Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind [181]
“How are you doing? How’s the arm? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She smiled. “Nissel has made me well.”
Richard kissed the top of the old woman’s head. “Thank you, Nissel. I forgive you the broom.”
Nissel smiled at the translation, leaned closer, and gave him a deep look he found uncomfortable.
“Shall I give him a potion,” Nissel asked, turning to her, “to give him stamina?”
“No,” Kahlan said bristling. “I am sure he will do just fine.”
CHAPTER 27
Laughter and the sound of drums drifted from the center of the village as Richard and Kahlan walked among the huddled, dark buildings. Black skies held back their rain, and the damp, warm air brought in the smell of the wet grasses that surrounded the village. Torches lit the platforms of the pole buildings, and large fires set about the open area snapped and popped, throwing off fluttering shadows. Kahlan knew it was a lot of work to haul in wood for cooking and kiln fires, and most were kept small. This was an extravagance the Mud People rarely witnessed.
Wonderful aromas from the cooking fires drifted to her through the night air, but failed to spark her appetite. Women dressed in their brightest dresses rushed around, with young girls at their sides, tending to errands, seeing to it that all went well. The men wore their finest skins, ceremonial knives hung at their waists, and their hair was slicked down with sticky mud in traditional fashion.
Cooking went on nonstop as people wandered by, sampling the fare, talking, sharing stories. Most people, it seemed, were either cooking or eating. There were children everywhere, playing and running and laughing, overflowing with excitement at the unexpected nighttime, firelit gathering.
Under grass roofs, musicians pounded drums and scraped paddles up and down ripples carved on boldas, long bell-shaped hollow tubes. The eerie strains, music meant to call ancestors’ spirits to the banquet, carried far out into the grasslands. Other musicians sat on the opposite side of the open area, the sounds of the two groups sometimes joining, sometimes separating, calling to one another in haunting and occasionally frantic beats and knells. Men in costume, some dressed as animals, others painted as stylized hunters, jumped and danced, acting out stories of Mud People legends. Gleeful children surrounded the dancers, imitating them and stamping their feet in time with the drumming. Young couples off in darker areas watched the activities as they nuzzled close together. Kahlan had never felt so alone.
Savidlin, his freshly cleaned coyote hide around his shoulders, found her and Richard, and dragged them off, slapping Richard’s back the whole way, to sit with the elders under their shelter. The Bird Man was dressed in his usual, plain buckskin pants and tunic. He was important enough not to have to wear anything more. Weselan was there, as were the wives of the other elders, and she came to sit next to Kahlan, taking her hand and asking with sincere concern how her arm was. Kahlan wasn’t used to having people care about her. It felt good to be one of the Mud People, even if it was only pretense. Pretense, because she was a Confessor, and as much as she wished it otherwise right now, it was not, and no decree could make it so. She did as she had learned to do at a young age: she put her emotions away, and thought about the job that lay ahead, about Darken Rahl and how little time they had left. And she thought about Dennee.
Richard, resigned to the fact that they would have to wait another day for the gathering, tried to make the best of it, smiling and nodding at chattered advice he couldn’t understand. People streamed past the elders’ shelter in a steady procession, to greet the newest Mud People with gentle slaps. In all fairness,