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Zedd tucked his head down between his knees and rolled himself through the wet, sticky slop. He laughed maniacally as he rolled in a circle around Ann’s squat figure sitting on the cold ground.
“Would you stop that!”
Zedd spread supine in the mud before her. He swept his rigid arms and legs through the mud.
“Ann,” he said in a low tone, “we have important business. I think we might have better success if we attempt to carry out those tasks in this world, rather than in the underworld, after we are dead.”
“I know we can’t help if we’re dead.”
“It would stand to reason, then, that we need to get away, now, wouldn’t it?”
“Of course it would,” she grumbled. “But I don’t think—”
Zedd plopped himself down in her lap. She winced in disgust. Her nose wrinkled when he rested his muddy arms around her neck.
“Ann, if we do nothing, we die. If we try to fight these people, we will die. Without the use of our magic, we can’t escape them. Our only option is to convince them to let us go. We can’t speak their language, and even if we could, I doubt we would be able to persuade them.”
“Yes, but—”
“We have only one chance, as I see it. We must convince them that we are quite loony. This sacrifice is a sacred service to their spirit ancestors. Look at the guards behind my back. Do they look happy?”
“Well, no.”
“If they believe that we’re crazy, then they just might think twice before sacrificing us to their spirits. Wouldn’t the spirits be insulted to receive a lunatic as a sacrifice? Wouldn’t that be disrespectful? We have to make them fear insulting their spirits with two loony people.”
“But that’s… crazy.”
“Look at it this way. A sacrifice is something like a treaty wedding between two peoples. The bride is the sacrifice of one people to another, in the flesh of the new husband, all in the hope for a peaceful and productive future. The bride’s new people treat her with respect. The bride’s people treat the husband and his people with respect. It’s all an arrangement symbolizing unity, continuity, and hope for the future.
“We are like the bride, being offered to the spirits. How would it look if the Nangtong offered an unworthy, demented bride? If you were one of the spirits, wouldn’t you be offended?”
“If I got you in the bargain, I would be.”
Zedd howled at the sky. Ann winced and pulled away from him.
“It’s our only chance, Ann.” He leaned close, whispering in her ear. “I swear an oath as First Wizard that I will never tell anyone how you behaved.”
He drew back and grinned at her. “Besides, it’s fun. Remember how much fun it was as a child to play outside? To play in the mud? Why, it was the grandest of things.”
“But it might not work.”
“Even if it doesn’t, wouldn’t you rather die having fun on the last day of your life, instead of sitting here, afraid and cold and dirty? Wouldn’t you rather have some childlike fun one last time? Let yourself go, Prelate, and recall what it was to be a child. Let yourself do anything that comes into your head. Have fun. Be a child.”
With a serious expression, Ann considered his words.
“You won’t tell anyone?”
“You have my word. You can act with childish glee, and no one but I will ever know—and the Nangtong, of course.”
“Another of your acts of desperation, Zedd?”
“The time for desperation is upon us. Let’s play.”
Ann smiled a sly smile. She stiff-armed him in the chest, knocking him back into the mud. With a riot of laughter, she leaped on top of him.
They wrestled like children, rolling through the slop. After a half dozen turns, Ann was a mud monster with arms, legs, and two eyes. The mud split, revealing a pink mouth as she howled with him at the sky.
They made mudballs and used the pigs as targets. They chased the pigs. They flopped onto the hard, round backs of the squealing creatures, riding them around until they were tossed off into the mud. Zedd doubted that Ann had ever been this dirty in her nine centuries of life.
He realized, while they were having a one-legged game of tag that involved more falling in the mud than hopping progress, that her laughter had changed.
Ann was having fun.
They stomped through puddles. They chased the pigs. They ran around the enclosure rattling sticks against the fence.
And then they hit upon the idea of making faces at the guards. They drew whimsical expressions on each other’s faces in mud. They made every rude noise they could think of. They jumped and laughed and pointed at the solemn guards.
Ann and Zedd got to laughing so hard that they couldn’t stand, and like two drunks, they rolled on the ground, holding their sides.
