Soul of the Fire (9 page)

“
Yes.” Richard poked at the dirt. “Nadine … died shortly after the ceremony.”

Zedd let out a low whistle. “Nadine was a nice girl—going to be a healer. The poor thing. Her parents will be devastated.”

“
Yes, the poor thing,” Kahlan muttered under her breath.

Nadine’s dogged ambition had been to have Richard, and there had been few bounds to that ambition. Any number of times, Richard had told Nadine in explicit terms there was nothing between the two of them, never would be, and he wanted her gone as soon as possible. To Kahlan’s exasperation, Nadine would simply smile and say, “Whatever you wish, Richard,” as she continued to scheme.

Though she would never have wished Nadine any real harm, especially the horrible death she suffered, Kahlan could not pretend pity for the conniving strumpet, as Cara called her.

“
Why is your face all red?” Zedd asked.

Kahlan looked up. Zedd and Ann were watching her.

“
Um, well …” Kahlan changed the subject. “Wait a minute. When I spoke the three chimes I wasn’t married to Richard. We weren’t married until we came here, to the Mud People. So, you see, I wasn’t even his wife at the time.”

“
That’s even better,” Ann said. “Removes another stepping-stone from the chimes’ path.”

Richard’s hand found Kahlan’s. “Well, that may not be exactly true. When we had to say the words to fulfill the requirements for me to get into the temple, in our hearts we said the words to each other, so it could be said that we were married because of that vow of commitment.

“
Sometimes magic, the spirit world’s magic, anyway, works by such ambiguous rules.”

Ann shifted her weight uncomfortably. “True enough.”

“
But no matter how you reason it out, that would still only make her your second wife.” Zedd eyed them both suspiciously. “This story gets more complicated every time one of you opens your mouth. I need to hear the whole thing.”

“
Before we leave, we can tell you a bit of it. When you get to Aydindril, then we’ll have the time to tell it all to you. But we need to return through the sliph right away.”

“
What’s the hurry, my boy?”

“
Jagang would like nothing better than to get his hands on the dangerous magic stored in the Wizard’s Keep. If he did, it would be disastrous. Zedd, you would be the best one to protect the Keep, but in the meantime don’t you think Kahlan and I would be better than nothing?

“
At least we were there when Jagang sent Marlin and Sister Amelia to Aydindril.”

“
Amelia!” Ann closed her eyes as she squeezed her temples. “She’s a Sister of the Dark. Do you know where she is, now?”

“
The Mother Confessor killed her, too,” Cara said from back at the door.

Kahlan scowled at the Mord-Sith. Cara grinned back like a proud sister.

Ann opened one eye to peer at Kahlan. “No small task. A wizard being directed by the dream walker, and now a woman wielding the Keeper’s own dark talent.”

“
An act of desperation,” Kahlan said. “Nothing more.”

Zedd grunted a brief agreeable chuckle. “There can be powerful magic in acts of desperation.”

“
Much like the business of speaking the three chimes,” she said. “An act of desperation to save Richard’s life. What are the chimes? Why were you so concerned?”

Zedd squirmed to get more comfortable on his bony bottom.

“
The wrong person speaking their names to summon their assistance in keeping a person from crossing the line”—he tapped the line of the Grace representing the world of the dead—“can by misfortune of design call them into the world of life, where they can accomplish the purpose for which they were created: to end magic.”

“
They soak it up,” Ann said, “like the parched ground soaks up a summer shower. They are beings of sorts, but not alive. They have no soul.”

The lines in Zedd’s face took a grim set as he nodded his agreement. “The chimes are creatures conjured of the other side, of the underworld. They would annul the magic in this world.”

“
You mean they hunt down and kill those with magic?” Kahlan asked. “Like the shadow people used to? Their touch is deadly?”

“
No,” Ann said. “They can and do kill, but just their being in this world, in time, is all it would take to extinguish magic. Eventually, any who derived their survival from magic would die. The weakest first. Eventually, even the strongest.”

