Blood of the Fold

Chapter 39

Kahlan clutched Adie’s arm in one hand and a sword in the other as they ran. In the darkness, they both stumbled over Orsk, falling hard. Kahlan yanked her hand back from the warm mass of his guts in the snow.

“How . . . how could he be here!”

Adie panted, trying to catch her breath. “It be impossible.”

“There’s enough moon to see. I know we’re not going in circles.” She took a quick swipe against the snow, smearing the gore from her hands. She scrambled to her feet, pulling Adie up with her. There were bodies, clad in red capes, scattered all about. They had had only one fight. There couldn’t be other bodies. And Orsk . . .

Kahlan swept her gaze along the tree line, looking for the men on horseback. “Adie, remember the vision Jebra had? She saw me going in circles.”

Adie brushed the snow from her face. “But how?”

Kahlan knew Adie couldn’t run much more. She had used her power to fight, and she was near dead with exhaustion. The force of her magic unleashed had been a terror to the attackers, but there were too many. Orsk must have killed twenty or thirty by himself. Kahlan hadn’t seen Orsk killed, but she had come across his body three times now. He had been cut nearly in two.

“Which way do you think we must go to get away?” she asked the sorceress.

“They be back there.” Adie pointed. “We must go this way.”

“That’s what I think, too.” She pulled Adie the other way. “We’ve been doing what we think we should, and it’s not working. We have to try something else. Come on. We must do what we think is wrong.”

“It could be a spell,” Adie offered. “If it is, you be right. I be too tired to feel it if there be one.”

They charged through the bramble and down a steep slope, half running, half sliding down the snow. Before she bounded over the edge she saw the horsemen spring from the cover of trees. The snow at the bottom was drifted into deep banks. They both struggled through them toward trees. It was like trying to run in a quagmire.

A man suddenly came out of the night and drove down the slope after them. Kahlan didn’t wait for Adie to try to use her magic. There was no time if she failed.

Kahlan spun, bringing the sword around. The man in the red cape swept his sword up defensively as he plunged onward. He wore an armored breastplate. Her strike would be wasted on his armor. He was protecting his face—an instinctive reaction, but a fatal move against someone trained by her father, King Wyborn. Men in armor fought with false confidence.

With all her strength, Kahlan took her sword low instead. It jolted to a halt when it hit his femur. The man, the muscle of his thigh cleaved, tumbled with a helplessly cry to the trampled ground.

Another man leapt over top of him toward her. His red cape sailed open in the night air. Kahlan brought her sword up, slashing the inside of his thigh, severing the artery. As he fell past her, she hacked his hamstring.

The first cried out in panic. The second man cursed at the top of his lungs, calling her every vile name she had ever heard as he crawled ahead, brandishing his sword, provoking her to dare to fight him.

Kahlan remembered her father’s counsel: Words can’t cut you. Ward only for steel. Fight only steel. She didn’t waste the time to finish them; they would probably bleed to death in the snow, and even if they didn’t, maimed as they were, they couldn’t come after her. Clutching each other’s arms, she and Adie fled onward into the trees.

Panting in the darkness, they wove their way through the snow crusted fur trees. Kahlan realized Adie was shivering. She had lost her heavy cloak at the very beginning. Kahlan pulled off her wolf-hide mantle and threw it around Adie’s shoulders.

“No, child,” Adie began to protest.

“Wear it,” Kahlan commanded. “I’m sweating, and anyway, it only slows my sword.” In truth, her sword arm was so weary she could hardly lift the thing, much less swing it. Only fright powered her muscles. For now, that was enough.

Kahlan no longer knew which way she was running. The two of them simply ran for their lives. When she wanted go right, she went left instead. The trees they ran through were too thick to see the stars, or the moon.

She had to get away. Richard was in danger. Richard needed her. She had to get to him. Zedd should be there by now, but anything could go wrong. Zedd might not make it. She had to.

Kahlan slapped a balsam branch aside, struggling into a small open area of ledge wind-blown nearly clean of snow. She started to a halt. Before her stood two horses.

Tobias Brogan, the lord general of the Blood of the Fold, smiled down at her. A woman in tattered scraps of colored cloth sat on a horse beside him.

