Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Remembering her task, Kahlan admonished herself to keep her mind on what she had been sent to do. She hurried down one of the paths through a sprawl of flower beds. The ground was littered with fallen red and yellow petals. She wondered if Richard Rahl picked flowers here for his lady love.

She liked the sound of his name. It had a comforting ring to it. Richard Rahl. Richard. She wondered what he was like, if he was as pleasant as his name was to her ear.

As she made her way along the path, Kahlan gazed up at the small trees growing all about her. She loved the trees. They reminded her of — of something. She growled in frustration. She hated it when she couldn't remember things that she was sure were important. Even if they weren't important, she hated forgetting things. It was like forgetting parts of who she was.

She hurried past shrubs and vine-covered stone walls until she reached the grassy place that Sister Ulicia said would be there in the center of the garden. Across the way the grassy ring was broken by a wedge of stone atop which sat a slab of granite, looking much like a table.

Atop the granite slab were supposed to be the things Kahlan had been sent to retrieve. Seeing them suddenly, she quailed. The three objects were as black as death itself. They looked as if they were sucking in the light from the room, from the skylights, from the very sky, and trying to swallow it all.

Her heart hammering with dread, Kahlan rushed across the grass to the granite table. Being that close to such sinister looking objects made her nervous. She slipped the shoulder straps off and set the pack down beside the black boxes she had been sent to recover. Her bedroll, lashed underneath, made the pack not want to sit up, so she had to lean it a little to the side.

She laid her hand on the bedroll for a moment, feeling the soft contour of what was rolled up inside. It was her most precious possession.

She remembered, then, that she had better get back to business. She immediately realized, though, that she was going to have a problem. The boxes were bigger than Sister Ulicia had said she thought they would be. They each were nearly as big as a loaf of bread. There was no way they would all fit in her pack.

But those had been her explicit instructions. The wishes of the Sisters conflicted with the reality that the boxes weren't going to fit. There was no way to satisfy the contradiction.

Memories of previous punishments flashed through her mind, bringing a sheen of sweat to her brow. She wiped the sweat from her eyes as the visions of torture came back to her. This, of all things, she cursed silently, she had to remember.

Kahlan decided that there was nothing else she could do; she would have to try.

At the same time, she also fretted about stealing things out of Lord Rahl's garden. After all, they didn't belong to the Sisters, and Lord Rahl would not have that many men posted all around the garden unless the boxes were important to him.

She was no thief. But was it worth the kind of punishment she would receive should she refuse? Was her blood worth Lord Rahl's treasure? Was Lord Rahl the kind of man who would want her to refuse to steal and as a result suffer the Sisters' torture?

She didn't know why, and maybe she was only coddling her doubts, but she told herself that Richard Rahl would say to take the boxes rather than sacrifice her life.

She flipped open the top of her pack and attempted to shove things down in tighter, but there was very little give. They were already packed as tightly as they were ever going to pack.

With rising worry that she was taking too much time, she pulled on clothes, trying to get something to wrap the first black box in.

Out came part of her satiny white dress.

Kahlan stared at the silken, nearly white material in her fingers. It was the most beautiful dress she had ever seen. But why would she have it? She was a nobody. A slave. What would a slave be doing with such a beautiful dress? She couldn't make her mind work to answer such a question.

The thoughts simply would not come together into answers.

Kahlan snatched up one of the boxes and rolled it up in the skirt of the dress and stuffed it all into the pack. She leaned on the box, trying to shove it down deeper, then closed the flap to test the fit. The flap hardly covered the top of the box and she only had one of them inside. She had to cinch the flap down with the strap just to get it to stay. There was no way in the world that the other boxes were going to fit in her pack.

Sister Ulicia had been very explicit that Kahlan had to hide the boxes in her pack or the soldiers would see them. They would forget Kahlan, but Sister Ulicia had said that the soldiers would recognize the boxes Kahlan was taking out of the garden room and then they would send up alarms. Kahlan had been told in no uncertain terms that she had to hide the boxes. But she could see that there was no way all three would fit.