Soul of the Fire (8 page)

Ann’s fingers fussed with a button on her collar; Kahlan thought the garden faç ade of her forbearance looked to be growing weeds. “We can begin now, and talk more on the journey.”

“
You can’t imagine how much I wish we could stay with you, but there’s no time for such a journey,” Richard said. “We must hurry back. We’ll have to go in the sliph. I’m sorry, I really am, but you can’t come with us through the sliph; you’ll have to travel to Aydindril on your own. When you get there, we can talk.”

“
Sliph?” Zedd’s nose wrinkled with the word. “What are you talking about?”

Richard didn’t answer, or even seem to hear. He was watching the cloth-covered window. Kahlan answered for him.

“
The sliph is a …” She paused. How did one explain such a thing? “Well, she’s sort of like living quicksilver. She can communicate with us. Talk, I mean.”

“
Talk,” Zedd repeated in a flat voice. “What does she talk about?”

“
It’s not the talking that’s important.” With a thumbnail, Kahlan picked at the seam in her pant leg as she stared into Zedd’s hazel eyes. “The sliph was created by those wizards, in the great war. They created weapons out of people; they created the sliph in much the same way. She was once a woman. They used her life to create the sliph, a being that can use magic to do what is called traveling. She was used to quickly travel great distances. Really great distances. Like from here all the way to Aydindril in less than a day, or many other places.”

Zedd considered her words, as startling as she knew they must be to him. It had been so for her at first. Such a journey would ordinarily take many days, even on horseback. It could take weeks.

Kahlan put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Zedd, but you and Ann can’t go. The sliph’s magic, as you were explaining, has dictates protecting it. That’s why Richard had to leave his sword behind; its magic is incompatible with the magic of the sliph.

“
To travel in the sliph, you must have at least some small amount of Subtractive Magic as well as the Additive. You don’t have any Subtractive Magic. You and Ann would die in the sliph. I have an element of it bound into my Confessor’s power, and Cara used her ability as a Mord-Sith to capture the gift of an Andolian, who has an element of it, so she can travel, too, and of course, Richard has the gift for Subtractive Magic.”

“
You’ve been using Subtractive Magic! But, but, how … what do … where …” Zedd sputtered, losing track of which question he wanted to ask first.

“
The sliph exists in these stone wells. Richard called the sliph, and now we can travel in her. But we have to be careful, or Jagang can send his minions through.” Kahlan tapped the insides of her wrists together. “When we’re not traveling, Richard sends her into her sleep by touching his wristbands together—on the Graces they have—and she rejoins her soul in the underworld.”

Ann’s face had gone ashen. “Zedd, I’ve warned you about this. We can’t let him run around by himself. He’s too important. He’s going to get himself killed.”

Zedd looked ready to explode. “You used the Graces on the wrist bands? Bags, Richard, you have no idea what you’re doing! You are messing about with the veil when you do such a thing!”

Richard, his attention elsewhere, snapped his fingers and gestured toward the fat sticks under the bench. He waggled his fingers urgently. Frowning, Zedd passed him one of the stout branches. Richard broke it in two over his knee while he watched the window.

With the next flash of lightning, Kahlan saw the silhouette of a chicken perched on the sill of the window, on the other side of the cloth. As the lightning flashed and thunder boomed, the chicken’s shadow sidled to the other corner of the window.

Richard hurled the stick.

It caught the bird square on the breast. With a flapping of wings and a startled squawk, it tumbled backwards out the window.

“
Richard!” Kahlan snatched his sleeve. “Why would you do such a thing? The chicken wasn’t bothering anyone. The poor thing was just trying to stay out of the rain.”

This, too, he seem not to hear. He turned toward Ann. “You lived in the Old World with him. How much do you know about the dream walker?”

“
Well, I, I, guess I know a bit,” she stammered in surprise.

“
You know about how Jagang can invade a person’s mind, slip in between their thoughts, and entrench himself there, even without their knowledge?”

“
Of course.” She almost looked indignant at such a basic question about the enemy they were fighting. “But you and those bonded to you are protected. The dream walker can’t invade the mind of one devoted to the Lord Rahl. We don’t know the reason, only that it works.”

Richard nodded. “Alric. He’s the reason.”

Zedd blinked in confusion. “Who?”

“
Alric Rahl. An ancestor of mine. I read that the dream walkers were a weapon devised three thousand years ago in the great war. Alric Rahl created a spell—the bond—to protect his people, or anyone sworn to him, from the dream walkers. The bond’s power to protect passes down to every gifted Rahl.”

Zedd opened his mouth to ask a question, but Richard turned instead to Ann. “Jagang entered the mind of a wizard and sent him to kill Kahlan and me—tried to use him as an assassin.”

“
Wizard?” Ann frowned. “Who? Which wizard?”

“
Marlin Pickard,” Kahlan said.

“
Marlin!” Ann sighed with a shake of her head. “The poor boy. What happened to him?”

“
The Mother Confessor killed him,” Cara said without hesitation. “She is a true sister of the Agiel.”

Ann folded her hands in her lap and leaned toward Kahlan. “But how did you ever find out—”

“
We would expect him to try such a thing again,” Richard interrupted, drawing Ann’s attention back. “But can a dream walker invade the mind of … of something other than a person?”

Ann considered the question with more patience than Kahlan thought it merited. “No. I don’t believe so.”

“
You ‘don’t believe so.’” Richard cocked his head. “Are you guessing, or are you certain? It’s important. Please don’t guess.”

She shared a long look with Richard before finally shaking her head. “No. He can’t do such a thing.”