Brogan knuckled his mustache. “And what have we here?”

“Two travelers,” Kahlan said in voice as cold as the winter air. “Since when has the Blood taken to robbing and butchering helpless travelers?”

“Helpless travelers? Hardly. The two of you must have killed over a hundred of my men.”

“We have been defending our lives from the Blood of the Fold, which if it thinks it can get away with it, attacks people it doesn’t even know.”

“Oh I know you, Kahlan Amnell, Queen of Galea. I know more than you think. I know who you be.”

Kahlan’s fist tightened on the hilt of the sword.

Brogan stepped his big dappled gray closer, a gruesome grin overcoming his face. He rested an arm on the pommel as he leaned forward, his dark eyes holding her in their malevolent grip.

“You, Kahlan Amnell, be the Mother Confessor. I see you for who you be, and you be the Mother Confessor.”

Kahlan’s muscles locked tight, her breath held prisoner in her lungs. How could he know that? Had Zedd removed the spell? Had something happened to Zedd? Dear spirits, if anything happened to Zedd . . .

With a cry of rage, she brought the sword around in a mighty swing. At the same time, the woman in the tattered rages flung a hand out. With a grunt of effort, Adie cast out a shield. The blow of air from the woman atop the horse brushed past Kahlan’s face, flicking her hair out. Adie’s shield had saved her.

Kahlan’s sword flashed in the moonlight. The night air cracked as her blade sundered the horse’s leg under Brogan.

The horse screamed as it thudded to the ground, pitching Brogan into the trees. At the same time, a gout of flame from Adie enveloped the other horse’s head. It reared wildly, throwing the woman whom Kahlan now knew to be a sorceress, too.

Kahlan snatched Adie’s hand and yanked her away. They scrambled desperately into the brush. All around, she could hear men and horses crashing through the trees. Kahlan didn’t try to think where she was going; she simply ran.

There was one thing she hadn’t resorted to, yet; she was saving her power as her last recourse. It could only be used once, and then would take hours to recover. Most Confessors took a day or two to recover their magic. The fact that Kahlan could recover her power within a couple of hours marked her as one of the most powerful Confessors to have ever been born. That power didn’t seem like much, now. One chance.

“Adie.” Kahlan gasped, trying to catch her breath. “If you can, if they catch us, try to slow one of the two women.”

Adie didn’t need further explanation. She understood; both the women chasing them were sorceresses. If Kahlan had to use her power, that would be the best use of it.

Kahlan ducked at a flash of light. A tree beside them crashed down with a deafening roar. As the snow cleared in rolling clouds, the other woman, the one who had been afoot, marched forward.

Beside the woman was a dark, scaled creature, looking half man, half lizard. Kahlan heard a cry come from her throat. It felt as if her bones wanted to jump out of her unmoving flesh.

“I’ve had quite enough of this nonsense,” the woman said as she strode forward, the scaled thing at her side.

Mriswith. It had to be mriswith. Richard had described them to her. This nightmare creature could only be a mriswith.

Adie darted closer, casting sparkling light toward the woman. The woman flicked her hand, almost indifferently, and Adie went down, the sparkles settling harmlessly to the snow.

The woman bent, took Adie’s wrist, and cast her away like a chicken for later plucking. Kahlan burst into action, diving forward with her sword.

The thing, the mriswith, swept before her like a gust of wind. She saw its dark cape billow open as it spun past. She heard the ring of steel.

She realized she was on her knees. Her empty sword hand tingled and stung. How could it move that fast? When she looked up, the woman was closer. Her hand came up, and the air shimmered. Kahlan felt a blow to her face.

She blinked the blood from her eyes, seeing the woman lift her hand again, her fingers curling.

The woman’s arms suddenly splayed in the air as she was hit from behind by a mighty wallop. Adie must have used everything she had left. The invisible blast of magic from Adie, hard as a hammer, threw the woman forward. Kahlan caught her hand as she tried desperately to snatch it back.

It was too late. Everything slowed in Kahlan’s mind. The sorceress seemed to be suspended in midair, Kahlan gripping her hand. Time was Kahlan’s, now. She had all the time in the world.

The sorceress began to gasp. She began to look up. She began to flinch. In the calm center of her power, her magic, Kahlan was in control. The woman had no chance.

