“I guess the Keeper’s minion would say anything to try to get away with what he had done, and to get away from you. I can understand you not being in the mood to forgive him.”
Light seemed to vanish into the ageless depths of Shota’s eyes. “He forgot to place the word ‘sincere’ before ‘forgiveness.’”
42
Kahlan watched the witch woman disappear back into the gloomy forest. Vines hanging down from craggy branches reached out to touch their mistress as she passed, while tendrils and roots stretched up to brush her leg. She vanished into a shroud of mist. Unseen creatures called in low whistles and clicks from the direction she had gone.
Kahlan turned back to the moss-covered boulder Shota had shown her and, just beyond, found the sliph’s well. The silver face of the sliph rose from beyond the round, stone wall, to watch as Kahlan approached. Kahlan almost wished the sliph hadn’t come, as if somehow, if Kahlan couldn’t get back, none of the things she had learned would come to pass.
How was she going to look into Richard’s eyes and not scream in anguish? How was she ever going to be able to go on? How would she find the will to live?
“Do you wish to travel?” the sliph asked.
“No, but I must.”
The sliph frowned, as if well puzzled. “If you wish to travel, I will be ready.”
Kahlan sank to the ground, put her back to the sliph’s well, and folded her legs under herself. Was she to give up this easily? Was she to submit meekly to the fates? She didn’t have a choice.
Think of the solution, not the problem.
Somehow, things didn’t seem as desperate as they had back in the reach. There had to be a way to solve this. Richard would not so easily give in. He would fight for her. She would fight for him. They loved each other, and that was more important than anything else.
Kahlan’s mind felt as if it were in a fog. She tried to focus with more resolve. She couldn’t just give up. She had to face this with her old determination.
She knew that witch women bewitched people. They didn’t necessarily do it out of malice; it was just the way they were. It was like a person not being able to help the fact that they were tall, or short, or the color of their hair. Witch women bewitched people because that was the way their magic worked.
Shota had bewitched Richard, to an extent. Only the magic of the Sword of Truth saved him the first time.
The Sword of Truth.
Richard was the Seeker. This was the kind of thing a Seeker did: solved problems. She was in love with the Seeker. He would not so easily give up.
Kahlan plucked a leaf and tore little strips from it as she began to reconsider everything she had been told by Shota. How much of it dare she believe? It was all beginning to seem like a dream from which she was just coming awake. Matters could not possibly be as desperate as she had thought.
Her father had told her never to give up, to fight with every breath, with the last breath if need be. Nor would Richard give in easily. This wasn’t ended yet. The future was still the future, and despite what Shota said, the matter was not yet decided.
Something at her shoulder was bothering her. As she thought, she flicked her hand at it, and then went back to tearing strips off the big leaf. There had to be a way to solve this.
When she swatted at her shoulder again, her fingers hit the bone knife. It felt warm.
Kahlan drew the knife and held it in her lap. The knife was warm. It seemed to pulse and vibrate. It grew so hot that it became uncomfortable to hold.
Kahlan watched, wide-eyed, as the black feathers stood up. They danced and waved and twisted in a breeze. Her hair hung limp. The air was dead still. There was no breeze.
Kahlan shot to her feet.
“Sliph!”
The sliph’s silver face was right there, close. Kahlan backed away a bit.
“Sliph, I need to travel.”
“Come, we will travel. Where do you wish to go?”
“The Mud People. I need to go to the Mud People.”
The liquid features contorted in thought. “I do not know this place.”
“It’s not a place. They’re people. People—” Kahlan tapped her chest—“they’re people, like me.”
“I know different peoples, but not these Mud People.”
Kahlan pushed back her hair, trying to think. “They live in the wilds.”
“I know places in the wilds. Which one do you wish to travel to? Name it, and we will travel. You will be pleased.”
“Well, it’s a place that’s flat. It’s a grassland. Flat grassland. No mountains, like here.” Kahlan gestured around, but realized that the sliph could see only trees.
