Temple of the Winds (55 page)

Drefan returned his hand to Erling’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, master Anderson, but Lily has the tokens upon her.”

Erling gasped and gripped the bench. Drefan had been ready and caught him under his arms to keep him from falling when his knees gave out. Drefan helped him to sit on the carving horse.

Kahlan turned her face away and put it to Richard’s shoulder when Erling covered his tears with both hands. Richard felt numb.

“
Grandpa,” Darby called from the steps, “what’s wrong?”

Erling straightened. “Nothing, boy. I’m just worried about your sisters, that’s all. Old men get foolish, that’s all.”

Darby eased the rest of the way down the stairs. “Yonick, I’m real sorry about Kip. If your pa needs anything, I’m sure my pa would let me leave my work and go help.”

Yonick nodded. He looked in a daze, too.

Richard squatted down before the boys. “Did either of you see anything strange at the Ja’La game?”

“
Strange?” Darby asked. “Strange like what?”

Richard combed his fingers back through his hair. “I don’t know. Did you talk to any strangers?”

“
Sure,” Darby said. “There were lots of people there we didn’t know. Soldiers were there watching the game. Lots of people I didn’t know came to congratulate us after we won.”

“
Do any of them stand out in your mind? Anything odd about any of them?”

“
I saw Kip talking to a man and a woman after the game,” Yonick said. “More than like they were just congratulating him. They were leaning down talking to him, showing him something.”

“
Showing him something? What?”

“
I’m sorry,” Yonick said, “but I didn’t see. I was too busy getting slapped on the back by soldiers.”

Richard was trying not to frighten the boy with his questions, but he had to press for answers. “What did this man and woman look like?”

“
I don’t know,” Yonick said. His eyes were filling with tears at remembering his brother alive. “The man was skinny, and young. The woman was young, too, but not as young as he. She was kind of pretty, I guess. She had brown hair.” He pointed at Nadine. “Like hers, but not as thick, or as long.”

Richard glanced up at Kahlan. By the stricken look on her face, he knew she was fearing the same thing as he.

“
I remember them,” Darby said. “My sisters talked to that man and woman, too.”

“
But neither of you talked to them?”

“
No,” Darby said. Yonick shook his head. “We were jumping around, excited that we’d won the game in front of Lord Rahl. A lot of the soldiers were congratulating us, and so were a lot of other people; I never talked to those two.”

Richard took Kahlan’s hand. “Kahlan and I have to go ask Beth and Lily a question,” he said to Drefan. “We’ll be right back.”

Pressed close together, seeking support in each other’s touch, they climbed the stairs. Richard was dreading what he might hear from the girls.

“
You ask them,” Richard whispered to her. “They’re afraid of me. They’ll talk easier to you.”

“
Do you think it could have been them?”

Richard didn’t need to ask who she was talking about. “I don’t know. But you told me that Jagang said he had watched the Ja’La game—through Marlin’s eyes. Sister Amelia was with Marlin. They were doing something here in Aydindril.”

Richard reassured the women that they just had a small question to ask the girls. The women busied themselves with their work while he went with Kahlan back into the bedroom. Richard doubted they were paying any more attention to their meat pies than Erling had been with the chair seat he had been planing.

“
Lily,” Kahlan asked the younger girl first in a soft voice as she smiled, “do you remember when you went to watch your brother play Ja’La?”

Lily nodded. “He won. We were real happy that he won. Pa said Darby scored a point.”

“
Yes, we saw him play, and we were happy for him, too. Do you remember the two people you talked to? A man and a woman?”

She frowned. “When Ma and Pa were cheering? That man and woman?”

“
Yes. Do you remember what they said to you?”

“
Beth was holding my hand. They asked if it was my brother we was cheering for.”

“
That’s right,” Beth said from the other bed. She had to stop talking as she was taken with a bout of coughing. When she recovered and caught her breath, she went on. “They said Darby played really good. They showed us the pretty thing they had.”

Richard stared at her. “Pretty thing?”

“
The shiny thing in the box,” Lily said.

“
That’s right,” Beth said. “They let me and Lily see it.”

“
What was it?”

Beth frowned through her headache. “It was … it was … I don’t know exactly. It was in a box that was so black you couldn’t see its sides. The shiny thing inside was pretty.”

Lily nodded her agreement. “My doll saw it, too. She thought it was real pretty, too.”

“
Do you have any idea what it was?”

They both shook their heads.

“
It was in a box that was as black as midnight. To look at it is like looking down a dark hole.” Richard said.

They both nodded.

“
Sounds like the night stone,” Kahlan whispered to him.

Richard knew well that blackness. Not only the night stone had been like that, but also the outer covering of the boxes of Orden. It was a color so sinister that it seemed to suck the very light from a room.

In Richard’s experience, that void of light was only associated with immensely dangerous things. The night stone could bring beings forth from the underworld, and the boxes of Orden held magic that, if used for evil, could destroy the world of life. The boxes could open a gateway to the underworld.

“
And inside was something shiny,” Richard said. “Was it like looking at a candle, or the flame of a lamp? That kind of shiny?”

“
Colors,” Lily said. “It was pretty colors.”

“
Like colored light,” Beth said. “It was sitting on white sand.”

Sitting on white sand. The hairs on the back of Richard’s neck stood on end. “How big was the box?”

