Kahlan sighed. Why wouldn’t a man like that have a beautiful woman with him. After hearing it, she didn’t know why she hadn’t ever considered such a likelihood before now.
Kahlan didn’t know why, but she felt as if something, some hope she had never dared define, or maybe an unfathomable longing she still clung to for something profoundly valuable hidden beneath the black shroud that had been drawn over her past…had just slipped away from her.
She had to look away from Jillian’s gaze lest she lose control at the thought of the forlorn situation she found herself trapped in. She used the excuse of looking over her shoulder, checking to make sure that the emperor and his Sisters were still busy, as she wiped an unexpected, solitary tear from her cheek.
The Sisters looked more involved than ever in a discussion of the technicalities in the book. Jagang was demanding to know how they could be sure that certain parts were correct.
When Kahlan looked back, Jillian was staring at her. “But she wasn’t as beautiful as you.”
Kahlan smiled. “Diplomacy must be a requirement of being a priestess of the bones.”
“No,” Jillian said, looking suddenly worried that Kahlan might not believe she was telling the truth. “Really. There’s something about you.”
Kahlan frowned. “What do you mean?”
Jillian’s nose scrunched up with the struggle of searching for words. “I don’t know how to explain it. You’re beautiful, and smart, and you know the right thing to do. But there’s something else.”
Kahlan wondered if this could be some link to who she really was. She had been looking for someone who would be able to see her, and remember her, and maybe give her a clue.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Something noble.”
“Noble?”
Jillian nodded. “You remind me of Lord Rahl in a way. He saved my life without hesitation, just like you want to do. It wasn’t just that, though. I don’t know how to explain it. There was just something about him…and you have that same quality about you, too.”
“Good. At least he and I have something in common, then, because I’m about to save your life, too.”
Kahlan took a steadying breath as she checked over her shoulder again. The others were still engaged in their heated conversation. She turned back to Jillian and gave her a dead serious look.
“We have to do this now.”
“But, I’m still worried about my grandfather….”
Kahlan looked into the girl’s eyes for a long moment.
“Now, you listen to me, Jillian. You’re fighting for your life. It’s the only life you will ever have. They will show you no mercy for staying. I know that your grandfather would want you to take this chance.”
Jillian nodded. “I understand. Lord Rahl told me much the same thing about the importance of my life.”
For some reason, that lifted Kahlan’s heart and made her smile. The smile quickly vanished, though, as she put her mind back to the task at hand. She didn’t know if Jagang and the Sisters would be finished soon, or if they would be at it for the rest of the night, but she couldn’t afford to miss the opportunity.
“We have to do this now, before I lose my nerve. I want you to do exactly as I say.”
“I will,” Jillian said.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. You will stay right here. I’m going to go over there and kill these two men.”
Jillian’s eyes went wide. “You’re going to do what?”
“Kill them.”
“How? You’re just a woman, and they’re big. And there’s two of them.”
“It’s not impossible if you know how.”
“You’re going to cut their throats?” Jillian guessed.
“No. They would make noise if I did that. Besides, I couldn’t do that to both of them at the same time. So, I’m going to take two more of their knives and then I’m going to slip up behind them and I’m going to stab them right…here.”
Kahlan jabbed a finger in Jillian’s back, a little to the side, right in the soft spot of her kidney. Even the small jab made the girl grunt with the pain of how sensitive that place was.
“Stabbing a man right there, in his kidney, is so painful that it makes it impossible for him to cry out.”
“You can’t be serious. Surely they will scream.”
Kahlan shook her head. “The pain is so great when you’re stabbed in the kidney that your throat clamps shut. Your scream is locked in your lungs. That will be our chance. Before they collapse and hit the floor as they’re dying, we have to get through that door behind them. We have to slip through as quietly as possible to buy as much time as we can. We’ll probably only have a brief moment before we’re discovered, but that moment is all we need for you to get away.
“You stand right here. As soon as I drive the knives in their backs, you head for the door—fast as you can. But don’t make any noise. I’ll be there with you at the doors.”
Jillian was panting in fear of such a task. Her eyes were brimming with tears. “But I want you to go with me.”
Kahlan squatted down and hugged the girl.
