Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

"Beyond is eternal night: the passage of the dead."

CHAPTER 35

The distant howl of a wolf woke Richard from a dead sleep. The forlorn cry echoed through the mountains, but went unanswered. Richard lay on his side, in the surreal light of false dawn, idly listening, waiting, for a return cry that never came.

Try as he might, he couldn't seem to open his eyes for longer than the span of a single, slow heartbeat, much less gather the energy to lift his head. Shadowy tree limbs appeared to move about in the murky darkness,

Richard gasped as he fully awoke. He awoke angry.

He was lying on his back. His sword lay across his chest, one hand clutching the scabbard, the other gripping the hilt so hard that the letters of the word truth were pressed painfully into his palm on one side and his fingertips on the other. The Sword of Truth was pulled partway out of its scabbard. Its anger, too, had partly slipped its bounds.

The first, faint traces of dawn were just beginning to silently steal through the forested mountainside. The thick woods were quiet and still.

Richard slid the blade back into its scabbard and sat up, laying the sword down beside him on his bedroll.

He drew his legs up and put his elbows on his knees as he ran his fingers back through his hair. His heart still raced from the sword's rage. It had stolen into him without his conscious awareness or direction, but he wasn't surprised or alarmed. It was hardly the first time he had begun to draw the sword as he'd remembered that fateful morning while slipping the bonds of sleep. Sometimes he woke to find that he'd pulled the blade completely free.

Why did he keep having that memory as he awoke?

He knew all too well the reason. That was the morning he had awakened to find Kahlan missing. It was the terrible memory of the morning she'd disappeared. It was a waking nightmare about the nightmare that had become his life, and yet, he knew that there was something about it that kept making it go through his mind. He had been over it a thousand times but he couldn't figure out what was so meaningful about that particular memory. The wolf waking him had been a bit odd, but that didn't seem so strange that it would keep haunting him.

Richard looked around in the deep gloom but he didn't see Cara. Off through the thick stands of trees he could just make out the faint stain of red streaking the rim of the eastern sky. The slash of color almost looked like blood seeping through a gash in the slate black sky beyond the perfectly still trees.

He was bone-weary from the relentless pace of their wild ride up from deep in the Old World. They had been stopped a number of times by patrolling soldiers scattered throughout the Midlands, and by occupying troops. It was by no means the main force of the Imperial Order, but they had been trouble enough. Once they'd let Cara and Richard, posing as a stone carver and his wife, go on their way to a job Richard had invented for the glory of the Order. The rest of the times the two of them had had to fight their way out of the situation. Those encounters had been bloody.

He needed more sleep-they had gotten very little on their journey —but as long as Kahlan was missing they couldn't afford to sleep any more than was absolutely necessary. He didn't know how much time he had to find her, but he didn't intend to waste any of it. He refused to believe that his time had long since run out.

One of the horses had died of exhaustion not long ago; he couldn't remember exactly when. Another had come up lame a while back and they'd had to abandon it. Richard would worry about finding more horses later. There were more important concerns at hand. They were close to Agaden Reach, Shota's home. For the last two days they had been climbing steadily into the formidable mountains that ringed the Reach.

As he stretched his aching, tired muscles, he again tried to think of how he would convince Shota to help him. She had helped him before, but that was no guarantee she would help him this time. Shota could be difficult, to say the least. There were people who were so terrified of the witch woman that they wouldn't even say her name aloud.

Zedd had told him once that Shota never told you anything you wanted to know without also telling you something that you didn't want to know. Richard couldn't really imagine what he didn't want to know, but he understood quite clearly what it was he did want to know and he intended Shota to tell him anything she knew about Kahlan's disappearance of where she might be. If Shota refused, there was going to be trouble.

As his anger heated he realized that he felt the cool, tingling touch of mist on his face.

It was then that he also noticed something moving in the trees.

He squinted in an effort to see in the darkness. It couldn't be the breeze moving the leaves; there was no wind in the silent predawn woods.

Shadowy tree limbs appeared to move about in the murky darkness.

There had been no wind at all that morning, either.