Stone of Tears tsot-2 Page 13

  “You will wake,” she promised cheerfully.

  She took out another blanket and pulled it over the two of them. She cuddled close, her head on his shoulder and an arm over his chest, and tried not to worry about what he had said.

  Chapter 8

  When she woke, her back was against the warmth of him. Light was seeping in around the edges of the door. She sat up, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and looked down at Richard.

  He lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, taking slow, shallow breaths. She smiled at the familiar pleasure of his face. He was so handsome it made her ache.

  Suddenly she realized with a jolt what it was about him that looked so familiar to her. Richard looked like Darken Rahl. Not the same kind of impossible perfection—the flawlessly smooth, uninterrupted sweep of features that were too exactly right, like some precisely perfect statue—but more rugged, rougher; more real.

  Before they’d defeated Rahl, when Shota, the witch woman, had appeared to them as Richard’s mother, Kahlan had seen her looks in Richard’s nose and mouth. It was as if Richard had Darken Rahl’s face with some of his mother’s features making it better than Rahl’s cruel perfection. Rahl’s hair was fine, straight, and blond, while Richard’s was coarser and darker. And Richard’s eyes were gray instead of Rahl’s blue, but they both possessed the same penetrating intensity—the same kind of raptor’s gaze that seemed as if it could cut steel.

  Though she didn’t know how it could be possible, she knew Richard had Rahl blood. But Darken Rahl was from D’Hara, and Richard from Westland; that was about as far apart as you could get. It must be, she finally decided, a connection in the distant past.

  Richard was still staring at the ceiling. She put her hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “How is your head?”

  Richard jumped hard. He looked around and blinked at her. He rubbed his eyes. “What? . . . I was asleep. What did you say?”

  Kahlan frowned. “You weren’t asleep.”

  “Yes I was. Sound asleep.”

  Kahlan felt a flutter of apprehension. “Your eyes were wide open. I was watching you.” She left unsaid that as far as she knew, only wizards slept with their eyes open.

  “Really?” He looked around. “Where are those leaves?”

  “Here. Does it still hurt bad?”

  “Yes.” He sat up. “But it’s been worse.” He put some of the leaves in his mouth and ran his fingers through his hair. “At least I can talk.” He smiled at her. “And I can smile without my face feeling like it’s going to break.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go shoot arrows today if you don’t feel well enough.”

  “Savidlin said I couldn’t back out. I’m not going to let him down. Besides, I really want to see this bow he made for me. It’s been . . . well, I don’t even remember how long it’s been since I shot a bow.”

  After he chewed some of Nissel’s leaves for a while, they folded up the blankets and went looking for Savidlin. They found him at his home, listening to Siddin telling stories of what it was like to ride a dragon. Savidlin liked listening to stories. Even though it was a little boy telling them, he listened with the same interest he would accord a hunter returning from a journey. Kahlan noted with pride that the little boy was giving a remarkably accurate rendition, without fanciful embellishment.

  Siddin wanted to know if he could have a dragon for a pet. Savidlin told him the red dragon was not a pet, but a friend to their people. He told him to find a red chicken, and he could have that.

  Weselan was cooking a pot of some sort of porridge with eggs mixed in. She asked Richard and Kahlan to join them and passed each a bowl as they sat on a skin on the floor. She gave them flat tava bread to fold and use as a scoop for the porridge.

  Richard had her ask Savidlin if he had a drill of any kind. Savidlin leaned way back, and with a finger and thumb pulled a thin rod from a pouch beneath a bench. He handed the rod to Richard, who had the dragon’s tooth out. Richard turned the rod around with a puzzled look, put it at the base of the tooth, and twisted it experimentally.

  Savidlin laughed. “You want a hole in that?” Richard nodded. Savidlin held out his hand. “Give it to me. I will show you how it is done.”

