Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Since the battle, Victor had had sentries and lookouts on constant watch while Ferran and several of the others scouted the surrounding forest. None of them had wanted to take any chance that enemy soldiers would unexpectedly come upon them while Nicci was trying to save Richard's life. After she had done all she could for Richard, Nicci had healed a nasty gash to one man's leg and taken care of a few other less serious wounds suffered by a half-dozen other men.

Since the morning of the battle and Richard being hurt, she had gotten little sleep. She was exhausted.

After watching the men set about the tasks assigned them, Victor clapped Richard on the shoulder. "Show us, then."

Richard lead Cara, Victor, and Nicci past the clearing with the dead men and then off through the woods. He took a route between trees where the ground was more open. At the crest of a gentle rise, he stopped and crouched down.

Seeing Richard on bended knee, his cloak draped over his back, his sword in a gleaming scabbard at his hip, his hood pushed back to expose strands of wet hair lying against his muscular neck, his bow and quiver strapped over his left shoulder, he looked at once regal-a warrior king —and at the same time like nothing so much as the wilderness guide from a distant land that he had once been. With intimate familiarity, his fingers brushed the pine needles, twigs, crumbles of leaves, bark, and loam. Nicci could sense, just by that touch, his breadth of understanding of the seemingly simple things spread out before them, yet to him those things revealed another world.

Richard remembered, then, his purpose and gestured, urging them to squat down close beside him.

"Here," he said, pointing. "See this?" His ringers carefully traced a vague depression in the dense tangle of forest litter. "This is Cara's footprint."

"Well, that's no surprise," Cara said. "This is the way we came in from the road on our way to where we set up camp back there."

"That's right." Richard leaned out a little, pointing as he went on. "See here, and then off there? Those are more of your tracks, Cara. See how they come in here in a line showing where you were walking?"

Cara shrugged suspiciously. "Sure."

Richard moved to his right. They all followed. He again carefully traced a depression so they could make it out. Nicci couldn't see anything at all in the forest floor until he carefully drew the outline with a finger just above the ground. In doing so, he seemed to make the footprint magically appear for them. After he pointed it out, Nicci could tell what it was.

"This is my track," he said, watching it as if fearing that were he to look away it might vanish. "The rain works to wear them down-some places more than others-but it hasn't made all of them disappear." With a finger and thumb, he carefully lifted a wet, brown oak leaf from the center of the print. "Look, you can see under here how the pressure of my weight under the ball of my foot broke these small twigs. See? Rain can't obliterate things like that."

He looked up at them to make sure they were all paying attention and then pointed off into the shadowy mist. "You can see my tracks coming in this direction, toward us, just like Cara's." He stretched out and quickly traced two more vague depressions in the matted forest floor to show them what he meant. "See? You can still make them out."

"What's the point?" Victor asked.

Richard glanced back over his shoulder again before gesturing between the sets of tracks. "See the distance between Cara's tracks and mine? When we walked in here I was on the left and Cara was to my right. See how far apart our tracks are?"

"What of it?" Nicci asked as she pulled the hood of her cloak forward, trying to shield her face from the frigid drizzle. She pulled her hands back under the cloak and snuggled them in her armpits for warmth.

"They're that far apart," Richard said, "because when we walked through here Kahlan was in the middle, between us."

Nicci stared again at the ground. She was no expert, so she wasn't especially surprised that she couldn't see any other tracks. But this time, she didn't think that Richard could, either.

"And can you show us Kahlan's tracks?" she asked.

Richard turned a look on her of such intensity that it momentarily halted the breath she was about to take.

"That's the point." He held up a finger with the same deliberate care with which he lifted his blade. "Her tracks are gone. Not washed away by the rain, but gone — gone as if they were never there."

Victor let out a very quiet and very troubled-sounding sigh. If she was shocked, Cara hid it well. Nicci knew that he hadn't told them all of what he had to say, so she remained guarded in her question.

"You're showing us that there are no tracks from this woman?"

"That's right. I've searched. I found my tracks and Cara's tracks in various places, but where Kahlan's tracks should be there are none."