She felt a small pang of sorrow for him and the two brothers, that their simple view of the outside world had to be shattered. Well, they would see more, before this journey was ended, that would astonish them further.
'Chandalen, I have spent a great effort, nearly every waking moment, teaching you and Prindin and Tossidin to speak my language. No one where we go will speak yours. It is for your own good that I do this. You are free to believe that I am being spiteful, or that I am doing as I say: being mindful of your safety outside your land, but either way, you will speak to me in the tongue I have taught you.'
His tone tightened, but still could not disguise how humbled he was at seeing a great city for the first time. It was far from the greatest he would see. Perhaps, too, it betrayed something she had never before sensed from him: fear.
'I am to take you to Aydindril, not this place. We should not be using our time at this place.' His inflection implied he thought a place such as this could be only evil.
Squinting against the blindingly bright sun on white snow, she saw the two figures, far below, starting up the slope. She let the round bone slip from her fingers. 'I'm the Mother Confessor. It's my duty to protect all the people of the Midlands, the same way I work to safeguard the Mud People.'
'You bring no help to my people, only trouble.'
His protest seemed more habit than a heartfelt challenge. She answered it in a quiet, tired murmur. 'Enough, Chandalen.'
Thankfully, he didn't press the argument, but turned his anger elsewhere. 'Prindin and Tossidin should not come up the hill in the open like that. I have taught them not to be so stupid. If they were boys, I would strike their bottoms. Anyone can see where they go. Will you do as I say, and come out of the open now?'
She let him shepherd her back into the shroud of trees, not because she thought it necessary, but because she wanted to let him know she respected his efforts to protect her. Despite his animosity at being forced to go on this journey, he had done his duty, watching over her constantly, as had the two brothers, they with smiles and concern, he with a scowl and suspicion. All three made her feel like a precious, fragile cargo that must be tended at all times. The brothers, she knew, were sincere. Chandalen, she was sure, saw his mission only as a task that must be performed, no matter how onerous.
'We should go quickly from here,' he pressed, again.
Kahlan withdrew a hand from under the fur mantle and pulled a stray strand of her long hair back from her face. 'It is my duty to know what has happened here.'
'You said your duty was to go to Aydindril, as Richard With The Temper asked.'
Kahlan turned away without answering, moving deeper into the snow-crusted trees. She missed Richard more than she could bear. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face as it had looked when he thought she had betrayed him. She wanted to drop to her knees and let out the scream that seemed to be always there, trapped just below the surface, trying to find a way past her restraint, a scream born of her horror at what she had done.
But what else could she have done? If what she had learned was true, and the veil to the underworld was torn and Richard was in fact the only one who could close it, and if the collar was the only thing that could save his life and give him the chance to close the veil, then she had had no choice. How could she have made any other decision? How could Richard ever respect her if she didn't face her responsibilities to the greater good? The Richard she loved would eventually realize that. He had to.
But if any of it was not true, then she had delivered the man she loved into his worst nightmare, for nothing.
She wondered again if Richard often looked at the lock of her hair she had given him, and thought of her. She hoped that he could find it in himself to understand and forgive her. She wanted so much to tell him how much she loved him. She yearned to hold him to her. She wanted only to get to Aydindril, to Zedd, for help.
But she had to know what had happened here. She stiffened her back with resolve. She was the Mother Confessor.
She had intended to skirt Ebinissia, but for the last two days they had been coming across the frozen corpses of women. Never any men, only women, from young to old, children to grandmothers. Most were half naked, some without clothes at all. And in the dead of winter. While most had been alone, a few were together, huddled in frozen death, too exhausted, or too frightened, or too disoriented to have sought shelter. They had run from Ebinissia not in disorderly haste, but in panic, choosing to freeze to death rather than remain.
Most, too, had been badly abused before they had scattered in every direction into the mountainous countryside. Kahlan knew what had been done to them, what had made them make the choice they did. The three men knew, too, but none would voice it aloud.
She pulled her warm mantle tighter around herself. This atrocity couldn't have been at the hands of the armies from D'Hara; it was far too recent. The troops from D'Hara had been called home. Surely, they wouldn't have done this after they had been told the war was ended.
Unable to stand for another moment not knowing what fate had befallen Ebinissia, she pushed her bow farther up on her shoulder and started down the hillside. Her leg muscles were at long last used to the wide-footed gait needed to walk on the snowshoes the men had made from willow and sinew. Chandalen charged after her.
'You must not go down there. There could be dangerous.'