  Savidlin used his knifepoint to start a small hole and then held the tooth between his feet as he sat on the floor. He placed a few grains of sand in the hole, followed by the rod. He spat in his palms and then spun the rod back and forth rapidly between his hands, stopping occasionally to drop a few more grains of sand down the hole and wipe a little spittle into the opening. In a little while, he had drilled all the way through the tooth. He used his knife to clean the burrs from where the drill went through the other side of the tooth, and then held it up, grinning, showing off the hole. Richard laughed and thanked him as he strung a leather thong to the tooth. He hung it around his neck with the Bird Man’s whistle and the Mord-Sith’s Agiel.

  He was getting quite a collection. Some of it she didn’t like.

  Wiping out his porridge bowl with a piece of tava bread, Savidlin asked, “Is your head better?”

  “It’s better, but still hurts something fierce. Nissel’s leaves help. I’m embarrassed I had to be carried back last night.”

  Savidlin laughed. “One time, I had a bad hurt, here.” He pointed at a round scar in his side. “I was carried home by women.” He leaned closer and lifted an eyebrow. “Women!” Weselan cast a disapproving eye toward him. He made a point of not noticing. “When my men found out I was carried home by women, they had a good laugh over it.” He put the last of the tava bread in his mouth and chewed for a few minutes. “Then I told them which women carried me home, and they stopped laughing and wanted to know how to get a hurt like mine so they too could be carried home by those women.”

  “Savidlin!” Weselan scolded in a scandalized tone. She turned to them. “If he didn’t already have a hurt, I would have given him one. A good one.”

  “So how did you get this hurt?” Richard asked.

  Savidlin shrugged. “Like I told my men: it was easy. You just stand there like a surprised rabbit while a trespasser puts a spear through you.”

  “And why didn’t he finish you?”

  “Because I put a few ten-step arrows in him.” He pointed at his throat. “Here.”

  “What’s a ten-step arrow?”

  Savidlin reached to the side and pulled a barbed, fine-pointed arrow from his quiver. “One of these. See the dark stain? Poison. Ten-step poison. When it sticks you, you get only ten steps, and then you are dead.” He laughed. “My men decided to think of a different way to get those women to carry them.”

  Weselan leaned over and stuffed the rest of her tava bread in her husband’s mouth. She turned to Kahlan. “Men enjoy telling the most awful stories.” She broke into a shy smile. “But I worried for him until he was well. I knew he was well when he came to me and made Siddin. Then I did not worry anymore.”

  Kahlan realized she had translated before she had paid attention to the meaning of the words. She felt her ears burn. Instead of looking at Richard, she paid close attention to eating her porridge. She was glad her hair covered her ears, at least.

  Savidlin gave Richard a look of a put-upon male. “You will find that women, too, like to tell stories.”

  Kahlan tried desperately to think of a new direction for the conversation. She couldn’t. Thankfully, Savidlin did. He leaned back, looking out the door.

  “It will soon be the time to go.”

  “How do you know what time we are to go?”

  Savidlin shrugged. “I am here, you are here, some of the men are here. When they are all here, that is the time to go.”

  Savidlin went to the corner and retrieved a bow that was taller than the one Kahlan had seen him use before. Taller for Richard. With the aid of his foot, Savidlin stretched the cord to the bow.

  Richard had a wide grin on his face. He told Savidlin it was the finest bow he had ever seen. Savidlin beamed with pride and gave him a q
uiver full of arrows.

  Richard tested the weight of the draw. “How did you know how strong to make the pull? It’s just right.”

  Savidlin pointed at his chin. “I remembered how strong your respect for my strength was when we first met. It is too heavy for me, but I estimated it was right for you.”

  Kahlan stood up next to Richard. “Are you sure you want to go? How does your head feel?”

  “Terrible. But I have the leaves; they help a little. I think I’ll be all right. Savidlin is looking forward to this. I don’t want to disappoint him.”

  She rubbed her hand on his shoulder. “Should I come with you?”

  Richard kissed her forehead. “I don’t think I’ll need anyone to translate to tell me how badly I’m being beaten. And I don’t think I want to give Chandalen’s men any excuse to humiliate me any worse than they are already going to.”

  “Zedd told me you were pretty good. In fact, he told me you were better than good.”