The crowd grew. Worried whispers swept through the onlookers.
Ann stuck her thumbs in her ears and wiggled her fingers as she made faces at them. Zedd stood on his head and sang a few lewd ballads he knew. Ann laughed hysterically as he mispronounced key words.
Zedd fell to laughing, and then fell in the mud, and then Ann fell on him. She sat on his stomach, pinning him to the ground as she tickled him under his arms, while he gasped for breath between laughter and tickled her ribs. The two of them had never had so much fun. The pigs cowered in the corner.
Suddenly, buckets of water were dumped over the both of them as they were furiously engaged in trying to find each other’s most ticklish spots. They looked up. More water rained down on them.
As fast as the mud was washed off them, they dived back into it. Ash-covered guards seized them by the arms and held them at spearpoint while they were once again washed off. Zedd peered over at Ann. She peered back. She looked ridiculous, her face emerging from streamers of slop. He giggled and made a face at her. She giggled and made a face back. The men yelled.
Zedd’s cheeks puffed with attempts to halt his laughing. The guards shoved them forward, spears poking in their backs. It reminded him of being tickled, and they both laughed.
It was as if once uncorked, the laughter had a life of its own. If they were to be sacrificed, what difference did it make? They might as well have the last laugh.
The crowd of shrouded figures parted as the two prisoners were led out of the pigs’ pen.
Giggling, Zedd held his arm high and waved. “Wave at the people, Annie.”
She made faces instead. Zedd liked the idea and imitated her. People shrank back, as if seeing a horrifying sight. Some of the women wept and wailed. Zedd and Ann laughed and pointed at them as the women ran from the crowd, seeking refuge from the lunatics.
The tents and onlookers were soon left behind as their captors prodded them on with spears. Before long, the two dirty, smelly, happy sacrifices were out in the hills. Thirty-five or forty Nangtong spirit hunters, all holding ready spears or bows, followed behind. Zedd noticed that some of them had brought packs and provisions.
First Wizard Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander and Prelate Annalina Aldurren skipped along ahead of the spears, laughing and making outrageous, ever-increasing claims as to how many onions they could eat without producing tears.
Zedd hadn’t a clue where they were going, but it was a fine morning to be going there, wherever it was.
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“It’s kind of funny, Lord Rahl,” Lieutenant Crawford said.
Richard gazed out over the boulder field. “What’s funny about it?”
The lieutenant bent his head back to peer up the cliff. “Well, I meant it’s odd. I grew up in rugged mountains, so I’ve seen places like these mountains my whole life, but this place is odd.” He turned and pointed. “See that mountain over there? You can see where the rockslide came from.”
Richard put a hand over his brow to shield his eyes from the low afternoon sun. The mountain the lieutenant was pointing to was rugged and covered with trees, except for the uppermost reaches. On the steep side facing them, a part of it had given way, leaving naked rock to scar the mountain where the rock had broken off. At the bottom of the barren scar lay a boulder field.
“What about it?”
“Well, look at all the rock at the bottom. That’s the portion that broke off the face of the mountain.” He gestured to the boulder field they stood atop. “This isn’t the same.”
Another soldier approached and saluted with a fist to his heart. He cast a wary glance at Ulic and Egan, who were standing with their arms folded, while he waited silently.
“Nothing, Lord Rahl,” he said when Richard acknowledged him. “Not so much as a flake of rock that’s been worked with tools.”
“Keep looking. Try the outer fringes of the boulder field. Look for places where you can crawl down under some of the larger boulders and check under there, too.”
The soldier saluted and hurried off. There wasn’t much of the day left. Richard had told them that he didn’t want to stay the next day. He wanted to get back to Aydindril. Kahlan would probably be back that night, or possibly tomorrow. He wanted to be there.
If she came back. If she was still alive.
He broke out in a sweat at the very thought. His knees felt weak.
He banished the thought. She would be back. That was all there was to it. She would be back. He made himself quit thinking about it, and put his mind to the problem at hand.
“So what do you think, lieutenant?”
