Soul of the Fire

  At the time, he had dismissed her adamant assertions as either irrational conviction or perhaps misconceptions about their history. Now, this old ghost had unexpectedly returned to haunt him.

  “Husband?” Kahlan repeated, a little louder, a little more insistently.

  Her dark eyes turned to Kahlan, as if annoyed she had to take them from Richard. “Yes. Husband. I am Du Chaillu, wife of the Caharin, Richard, the Seeker.” Du Chaillu rubbed her hand over her pronounced belly. Her look of annoyance passed and she beamed with pride. “I bear his child.”

  “Leave it to me, Mother Confessor,” Cara said. There was no mistaking the resolute menace in her voice. “This time, I will take care of it.”

  Cara yanked the knife from Chandalen’s belt and lunged for the woman.

  Richard was quicker. He spun to Cara and shoved the tips of his stiffened fingers against her upper chest. It not only halted her forward progress, but drove her back three paces. He had enough problems without her causing more. He shoved her again and drove her back another three, and then another three, away from the group of people.

  Richard twisted the knife from her grip. “Now, you listen to me. You don’t know the first thing about this woman.”

  “I know—”

  “You know nothing! Listen to me! You are fighting the last war. This is not Nadine. This is nothing like Nadine!”

  His quiescent fury had at last erupted. With a cry of unleashed rage, Richard heaved the knife at the ground. The force drove it beneath the grass mat, burying it completely into the soil of the plains.

  Kahlan laid her hand on the back of his shoulder.

  “Richard, calm down. What’s this about? What’s going on?”

  Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. Clenching his jaw, he glanced about and saw the men still on their knees.

  “Jiaan—the rest of you—get off your knees! Get up!”

  The men rose up at once. Du Chaillu waited passively, patiently. Chandalen and his men backed off. The Mud People had named him Richard with the Temper and, while not surprised, looked to think it best to give ground.

  Chandalen and his men had no idea his anger was for what had killed one of them—had most likely, he realized, killed two of them—and would surely kill more.

  Kahlan regarded him with a look of concern. “Richard, calm down and get ahold of yourself. Who are these people?”

  He couldn’t seem to slow his breathing. Or his heart. Or unclench his fists. Or stop his racing thoughts. Everything seemed to be reeling out of control. Fears laid to rest seemed to have unshackled themselves and suddenly sprung up to snare him. He should have seen it before. He cursed himself for missing it.

  But there had to be a way to stop it. He had to think. He had to stop fearing things that had not yet happened, and think of a way to prevent them from coming to be.

  He realized it had already happened. He now had to think of the solution.

  Kahlan lifted his chin to look into his eyes. “Richard, answer me. Who are these people?”

  He pressed a hand to his forehead in frustrated rage. “The Baka Ban Mana. It means ‘those without masters.’”

  “We now have a Caharin; we are no longer the Baka Ban Mana,” Du Chaillu said from not far away. “We are now the Baka Tau Mana.”

  Not really comprehending Du Chaillu’s explanation, Kahlan turned her attention once more to Richard. This time her voice had a razor’s edge to it. “Why is she saying you are her husband?”

  His mind had already galloped so far off down another road he had to concentrate for a moment to understand what Kahlan was asking. She didn’t realize the implications. To Richard, Kahlan’s question seemed insignificant past history in the face of the future looming before them.

  He impatiently tried to wave away her concern. “Kahlan, it’s not what you think.”

  She licked her lips and took a breath. “Fine.” Her green eyes fixed on him. “So, why don’t you just explain it to me, then.”

  It was not a question. Richard instead asked his own. “Don’t you see?” Overwhelmed by impatience, he pointed at Du Chaillu. “It’s the old law! By the old law, she is my wife. At least she thinks she is.”

  Richard pressed his fingertips to his temples. His head was throbbing.

  “We are in a great deal of trouble,” he muttered.

  “You are, anyway,” Cara said.

  “Cara,” Kahlan said through her teeth, “that’s enough.” She turned back to him. “Richard, what are you talking about? What’s going on?”