“I know. This is all I can do to protect you, Jillian. But I think it will be enough to get away.”
She wiped at her eyes. “But what will they do to you?”
“You just worry about getting away. If I get a chance to escape, I promise you I will. Tell Lokey to watch for me in case I ever do get away.”
“All right.”
Kahlan knew that it was a false hope. She squeezed Jillian’s shoulder
and stood. She checked the four at the table one last time. She did so just in time.
Jagang glanced over his shoulder to see what Kahlan was doing. She stood silently beside Jillian, watching him and the Sisters working, as if she had been there the whole time, doing nothing but awaiting her fate. He turned his attention to the heated words between Sister Ulicia and Sister Cecilia. Sister Ulicia was being her obstinate self, while Sister Cecilia was trying to find a way to appease Jagang by telling him whatever he wanted to hear.
Once she was sure that Jagang’s attention was back on the book, Kahlan immediately started for the guards. As one was again eyeing Jillian with increasingly open lust, Kahlan carefully pulled a long knife from his weapons belt. Without delay, she moved to the far guard and did the same, taking his long knife as well.
Standing behind them, she glanced to the Sisters and Jagang and, seeing them still busy, she looked over at Jillian. The girl, wiping her palms on her hips, nodded that she was ready.
Kahlan reached to the man on the right and drew a knife he carried in a sheath hanging from a strap on his side. She placed the blade sideways between her teeth.
Without lingering any longer, she scrutinized the lower backs of the guards, selecting the precise spots she needed to hit. She chose the right side of the man on her left, and the left side of the man on her right, so that she would have targets closest together and she would be able to put her full strength into the thrust.
She looked back and forth between the men, making sure that she would hit the right spot with each knife. If she missed, it would be fatal, but not necessarily for the men. It would be Jillian who paid the price of an error. It had to be right, and it had to be right the first time.
Kahlan took a deep breath, holding it only briefly, then she exhaled hard, adding that power to the force she put into her thrust. With all her strength, she plunged both knives into the men’s backs. The blades went in up to the hilts.
Both men stiffened at the jolting shock.
Kahlan had already drawn another breath. This time, as quickly as she could, she forced out the breath and used all her considerable strength to pull the handles together toward one another so that the blades would pivot and rip through the men’s kidneys.
The men stood frozen stiff and slightly twisted, backs arched with the intense wallop of excruciating pain. Their eyes bulged, their mouths opened, but they made no sound. They stood in mortal trauma, unable to draw in a gasp or let out a cry.
When Kahlan looked up, Jillian was already on her way. Kahlan turned and swiftly opened one of the narrow doors. She didn’t want to give their pursuers a clear path by opening both.
Jillian was there. The men’s knees began buckling. Kahlan put her hand on Jillian’s back, between her shoulders, and pushed her through the doorway, propelling her out into the hallway.
Kahlan took the knife from her teeth. “Run. Don’t stop for anything.”
Jillian nodded back. She looked as if the Keeper himself were on her heels.
Kahlan turned to close the door, but just then the men hit the floor.
Four startled faces spun around toward her. Kahlan pulled the door closed and ran as if the Keeper were after her, too.
She saw Jillian in the dim distance just as she reached an intersection where a juncture of branches of passages went off in different directions. The girl paused, looking back at Kahlan. They shared a brief look filled with meaning, and then she was gone, vanished down one of the passages. It was so dark in the distance that Kahlan wasn’t sure which one Jillian had taken.
Behind came an explosive splintering of wood, as if the doors had been blown apart. Torchlight suddenly spilled through the hall, surrounding Kahlan. She immediately stopped and spun back. She gripped the knife by the point. She saw shadows in the room rushing toward the gaping doorway.
With all her strength she heaved the knife without there even being anyone there, yet, in that doorway.
An enraged Sister Cecilia burst through first. The knife slammed into her chest. Kahlan had hoped it would be Jagang first through, but she had been pretty sure it would be a Sister, so she had aimed accordingly. The blade had flown true, and plunged right through Sister Cecilia’s heart.
The Sister went down hard. Kahlan turned and ran with all her strength. Just as she had turned, she had seen the others fall over the body of Sister Cecilia.
Kahlan ran as she had never run before. She took the first corner to the
left. She didn’t know which turns Jillian had taken, but she didn’t see her. The girl was gone.