  Richard stole a look at Savidlin, who was stringing his own bow. “It’s been a long time since I’ve shot a bow. Zedd was just trying to stir up trouble, I’ll bet.”

  He stole a kiss while Savidlin was finishing and then went out the door with him. Kahlan leaned against the doorframe, still feeling the print of his lips on hers as she watched him walking away.

  Showing no emotion, Chandalen stared up from sighting down one of his arrows. Prindin and Tossidin flashed sly smiles. They were looking forward to this. Richard glanced around, meeting the eyes of all the men as he walked past. They fell in behind him. He was a good head taller than any of them. They looked like a bunch of children following an adult. But these children had poison arrows, and some of them didn’t hold any favor for Richard. Suddenly she didn’t like this.

  Weselan stood next to her, watching the men go. “Savidlin said he will watch Richard’s back. Don’t be concerned, Chandalen would not do anything foolish.”

  “I worry about what Chandalen considers foolish.”

  Weselan wiped her hands on a cloth, turning back to keep a watchful eye on Siddin. Siddin wanted to go out, and was sitting, poking a finger along the ground, looking dejected because his mother said she wanted him to stay inside. Weselan stood over him a long moment watching. He looked up, his chin resting in one palm. She gave him a gentle snap with the cloth.

  “Go outside and play.” Weselan sighed as he tore through the door with a squeal of glee. She shook her head to herself. “The young don’t know how dear life is. Or how fragile.”

  “Maybe that is why we all wish we were young again.”

  Weselan nodded. “Maybe so.” A handsome smile came to her tanned face. Her dark eyes sparkled. “What color would you like to wear when you wed your man?”

  With both hands, Kahlan pulled her long hair back over her shoulders and thought a minute. A smile welled up from within. “Richard favors blue.”

  Weselan twined her fingers together. “Oh, that would be just right, then. I have just the thing. I have been saving it for something special.”

  She went into her small bedroom and came back with a bundle. Sitting on the bench next to Kahlan, she carefully unfolded it in her lap. The cloth was finely woven, a rich blue with a print of lighter blue flowers dappled across it. Kahlan thought it would make a gorgeous dress.

  She tested the weave between her finger and thumb. “It’s beautiful. Where did you get it?”

  “I traded for it.” She flicked her hand over her head. “With people from the north. They like the bowls I make. I traded with them for it.”

  Kahlan knew fine cloth when she saw it. Weselan would have had to make many bowls for this cloth. “I wouldn’t feel right using it, Weselan. You worked hard for this. It is yours.”

  Weselan held up the corners of the blue fabric, giving it a critical appraisal. “Nonsense. You two come here and teach our people how to make roofs that don’t leak. You save Siddin from those shadow things, and in the process rid us of an old fool and make it so Savidlin can be one of the six elders. He has never been so happy. When Siddin is carried off, you find him and bring him back to us. You destroy the man who would have enslaved us. You two are guardians to our people. What is a piece of cloth?

  “I will be proud the Mother Confessor of all the Midlands is wedded in a dress I make. Me, just a simple woman. For you, my friend, from all those faraway places, with all those grand things that I cannot even imagine. You would not be taking something from me. You would be giving me something.”

  Kahlan’s eyes filled with tears. Her lower lip trembled. “You can’t know the joy you have given me, Weselan. To be a Confessor is to be feared. My whole life, people have feared and shunned me. No one has ever treated me as just a woman, talked to me as a woman. Only as a Confessor. No one before Richard ever saw me as a person. No woman before you ever welcomed me into her home. No woman has ever let me hold her child.” She wiped away some of the tears. “It will be the most beautiful dress I have ever worn, the most treasured dress I will ever have. I will wear it, proud that a friend made it for me.”

  Weselan gave her a sidelong look. “When your man sees you in this dress, he will make you a child of your own.”

  Kahlan laughed and cried and hugged her. She had never dared to dream that all these things could happen in her life, that she could ever be treated as anything but a Confessor.