'Danger,' she corrected as she hitched her pack up higher. 'If there was danger, Prindin and Tossidin would not be out in the open. You may come, or you may wait here, but I'm going down there.'
Knowing argument was useless, he followed in a rare fit of silence. The bright afternoon sun brought no warmth to the bitterly cold day. There was usually wind at the fringe of the Rang'Shada Mountains, but thankfully there was little this day, for a change. It hadn't snowed for several days, and they had been able to make better time in the clear weather. Still, with every breath she took, the air felt as if it were turning the inside of her nose to ice.
She intercepted Prindin and Tossidin halfway down the slope. They brought themselves to a halt before her, leaning on their spears, breathing heavily, which was unusual for them as nothing seemed to tire them, but they were unaccustomed to the altitude. Their faces were pale, and their handsome twin smiles long gone.
'Please, Mother Confessor,' Prindin said, pausing to catch his breath from the strenuous climb, 'you must not go to that place. The ancestor spirits of those people have abandoned them.'
Kahlan untied a waterskin from her waist and pulled it from under her mantle, where her body's heat kept the water from freezing. She held it up to Prindin, urging him to take a drink before questioning him.
'What did you see? You didn't go into the city, did you? I told you not to go inside the walls.'
Prindin handed the waterskin to his panting brother. 'No.
We stay hidden, as you told us. We do not go inside, but we do not need to.' He licked a drop of water from his lower lip. 'We see enough from outside.'
She took back the waterskin when Tossidin finished, and replaced the stopper. 'Did you see any people?'
Tossidin stole a quick glance over his shoulder, down the hill. 'We see many people.'
Prindin wiped his nose on the back of his hand as he looked from his brother to her. 'Dead people.'
'How many? Dead from what?'
Tossidin tugged loose the thong holding his fur mantle tight at his neck. 'Dead from fighting. Most are men with weapons: swords and spears and bows. There are more than I know the words to count. I have never seen that many men. In my whole life, I have not seen that many men. There has been war here. War, and killing of those defeated.'
Kahlan stared at them for a moment as horror threatened to choke off her breath. She had hoped that somehow the people of Ebinissia had escaped, that they had fled.
A war. Had the D'Haran forces done this after the war was ended? Or was it something else?
Her muscles at last unlocked and she started down the hill, the mantle billowing open, letting in the icy air. Her heart pounded with dread at what had befallen the people of Ebinissia. 'I must go down there to see what has happened.'
'Please, Mother Confessor, do not go,' Prindin called after her. 'It is bad to see.'
The three men jumped to follow as she marched down the hill, the slope speeding her effort. 'I have seen dead people before.'
They began encountering the sprawled corpses - apparently the sites of skirmishes - a good distance from the city walls. Snow had drifted against them, partially covering them. In one place, a hand reached up from the snow, as if the man below were drowning, and reaching for air. Most had not been touched by animals or birds, there being an overabundance for scavengers. All were soldiers of the Galean army, frozen in death where they had fallen, blood-soaked clothes frozen rock-solid to them, ghastly wounds frozen open.
At the south wall, where huge oak doors crisscrossed with iron strapping had stood, was a gaping hole through the stone, its edges melted and burned black. Kahlan stood staring at rock melted like wax from a candle that had guttered. She knew of only one power that could do that: wizard's fire.
Her mind fought to understand what she was seeing. She knew what the results of wizard's fire looked like, but there were no more wizards. Except Zedd and, she guessed, Richard. But this would not have been Zedd's deed.
Outside the walls, off to either side, headless corpses were heaped in huge, frozen mounds. Heads stared out from less orderly piles of their own. Swords and shields and spears were discarded to separate heaps, looking like great, dead, steel porcupines. This had been a mass execution, carried out at a number of stations at once to handle the numbers more efficiently. All were Galean soldiers.
As she stared in numb shock at the splayed limbs draped over their fellows under them, Kahlan spoke softly to the three men behind her. The word you did not know to use to count this many is thousand. There are perhaps five thousand dead men here.'
Gently, Prindin planted the butt end of his spear in the snow, giving it an uneasy twist. 'I did not know there was a word needed to count this many men.' His fist twisted the spear again, and his voice lowered to a whisper. This will be a bad place when the warm weather comes.'
'It is a bad place now,' his brother murmured to himself in his own tongue.
Kahlan knew this was the least of the dead. She knew the tactics of defense for Ebinissia. The walls were not secure fortifications, the way they had been in times long ago. As the city had grown in the prosperity of the Midlands alliance, the older, stronger, fortified walls had been torn down, and the stone used to build these newer, more encompassing outer walls. But they had been built less secure than in the past. They were more a symbol of the size and pride of the Crown city than a strong defensible perimeter.