A flush of pure exhilaration washed through Kahlan, filling her very soul with the thrill of success. It had worked. She had kept her promise to Jillian, and to herself. She had at least beaten them in this much of it.
She was giddy with the victory even as she ran like a madwoman. She had not only killed the two guards but taken out Sister Cecilia. Images of the pain that woman had given her, and the satisfaction she had derived from it, flashed through Kahlan’s mind, and she savored her vengeance.
Now that it had worked, and Jillian was away, terror flooded up through her. She knew she wouldn’t get away. All she could do was run, taking random turns, and wait for the end.
It came with a sudden shock of pain she thought must be something like what the two men had felt.
She knew she hit the ground, but she didn’t really feel it.
And then it felt as if the entire ceiling and dead city above all caved in on top of her.
The world went as black as a grave.
Richard was winded by the time he had finally crested the rise. It wasn’t just that he was out of breath, though; he was out of strength as well. He knew that he hadn’t taken the time to eat as much as he should have along the way, and now he was paying the price for it. His legs felt like lead. His stomach ached with hunger. He felt weak and just wanted to lie down, but he couldn’t, not now, not when he was this close. Not when there was so much at stake.
He’d eaten some pine nuts and a few handfuls of huckleberries he’d come across as he went along, but he hadn’t gone out of his way to collect any more. He just hadn’t wanted to take the time.
At least he had his pack with him, so the night before he had been able to set out a fishing line in a small lake just at sunset. He then collected an armload of dry wood and started a fire with a flint and steel. By the time the fire was hot he had three trout on his setline. He had been so hungry that he’d been tempted to eat them raw, but fish cooked quickly, so he waited.
Not wanting to stop any longer than necessary, he’d gotten little sleep on the short journey from the sliph. He reasoned that the sooner he got his hands on the book that Baraccus had left for him, the better off he would be. The book had already been waiting there for him for three thousand years. He didn’t want it to wait another night. He thought about how, if he had been smart enough to find the book sooner, he might have avoided the problems he now faced. He was hoping that it could somehow help him in finding Kahlan, maybe even help him find a way to reverse the tainted Chainfire spell.
He’d reasoned that the best plan would be to recover the book as soon as possible; then he could do some reading while he took the time to eat. He would worry then about sleeping and getting back to the Keep.
The Keep was a long way off. He didn’t know exactly where he was, except that he was a good distance south of Agaden Reach in what appeared
to be an uninhabited area either near or in the wilds, so he was concerned about how he was going to find some horses. One problem at a time, he reminded himself, one problem at a time.
As difficult as it had been to undertake the climb up the steep, rocky rise in the dark, he couldn’t bring himself to stop when he knew that he was close. Besides, if he wanted to see the night wisps, it could only be at night, so he didn’t want to wait until morning to make the climb and then have to wait around all the next day for it to get dark again.
Finally reaching the top, Richard scanned the area to get his bearings. Above the edge of the steep slope the ground leveled off into a sparsely wooded oak grove. The breeze from earlier in the day had died hours ago, at sunset, and it was now dead calm. The silence felt like an oppressive weight lying over him. For some reason, the typical night sounds of small animals, insects, and such that were common in the lowlands stretching out endlessly behind him were silent up at the top of the long climb.
In the moonlight, Richard immediately noticed that there was something wrong with the trees. It looked as if they were all dead. The fat, squat trunks were twisted and gnarled. The bark had started to come away in ragged strips. The bent and distorted branches looked like claws reaching out to snatch anyone who dared enter the place.
Richard had been focused at the trek and the climb, but he suddenly switched to being on guard, his attention riveted as he listened for any sound in the eerie silence. He moved carefully beneath the trees, trying to make as little noise as possible. It was difficult, though, since the ground was littered with dry sticks and leaves. The branches looming overhead cast grotesque shadows in the moonlight, and the air had a chill to it that ran a shiver up his back.
With the next step, something underfoot broke with an odd, bony pop. In all the years he’d spent in the woods, Richard had never heard a sound like that.
He froze in place, listening, waiting. His mind raced as he went over the memory of the sound, trying to come up with its cause. Try as he might, he couldn’t place it. When he heard nothing more, and saw nothing move, he carefully backed up, lifting his foot off whatever it was that had broken.
