Into Darkness

12

The snow crunched underfoot in the cold, still air as they made their way up the path marked by cairns. Kahlan could smell woodsmoke mingled with the aroma of balsam and spruce. Richard and Vika led the way, poking their staffs into the snow ahead to make sure it didn’t hide any deep holes. Kahlan and Shale followed behind them, with the rest of the Mord-Sith guarding the rear. If the fortress up in the pass had sentries, they hadn’t seen any, yet.

The moonlight on such a clear night was proving to be more than enough to help them see their way. It was a little harder to make out the lay of the land in the dark pools of moon shadows as they passed under dense canopies of trees, but with the light reflecting off snow they were still usually able to make out the trail well enough.

In a particularly dense, dark section of the woods, Richard had Shale light a torch he made so they could see. Since they were going to the town in the pass, they would be seen soon enough, so it no longer really mattered if they were spotted by the light of that torch. When they once again emerged into bright moonlight, Shale turned the torch down and doused it in the snow.

It turned out that the fortress town they had spotted from that ridge the day before was a lot farther away than they had initially thought. As a result, as they finally drew closer after a long and strenuous hike and were better able to see the details of it, it became obvious that it was not only much larger than they had initially thought, but more complex.

At parts of the wall to either side, the wall itself continued up to become the walls of multistory buildings, their square windows looking out over the approach to the pass. Those windows looked to be more domestic than watchtowers. A great many more structures were crowded in behind them, rising up higher on the ascending slopes to each side, like building blocks stacked tightly together.

The pass itself was broader than it had appeared to Kahlan from a distance, meaning that the town partly built into the wall with more blocky buildings tightly stacked behind was larger than she had at first realized. The imposing wall stretched from the sharp rise of the mountain on the left to a similar soaring mountain on the right. Now that Kahlan was closer and could see that wall better, it was obvious to her that it was well built and looked quite formidable. Stained with water and age, it also looked ancient, as if it had been there for thousands of years.

As the trail led them closer to the base of the wall, they were finally able to spot a large, arched opening near the bottom. Two halves of a gate door stood open. The massive doors were made of wood held together with iron straps. Inside, beyond the doors, there was a portcullis made of crossed iron bars, but it was drawn up enough to easily allow admittance. The portcullis had spikes along the bottom to crush anyone if the heavy gateway were to be suddenly dropped on them. Through the tunnel that was the arched opening in the wall and beyond the portcullis, Kahlan could see broad steps bathed in moonlight.

Vika pointed with her staff. “What kind of tracks are these?”

Kahlan looked down and saw that in the trail they were following there were a lot of tracks from a big animal.

“Mountain lion,” Richard said without even needing to look down.

“That’s what I thought.” Vika frowned over at him. “They go right into that opening in the wall up there. Why would a mountain lion be coming and going from this fortress?”

“I guess we’re about to find out,” he said, clearly not yet wanting to say what he seemed to already know.

Kahlan didn’t especially like his answer that wasn’t really an answer. He knew more about what was going on than he was saying. She had to admit, though, that she did as well. She guessed that she was no more eager to put words to her suspicions and fears than was he.

She glanced up from time to time but didn’t see any guards patrolling along the top of the wall. As they went into the arched tunnel under the massive wall, it revealed at last how massively thick it was. The buildings up on top were obviously as broad as the wall itself. Everyone continually scanned the area, looking for trouble.

Kahlan thought it was just a little bit too easy for the gates into the wall to be wide open and the portcullis drawn up out of the way, like the maw of a beast inviting them in. As they started climbing the broad hill of stairs, Richard gave the Mord-Sith a hand signal. They spread out, some racing up the stairs, with others dashing off diagonally to the sides as they ascended.

When they finally reached the top of the long rise of stairs, Kahlan was stunned by what she saw. Spread out before them were row upon row of plants to each side of the wide path. Off in the distance beyond the fields of low plants were more of the blocky buildings, presumably homes. They were stacked along the base of the mountains to either side, all on top of one another, stepping their way up the steep slopes.

Richard paused and bent to lift a big leaf of one of the plants as he looked up at Shale. There was a long row of the plants with the same fist-shaped leaves.

The sorceress stared in disbelief. “Mother’s breath.”

Beyond the row of mother’s breath, there were expansive rows of many other herbs, some tall and spindly, some short and lush, some with blue flowers and others with yellow. Bright blue butterflies flitted along over the plants in the moonlight, pausing at flowers, presumably to drink nectar. There were vast rows of different kinds of plants stretching off to each side of the cobblestone path. Kahlan recognized some of the herbs, but not most of them. Some of the plants were exotic, crooked shapes unlike any she had seen before.

Far out ahead, beyond the fields of herbs, up against buildings, there were pens with animals. Kahlan could see pigs and sheep. Given the size of some of the other pens, she was sure that there must be milking cows in some of the buildings that had to be barns.

