Blood of the Fold

Chapter 2

Richard had just taken a spoonful of hot spice soup when he heard the deep, menacing growl. He frowned over at Gratch. The gar’s hooded eyes glowed, lit from within by cold green fire as he glared toward the gloom among the columns at the base of the expansive steps. His leathery lips drew back in a snarl, exposing prodigious fangs. Richard realized he still had a mouthful of soup, and swallowed.

Gratch’s guttural growl grew, deep in his throat, sounding like a moldy old castle’s massive dungeon door being opened for the first time in a hundred years.

Richard glanced to Mistress Sanderholt’s wide, brown eyes. Mistress Sanderholt, the head cook at the Confessors’ Palace, was still uneasy about Gratch, and not entirely confident in Richard’s assurances that the gar was harmless. The ominous growl wasn’t helping.

She had brought Richard out a loaf of freshly baked bread and a bowl of savory spice soup, intending to sit on the steps with him and talk about Kahlan, only to discover that the gar had arrived a short time before. Despite her trepidation over the gar, Richard had managed to convince her to join him on the steps.

Gratch had been keenly interested at the mention of Kahlan’s name; he had a lock of her hair that Richard had given him hanging on a thong around his neck, along with the dragon’s tooth. Richard had told Gratch that he and Kahlan were in love, and she wanted to be Gratch’s friend, just as Richard was, and so the inquisitive gar had sat down to listen, but just as Richard had tasted the soup, and before Mistress Sanderholt had been able to begin, Gratch’s mood had suddenly changed. He looked savagely intent, now, on something that Richard couldn’t see. “Why is he doing that?” Mistress Sanderholt whispered.

“I’m not sure,” Richard admitted. He brightened his smile and shrugged offhandedly when the creases in her brow deepened. “He must just see a rabbit or something. Gars have exceptional eyesight, even in the dark, and they’re excellent hunters.”

Her concerned expression didn’t ease, so he went on. “He doesn’t eat people. He would never hurt anyone,” he reassured her. “It’s all right, Mistress Sanderholt, really, it is.”

Richard glanced up at the sinister-looking, snarling face. “Gratch,” he whispered out of the side of his mouth, “stop growling. You’re scaring her.”

“Richard,” she said as she leaned closer, “gars are dangerous beasts. They are not pets. Gars can’t be trusted.”

“Gratch isn’t a pet, he’s my friend. I’ve know him since he was a pup, since he was half my size. He’s as gentle as a kitten.”

An unconvincing smile twitched onto Mistress Sanderholt’s face. “If you say so, Richard.” Dismay suddenly widened her eyes, “He doesn’t understand anything I’m saying, does he?”

“It’s hard to tell,” Richard confided. “Sometimes he understands more than I think possible.”

Gratch appeared oblivious of them as they talked. He was frozen in concentration, seeming to have either the scent or the sight of something he didn’t like. Richard thought he had seen Gratch growling like that one time before, but he couldn’t place where or when. He tried to recall the occasion, but the mental image kept slipping away, just out of grasp. The harder he tried, the more elusive the shadowy memory became, “Gratch?” He clutched the gar’s powerful arm. “Gratch, what is it?”

Stone still, Gratch didn’t react to the touch. As he had grown, the glow in his green eyes had intensified, but never before to this ferocity. They were glowing brightly.

Richard scanned the shadows below, where those green eyes were fixed, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were no people among the columns, or along the wall of the palace grounds. It must be a rabbit, he decided at last; Gratch loved rabbit.

Dawn was just beginning to reveal wisps of purple and pink clouds above the brightening horizon, leaving but a few of the brightest stars to glimmer in the western sky. With the faint first light came a gentle breeze, unusually warm for winter, that ruffled the fur of the huge beast and billowed open Richard’s black mriswith cape.

When he had been in the Old World with the Sisters of the Light, Richard had gone into the Hagen Woods, where lurked the mriswith—vile creatures looking like men half melted into a reptilian nightmare. After he had fought and killed one of the mriswith, he had discovered the astonishing thing its cape could do; it had the ability to blend with its background so perfectly, so flawlessly, that it made the mriswith, or Richard when he concentrated while wearing the cape, seem invisible. It also prevented anyone with the gift from sensing them, or him. For some reason, though, Richard’s own gift allowed him to sense the presence of the mriswith. That ability—to sense the danger despite its cloak of magic—had saved his life.

