Soul of the Fire

Hunters, their ever-present protectors, appeared from the sweeping sheets of rain to run along beside them. The buildings flashing by were mostly single-room homes sharing at least one common wall, but sometimes as many as three. Together, they clustered into a complex maze seemingly without design.

Following right, behind Richard, Ann surprised Kahlan with her swift gait. Ann didn't look a woman designed to run, but she kept up with ease. Zedd's bony arms pumped a swift and steady cadence. Cara, with her long legs, loped along beside Kahlan. The sprinting hunters ran with effortless grace. At the lead, Richard, his golden cape billowing out behind, was an intimidating sight; compared with the wiry hunters, he was a mountain of a man avalanching through the narrow streets.

Richard followed the meandering passageway a short distance before darting to the right at the first corner. A black and two brown goats thought the rushing procession a curiosity, as did several children in tiny courtyards planted with rapeseed for the chickens. Women gaped from doorways flanked by pots of herbs.

Richard rounded the next corner to the left. At the sight of the charging troop of people, a young woman beneath a small roof swept a crying child into her arms. Holding the little boy's head to her shoulder, she pressed her back against the door, to be out of the way of the trouble racing her way. The boy wailed as she tried to hush him.

Richard slid to a fluid but abrupt stop, with everyone behind doing their best not to crash into him. The woman's frightened, wide-eyed gaze flitted among the people suddenly surrounding her as she stood in her doorway.

"What is it?" she asked. "Why do you want us?"

Richard wanted to know what she was saying before she had finished saying it. Kahlan squeezed her way through to the fore of the group. Blood beaded along scratches and ran from cuts on the boy the woman clutched in her arms.

"We heard your son cry out." With tender fingers, Kahlan stroked the bawling child's hair. "We thought there was trouble. We were concerned for your boy. We came to help."

Relieved, the woman let the weight of the boy slip from her hip to the ground. She squatted and pressed a bloodstained wad of cloth to, his cuts as she briefly cooed comfort to calm his panic.

She looked up at the crowd around her. "Ungi is fine. Thank you for your concern, but he was just being a boy. Boys get themselves in trouble."

Kahlan told the others what the woman had said.

"How did he get all clawed up?" Richard wanted to know.

"Ka chenota," the woman answered when Kahlan asked Richard's question.

"A chicken," Richard said before Kahlan could tell him. Apparently, he had learned that chenota meant chicken in the Mud People's language. "A chicken attacked your boy? Ka chenota?"

She blinked when Kahlan translated Richard's question. The woman's cynical laughter rang out through the drumbeat of the rain. "Attacked by a chicken?" Flipping her hand, she scoffed, as if she had thought for a moment they were serious. "Ungi thinks he is a great hunter. He chases chickens. This time he cornered one, frightening it, and it scratched him trying to get away."

Richard squatted down before Ungi, giving the boy's dark fall of wet hair a friendly tousle. "You've been chasing chickens? Ka chenota? Teasing them? That isn't what really happened, is it?"

Instead of interpreting Richard's questions, Kahlan crouched down on the balls of her feet. "Richard, what's this about?"

Richard put a comforting hand on the child's back as his mother wiped at blood running down his chest. "Look at the claw marks," Richard whispered. "Most are around his neck."

Kahlan heaved a chafed sigh. "He no doubt tried to pick it up and hold it to himself. The panicked chicken was simply trying to get away."

Reluctantly, Richard admitted that it could be so.

"This is no great misadventure," Zedd announced from above. "Let me do a little healing on the boy and then we can get in out of this confounded rain and have something to eat. And I have a lot of questions yet to ask."

Richard, still squatted down before the boy, held up a finger, stalling Zedd. He looked into Kahlan's eyes. "Ask him. Please?"

"Tell me why," Kahlan insisted. "Is this about what the Bird Man said? Is that really what this is about? Richard, the man had been drinking."

"Look over my shoulder."

Kahlan peered through the writhing ribbons of rain. Across the narrow passageway, under the dripping grass eaves at the corner of a building, a chicken ruffled its feathers. It was another of the striated Barred Rock breed, as were most of the Mud People's chickens.

Kahlan was cold and miserable and soaking wet. She was beginning to lose her patience as she once again met Richard's waiting gaze.

"A chicken trying to stay out of the rain? Is that what you want me to see?"

"I know you think-"

"Richard!" she growled under her breath. "Listen to me."