Wizard's First Rule (9 page)

He was frightened, exhausted, confused, and in pain. He wanted this nightmare to end. With a moan of frustration he sagged back down onto his back, not caring anymore about whatever it was that was poking him.

“Kahlan, after those men attacked us, and you didn’t want to tell me more about what is going on, I didn’t press you.” His eyes were closed. He couldn’t bear the scrutiny of her eyes. “Now someone is after me, too. For all I know, it could be the same person who murdered my father. It’s not just you anymore; I can’t go home either. I think I have a right to know at least some of what’s going on. I’m your friend, not your enemy.

“Once, when I was little, I got a fever and almost died. Zedd found a root that saved me. Until today, that was the only time I’ve ever been close to death. Today I was close three times. What do I…”

Her fingertips touched his lips to silence him.

“You’re right. I will answer your questions. Except about me. For now, I cannot.”

He sat up and looked at her. She was starting to shake with cold. Shrugging the straps of the pack off his shoulders, he pulled a blanket out and wrapped it around her.

“You promised me a fire,” she said as she shivered. “Is it a promise you intend to keep?”

He couldn’t help but to laugh as he got to his feet. “Sure. There’s a wayward pine right over there on the other side of the clearing. Or if you want there are others up the trail a little way.”

She looked up and gave him a worried frown.

“Right,” he smiled, “we’ll find another wayward pine up the trail.”

“What is a wayward pine?” she asked.

Richard held back the boughs of the tree. “This is a wayward pine,” he announced. “Friend to any traveler.”

It was dark inside. Kahlan held the boughs aside so he could see by the moonlight to strike steel to flint and start a fire. Clouds scudded across the moon, and they could see their breath in the cold air. Richard had stayed here before on trips to and from Zedd’s, and had made a small fire pit of stones. There was dry wood and to the far side a stack of dry grass he had used for bedding. Since he didn’t have his knife he was thankful he had left a supply of tinder. The fire was quickly started, filling the interior of the tree’s skirt with flickering light.

Richard was not quite able to stand under the branches where they began growing out from the trunk. The branches were bare near the trunk, with needles on the ends, leaving a hollow interior. The lower branches dipped all the way to the ground. The tree was fire-resistant, as long as one was careful. The smoke from the small fire curled up the center, near the trunk. The needles grew so thick that even in a good rain it remained dry inside. Richard had waited out many a rain in a wayward pine. He always enjoyed staying in the small but cozy shelters as he traveled the Hartland.

Now he was especially glad for its concealing shelter. Before their encounter with the long-tailed gar, there had been plants and animals in the forest he had strong respect for, but there had been nothing in the woods he feared.

Kahlan sat herself down cross-legged in front of the fire. She was still shivering and kept the blanket over her head formed into a hood, and held tightly up around her chin.

“I never heard of wayward pines before. I am not used to staying in the woods when I travel, but they look like a wonderful place to sleep.” She looked even more tired than he.

“When was the last time you slept?”

“Two days ago, I think. It has all become a blur.”

Richard was surprised she could keep her eyes open. When they were running from the quad, he had barely been able to keep up with her. It was her fear that pushed her on, he knew.

“Why so long?”

“It would be very unwise,” she said, “to go to sleep in the boundary.” Kahlan watched the fire, spellbound in its warm embrace, the light from it fluttering on her
face. She loosened the blanket from around her chin and let it hang so she could put her hands out to warm them closer to the fire.

A chill ran through him when he wondered what was in the boundary, and what would happen if you went to sleep there.

“Hungry?”

She nodded her head.

Richard dug around in his pack, retrieving a pot, and went outside to fill it in a pool of water at a small brook they had passed a short distance back. Sounds of the night filled air so cold it felt as if it might break if he wasn’t careful. Once again he cursed himself for leaving home without his forest cloak, among other things. The memory of what had been waiting for him at his house made him shiver all the more.

Every bug that looped past made him recoil in fear it was a blood fly, and several times he froze in midstep, only to exhale in relief when he saw it was only a snowy tree cricket, or a moth, or a lacewing. Shadows melted and materialized as clouds passed in front of the moon. He didn’t want to, but he looked up anyway. Stars winked off and back on as soft, gauzelike clouds moved silently across the sky. All except one, which did not move.

He came back in, cold to the bone, and put the pot of water on the fire, balancing it on three stones. Richard started to sit across from her, but then changed his mind and sat next to her, telling himself it was because he was so cold. When she heard his teeth chattering, she put half the blanket around his shoulders, letting her half slip from her head down to her shoulders as well. The blanket, heated by her body, felt good around him, and he sat quietly letting the warmth soak in.

“I’ve never seen anything like a gar. The Midlands must be a dreadful place.”

“There are many dangers in the Midlands.” A wistful smile came over her face. “There are also many fantastic and magical things. It is a beautiful, wondrous place. But the gar are not from the Midlands. They are from D’Hara.”

He stared in astonishment. “D’Hara! From across the second boundary?”

D’Hara. Until his brother’s speech today he had never heard the name spoken in anything other than the cautious whispers of older people. Or in a curse. Kahlan continued to watch the fire.

“Richard—” She paused as if afraid to tell him the rest. “—there is no longer a second boundary. The boundary between the Midlands and D’Hara is down. Since the spring.”

That shock made him feel as if the shadowy D’Hara had just taken a frightening, giant leap closer. He struggled to make sense of the things he was learning.

“Maybe my brother is more of a prophet than he knows.”

“Maybe,” she said noncommittally.

“Although it would be hard to make a living as a prophet by predicting events that had already taken place.” He gave her a sidelong glance.