  Accounts from Kolo’s journal echoed through his mind.

  He couldn’t seem to order his thoughts enough to put all the tumbling elements into words. The world was shreading apart, and she was asking him yesterday’s questions. Since he saw it so clearly looming before them, he couldn’t comprehend why Kahlan wouldn’t comprehend the danger, too.

  “Don’t you see?”

  Richard’s mind picked madly through the shadowy possibilities as he tried to decide what to do next. Time was slipping away. He didn’t even know how much they had.

  “I see you got her pregnant,” Cara said.

  Richard turned a glare on the Mord-Sith. “After all we have been through, Cara, do you think no more of me?”

  Looking galled, Cara folded her arms and didn’t answer.

  “Do the math,” Kahlan told Cara. “Richard would have been a prisoner of the Mord-Sith, far off at the People’s Palace in D’Hara, back when this woman got pregnant.”

  Unlike the Agiel Richard wore out of respect for the two women who had died protecting them, Kahlan wore the Agiel of Denna, the Mord-Sith who had, at the behest of Darken Rahl, captured Richard and tortured him nearly to death. Denna had decided to take Richard as her mate, but she had never once implied it was marriage. To Denna, it was just another way to torture and humiliate him.

  In the end, Richard forgave Denna for what she had done to him. Denna, knowing he was going to kill her in order to escape, gave him her Agiel and asked him to remember her as having been more in life than simply Mord-Sith. She had asked him to share her last breath of life. It had been through Denna that Richard had come to understand and empathize with these women, and by so doing he had been the only one ever to have escaped a Mord-Sith.

  Richard was surprised at Kahlan already having done “the math.” He would not have expected her to doubt him. He was wrong. She seemed to read his thoughts in his eyes.

  “It’s just something you do without thinking,” she whispered. “All right? Richard, please, tell me what’s going on?”

  “You’re a Confessor. You know how different arrangements can constitute marriage to different peoples. Except for you, Confessors always picked their mates for reasons of their own, reasons other than love, and then took them with their power before wedding them. The man had no say.”

  The man a Confessor singled out to be her husband was selected for little more reason than his value as breeding stock. Since her power would destroy the man she picked, love, despite what she might wish, had never been an option for a Confessor. A Confessor chose a man for the qualities he would contribute to her daughter.

  “Where I came from,” Richard went on, “parents often chose who their children would wed. A father would one day tell his child, ‘This will be your husband’ or ‘This will be your wife.’ Different people have different ways and different laws.”

  Kahlan cast a furtive glance at Du Chaillu. Her gaze pausing twice, once on Du Chaillu’s face, and once on her belly.

  When Kahlan’s gaze returned to him, her eyes had turned brutally cold. “So tell me about her laws.”

  Richard didn’t think Kahlan was aware that she was stroking the dark stone on the delicate gold necklace Shota had given her. The witch woman had appeared unexpectedly at their wedding, and Richard remembered well her words to them.

  “This is my gift to you both. I do this out of love for you both, and for everyone else. As long as you wear it, you
will bear no children. Celebrate your union and your love. You have each other, now, as you always wanted.

  “Mark my words well—never take this off when you are together. I will not allow a male child of this union to live. I do not make a threat. I deliver you a promise. Disregard my request, and suffer the consequences of my vow.”

  The witch woman had then looked into Richard’s eyes, and said, “Better you battle the Keeper of the underworld himself, than me.”

  Shota’s elaborate throne was covered with the hide of an experienced wizard who had crossed her. Richard knew little of his birthright of the gift. He didn’t necessarily believe Shota’s claim that their child would be a fiend unleashed upon the world, but for now he and Kahlan had decided to heed the witch woman’s warning. They had little choice.

  Kahlan’s fingers on his cheek drew his gaze to hers and reminded him she wanted an answer.

  Richard made an effort to slow his words. “Du Chaillu is from the Old World, on the other side of the Valley of the Lost. I helped her when Sister Verna took me across to the Old World.

