Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

While Richard had always found it eerie being in a crooked wood, he knew what it was and why it had grown to be that way, even if it still fell rather haunting to be in such a place. He was aware that there were basically two ways to deal with that primordial emotion. The superstitious solution was to carry sacred talismans and amulets to ward off spiteful demons and incomprehensible dark forces thought to inhabit such places, hoping that the fates would be persuaded to kindly stay their fickle hand. Even though people proclaimed with complete confidence that such mysterious forces were fundamentally unknowable to mere mortals, they nonetheless passionately believed, without evidence, that they could be certain that the power of charms would soothe the savage temper of those menacing forces, insisting that faith was all that was necessary-as if faith were a mystical plaster with the power to patch over all the yawning holes in their convictions.

Believing in free will, Richard instead chose the second way of dealing with such fear, which was to be watchful, alert, and ready to take responsibility for his own survival and life. At its core, that battle of belief between the cruel fates and free will was his essential disagreement with prophecy and why he discounted it. To choose to believe in fate was at once an admission of free will and at the same time an abdication of one's responsibility to it.

As he and Cara passed through the crooked wood, Richard kept a watchful eye out but he saw no legendary beasts or vengeful ghosts. Only the wind-borne snow wandered the wood.

Having traveled at a breakneck pace for so long in the oppressive heat and humidity of summer, they found that the encounter with bitter cold high up in the mountain pass made the effort of the climb all the more difficult, especially after being drenched by the miserable rain. Despite being fatigued from the altitude, Richard knew that, as wet as they were, they had to keep moving at a brisk pace to keep warm or the cold could easily overcome them. He was well aware that the seductive song of the cold could entice people to stop and lie down for a rest, luring them to surrender to sleep and the death that waited under its inviting cloak. As Zedd had once told him, dead was dead. Richard knew that he would be no less dead from the cold than he would be from an arrow.

More than that, though, he and Cara were both eager to put distance between them and the trap that had nearly captured him back at their camp. His burns from the brief contact with his would-be death trap had blistered. He shuddered to think of what had nearly happened.

At the same time, he was leery about going to see Shota in her lair at Agaden Reach. The last time he had been in the Reach she had told him that if he ever came back there she would kill him. Richard didn't doubt her word or her ability to carry out the threat. Even so, he believed Shota would be his best chance of getting the kind of help necessary to find Kahlan.

He was desperate to find someone who could tell him something useful, and after going through a list of things he might do, people he might go to, and in the end he couldn't come up with anyone else who could be as potentially informative as Shota. Nicci hadn't been able to offer any solutions. Zedd, he knew, might be able to help him in some ways, and maybe there were others with the capacity to be able to add some piece to the puzzle, but to Richard's mind, when all was said and done, none of them were as likely as Shota to be able to point him in the right direction. That alone made the choice simple.

When he glanced up, Richard briefly saw the snowcap through gaps in the driving snow. Some distance off, over the open, broken ground of the steep slope, the trail over the pass would skirt the lower reaches of the mountain's year-round icy mantle. The clouds, laden with moisture, clung to the soaring gray rock. The low trailers of mist and fog dragging past left visibility limited in most places and nearly nonexistent in others. It was just as well; the precipitous drop-offs in spots along the infrequently used and increasingly slippery trail offered frightening glimpses down the towering mountainside.

When a fresh flight of icy gusts carried curtains of wet snow into their faces, Richard pulled his cloak tight against the buffeting onslaught. Out of the cover of the trees, making their way across the loose scree, they had to lean not only into the steep incline, but into the wind. Richard hunched a shoulder, trying to keep the icy wet sting off his face. Wind-driven snow built a brittle crust on one side of his cloak.