“I know several places like that.”
“Which places? Maybe I’ll recognize them.”
“I can travel to a place overlooking the Callisidrin River—”
“To the west of the Callisidrin. The Mud People are farther west.”
“I can travel to Tondelen Vale, the Harja Rift, Kea Plains, Sealan, Herkon Split, Anderith, Pickton, the Jocopo Treasure—”
“The what? What was the last one?” She knew most of the rest of the places the sliph named, but they weren’t close to the Mud People.
“The Jocopo Treasure. Do you wish to travel there?”
Kahlan held out the warm bone knife—grandfather’s knife. Chandalen had told her how the Jocopo had made war on the Mud People, and the ancestor spirits had guided Chandalen’s grandfather in how to defend his people against the Jocopo. Chandalen had said they used to trade with the Jocopo, before their war. The Jocopo had to be close to the Mud People.
“Say the last place again,” Kahlan said.
“The Jocopo Treasure.”
At the echoing words, the black feathers danced and twisted. Kahlan shoved the bone knife back in the band around her upper arm. She sprang up onto the stone wall.
“That’s where I wish to go: the Jocopo Treasure. I wish to travel to the Jocopo Treasure. Can you take me there, sliph?”
A silver arm swept her off the stone wall. “Come. We will travel to the Jocopo Treasure. You will be pleased.”
Kahlan gasped one quick breath before she was plunged into the quicksilver froth. She let the breath go, and inhaled the sliph, but this time, numbed by troubling thoughts of losing Richard, of his marrying Nadine, she felt no rapture.
Zedd cackled like a madman. Ann was upside down in his vision. He stuck out his tongue at her and blew, making a long, crude sound.
“You needn’t attempt to pretend,” she growled. “It seems to be your natural state.”
Zedd moved his legs as if trying to walk upside down through the air. The blood was rushing to his head.
“Do you wish to die with your dignity?” he asked her. “Or would you rather live.”
“I’ll not play a fool.”
“That’s the word—play! Don’t just sit there in the mud. Play in it!”
She leaned over, putting her head close to his. He was standing on it in the mud. “Zedd, you can’t possibly think such a thing would work.”
“You said it yourself. You are mucking about with a crazy man. It was your suggestion.”
“I suggested no such thing!”
“Perhaps you didn’t suggest it, but you were the one who gave me the inspiration. I’ll be happy to give you full credit, when we tell people the story.”
“Tell people! In the first place, it won’t work. In the second place, I realize full well that you would be only too delighted to tell people. That’s just one more reason why I won’t do it.”
Zedd howled like a coyote. He stiffened his legs and his spine, letting himself topple like a tree felled by an axe. Mud splashed on Ann. Fuming, she wiped a small splat from her nose.
At the tall stick fence, grim-faced Nangtong guards watched the two prisoners, the two sacrifices. Zedd and Ann had sat in the mud with their backs to one another and untied the ropes binding their wrists. The guards, armed with spears and bows, didn’t seem to
care; the prisoners couldn’t get away. Zedd knew they were right.
Happy people had begun to stop by the pigpen at dawn. As the morning wore on, the crowd grew as more people stopped by to chatter with the guards and take a look at the fine offerings. Apparently, everyone was in a good mood because they now had a sacrifice for the spirits. Their lives would be safe after the unhappy spirits were appeased.
The guards and the people of the Nangtong village, watching from the other side of the fence, were now looking less pleased. They fidgeted with the cloth covering their faces, making sure it hid enough, and that it was secure. The guards began wiping more ash on their faces and bodies. Apparently, one couldn’t be too careful, lest the spirits recognize them.
Zedd tucked his head down between his knees and rolled himself through the wet, sticky slop. He laughed maniacally as he rolled in a circle around Ann’s squat figure sitting on the cold ground.
“Would you stop that!”
Zedd spread supine in the mud before her. He swept his rigid arms and legs through the mud.
