Warheart

CHAPTER 8

Beside the stream, low rocks lay scattered through the area of gravel in more than enough numbers for each of them to have their choice of places to sit close to the fire. Kahlan had more urgent matters on her mind than lunch, but it did smell good and she was starving.

Red used a forked stick to push sizzling meat off the spits onto a flat rock where a pile of already cooked meat was cooling. It appeared by how much there was that she had been cooking all morning. Not only was there a variety of several different things, from what looked like boiled eggs to rabbit to fish, but there looked to be more than they could all eat. There were even some wild plums to the side.

Red gestured as she handed them each a sharpened, forked stick. “Go on, help yourselves. I know that you have been traveling hard and are all in need of a good meal.”

Cassia glanced at Kahlan. When Kahlan gave her a slight nod, Cassia and Laurin stabbed pieces of the rabbit meat. Kahlan started out with a couple of eggs. Nicci chose a piece of fish.

“Snake!” Vale said with delight as she found a long string of meat in the pile. “I haven’t had snake since I was young. It was always one of my favorites.”

“I know,” the witch woman said without looking up from setting aside the cooking rod. “That’s why I prepared it.”

“Thank you,” Vale said as she held up the string of meat between a finger and thumb. She bit off a long chunk from the bottom and chewed with obvious delight. “Delicious,” she told Red.

Red smiled.

Gravel crunched under Kahlan’s boots as she went to a rock on the opposite side of the bed of hot coals from where Red sat. Red’s rock of choice was taller than all the rest, so that once they were seated she looked down on them a little. Kahlan had seen enough queens holding court to get the point. As the Mother Confessor, she ruled over those queens, but at the moment that was about the last thing on her mind. She was content to let Red hold court if that was what pleased her.

Kahlan cracked the shell of an egg and started peeling it off. “What are you doing here, in this place?” She deliberately glanced around. “What brings you here?”

“Why, you do, Mother Confessor.”

“There must be more to it,” Kahlan said, not buying the simplicity of the answer. “We were on our way to see you at your home. You would have seen me there. Why come here, instead?”

“Well,” Red said with a flick of her hand, “I’m afraid that my place is a bit of a mess right now. I don’t mind it, but I wouldn’t feel right receiving guests there.”

Kahlan looked up from under her brow as she popped the shell off the small end of the egg. “What do you mean, it’s a mess? It’s a mountain pass. How could it be a mess?”

She bit off half the egg and chewed as Red’s sky-blue eyes studied her for a moment.

“Do you remember me telling you how I got my name?”

Kahlan swallowed the egg as she peeled the second one. It was a great relief to be eating something warm and fresh.

“Yes, you said it was because there were times when you made that mountain pass run red with blood.”

A small smile spread on the woman’s lips. “That’s right.”

“Are you saying that you had some sort of trouble there?” Nicci asked.

The witch woman ignored Nicci and instead glanced at the Mord-Sith in their red leather outfits–outfits designed to obscure the shocking sight of blood. The sight didn’t bother Mord-Sith, but it did others. All three were taking bites of meat off their forked sticks, but their gazes stayed on the witch woman. Kahlan could read Mord-Sith well enough to know that they considered the witch woman to be a potential threat. She was used to having Mord-Sith protecting her and Richard. She was glad to have them along. Like most Mord-Sith, these three were as guileless as they were deadly.

Kahlan missed Cara something fierce, but not as fiercely as she missed Richard.

“You see,” Red finally went on, looking from the other four back at Kahlan, “the demon–”

“Demon?” Nicci interrupted again. “What demon?”

The witch woman’s unsettling gaze glided to Nicci. “The one who belongs in the underworld. The one who came into this world where he does not belong. The one who would unbalance the worlds of life and death.”

“You mean Sulachan,” Nicci said, not the least bit intimidated by the look the witch woman was giving her.

“Of course.”

“So, what were you going to tell us about this demon, Sulachan?” Nicci asked.

“He seeks to bend the forces of the Grace until they break. In his time he–”

“We know,” Nicci said as she licked white flakes of fish from a finger. “What does this have to do with your home being a mess?”

Red idly rolled a red lock of hair around a finger as she studied Nicci with a hint of disapproval. “You are a very forward woman, aren’t you?”

Nicci shrugged as she stabbed another piece of fish from the pile on the rock. “We didn’t come for a social visit,” she said as she sat back down. “Every moment counts if we are to send the demon back to the underworld where he belongs. Time is precious–at least it is here in this world. I don’t think we have a lot of time to lose.”

Red conceded the point with a nod. “Well, from what I saw in the flow of time, he knew that you had escaped those he sent after you. He wanted all the soldiers annihilated. He wanted some, like Lord Rahl, the Mother Confessor, and anyone else gifted, captured and brought to him. He had plans for all of you and was furious that you escaped his grasp.

“The demon knew where you were headed, so he sent another force of his half people after you. A large force. He believed that this time they would not fail him.”

Kahlan glanced at Nicci out of the corner of her eye. This was news. She had expected that Sulachan might send more half people after them, but didn’t know that he had.

“So what happened?” Kahlan asked.

“The route you traveled to get to Saavedra took you through the only mountain pass in that area of the mountains. If the horde of half people wanted to get to you, they had to follow the same route and come through that same pass, my home, first.”

Kahlan swallowed some of her egg. Nicci paused eating her fish.

Cassia’s eyes widened. “You mean the half people chased you out of your home?”

The witch woman frowned at the Mord-Sith. “I don’t get ‘chased out’ of my home by anyone.”

