That the crushing headache was gone was a great relief, but that it had vanished in the manner that it had was also a cause for concern. The torment often vanished when he was distracted by something important. Something dangerous. At the same time, even though the pain was gone, it felt as if it were simply hiding in the shadows of his mind, waiting for him to relax so that it could pounce.
When the headaches surged through him, the nauseating pain was so intense that it made him feel sick in every fiber of his being. Even though the crushing pain at times made it difficult for him to stand, to put one foot in front of the other, he had known that to remain behind, where they were, would have meant certain death. While the headaches were bad in and of themselves, Richard wasn't so much concerned about the pain as he was about the nature of the headaches-their cause.
They weren't the same as the headaches he'd had before that he so feared-the headaches brought on by the gift-but they weren't like those he considered to be normal headaches, either. Throughout his life he'd occasionally had terrible headaches, the same as his mother used to have on a more regular basis. She'd called them "my grim headaches." Richard thoroughly understood her meaning.
These, however grim, were not like those. He worried that they might be caused by the gift.
He'd had the headaches brought on by the gift before. He had been told that as he grew older, as his ability grew, as he came to understand more, he would, at times later in his life, be confronted with headaches brought on by the gift. The remedy was supposedly simple. He had only to seek the help of another wizard and have him assist with the necessary next level of awareness and comprehension of the nature of the gift within himself. That mental awareness and understanding would enable him to control and thereby eliminate the pain-to douse the flare-up. At least, that's what he had been told.
Of course, in the absence of another wizard to help, the Sisters of the Light would gladly put a collar around his neck to help control the runaway power of the gift.
He had been told that such headaches, if not properly tended to, were lethal. This much of it, at least, he knew was true. He couldn't afford to have that problem now, on top of all his others. Right now there was nothing he could do about it; there was no one anywhere near who could help him with that kind of headache-no wizard, and even though he would never allow it, no Sister of the Light to put him in a collar again.
Richard once more reminded himself that it wasn't the same kind of pain as the last time, when it had been brought on by the gift. He reminded himself not to invent trouble he didn't have.
He had enough real trouble.
He heard the whoosh as one of the huge birds shot past low overhead.
The race twisted in flight, lifting on a gust of wind, to peer back at him.
Another followed in its wake, and then a third, a fourth, and a fifth.
They slipped silently away, out across the open ground, following one another roughly in a line. Their wings rocked as they worked to stabilize themselves in the gusty air. Some distance away, they soared into a gliding, climbing turn back toward him.
Before they returned, the races tightened their flight into a circle.
When they stroked their huge wings, Richard could usually hear their feathers whisper through the air, although now, with the sound of the wind, he couldn't. Their black eyes watched him watching them. He wanted them to know he was aware of them, that he hadn't slept through their nocturnal return.
Were he not so concerned about the meaning of the races, he might think they were beautiful, their sleek black shapes silhouetted majestically against the crimson flush coming to the sky.
As he watched, though, Richard couldn't imagine what they were doing.
He'd seen this behavior from them before and hadn't understood it then, either. He realized, suddenly, that those other times when they'd returned to circle in this curious fashion, he had also been aware of them. He wasn't always aware of them or aware of when they returned. If he had a headache, though, it had vanished when they returned.
The hot wind ruffled Richard's hair as he gazed out across wasteland obscured by the dusty predawn gloom. He didn't like this dead place. Dawn here would offer no promise of a world coming to life. He wished Kahlan and he were back in his woods. He couldn't help smiling as he recalled the place in the mountains where the year before they had spent the summer. The place was so wondrous that it had even managed to mellow Cara.