Under attack, the gates would have been closed, with the toughest, most experienced troops on the outside to stop the attackers before they had a chance to reach the walls. The real defense for Ebinissia was the surrounding mountains, whose narrow passes prevented a broad attack.
Under Darken Rahl's order, D'Haran forces had laid siege to Ebinissia for two months, but the defenders outside the walls were able to hold them back in the surrounding passes, pin them down, and harry them relentlessly until the attackers finally withdrew, licking their wounds, in search of easier prey. Though the Ebinissians had prevailed, it had been at a great cost of lives to the defenders. Had Darken Rahl been less concerned with finding the boxes, he could have sent greater numbers and maybe overrun the defenders in the passes, but he didn't. This time, someone had.
These headless men were a part of that outer defensive ring. Backs to the wall, they had been defeated and captured, and then executed before the walls were breached - apparently as a demonstration to those still inside, to terrorize them, to panic them into an ineffectual defense. She knew that what was inside the walls would be worse. The dead women they had been finding told her that much.
Out of habit, and without even realizing it, she had put on the calm face that showed nothing: the face of a Confessor, as her mother had taught her.
'Prindin, Tossidin, I want you two to go around the outside of the walls. I want to know what else is on the outside. I want to know everything about what has happened here. I want to know when this was done, where the attackers came from, and where they went when they were finished. Chan-dalen and I will go inside. Meet us back here when you are finished.'
The brothers went quickly at her direction, their heads close together as they whispered to one another while pointing, analyzing tracks and signs they understood with hardly more than a glance. Chandalen walked silently at her side, his bow, with an arrow nocked and tension to the string, at the ready as she stepped over rubble and moved on through the yawning hole.
None of the three men had objected to her instructions. They were, she knew, astonished at the size of the city, but more than that, they were overwhelmed at the enormity of what had happened here; they respected her obligation to the dead.
Chandalen's eyes ignored the bodies that lay everywhere and watched instead the shaded openings and alleyways among the small daub-and-wattle houses that were homes to the farmers and sheepherders who worked the land closer to the city. There were no fresh prints in the snow; nothing alive had been here recently.
Kahlan chose the proper streets and Chandalen stayed close at her right shoulder, half a step behind. She didn't stop to inspect the dead laying everywhere. All looked to have died the same way: killed in a fierce battle.
'These people were defeated by great numbers,' Chandalen said in a quiet tone. 'Many thousands, as you called it. They had no chance to win.'
'Why do you say that?'
'They are bunched together between the buildings. This is a bad place to have to fight, but in a closed-in place like this, that is the only way. That is the way I would try to defend against a larger number - by blocking the enemy from spreading out behind me to trap me. Greater numbers would not be as much good in the small passageways. I would try to keep the enemy from spreading out, and come at them from all sides so they could not attack as they wished, but must be always in fear of where I would be next. You must not meet the enemy as they wish you to, especially when they greatly outnumber you.
There are old men, and boys, among the soldiers. Boys and old men would not come to fight beside Chandalen unless they saw it was a war to the death and I was greatly outnumbered. For these men to stand and fight against vastly greater numbers, they must have been brave. Old men and boys would not have come to help such brave men if the enemy were not so great.'
She knew Chandalen was right. Everyone had seen or heard the executions outside the walls. They knew defeat was death.
The bodies were felled like reeds before a great wind. As they ascended the rise to where the old city walls had stood, the dead were more numerous. It looked that they had fallen back, trying to make a stand from higher ground. It had done them no good; they had been overrun.
All the dead were defenders; none were the corpses of attackers. Kahlan knew that some believed leaving the dead where they fell in defeating an enemy augured ill luck in future battles, and further, that it abandoned their spirits to retribution by the spirits of those defeated. Likewise, they believed that if they left their dead at the site of a defeat, the spirits of their fallen comrades would live on to plague their enemies. Whoever had done this must have believed such, and dragged their own dead away from the bodies of those they had vanquished. Kahlan knew of several peoples who believed that the act of dying in battle could bring about such thaumaturgy. One nation, above all, sat at the head of her roster.
As they skirted an overturned wagon, its load of firewood spilled in a heap, Chandalen paused beneath a small wooden sign carved with a leafy plant next to a mortar and pestle. With a hand, he shielded his eyes from the sunlight and looked into the long, narrow shop set back a few feet from the buildings to each side. 'What is this place?'