Kahlan smiled as she idly twisted a strand of hair. “When I first saw you, my thought was that you were no fool.” Firelight sparkled in her green eyes. “Thank you for not proving me wrong.”

“Michael is in a position to have knowledge others don’t. Maybe he’s trying to
prepare the people, get them used to the idea, so when they find out, they won’t panic.”

Michael often said that information was the coin of power, and that it was not a coin to be spent frivolously. After he had become a councilor, he encouraged people to bring their information to him first. Even a farmer with a tale received an ear, and if the tale proved true, a favor.

The water was starting to boil. Richard leaned over, hooked his finger through a strap and pulled his pack to him, then rearranged the blanket. Rummaging around, he located the pouch of dried vegetables and poured some into the pot. From his pocket he pulled a napkin that held four fat sausages, which he broke up and tossed into the soup pot.

Kahlan looked surprised. “Where did those come from? Did you snatch those from your brother’s party?” Her voice carried a tone of disapproval.

“A good woodsman,” he said, licking his fingers and looking up at her, “always plans ahead and tries to know where his next meal will come from.”

“He will not think much of your manners.”

“I do not think much of his.” He knew he would get no argument from her on that point. “Kahlan, I won’t justify the way he acted. Ever since our mother died he’s been a hard person to be close to. But I know he cares about people. You have to, if you want to be a good councilor. It must be a lot of pressure. I certainly wouldn’t want the responsibility. But that’s all he ever wanted; to be someone important. And now that he’s First Councilor, he has what he’s always wanted. He should be satisfied, but he seems even less tolerant. He’s always busy, and always snapping orders. He is always in a bad mood lately. Maybe when he got what he wanted, it wasn’t what he thought it would be. I wish he could be more like he used to be.”

She grinned. “At least you had the good sense to pick the best of the sausages.”

That eased the tension. They both laughed.

“Kahlan, I don’t understand, about the boundary, I mean. I don’t even know what the boundary is, except it’s meant to keep the lands separated so there will be peace. And of course everyone knows that whoever goes into the boundary will not come out alive. Chase and the boundary wardens patrol to make sure people stay away for their own good.”

“Young people here are not taught the histories of the three lands?”

“No. I always thought it odd myself, because I wanted to know, but no one would ever tell me much. People think I’m strange because I want to know, and I ask questions. Older people seem suspicious when I ask, and tell me it was too long ago to remember, or give some other excuse.

“Both my father and Zedd told me they used to live in the Midlands before the boundary. Before it went up, they came to Westland. They met here before I was born. They said that back before the boundaries was a terrible time, and that there was a lot of fighting. They both told me there was nothing I needed to know except it was a dreadful time best forgotten. Zedd always seemed the most bitter about it.”

Kahlan snapped a piece off a dry stick and tossed it into the fire, where it flamed into a bright ember.

“Well, it is a long story. If you want I will tell you some of it.” When she turned to him, he nodded for her to go on.

“Long ago, back in the time before our parents were born, D’Hara was just a confederation of kingdoms, as was the Midlands. The most ruthless of the D’Haran rulers was Panis Rahl. He was avaricious. From the first day of his reign, he started swallowing up all of D’Hara for himself, one kingdom after another, many times before the ink was dry on a peace treaty. In the end, he held sway over all of D’Hara, but instead of satisfying him, it only whetted his appetite, and he soon turned his attention to the lands that are now the Midlands. The Midlands is a loose confederation of free lands; free, at least, to rule as they see fit, and only so long as they live in peace with each other.

“By the time Rahl had conquered all of D’Hara, the peoples of the Midlands had seen what he was about, and were not to be taken so easily. They knew that signing a peace treaty with him was as good as signing an invitation to invasion. Instead, they chose to remain free, and joined together, through the council of the Midlands, in a common defense. Many of the free lands held no favor with each other, but they knew that if they did not fight together, they would die separately, one at a time.

“Panis Rahl threw the might of D’Hara against them. War raged for many years.”

Kahlan broke off another piece of the stick and fed it to the fire. “As his legions were finally slowed and then halted, Rahl turned to magic. There is magic in D’Hara, too, not just in the Midlands. Back then there was magic everywhere. There were no separate lands, no boundaries. Anyway, Panis Rahl was ruthless in his use of magic against the free people. He was terribly brutal.”

“What kind of magic? What did he do?”

“Some was trickery, sickness, fevers, but the worst of it was the shadow people.”

Richard frowned. “Shadow people? What were they?”

“Shadows in the air. Shadow people had no solid form, no precise shape, they were not even alive as we know it, but beings created out of magic.” She held out her hand, gliding it across in front of them. “They would come floating across a field or through a wood. Weapons had no effect on them. Swords and arrows went through them as if they were nothing more than smoke. You couldn’t hide; shadow people could see you anywhere. One would drift right up to a person and touch him. The touch caused the person’s whole body to blister and swell and finally split open. No one touched by a shadow person ever survived. Whole battalions were found killed to a man.”

She pulled her hand back inside the blanket. “When Panis Rahl started using the magic in that way, a great and honorable wizard joined the side of the Midlands cause.”

“What was his name, this great and honorable wizard?”

“That is part of the story. Have patience until I get to it.”

Richard stirred some spices into the soup, listening intently while she resumed her story.

“Many thousands had already died in battle, but the magic killed many more.
It was a dark time, after all those years of struggle, to have so many taken by the magic Rahl called forth. But with the help of the great wizard holding Panis Rahl’s magic in check, his legions were driven back into D’Hara.”