Wizard's First Rule

The Shinga came, transparent at first, like smoke rising from the ground, turning, as if unscrewing itself from the white sand, lured by the drawing. Its head reared as it struggled to pull itself through the drawing, snorting steam from its flared nostrils. Rahl calmly watched as the fearsome beast rose, becoming solid as it came, ripping the ground and pulling the sand up with it, its powerful hind legs pulling through at last as it reared with a wail. A hole opened, black as pitch. Sand around the edges fell away into the bottomless blackness. The Shinga floated above it. Piercing brown eyes looked down at Rahl.

"Thank you for coming, Carl."

The beast bent forward, nuzzling its muzzle against the Master's bare chest. Rahl came to his feet and stroked the Shinga's head as it bucked, calming its impatience to be off. When at last it quieted, Rahl climbed onto its back and held its neck tight.

With a flash of light, the Shinga, Darken Rahl astride its back, dissolved back into the black void, corkscrewing itself down as it went. The ground shuddered and the hole closed with a grating sound. The Garden of Life was left in the sudden silence of the night.

From the shadows of the trees, Demmin Nass stepped forward, forehead beaded with sweat. "Safe journey, my friend," he whispered, "safe journey."

CHAPTER 25

THE RAIN HELD OFF for the time being, but the sky remained thickly overcast, as it had been for almost as long as she could remember. Sitting alone on a small bench against the wall of another building, Kahlan smiled to herself as she watched Richard construct the roof of the spirit house. Sweat ran off his bare back, over the swell of skis muscles, over the scars where the gar's claws had raked his back.

Richard was working with Savidlin and some other men, teaching them. He had told her he didn't need her to translate, that working with one's hands was universal, and if they had to partly figure it out themselves, they would understand it better and have more pride in what they had done.

Savidlin kept jabbering questions Richard didn't understand. Richard just smiled and explained things in words the others couldn't understand, using his hands in a sign language he invented as needed. Sometimes the others thought it hilarious, and all would end up laughing. They had accomplished a lot for men who didn't understand each other.

At first, Richard hadn't told her what he was doing; he just smiled and said she would have to wait and see. First, he took blocks of clay, about one by two feet, and made wavelike forms. Half the block's face was a concave trough, like a gutter, the other half along rounded hump. He hollowed them out and asked the women who worked the pottery to fire them.

Next, he attached two uniform strips of wood to a flat board, one to each side, and put a lump of soft clay into the center. Using a rolling pin, he flattened the clay, the two strips of wood acting as a thickness gauge. Slicing off the excess at the top and bottom of the board, he ended up with slabs of clay of a uniform thickness and size, which he draped and smoothed over the forms the women had fired for him. He used a stick to poke a hole in the two upper corners.

The women followed him around, inspecting his work closely, so he enlisted their help. Soon he had a whole crew of smiling, chatting women making the slabs and forming them, showing him how to do it better. When the slabs were dry, they could be pulled from the forms. While these were being fired, the women, by then buzzing with curiosity, made more. When they asked how many they should make, he said to just keep making them.

Richard left them to their new work and went to the spirit house and began making a fireplace out of the mud bricks that were used for the buildings. Savidlin followed him around, trying to learn everything.

"You're making clay roofing tiles, aren't you?" Kahlan had asked him.

"Yes," he had said with a smile.

"Richard, I have seen thatched roofs that do not leak."

"So have L"

"Then why not simply make their grass roofs over properly, so they don't leak?"

"Do you know how to thatch roofs?"

"No."

"Neither do 1. But I know how to make tile roofs, so that's what I have to do."

While he was building the fireplace, and showing Savidlin how to do it, he had other men strip the grass off the roof, leaving a skeleton of poles that ran the length of the building, poles that had been used to tie down each course of grass. Now they would be used to secure the clay tiles.