Richard found it difficult to focus on Gratch’s growling at rabbits in the shadows. The anguish, the numb misery, of believing that his beloved, Kahlan, had been executed, had evaporated in a heart-pounding instant the day before when he had discovered she was alive. He felt blind joy that she was safe, and exultant at having spent the night alone with her in a strange place between worlds. His mind was in song this beautiful morning, and he found himself smiling without even realizing it. Not even Gratch’s annoying fixation with a rabbit could dampen his mood.

Richard did find the guttural sound distracting, though, and obviously Mistress Sanderholt found it alarming; she sat woodenly on the edge of a step beside him, clutching her wool shawl tight. “Quiet, Gratch. You just had a whole leg of mutton and half a loaf of bread. You couldn’t be that hungry already.”

Although Gratch’s attention remained riveted, his growling lessened to a rumbling deep in his throat, as if he was absently trying to comply.

Richard directed a brief glance once more toward the city. His plan had been to find a horse and hurry on his way to catch up with Kahlan and his grandfather and old friend, Zedd. Besides being impatient to see Kahlan, he dearly missed Zedd; it had been three months since he had seen him, but it seemed years. Zedd was a wizard of the First Order, and there was much that Richard, in light of his discoveries about himself, needed to talk to him about, but then Mistress Sanderholt had brought out the soup and freshly baked bread. Good mood or not, he had been famished. Richard glanced back, past the white elegance of the Confessors’ Palace, up at the immense, imposing Wizard’s Keep embedded in the steep mountainside, its soaring walls of dark stone, its ramparts, bastions, towers, connecting passageways, and bridges, all looking like a sinister encrustation growing from the stone, somehow looking alive, as if it were peering down at him from above. A wide ribbon of road wound its way up from the city toward the dark walls, crossing a bridge that looked thin and delicate, but only because of the distance, before passing under a spiked dropgate and being swallowed into the dark maw of the Keep. There had to be thousands of rooms in the Keep, if there was one. Richard snugged his cape closer under the cold, stony gaze of that place, and looked away. This was the palace, the city, where Kahlan had grown up, where she had lived most of her life until the previous summer when she had crossed the boundary to Westland in search of Zedd, and had come across Richard, too.

The Wizard’s Keep was where Zedd had grown up and lived prior to leaving the Midlands, before Richard was born. Kahlan had told him stories about how she had spent much of her time in the Keep, studying, but she had never made the place sound in the least bit sinister. Hard against the mountain, the Keep looked baleful to him now.

Richard’s smile returned at the thought of how Kahlan must have looked when she was a little girl, a Confessor in training, strolling the halls of this palace, walking the corridors of the Keep, among wizards, and out among the people of this city.

But Aydindril had fallen under the blight of the Imperial Order, and was no longer a free city, no longer the seat of power in the Midlands.

Zedd had produced one of his wizard’s tricks—magic—to make everyone think they had witnessed Kahlan’s beheading, allowing them to flee Aydindril, while everyone here thought she was dead. No one would chase after them now. Mistress Sanderholt had known Kahlan since she was born, and was delirious with relief when Richard told her that Kahlan was safe and well.

The smile touched his lips again. “What was Kahlan like when she was little?”

She stared off, a smile on her lips as well. “She was always serious, but as precious a child as I’ve ever seen, who grew to be a stalwart and beautiful woman. She was a child not only touched by magic, but also of a special character.

“None of the Confessors were surprised by her accession to Mother Confessor, and all were pleased because her way was to facilitate agreement, not to dominate, though if someone wrongly opposed her they’d find her cast with as much iron as any Mother Confessor ever born. I’ve never known a Confessor with her passion for the people of the Midlands. I’ve always felt honored to know her.” Drifting into memories, she laughed faintly, a sound not nearly as frail as the rest of her appeared. “Even one time when I swatted her bottom after I discovered she had made off with a just roasted duck without asking.”

Richard grinned at the prospect of hearing a story about Kahlan misbehaving. “Punishing a Confessor, even a young one, didn’t give you pause?”

“No,” she scoffed. “Had I pampered her, her mother would have turned me out. We were expected to treat her respectfully, but fairly.”

“Did she cry?” he asked, before he took a big bite of bread. It was delicious, coarse ground wheat with a hint of molasses.

“No. She looked surprised. She believed she had done no wrong, and started explaining. Apparently a woman with two young ones almost Kahlan’s age had been waiting outside the palace for someone she thought would be gullible. As Kahlan started for the Wizard’s Keep, the woman approached her with a sad story, telling her that she needed gold to feed her youngsters. Kahlan told her to wait, and then took her my roasted duck, reasoning that it was food the woman needed, not gold. Kahlan sat the children down—” with a bandaged hand, she pointed off to her left, “—around that side over there, and fed them the duck. The woman was furious, and started yelling, accusing Kahlan of being selfish with all the palace’s gold.

