“No one told you that you could sit down,” Sorrel growled down at Kahlan.
Kahlan looked up at Sorrel’s black gums, revealed whenever she snarled, wishing she could drive her knife through the woman’s heart. But they had taken her knife and her pack, lest she get the idea to use her blade on one of them. Shota didn’t want to take a chance on losing one of the thirteen witches, because that would break the coven. That coven gave her powers over and above those she possessed on her own. The kind of magic she had used back in the chamber below the palace had made those frightening powers all too evident. As if Shota hadn’t been frightening enough without them.
“I’m exhausted,” Kahlan told Sorrel as she gestured to the side. “Look, there’s a pretty level place, here, on this ledge. It’s sheltered by that rock face you’re kneeling on. I think we should stop for the night. Besides being spent, we can’t climb this mountain in the dark. I could easily fall and split my skull.”
Grinning, Nea put a hand on Kahlan’s shoulder and pulled her around to face her. “That would solve everything, then, now wouldn’t it? We are only keeping you alive because that’s Shota’s wish, not because it’s ours.”
Worry for her unborn babies immediately came to the forefront of Kahlan’s thoughts. “Shota is the grand witch. You had better do as she tells you and keep me alive.”
Kahlan didn’t think that Shota really cared if she died, but it was a bluff that seemed to give Nea pause.
Nea reached up and parted the strands of hair hanging down over her face so that she could better peer out at Kahlan. “True, but if you took a nasty fall and broke some bones … who is to say it’s the fault of anyone but your own clumsy feet?”
33
Shota pushed her way through the tight knot of witch women crowded around on the ledge just above Kahlan. She leaped down the last few feet, landing with surprising grace. She had fire in her eyes.
Kahlan stood. She didn’t know exactly why. Somehow, she felt compelled to stand and face a coldly angry Shota, whether by her own volition or Shota’s she wasn’t entirely sure.
Kahlan remembered how terrified she had been the first time she had gone to Agaden Reach with Richard to face the witch woman. There had been times since then when her fear of the woman had ebbed and flowed, but at the moment, she was back to remembering how much she had feared that first encounter, when Shota had put snakes all over her. The witch woman knew how much Kahlan feared snakes. Had Richard not been able to stop her and make her remove her snakes, they very well might have bitten her, and she surely would have died. But Richard was not with her this time.
“Do you think I don’t know what you are doing?” Shota asked in a smooth voice, suddenly looking and sounding like Kahlan’s mother.
Such an image hurt Kahlan’s heart, but she dared not show how much it got to her.
“I don’t know what you are talking about, Shota.”
Kahlan put emphasis on the witch woman’s name to let her know that she wasn’t going to break down in helpless emotion at seeing an image that appeared to be her mother. It was thievery of cherished memories from her own mind in order to use them in cruel trickery. As much as Kahlan had loved her mother, she didn’t appreciate Shota using her mother’s image in such a cold-blooded manner.
“Do you think I haven’t noticed you deliberately leaving your tracks, or breaking a branch here and there so that Richard can follow you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Kahlan hooked some of her hair behind an ear. “I’m simply walking. I don’t know how you expect me to walk and not leave tracks.”
Shota, reverting to looking again like Shota—a very angry Shota—seized Kahlan’s chin between her thumb and the knuckle of her first finger. She narrowed her eyes as she leaned in.
“Don’t feed me that. I know what you’re doing. I am also well aware that you have been trying to slow us down so that Richard can catch up with us and ‘rescue’ you.”
Kahlan retreated to her Confessor face, showing no emotion.
“Why would you fear he would be alive?” Kahlan asked. “The entire palace fell in on him.”
“Fear it? There is hardly anything to fear.” Shota released Kahlan’s chin, instead regarding her with an intense look that held her in no less of a powerful grip. “On the contrary. I made sure the palace fell in on him. But you foolishly hold out hope that he somehow got out in time. Am I right?”
Kahlan shrugged. “Well, you know Richard. He often manages to come out of impossible situations wondering why anyone would have been worried about him. So, were I you, I wouldn’t be so smug that he isn’t this minute coming up this mountain after you and your coven.”
“You think so?” Shota nodded with a sly smile. “Well, I think you should know that down in that chamber beneath my palace, when I saw that everything was beginning to fall in, just before I escaped out the tunnel with you and my ladies, I turned back and cast a simple little spell to hinder his legs for just long enough to keep him from running to safety in time. He wouldn’t have realized that my spell was there, and, because of it, he would have been unable to get away. As he stood there, momentarily helpless, the entire weight of the palace and a good part of the mountain all fell in on him.”
Not wanting to give Shota the satisfaction of reacting with the horror and rage she was feeling inside, Kahlan maintained the Confessor face and didn’t say anything.
“So you see, Mother Confessor, your husband, the man who fathered those two monsters you carry, is dead and buried in a grave so deep his body will never even be recovered for a state funeral. He is entombed under my palace, because of my spell. Quite fitting, don’t you think, since he came to bury me.”
“What’s your point?”
“The point is, you no longer have a husband; we no longer have a Lord Rahl; those two children no longer have a father; and he isn’t going to come to rescue you. So you might as well quit bothering with your little tricks.”
Unable to maintain her Confessor face, Kahlan swallowed.
“You shouldn’t be so smug about your safety, because if he doesn’t come to kill you, I will do it myself—you have the promise of the Mother Confessor on that.”
Shota straightened and folded her arms, looking down at her, amused by the threat. “Is that so? Well, I must admit, you are more vicious than I am. My intent is to let you live, not kill you. I simply want to eliminate the threat to the world posed by those two monsters you carry. Fortunately, with Richard dead, no more can ever be created.”
Against her will, Kahlan felt a tear roll down her cheek.
“Now,” Shota went on, “you can either get moving and get yourself and those unborn babies to Agaden Reach, where you will give birth to them, or I will see to it that you miscarry here and now.”
Kahlan lifted her chin. “You mean like you tried and failed to do before?”
“With everything I have done, my aim was always to simply slow you down so that you wouldn’t get too far away. Were you to get to the Keep I wouldn’t have been able to get to you and do what is necessary for the greater good. I could have killed you any number of times, but I didn’t. None of the things I did, such as that wood where you lost so much time, were an attempt to kill you, now were they?”
“You did something to make me start to miscarry after we were out of that wood, and after we were stopped from getting to the Keep by the boundary you put up, but Richard was able to help stop it. You were trying to kill me along with my babies.”
“On the contrary.” Shota couldn’t seem to hold back a knowing smile, as if she were talking to an ignorant child. “I knew that if I cast a spell to have you start to miscarry, Richard would have to find you a plant called mother’s breath, the only herb that could stop it. I made you start to miscarry and collapse in that particular place on purpose. I knew that when Richard went to look for mother’s breath—mother’s breath transplanted from the fields of Bindamoon and planted there for him to find—he would come across the pass trail, which would eventually lead you all to the pass and to me. My mountain lion returned to let me know that all went as I had planned.