After checking in every direction, appraising every shadow, he squatted down to see what it was that he had stepped on. Whatever it was, it was covered in leaves. He cautiously pushed the decaying leaves aside.
There, half-buried in the forest loam, dark with age, was a broken human skull staring up at him. The weight of his foot had broken in the rounded top of the skull. The eye sockets, which seemed to be watching him, were still intact.
Richard scanned the forest floor and saw other humps under the leaves. He also saw something else: more skulls that weren’t buried beneath the forest litter. Just from where he crouched, he could see a good half-dozen skulls lying at least partially atop leaves, and even more rounded shapes below them. Beneath the leaves he found the rest of the bones that belonged to the skull he had stepped on.
He stood slowly and began moving again, scrutinizing the ground, the fat, twisted tree trunks, as well as the limbs overhead as he went. He saw no one and heard nothing.
Now that he knew what he was looking for, he was able to spot skulls seemingly everywhere. He stopped counting once he’d reached thirty. The bones appeared scattered, not bunched together as if people had all died together or in groups. With a few exceptions, they appeared to have been individuals who had died at those particular places. He supposed that the bodies might have been placed there; he had no way of really knowing. The few exceptions were skulls close together, but he reasoned that might have been chance—people who had happened to have fallen near another body.
Richard crouched down to inspect a number of the skulls, both those lying exposed and those buried beneath the litter. His initial thought was that it was possibly the site of a battle, but as near as he could tell in the moonlight these people had not died at the same time. There were some bones that were sound, while others were moldering away. Some appeared so ancient that they fell apart when he touched them. The place was like a graveyard, but with all of the bodies above ground, rather than being buried.
The other thing that he noticed was that no predators looked to have disturbed the dead. Richard had come across remains in the woods when he had been a guide. Animals always got at the dead, human or otherwise. It looked as if each one of these bodies, though, had rotted away over time, leaving the bones lying in the exact same position in which the person had fallen—on their sides, or with arms sprawled, or facedown. None had been laid out as if in burial, with arms neatly crossed on their chests,
or at their sides. They looked simply to have fallen dead. It still might not have seemed quite so peculiar except that not one of the corpses looked to have been touched by any predator.
As Richard walked endlessly through the oak grove, he wondered if it would ever end. On a moonless, cloudy night, or even a cloudy day for that matter, it was the kind of place where it would have been easy to get lost. Everything looked the same. The trees were spaced evenly, and there was nothing to indicate if he was going in the right direction, except the moon and stars.
For what seemed like half the night, Richard moved ever onward through the forest of the dead. He was sure that he had followed the directions the sliph had given him. The sliph, however, had no way to know exactly what he would find; she had only been given directions from Baraccus, and that had been three thousand years before. The landscape could have changed a great deal since the time of Baraccus. The bones, though, didn’t look to be anywhere near that old. Of course, it could be that lying in the oak grove there were bones thousands of years old, but by now those would have all crumbled to dust.
As Richard continued on, the woods began growing murkier, until he found himself entering the black shadows of a dark forest of immense pines, their trunks standing close together and each nearly as big as his house back in the Hartland woods had been. It was like encountering a wall of mountains that rose up into the sky. The trunks, like pillars, were clear of branches until somewhere up out of sight. But those branches completely closed off the sky and left the forest floor below a dark and confusing maze among the massive trunks.
Richard paused, considering how he would keep to a direction in the pitch blackness that lay ahead while being unable to move in anything resembling a straight line.
That was when he heard the whispers.
He cocked his head, listening, trying to make out the words. He couldn’t, so he carefully stepped deeper into the gloom, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness before taking a few more steps. Before long he began to be able to make out the shapes of the trees ahead, so he moved forward, ever deeper into the close canyons among the trunks of the monumental pines.
“Go back,” came a whisper.
“Who’s there?” he whispered back.
“Go back,” said a faint little voice, “or stay forever with the bones of those who have come before you.”
“I’ve come to speak with the night wisps,” Richard said.
“Then you have come for nothing. Go, now,” the voice repeated with more strength.
