"The color is there on a painting but a blind person can't see it, nor can they see the shapes that the brush strokes, laden with color, help define." He shook his head in wonder as he watched Jennsen. "We don't really know to what degree someone is affected by other things when they can't perceive the magic that interacts with those other things. For all we know, it could be that her mind simply fails to recognize the pattern caused by magic and just reads it as blowing sand. It could even be that because there is a pattern to the magic, only we can see those particles of sand directly involved with defining the pattern, while she sees them all and therefore the subordinate pattern is lost to her eyes.
"It could even be that it's something like the boundaries were; two worlds existing in the same place at the same time. Jennsen and we could be looking at the same thing, and see it through different eyes- through different worlds." Kahlan nodded as Richard bent to one knee beside Jennsen to inspect the gash through the goat's wiry brown hair.
"We'd better stitch this," he told Jennsen. "It's not life-threatening, but it needs attention."
Jennsen snuffled back her tears as Richard stood. "It was magic, then-the thing you saw?"
Richard stared off toward where the form had appeared in the blowing sand. "Something evil."
Off behind them, Rusty tossed her head and whinnied in sympathy with inconsolable Betty. When Tom laid a sorrowful hand on Jennsen's shoulder, she seized it as if for strength and held it to her cheek.
Jennsen finally stood, shielding her eyes against the blowing dust as she looked to the horizon. "At least we're rid of the filthy races."
"Not for long," Richard said.
His headache came slamming back with such force that it nearly took him from his feet. He had learned a great deal about controlling pain, about how to disregard it. He did that now.
There were bigger worries.
Around midafternoon, as they were walking across the scorching desert, Kahlan noticed Richard carefully watching his shadow stretched out before him.
"What is it?" she asked. "What's the matter?"
He gestured at the shadow before him. "Races. Ten or twelve. They just glided up behind us. They're hiding in the sun."
"Hiding in the sun?"
"They're flying high and in the spot where their shadow falls on us. If we were to look up in the sky we wouldn't be able to see them because we'd have to look right into the sun."
Kahlan turned and, with her hand shielding her eyes, tried to see for herself, but it was too painful to try to look up anywhere near the merciless sun. When she looked back, Richard, who hadn't turned to look with her, again flicked his hand toward the shadows.
"If you look carefully at the ground around your shadow, you can just make out the distortion in the light. It's them."
Kahlan might have thought that Richard was having a little fun with her were it not about a matter as serious as the races. She searched the ground around their shadows until she finally saw what he was talking about. At such a distance, the races' shadows were little more than shifting irregularities in the light.
Kahlan glanced back at the wagon. Tom was driving, with Friedrich sitting up on the seat beside him. Richard and Kahlan were giving the horses a rest from being ridden, so they were tethered to the wagon.
Jennsen sat on blankets in the back of the wagon, comforting Betty as she bleated in misery. Kahlan didn't think the goat had been silent for more than a minute or two all day. The gash wasn't bad; Betty's suffering was from other pain. At least the poor goat had Jennsen for solace.
From what Kahlan had learned, Jennsen had had Betty for half her life.
Moving around as she and her mother had, running from Darken Rahl, hiding, staying away from people so as not to reveal themselves and risk word drifting back to Darken Rahl's ears, Jennsen had never had a chance to have childhood friends. Her mother had gotten her the goat as a companion. In her constant effort to keep Jennsen out of the hands of a monster, it was the best she could offer.
Kahlan wiped the stinging sweat from her eyes. She took in the four black feathers Richard had bundled together and strung on his upper right arm. He had taken the feathers when he'd retrieved the arrows that were still good. Richard had given the last feather to Tom for killing the fifth race with his knife. Tom wore his single feather like Richard, on his arm.
Tom thought of it as a trophy, of sorts, awarded by the Lord Rahl.
Kahlan knew that Richard wore his four feathers for a different reason:
it was a warning for all to see.
Kahlan pulled her hair back over her shoulder. "Do you think that was a man below the races? A man watching us?"
Richard shrugged. "You know more about magic than me. You tell me."
"I've never seen anything like it." She frowned over at him. "If it was a man… or something like that, why do you think he finally decided to reveal himself?"
