'A screeling.'
'And what is a screeling?'
'I'm not sure. Nobody I know has ever seen one, but I've heard them described. They're supposed to be from the underworld.'
Richard stopped chewing and opened his eyes to look at her. The underworld? What do you know about this screeling thing?'
'Not much.' She frowned. 'Have you ever seen Zedd drunk?'
'Zedd? Never. He doesn't like wine. Just food. He says that drinking interferes with thinking, and there is nothing more important than thinking.' Richard smiled. 'He says that the worse a man is at thinking, the better he is at drinking.'
'Well, wizards can get pretty scary when they're drunk. One time when I was little, I was in the Keep, studying my languages. They have books of languages there. Anyway, I was studying, and four of the wizards were reading a book of prophecy together. It was a book I had never seen before.
They were leaning over it, and started getting all worked up. They were talking in hushed tones. I could tell they were frightened. At the time it was a lot more fun to watch wizards than to read my languages.
'I looked up and they had all turned white as snow. They all stood up straight at the same time, and flipped the cover shut. I remember it banged and made me jump. They all stood there, quiet for a while, and then one went away and came back with a bottle. Without saying a word, he passed out cups and poured out the drink. They all drank it down in one swallow. He poured more and they did the same thing again. They sat down on stools around the table the big book was on and kept drinking until the bottle was empty. By that time they were pretty happy. And drunk. They were laughing and singing. I thought it was tremendously interesting. I had never seen anything like it.
They finally saw me watching them, and called me over. I didn't really want to go, but they were wizards, and I knew them pretty well, so I wasn't afraid and I went over to them. One set me up on his knee and asked if I wanted to sing with them. I told them that I didn't know the song they were singing. They looked at each other and then said they would teach me. So we sat there for a long time and they taught me the song.'
'So, do you remember it?'
Kahlan nodded. 'I've never forgotten that song.' She rearranged herself a little and then sang it for him.
The screelings are loose and the Keeper may win.
His assassins have come to rip off your skin.
Golden eyes will see you if you try to run.
The screelings will get you and laugh like it's fun.
Walk away slow or they'll tear you apart,
and laugh all day long as they rip out your heart.
Golden eyes will see you if you try to stand still.
The screelings will get you, for the Keeper they kill.
Hack 'em up, chop 'em up, cut 'em to bits,
or else they will get you while laughing in fits.
If the screelings don't get you the Keeper will try,
to reach out and touch you, your skin he will fry.
Your mind he will flail, your soul he will take.
You'll sleep with the dead, for life you'll forsake.
You'll die with the Keeper till the end of time.
He hates that you live, your life is the crime.
The screelings might get you, it says so in text.
If screelings don't get you the Keeper is next,
lest he who's born true can fight for life's bond.
And that one is marked; he's the pebble in the pond.
Richard stared at her when she finished. 'Pretty gruesome song to teach a child.' Finally, he resumed chewing the leaves.
Kahlan nodded with a sigh. That night, I had terrible nightmares. My mother came into my room and sat on my bed. She hugged me and asked what I was having nightmares about. I sang her the song the wizards had taught me. She climbed into my bed and stayed with me that night.
The next day she went to see the wizards. I never knew what she did or said to them, but for the next few months, whenever they saw her coming they turned and hurried off the other way. And for a good long time they avoided me like death itself.'
Richard took another leaf from the little bag and put it in his mouth. The screelings are sent by the Keeper? The Keeper of the underworld?'
That's what the song says. It must be true. How could anything of this world take that many arrows and just laugh?'
Richard thought in silence a moment. 'What is "the pebble in the pond"?'
Kahlan shrugged. 'I've never heard of it before or since.'
'What about the blue lightning? How did you do that?'
'It's something to do with the Con Dar. I did it before when it came over me the first time.' She took a deep breath at the memory. 'When I thought you were dead. I'd never felt the Con Dar before, but now I feel it there all the time, just as I can always feel the Confessor's magic. The two are somehow connected. I must have awakened it. I think it's what Adie warned me about that time we were with her. But Richard, I don't know how I did it.'
Richard smiled. 'You never fail to amaze me. If I just found out I could call down lightning, I don't think I would be sitting there so calmly.'
'Well, you just remember what I can do,' she warned, 'if some pretty girl ever bats her lashes at you.'
He took her hand. There are no other pretty girls.'
The fingers of her other hand combed through his hair. 'Is there anything I can do for you?'
'Yes,' he whispered. 'Lie down next to me. I want you close. I'm afraid of never waking, and I want to be close to you.'
'You will wake,' she promised cheerfully.
She took out another blanket and pulled it over the two of them. She cuddled close, her head on his shoulder and an arm over his chest, and tried not to worry about what he had said.
CHAPTER 8
When she woke, her back was against the warmth of him. Light was seeping in around the edges of the door. She sat up, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and looked down at Richard.
He lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, taking slow, shallow breaths. She smiled at the familiar pleasure of his face. He was so handsome it made her ache.
Suddenly she realized with a jolt what it was about him that looked so familiar to her. Richard looked like Darken Rahl. Not the same kind of impossible perfection - the flawlessly smooth, uninterrupted sweep of features that were too exactly right, like some precisely perfect statue - but more rugged, rougher; more real.
Before they'd defeated Rahl, when Shota, the witch woman, had appeared to them as Richard's mother, Kahlan had seen her looks in Richard's nose and mouth. It was as if Richard had Darken Rahl's face with some of his mother's features making it better than Rahl's cruel perfection. Rahl's hair was fine, straight, and blond, while Richard's was coarser and darker. And Richard's eyes were gray instead of Rahl's blue, but they both possessed the same penetrating intensity - the same kind of raptor's gaze that seemed as if it could cut steel.
Though she didn't know how it could be possible, she knew Richard had Rahl blood. But Darken Rahl was from D'Hara, and Richard from Westland; that was about as far apart as you could get. It must be, she finally decided, a connection in the distant past.
Richard was still staring at the ceiling. She put her hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. 'How is your head?'
Richard jumped hard. He looked around and blinked at her. He rubbed his eyes. 'What? ... I was asleep. What did you say?'
Kahlan frowned. 'You weren't asleep.'
'Yes I was. Sound asleep.'
Kahlan felt a flutter of apprehension. 'Your eyes were wide open. I was watching you.' She left unsaid that as far as she knew, only wizards slept with their eyes open.
'Really?' He looked around. 'Where are those leaves?'
'Here. Does it still hurt bad?'
'Yes.' He sat up. 'But it's been worse.' He put some of the leaves in his mouth and ran his fingers through his hair. 'At least I can talk.' He smiled at her. 'And I can smile without my face feel
ing like it's going to break.'
'Maybe you shouldn't go shoot arrows today if you don't feel well enough.'
'Savidlin said I couldn't back out. I'm not going to let him down. Besides, I really want to see this bow he made for me. It's been ... well, I don't even remember how long it's been since I shot a bow.'
After he chewed some of Nissel's leaves for a while, they folded up the blankets and went looking for Savidlin. They found him at his home, listening to Siddin telling stories of what it was like to ride a dragon. Savidlin liked listening to stories. Even though it was a little boy telling them, he listened with the same interest he would accord a hunter returning from a journey. Kahlan noted with pride that the little boy was giving a remarkably accurate rendition, without fanciful embellishment.
Siddin wanted to know if he could have a dragon for a pet. Savidlin told him the red dragon was not a pet, but a friend to their people. He told him to find a red chicken, and he could have that.
Weselan was cooking a pot of some sort of porridge with eggs mixed in. She asked Richard and Kahlan to join them and passed each a bowl as they sat on a skin on the floor. She gave them flat tava bread to fold and use as a scoop for the porridge.
Richard had her ask Savidlin if he had a drill of any kind. Savidlin leaned way back, and with a finger and thumb pulled a thin rod from a pouch beneath a bench. He handed the rod to Richard, who had the dragon's tooth out. Richard turned the rod around with a puzzled look, put it at the base of the tooth, and twisted it experimentally.
Savidlin laughed. 'You want a hole in that?' Richard nodded. Savidlin held out his hand. 'Give it to me. I will show you how it is done.'
Savidlin used his knifepoint to start a small hole and then held the tooth between his feet as he sat on the floor. He placed a few grains of sand in the hole, followed by the rod. He spat in his palms and then spun the rod back and forth rapidly between his hands, stopping occasionally to drop a few more grains of sand down the hole and wipe a little spittle into the opening. In a little while, he had drilled all the way through the tooth. He used his knife to clean the burrs from where the drill went through the other side of the tooth, and then held it up, grinning, showing off the hole. Richard laughed and thanked him as he strung a leather thong to the tooth. He hung it around his neck with the Bird Man's whistle and the Mord-Sith's Agiel.
He was getting quite a collection. Some of it she didn't like.
Wiping out his porridge bowl with a piece of tava bread, Savidlin asked, 'Is your head better?'
'It's better, but still hurts something fierce. Nissel's leaves help. I'm embarrassed I had to be carried back last night.'
Savidlin laughed. 'One time, I had a bad hurt, here.' He pointed at a round scar in his side. 'I was carried home by women.' He leaned closer and lifted an eyebrow. 'Women!' Weselan cast a disapproving eye toward him. He made a point of not noticing. 'When my men found out I was carried home by women, they had a good laugh over it.' He put the last of the tava bread in his mouth and chewed for a few minutes. 'Then I told them which women carried me home, and they stopped laughing and wanted to know how to get a hurt like mine so they too could be carried home by those women.'
'Savidlin!' Weselan scolded in a scandalized tone. She turned to them. 'If he didn't already have a hurt, I would have given him one. A good one.'
'So how did you get this hurt?' Richard asked.
