Temple of the Winds

Drefan was kneeling before his array of candles set about on the table against the wall. His head was bowed, and his hands were folded in supplication. "I hope I'm not interrupting," Richard said.

Drefan looked back over his shoulder and then stood. His eyes reminded Richard of Darken Rahl. Drefan had the same blue eyes, with the same indefinably odd, unsettling look in them. Richard couldn't help being disquieted by them. It sometimes made him feel as if Darken Rahl himself were staring at him.

People who had lived in fear of Darken Rahl were probably terrified when they looked into Richard's eyes, too. "What are you doing?" Richard asked.

"Praying to the good spirits to watch over the soul of someone." "Whose soul?"

Drefan sighed. He looked tired and doleful. "The soul of a woman no one cared about." "A woman named Rose?"

Drefan nodded. "How did you know about her?" He waved off his own question. "Forgive me-I wasn't thinking. You're the Lord Rahl. I expect you get reports of such things."

"Yes, well, I do hear about things." Richard spotted something new in the room. "I see you've taken to brightening up the decor."

Drefan saw where Richard was looking, and went to the chair beside the bed. He returned with a small pillow. He ran his fingers lovingly over the rose embroidered on it.

"This was hers. They didn't know where she came from, so Silas-he's the man who runs the house-Silas insisted I take this for the small help I offer the women there. I won't accept their money. If they had money to spare, they wouldn't be doing what they do."

Richard wasn't an expert, but the embroidered rose looked to be done with care. "Do you think she made it?"

Drefan shrugged. "Silas didn't know. Maybe she did. Maybe she saw it somewhere and bought it because it had a rose on it, like her name." He gently nibbled his thumb back and forth across the rose as he stared at it. "Drefan, what are you doing going to. . to places like that? There's no shortage of people needing healing. We have soldiers here who were wounded down by the pit. There's plenty for you lo do. Why were you going to whorehouses?"

Drefan dragged a finger down the stem of green thread. "I'm seeing to the soldiers. I go on my own time, before people are up and need me." "But why go there at all?"

Drefan's eyes welled with tears as he stared at the rose on the pillow. "My mother was a whore," he whispered. "I am the son of a whore. Some of those women have children. I could have been any one of them.

"Just like Rose, my mother took the wrong man to her bed. No one knew Rose. No one knew who she was, or where she came from. I don't even know my own mother's name-she wouldn't tell the healers she left me with. Only that she was a whore."

"Drefan, I'm sorry. That was a pretty stupid question." "No, it was a perfectly logical question. No one cares about those women, I mean cares about them as people. They get beaten bloody by the men who come to them. They catch terrible diseases. They're scorned by other people.

"Herb sellers don't want them coming into their shops-it gives them a reputation and then decent people won't come around. Many of the things those women have, even I don't know how to cure. They suffer sad, lingering deaths. Just for money. Some of them are drunks, and the men prostitute them and pay them with liquor. They're drunk all the time and don't know the difference.

"Some of them think they'll find a rich man and be his mistress. They think they will please him and gain his favor. Like my mother. Instead, they have bastard children, like me."

Richard was mentally wincing. He had been ready to believe that Drefan was an unfeeling opportunist. "Well, if it makes you feel any better. I'm the son of that bastard, too."

Drefan looked lip and smiled. "I guess so. At least your mother loved you. Mine didn't. She didn't even leave me her name."

"Don't say that, Drefan. Your mother loved you. She took you to a place where you would be safe, didn't she?"

He nodded. "And left me there with people she didn't know." "But she left you because she had to, so that you would be safe. Can you imagine how that must have hurt her? Can you imagine how it must have broken her heart to leave you with strangers? She must have loved you a great deal to do that for you."

Drefan smiled. "Wise words, my brother. With a mind like that. you might make something of yourself, someday."

Richard returned the smile. "Sometimes, we have to do desperate things to save the ones we love. I have a grandfather who has great admiration for acts of desperation. I think, with your mother. I'm beginning to understand what he means." "Grandfather?"