Witch's Oath

29

Kahlan laid the reins down on her horse’s neck and then rested her wrists on the saddle horn. She sat quietly, waiting, as Richard stared off at something. They had been riding since first light, and she was getting saddle-sore. As she waited, she put her hands on her sides and stretched in both directions as best she could.

Whatever it was he was staring at had Richard looking troubled, so much so that his behavior was beginning to spook her. She didn’t like it when he turned quiet like this. It usually meant trouble.

A light mist tingled against her face, feeling like icy little sparkles. The weather had been gloomy for the past three weeks. Or was it four? The monotony of it was getting to be mind-numbing. Somehow, she felt as if she was losing count of the days as they made their way endlessly through a quiet wood of tall pine and fir on their way southwest.

Soft streamers of hazy light angled down in long shafts among the towering tree trunks, illuminating the veils of mist floating in the occasional breath of gentle breeze. Here and there small stretches of granite ledges broke up through the forest floor. A light fog moved silently among some of the fern beds between the rock outcroppings. The towering canopies of the trees left it somber and deathly quiet down on the forest floor. Because of the perpetual shade, little brush grew, leaving the ground open among the trees.

Down where they were, with the thick canopy so far above them, not even the wind reached them. While it was quiet now, she had on some days heard the distant sound of the wind gusting far above them. Sometimes, in the drizzle, the only sound was water that collected on the pine needles letting go and dripping down to splatter on the large leaves of moose maples. She was tired of huddling under rain gear. It never kept them completely dry, making for miserable travel. She ached for the warmth of sunlight.

Everyone else waited behind Richard and Kahlan as he silently studied something. She was getting impatient.

“You know, for some reason, I feel like I’ve seen that rock before,” Kahlan said to break the silence. She swiped accumulated mist off her brow. As she flicked the water off her finger, she gestured ahead. “That one there, the one that looks like a big nose on the side. It looks familiar.”

Richard finally turned a troubled look back toward her. “That’s because you have seen it before. This is the third time we’ve come this way.”

Kahlan blinked in disbelief. Richard grew up as a woods guide. The forest had been his home for much of his life. He didn’t lose his bearings in the woods.

“How is that possible?”

He turned away toward the rock again. “I don’t know.”

“What’s the problem?” Shale asked from behind them.

Richard stood in the stirrups and looked back at the others. “Do any of you recognize this place?”

Baffled, Berdine glanced around. “Recognize it? How could we? Trees all look the same. How could we possibly recognize one place from another?”

Nyda looked about. “The woods all look the same to me, too.”

The rest of the Mord-Sith all nodded their agreement. Mord-Sith weren’t exactly familiar with forests, so Kahlan wasn’t surprised they thought that trees all looked the same.

“So what’s going on?” Shale asked, clearly getting impatient.

Rather than answer her question, he asked her one instead. “What direction are we heading?”

Perplexed, Shale lifted an arm to point out ahead. “Southwest. We’ve been heading southwest for weeks.”

“I don’t know a whole lot about the woods,” Cassia said, “but I’m pretty good with direction. Shale is right. We’ve been heading southwest the whole time. Straight as an arrow,” she added.

Shale regarded him with a curious look, sensing that something was amiss. “Do you for some reason think differently?”

“No,” Richard said, “I agree, we’ve been heading southwest for a long time.”

“So what’s the problem?” the sorceress asked.

“The problem is, despite going in the same direction the whole time, straight as an arrow, as Cassia put it, this is at least the third time we’ve been in this exact same spot. Without a road or path, we are moving randomly among the trees, so even traveling in a big circle we wouldn’t necessarily come across the exact same ground. Yet this time we did. If fact, this is the third time we have been in this same place in the woods.”

The Mord-Sith, now alert, all looked around. Shale rode her horse forward, closer to Richard and Kahlan.

“What are you talking about? That’s impossible.”

Richard gestured ahead. “Do you recognize that rock?”

Shale wet her lips as she hesitated. “As a matter of fact, I might. I seem to remember it because it looks like a nose growing out of the left side.”

“You mean we’ve been traveling around in a big circle?” Vika asked as she rode her horse up on the other side of Richard.

He nodded. “I believe so.”

“We can’t afford to waste time riding around in circles.” Shale was beginning to sound more than a little aggravated, as if she thought he was doing it deliberately. “I thought you were a woodsman, or something.”

“Or something.” Richard sighed as he laid both wrists over the horn of his saddle. “All I can tell you is that as far as I know, we have been riding southwest for weeks, but this is at least the third time we’ve come across this rock. That can only mean that we are traveling in circles.”

Shale glanced around suspiciously. “Well, have you seen hoof prints from all our horses to confirm your suspicion? If we’ve been here before, there should be some signs to confirm it.”

Richard shook his head unhappily. “No, I haven’t. But I know we’ve been in this spot before. I can’t explain it, but I’m telling you, we are somehow going in a circles.”

“Maybe it just looks like another rock we saw before,” Berdine suggested. “The rocks all have different shapes, but a lot of them are kind of similar-looking—like the trees. Maybe this one only looks similar to ones that you’ve seen before.”

He gestured around at the woods. “Look at the type of forest we’re in. It never changes.”

Berdine wrinkled up her expression at what he could be talking about. “Of course not. Woods are woods. They all look the same.”

“No they don’t,” Richard said with quiet disagreement. “At least, they shouldn’t. As you travel you move into different areas. Vegetation changes. Trees grow different sizes with different soil conditions. Rocks and the terrain change from time to time. Sometimes windfalls will create openings for a meadow, or a tree nursery to spring to life. But the woods we’ve been in have not changed since about the time we entered them.”

“Now that you mention it,” Kahlan said, “the woods have been looking pretty much just like this for weeks, now. That is odd. We should be getting somewhere, but it doesn’t seem like we are.”

Richard nodded. “That’s because we are somehow riding in a big circle.”

“Well, except for the first day, it has been cloudy and drizzly for the entire time,” Vika said. “It has been too overcast to see for sure where the sun is in the sky, and down here, under the cover of trees, it is even harder to tell.”

“You’re right, but the sun isn’t the only way to tell direction,” Richard said. “More than that, though, something feels wrong.”

Shale squinted at him. “Like what? What are you suggesting?”

Richard sighed as he shook his head. “Maybe it’s been too long since I’ve been in the woods. Maybe my skills have gotten rusty and something is confusing my sense of direction.”

Kahlan thought that highly improbable, but she didn’t want to say it out loud.