

  Kahlan lifted his chin to look into his eyes. "Richard, answer me. Who are these people?"

  He pressed a hand to his forehead in frustrated rage. "The Baka Ban Mana. It means 'those without masters.' "

  "We now have a Caharin; we are no longer the Baka Ban Mana," Du Chaillu said from not far away. "We are now the Baka Tau Mana."

  Not really comprehending Du Chaillu's explanation, Kahlan turned her attention once more to Richard. This time her voice had a razor's edge t
o it. "Why is she saying you are her husband?"

  His mind had already galloped so far off down another road he had to concentrate for a moment to understand what Kahlan was asking. She didn't realize the implications. To

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  Richard, Kahlan's question seemed insignificant past history in the face of the future looming before them.

  He impatiently tried to wave away her concern. "Kahlan, it's not what you think."

  She licked her lips and took a breath. "Fine." Her green eyes fixed on him. "So, why don't you just explain it to me, then."

  It was not a question. Richard instead asked his own. "Don't you see?" Overwhelmed by impatience, he pointed at Du Chaillu. "It's the old law! By the old law, she is my wife. At least she thinks she is."

  Richard pressed his fingertips to his temples. His head was throbbing.

  "We are in a great deal of trouble," he muttered.

  "You are, anyway," Cara said.

  "Cara," Kahlan said through her teeth, "that's enough." She turned back to him. "Richard, what are you talking about? What's going on?"

  Accounts from Kolo's journal echoed through his mind.

  He couldn't seem to order his thoughts enough to put all the tumbling elements into words. The world was shredding apart, and she was asking him yesterday's questions. Since he saw it so clearly looming before them, he couldn't comprehend why Kahlan wouldn't comprehend the danger, too.

  "Don't you see?"

  Richard's mind picked madly through the shadowy possibilities as he tried to decide what to do next. Time was slipping away. He didn't even know how much they had.

  "I see you got her pregnant," Cara said.

  Richard turned a glare on the Mord-Sith. "After all we have been through, Cara, do you think no more of me?"

  Looking galled, Cara folded her arms and didn't answer.

  "Do the math," Kahlan told Cara. "Richard would have been a prisoner of the Mord-Sith, far off at the People's Palace in D'Hara, back when this woman got pregnant."

  Unlike the Agiel Richard wore out of respect for the two women who had died protecting them, Kahlan wore the Agiel of Denna, the Mord-Sith who had, at the behest of

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  Darken Rahl, captured Richard and tortured him nearly to death. Denna had decided to take Richard as her mate, but she had never once implied it was marriage. To Denna, it was just another way to torture and humiliate him.

  In the end, Richard forgave Denna for what she had done to him. Denna, knowing he was going to kill her in order to escape, gave him her Agiel and asked him to remember her as having been more in life than simply Mord-Sith. She had asked him to share her last breath of life. It had been through Denna that Richard had come to understand and empathize with these women, and by so doing he had been the only one ever to have escaped a Mord-Sith.

  Richard was surprised at Kahlan already having done "the math." He would not have expected her to doubt him. He was wrong. She seemed to read his thoughts in his eyes.

  "It's just something you do without thinking," she whispered. "All right? Richard, please, tell me what's going on?" "You're a Confessor. You know how different arrangements can constitute marriage to different peoples. Except for you, Confessors always picked their mates for reasons of their own, reasons other than love, and then took them with their power before wedding them. The man had no say."

  The man a Confessor singled out to be her husband was selected for little more reason than his value as breeding stock. Since her power would destroy the man she picked, love, despite what she might wish, had never been an option for a Confessor. A Confessor chose a man for the qualities he would contribute to her daughter.

  "Where I came from," Richard went on, "parents often chose who their children would wed. A father would one day tell his child, 'This will be your husband' or 'This will be your wife.' Different people have different ways and different laws."

  Kahlan cast a furtive glance at Du Chaillu. Her gaze pausing twice, once on Du Chaillu's face, and once on her belly. When Kahlan's gaze returned to him, her eyes had turned brutally cold. "So tell me about her laws."

