“If they wanted to kill us, it’s highly unlikely that those powerful enough to do such a thing would think we would be foolish enough to simply walk into the boundary and be killed.” The calm demeanor of the Seeker was back. “The strange wood wasn’t life-threatening, it simply slowed us down. The boundary they put up must also be meant to stop us, not kill us. After all, stopping people from passing was the purpose of the boundaries.”
“But why?” Kahlan asked.
He paced off a ways, then turned and came back with a look that worried her. “I think they don’t want us getting away with the twins. I think their purpose is to keep us from going to the Keep where the twins would be safe.”
Kahlan looked off toward the new boundary. “That’s a frightening thought.”
Richard let out a sigh of resignation. He held up a hand as he thought out loud.
“We can’t get through that boundary to get any farther to the southwest in order to go around the mountains, so at this point our only two choices are to either go back to the People’s Palace or try to get to Aydindril by going straight northwest over the mountains. Back toward the palace, we will be attacked relentlessly by the Glee. They are determined to slaughter us. If we try to get to Aydindril by trying to get over those mountains, I can only assume we will encounter those who are doing all of this.”
Kahlan felt a rising sense of panic. “They want the babies.”
“We all will protect the twins,” Shale said.
With one hand on a hip, Richard rubbed his forehead with the fingertips of his other hand as he paced off a ways before finally returning to look at Shale.
“If it’s my gift doing this, then is there a way for you to … to, I don’t know, cut my gift off from it so that the boundary will lose its viability and come down?”
Shale looked off toward the boundary, as if she could still see it and hear the call of the dead.
“I suspect that now that it’s up, it no longer needs your magic to persist. Once it’s up, it’s up. After all, once your grandfather used his gift to create the ones before, they were there and they didn’t then need his gift to continue to exist, did they?”
“No,” he admitted. He let out a sigh. “What matters is that someone doesn’t want us to go south to take the twins out of reach.” He gestured toward the mountains. “We have nowhere else to go except that way.”
“Then it’s surely a trap,” Vika said as she stepped forward, unable to remain silent any longer. “We shouldn’t indulge them and walk into their trap. Especially since they have already proven that they have enough power that they can use your gift.”
Richard gave her a curious look. “Since when have the Mord-Sith not wanted to run headlong into trouble?”
“If it was me, and the others, we would do so in a heartbeat and without a second’s thought.” Vika gestured at Kahlan. “But the Mother Confessor carries the children of D’Hara and our hope for the future. It is for her that I am reluctant to take the risk.”
“Well,” he said, wiping a weary hand over his face, seeming a little surprised at how much sense she was making, “whoever used my gift has to be off that way. We don’t know what other unexpected things they might do if we don’t find them and stop them. Better on our terms than theirs.”
Kahlan felt trapped by the unknown. “But they obviously want us to try just that so they can get our children.”
Richard looked sympathetic but determined. “All the more reason we must find them and put a stop to it. The only way to protect the twins is to stop whoever is doing this, or just like the Glee, they will come after us in another way when we least expect it.”
Despite the terror of the implications, Kahlan knew he was right. She tried to sound positive. “I guess if we can stop this threat and, in the process, find a way over the mountains, we will end up much closer to Aydindril and we will reach the Keep all that much sooner.”
Richard smiled. “That’s what I’m hoping.” He gestured to the mountains. “The threat is that way. There are nine of us, so we have the Law of Nines on our side. The sooner we find and eliminate the threat, the better. With winter closing in those mountains will become even more treacherous. We need to get over them before the worst of it sets in. We can still make some distance before we need to make camp for the night so I think we should press on.”
He looked around at all the faces watching them. “Just be aware that going through those mountains will be difficult and dangerous even if we can beat the weather, and even without the threat that’s out there.”
Everyone gave him a grim nod.
With the decision made, everyone mounted up.
As soon as they started out, Kahlan rode up close to Richard so the others wouldn’t hear her. “I can tell by that ‘Seeker look’ in your eyes that you might know who could be waiting for us in that trap up there in those forbidding mountains.”
He rode in silence for a time before he gave her an unreadable look. “I have a nasty suspicion, but I’m not ready to say it out loud, yet.”
“Richard Cypher,” she admonished in the name she knew him by when she first came to know him and fall in love with him, a name that touched on deep history and meaning for them both, “don’t give me that. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
He gave her a look for using that name and then rode on for a time before answering. “I think we’re making it too complex. I think it all boils down to one simple question.”
Kahlan stared over at him as she swayed in her saddle. “What question?”
“When he was dying, Michec said that the witch’s oath didn’t begin and end with him. So who, then?”
Kahlan felt an icy jolt of realization wash through her veins.
“Shota.”
36
As they followed the natural lay of the land to begin the ascent up into the mountains to try to find a pass, the forest thinned as it struggled to grow among the granite ledges and masses of rock that rose up all around. The exposed rock was covered in colorful medallions of lichen. Fluffy moss and small plants with deep green, heart-shaped leaves grew in low clefts in the ledges.
In the more rocky places, scraggly trees struggled to hold on to the rock with roots like claws. The roots grew in fat, twisting clusters over and around walls of stone and down over granite that looked like disorderly stacks of giant blocks. Ferns found a home in the crooks of those roots, and in the ferns, dirt collected to allow spotted mushrooms and other small plants to grow. Thin trailers of vines hung down from small ledges in the stone. Where water seeped down sheets of sloped granite, green slime grew, and in the laps of rock that collected the water small, colorful frogs waited for bugs.
Squirrels in the upper branches followed the progress of the invaders, chattering warnings as they leaped from branch to branch. Mockingbirds flitted about, or called out as they flicked their long tails. Richard saw ravens perched on branches high up in the larger spruce trees, watching them pass below. When they took to wing, the massive trees left plenty of space for them under the canopy to swoop through the forest. They sent out loud calls as they soared among the trees.
Richard heard a strange moan from Kahlan. He slowed and turned in his saddle.
“What’s wrong?”
Kahlan doubled over. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
He leaped off his horse when he saw her start to slump to the side and begin to slide off her saddle. He rushed in under her just in time to catch her fall enough to ease her limp form to the ground. The others all jumped off their horses when they saw her go down.