Soul of the Fire by Terry Goodkind

fought together, Mother Confessor.” Chandalen winked. “You know I am too strong and too smart for trouble to catch me.”
    As she watched Chandalen work his way through the milling mass of the chickens, Kahlan asked the Bird Man, “Have you seen anything … suspicious?”
    “ I do not yet see the chicken that is not a chicken,” the Bird Man said, “but I will keep looking until I find it.”
    Kahlan tried to think of a polite way to ask if he was sober. She decided to ask another question, instead.
    “ How can you tell the chicken is not a chicken?”
    His sun-browned face creased with thought. “It is something I can sense.”
    She decided there was no avoiding it. “Perhaps, since you were celebrating with drink, you only thought you sensed something?”
    The creases in his face bent with a smile. “Perhaps the drink relaxed me so that I could see more clearly.”
    “ And are you still … relaxed?”
    He folded his arms as he watched the teeming flock.
    “ I know what I saw.”
    “ How could you tell it was not a chicken?”
    He stroked a finger down his nose as he considered her question. Kahlan waited, watching Richard urgently searching through the chickens as if looking for a lost pet.
    “ At celebrations, such as your wedding,” the Bird Man said after a time, “our men act out stories of our people. Women do not dance the stories, only men. But many stories have women in them. You have seen these stories?”
    “ Yes. I watched yesterday as the dancers told the story of the first Mud People: our ancestor mother and father.”
    He smiled, as if the mention of that particular story touched his heart. It was a smile of private pride in his people.
    “ If you had arrived during that dance, and did not know anything of our people, would you have known the dancer dressed as the mother of our people was not a woman?”
    Kahlan thought it over. The Mud People made elaborate costumes expressly for the dances; they were brought out for no other reason. For Mud People, seeing dancers in the special costumes was awe-inspiring. The men who dressed as women in the stories went to great lengths to make themselves look the part.
    “ I am not certain, but I think I would recognize they were not women.”
    “ How? What would give them away to you? Are you sure?”
    “ I don’t think I can explain it. Just something not quite right. I think, looking at them, I would know it was not a woman.”
    His intent brown-eyed gaze turned to her for the first time. “And I know it is not a chicken.”
    Kahlan entwined her fingers. “Maybe in the morning, after you have had a good sleep, you will see only a chicken when you look at a chicken?”
    He merely smiled at her suspicion of his impaired judgment. “You should go eat. Take your new husband. I will send someone for you when I find the chicken that is not a chicken.”
    It did sound like a good idea, and she saw Richard heading in their direction. Kahlan clasped the Bird Man’s arm in mute appreciation.
    It had taken the whole afternoon to gather the chickens. Both structures reserved for evil spirits and a third empty building were needed to house all the birds. Nearly the entire village had joined in the grave cause. It had been a lot of work.
    The children had proven invaluable. Fired by responsibility in such an important village-wide effort, they had revealed all the places the chickens hid and roosted. The hunters gently gathered all the chickens, even though it was a Barred Rock the Bird Man had at first pointed out, the same striated breed Richard chased out when they went to see Zedd, the same breed Richard said had waited above the door while they’d been in to see Juni.
    An extensive search had been conducted. They were confident every chicken was housed in one of the three buildings.
    As he cut a straight line through the chickens, Richard smiled briefly in greeting to the Bird Man, but his eyes never joined in. As Richard gaze met hers, Kahlan