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  Richard didn't think Kahlan was aware that she was stroking the dark stone on the delicate gold necklace Shota had given her. The witch woman had appeared unexpectedly at their wedding, and Richard remembered well her words to them.

  "This is my gift to you both. I do this out of love for you both, and for everyone else. As long as you wear it, you will bear no children. Celebrate your union and your love. You_ have each other, now, as you always wanted.

  "Mark my words well-never take this off when you are together. I will not allow a male child of this union to live. I do not make a threat. I deliver you a promise. Disregard my request, and suffer the consequences of my vow."

  The witch woman had then looked into Richard's eyes, and said, "Better you battle the Keeper of the underworld himself, than me."

  Shota's elaborate throne was covered with the hide of an experienced wizard who had crossed her. Richard knew little of his birthright of the gift. He didn't necessarily believe Shota's claim that their child would be a fiend unleashed upon the world, but for now he and Kahlan had decided to heed the witch woman's warning. They had little choice.

  Kahlan's fingers on his cheek drew his gaze to hers and reminded him she wanted an answer.

  Richard made an effort to slow his words. "Du Chaillu is from the Old World, on the other side of the Valley of the Lost. I helped her when Sister Verna took me across to the Old World.

  "These other people, the Majendie, had captured Du Chaillu and were going to sacrifice her. They held her prisoner for months. The men used her for their amusement.

  'The Majendie expected me, being gifted, to help them sacrifice her in return for passage through their land. A gifted man helping with the sacrifice was part of their religious beliefs. Instead, I freed Du Chaillu, hoping she would see us through her trackless swamps, since we could no longer cross the Majendie's land."

  "I provided men to guide Richard and the witch safely

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  through the swamps to the big stone witch house," Du Chaillu said, as if that would clarify matters.

  Kahlan blinked at the explanation. "Witch? Witch house?"

  "She means Sister Verna and the Palace of the Prophets," Richard said. "They led Sister Verna and me there not because I freed Du Chaillu, but because I fulfilled an ancient prophecy."

  Du Chaillu stepped to Richard's side, as if by right. "According to the old law, Richard came to us and danced with the spirits, proving he is the Caharin, and my husband."

  Richard could almost see Kahlan's hackles lifting. "What does that mean?"

  Richard opened his mouth as he searched for the words. Du Chaillu lifted her chin and spoke instead.

  "I am the spirit woman of the Baka Tau Mana. I am also the keeper of our laws. It is proclaimed that the Caharin will announce his arrival by dancing with the spirits, and spilling the blood of thirty Baka Ban Mana, a feat none but the chosen one could accomplish and only then with the aid of the spirits.

  "It is said that when this happens, we are no longer a free people, but bound to his wishes. We are his to rule.

  "It was for this our blade masters trained their entire lives. They had the honor of teaching the Caharin so that he might fight the Dark Spirit. This proved Richard was the Caharin come to return us to our land, as the old ones promised."

  A light breeze ruffled Du Chaillu's thick hair. Her dark eyes revealed no emotion, but the slightest break in her voice betrayed it. "He killed the thirty, as set down in the old law. The thirty are now legend to our people."

  "I didn't have any choice." Richard could manage little more than a whisper. "They would have killed me, otherwise. I begged them to stop. I begged Du Chaillu to stop them. I didn't save her life just to end up killing those people. In the end, I defended myself."

  Kahlan gave Du Chaillu a long hard look before turning to Richard. "She was held p
risoner, and you saved her life

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  and then returned her to her people." Richard nodded. "And she then had her people try to kill you? That was her thanks?"

  "There was more to it." Richard felt uncomfortable defending those people's actions-actions that had resulted in so much bloodshed. He could still remember the sickening stench of it.

  Kahlan stole another icy sidelong glance at Du Chaillu. "But you saved her life?"

  "Yes."

  "So tell me what more there is to it, then."