Kahlan remembered quite clearly going through these strange, hot, humid woods. After the frigid hike the night before, the oppressive heat was at first welcome. Before long, it became suffocating.
She remembered, too, how dangerous these woods were. The swamp had unseen things that would grab anyone unwary enough to wander into the water, and in some cases, if they simply got too close to it, they could be snatched right off the trail. It was not at all rare to see human bones in the bogs or sticking up from the slimy, green, swampy places that had trapped them.
Kahlan knew that a wizard had once come to take Shota’s home. He was not killed by anything in the swamp. He had faced something far more dangerous: the witch who lived there and wanted her home back. She had used his hide to cover her throne. The same throne now buried under a mountain of rubble.
Kahlan prayed to the good spirits that Richard wasn’t also buried under all of that same rubble.
As she plodded ahead, Kahlan was well beyond her second wind. She was spent and could only shuffle along, putting one weary foot in front of the other, her mind numb. But in these woods, she knew that she had to pay attention to every step, or it might be her last, so she focused again and tried to watch where she put her feet.
The hot, humid swamp smelled foul. They passed through a number of areas, though, where the stench was especially bad. She held her hand over her mouth and nose, trying not to breathe in the gagging smell of death and rotting flesh. She hurried until they were past the worst of it.
Birds screamed raucous calls that echoed through the wet woods. The ravens that had followed them for so long sat in a row on a long, dead branch, watching Kahlan approach. They cocked their heads and looked down at her with one black eye as she passed beneath them. Sometimes they flapped their wings and cawed so loudly it made her ears hurt. Then, they flew on to another branch where they could continue to watch her progress.
Here and there boggy patches of water spanned back in under the thick, overhanging growth. Vapor hung just above the murky black water. In places, it drifted out and across the path. It swirled around her legs as she walked through the thick, heavy mist. It came up only about as high as her knees and left the bottoms of her trousers damp. It also carried with it the smells of dead things.
In other spots, the tangle of thick vines coiled like snakes on the trees, killing them. In the boggy woods to the sides the roots of large trees were so thick, gnarled, and broad that in places they spread out over the path. She knew that if her ankle got caught in one of those gnarled roots, she might break it before she could catch herself, so it took time and extreme caution to cross those extensive webs of roots.
Off across the water, in the deep shadows, she could see glowing eyes watching them. Others followed from off in the trees and brush. A few dark shapes now and then leaped from tree to tree, following them from the shadows for a time.
In some of the wetter areas, large trees stood on skirts of tall roots, as if trying to stay above the dark water. Smaller creatures hid back in those standing roots. The gray trunks of those trees were smooth and bare of bark and their branches were bare of leaves. Instead, they were draped with long trailers of dead, brown moss hanging still in the stagnant, humid air. It made the trees look like silver specters haunting the trail, watching who dared pass.
The spongy path in many places was mere inches above the expanses of turbid water to either side. With each step, water oozed up out of the soft, mossy ground and over her boots. Sometimes the water to the sides rippled as something unseen under the surface followed them along for a time, then left a spiraling swirl as it submerged.
Off in the thick, dark, dense vegetation in the distance, unseen things whooped and howled. Every once in a while, Kahlan spotted a shadowed shape skitter through the lower branches or bound along the ground back in the brush. In the heavy air, other things off out of sight clicked and whistled warnings to others of their kind. Creatures she couldn’t see and couldn’t imagine noted the group’s passing with apparent displeasure by growling low, guttural warnings.
In some places, the mist rising from the stinking, bubbling, thick black water carried with it the smell of sulfur. It was a smell strongly associated with the underworld, so Kahlan kept a wary watch whenever she smelled it, worried that something might appear from the world of the dead.
Sometimes the mist carried the gagging stench of rotting flesh. There was never any area where it smelled even remotely good. Kahlan was reluctant to draw a breath as her gaze continually swept the area to each side, watching for danger or the source of the stench. In places she saw the bloated, putrefied, half-submerged bodies of animals too rotted to identify. She didn’t know if they had drowned in the foul water, or possibly succumbed to the toxic smells.
In a few places she saw rotting corpses that looked like they might be human floating only partly above the surface of scummy water.
Those ahead of her carefully picked their way over the tangled masses of roots of the gnarled trees. She remembered all too well that there were particularly dangerous roots in the swamp that no one would dare to walk across. The roots of those trees, the ones with squat, fat trunks, were tangled and looked very much like nests of balled snakes. Those roots had to be given a wide berth. She saw those every once in a while, but the path skirted them, and the witch women always walked on the farthest side of the path so as to stay as far away as possible.
And then, near just one of those squat trees with the tangled roots that had to be avoided, Kahlan suddenly missed a step.
She stopped; her eyes went wide.
The thing she had been trying pull from the dark corner of her mind suddenly came rushing forward into her consciousness.
She realized what it was that didn’t make sense.
35
One single question stood out in Kahlan’s mind above all others.
Why would Shota want Kahlan to give birth just so she could kill the babies?
And why go to all the trouble to take her all the way to Agaden Reach to give birth? Not only that, but if she simply wanted to kill the babies, why not have her miscarry—which she had now twice proven she was entirely capable of doing—and then use a healer, like Shale, to help her recover if she really wanted Kahlan to live? If her intention was in fact to get rid of the babies and not kill Kahlan, that would be the easiest way. It would be over and done with.
So why would Shota insist that the babies must be born first, if she simply wanted them dead so that what she saw as the threat of their existence would be ended?
On the surface it made no sense.
But beneath the surface, it was starting to make sinister sense.
In the beginning, Shota had told Richard and Kahlan that she harbored no ill will toward them. She had even said that she appreciated the things they had done for their people, as well as what they had done that had saved her from the Keeper of the underworld. She had even said that she rather liked them, and that she didn’t mean them any harm.
She had tried to paint herself as reasonable—kind, even.
She had said that after the birth they would be free to go.
And yet, she proudly admitted that she had spelled Richard’s legs so that he couldn’t get away in time and the palace would collapse on top of him. That certainly didn’t sound like she didn’t intend them harm. In fact, she had used her power in a surprise attack to try to kill him just before that. Richard hadn’t struck first; she had. Despite her benevolent claims, it was clear that her intent had been to kill him, not let him go.
After all of that, why would she then go back to her original story that she meant Kahlan no harm and that she would let her go once she gave birth? She had said that she intended Richard no harm, either, yet she had clearly acted to kill him.