  Kahlan and Weselan spent the better part of the morning starting the dress. Weselan seemed as excited about making the dress as Kahlan was about wearing it. The seamstresses back in Aydindril had nothing over Weselan with her fine bone needles. They settled on a simple design fashioned something like a kirtle.

  They had a light lunch of tava bread and chicken broth. Weselan said she would work on the dress later, and asked what Kahlan wanted to do in the afternoon. Kahlan said she really would like to cook something.

  Kahlan never ate meat when she was here before on official business because she knew the Mud People ate human flesh, ate their enemies to gain their knowledge. To avoid offending them, she had always used the excuse that she didn’t eat meat. The night before, Richard had reacted strangely to eating meat, so Kahlan didn’t say anything to change the menu when Weselan suggested a vegetable stew.

  The two of them cut up tava, some other rust-colored roots Kahlan didn’t recognize, peppers, beans, some nutty kuru, and then added greens and dried mushrooms into the big iron kettle hanging over the little fire in the corner cooking hearth. Weselan pushed a few sticks of hardwood into the fire as she told Kahlan the men probably wouldn’t be back until dark. She suggested they go to the common area with the other women and bake some tava bread in the ovens.

  “I would like that,” Kahlan said.

  “We will talk about the wedding with them. Talk of weddings always makes for good conversation.” She smiled. “Especially when there are no men around.”

  Kahlan was happy to find that the young women talked to her now. In the past they had always been too shy. The older women wanted to talk about the marriage. The younger women wanted to talk about faraway places. They wanted to know if it was really true that men followed her orders, that they did as she said.

  Their eyes were wide as Kahlan told them about the Central Council and how she protected the interests of peoples like the Mud People from the threat of invasion by more powerful lands so the Mud People and others in small communities could live as they wished. She explained that although she was able to command people, she did so only because she was the servant to all the people. When they asked if she commanded armies of men in battle, Kahlan told them that it wasn’t like that; that what she did was try to help the different lands work together so there wouldn’t be fighting. They wanted to know how many servants she had and what sorts of fabulous dresses she had. The questions were beginning to make the older women nervous, and to frustrate Kahlan.

  She flopped a ball of dough down on the board, sending up a little cloud of flour. She looked the younger women in the ey
e.

  “The prettiest dress I will ever have will be the dress Weselan is making me, because she is doing it out of friendship, and not because I commanded her to make it. There is no possession to compare to friendship. I would give up everything I have, and live in rags, and grub for roots, just to have one friend.”

  That seemed to quiet the young girls, and settle the older women. The chatter drifted back to the subject of the wedding, and Kahlan was happy to let it. She tried to keep out of it, to let the older women lead the talk.

  Near the end of the afternoon, Kahlan saw a commotion across the field. She saw a taller figure, Richard, taking long strides toward Savidlin and Weselan’s home. Even from a distance, she could tell he was angry. A throng of hunters followed in his wake, trotting at times to keep pace.

  Kahlan wiped her flour-covered hands on a cloth. She threw the cloth on a table as she stepped off the plank floor of the shelter and jogged the distance to the men. She caught them as they went down a wide passageway.

  Pushing through the hunters, she finally caught up with Richard just before he reached Savidlin’s doorway. Chandalen was right at his heels, along with Savidlin. Chandalen had blood down his shoulder, with some kind of mud pack over a wound on top. He looked to be in a mood to chew rocks.

  She grabbed Richard’s sleeve. He spun around with a hot expression that cooled a little when he saw it was her. He removed his hand from the hilt of the sword.

  “Richard, what’s wrong?”

  He glared around at the men, mostly Chandalen, then settled his gaze back on her. “I need you to translate. We had a little . . . ‘adventure’ . . . this afternoon. I haven’t been able to make them understand what happened.”

  “I want to know how he could dare to try to kill me!” Chandalen was saying over Richard’s words.

  “What’s he talking about? He wants to know why you tried to kill him.”

  “Kill him! I saved his fool life. Don’t ask me why! I should have let him get killed! The next time I will!” He ran his fingers through his hair. “My head is killing me.”