Kahlan walked past him, through the splintered doorframe. 'It's an herb shop.' The counter was covered with broken glass jars and dried herbs, all scattered together in a useless mess. Only two glass lids remained unbroken among the pale green debris. 'This is where people went to get herbs and remedies.'
Behind the counter, the wall cabinet, which reached from floor to ceiling and almost the entire length of the narrow shop, had held hundreds of small wooden drawers, their patina darkened by the countless touches of fingers. The ones still left in place were smashed in with a mace. The drawers and their contents on the floor had been crushed underfoot. Chandalen squatted and pulled open the few drawers near the bottom that had remained untouched, inspecting briefly their stores before sliding each drawer closed again.
'Nissel would be... how do you say "astonished"?'
'Astonished,' Kahlan answered.
'She would be astonished, to see this many healing plants. This is a crime, to destroy things that help people.'
She watched him pull open drawers and then slide them closed. 'A crime,' she agreed.
He pulled open another drawer, and gasped. He squatted, motionless, for a moment, before reverently lifting a bundle of miniature plants, tied at their stems with a bit of string. The tiny, dry leaves were a dusky greenish brown with crimson veining.
A low whistle came from between his teeth. 'Quassin doe,' he whispered.
Kahlan eyed the shadowed back of the shop as her vision adjusted to the darkness. She saw no bodies. The proprietor must have fled before he was killed, or maybe he was one who had stood with the army against the invaders. 'What is Quassin doe?'
Chandalen turned the bundle over in his palm, his eyes fixed unblinking on it. 'Quassin doe can save your life if you take ten-step poison by mistake, or, if you are quick enough, when shot by an arrow with the poison on it.'
'How can you take it by mistake?'
'Many poison bandu leaves must be chewed, for a long time, and made wet in your mouth, before being cooked until they become a thick paste. Sometimes, if you swallow some of the wetness in your mouth by accident, or chew too long, it can make you sick.'
He opened a buckskin waist pouch and showed her a small, carved bone, lidded box. Inside was a dark paste. This is ten-step poison we put on our arrows. We make it from the bandu. If you ate a very little of this, it would make you sick. If you ate a little more you would be a long time to die. If you ate more, you would die quick. But no one would eat it after it is made and put in here.' He slipped the box of poison back in his pouch.
'So you could take some of the quassin doe, and it would make you well if you accidentally swallowed some of the bandu when you were chewing its leaves to make the poison?' He nodded in answer to her question. 'But if you were shot with a ten-step arrow, wouldn't you die before you could take the quassin doe?'
Chandalen turned the bundle of plants in his fingers. 'Maybe. Sometimes, a man will scratch himself with his own ten-step arrow, by not meaning to, and he can take the quassin doe, and he will be well again. If you are shot with a poison arrow, sometimes you will have time to save yourself. Ten-step arrows only work quick if you are shot in the neck.
Then you have no time to take the quassin doe, you will die too quick. But if you are shot in another place, maybe your leg, the poison takes longer to work, and you have time to take the quassin doe.'
'What if you aren't near to Nissel, so she could give it to you? You would die if you were out on the plains hunting and you scratched yourself accidentally with a poison arrow.'
'All hunters used to carry a few leaves with them, so they may take it if they scratched themselves, or were shot with an arrow and had time. If there is not much poison on the arrow, like if it has not much on it because it is used to hunt small animals, you have longer. In times long ago, when there was war, our men would swallow quassin doe just before a battle, so the enemy's ten-step arrows would not poison them.'
He shook his head sadly. 'But this is much trouble to get. The last time we traded for this much, every man in the village had to make three bows, and two fists of arrows, and all the women had to make bowls. It is gone now, for a long time. Years. The people we traded with have been able to find no more. Two men have died since we no longer have it. My people would trade much to have this much again.'
Kahlan stood over him, watching him gently place it back in the drawer. 'Take it, Chandalen. Give it to your people. They have need of it.'
He slowly slid the drawer closed. 'I cannot. It would be wrong to take it from another people, even if they are dead. It does not belong to my people, it belongs to the people here.'
Kahlan squatted down next to him, pulled open the drawer, and lifted out the little bundle. She found a square of cloth lying on the floor nearby, used for packaging purchases and wrapped the quassin doe plants. Take it.' She pushed the bundle into his hand. 'I know the people of this city. I will repay them for what I have taken. Since I will pay for it, it belongs to me now. Take it. It is my gift for the trouble I have caused your people.'
