AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Zedd’s eyebrows arched. He turned to Richard. “A danger! Why would the man turn belligerent toward you?”
Richard scowled over his shoulder at the Mord-Sith. “Cara’s wrong. He wasn’t trying to harm us.” Satisfied when she didn’t argue, he returned his attention to his grandfather. “When we found him—dead—he had an odd look in his eyes. He saw something before he died that left a mask of… I don’t know… longing, or something, on his face.
“Nissel, the healer, came and inspected his body. She said he had no injuries, but that he drowned.”
Richard braced a forearm on his knee as he leaned in. “Drowned, Zedd, in six inches of water. Nissel said evil spirits killed him.”
Zedd’s eyebrows rose even higher. “Evil spirits?”
“The Mud People believe evil spirits sometimes come and take the life of a villager,” Kahlan explained. “The villagers leave offerings before clay figures in a couple of the buildings over there.” She lifted her chin toward the north. “Apparently, they believe that leaving rice cakes will appease these evil spirits. As if ‘evil spirits’ could eat, or could be easily bribed.”
Outside, the rain lashed at the buildings. Water ran in a dark stain below the window and dripped here and there through the grass roof. Thunder rumbled almost constantly, taking the place of the now silent drums.
“Ah, I see,” Ann said. She looked up with a smile Kahlan found curious. “So, you think the Mud People gave you a paltry wedding, compared to the grand affair you would have had back in Aydindril. Hmm?”
Perplexed, Kahlan’s brow tightened. “Of course not. It was the most beautiful wedding we could have wished for.”
“Really?” Ann swept her arm out, indicating the surrounding village. “People in gaudy dress and animal skins? Their hair slicked down with mud? Naked children running about, laughing, playing, during such a solemn ceremony? Men painted in frightening mud masks dancing and telling stories of animals, hunts, and wars? This is what makes a good wedding to your mind?”
“No… those things aren’t what I meant, or material,” Kahlan stammered. “It’s what was in their hearts that made it so special. It was that they sincerely shared our joy that made it meaningful to us. And what does that have to do with offering rice cakes to imagined evil spirits?”
With the side of a finger, Ann ordered one of the lines on the Grace—the line representing the underworld. “When you say, ‘Dear spirits, watch over my departed mother’s soul,’ do you expect the dear spirits to rush of a sudden to do so because you’ve put words to the wish?”
Kahlan could feel her face flush. She often asked the dear spirits to watch over her mother’s soul. She was beginning to see why Zedd found the woman so vexing.
Richard came to Kahlan’s rescue. “The prayers are not actually meant as a direct request, since we know the spirits don’t work in such simple ways, but are meant to convey heartfelt feelings of love and hope for her mother’s peace in the next world.” He stroked his finger along the opposite side of the same line Ann had ordered. “The same as my prayers for my mother,” he added in a whisper.
Ann’s cheeks plumped as she smiled. “So they are, Richard. The Mud People must know better than to try to bribe with rice cakes the powerful forces they believe in and fear, don’t you suppose?”
“It’s the act of making the offering that’s important,” Richard said. By his unruffled attitude toward the woman it was apparent to Kahlan that Richard had learned to pick the berries out of the nettles.
Too, Kahlan understood what he meant. “It’s the supplication to forces they fear that is really meant to appease the unknown.”
Ann’s finger rose along with her brow. “Yes. The nature of the offering is really only symbolic, meant to show homage, and by such an obeisance to this power they hope to placate it.” Ann’s finger wilted. “Sometimes, the act of courteous yielding is enough to stay an angry foe, yes?”
Kahlan and Richard both agreed it was.
“Better to kill the foe and be done with it,” Cara sniped from back at the door.
Ann chuckled, leaning back to look over at Cara. “Well, sometimes, my dear, there is merit to such an alternative.”
“And how would you ‘kill’ evil spirits,” Zedd asked in a thin voice that cut through the drumming of the rain.
Cara didn’t have an answer and so she glared instead.
Richard wasn’t listening to them. He seemed to be transfixed by the Grace as he spoke. “By the same token, evil spirits… and such could be angered by a gesture of disrespect.”
Kahlan was just opening her mouth to ask Richard why he was suddenly taking the Mud People’s evil spirits so seriously when Zedd’s fingers touched the side of her leg. His sidelong glance told her that he wanted her to be quiet.
“Some think it so, Richard,” Zedd offered quietly.
“Why did you draw this symbol, this Grace?” Richard asked.
“Ann and I were using it to evaluate a few matters. At times, a Grace can be invaluable.
“A Grace is a simple thing, and yet it is infinitely complex. Learning about the Grace is a lifetime’s journey, but like a child learning to walk, it begins with a first step. Since you were born with the gift, we also thought this would be a good time to introduce you to it.”
Richard’s gift was largely an enigma to him. Now that they were back with his grandfather, Richard needed to delve the mysteries of that birthright and at last begin to chart the foreign landscape of his power. Kahlan wished they had the time Richard needed, but they didn’t.
“Zedd, I’d really like you take a look at Juni’s body.”
“The rain will let up in a while,” Zedd soothed, “and then we will go have a look.”
Richard dragged a finger down the end of a line representing the gift—representing magic. “If it’s a first step, and so important,” Richard pointedly asked Ann, “then why didn’t the Sisters of the Light try to teach me about the Grace when they took me to the Palace of the Prophets in the Old World? When they had the chance?”
Kahlan knew how quickly Richard become wary and distrustful when he thought he felt the tickling of a halter being slipped over his ears, no m
atter how kindly done, or how innocent its intent. Ann’s Sisters had once put a collar around his throat.
Ann stole a glance at Zedd. “The Sisters of the Light had never before attempted to instruct one such as yourself—one born with the gift for Subtractive Magic in addition to the usual Additive.” She chose her words carefully. “Prudence was required.”
Richard’s voice had made the subtle shift from questioned to questioner.
“Yet now you think I should be taught this Grace business?”
“Ignorance, too, is dangerous,” Ann said in a cryptic murmur.
5
Zedd scooped up a handful of dry dirt from the ground to the side. “Ann is given to histrionics,” he griped. “I would have taught you about the Grace long ago, Richard, but we’ve been separated, that’s all.”
His apprehension alleviated by his grandfather’s words, if not Ann’s, the sharply defined muscles in Richard’s shoulders and thick neck relaxed as Zedd went on.
“Though a Grace appears simple, it represents the whole of everything. It is drawn thus.”
Zedd leaned forward on his knees. With practiced precision, he let the dirt drizzle from the side of his fist to quickly trace in demonstration the symbol already drawn on the ground.
“This outer circle represents the beginning of the underworld—the infinite world of the dead. Out beyond this circle, in the underworld, there is nothing else; there is only forever. This is why the Grace is begun here: out of nothing, where there was nothing, Creation begins.”
A square sat inside the outer circle, its corners touching the circle. The square contained another circle just large enough to touch the insides of the square. The center circle held an eight-pointed star. Straight lines drawn last radiated out from the points of the star, piercing all the way through both circles, every other line bisecting a corner of the square.
The square represented the veil separating the outer circle of the spirit world—the underworld, the world of the dead—from the inner circle, which depicted the limits of the world of life. In the center of it all, the star expressed the Light—the Creator—with the rays of His gift of magic coming from that Light passing through all the boundaries.