“How close are they?” Nicci asked. “How much time until they reach us?”

Red clasped her fingers together around one knee. “I don’t think you understand.”

Kahlan did. “You killed them. You slaughtered them all.”

Nicci looked up, her gaze moving suspiciously from Kahlan to Red. “Witch women can’t personally take direct action to alter events of consequence.”

“True.” A smile widened on Red’s lips. “We don’t interfere with events in the flow of time–events of consequence, as you put it. While we see such events and try to use what we see to help those involved, those events must be allowed to run their course.

“For example, I told the Mother Confessor that you would kill Richard, and that she must kill you if she was to prevent that from happening. She chose a different path. As much as I advocated against such a choice, it was her choice to make. I could not kill you myself, I could only let her know what was going to happen if she did not act. The flow of time played out as I feared it would. It played out as I had warned.”

Cassia frowned and looked up before taking another bite of rabbit from the forked stick. “If you knew something bad was going to happen, like Lord Rahl dying, and you did not act to prevent it, then the death is your responsibility.”

“It might seem that way to someone who does not understand such things, but we can’t impose ourselves overtly, directly. That is just the way it is for witch women. While it might seem to others, like you, that such action would be the right thing to do, what others don’t see is that our altering events directly endangers the Grace itself.”

Cassia clearly wasn’t satisfied with the answer. “How does it do that?” she pressed.

“The Grace may seem simple,” the witch woman said, “but it is complexity beyond what most people could begin to understand. The demon understands such things. By using forces within the Grace, he seeks to destroy it. For example, he used Richard’s lifeblood to breach the veil. Things such as that endanger the stability, the balance, of the Grace and therefore of the world of life.

“It is the same way with a witch woman. It would be difficult to explain the tenets of our existence to one who is not specifically gifted as a witch woman, but take my word for it that restrictions exist for me just as they exist for you.”

Cassia looked first to one side and then to her sister Mord-Sith on the other side. “We have no restrictions. Except to follow orders.”

“Does your Agiel work?”

“Well, no.”

“That’s because it needs the bond to the Lord Rahl in order to function. That’s a restriction. That’s why your Agiel doesn’t work. Even if it does, there are restrictions to how it works. For example, you can’t use it on a Confessor–unless of course you want to die a horrific death.”

Cassia stared down at the meat on her stick without answering.

Red gestured around herself. “My restrictions have to do with the nature of all things, and they exist for sound reasons. One of those restrictions is that we can, if we choose, use what we find of events in the flow of time to help those involved understand the choices they have in the events that are to unfold, but we are not free to directly take part in those events we see. You might say that our place is to be advisors.

“If we directly, personally, take part in that flow, take actions ourselves, then the balance is destroyed because we would be acting on what we see. That is an unbalanced use of power, and all power must be balanced or it can be destructive. We could lose much more than we could ever gain.”

“You acted with Emperor Sulachan’s forces,” Cassia pointed out. “The Mother Confessor said that you killed them.”

“That was different. That army of half people took a route that brought them into the sanctuary of my home. That is sacred ground. That changes everything.

“Once they came, they intended to rip my flesh from my bones and devour it, thinking it possessed my soul and they could take it for themselves. They would have killed me to steal something that is not able to be stolen.

“The balance within our nature allows for us to respond to a direct threat to our lives.” The witch woman’s expression turned icy. “My valley pass ran red with their blood,” she said in a chilling, quiet tone. “Their corpses lay in heaps and mounds, food for my worms.”

Cassia finally swallowed her bite of rabbit. “Your worms?”

“Don’t ask,” Kahlan told the Mord-Sith under her breath. “So you killed them all?” she asked Red, wanting to get back to business.

“All but one.” Red looked up from the memory. “I’m afraid that it left the pass a bloody mess. Their blood ran in rivers and covers everything. And that is to say nothing of all the viscera and rotting corpses. The stench is quite unpleasant, I can assure you. Hardly the place to receive guests until they are all turned to nothing but bleached bones beneath the grasses. Besides, by coming here I met you somewhat in the middle and that saves you precious time.”

Red looked deliberately at Nicci. “You expressed a concern about time. I saw the flow of time, of course, and I knew the urgency of why you would come to me, so I thought to help you by meeting you partway.”

“That isn’t a violation of directly participating?” Cassia asked.

Red smiled indulgently. “No. That isn’t how it works. I came to advise. That is something I am born to do.”

“What do you mean you killed all but one?” Kahlan asked. “You said you killed all but one.”

“It’s rather complex, but basically since I interfered with events directly, even though I had every right to defend myself, I had to leave one of the enemy alive.”

Kahlan thought that was rather odd. “Why would you need to leave one of them alive?”

“To balance what happened. Even one is enough to fulfill the need for balance.”

Kahlan wasn’t satisfied. “How does leaving one alive balance killing a horde of them?”

She gestured among the five women before her. “I had to leave one for you to kill, since you are the ones this horde was after. You are the ones central to events. I had to leave one for you to kill to bring you into direct contact with the event in the flow. That makes you part of it. That is the balance, not the numbers involved.”

Red’s gaze finally moved deliberately to Nicci. “Speaking of killing, and the events in the flow of time, you realize that the Mother Confessor drastically altered the flow by sparing your life. She made the conscious decision to save your life.”

Nicci didn’t show any reaction. “It’s only fitting.”

Red looked genuinely puzzled. “In what way?”

“Her husband saved my soul.”

A small smile finally returned to Red’s lips. “You may have the chance to return the favor and save his.”