He was frustrated that the book hadn't yet told him anything that would in any way help explain the presence of the strange boundary line, much less the connection of the book's title, the place called the Pillars of Creation, and those ungifted people like Jennsen. The book, in the beginning that he'd so far translated, anyway, appeared mostly to be an historical record dealing with unanticipated matters involving occurrences of "pillars of Creation," as those like Jennsen were called, and the unsuccessful attempts at «curing» those "unfortunates."
Richard was beginning to get the clear sense that the book was laying a careful foundation of early details in preparation for something calamitous.
The nearly quaking care of the recounting of every possible course of action that had been investigated gave him the feeling that whoever wrote the book was being painstaking for reasons of consequence.
Not daring to slow their pace, Richard had been translating while riding in the wagon. The dialect was slightly different from the High D'Haran he was used to reading, so working out the translation was slow going, especially sitting in the back of the bouncing wagon. He had no way of knowing if the book would eventually offer any answers, but he felt a gnawing worry over what the unfolding account was working up to. He would have jumped ahead, but he'd learned in the past that doing so often wasted more time than it saved, since it interfered with accurately grasping the whole picture, which sometimes led to dangerously erroneous conclusions. He would just have to keep at it.
After working all day, focused intently on the book, he'd ended up with a fierce headache. He'd had days without them, but now when they came it seemed they were worse each time. He didn't tell Kahlan how concerned he was that he wouldn't make it to the sliph's well in Tanimura. Besides working at translating, he racked his brain trying to find a solution.
While he had no idea what the key to the headaches brought on by the gift was, he had the nagging feeling that it was within himself. He feared it was a matter of balance he was failing to see. He had even resorted when out alone, once, to sitting and meditating as the Sisters had once taught him in order to try to focus on the gift within. It had been to no avail.
It would be dark soon and they would need to stop for the night. Since the terrain had changed, it was no longer a simple task to see if the area all around them was clear. Now there were places where an army could lie in wait. With the races shadowing them, there was no telling who might know where to find them. Besides simply wanting a break to think about what he'd read and what he might find within himself to answer the problem of his headaches, Richard wanted to check the surrounding area himself.
Richard paused for a moment to watch a family of quail, the juveniles fully grown, hurry across an open patch of ground. They trotted across the exposed gravel in a line while the father, perched atop a rock, stood lookout. As soon as they melted into the brush, they were again invisible.
Small scraggly pine trees dotted the sweep of irregular hills, gullies, and rocky outcroppings at the fringe of the mountains. Up higher, on the nearby slopes, larger conifers grew in greater abundance. In low, sheltered places clumps of brush lay in thick clusters. Thin grasses covered some of the open ground.
Richard wiped sweat from his eyes. He hoped that with the sun going down the air might cool a little. As he made his way along the concealment of the base of a runoff channel in a fold of two hills, he reached for the strap of his waterskin, about to take a long drink, when movement on a far hillside caught his attention.
He slipped behind the screen of a long shelf of rock to stay out of sight. Taking a careful peek, he saw a man making his way down the loose scree on the side of the hill. The sound of the rock crunching underfoot and sliding down the slope sent a distant echo through the rocky canyons.
Richard had expected that as they left the forbidding wasteland they might at any time begin encountering people, so he had had everyone change out of the black outfits of the nomadic desert people and back into their unassuming traveling clothes. While he was in black trousers and simple shirt, his sword was hardly inconspicuous. Kahlan, as well, had put on simple clothes that were more in keeping with the impoverished people of the Old World, but on Kahlan they didn't seem to make much difference; it was hard to hide her figure and her hair, but most of all her presence. Once those green eyes of hers fixed on people, they usually had an urge to drop to a knee and bow their head. Her clothes made little difference.