As Kahlan watched, she could feel the magic within, the Confessor’s magic, rip through every fiber of her being, screaming onward.

In that timeless place of her mind, Kahlan released her power.

Thunder without sound jolted the night.

As the concussion slammed through the air, even the stars above seemed to stagger, as if a celestial fist had struck the great, silent bell of the night sky.

The shock shuddered the trees. A ring of snow lifted, billowing outward in a ring.

The impact of magic had knocked the mriswith from its feet.

The woman looked up, her eyes wide, her muscles slack.

“Mistress,” she whispered, “command me.”

Men were crashing through the trees. The mriswith was staggering to its feet.

“Protect me!”

The sorceress sprang up, spinning with a hand out. The night ignited.

Lightning ripped through the trees in an arc. Tree trunks exploded as the twisting line of light sliced across them. Splintered wood spun through the air, trailing smoke. Men were no less naked before the rending violence than were the trees. Not so much as a scream escaped their lungs, nor would it have been heard above the pandemonium.

The mriswith vaulted toward her. Scales, like the feathers of a bird hit by a rock from a sling, filled the air.

The night roared with fire. The air was rife with flame, flesh, and bone.

Kahlan wiped blood from her eyes, trying to see, as she scooted backward across the snow. She had to get away. She had to find Adie.

She bumped into something. She thought it must be a tree. A fist snatched her by the hair. She reached for her power, realizing too late that it was gone.

Kahlan spit blood from her mouth. Her ears rang. And then there was pain. She couldn’t push herself up. Her head felt as if a tree had fallen on it. She heard a voice above her.

“Lunetta, put a stop to this at once.”

Kahian turned her head in the snow and saw the sorceress she had touched with her power seem to grow bigger, to come apart. Her arms went in two different directions. That was all Kahlan could recognize as a cloud of red misted the air where the woman had been.

Kahlan slumped into the numbing snow. No. She couldn’t give up. She twisted up onto her knees, pulling her knife. Brogan’s boot caught her in the middle.

Looking up at the stars, she tried to draw a breath. She couldn’t. Cold panic swept through her as she tried to get air. It wouldn’t come. Her stomach muscles clenched in spasms, but she couldn’t get a breath.

Brogan knelt beside her, pulling her up by her shirt. Breath finally came in convulsing coughing, choking, pulls.

“At last,” he whispered. “At last, I have the prize of prizes—the Keeper’s most precious pet, the Mother Confessor herself. Oh, you have no idea how I’ve dreamed of this day.” He backhanded her across the jaw. “No idea at all.”

Kahlan labored for air as Brogan twisted the knife from her grip. She fought to keep her mind from going black. She had to remain conscious if she was to think, if she was to fight.

“Lunetta!”

“Yes, my lord general, I be here.”

Kahlan felt the buttons on her shirt pop off as he ripped it open. She weakly lifted an arm to check his hands. He batted the arm away. Her arms felt too heavy to lift.

“First, Lunetta, we must take her before her power returns. Then we will have all the time we want to question her before she pays for her crimes.”

He leaned closer in the moonlight, leaning a knee into her gut, holding her down. She fought to get air back into her lungs, but then it rushed out with a scream as his brutal fingers wrenched her left nipple.

She saw the knife come up in his other hand.

With wide eyes, she saw a white glimmer before Brogan’s grin. In the moonlight, three blades poised before his bloodless face. Kahlan’s eyes, along with Brogan’s, turned to see two mriswith above them.

“Releassse her,” the mriswith hissed, “or die.”

Kahlan covered the piercing pain in her breast when he had done as he was told. Her eyes watered with the intensity of hurt. At least it helped clear them of the blood.

“What be the meaning of this,” Brogan growled. “She be mine. The Creator wishes her punished!”

“You will do as the dreamssss walker commandsss, or you will die.”

Brogan cocked his head. “He wishes this?” The mriswith hissed confirmation. “I don’t understand . . .”

“You question?”

“No. No, of course not. It will be as you advise, sacred one.”

Kahlan was afraid to sit up, hoping they would tell Brogan to let her go, next. Brogan stood, backing away.