Savidlin shrugged. 'Like I told my men: it was easy. You just stand there like a surprised rabbit while a trespasser puts a spear through you.'
'And why didn't he finish you?'
'Because I put a few ten-step arrows in him.' He pointed at his throat. 'Here.'
'What's a ten-step arrow?'
Savidlin reached to the side and pulled a barbed, fine-pointed arrow from his quiver. 'One of these. See the dark stain? Poison. Ten-step poison. When it sticks you, you get only ten steps, and then you are dead.' He laughed. 'My men decided to think of a different way to get those women to carry them.'
Weselan leaned over and stuffed the rest of her tava bread in her husband's mouth. She turned to Kahlan. 'Men enjoy telling the most awful stories.' She broke into a shy smile. 'But I worried for him until he was well. I knew he was well when he came to me and made Siddin. Then I did not worry anymore.'
Kahlan realized she had translated before she had paid attention to the meaning of the words. She felt her ears burn. Instead of looking at Richard, she paid close attention to eating her porridge. She was glad her hair covered her ears, at least.
Savidlin gave Richard a look of a put-upon male. ' You will find that women, too, like to tell stories.'
Kahlan tried desperately to think of a new direction for the conversation. She couldn't. Thankfully, Savidlin did. He leaned back, looking out the door.
'It will soon be the time to go.'
'How do you know what time we are to go?'
Savidlin shrugged. 'I am here, you are here, some of the men are here. When they are all here, that is the time to go.'
Savidlin went to the corner and retrieved a bow that was taller than the one Kahlan had seen him use before. Taller for Richard. With the aid of his foot, Savidlin stretched the cord to the bow.
Richard had a wide grin on his face. He told Savidlin it was the finest bow he had ever seen. Savidlin beamed with pride and gave him a quiver full of arrows.
Richard tested the weight of the draw. 'How did you know how strong to make the pull? It's just right.'
Savidlin pointed at his chin. 'I remembered how strong your respect for my strength was when we first met. It is too heavy for me, but I estimated it was right for you.'
Kahlan stood up next to Richard. 'Are you sure you want to go? How does your head feel?'
Terrible. But I have the leaves; they help a little. I think I'll be all right. Savidlin is looking forward to this. I don't want to disappoint him.'
She rubbed her hand on his shoulder. 'Should I come with you?'
Richard kissed her forehead. 'I don't think I'll need anyone to translate to tell me how badly I'm being beaten. And I don't think I want to give Chandalen's men any excuse to humiliate me any worse than they are already going to.'
'Zedd told me you were pretty good. In fact, he told me you were better than good.'
Richard stole a look at Savidlin, who was stringing his own bow. 'It's been a long time since I've shot a bow. Zedd was just trying to stir up trouble, I'll bet.'
He stole a kiss while Savidlin was finishing and then went out the door with him. Kahlan leaned against the doorframe, still feeling the print of his lips on hers as she watched him walking away.
Showing no emotion, Chandalen stared up from sighting down one of his arrows. Prindin and Tossidin flashed sly smiles. They were looking forward to this. Richard glanced around, meeting the eyes of all the men as he walked past. They fell in behind him. He was a good head taller than any of them. They looked like a bunch of children following an adult. But these children had poison arrows, and some of them didn't hold any favor for Richard. Suddenly she didn't like this.
Weselan stood next to her, watching the men go. 'Savidlin said he will watch Richard's back. Don't be concerned, Chandalen would not do anything foolish.'
'I worry about what Chandalen considers foolish.'
Weselan wiped her hands on a cloth, turning back to keep a watchful eye on Siddin. Siddin wanted to go out, and was sitting, poking a finger along the ground, looking dejected because his mother said she wanted him to stay inside. Weselan stood over him a long moment watching. He looked up, his chin resting in one palm. She gave him a gentle snap with the cloth.
'Go outside and play.' Weselan sighed as he tore through the door with a squeal of glee. She shook her head to herself. 'The young don't know how dear life is. Or how fragile.'
'Maybe that is why we all wish we were young again.'
Weselan nodded. 'Maybe so.' A handsome smile came to her tanned face. Her dark eyes sparkled. 'What color would you like to wear when you we
d your man?'
With both hands, Kahlan pulled her long hair back over her shoulders and thought a minute. A smile welled up from within. 'Richard favors blue.'
Weselan twined her fingers together. 'Oh, that would be just right, then. I have just the thing. I have been saving it for something special.'
She went into her small bedroom and came back with a bundle. Sitting on the bench next to Kahlan, she carefully unfolded it in her lap. The cloth was finely woven, a rich blue with a print of lighter blue flowers dappled across it. Kahlan thought it would make a gorgeous dress.
She tested the weave between her finger and thumb. 'It's beautiful. Where did you get it?'
'I traded for it.' She flicked her hand over her head. 'With people from the north. They like the bowls I make. I traded with them for it.'
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