  “These other people, the Majendie, had captured Du Chaillu and were going to sacrifice her. They held her prisoner for months. The men used her for their amusement.

  “The Majendie expected me, being gifted, to help them sacrifice her in return for passage through their land. A gifted man helping with the sacrifice was part of their religious beliefs. Instead, I freed Du Chaillu, hoping she would see us through her trackless swamps, since we could no longer cross the Majendie’s land.”

  “I provided men to guide Richard and the witch safely through the swamps to the big stone witch house,” Du Chaillu said, as if that would clarify matters.

  Kahlan blinked at the explanation. “Witch? Witch house?”

  “She means Sister Verna and the Palace of the Prophets,” Richard said. “They led Sister Verna and me there not because I freed Du Chaillu, but because I fulfilled an ancient prophecy.”

  Du Chaillu stepped to Richard’s side, as if by right. “According to the old law, Richard came to us and danced with the spirits, proving he is the Caharin, and my husband.”

  Richard could almost see Kahlan’s hackles lifting. “What does that mean?”

  Richard opened his mouth as he searched for the words. Du Chaillu lifted her chin and spoke instead.

  “I am the spirit woman of the Baka Tau Mana. I am also the keeper of our laws. It is proclaimed that the Caharin will announce his arrival by dancing with the spirits, and spilling the blood of thirty Baka Ban Mana, a feat none but the chosen one could accomplish and only then with the aid of the spirits.

  “It is said that when this happens, we are no longer a free people, but bound to his wishes. We are his to rule.

  “It was for this our blade masters trained their entire lives. They had the honor of teaching the Caharin so that he might fight the Dark Spirit. This proved Richard was the Caharin come to return us to our land, as the old ones promised.”

  A light breeze ruffled Du Chaillu’s thick hair. Her dark eyes revealed no emotion, but the slightest break in her voice betrayed it. “He killed the thirty, as set down in the old law. The thirty are now legend to our people.”

  “I didn’t have any choice.” Richard could manage little more than a whisper. “They would have killed me, otherwise. I begged them to stop. I begged Du Chaillu to stop them. I didn’t save her life just to end up killing those people. In the end, I defended myself.”

  Kahlan gave Du Chaillu a long hard look before turning to Richard. “She was held prisoner, and you saved her life and then returned her to her people.” Richard nodded. “And she then had her people try to kill you? That was her thanks?”

  “There was more to it.” Richard felt uncomfortable defending those people’s actions—actions that had resulted in so much bloodshed. He could still remember the sickening stench of it.

  Kahlan stole another icy sidelong glance at Du Chaillu. “But you saved her life?”

  “Yes.”

  “So tell me what more there is to it, then.”

  Through the pain of the memories, Richard sought to explain, in words Kahlan would understand. “What they did was a kind of test. A live-or-die test. It forced me to learn to use the magic of the sword in a way I never before realized was possible. In order to survive, I had to draw on the experience of the people who had used the sword before me.”

  “What do you mean? How could you draw their experience?”

  “The magic of the Sword of Truth retains the essence of the fighting knowledge of all those who’ve used the sword before—both the good and the wicked. I figured out how to tap that skill by letting the spirits of the sword speak to me, in my mind. But in the heat of combat there isn’t always time for me to comprehend it in words.

  “So, sometimes the information I need comes to me in images—symbols—that relate it. That was a pivotal connection in understanding why I was named in prophecy fuer grissa ost drauka: the bringer of death.”

  Richard touched the amulet on his chest. The ruby represented a drop of blood. The lines around it were a symbolic portrayal of the dance. It held meaning for a war wizard.

  “This,” Richard whispered. “The is dance with death. But back then, with Du Chaillu and her thirty, that was when I first understood.

  “Prophecy said I would someday come to them. Prophecy and their old laws said they had to teach me this—to dance with the spirits of those who had used the sword before. I doubt they fully understood how their test would do this, just that they were to uphold their duty and if they did and I was the one, I would survive.

