Stone of Tears

He opened a buckskin waist pouch and showed her a small, carved bone, lidded box. Inside was a dark paste. This is ten-step poison we put on our arrows. We make it from the bandu. If you ate a very little of this, it would make you sick. If you ate a little more you would be a long time to die. If you ate more, you would die quick. But no one would eat it after it is made and put in here.” He slipped the box of poison back in his pouch.

“So you could take some of the quassin doe, and it would make you well if you accidentally swallowed some of the bandu when you were chewing its leaves to make the poison?” He nodded in answer to her question. “But if you were shot with a ten-step arrow, wouldn’t you die before you could take the quassin doe?”

Chandalen turned the bundle of plants in his fingers. “Maybe. Sometimes, a man will scratch himself with his own ten-step arrow, by not meaning to, and he can take the quassin doe, and he will be well again. If you are shot with a poison arrow, sometimes you will have time to save yourself. Ten-step arrows only work quick if you are shot in the neck.

Then you have no time to take the quassin doe, you will die too quick. But if you are shot in another place, maybe your leg, the poison takes longer to work, and you have time to take the quassin doe.”

“What if you aren’t near to Nissel, so she could give it to you? You would die if you were out on the plains hunting and you scratched yourself accidentally with a poison arrow.”

“All hunters used to carry a few leaves with them, so they may take it if they scratched themselves, or were shot with an arrow and had time. If there is not much poison on the arrow, like if it has not much on it because it is used to hunt small animals, you have longer. In times long ago, when there was war, our men would swallow quassin doe just before a battle, so the enemy’s ten-step arrows would not poison them.”

He shook his head sadly. “But this is much trouble to get. The last time we traded for this much, every man in the village had to make three bows, and two fists of arrows, and all the women had to make bowls. It is gone now, for a long time. Years. The people we traded with have been able to find no more. Two men have died since we no longer have it. My people would trade much to have this much again.”

Kahlan stood over him, watching him gently place it back in the drawer. “Take it, Chandalen. Give it to your people. They have need of it.”

He slowly slid the drawer closed. “I cannot. It would be wrong to take it from another people, even if they are dead. It does not belong to my people, it belongs to the people here.”

Kahlan squatted down next to him, pulled open the drawer, and lifted out the little bundle. She found a square of cloth lying on the floor nearby, used for packaging purchases and wrapped the quassin doe plants. Take it.” She pushed the bundle into his hand. “I know the people of this city. I will repay them for what I have taken. Since I will pay for it, it belongs to me now. Take it. It is my gift for the trouble I have caused your people.”

He stared at the cloth parcel in his hand. “It is too valuable for a gift. A gift of such great value would bind us to an obligation to you.”

Then it is not a gift, but my payment, to you and Prindin and Tossidin, for guarding me on this journey. You three are risking your lives to protect me. That is a debt I owe you that is greater than this payment. You will owe me no more obligation.”

With a frown, he studied the bundle a moment, and then bounced it twice in his hand before tucking it in the buckskin pouch at his waist. He tied the flap closed by its rawhide thong and stood. Then this is in trade for what we do. We owe you no obligation beyond this journey.”

“None,” she said, sealing the bargain.

The two of them walked on through the silent streets, past the shops and inns of the old city quarter. Every door, every window, was broken in. Shards of glass sparkled in the sunlight, shimmering tears for the dead. The invading horde had swept through every building, searching out anything alive.

“How do this many thousands, all living in this one place, find land to feed their families? There could not be enough game to hunt, or fields for all to plant.”

Kahlan tried to see the city through his eyes. It must be a great puzzle to him. “They don’t all hunt, or plant the land. The people who lived here specialized.”

“Specialized? What is this?”

“It means that different people have different jobs. They work at one thing. They use silver or gold to buy the things they need that they don’t grow or make themselves.”

“Where do they get this silver or gold?”

“People who want the thing they specialize in pay for it with silver or gold.”

“And where do these others get this silver or gold?”

“They get it from people who pay them for the things they do.”

Chandalen looked at her skeptically. “Why do they not trade? It would be easier to trade.”