“
Understand,” Zedd cautioned, “that we don’t know much about them. They were weapons of the great war, created by wizards with more power than I can fathom. The gift is no longer as it was.”

“
If the chimes were to somehow get to this world, and they ended magic,” Richard asked, “would all those with the gift just not have it anymore? Would the Mud People, for instance, simply not be able to contact their spirit ancestors anymore? Would creatures of magic die out and that would be that? Just regular people and animals and trees and such left? Like where I grew up in Westland, where there was no magic?”

Kahlan could feel the faint rumble of thunder in the ground under her. The rain drummed on. The fire in the hearth hissed its ill will for its liquid antagonist.

“
We can’t answer that, my boy. It’s not like there is precedent to which we can point. The world is complex beyond our comprehension. Only the Creator understands how it all works together.”

The firelight cast Zedd’s face in harsh angular shadows as he spoke with grim conviction. “But I fear it would be much worse than you paint it.”

“
Worse? Worse how?”

Fastidiously smoothing his robes along his thighs, Zedd took his time in responding.

“
West of here, in the highlands above the Nareef Valley, the headwaters of the Dammar River gather, eventually to flow into the Drun River. These headwaters leach poisons from the ground of the highlands.

“
The highlands are a bleak wasteland, with the occasional bleached bones of an animal that stayed too long and drank too much from the poison waters. It’s a windy, desolate, deadly place.”

Zedd opened his arms to gesture, suggesting the grand scale. “The thousand tiny runnels and runoff brooks from all the surrounding mountain slopes collect into a broad, shallow, swampy lake before continuing on to the valley below. The paka plant grows there in great abundance, especially at the broad south end, from where the waters descend. The paka is able to not only tolerate the poison, but thrive on it. Only the caterpillar of a moth eats some of the leaves of the paka and spins its cocoon among the fleshy stems.

“
Warfer birds nest at the head of the Nareef Valley, on the cliffs just below this poison highland lake. One of their favorite foods is the berries of the paka plant that grows not far above, and so they are one of the few animals to frequent the highlands. They don’t drink the water.”

“
The berries aren’t poison, then?” Richard asked.

“
No. In a wonder of Creation, the paka grows strong on the contaminates from the water, but the berries it produces don’t contain the poison, and the water that flows on down the mountain, filtered by all the paka, is pure and healthy.

“
Also living in the highlands is the gambit moth. The way it flits about makes it irresistible to warfer birds, which otherwise eat mostly seeds and berries. Living where it does, it is preyed on by few animals other than warfer birds.

“
Now, the paka plant, you see, can’t reproduce by itself. Perhaps because of the poisons in the water, its outer seed casing is hard as steel and will not open, so the plant inside can’t sprout.

“
Only magic can accomplish the task.”

Zedd’s eyes narrowed, his arms spread wide, and his fingers splayed with the spinning of the tale. Kahlan recalled her wide-eyed child wonder at hearing the story of the gambit moth for the first time while sitting on the knee of a wizard up in the Keep.

“
The gambit moth has such magic, in the dust on its wings. When the warfer birds eat the moth, along with the berries of the paka, the magic dust from the moth works inside the birds to breach the husk of the tiny seeds. In their droppings, the warfer birds thus sow the paka seeds, and because of the singular magic of the gambit moth, the paka’s seeds can sprout.

“
It is upon the paka, thus brought to leaf, that the gambit moth lays it eggs and where the new-hatched caterpillars eat and grow strong before they spin their cocoon to become gambit moths.”

“
So,” Richard said, “if magic is ended, then … what are you saying? That even creatures such as a moth with magic would no longer have it, and so the paka plant would die out, and then the warfer bird would starve, and the gambit moth would in turn have no paka plant for its caterpillars to eat, so it would perish?

“
Think,” the old wizard whispered, “what else would happen.”