Another mriswith appeared with Adie, shoving her to the ground beside Kahlan. The sorceress’s touch on Kahlan’s arm said without words that she was all right, if bruised and cut. Adie put an arm around Kahlan’s shoulders and helped her sit up.

Kahlan hurt everywhere. Her jaw throbbed where Brogan had hit her, her stomach ached, and her forehead stung. Blood was still running into her eyes.

One of the mriswith selected two rings from a number looped over its wrist, and shoved them at the sorceress in tattered rags—Lunetta, Brogan had called her. “The other is dead. You must do it instead.”

Lunetta, looking puzzled, took the rings. “Do what?”

“Use your gift to put these around their neck, so they can be controlled.”

Lunetta pulled and one of the collars snapped, coming open. She seemed surprised, even pleased. Holding it out, she bent over Adie.

“Please, sister,” Adie whispered it her native tongue, “I be from your homeland. Help us.”

Lunetta paused, looking into Adie’s eyes.

“Lunetta!” Brogan kicked her rump. “Hurry up. Do as the Creator wishes.”

Lunetta snapped the metal collar around Adie’s neck, then shuffled over to Kahlan and did the same. Kahlan blinked at the childlike smile Lunetta gave her.

Kahlan reached up after Lunetta straightened, and felt the collar. In the moonlight, she thought she recognized it, but when she felt the smooth metal and could no longer find the seam, she was sure. It was a Rada’Han, like the Sisters of the Light had put around Richard’s neck. She knew that those sorceresses used the collar to control him. The purpose must be the same for them: to control their power. Kahlan suddenly feared that her power would not be returning in a few hours.

When they reached the coach, Ahern was there, at the point of a mriswith blade. He had told Kahlan, Adie, and Orsk to dive out of the coach on a curve and he would lead their pursuers away from her. A bold, and brave, move that, in the end, had failed.

Kahlan was suddenly relieved she had made everyone else go to Ebinissia, as planned. Kahlan had told Jebra to care for Cyrilla, and the rest of die men to carry out their plans to bring Ebinissia back from the ashes. Kahlan’s sister was home. If Kahlan died, Galea still had a queen.

Had she brought any of those gallant young men, these mriswith, these nightmare creatures of the wind, would have gutted them all, as they had done to Orsk.

She felt a pang of sorrow for Orsk, and then a claw shoved her into the coach. Adie was pushed in right behind her. Kahlan heard a brief conversation, and then Lunetta climbed in the coach, sitting across from Kahlan and Adie. A mriswith entered and sat beside Lunetta, its beady eyes taking account of them. Kahlan pulled her shirt closed and tried to wipe the blood from her eyes.

She heard more talking outside, something about replacing the runners on the coach with wheels. Through the window, she saw Ahern, at swordpoint, climb up to the driver’s seat. The man in the red cape followed him up, and then another of the mriswith.

Kahlan felt her legs trembling. Where were they taking them? She was so close to Richard. She clenched her teeth, holding back a wail. It wasn’t fair. She felt a tear roll down her cheek.

Adie’s hand slid between their legs, and by its little movement against her thigh, she read the comfort in that touch.

The mriswith leaned toward them as its slit of a mouth seemed to widen in a grim smile. It lifted the three-bladed knife in its claw, giving it a little wiggle before their eyes.

“Try to esssscape, and I will ssslice the bottoms of your feet.” It cocked its smooth head. “Understand?”

Kahlan and Adie both nodded.

“Speak,” it added, “And I ssslice out your tonguesss.”

They nodded again.

It turned to Lunetta. “With your gift, through the collar, seal their power. Like I show you.” It put a claw to Lunetta’s forehead. “Understand?”

Lunetta smiled with comprehension. “Yes. I see.”

Kahlan heard Adie grunt, and at the same time she felt something tighten in her own chest. It was the place where she always felt her power. In dismay, she wondered if she would ever feel it return. She remembered the forlorn emptiness when the Keltish wizard had use magic to make her lose the connection with her power. She knew what to expect.

“She bleeds,” the mriswith said to Lunetta. “You must heal her. Skin brother would not be pleased if she were scarred.”

She heard the whip snap, and Ahern’s whistle. The coach lurched ahead. Lunetta leaned forward to heal her wound.

Dear spirits, where were they taking her?