“Besides being a sorceress,” she finally said, her voice weaker, “I am also a witch woman. Some of my ability as a sorceress, such as healing, still works as always.” She looked up expectantly at him. “But other things, such as my ability to see into the flow of time, seem to be lost to me. That ability is part of who I am, what I am, and now I can’t call it forth.
“This is in part the reason I came to see you—to ask how soon can I expect my ability to see into the flow of time to be restored to normal?”
Richard let out a sigh as he considered how to tell her. “Part of the key to saving the world of life was that it was necessary to end prophecy. The star shift was a way to do that. I’m afraid that a witch woman’s ability to see into the flow of time is a form of prophecy. I had to end all forms of prophecy.”
“End prophecy?” She looked both dumbfounded and horrified. “How could you do such a thing? How could you possibly take it upon yourself to destroy such a fundamental part of the lives of so many people?”
“That’s where you are wrong,” he said, leaning closer, “and that was the key to our survival. Prophecy is alien to the world of life. It was long ago sent here from the timeless world of the dead. Having that corrosive force here in this world was part of how that ancient, dead emperor was destroying the veil separating life and death. I had to end prophecy by sending it back to the world of the dead where it belongs. The star shift was the only way of doing it. I’m afraid that your ability to see into the flow of time will never return.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. “But that’s who I am. It’s part of me.”
“An alien part,” he said. “Would you keep an arm eaten away by gangrene because that dying arm was ‘a part of you’? No. To preserve life you would cut it off before it could kill you. That’s what I did. Cutting off that arm would certainly hurt, but it would also keep you alive.
“Prophecy was never meant to be part of who witch women really are. It was a crutch that in part gave witch women such a fearsome reputation. Believe me, witch women can be plenty fearsome without needing to see into the flow of time. That alien ability was also sometimes the cause of great harm.
“In the past, the false prophecies of a witch woman nearly killed me, nearly killed Kahlan. Witch women have had otherworldly power for so long they came to believe it was part of them, but it’s not. It was in reality death lurking within you. I’ve ended it.”
He knew by her expression that he had not heard the last of it, so he thought he needed to end the argument before it could fester in her.
“It’s done, Shale. There is no putting it back to the way it was, any more than it is possible for me to put the stars back where they were. The spell has run its course. It is over and done.
“Our lives have all changed—mine included. Life is about change. Change has both good and bad elements to it. You can either deal with the way things have changed and move forward, or you can let bitterness about what’s lost in the past rob you of your future.
“I’m afraid that what happened here today with this business about a goddess is one of those bad changes brought about by the star shift. I don’t like it and I don’t yet know what it means, but we have to figure it out and deal with it.”
She nodded distantly. “I guess so.”
“When I was starting to heal Kahlan,” Richard said, changing the subject to get her mind off it, “you told me that there was something else going on, and that if I kept going I would kill her. What was it you felt?”
“It was that poison I told you about. Those claws planted the infection or poison in her during the attack. One of my healing talents—I’m not sure I can adequately explain it—is that I can, in a way, see what is happening inside the person I’m healing. I could tell that your gift had a dangerous effect on that poison. I don’t know if it was an intended effect or simply that the two could not coexist. They were oil and water, you might say. Had I not stopped you, the Mother Confessor would have gone on to suffer a lingering death, but only after it had killed you first.”
Richard was taken aback. “Do you think it was deliberate? That it was meant for me?”
“When I first probed for her injuries, I could feel your gift seeping into her. I could also feel that malevolence being drawn to your gift. Your gift attracted it. Had you kept the contact with her, it would have used that link to seep into you and kill you as surely as a bite from a viper.”
“Why didn’t it react to your gift the same way?”
She shook her head. “I’m not entirely sure of the reason, but I could see that it was drawn to your gift. I was able to get around it, allowing me to come in behind it and choke it off. Our gift is different. You are a war wizard, I am, among other things, a healer. Maybe your aggressive ability with your gift drew it.”
Richard paced off a short distance. “I guess I owe you a debt of gratitude. Not only have you saved Kahlan’s life, it seems you may have saved mine as well.”
“True enough. I guess it’s fortunate I showed up when I did.”
10
Richard looked back over his shoulder at her. “What’s the rest of the reason for you making such a long journey? I suspect there is more to it.”
Shale confirmed that with a troubled sigh. “Some of my people have been killed in a very strange fashion.”
“Killed by who?”
“Not who, what. We find remains—larger bones and the dirty end of a gut pile—much like a mountain lion might leave from a calf or lamb kill. And the head. It always leaves the head. We don’t know what is doing the killing, but no horses or farm animals have been killed in this same manner. This is something that hunts people exclusively.”
“Is the Northern Waste covered with snow yet?”
“It’s early in the season, but the snows have already come to large parts of it. It has snowed in some of the places where victims were found.”
“Snow would make for clear tracks. What do the tracks look like?”
“There were markings in the snow,” she said, looking somewhat at a loss. “Markings, of a sort, I guess you could say, but not exactly tracks. The snow was disturbed by networks of conflicting lines. There were no tracks as such, no indication of what sort of beast it might be, just a crisscrossed matrix of lines.”
“I presume you followed them?”
“They were only in the immediate vicinity of the kill. They came from nowhere and led nowhere. There are no footprints, no claw prints, no wing impressions of something landing. Just those slashes and streaks in the snow, and then, of course, blood and the bones that were stripped of flesh and left. Sometimes some of the clothes were left as well, but not always. We find the flesh stripped from the skull and the eyes sucked out, making it difficult to identify the victim. There simply were no tracks to follow and even these strange slashes never went very far. It’s as if it simply appeared out of nowhere and then after the kill vanished into thin air.”
Richard looked off, thinking out loud. “Right off the top of my head that doesn’t make any sense. A gar could drop in on prey but they would have left plenty of distinctive prints. Same with a dragon. Anything I know of that’s large enough to snatch up a person and spit out the bones would have had to have left tracks. Of course, I’m not familiar with all the beasts in D’Hara, and I know virtually nothing of the Northern Waste.”
“Well, I can tell you that there has never been any beast in the Waste I know of that would leave these kinds of marks in the snow. There are things like wolves and such that will take a person, but this is very different.”
“Any other strange things going on that might help give us the bigger picture?”