  “I needed that knowledge to stand against Darken Rahl and send him back to the underworld. Remember how I called him in the gathering with the Mud People, and how he escaped into this world, and then the Sisters took me?”

  “Of course,” Kahlan said. “So they forced you into a life-or-death fight against impossible odds in order to make you call upon your inner strength—your gift. And as a result you killed her thirty blade masters?”

  “Yes, exactly. They were fulfilling prophecy.” He shared a long look with his only true wife—in his heart, anyway. “You know how terrible prophecy can be.”

  Kahlan looked away at last and nodded, caught in her own painful memories. Prophecies had caused them many hardships and subjected them to many trials. His second wife, Nadine, forced upon him by prophecy, had been one of those trials.

  Du Chaillu’s chin lifted. “Five of those the Caharin killed were my husbands and the fathers to my children.”

  “Her five husbands… Dear spirits.”

  Richard shot Du Chaillu a look. “You’re not helping.”

  “You mean, by her law, killing her husbands compels you to become her husband?”

  “No. It’s not because I killed her husbands, but because defeating the thirty proved I was their Caharin. Du Chaillu is their spirit woman; by their old laws the spirit woman is meant to be the wife of the Caharin. I should have thought of it before.”

  “That’s obvious,” Kahlan snapped

  “Look, I know how it must sound—I know it doesn’t seem to make any sense—”

  “No, it’s all right. I understand.” Her chill expression heated to simmering hurt. “So you did the noble thing, and married her. Of course. Makes perfect sense to me.” She leaned close. “And you just got so busy and all, you forgot to mention it before you married me. Of course. I understand. Who wouldn’t? A man can’t be expected to recall all the wives he leaves lying about.” She folded her arms and turned away. “Richard, how could you—”

  “No! It wasn’t like that. I never agreed. Never. There was no ceremony. No one said any words. I never stood and swore an oath. Don’t you understand? We weren’t married. It never happened!

  “So much has been going on. I’m sorry I forgot to tell you, but it never entered my mind because at the time I dismissed it as an irrational belief of an isolated people. I didn’t put any stock in it. She si
mply thinks that since I killed those men to defend myself, that makes me her husband.”

  “It does,” Du Chaillu said.

  Kahlan glanced briefly at Du Chaillu as she coolly considered his words. “So then you never, in any sense, really agreed to marry her?”

  Richard threw up his hands. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s just the Baka Ban Mana’s beliefs.”

  “Baka Tau Mana,” Du Chaillu corrected.

  Richard ignored her and leaned close to Kahlan. “I’m sorry, but can we talk about it later? We may have a serious problem.” She lifted an eyebrow. He amended to, “Another serious problem.”

  She gave him an indulgent scowl. He turned away, pulling a stalk of grass as he considered the plausibility of worse trouble than Kahlan’s ire.

  “You know a lot about about magic. I mean, you grew up in Aydindril with wizards who instructed you, and you’ve studied books at the Wizard’s Keep. You’re the Mother Confessor.”

  “I’m not gifted in the conventional sense,” Kahlan said, “not like a wizard or a sorceress—my power is different—but, yes, I know about magic. Being a Confessor, I had to be taught about magic in many of its various forms.”

  “Then answer me this. If there’s a requirement for magic, can the requirement be fulfilled by some ambiguous rule without the actual required ritual taking place?”

  “Yes, of course. It’s called the reflective effect.”

  “Reflective effect. How does that work?”

  Kahlan wound a long lock of damp hair on a finger as she turned her mind to the question. “Say you have a room with only one window and therefore the sun never reaches the corner. Can you get the sunlight to shine into a corner it never touches?”

  “Since it’s called the reflective effect, I’d guess you’d use a mirror to reflect the sunlight into the corner.”

  “Right.” Kahlan let the hair go and held up the finger. “Even though the sunlight could never itself reach the corner, by using a mirror you can get the sunlight to fall where it ordinarily wouldn’t. Magic can sometimes work like that. Magic is much more complex, of course, but that’s the easiest way I can explain it.