The place beyond the fields of herbs and the animals was not a village; it was more like a small town. There were square buildings built of stone stacked up along the rising ground to each side of the pass. Out ahead in the flatter ground beyond all the fields and animal pens there were yet more of the blocky buildings crowded together.

While most of the buildings were small, some were larger, with two, three, and in some cases four stories, but it looked to Kahlan like it was possible that each of those square buildings was an individual home. Like the stone walls themselves, all of the windows were square and devoid of any exterior decoration. Nor were any of the buildings at all fancy or adorned in other ways. The roofs were uniformly tile, making all the buildings appear simple and much the same. A few of the windows had lamplight coming from inside, but most were dark.

“It’s not cold here, inside the wall,” Richard said as he looked around at the growing fields of herbs.

Kahlan looked around, then, too, realizing when he said it that he was right. Not only wasn’t it cold, but there was no snow. It felt like a gentle spring night, with no sting of approaching winter. All the plants looked green and healthy. It was as if the wall also kept out the snow and cold.

Shale looked around in wonder. “The air is mild, mild enough to grow all these rare herbs.”

“I think we all know that there has to be some kind of magic involved,” Richard said.

The Mord-Sith all returned from scouting to form a protective ring around Richard and Kahlan. The ring tightened when they saw a man in the distance making his way toward them down the cobbled mountain-path road. He lifted an arm in a friendly greeting. He walked with an odd side-to-side sway to his gait, as if his knees didn’t bend very well.

“Welcome,” he called out when he was still some distance away, his arm repeatedly waving in greeting.

Despite his obvious difficulty walking very fast on his stiff legs, he did his best to hurry to meet the visitors. He finally came to a stop, wheezing a bit as he caught his breath.

“Welcome,” he repeated. “We were expecting you tomorrow, not this late at night, but welcome anyway. I’m Iron Jack.”

Kahlan could see where he got his name. He was quite stout-looking, with a thick neck, a full red beard, and a full head of wiry red hair. His thick features revealed that he was well beyond middle age, but he looked like a man made of iron, with his red hair giving him a rusty look, the kind of man who had been in many a battle in his years and had the scars to prove it.

Kahlan stepped forward, holding her hand back at her side in signal before Richard could say anything.

“I am the Mother Confessor.”

Richard arched an eyebrow at her when the man showed no reaction, least of all reverence.

Cassia stepped forward as she spun her Agiel up into her fist. “Perhaps you are hard of hearing. This is the Mother Confessor. You should be on at least one knee, and two if you had any common sense.”

He smiled as he gestured dismissively. “My knees don’t work so well anymore. Sorry, but I’ll not be able to kneel.”

He didn’t look at all concerned; Cassia did.

“Then maybe I can help you to—”

“It’s all right,” Kahlan said as she gently took Cassia by her upper arm and pulled her back. “It’s clear that the man has bad knees.”

Cassia looked in a mood to bite spikes in two. “His neck isn’t bad. He can at least bow his head.”

Iron Jack’s cheerful face suddenly didn’t look at all cheerful. “If it would speed matters along …” He performed a perfunctory bow of his head. “Mother Confessor. Welcome.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Kahlan saw Richard use two fingers of his left hand to lift his sword from its scabbard enough to make sure it was clear. She had seen him do that same thing as a prelude to the possibility of violence countless times since he had become Seeker.

But this time, the sword didn’t lift away from the scabbard.

Instead, the scabbard lifted with the sword as if the two were welded together. Richard tried not to betray his surprise, but Kahlan could read his reaction in the change of his posture. Kahlan didn’t usually become overly concerned when someone didn’t show the proper respect for the office of Mother Confessor, but with Richard’s sword suddenly not available to him, her level of concern rose several notches.

She returned her gaze from Richard to Iron Jack so as not to draw attention to what was clearly a problem.

“What is this place?” she asked the man before her.

“Why, you didn’t know?” Iron Jack lifted an arm and swept it around in grand fashion. “You have arrived in Bindamoon.”

“Bindamoon? This is Bindamoon?” Shale asked with a frown of surprise as she took a step forward. “I know of Bindamoon.”

Iron Jack’s tense expression eased and he beamed again. “Then you know what a wonderful place it is.”

Richard shot a suspicious look at the sorceress. “You’re from the Northern Waste. How do you know of it?”

“Some of the people in the Northern Waste trade in Bindamoon for rare herbs. Healers consider this place sacred. They make pilgrimages here to collect the rare herbs they need.”

Richard turned back to the blocky man. “You said that you were expecting us.”

“That’s right,” the man said, as if no explanation were needed.

Richard clearly wanted to hear that explanation. “How is it that you were expecting us?”

“The queen told us that you were coming.”

“The queen,” Richard repeated in a flat tone.

Iron Jack twisted around to lift an arm toward an elegant, soaring structure built on a prominent rise of rock in the distance.

“Yes, the queen. That would be her winter palace, up there.”

“We need to see this queen,” Richard said. “Now.”

Iron Jack, the mirth again vanishing from his gnarly features, lifted his eyebrows. “Oh, I’m afraid that isn’t possible.”