Temple of the Winds (52 page)

Silence settled into the room, patiently waiting for darkness to return.

Richard could hear the wheels of a handcart outside squeaking, and the distant, raucous cry of ravens. The music of children’s laughter drifted in the air.

This child would never laugh again.

Kahlan’s head fell against his shoulder. Soft sobs claimed her as she clutched his sleeve.

Richard reached over to pull the sheet over the body.

The boy’s hand rose slowly off his stomach. Richard froze.

The hand floated purposefully to Richard’s throat. The black fingers curled, gathering Richard’s shirt in a death grip.

Kahlan had fallen silent.

They both knew that the boy had died.

The boy’s hand drew Richard closer. The long-silent lungs filled once more with a breath.

Richard, the hair at the base of his neck stiffening, put his ear close.

“
The winds,” the dead boy whispered, “hunt you.”

Richard stared in a daze as Drefan wrapped the dead boy in the sheet. Only Richard and Kahlan had seen what had happened—had heard what the dead boy had said. Behind him, in the outer room, the mother wailed in anguish.

Drefan leaned close to him. “Richard.” Drefan touched his arm. “Richard.”

Richard started. “What?”

“
What do you want to do?”

“
Do? What do you mean?”

Drefan glanced over his shoulder at the rest of them back by the door. “What do you want to tell people about this? I mean, he died of the plague. Do you want to try to keep it a secret?”

Richard couldn’t seem to make his mind work.

Kahlan leaned past Richard. “A secret? Why would we want to do that?”

Drefan took a deep breath. “Well, word of a plague might cause a panic. If we let people know, believe me, word of it will beat us back to the palace.”

“
Do you think others have it?” she asked.

Drefan shrugged. “I doubt there would be only one isolated case. We have to bury or burn the body at once. His bedcovers, bed, and anything else he touched should be burned. The room should be treated with smoke.”

“
Won’t people want to know why that’s being done?” Richard asked. “Won’t they guess the reason?”

“
Probably.”

“
Then how could it be kept a secret?”

“
You’re the Lord Rahl. Your word is law. You would have to suppress any information. Arrest the family. Accuse them of a crime. Have them held until this is over. Have the soldiers carry off all their possessions to be burned and shut up their home.”

Richard closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips to them. He was the Seeker of Truth, not the suppressor of it.

“
We can’t do that to a family who just lost a boy. I won’t do that. Besides, wouldn’t it be better if people knew? Don’t people have a right to know of the danger they’re in?”

Drefan nodded. “If it were my decision, I would want people to know. I’ve seen the plague before, in small places. Some have tried to suppress the knowledge of it to prevent panic, but when more people started dying, it couldn’t be kept a secret.”

Richard felt as though the sky had fallen on him. He struggled to make his mind work, but the dead boy’s words kept echoing around in his head. The winds hunt you.

“
If we try to lie to people, they won’t believe anything we say. We have to tell them the truth. They’ve a right to know.”

“
I agree with Richard,” Kahlan said. “We shouldn’t try to deceive people, especially about something that could endanger their lives.”

Drefan nodded his concurrence. “We’re fortunate, at least, with the time of year. Plague is worst in the heat of summer. It could run rampant if this were summer. In the colder weather of the spring it shouldn’t be able to get a good foothold. With luck, the outbreak of plague will be weak and soon over.”

“
Luck,” Richard muttered. “Luck is for dreamers; I only have nightmares. We have to warn people.”

Drefan’s blue eyes looked to each in turn. “I understand, and I agree with your reasoning. The problem is, there’s not much to be done, other than burying the dead quickly and burning their things. There are remedies, but I fear they are of limited value.

“
I just want to warn you: news of plague will spread like a firestorm.”

Richard’s flesh prickled with goose flesh.

On the red moon will come the firestorm.

“
Dear spirits spare us,” Kahlan whispered. She was thinking the same as he.

Richard sprang up. “Yonick.” He crossed the room, rather than make the boy come to his dead brother.

“
Yes, Lord Rahl?” His brow creased as he struggled to hold back his tears.

Richard put one knee to the floor and held the boy’s shoulders.

“
Yonick, I’m so sorry. But your brother isn’t suffering any longer. He’s with the good spirits now. He’s at peace, and hoping we will remember the good times with him, and not be too sad. The good spirits will watch over him.”

Yonick brushed his blond hair aside. “But … I …”

“
I don’t want you to blame yourself. Nothing could have been done. Nothing. Sometimes people get sick, and none of us has the power to make them well. No one could have done anything. Even if you had brought me right at the first, we couldn’t have done anything.”

“
But you have magic.”

Richard felt heartsick. “Not for this,” he whispered.

Richard hugged Yonick for a moment. In the room beyond, the mother wept onto Raina’s shoulder. Nadine was wrapping up some herbs for the woman, and giving her instructions. The woman nodded against Raina’s shoulder as she listened and sobbed.

“
Yonick, I need your help. I need to go see the other boys on your Ja’La team. Can you take us to their homes?”

Yonick wiped his sleeve across his nose. “Why?”

“
I’m afraid they might be sick, too. We have to know.”

Yonick glanced back at his mother with unspoken concern. Richard gestured for Cara.

“
Yonick, where’s your father?”