“
She’s right,” Zedd insisted. “I know enough about what he can do to know what he can’t do. A soul is needed. A soul like his own. Otherwise, it just won’t work. Same as he couldn’t project his mind into a rock to see what it was thinking.”

With his first finger, Richard stroked his lower lip. “Then it’s not Jagang,” he muttered to himself.

Zedd rolled his eyes in exasperation. “What’s not Jagang?”

Kahlan sighed. Sometimes attempting to follow Richard’s reasoning was like trying to spoon ants.

Rather than answer Zedd’s question, Richard seemed to once again already be half a mile down a different road.

“
The chimes. Did you take care of them? It’s supposed to be a simple matter. Did you take care of it?”

“
A simple matter?” Zedd’s face stood out red against his shock of unruly white hair. “Who told you that!”

Richard looked surprised at the question. “I read it. So, did you take care of it?”

“
We determined there was nothing to ‘take care of,’” Ann said, her voice taking on an undertone of annoyance.

“
That’s right,” Zedd grumbled. “What do you mean it’s a simple matter?”

“
Kolo said they were quite alarmed at first, but after investigating they discovered the chimes were a simple weapon and easily overcome.” Richard threw up his hands. “How do you know it’s not a problem? Are you certain?”

“
Kolo? Bags, Richard, what are you talking about! Who’s Kolo?”

Richard waggled a hand as if begging forbearance before he rose up and strode to the window. He lifted the curtain. The chicken wasn’t there. While he stretched up on his toes to peer out into the driving rain, Kahlan answered for him.

“
Richard found a journal in the Keep. It’s written in High D’Haran. He and one of the Mord-Sith, Berdine, who knows a little of the dead language of High D’Haran, have worked very hard to translate some of it.

“
The man who wrote the journal was a wizard at the Keep during the great war, but they don’t know his name, so they call him Kolo, from a High D’Haran word meaning ‘strong advisor.’ The journal has proved invaluable.”

Zedd turned to peer suspiciously at Richard. His gaze returned to Kahlan. The suspicion moved to his voice. “And just where did he find this journal?”

Richard began pacing, his fingertips to his forehead in deep concentration. Zedd’s hazel eyes waited for her answer.

“
It was in the sliph’s room. Down in the big tower.”

“
The big tower.” The way Zedd repeated her words sounded like an accusation. He again glanced briefly at Richard. “Don’t tell me you mean the room that’s sealed.”

“
That’s the one. When Richard destroyed the towers between the New and Old Worlds so he could get back here, the seal was blasted off that room, too. That’s where he found the journal, Kolo’s bones, and the sliph.”

Richard halted over his grandfather. “Zedd, we’ll tell you about all this later. Right now, I’d like to know why you don’t think the chimes are here.”

Kahlan frowned up at Richard. “Here? What does that mean, here?”

“
Here in this world. Zedd, how do you know?”

Zedd straightened a finger toward the empty spot in their circle on the floor around the Grace. “Sit down, Richard. You’re making me jumpy, pacing back and forth like a hound wanting to be let out.”

As Richard checked the window one last time before returning to sit, Kahlan asked Zedd, “What are the chimes?”

“
Oh,” Zedd said with a shrug, “they’re just some vexatious creatures. But—”

“
Vexatious!” Ann slapped her forehead. “Try catastrophic!”

“
And I called them forth?” Kahlan asked, anxiety rising in her voice. She had spoken the names of the three chimes to complete magic that saved Richard’s life. She hadn’t known what the words meant, but she had known that without them Richard would have died within a breath or two at most.

Zedd waggled a hand to allay her fears. “No, no. As Ann says, they have the potential to be troublesome, but—”

Richard hiked up his trousers at the knees as he folded his legs. “Zedd, please answer the question. How do you know they aren’t here?”

“
Because, the chimes are a work of threes. That’s partly why there are three: Reechani, Sentrosi, Vasi.”

Kahlan nearly leaped to her feet. “I thought you weren’t supposed to say them aloud!”

“
You are not. An ordinary person could say them with no ill effect. I can speak them aloud without calling them. Ann can, and Richard, too. But not those exceedingly rare people such as yourself.”

“
Why me?”

“
Because you have magic powerful enough to summon their aid on behalf of another. But without the gift, which protects the veil, the chimes could also ride your magic across into this world. The names of the three chimes are supposed to be a secret.”

“
Then I might have called them into this world.”

“
Dear spirits,” Richard whispered. His face had gone bloodless. “They could be here.”

“
No, no. There are countless safeguards, and numerous requirements that are exacting and extraordinary.” Zedd held up a finger to silence Richard’s question before it could come out his open mouth. “Among many other things, Kahlan, for example, would have to be your third wife.”

Zedd flashed Richard a patronizing smirk. “Satisfied, Mister Read-it-in-a-book?”

Richard let out a breath. “Good.” He sighed aloud again as the color returned to his face. “Good. She’s only my second wife.”

“
What!” Zedd threw up his arms, nearly toppling backward. He huffed and hauled his sleeves back down. “What do you mean, she is your second wife? I’ve known you your whole life, Richard, and I know you’ve never loved anyone but Kahlan. Why in Creation would you marry someone else!”

Richard cleared his throat as he shared a pained expression with Kahlan. “Look, it’s a long story, but the end of it is that in order to get into the Temple of the Winds to stop the plague, I had to marry Nadine. That would make Kahlan my second wife.”

“
Nadine.” Zedd let his jaw hang as he scratched the hollow of his cheek. “Nadine Brighton? That Nadine?”