Terry Goodkind - Naked Empire

Tom thought of it as a trophy, of sorts, awarded by the Lord Rahl.

Kahlan knew that Richard wore his four feathers for a different reason: it was a warning for all to see.

Kahlan pulled her hair back over her shoulder. “Do you think that was a man below the races? A man watching us?”

Richard shrugged. “You know more about magic than me. You tell me.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.” She frowned over at him. “If it was a man . . . or something like that, why do you think he finally decided to reveal himself?”

“I don’t think he did decide to reveal himself.” Richard’s intent gray eyes turned toward her. “I think it was an accident.”

“How could it be an accident?”

“If it’s someone using the races to track us, and he can somehow see us—”

“See us how?”

“I don’t know. See us through the eyes of the races.”

“You can’t do that with magic.”

Richard fixed her with a trenchant look. “Fine. Then what was it?”

Kahlan looked back at the shadows stretching out before them on the buckskin-colored rock, back at the small bleary shapes moving around the shadow of her head, like flies around a corpse. “I don’t know. You were saying? . . . About someone using the races to track us, to see us?”

“I think,” Richard said, “that someone is watching us, through the races or with their aid—or something like that—and they can’t really see everything. They can’t see clearly.”

“So?”

“So, since he can’t see with clarity, I think maybe he didn’t realize that there was a sandstorm. He didn’t anticipate what the blowing sand would reveal. I don’t think he intended to give himself away.” Richard looked over at her again. “I think he made a mistake. I think he showed himself accidentally.”

Kahlan let out a measured, exasperated breath. She had no argument for such a preposterous notion. It was no wonder he hadn’t told her the full extent of his theory. She had been thinking, when he said the races were tracking them, that probably a web had been cast and then some event had triggered it—most likely Cara’s innocent touch—and that spell had then attached to them, causing the races to follow that marker of magic. Then, as Jennsen had suggested, someone was simply watching where the races were in order to get a pretty good idea of where Richard and Kahlan were. Kahlan had thought of it in terms of the way Darken Rahl had once hooked a tracer cloud to Richard in order to know where they were. Richard wasn’t thinking in terms of what had happened before; he was looking at it through the prism of a Seeker.

There were still a number of things about Richard’s notion that didn’t make sense to her, but she knew better than to discount what he thought simply because she had never heard of such a thing before.

“Maybe it’s not a ‘he,’ ” she finally said. “Maybe it’s a she. Maybe a Sister of the Dark.”

Richard gave her another look, but this one was more worry than anything else. “Whoever it is—whatever it is—I don’t think it can be anything good.”

Kahlan couldn’t argue that much of it, but still, she couldn’t reconcile such a notion. “Well, let’s say it’s like you think it is—that we spotted him spying on us, by accident. Why did the races then attack us?”

Dust rose from Richard’s boot as he casually kicked a small stone. “I don’t know. Maybe he was just angry that he’d given himself away.”

“He was angry, so he had the races kill Betty’s kids? And attack you?”

Richard shrugged. “I’m just guessing because you asked; I’m not saying I think it’s so.” The long feathers, bloodred at their base, turning to a dark gray and then to inky black at the tip, ruffled in the gusts of wind.

As he thought it over, his tone turned more speculative. “It could even be that whoever it was using the races to watch us had nothing at all to do with the attack. Maybe the races decided to attack on their own.”

“They simply took the reins from whoever it was that was taking them for the ride?”

“Maybe. Maybe he can send them to us so he can have a peek at where we are, where we’re going, but can’t control them much more than that.”

In frustration, Kahlan let out a sigh. “Richard,” she said, unable to hold back her doubts, “I know a good deal about all sorts of magic and I’ve never heard of anything like this being possible.”

Richard leaned close, again taking her in with those arresting gray eyes of his. “You know about all sorts of things magic from the Midlands. Maybe down here they have something you never encountered before. After all, had you ever heard of a dream walker before we encountered Jagang? Or even thought such a thing was possible?”

Kahlan pulled her lower lip through her teeth as she studied his grim expression for a long moment. Richard hadn’t grown up around magic—it was all new to him. In some ways, though, that was a strength, because he didn’t have preconceived notions about what was possible and what wasn’t.

Sometimes, the things they’d encountered were unprecedented.

To Richard, just about all magic was unprecedented.

“So, what do you think we should do?” she finally asked in a confidential tone.

“What we planned.” He glanced over his shoulder to see Cara scouting a goodly distance off to their left side. “It has to be connected to the rest of it.”

“Cara only meant to protect us.”

“I know. And who knows, maybe it would have been worse if she hadn’t touched it. It could even be that by doing what she did, she actually bought us time.”

Kahlan swallowed at the feeling of dread churning in her. “Do you think we still have enough time?”

“We’ll think of something. We don’t even know yet for sure what it could mean.”

“When the sand finally runs out of an hourglass, it usually means the goose is cooked.”

“We’ll find an answer.”

“Promise?”

Richard reached over and gently caressed the back of her neck.

“Promise.”

Kahlan loved his smile, the way it sparkled in his eyes. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that he always kept his promises. His eyes held something else, though, and that distracted her from asking if he believed the answer he promised would come in time, or even if it would be an answer that could help them.

“You have a headache, don’t you,” she said.

“Yes.” His smile had vanished. “It’s different than before, but I’m pretty sure it’s caused by the same thing.”

The gift. That’s what he meant.

“What do you mean it’s different? And if it’s different, then what makes you think the cause is the same?”

He thought about it a moment. “Remember when I was explaining to Jennsen about how the gift needs to be balanced, how I have to balance the fighting I do by not eating meat?” When she nodded he went on. “It got worse right then.”

“Headaches, even those kind, vary.”

“No . . .” he said, frowning as he tried to find the words. “No, it was almost as if talking about—thinking about—the need not to eat meat in order to balance the gift somehow brought it more to the fore and made the headaches worse.”

Kahlan didn’t at all like that concept. “You mean like maybe the gift within you that is the cause of the headaches is trying to impress upon you the importance of balance in what you do with the gift.”

Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. “I don’t know. There’s more to it. I just can’t seem to get it all worked out. Sometimes when I try, when I go down that line of reasoning, about how I need to balance the fighting I do, the pain starts to get so bad I can’t dwell on it.