“As Kahlan was telling me this story, a patrol of the Home Guard came into the kitchen dragging the woman and her two young ones along. Apparently, as the woman had been railing at Kahlan the Guard had come upon the scene. About this time Kahlan’s mother showed up in the kitchen wanting to know what the trouble was. Kahlan told her story, and the woman fell to pieces at being in the custody of the Home Guard, and worse, at finding herself before the Mother Confessor herself.

“Kahlan’s mother listened to her story, and to the woman’s, and then told Kahlan that if you chose to help someone then they became your responsibility, and it was your duty to see the help through until they were back on their own feet. Kahlan spent the next day on Kings Row, with the Home Guard dragging the woman behind, going from one palace to another, looking for one that was in need of help. She wasn’t having much luck; they all knew the woman was a sot.

“I felt guilty about giving Kahlan a swat before at least hearing her reasons for taking my roasted duck. I had a friend, a stern woman in charge of the cooks at one of the palaces, and so I rushed over and convinced her to accept the woman into her employ when Kahlan brought her around. I never told Kahlan what I’d done. The woman worked there a long time, but she never again came near the Confessors’ Palace. Her youngest grew up to join the Home Guard. Last summer he was wounded when the D’Harans captured Aydindril, and died a week later.”

Richard, too, had fought D’Hara, and in the end had killed its ruler, Darken Rahl. Though he still couldn’t help feeling a twinge of regret at being sired by that evil man, he no longer felt the guilt of being his son. He knew that the crimes of the father didn’t pass on to the child, and it certainly wasn’t his mother’s fault she had been raped by Darken Rahl. His stepfather loved Richard’s mother no less for it, nor did he show Richard any less love for not having been his own blood. Richard would not have loved his stepfather any less had he known George Cypher was not his real father.

Richard was a wizard, too, he now knew. The gift, the force of magic within him called Han, had been passed down from two lines of wizards: Zedd, his grandfather on his mother’s side, and Darken Rahl, his father. That combination had spawned in him magic no wizard had possessed in thousands of years—not only Additive but also Subtractive Magic. Richard knew precious little about being a wizard, or about magic, but Zedd would help him learn, help him control the gift and use it to aid people.

Richard swallowed the bread he had been chewing. “That sounds like the Kahlan I know.”

Mistress Sanderholt shook her head ruefully. “She always felt a deep responsibility for the people of the Midlands. I know it hurt her to her very soul to have them turn against her for the promise of gold.”

“Not all did that, I’d bet,” Richard said. “But that’s why you mustn’t tell anyone she’s still alive. In order to keep Kahlan safe, and protect her, no one must know the truth.”

“You know you have my promise, Richard. But I expect they’ve forgotten about her by now. I expect that if they don’t get the gold they were promised, they’ll soon be rioting.”

“So that’s why all those people are gathered outside the Confessors’ Palace?”

She nodded. “They now believe they’re entitled to it, because someone from the Imperial Order said that they were to have it. Though the man who promised it is now dead, it’s as if once his words were spoken aloud, the gold magically became theirs. If the Imperial Order doesn’t soon begin handing out the gold in the treasury, I imagine it won’t be long before those people in the streets decide to storm the palace and take it.”

“Maybe the promise was only made as a diversion, and the troops of the Order intended all along to keep the gold for themselves, as plunder, and will defend the palace.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” She stared off. “Come to think of it, I don’t even know what I’m still doing here. I’m of no mind to see the Order set up quarters in the palace. I’m of no mind to end up working for them. Maybe I should leave, and see if I couldn’t find a place to work where people are still free of that lot. It seems so strange to think of doing that, though; the palace has been my home for most of my life.”

Richard looked away from the white splendor of the Confessors’ Palace, out over the city again. Should he flee, too, and leave the ancestral home of the Confessors, and the wizards, to the Imperial Order? But how could he do anything about it? Besides, the Order’s troops were probably searching for him. Best if he slipped away while they were still confused and disorganized after the death of their council. He didn’t know what Mistress Sanderholt should do, but he should be going before the Order found him. He needed to get to Kahlan and Zedd.

Gratch’s growl deepened into a primal rumble that rattled Richard’s bones, and brought him out of his thoughts. The gar rose smoothly to his feet. Richard scanned the area below again, but saw nothing. The Confessors’ Palace sat on a hill, with a commanding view of Aydindril, and from his vantage point he could see that there were troops beyond the walls, in the streets of the city, but none were close to the three of them in the secluded side courtyard outside the kitchen entrance. There was nothing alive in sight where Gratch was watching.