“
He’s a felt maker. He works down the street and three over to the right. He works until late every day.”

Richard stood. “Cara, have some soldiers go and get Yonick’s father. He should be here with his wife right now. Have a couple of soldiers take his place for today and tomorrow and help out as best they can, so that his family won’t lose the income. Tell Raina to stay here with her until Yonick’s father comes home. It shouldn’t be long, then she can catch up with us.”

At the bottom of the stairs, Kahlan clutched his arm, holding him back, and asked Drefan and Nadine to wait outside with Yonick while Cara went to find his father. Kahlan closed the door to the alley, leaving Richard alone with her at the bottom of the dim stairwell.

She wiped the tears from her cheeks with trembling fingers. Her green eyes let slip more.

“
Richard.” She swallowed and gasped a breath. “Richard, I didn’t know. There was Marlin, and the Sister of the Dark … I never knew that Yonick’s brother was so sick, or I would never—”

Richard held up a finger to silence her. He realized, though, by the dread in her eyes, that his scowl was what had silenced her.

“
Don’t you
dare
dignify Nadine’s cruel lies with an explanation. Don’t you dare. I know you, and would never believe such things about you. Never.”

She closed her eyes with relief and fell against his chest. “That poor child,” she wept.

He stroked a hand down her long, thick hair. “I know.”

“
Richard, we both heard what that boy said after he died.”

“
Another warning that the Temple of the Winds has been violated.”

She pushed herself back. Her green eyes searched his.

“
Richard, we have to reconsider everything now. What you were telling me about the Temple of the Winds was only one source and not an official one at that. It was just a journal kept by one man to keep himself occupied while he guarded the sliph. Besides that, you’ve only read parts of it, and it’s in High D’Haran, which is difficult to translate accurately. You may have been getting the wrong idea about the Temple of the Winds from the journal.”

“
Well, I don’t know that I would agree—”

“
You’re dead tired. You’re not thinking. We now know the truth. The Temple of the Winds isn’t trying to send a warning—it’s trying to kill you.”

Richard took pause at the concern on her face. Besides the grief he saw in her eyes, he saw disquiet. Disquiet for him.

“
Kolo didn’t make it sound like that was what was happening. From what I’ve read, I think the red moon is a warning that the Temple of the Winds has been violated. When the red moon came before—”

“
Kolo said everyone was in an uproar. He didn’t explain the uproar, did he? Maybe it was because the temple was trying to kill them. Kolo said that the team who had sent the Temple of the Winds away had betrayed them.

“
Richard, face the facts. That dead boy just delivered a threat from the Temple of the Winds: ‘The winds hunt you.’ You hunt something when you want to kill it. The Temple of the Winds is hunting you—trying to kill you.”

“
Then why didn’t it kill me, instead of the boy?”

She didn’t have an answer.

Out in the alley, Drefan’s blue, Darken Rahl eyes watched Richard and Kahlan returning over the boards in the mud. It seemed as if the process of deep reflection could be glimpsed through those eyes. Richard guessed that healers had to be keen observers of people, but those eyes made him feel somehow naked. At least he saw no magic in them.

Nadine and Yonick waited in mute anxiety. Richard whispered to Kahlan to wait with Drefan and Yonick. He took Nadine’s arm.

“
Nadine, would you come with me a moment, please?”

She beamed up at him. “Sure, Richard.”

He helped her step up into the stairwell. As Richard closed the door, she fussed with her hair.

When the door was shut, he turned to the smiling Nadine and slammed her back against the wall so hard it drove the wind from her lungs.

She pushed off the wall. “Richard—”

He seized her by the throat and smacked her against the wall again, holding her there.

“
You and I were never going to be married.” The sword’s magic, its fury, was bleeding into his voice. It was coursing through his veins. “We never are going to be married. I love Kahlan. I am going to marry Kahlan. The only reason you are still here is because you are somehow tangled in this. You are going to remain here, for now, until we can figure it out.

“
I can, and I have, forgiven you for what you did to me, but if you ever again say or do anything so cruel and deliberately hurtful to Kahlan, you will spend the rest of your time in Aydindril down in the pit. Do you understand me!”

Nadine put her fingers tenderly to his forearm. She smiled patiently, as if she thought he didn’t fully grasp the situation, and she would make him see her reasoned side of it.

“
Richard, I know you’re upset right now, everyone is, but I was only trying to warn you. I didn’t want you to be unaware of what had happened. I only wanted you to know the truth about what she had—”

He slammed her against the wall again. “Do you understand me!”

She watched his eyes a moment. “Yes,” she said, as if believing that there was no use in trying to reason with him until he cooled off.

It only made Richard more angry. He struggled to rein it in so that he could get across to her that this was more than anger and that he meant what he was saying.

“
I know you have good in you, Nadine. I know that you care about people. We were friends back in Hartland, so I’m going to let this go with a warning. You had better mind my words. There is trouble about. A lot of people are going to need help. You always wanted to help people. I’m giving you your chance to do that. I can use your help.

“
But Kahlan is the woman I love and the woman I’m going to marry. I won’t have you trying to change that, or trying to hurt her. Don’t you so much as think to test this again, or I will find another herb woman to help. Are you clear on that?”