Temple of the Winds (112 page)

“
Your return. Don’t tell me that you only came back to die? Oh, Richard, why would you do such a foolish thing?”

“
If I had stayed at the Temple of the Winds, I would eventually have died, but without your forgiveness. I chose, instead, to return and hope that a part of you still loved me enough to forgive me, so I could die with that much at least. With your love back. I couldn’t go on, knowing what I had done to you, knowing how I had hurt your heart.”

“
And you don’t think this hurts my heart! Richard, there has to be something we can do. What can we do? Please, you must have known!”

Richard fell onto his side, holding his stomach. “I’m sorry, Kahlan. There is nothing. I am absorbing the magic from the book that was stolen. When I die, the magic will die with me.”

Kahlan crouched over him, clutching at him, as the tears overwhelmed her. “Richard, please don’t do this. Please don’t die.”

“
I’m sorry, Kahlan. I can’t stop it. I gladly paid the price. My heart is at peace, now.” He reached up and touched the Agiel hanging from the chain at her throat. “There was never a moment’s hesitation, once I understood. Denna helped me to understand.”

Kahlan hugged him as he rolled onto his back. “Richard, there must be something. You would have known what to do, before they took the knowledge from you. Try to remember. Please, Richard, try to remember.”

His eyelids drooped. “I need … to rest. I’m sorry. I used all my strength. I need to rest a bit.”

Kahlan gripped his hand in both of hers as she wept. It was all too overwhelming to endure. To have him back, only to lose him was too crushing to endure.

She opened his limp hand, to press it to her cheek, and saw something in his palm. She pulled back his fingers, and through the tears, she saw writing in the palm of his hand.

It said,
Find book, destroy it to live.

Kahlan sprawled over his unconscious form and grabbed his other hand. It, too, had writing in it.
Pinch of white sorcerer’s sand on third page. One grain of black sorcerer’s sand tossed on.

There were three other words, but in her mind’s state of chaotic disorder, she couldn’t think of how pronounce them.

He knew he was going to forget, and before he did, he wrote a message to himself. He had even forgotten that he had written it.

The book. She had to have the book.

And then she was running, screaming as she went.

“
Cara, Berdine! Help me! Cara! Berdine!”

Both women dashed out of the sliph’s room, out onto the walkway beside the inky pool, when they heard Kahlan screaming their names as she raced into the tower room.

Kahlan grasped at their leather as she tried to explain. They each seized one of Kahlan’s arms and pressed her up against the wall.

“
Slow down,” Berdine said.

“
We can’t understand you,” Cara said. “Get your breath. Stop crying and get your breath.”

“
Richard—” She tried to point but they held her arms. “Richard has the plague … I need the book.”

Berdine leaned in close. “Lord Rahl … has the plague?”

Kahlan nodded frantically. “I have to get the book. The book that was stolen from the Temple of the Winds. I have to get it or he will die.” Kahlan tore her arms away from them. “Please help me. Richard has the plague.”

“
What do you need us to do?” Cara asked.

“
I’m going to the Old World. Protect him.”

“
The Old World!” Berdine gasped. “Do you know where the book is? Did he tell you where to find it? Did he give you any hint?”

Kahlan shook her head. There wasn’t time. She had to hurry. She had to go.

“
I don’t know where it is! But it’s the only chance he has. He took on the magic of the plague in order to return to this world. In order to beg my forgiveness. He wanted to tell me he was sorry for hurting me. If we don’t destroy the book, he’ll die—just so he could say he was sorry. He’ll die! I have to go!”

“
But, Mother Confessor,” Berdine said, “the Old World is a big place. If Richard has the plague … how can you hope to find the book?”

In time. That was what she meant. How could she hope to find the book in time? Before Richard died.

Kahlan gripped a fistful of red leather. “I have to try! Protect Richard. Don’t let Drefan know that Richard is back. I don’t know what Drefan would do. Don’t tell him!”

Cara was shaking her head. “Don’t worry about that. We won’t tell Drefan. We’ll take care of Richard while you’re gone. We’ll hide him here in the Keep. But hurry. If you can’t find it, please come back before—”

Kahlan rushed into the room with the sliph. She raced to the sliph’s well. The sliph smiled at seeing her.

“
Do you wish—”

“
Travel! I need to travel! Now!”

“
To where do you wish to travel?”

“
The Old World!”

“
Where in the Old World? There are a number of places I know there. We can go to any you wish. I will take you. You will be pleased.”

Kahlan pressed her hands to her head, growling in frustration as the sliph started naming places Kahlan had never heard of.

“
The place you came to with Richard, with your Master, when he went to get me! The first time I traveled with you!”

“
I know the place of which you speak.”

Kahlan hiked up her white dress and clambered up onto the wall of the well. “That place! Take me there! Hurry! Your master’s life is at stake!”

“
Protect Richard,” Kahlan called out to Cara and Berdine.