Richard tried to lay the sound of the words over his memory of what a wisp sounded like. While it wasn’t the same, it did have qualities in common.
“Please come forward so that I may talk with you.”
Only silence surrounded him. Richard moved ahead a dozen paces into the darkness.
“Last time warned,” came the eerie voice. “Go, now.”
“I have come a long way. I’m not going back without speaking with the wisps. This is important.”
“Not to us.”
Richard stood with one hand on a hip as he tried to conceive of what to do next. He was far from clearheaded. His weariness was hampering his thinking.
“Yes, this is important to you, too.”
“How?”
“I have come for what Baraccus left for me.”
“So did those whose bones you have passed.”
“Look, this is important. Your lives ultimately depend upon this as well. In this struggle there will be no uninvolved bystanders. All will be drawn into the storm.”
“The stories you have heard about a treasure are empty lies. There is nothing here.”
“Treasure? No—you don’t understand. That’s not what this is about at all. I think you misunderstand me. I’ve already passed the tests Baraccus left for me—that’s why I’m here. I’m Richard Rahl. I’m married to Kahlan Amnell, the Mother Confessor.”
“We don’t know this person you speak of. Go back to her while you still can.”
“No, that’s the point, I can’t. I’m trying to find her.” Frustrated, Richard ran his fingers back into his hair. He didn’t know how much time he might have to say what he needed to say, or how much he should leave out, if he
was to convince the wisps of his true reason for being there—to convince them to help him.
“You once knew her. Magic was used against Kahlan to make everyone forget her. You knew her, too, but you forgot her like everyone else. Kahlan used to come here. In her role as the Mother Confessor she fought to protect the land of the night wisps and to keep others out.
“She told me about the beautiful land of the night wisps. She told me about the open fields in ancient, remote forests. She has been among the wisps as they gather at twilight to dance together in the grasses and wildflowers.
“She told me that she spent many a night lying on her back in the grass as the wisps gathered around her, speaking with her of things common to both of your lives: of dreams and hopes, of loves.
“Please, the wisps knew her. She was your friend.”
Richard saw, then, a tiny light come out from behind a tree. “Go, or your bones will remain out there, with the others who seek treasure, and no one will ever see you again or know what became of you.”
“If I need gold I earn it. I have no interest in treasure.”
The tiny spark of light started away. “Not all treasure is gold.”
As it glided into the distance, the shafts of spinning light played over the trunks of trees it passed.
“I knew Shar,” Richard called out.
The light paused. It stopped spinning.
For a moment, Richard watched as the spark of light hung there, in the distance, faintly illuminating the closely gathered monarchs of the forest standing like sentries for what lay beyond.
“You did not come because of the legends that there was treasure to be found here?”
“No.”
“What do you know of the name you spoke?”
“I was with Shar after she went through the boundary. Shar crossed that boundary to help stop the threat from Darken Rahl. Shar crossed the boundary to help in the effort to find me so that I, too, could help in that struggle. Before she died, Shar said that if I ever needed the help of the night wisps, then I should say her name and they would help me, for no enemy may know it.”
Richard pointed back toward the grove of dead oaks, where the forgotten,
moldering remains reposed. “I have a feeling that none of the people whose bones lie back there knew her name, or the name of any wisp.”
The light slowly returned through the trees, finally coming to a stop not far from him. He could feel the softly glowing shafts of light gliding over the contours of his face. They almost felt like the faint touch of a spider’s web.
Richard took a small step closer. “I spoke with Shar before she died. She said that she could not live away from those of her kind any longer, and she did not have the strength to return to her home place.
“She gave me my first test from Baraccus. She said that she believed in me, believed that I had inside me what it takes to prevail. It was a message from him. She asked me about secrets.”
The tiny light turned a warm, rosy color as it spun in silence for a moment.
“And you passed her test?”
“No,” Richard admitted. “It was too soon for me to understand it all. Later, I finally came to understand. The sliph said that I have now passed the test that Baraccus left for me.”
“What is your name?”
“I grew up named Richard Cypher. Since then I’ve come to learn that I am Richard Rahl. I have been called by other names as well: the Seeker; the one born true; the bringer of death; Richard with the Temper; the Pebble in the Pond; and
Caharin
. Does one of those names mean anything to you?”