Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

The other thing that he noticed was that no predators looked to have disturbed the dead. Richard had come across remains in the woods when he had been a guide. Animals always got at the dead, human or otherwise. It looked as if each one of these bodies, though, had rotted away over time, leaving the bones lying in the exact same position in which the person had fallen — on their sides, or with arms sprawled, or facedown. None had been laid out as if in burial, with arms neatly crossed on their chests, or at their sides. They looked simply to have fallen dead. It still might not have seemed quite so peculiar except that not one of the corpses looked to have been touched by any predator.

As Richard walked endlessly through the oak grove, he wondered if it would ever end. On a moonless, cloudy night, or even a cloudy day for that matter, it was the kind of place where it would have been easy to get lost. Everything looked the same. The trees were spaced evenly, and there was nothing to indicate if he was going in the right direction, except the moon and stars.

For what seemed like half the night, Richard moved ever onward through the forest of the dead. He was sure that he had followed the directions the sliph had given him. The sliph, however, had no way to know exactly what he would find; she had only been given directions from Baraccus, and that had been three thousand years before. The landscape could have changed a great deal since the time of Baraccus. The bones, though, didn't look to be anywhere near that old. Of course, it could be that lying in the oak grove there were bones thousands of years old, but by now those would have all crumbled to dust.

As Richard continued on, the woods began growing murkier, until he found himself entering the black shadows of a dark forest of immense pines, their trunks standing close together and each nearly as big as his house back in the Hartland woods had been. It was like encountering a wall of mountains that rose up into the sky. The trunks, like pillars, were clear of branches until somewhere up out of sight. But those branches completely closed off the sky and left the forest floor below a dark and confusing maze among the massive trunks.

Richard paused, considering how he would keep to a direction in the pitch blackness that lay ahead while being unable to move in anything resembling a straight line.

That was when he heard the whispers.

He cocked his head, listening, trying to make out the words. He couldn't, so he carefully stepped deeper into the gloom, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness before taking a few more steps. Before long he began to be able to make out the shapes of the trees ahead, so he moved forward, ever deeper into the close canyons among the trunks of the monumental pines.

"Go back," came a whisper.

"Who's there?" he whispered back.

"Go back," said a faint little voice, "or stay forever with the bones of those who have come before you."

"I've come to speak with the night wisps," Richard said.

"Then you have come for nothing. Go, now," the voice repeated with more strength.

Richard tried to lay the sound of the words over his memory of what a wisp sounded like. While it wasn't the same, it did have qualities in common.

"Please come forward so that I may talk with you."

Only silence surrounded him. Richard moved ahead a dozen paces into the darkness.

"Last time warned," came the eerie voice. "Go, now."

"I have come a long way. I'm not going back without speaking with the wisps. This is important."

"Not to us."

Richard stood with one hand on a hip as he tried to conceive of what to do next. He was far from clearheaded. His weariness was hampering his thinking.

"Yes, this is important to you, too."

"How?"

"I have come for what Baraccus left for me."

"So did those whose bones you have passed."

"Look, this is important. Your lives ultimately depend upon this as well. In this struggle there will be no uninvolved bystanders. All will be drawn into the storm."

"The stories you have heard about a treasure are empty lies. There is nothing here."

"Treasure? No — you don't understand. That's not what this is about at all. I think you misunderstand me. I've already passed the tests Baraccus left for me — that's why I'm here. I'm Richard Rahl. I'm married to Kahlan Amnell, the Mother Confessor."

"We don't know this person you speak of. Go back to her while you still can."

"No, that's the point, I can't. I'm trying to find her." Frustrated, Richard ran his fingers back into his hair. He didn't know how much time he might have to say what he needed to say, or how much he should leave out, if he was to convince the wisps of his true reason for being there — to convince i them to help him.

"You once knew her. Magic was used against Kahlan to make everyone forget her. You knew her, too, but you forgot her like everyone else. Kahlan used to come here. In her role as the Mother Confessor she fought to protect the land of the night wisps and to keep others out.