Wasteland

5

Richard squatted down, holding the lantern out close to the ground to better highlight the ridges and depressions. There, in the soft dirt, he could see where Vika had come to a stop, and a short distance beyond that, where she had gone to her knees.

His blood ran cold when he saw that the man’s prints tracked around her while she had been there on her knees to turn and stand before her. In his mind, as he stared at the prints, Richard could picture a big man standing over Vika.

It made no sense, but the tracks were clear in the story they told.

“Someone has taken her,” he whispered to himself.

Berdine leaned in with alarm. “Taken her? That’s crazy. Who in the world could take a Mord-Sith?”

Richard gestured behind, then along the building, and finally to the prints on the ground before him. “Her footprints came from between the buildings, where I saw her go, then around behind the back of this building to right here.”

Berdine smoothed a hand back over her hair as she straightened after peering at the ground. “If you say so, Lord Rahl. I can read books, but I can’t read footprints.”

“Well, I can. Look,” he said urging Berdine to lean in again as he pointed. “See there, those impressions? That’s where Vika walked up to here and right there is where she knelt down.”

“Knelt down?” Her nose wrinkled skeptically. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. See this?” He hovered his hand over the indentations made by Vika’s knees. “See this depression? That’s not a footprint. It’s a knee print. It’s deeper where her knees bend and gets shallower as it goes back toward her ankles. See those little round impressions? Those are from the toes of her boots as she was on her knees. She knelt down right here.”

Berdine squinted in the lantern light. “I guess I can see what you’re talking about. It does make sense now that you explain the depressions in the ground.”

He touched the edge of the indentations. “See this? You can see where the wrinkles of her leather outfit as she knelt made these rows of little marks.”

Berdine leaned in, looking more closely this time. “All right, I see what you’re talking about now. But why would Vika kneel down in the dirt back here, in such a dark, out-of-the-way place?”

With his fingertips, Richard touched a couple of the other footprints. “These prints here are from a man who is big, but not as big as me. They come in here beside Vika’s prints—not in front of or behind, but beside her prints—then … ” He leaned over to point out the important part. “… then, see here? He walked around Vika right here, when she went to her knees. Right there. See that? See the prints turned around right there, the toes pointing toward her, right in front of her knee prints?

“That shows that he stood in front of Vika when she was on her knees.”

Berdine blinked as the meaning of it all sank in.

“Look at these prints here. After he stood there in front of her, she got back up. See that sideways indentation? That’s the side of the sole of her boot pushing the dirt sideways from her putting weight on her right foot as she got back to her feet in front of the man. That’s her prints standing, then, right in front of where she had been kneeling, right in front of the man facing her.”

Berdine was staring, her eyes wide. Her face had gone ashen.

Richard flicked a hand. “Then, the man’s prints twist around and they both go off in that direction, down that way, with the man leading, Vika right behind him.”

Berdine swallowed. Her blue eyes welled up with tears.

“He took her,” she said in a meek voice choked with those tears. “Lord Rahl, he took her.” She gasped back a sob. “It can’t be, but that’s the only explanation for why Vika would leave you without her protection, and why she would go to her knees like this.”

Richard finally stood. He whistled for the others; then he looked down at Berdine. “Berdine, what are you talking about? Do you know something about this?”

She choked back another sob as the others rushed around the building and came to an abrupt halt, looking expectantly at the two of them. Richard signaled them to be quiet and wait.

“It can’t be,” Berdine said to no one in particular as she stared off in the direction he had taken her. “But it has to be.”

She sounded forlorn and terrified. While Berdine was bubbly and cheerful, it was always filtered through a Mord-Sith’s iron temperament. Richard had never seen her behave in such a normal human way. Human feelings were suppressed in Mord-Sith. But with Richard as the Lord Rahl, he always hoped that their humanity would return to them. He had seen a number of instances where it rose to the surface. This seemed to be one of those times, yet not a joyful one. It made him ache for all she had been through.

When he reached out and gently held her by her shoulders, he could feel her trembling. He shook her just enough to make her look up at him.

“Berdine, what are you saying? Do you know who took her?”

“Moravaska.”

“Moravaska? Who is Moravaska?”

Her big eyes brimmed with tears. “Moravaska Michec.”

Richard frowned at her. The tears began to run down her cheeks as she shook. He could only imagine what would make a Mord-Sith tremble in fear.

“Berdine, who is Moravaska Michec?”

Berdine wiped tears back off her cheek as she swallowed. Her eyes turned away from him in embarrassment for having shown such emotion.

“A bad man. A very, very bad man.”

Kahlan gently circled a comforting arm around Berdine’s shoulders as she looked back at Richard. “What’s going on?”