He stared at the cloth parcel in his hand. 'It is too valuable for a gift. A gift of such great value would bind us to an obligation to you.'
Then it is not a gift, but my payment, to you and Prindin and Tossidin, for guarding me on this journey. You three are risking your lives to protect me. That is a debt I owe you that is greater than this payment. You will owe me no more obligation.'
With a frown, he studied the bundle a moment, and then bounced it twice in his hand before tucking it in the buckskin pouch at his waist. He tied the flap closed by its rawhide thong and stood. Then this is in trade for what we do. We owe you no obligation beyond this journey.'
'None,' she said, sealing the bargain.
The two of them walked on through the silent streets, past the shops and inns of the old city quarter. Every door, every window, was broken in. Shards of glass sparkled in the sunlight, shimmering tears for the dead. The invading horde had swept through every building, searching out anything alive.
'How do this many thousands, all living in this one place, find land to feed their families? There could not be enough game to hunt, or fields for all to plant.'
Kahlan tried to see the city through his eyes. It must be a great puzzle to him. 'They don't all hunt, or plant the land. The people who lived here specialized.'
'Specialized? What is this?'
'It means that different people have different jobs. They work at one thing. They use silver or gold to buy the things they need that they don't grow or make themselves.'
'Where do they get this silver or gold?'
'People who want the thing they specialize in pay for it with silver or gold.'
'And where do these others get this silver or gold?'
'They get it from people who pay them for the things they do.'
Chandalen looked at her skeptically. 'Why do they not trade? It would be easier to trade.'
'Well, in a way, it is trading. Often, the person who wants what you have has nothing you want, so they give you money - silver or gold made into flat, round disks called coins -instead. Then you can use the money to buy things you need.'
'Buy.' Chandalen seemed to test the strange word with his tongue as he looked off down a street to their right while shaking his head in disbelief. 'Why would people work, then?
Why would they not just go and get this silver or gold money?'
'Some do. They hunt silver and gold. But that is hard work, too. Gold is hard to find and dig out of the ground. That is why it is used for money: because it is rare. If it were easy to find, like grains of sand, then no one would take it in trade. If money were easy to get, or to make, it would become worthless, and then in the end this system of trade, with worthless money, would fail, and everyone would starve.'
He came to a halt with a frown. 'What is this money made from? What is this silver or gold you speak of?'
She didn't stop with him, and he had to take a few bounding steps to catch back up with her. 'Gold is... The medallion, the necklace, that the Bantak gave as a gift to the Mud People, to show they did not wish to make war, that is made of gold.' Chandalen nodded with a knowing grunt. Kahlan halted this time. 'Do you know where the Bantak got that much gold?'
Chandalen swept his gaze across the slate rooftops. 'Of course. They got it from us.'
Kahlan gripped his arm covered with his mantle and pulled him around. 'What do you mean, they got it from you?'
He tensed at her touch. He didn't like her hand - a Confessor's hand - on him. That the fur mantle separated actual contact of flesh was of no consequence; their flesh was close enough. If she relaxed her restraint of the power, that thin piece of hide would be no impediment; Kahlan had loosed her power through armor before. She released her grip and he visibly relaxed. 'Chandalen, where did the Mud People get that much gold?'
He looked at her as if she were a child asking where you might find dirt. 'From the holes in the ground. In our land, to the north where it is rocky and nothing much will grow or live, there are holes in the ground. They have this gold in them. It is a bad place. The air is hot and bad. It is said that men die if they stay too long in the ground. The yellow metal is in these deep holes. It is too soft to make good weapons, so it is of no use.'
He dismissed its importance with a wave of his hand. 'But the Bantak say their ancestors' spirits like the look of the yellow metal, and so we let them come onto our land and go in the holes so they may get it to make things their ancestors' spirits may like to look upon when they come to this world.'
'Chandalen, do others know of these holes in the ground, of the gold that is in them?'
He shrugged. 'We do not let outsiders come to our land. But I told you, it is too soft to make weapons with, so it is of no use. It pleases the Bantak, and they are good traders with us, so we let them take what they want. They do not take much, though, because it is a bad place to go into. No one would want to go there, except the Bantak, to please their ancestors' spirits.'
How could she explain it to him? He didn't understand the ways of the outside world. 'Chandalen, you must never use this gold.' He made a face that said he had already explained how useless it was, and no one would want it. 'You may think it is useless, but others would kill to get it. If people knew you had gold on your land, they would swarm over you to get it. The craving for gold makes men crazy, and they would do anything to get it. They would kill Mud People.'
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