Richard looked deeper and suddenly saw what Vika hadn’t noticed in her desperate search for the rare plant, and her excitement at having found it.
In the snow to either side of the cave, and in the soft ground of the entrance, were the prints of a large cat. Farther back in the cave, where rays of the rising sun reached, he spotted a variety of bones.
Farther still, back in the darkness, Richard saw a pair of eyes reflecting the light.
When he thought he heard the low rumble of a throaty growl, he drew his sword.
Vika looked back over her shoulder when she heard the distinctive sound of his blade being drawn. “What’s the matter?”
Richard gestured with his sword. “There’s a mountain lion back in there.”
Vika froze. “What do we do?”
Richard carefully put one knee down beside her and leaned in, holding the blade protectively out over the top of her. He put his left hand on the back of her shoulder to keep her down as he spoke quietly, so as not to alarm the animal hiding back in the darkness.
“Dig up the three plants right there by your left hand. Shale said she needed the whole plant, so dig out the roots. We need to get all of the roots you can dig out. Three plants should be more than enough. Leave the other two on the other side to help them regrow. While you dig these three out, I’ll watch and make sure that mountain lion stays back.”
“All right,” she said as she quickly pulled her knife from the sheath at her side, drove it into the ground, and used it to help her start digging.
With her fingers and the blade she dug down through the relatively soft, rocky dirt, frantically flicking it back like a badger digging a den. As she worked, the animal back in the cave crept forward into the light enough for Richard to see its face and yellow eyes. It was indeed a formidably large mountain lion, and by its low, rattling growl, an unhappy one at that.
The creature drew back its upper lip, revealing big teeth, as it opened its mouth a little to let out a louder guttural growl. As it took another step forward with a big, broad paw, Richard poked the blade toward its face just enough to make his defensive intentions clear.
It took two steps closer, head hunched down, ears laid back, eyes locked on him. Powerful muscles in its shoulders flexed as it growled while taking another step closer.
“Don’t make me kill you,” Richard said to the beast. “I don’t want to kill you, but I will if I have to. Just wait a moment until we’re done here and then we will be on our way.”
For the time being, the blade was keeping it back. The mountain lion stopped, almost as if it understood his words. More likely, it understood the blade in its way.
Vika dug with her fingers as fast as she could, throwing the dirt back, trying to dig down and expose the roots without damaging them. All the while Richard and the mountain lion stared each other down.
Vika clawed at the ground and was finally able to bring the first plant out of the deep hole she had dug. It had a long, thick taproot. She got almost all of it out, shook the dirt off the roots, set it aside, then went back to excavating the other two. Richard could see that it wasn’t easy digging while on her belly, but she worked as fast as she could, letting out little grunts of effort. Her fingers were bloody, but that didn’t slow her down.
Richard carefully reached down with his left hand, as he kept the mountain lion at bay with the sword in his right, and set the mother’s breath already out of the ground safely up on a small ledge that formed the roof of the cave. When Vika, panting with the effort, brought out the second, he took it from her and set it up with the first. Having loosened the ground as much as she needed to with her knife, she returned it to the sheath and went back to clawing out the dirt around the roots of the third mother’s breath plant and flicking it behind.
“Got it!”
With the third plant in her left hand, Vika squirmed back. When she was back far enough, she got to her hands and knees under the protection of Richard’s sword and collected the other two as he continued to guard her.
After she had the three mother’s breath plants clutched in her hand, the two of them slowly retreated from the mouth of the cave. The mountain lion matched their movement, slowly slinking out with them while maintaining a safe distance, until it emerged from the darkness and into the light.
Richard gripped Vika’s arm with one hand and pulled her behind him while he held the sword out with the other. Together they moved off to the side away from the angry animal.
Once they had left it enough room to escape, the mountain lion emerged from the cave, gave them a long, uncomfortable look, and then gracefully bounded off to their right, over the snow and among the sparse trees.
“It’s heading toward the trail,” Vika said as she pulled out a blanket to wrap up the plants. “That’s an odd coincidence.”
Richard watched where the mountain lion was slipping away. “We’re long and well past the realm of coincidence.”
4
Quiet darkness was settling into the woods when Richard spotted Nyda on watch long before she spotted him and Vika. When she finally did see him, she ran out and whistled a birdcall he had taught the Mord-Sith to alert the others that they had returned.
Rikka then emerged from the thick underbrush behind him. He hadn’t spotted her. He was glad to see that they were using the tactic of positioning one person on watch so as to be spotted and distract anyone approaching. If it turned out to be a threat, the one still hidden could then take out that threat from behind. Even though he was glad to see them using their heads, he had more important things on his mind.
Richard and Vika were both exhausted from the long ride up the steep terrain, climbing the trail in the dark the entire night before, the hunt along the steep and difficult ground for the mother’s breath, the tense encounter with the mountain lion, and then the difficult journey back down the mountains to where they had left Kahlan, Shale, and the rest of the Mord-Sith.
As they galloped into camp, Richard leaped off his horse. Berdine ran in and took the reins of both horses as Vika jumped down and handed Richard the blanket with their precious cargo. Shale was adding a stick of wood in the fire when she saw them ride in.
She stood and then rushed to meet them, brushing crumbs of bark from her hands. “Do you have it?”
Richard flipped open the blanket to show her. “How is Kahlan?”
Shale gently lifted out all three plants, using it as an excuse to divert her gaze. She looked amazed that they had actually found some mother’s breath.
“Three! This is wonderful, and you managed to recover them with their taproots intact. I had dared not hope you would find even one. This is exactly what we need.”
“I asked how Kahlan was.”
Shale looked up from under her brow. “The Mother Confessor is asleep.”
Richard gently grabbed Shale’s upper arm. “I asked how she is.”
The sorceress considered the intensity in his eyes briefly before answering. “She was losing the babies and her life along with theirs. The only thing I could think to do until you returned with the mother’s breath was to use my gift to immerse her in a form of very deep sleep. I had to put her in that place between life and death. You called it the cusp. My hope is that inducing such a profound sleep will slow down all the functions in her body enough to keep her from miscarrying. It was the only way I could think of to save her and the twins. So far, she still has the babies and she is still breathing.”
“But she will be all right.” It came out more like a command than a question. He didn’t like to hear that the sorceress had pushed Kahlan to the cusp between life and death. He didn’t like it one bit. But he didn’t want to second-guess her decisions. He knew the extent of the emergency, and that Shale would do everything she could to save Kahlan. “Now that we have the mother’s breath, will she be all right?”