“Ann,” he said in a low tone, “we have important business. I think we might have better success if we attempt to carry out those tasks in this world, rather than in the underworld, after we are dead.”
“I know we can’t help if we’re dead.”
“It would stand to reason, then, that we need to get away, now, wouldn’t it?”
“Of course it would,” she grumbled. “But I don’t think—”
Zedd plopped himself down in her lap. She winced in disgust. Her nose wrinkled when he rested his muddy arms around her neck.
“Ann, if we do nothing, we die. If we try to fight these people, we will die. Without the use of our magic, we can’t escape them. Our only option is to convince them to let us go. We can’t speak their language, and even if we could, I doubt we would be able to persuade them.”
“Yes, but—”
“We have only one chance, as I see it. We must convince them that we are quite loony. This sacrifice is a sacred service to their spirit ancestors. Look at the guards behind my back. Do they look happy?”
“Well, no.”
“If they believe that we’re crazy, then they just might think twice before sacrificing us to their spirits. Wouldn’t the spirits be insulted to receive a lunatic as a sacrifice? Wouldn’t that be disrespectful? We have to make them fear insulting their spirits with two loony people.”
“But that’s… crazy.”
“Look at it this way. A sacrifice is something like a treaty wedding between two peoples. The bride is the sacrifice of one people to another, in the flesh of the new husband, all in the hope for a peaceful and productive future. The bride’s new people treat her with respect. The bride’s people treat the husband and his people with respect. It’s all an arrangement symbolizing unity, continuity, and hope for the future.
“We are like the bride, being offered to the spirits. How would it look if the Nangtong offered an unworthy, demented bride? If you were one of the spirits, wouldn’t you be offended?”
“If I got you in the bargain, I would be.”
Zedd howled at the sky. Ann winced and pulled away from him.
“It’s our only chance, Ann.” He leaned close, whispering in her ear. “I swear an oath as First Wizard that I will never tell anyone how you behaved.”
He drew back and grinned at her. “Besides, it’s fun. Remember how much fun it was as a child to play outside? To play in the mud? Why, it was the grandest of things.”
“But it might not work.”
“Even if it doesn’t, wouldn’t you rather die having fun on the last day of your life, instead of sitting here, afraid and cold and dirty? Wouldn’t you rather have some childlike fun one last time? Let yourself go, Prelate, and recall what it was to be a child. Let yourself do anything that comes into your head. Have fun. Be a child.”
With a serious expression, Ann considered his words.
“You won’t tell anyone?”
“You have my word. You can act with childish glee, and no one but I will ever know—and the Nangtong, of course.”
“Another of your acts of desperation, Zedd?”
“The time for desperation is upon us. Let’s play.”
Ann smiled a sly smile. She stiff-armed him in the chest, knocking him back into the mud. With a riot of laughter, she leaped on top of him.
They wrestled like children, rolling through the slop. After a half dozen turns, Ann was a mud monster with arms, legs, and two eyes. The mud split, revealing a pink mouth as she howled with him at the sky.
They made mudballs and used the pigs as targets. They chased the pigs. They flopped onto the hard, round backs of the squealing creatures, riding them around until they were tossed off into the mud. Zedd doubted that Ann had ever been this dirty in her nine centuries of life.
He realized, while they were having a one-legged game of tag that involved more falling in the mud than hopping progress, that her laughter had changed.
Ann was having fun.
They stomped through puddles. They chased the pigs. They ran around the enclosure rattling sticks against the fence.
And then they hit upon the idea of making faces at the guards. They drew whimsical expressions on each other’s faces in mud. They made every rude noise they could think of. They jumped and laughed and pointed at the solemn guards.
Ann and Zedd got to laughing so hard that they couldn’t stand, and like two drunks, they rolled on the ground, holding their sides.
The crowd grew. Worried whispers swept through the onlookers.