“
Well, for one thing, as the old paka plants died and no new ones grew, it would only seem logical that the water going into the Nareef Valley would become poisonous.”

“
That’s right, my boy. The water would poison the animals below. The deer would die. The raccoons, the porcupines, the voles, the owls, the songbirds. And any animal that ate their carcasses: wolves, coyotes, vultures. All would die.” Zedd leaned forward, raising a finger. “Even the worms.”

Richard nodded. “Much of the livestock raised in the valley could eventually be poisoned. Much of the cropland could become tainted by the waters of the Dammar. It would be a disaster for the people and animals living in the Nareef Valley.”

“
Think of what would happen when the meat from that livestock was sold,” Ann coached, “before anyone knew it was poison.”

“
Or the crops,” Kahlan added.

Zedd leaned in. “And think of what more it would mean.”

Richard looked from Ann to Kahlan to Zedd. “The Dammar River flows into the Drun. If the Dammar was poison, then too would be the Drun. Everything downstream would be tainted as well.”

Zedd nodded. “And downstream is the land of Toscla. The Nareef is to Toscla as a flea is to a dog. Toscla grows great quantities of grain and other crops that feed many people of the Midlands. They send long trains of cargo wagons north to trade.”

It had been a long time since Zedd had lived in the Midlands. Toscla was an old name. It lay far to the southwest; the wilds, like a vast sea, isolated it from the rest of the Midlands. The dominant people there, now calling themselves Anders, repeatedly changed their name, and so the name of their land. What Zedd knew as Toscla was changed to Vengren, then Vendice, then Turslan, and was presently Anderith.

“
Either poison grain would be sold before it was known to be such, thus poisoning countless unknowing souls,” Zedd was saying, “or the people of Toscla would find out in time, and then couldn’t sell their crops. Their livestock might soon die. The fish they harvest from the costal waters could likely be poisoned by the waters of the Drun flowing into it. The taint could find its way to the fields, killing new crops and hope for the future.

“
With their livestock and fishing industries poisoned, and without crops to trade for other food, the people of Toscla could starve. People in other lands who relied on purchasing those crops in trade would fall on hard times, too, because they, in turn, then couldn’t sell their goods. With trade disrupted, and with shortages driving prices up, people everywhere in the Midlands would begin to have have trouble feeding their families.

“
Civil unrest would swell on the shortages. Hunger would spread. Panic could set in. Unrest could turn to fighting as people flee to untainted land, which others already occupy. Desperation could fan the flames. All order could break down.”

“
You’re just speculating,” Richard said. “You aren’t predicting such a widespread calamity, are you? If magic were to fail, might it not be that bad?”

Zedd shrugged. “Such a thing has never happened, so it’s hard to predict. It could be that the poison would be diluted by the water of the Dammar and the Drun, and it would cause no harm, or at most only a few localized problems. When the Drun flows into the sea, that much water might render the poison harmless, so fishing might not be affected. It could end up being nothing more than a minor inconvenience.”

In the dim light, Zedd’s hair reminded Kahlan of white flames. He peered with one eye at his grandson. “But,” he whispered, “were the magic of the gambit moth to fail, for all we know it could very well begin a cascade of events that would result in the end of life as we know it.”

Richard wiped a hand over his face as he contemplated how such a disaster might ripple through the Midlands.

Zedd lifted an eyebrow. “Do you begin to get the idea?” He let the uncomfortable silence drag before he added, “And that is but one small thing of magic. I could give you countless others.”

“
The chimes are from the world of the dead. That would certainly fit their purpose,” Richard muttered as he raked his fingers back through his hair. “Would that mean that if magic were to fail, with the weakest dying out first, the magic of the gambit moth would be among the first to fail?”

“
And how strong is the gambit moth’s magic?” Zedd spread his hands. “There is no telling. Could be among the first, or the last.”

“
What about Kahlan? Would she lose her power? It’s her protection. She needs it.”