Stone of Tears by Terry Goodkind Read Free Book Online

understand it and can’t tell if it will come to pass. The visions from this man came in a torrent. They rushed past like wind driven rain. But every one was pain and hurt and danger.
    “The ones that stood out the hardest, and I knew to be true, were the worst. One was of something around his neck, I couldn’t tell what, but it was something that will cause him great pain. Take him from the woman … Kahlan, you said her name was … take him from everyone he loves. Lock him away.”
    “Richard was captured by a Mord-Sith, and tortured by her. Perhaps that is what you saw,” Zedd offered.
    Jebra shook her head vehemently. “It wasn’t what was; it was what will be. And not the pain of a Mord-Sith. Different. I am sure of it.”
    Zedd nodded in thought. “What else?”
    “I saw him in an hourglass. He was on his knees in the bottom half, crying in anguish, the sand falling all about him, but not a grain touching him. The gravestones of all those he loved were in the top half, where he couldn’t reach them against the fall of the sand.
    “I saw a knife at his heart. A killing knife. Held in his own shaking hands. Before I could see what would happen, another vision came—they are not always in order of events. He was in his fine red coat, the one with gold buttons and brocade trim. He was face down … a knife in his back. He was dead, but at the same time, he wasn’t. His own hands reached down to roll him over, but before I saw his dead face, another vision came.
    “It was the worst. The strongest.” The tears welled up again, and she began to sob softly. Zedd squeezed her shoulder to encourage her to go on. “I saw his flesh burning.” She wiped at the tears and rocked back and forth a little as she cried. “He was screaming. I could even smell the burning skin. Then, whatever was burning him—I couldn’t tell what it was—when it pulled back, he was unconscious, and there was a mark upon him. A mark burned into him.”
    Zedd worked his tongue in his mouth, trying to wet it. “Could you see what the mark was?”
    “No, not what it looked like. But I knew what it was as surely as I know the sun when I see it. It was the mark of the dead. It was a mark of the Keeper of the underworld. The Keeper had marked him to be his own.”
    Zedd worked to steady his breathing, his trembling hands. “Were there more visions?”
    “Yes, but not as strong and I didn’t understand them. They rushed by so fast I couldn’t grasp their form, only their pain. Then he was gone.
    “While the Mord-Sith were turned, watching him go, I ran back to my room and locked myself in. I lay on the bed for hours, crying uncontrollably with the hurt of what I had seen. The Lady Ordith banged at my door, wanting me, but I called to her that I was sick and she finally went away in a huff. I cried until my insides were jelly. I saw virtue in that man, and I wept in fear of the evil I saw snatching for him.
    “Though the visions were all different, they were the same. They all had the same feel: danger. Danger presses in around that man as tightly as water presses around a fish.” She regained some of her composure as Zedd sat silently watching her. “That is why I will not work for him. The good spirits protect me, I don’t want anything to do with the danger around that man. With the underworld.”
    “Maybe you could help him, with your talent, help him to avoid the danger. That is what I was hoping anyway,” Zedd said in a quiet voice.
    Jebra dabbed her cheeks dry with the back of her sleeve. “Not for all the Duke’s gold and power would I want to be in Lord Rahl’s wake. I am no coward, but I am no heroine in a song, and no fool neither. I did not wish my guts put back to have them ripped out again, and this time my soul with them.”
    Zedd quietly watched her snuffing herself back under control, putting the frightening visions away. With a deep breath and a sigh, her blue eyes finally looked to his.
    “Richard is my