When Richard saw the faces of the other Mord-Sith, there was no doubt that they all knew who Moravaska Michec was. But Berdine’s reaction was the strongest.

He gestured to the tracks to explain it to Kahlan. “See here? These are Vika’s tracks. She came around this building.” He pointed. “She stopped and knelt down there. A man walked around in front of her while she was kneeling, and then the two of them walked away in that direction.”

“Are you sure, Lord Rahl?” Shale asked, sounding more than a little skeptical. “You really believe you can tell all that just by looking at the ground?”

“Richard can track a cricket through a field of tall grass in a rainstorm at midnight,” Kahlan said to the sorceress.

Shale arched a cynical eyebrow.

“Figure of speech,” Kahlan said. “But Richard knows tracks. It’s what he was raised doing, what he used to do as a woods guide. If Richard says that’s what happened, then that’s what happened.”

Richard looked around at the Mord-Sith standing in a semicircle. “Who is Moravaska Michec?”

Nyda was the one who spoke up. “Michec was Vika’s trainer. She was taken when she was twelve and given to Michec to be trained. He tortured her for three years. After that first phase of her training, he eventually tortured her mother to death in front of her, but after keeping her alive for a long, long time to numb Vika to another’s pain. As her last stage of training to be Mord-Sith, when ordered, Vika had to torture her father, keeping him alive for a protracted period of time to demonstrate that she could keep a captive on the cusp of life and death for as long as she wanted. She was finally ordered by Michec to kill him. When she completed her training, and had been broken those three times, Michec took her as his mate.”

Richard knew all too well about a Mord-Sith’s training, but even so he stood in pain for a moment in the dragging silence. “Was Michec gifted?”

Nyda huffed. “Oh yes. That was part of how he was so easily able to control his trainees. Michec was feared here at the People’s Palace. Darken Rahl let him indulge his sick appetites, not merely with the Mord-Sith in training but on others as well. Darken Rahl ordinarily didn’t trust having strongly gifted people around him, but Moravaska Michec was so loyal and devoted to the cause that Darken Rahl trusted him.”

“Then that must have been how he captured her, here,” Richard said. “With his gift and the power he had over her.”

“She would have been kneeling in front of him,” Nyda said in a flat tone that unlike Berdine’s seemed devoid of all emotion, “so that he could have put a training collar back around her neck and attached a chain to it.”

Richard knew all too well about the collar and chain.

In the terrible silence, Berdine, still turned away, said, “Vika wasn’t the only one Moravaska Michec trained. Not the only one he took as his mate.”

Now he understood Berdine’s reaction.

“But Vika was with Hannis Arc,” Richard said. “That’s where I first came into contact with her. She was his most trusted protection, always at his side. When they had me captive for a time, I told her that her life could be her own. She eventually came to believe me. She’s the one who killed Hannis Arc to join with us.”

Nyda nodded. “Long before that, Vika belonged to Michec. He gave her to Hannis Arc on the condition that if and when he no longer had need of her services, she was to be returned to him. Hannis Arc liked the status of having a Mord-Sith at his side. But Vika always belonged to Moravaska Michec. She was his property.”

Richard rested the palm of his left hand on the pommel of the sword in the scabbard at his left hip. “So then when she killed Hannis Arc, she was supposed to go back to Michec.”

“Yes,” Nyda said. “But she instead swore loyalty to you. Against all the training and despite being the property of Moravaska Michec.”

Richard was incensed at such a concept. “She belongs to no one but herself.”

“We have to go find her,” Berdine said, the strength returning to her voice. “We have to.”

“What we have to do,” Shale said in a sympathetic but firm tone, “is get the horses and supplies we need and get away from the palace. It’s dark. Sentries won’t be able to see which way we ride off. I can help to make sure of it.”

“That would mean the death of Vika,” Richard said.

“A very long and torturous death,” Nyda added.

Shale didn’t shy away from Richard’s glare. “Vika knows the possible price of her loyalty to you. She knows that her sacrifice might be necessary to protect you. It was what she chose. For your safety, for the Mother Confessor’s safety, and for the future hope of everyone in this world carried in the gift of those babies, we need to get to the Keep. Delay would risk everything.”

“We don’t leave one of ours behind if there is any chance we can save them,” Kahlan said with quiet authority.

“I understand, Mother Confessor, but—”

“We would come after you,” Richard said in an equally quiet voice.

Staring up at him, Shale considered for a long moment. “I am a witch woman. No one would come after me.”

“We would,” he said without hesitation.

Her brow twitched as she seemed captured in his gaze, unable to look away. Finally, her voice returned.

“Let’s go get Vika back.”