Ann stuck her thumbs in her ears and wiggled her fingers as she made faces at them. Zedd stood on his head and sang a few lewd ballads he knew. Ann laughed hysterically as he mispronounced key words.
Zedd fell to laughing, and then fell in the mud, and then Ann fell on him. She sat on his stomach, pinning him to the ground as she tickled him under his arms, while he gasped for breath between laughter and tickled her ribs. The two of them had never had so much fun. The pigs cowered in the corner.
Suddenly, buckets of water were dumped over the both of them as they were furiously engaged in trying to find each other’s most ticklish spots. They looked up. More water rained down on them.
As fast as the mud was washed off them, they dived back into it. Ash-covered guards seized them by the arms and held them at spearpoint while they were once again washed off. Zedd peered over at Ann. She peered back. She looked ridiculous, her face emerging from streamers of slop. He giggled and made a face at her. She giggled and made a face back. The men yelled.
Zedd’s cheeks puffed with attempts to halt his laughing. The guards shoved them forward, spears poking in their backs. It reminded him of being tickled, and they both laughed.
It was as if once uncorked, the laughter had a life of its own. If they were to be sacrificed, what difference did it make? They might as well have the last laugh.
The crowd of shrouded figures parted as the two prisoners were led out of the pigs’ pen.
Giggling, Zedd held his arm high and waved. “Wave at the people, Annie.”
She made faces instead. Zedd liked the idea and imitated her. People shrank back, as if seeing a horrifying sight. Some of the women wept and wailed. Zedd and Ann laughed and pointed at them as the women ran from the crowd, seeking refuge from the lunatics.
The tents and onlookers were soon left behind as their captors prodded them on with spears. Before long, the two dirty, smelly, happy sacrifices were out in the hills. Thirty-five or forty Nangtong spirit hunters, all holding ready spears or bows, followed behind. Zedd noticed that some of them had brought packs and provisions.
First Wizard Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander and Prelate Annalina Aldurren skipped along ahead of the spears, laughing and making outrageous, ever-increasing claims as to how many onions they could eat without producing tears.
Zedd hadn’t a clue where they were going, but it was a fine morning to be going there, wherever it was. r />
“It’s kind of funny, Lord Rahl,” Lieutenant Crawford said.
Richard gazed out over the boulder field. “What’s funny about it?”
The lieutenant bent his head back to peer up the cliff. “Well, I meant it’s odd. I grew up in rugged mountains, so I’ve seen places like these mountains my whole life, but this place is odd.” He turned and pointed. “See that mountain over there? You can see where the rockslide came from.”
Richard put a hand over his brow to shield his eyes from the low afternoon sun. The mountain the lieutenant was pointing to was rugged and covered with trees, except for the uppermost reaches. On the steep side facing them, a part of it had given way, leaving naked rock to scar the mountain where the rock had broken off. At the bottom of the barren scar lay a boulder field.
“What about it?”
“Well, look at all the rock at the bottom. That’s the portion that broke off the face of the mountain.” He gestured to the boulder field they stood atop. “This isn’t the same.”
Another soldier approached and saluted with a fist to his heart. He cast a wary glance at Ulic and Egan, who were standing with their arms folded, while he waited silently.
“Nothing, Lord Rahl,” he said when Richard acknowledged him. “Not so much as a flake of rock that’s been worked with tools.”
“Keep looking. Try the outer fringes of the boulder field. Look for places where you can crawl down under some of the larger boulders and check under there, too.”
The soldier saluted and hurried off. There wasn’t much of the day left. Richard had told them that he didn’t want to stay the next day. He wanted to get back to Aydindril. Kahlan would probably be back that night, or possibly tomorrow. He wanted to be there.
If she came back. If she was still alive.
He broke out in a sweat at the very thought. His knees felt weak.
He banished the thought. She would be back. That was all there was to it. She would be back. He made himself quit thinking about it, and put his mind to the problem at hand.
“So what do you think, lieutenant?”