He lifted the torch from her hand. His face was grim under the mud mask. "There is no need to wait three days. Grandfather waits for you in the spirit house."

Kahlan's eyes widened. She knew that a gathering lasted only through the one night it was called. "How can that be?"

"The elders still sit in the circle. Grandfather told them to wait for you. He, too, waits." "How many are sick?"

Chandalen held all his fingers up once, and then only one hand a second time. "They have great pain in their heads. They empty their stomachs even though they have nothing in them. They burn with fever. Some begin to turn black on their fingers and toes."

"Dear spirits," she whispered to herself. "Have any died?" "One child died this day, just before grandfather sent me here. He was the first to become sick."

Kahlan herself felt sick. Her head spun as she tried to come to grips with what she was hearing. The Mud People didn't usually tolerate other people coming to their village, and they rarely ventured from their lands. How could this have happened?

"Chandalen, have any outsiders come?"

He shook his head. 'We would not allow it. Outsiders bring trouble." He seemed to reconsider. "One may have tried to come. But we would not allow her to come to the village." "Her?"

"Yes. Some of the children were playing at hunting out in the grassland. A woman came to them, asking if she could come to the village. The children ran back to tell us. When I took my hunters to the place, we could not find her. We told the children that their spirit ancestors would be angry if they played such tricks again."

Kahlan feared to ask, because she feared the answer. "The child who died today, he was one of those children who said they saw the woman, wasn't he?" Chandalen cocked his head. "You are a wise woman, Mother Confessor." "No, I'm a frightened woman, Chandalen. A woman came to Aydindril, and talked to children. They have begun to die, too. Did the boy who died say that she showed him a book?"

"When I went on my journey with you, you showed me these things called books that you use to pass on knowledge, but the children here do not know of such things. We teach our children with living words, as our ancestors taught us.

"The boy did say that this woman showed him pretty colored lights. That does not sound like the books I remember."

Kahlan put a hand to Chandalen's arm, a touch that once would have frightened him with the implied threat of a Confessor's power, but now worried him for other reasons.

"You said we should not be close."

"It doesn't matter, now," she reassured him. "I can cause no further harm; the same sickness is here that is in Aydindril."

"I am sorry. Mother Confessor, that this sickness and death should visit your home, too."

They embraced in friendship, and shared fear. "Chandalen, what is this place? This cave?"

"I told you of it once. The place with the bad air and the worthless metal." "Then we're north of your home?" "North, and some west."

"How long will it lake us to get back to the village?"

He gave his own chest a thump with a fist. "Chandalen is strong and runs fast. I left our village as the sun was going down. It takes Chandalen only a couple hours. Even in the dark."

She surveyed the moonlit grassland beyond the low, rocky hill on which they stood. "There is enough moon to see our way." Kahlan managed a small smile. "And you ought to know that I'm as strong as you, Chandalen."

Chandalen returned the smile. It was a wonderful sight to see, even under the circumstances. "Yes, I remember well your strength, Mother Confessor. We will run, then."

The moonlight conveyed intimately the ghostly, boxy shapes of the Mud People's village lying hidden on the dark, grass-covered plain. Few lights burned in the small windows. At this late hour not many people were out, and Kahlan was glad for that; she didn't want to see the faces of these people, see the fear and sorrow in their eyes, and know that many of them would die.

Chandalen took her directly to the spirit house, among the communal buildings at the north side of the village. Most of these buildings were bunched close together, but the spirit house sat apart. Moonlight reflected off the tile roof Richard had helped to make. Guards, Chandalen's hunters, ringed the windowless building.

Outside the door, on a low bench, sat the fatherly figure of the Bird Man. His silver hair hanging down around his shoulders shone in the moonlight. He was naked. Black and white mud covered his body and face in a tangle of whorls and lines: a mask all in the gathering wore so the spirits could see them.

Two pots, one with white mud and the other holding black, sat on the ground at the Bird Man's feet. She could tell by the glazed look in his eyes that he was in a trance, and speaking would do her no good. She knew what was required.

Kahlan unbuckled her belt. "Chandalen, would you mind turning your back, please? And ask your men to do the same." It was the greatest concession to her modesty that circumstances would allow. Chandalen called out the order to his men in his own language. "My men and I will guard the spirit house while you and the elders are inside," Chandalen said to her over his shoulder.

When she had slipped off all her clothes and at last stood naked in the cool night air, the silent Bird Man began applying the gooey mud so that the spirits might see her, too. Sleepy chickens sat watching from the nearby low wall. The wall still bore a slash from Richard's sword.

She knew she had to do this, to go in and speak with the spirits, but she wasn't eager; speaking with the spirit ancestors was only done in times of dire need, and while the results sometimes brought the answers needed, they never brought joy. When the Bird Man had finished covering Kahlan with the black and white mud, he silently led her inside. The six elders sat in a circle around the skulls of ancestors arranged in the center. The Bird Man took his place, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Kahlan sat in the circle, opposite him. to the right of her friend Savidlin. She didn't speak to him; he. too. was in a trance, seeing the spirit in the center of the circle that she could not yet see.

A woven basket sat behind her. Knowing why it was there, she picked it up and reached inside. Hesitantly. she seized a squirming red spirit frog and pressed its back between her breasts-the one place she wasn't painted.

The slime from the frog tingled against her skin. She released the spirit frog and took up hands with the elders to either side. It wasn't long before she felt herself spiraling into a daze.

, The room began its dizzying spin. She was lifted away from the world she knew. and carried into a revolving vortex of light, shadow, aroma, and sound. The skulls spun with her.

Time twisted, much as it did in the sliph. but not in the same comforting way. This was a disorienting experience that brought sweat to her brow. It also brought the spirit.

His glowing form was before her. yet she couldn't recall when it had appeared to her. It was simply there.

«Grandfather,» she whispered in the tongue of the Mud People. Chandalen had said that it was his grandfather who had come in the gathering. but she recognized him on a more visceral level; he had become her protector. She felt the connection to the bone that had been his in life.

"Child."The unearthly sound of his voice coming through the Bird Man tingled against her flesh. 'Thank you for heeding my call. ' "What does our ancestor's spirit wish of me?"

The Bird Man's mouth moved with the spirit's voice. "That which has been partly entrusted to us has been violated. ' "Entrusted to you? What was entrusted to you?" 'The Temple of the Winds. ' Kahlan's naked flesh prickled with goose bumps.

Entrusted to the spirits? The implications made her head swim. The spirit world was the underworld, the world of the dead. How could something like a temple, built mostly of inert materials like stone, be sent to the underworld? "The Temple of the Winds is in the spirit world?"