“
What should we tell Drefan when he wants to know where you are?” Berdine asked.

“
I don’t know. You’ll have to think of something!”

“
We will care for Richard until you return,” Cara said. “May the good spirits be with you.”

“
Tell him I love him. If … tell him I love him!” she called out as the sliph’s silver arm swept Kahlan from the top of the wall.

Her voice was still echoing off the stone walls when Kahlan was plunged into the quicksilver froth. She gasped in the sliph, praying to the good spirits that they would help her find the book. With frantic effort, she swam into what in the past had been the silver rapture.

Now, there was only dark terror.

Ann leaned toward him. “This is your fault, you know.”

Zedd, sitting on the floor in the center of the room with her, glanced over. “You broke her prized mirror.”

“
That was an accident,” Ann insisted. “You are the one who ruined their shrine.”

“
I was simply trying to get it clean. How was I to know that it would catch fire? They shouldn’t have put all those dried flowers around it. You were the one who spilled that berry wine on her best dress.”

Ann turned her nose up. “The pitcher was too full. You’re the one who filled it. Besides, you broke his prized knife handle. He won’t ever be able to find a burled wassen root like that one again. He was understandably upset.”

Zedd harrumphed. “What do I know about sharpening knives? I’m a wizard, not a blacksmith.”

“
That would explain the incident with the elder’s horse.”

“
They can’t blame that on me. I didn’t leave the gate open. At least, I’m pretty sure I didn’t leave it open. Anyway, there is bound to be another horse that fast he can buy. He can afford it. What I want to know is how you managed to turn his number three wife’s hair that color green.”

Ann folded her arms. “Well, it was an accident. I thought those herbs would make her hair smell good. I wanted to surprise her. But the elder’s prized rabbit skin headdress—that was no accident; that was plain laziness. You should have checked it sooner, instead of leaving it to dry unattended over the fire. That headdress was a work of art, what with those thousands of beads. He won’t easily replace such a nice headdress.”

Zedd shrugged. “Well, we never told them that we were any good at domestic tasks. We never told them that at all.”

“
Quite right. We didn’t. It’s not our fault if we didn’t work out. We could have told them, if they’d asked.”

“
We certainly could have.”

Ann cleared her throat into the silence. “What do you think they are going to do with us?”

Both of them were sitting back to back, bound together with a coarse rope, while the meeting across the room dragged on. They still wore the wrist bands that kept them from using their magic.

Zedd glanced across the room, where a heated discussion was being conducted. The bareheaded elder, his number one wife, several influential members of the Si Doak community who had claimed rights to use the services of the captives, and the Si Doak shaman, were all complaining to one another about troubles they had had. Zedd couldn’t understand all of the words, but he could understand enough to follow the deliberations.

“
They’ve decided they want to cut their losses and rid themselves of their domestic slaves,” Zedd whispered to Ann.

“
What’s happening?” Ann asked, when the chattering finally came to an end. “What have they decided? Are they going to set us free?”

The eyes across the room all turned to the captives. Zedd made a warning sound to Ann.

“
I think maybe we should have been a little more attentive to our chores,” Zedd whispered over his shoulder. “I think we’re in a great deal of trouble.”

“
Why, what are they going to do,” Ann mocked, “return us to the Nangtong and demand their blankets back?”

Zedd shook his head as the Si Doak rose up. The shaman’s necklaces jangled together. The elder thumped his staff.

“
I wish they would. They want to get back all their costs and something toward the damages. They are going to take us on a journey.

“
They have just decided that they can get the best price for us by selling us to cannibals.”

Ann’s head swung around. “Cannibals?”

“
That’s what they said. Cannibals.”

“
Zedd, you were able to take the collar off your neck. Can’t you get these confounded bracelets off our wrists? I think that now would be the time.”

“
I’m afraid we may end up in a cook pot with them still on us.”

Zedd watched an angry elder and a seething shaman stalking toward them.

“
Well, it’s been fun, Ann. But I’m afraid the fun is over.”

Verna put an arm around Warren’s waist, trying to help him as he stumbled along, as she followed behind Clarissa, who was following behind Walsh and Bollesdun. Janet hurried to the other side of Warren and lifted his arm, draping it over her shoulder.

“
Are you sure?” Verna whispered to Walsh. “Here? Nathan wanted us to meet him in the Hagen Woods?”

“
Yes,” Walsh said over his shoulder.

“
That was the name he told me, too,” Clarissa added.

Verna let out an annoyed breath. It was just like Nathan to make them go into the Hagen Woods. Even if Richard had cleared the mriswith from this place, she still didn’t like it. Verna always suspected Nathan of being dangerously unbalanced, and that he would want her to meet him here only confirmed it.

Trailers of moss hung down, like gauzy rags of the dead. Roots tripped their feet as they moved through the darkness. Unpleasant odors wafted in on the warm, humid air. Verna had never been this deep into the Hagen Woods before—and for good reason.