Terry Goodkind - Chainfire - Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Nicci pressed a hand to Richard’s forehead, testing for fever. “You need rest. No watch for you tonight. The three of us will each take a turn.”

Richard wanted to argue, but he knew that she was right. This was not a battle he should take up, so he didn’t and instead nodded his agreement. Cara, obviously prepared to take Nicci’s side if he argued, turned back from watching them from out of the small opening between the boughs.

From the gathering darkness all around a grating sound had begun to build into a shrill chirr. Now that they were finished with the effort of building the shelter, the noise was hard to ignore. It made the whole forest seem alive with raucous activity. Nicci finally took notice of it and paused to look around.

She frowned. “What is that sound, anyway?”

Richard plucked an empty skin from a tree trunk. Everywhere throughout the forest the trees were covered with the pale, tannish, thumb-sized husks.

“Cicadas.” Richard smiled to himself as he let the gossamer ghost of the creature that had once lived inside roll into his palm. “This is what’s left after they molt.”

Nicci glanced at the empty skin in his hand and briefly looked at some of the others clinging to the trees. “While I spent most of my life in towns and cities, and indoors, I’ve spent a great deal of time outdoors since leaving the Palace of the Prophets. These insects must be unique to these woods; I don’t recall ever seeing them before—or hearing them.”

“You wouldn’t have. I was a boy the last time I saw them. This kind of cicada emerges from underground every seventeen years. Today is the first day they all have begun to emerge. They will only be around for a few weeks while they mate and lay their eggs. Then we won’t see them again for another seventeen years.”

“Really?” Cara asked as she poked her head back out. “Every seventeen years?” She thought it over for a moment and then scowled up at Richard. “They better not keep us awake.”

“Because of their numbers they create quite an unforgettable sound. With countless of the cicadas all trilling together, you can sometimes hear the harmonic rise and fall of their song moving through the forest in a wave. In the quiet of night, their stridulation may seem deafening at first, but, believe it or not, it will actually lull you to sleep.”

Satisfied to know that the noisy insects would not keep her charge awake, Cara disappeared back inside.

Richard recalled his wonder when Zedd had walked with him through the woods, showing him the newly emerged creatures, telling him all about their seventeen-year life cycle. To Richard, as a boy, it was a memorable wonder. Zedd told him how he would be grown up when they came again, that he had first seen them as a boy, and the next time he would see them as a grown man. Richard remembered marveling at the event and promising himself that when they came again, he would be sure to spend more time watching the rare creatures when they appeared from the ground.

Richard felt a wave of profound sadness for the loss of that innocent time in life. As a boy, the emergence of the cicadas had seemed like just about the most amazing phenomenon he could imagine, and waiting seventeen years until they returned seemed like the hardest thing he would ever have to do. And now they were back.

And now he was a man. He cast the empty husk aside.

After Richard removed his wet cloak and crawled in behind Nicci, he pulled branches together to cover over the opening to the snug shelter. The thick branches toned down the high-pitched song of the cicadas. The ceaseless buzzing was making him sleepy.

He was pleased to see that the balsam boughs worked to shed the rain, leaving the cavelike refuge dry, if not warm. They had laid down a bed of boughs over the exposed ground so they would have a relatively soft and dry platform upon which to sleep. Even without rain dripping on them, though, the humidity and fog still dampened everything. Their breath came out in ephemeral clouds.

Richard was weary of being wet. Handling trees had left him covered with bark and needles and dirt. His hands were sticky from tree sap. He couldn’t remember ever being so miserable with grime and grit clinging to his wet skin and wet clothes. At least the pine and balsam pitch left the shelter smelling pleasant.

He wished he could have a hot bath. He hoped that Kahlan was warm and dry and unharmed.

Tired as he was, and as sleepy as the sound of the cicadas was making him, there were things Richard needed to know. There were matters far more important to him than sleep, or his simple boyhood wonder.

He needed to find out what Nicci knew about what had killed Victor’s men. There were too many connections to ignore. The attack had come right near where Richard, Kahlan, and Cara had been camped a few days before. More importantly, whatever had killed the men didn’t seem to have left any tracks, at least none that he been able to find in his brief search, and, other than that displaced rock, Richard couldn’t find any tracks from either Kahlan or her abductor.

Richard intended, before he slept, to find out what Nicci knew about what had killed the men.

Richard untied the leather thongs beneath his pack and opened his bedroll, spreading it out in the narrow space left between the other two.

“Nicci, back at the place where the men were killed you said that it had been a blood frenzy.” He leaned back against the rock wall underneath the overhang. “What did you mean?”

Nicci folded herself into a sitting position to his right, atop her own bedroll. “What we saw back there wasn’t simply killing. Isn’t that obvious?”

He supposed she had a point. He had never witnessed a scene so shaped by rage. He was well aware, though, that she knew far more about it.

Cara curled up to his left. “I’m telling you,” she said to Nicci, “I don’t think he knows.”

Richard cast a leery gaze at the Mord-Sith and then at the sorceress. “Knows what?”

Nicci ran her fingers back through her wet hair, pulling strands off her face. She looked a little puzzled. “You said that you got the letter I sent.”

“I did.” It had been quite a while back. He tried to remember through the daze of weariness and worry everything Nicci’s letter had said—something about Jagang creating weapons out of people. “Your letter was valuable in helping figure out what was happening at the time. And I did appreciate your warning about Jagang’s darker pursuits of creating weapons out of the gifted; Nicholas the Slide was as nasty a piece of work.”

“Nicholas.” Nicci spat the name before wrapping a blanket around her shoulders. “He is but a flea on the rump of the wolf.”

If Nicholas was the flea, Richard hoped never to run into the wolf. Nicholas the Slide had been a wizard whom the Sisters of the Dark had altered to have abilities that were well beyond any human traits. It had been thought that accomplishing such conjuring with people was not only a lost art but impossible because, among other things, such nefarious work required the use of not only Additive but Subtractive Magic. While a rare few had learned to manipulate it, until Richard’s birth there hadn’t been anyone born with the actual gift for Subtractive Magic in thousands of years.

But there had been those who, even though they had not been born with that side of the gift, still had managed to gain the use of Subtractive Magic. Darken Rahl had been one such person. It was said that he had traded the pure souls of children to the Keeper of the underworld in exchange for dark indulgences, including the ability to use Subtractive Magic.

Richard supposed that it could also have been through morbid promises to the Keeper that the first Sisters of the Dark had contrived to obtain the knowledge of how to use Subtractive Magic, thereafter passing it on in secret to their covert disciples.