Richard stood, his fingers briefly finding reassurance on the hilt of his sword. He was bigger than most men, but the gar towered over him. Though little more than a youngster, for a gar, Gratch stood close to seven feet, Richard guessing his weight at half again his own. Gratch had another foot to grow, maybe more; Richard was far from an expert on short-tailed gars—he had not seen that many, and the ones he had seen had been trying to kill him at the time. Richard, in fact, had killed Gratch’s mother, in self-defense, and had inadvertently ended up adopting the little orphan. Over time, they had become fast friends.

Muscles under the pink skin of the powerfully built beast’s stomach and chest knotted in rippling bulges. He stood still and tensed, his claws poised out to his sides, his hairy ears perked toward things unseen. Even in taking prey when he was hungry, Gratch had never displayed this level of intent ferocity. Richard felt the hackles on the back of his neck rising.

He wished he could remember when or where it was he had seen Gratch growling like this. He finally put aside his pleasant thoughts of Kahlan and, with mounting urgency, focused his attention.

Mistress Sanderholt stood beside him, peering nervously from Gratch to where he was looking. Thin and frail-looking, she was not a timid woman by any means, but had her hands not been bandaged, he thought she would be wringing them; she looked as if she wanted to.

Richard suddenly felt quite exposed on the open, wide sweep of steps. His keen gray eyes scrutinized the murky shadows and concealed places among the columns, walls, and assortment of elegant belvederes spread across the lower parts of the palace grounds. Sparkling snow lifted on an occasional ripple of wind, but nothing else moved. He stared so hard it made his eyes hurt, but he saw nothing alive, no sign of any threat.

Though he saw nothing, Richard began to feel a burgeoning sense of danger—not a simple reaction from seeing Gratch so riled, but welling up from within himself, from his Han, welling from the depths of his chest, coursing into the fibers of his muscles, drawing them tight and ready. The magic within had become another sense that often warned him when his other senses did not. He realized that that was what was warning him now.

An urge to run, before it was too late, gnawed deep in his gut. He needed to get to Kahlan; he didn’t want to get tangled in any trouble. He could find a horse, and just go. Better yet, he could run, now, and find a horse later.

Gratch’s wings unfolded as he crouched in a menacing posture, ready to launch into the air. His lips drew back further, vapor hissing from between his fangs as the growl deepened, vibrating the air.

The flesh on Richard’s arms tingled. His breathing quickened as the palpable sense of danger coalesced into points of threat.

“Mistress Sanderholt,” he said as his gaze skipped from one long shadow to another, “why don’t you go inside. I’ll come in and talk to you after—”

His words caught in his throat as he saw a brief movement down among the white columns—a shimmer to the air, like the heat rippling the air above a fire. He stared, trying to decide if he had really seen it, or just imagined it. He frantically tried to think of what it could be, if indeed he had seen something. It could have been a wisp of snow carried on a brief gust of wind. He didn’t see anything as he squinted in concentration. It was probably nothing more than the snow in the wind, he tried to assure himself.

Abruptly, the manifest realization welled up within him, like cold black water surging up through a rift in river ice—Richard remembered when it was he had heard Gratch growl like that. The fine hairs on the back of his neck stood out like icy needles in his flesh. His hand found the wire-wound hilt of his sword.

“Go,” he whispered urgently to Mistress Sanderholt. “Now.”

Without hesitation, she dashed up the steps and made for the distant kitchen trance behind him as the ring of steel announced the arrival of the Sword of Truth in the crisp dawn air.

How was it possible for them to be here? It wasn’t possible, yet he was sure of it; he could feel them.

“Dance with me, Death. I am ready,” Richard murmured, already in a trance of wrath from the magic coursing into him from the Sword of Truth. The words were not his, but came from the sword’s magic, from the spirits of those who had used the weapon before him. With the words came an instinctive understanding of their meaning: it was a morning prayer, meant to say that you could die this day, so you should strive to do your best while you still lived.

From the echo of other voices within came the realization that the same words also meant something altogether different: they were a battle cry.

With a roar, Gratch shot into the air, his wings lifting him after only one bounding stride. Snow swirled, curling into the air under him, stirred up by the powerful strokes of his wings that also billowed open Richard’s mriswith cape.

Even before he could see them materialize out of the winter air, Richard could sense their presence. He could see them in his mind even though he couldn’t yet see them with his eyes.

Howling in fury, Gratch descended in a streak toward the the base of the steps. Near the columns, just as the gar reached them, they began to become visible—scales and claws and capes, white against the white snow. White as pure as a child’s prayer.

Mriswith.