Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Richard followed the darkening trail as fast as safely possible while in his mind he went over Shota's every word, concentrating on the treasure for which he had paid such a terrible price. Cara followed close on his heels, swinging and swatting at the cloud of bugs hovering around their faces. Occasionally a bat fluttered in out of the dark shadows to snatch up some of those bugs.

As he made his way through the tangle of growth, Richard pushed aside vines and branches and stepped carefully around snarls of roots-some of which writhed like a nest of snakes when they got too close. On his first visit Samuel had shown him how those roots could grab an ankle if you got too close. Richard was so totally absorbed in trying to figure out what «Chainfire» could possibly mean, or what it could be, that he nearly stepped into a stretch of black water that was hard to see in the murky light. Cara's hand snatching his arm halted him just in time. He glanced around and spotted the log they had crossed on before and took to that route.

He racked his brain trying to think if he had ever heard the word Chain-fire before, but his hopes grew as dim as the failing light. It was a strange enough word, it seemed, that he would have remembered it if he had ever heard it before. He wished that Shota would have known its source or meaning, but he believed that she was telling the truth about these kinds of answers coming to her without explanation or insight.

On the other hand, he feared that he knew all too well what Shota meant when she'd said, "What you seek is long buried."

That warning made his chest ache. He dreaded that it very well might mean that Kahlan was already dead and long ago buried.

He'd felt lost ever since that morning he awoke to find her missing. Without Kahlan, everything else in the world seemed meaningless.

He couldn't allow himself to envision her death as being true. Instead, he thought about her beautiful, intelligent green eyes, her special smile, her singular manner as being very real and very alive.

Shota's words, though, kept returning to him. He had to figure out what meaning they could hold if he was to find Kahlan.

The last part, that he should "Beware the viper with four heads," had made no sense to him at first, but the more he mulled it over, the more it began to feel to him like he should understand it, as if it was something that should make sense to him or something he should be able to figure out if he just thought about it hard enough. The implication that seemed obvious was that this four-headed viper-whatever it was-was somehow responsible for Kahlan's disappearance.

He wondered if he only suspected that because it sounded sinister. He didn't want to allow himself to start down the wrong roads on groundless impulses. That would only waste valuable time. He feared that he had already used too much time.

"Where are we going?" Cara asked, lifting him out of his snare of thoughts.

He realized that it was the first thing she had said since leaving Shota. "To get the horses."

"You intend to try to make it over the pass tonight?"

Richard nodded. "Yes, if we can. If the storm has blown away, the moon will provide enough light."

The first time he had come to see Shota, the witch woman had taken Kahlan back to her valley. Richard had followed their tracks over the pass at night. It wasn't easy, but he knew it could be done. He knew how tired he was from the hard day of crossing the pass, and he knew that Cara had to be just as tired, but he didn't intend to stop so long as he could still put one foot in front of the other.

It was obvious by the set of Cara's jaw that she didn't like the idea of making such a journey at night, but, instead of objecting, she asked something else.

"And when we get the horses? Then where?"

"To try to get answers to what I've found out so far."

All around, the mist had slowly drifted in among the gnarled trees, hanging vines, and expanses of still water, as if it were coming closer to listen in on their conversation. There was no wind to move the trailers of moss, so they hung limp from crooked branches. Shadows moved in the dark places beneath vines and brush. Unseen things distantly splashed in the black stretches of stagnant water.

Richard didn't really want to discuss the long and difficult ride ahead of them, so before Cara could say anything, he asked, "Have you ever heard the word Chainfire

Cara let out a sigh. "No."

"Any guesses at all about what it could mean?"

She shook her head.

"What about the place of the bones in the Deep Nothing? Does that mean anything to you?"

Cara didn't answer for a moment. "It seems like 'the Deep Nothing' might be vaguely familiar, like I might have heard it once before."

Richard thought that that sounded encouraging. "Can you recall where, or anything about it?"