Beth held her hands not quite a foot apart. “About this big on a side. But it wasn’t very thick. Kind of like a book. It was almost like they opened a book. That’s what the box reminded me of—a book.”

“
And inside, the sand that was inside, did it have lines drawn in it? Kind of like if you were to draw lines in dry dirt with a stick?”

Beth nodded as she succumbed to a bout of rattling coughs. She panted, catching her breath, when they finally ceased.

“
That’s right. Neat lines, in patterns. That’s just what it was like. It was a box, or maybe a big book, and when they opened it to show us the pretty colors, it had white sand in it with careful lines drawn in it. Then we saw the pretty colors.”

“
You mean, there was something sitting in the sand? This thing that made the colored light was sitting in the sand?”

Beth blinked in confusion, trying to remember. “No … it was more like the light came out of the sand.” She flopped back on her bed and rolled on her side, in obvious distress from her sickness.

From the plague. From black death.

From a black box.

Richard stroked a hand tenderly down her arm and pulled the blanket back up over her as she moaned in pain. “Thank you, Beth. You rest now, and get yourself better.”

Richard couldn’t thank Lily. He dared not trust his voice.

Lily lay back. Her tiny little brow puckered. “I’m tired.” She pouted, near tears. “I don’t feel good.”

She curled up and put her thumb in her mouth.

Kahlan tucked Lily in, and promised her a treat as soon as she was well. Kahlan’s tender smile brought a small smile to Lily’s mouth. It almost made Richard smile. Almost.

In the alley, after they had left the Anderson house, Richard pulled Drefan aside. Kahlan told the others to wait, and then she joined them.

“
What are tokens?” Richard asked. “You told the grandfather that the youngest had tokens on her.”

“
Those spots on her legs are called tokens.”

“
And why was the old man nearly struck down with dread when he heard you say the girl had them?”

Drefan’s blue eyes turned away. “People die of the plague in different ways. I don’t know the reason, except to imagine it has something to do with their constitution. The strength and vulnerability of everyone’s aura is different.

“
I’ve not seen with my own eyes all manner of death the plague causes, as, thankfully, it is a rare occurrence. Some of what I know I learned from the records that the Raug’Moss keep. The plagues I’ve seen have been in small, remote places. In the past, many centuries ago, there have been a few great plagues in large cities, and I’ve read the records of those.

“
With some people it comes on of a sudden—very high fevers, intolerable headaches, vomiting, searing pains in their backs. They are out of their minds with the agony of it for many days, even weeks, before they die. A few of these recover. Beth is like that. She will get much worse, yet. I have seen people like her recover. She has a small chance.

“
Sometimes, they look like the first boy, with the black death overwhelming them and rotting their bodies. Others are tortured with horribly painful swellings in their neck, armpits, or groin; they suffer miserably until they finally die. Bert is like that. If the distemper can be brought to a head, and encouraged to break and run, then they occasionally recover.”

“
What about Lily?” Kahlan asked. “What about these tokens, as you called them?”

“
I’ve never seen them before, with my own eyes, but I’ve read about them in our records. The tokens will appear on the legs and sometimes on the chest. People who have the tokens rarely know they are sick, until the end. They will one day discover to their horror that they have the tokens upon them, and be dead shortly thereafter.

“
They die with little or no pain. But they all die. No one with tokens on them ever lives. The old man must have seen them before, because he knew this.

“
The plagues I’ve seen, as violent as the outbreaks were, never displayed the tokens. The records say that the worst of the great plagues, the ones that brought the most widespread death, were marked with the tokens. Some people thought they were visible signs of the Keeper’s fatal touch.”

“
But Lily is just a little girl,” Kahlan protested, as if arguing could change it, “she doesn’t seem so sick. It isn’t possible for her to …”

“
Lily is feeling out of sorts. The tokens on her legs are fully developed. She will be dead before midnight.”

“
Tonight?” Richard asked in astonishment.

“
Yes. At the very latest. More likely within hours. I think perhaps even …”

A woman’s long, shrill scream came from the house. The horror in it sent a shiver through Richard’s bones. The soldiers who had been talking in low voices off at the end of the alley fell silent. The only sound was a dog barking down the next street.

A man’s anguished cry came from the house.

Drefan closed his eyes. “As I was about to say, even sooner.”

Kahlan buried her face against Richard’s shoulder. She clutched his shirt. Richard’s head spun.

“
They’re children,” she wept. “That bastard is killing children!”

Drefan’s brow bunched. “What’s she talking about?”

“
Drefan”—Richard tightened his arms around Kahlan as she shook—“I think these children are dying because a wizard and a sorceress went to a Ja’La game a few days back and used magic to start this plague.”

“
That’s not possible. It takes longer than that for people to fall sick.”

“
The wizard was the one who hurt Cara when you first arrived. He left a prophecy on the wall in the pit. It begins: ‘On the red moon will come the firestorm.’”

Drefan regarded him with a dubious frown. “How can magic start a plague?”

“
I don’t know,” Richard whispered.

He couldn’t bear to speak aloud the next part of the prophecy.
The one bonded to the blade will watch as his people die. If he does nothing, then he, and all those he loves, will die in its heat, for no blade, forged of steel or conjured of sorcery, can touch this foe.

Kahlan trembled in his arms, and he knew she was agonizing over the final part of the prophecy.

To quench the inferno, he must seek the remedy in the wind. Lightning will find him on that path, for the one in white, his true beloved, will betray him in her blood.