Witch's Oath

35

Richard gritted his teeth as he tightened his grip on her arm. “What are you talking about? What do you mean I’m doing it?”

Shale swallowed at the fire in his eyes. “As a sorceress I can sense a person’s individual gift, much the way you can recognize a person by their voice, or their eyes. Your gift, like everyone’s gift, has a unique feel to it, except yours is more recognizable and distinctive to me than most. The gift that empowers that wall of death, that boundary as you call it, is your gift.”

Richard stared at her for the longest time. “That’s impossible. I don’t have any idea how to create such a thing,” he finally said.

Shale pulled her arm back. “I didn’t say you did. But the feel of your gift is unmistakable to me. It is your gift that brought up that boundary wall.”

Richard growled in frustration. “It can’t be. I would have no idea how to do such a thing.”

“It’s in your blood,” Kahlan told him.

They all turned to her. “Your grandfather created the original boundaries,” she explained. “He’s the only one who could have. The awareness of the organic process involved with using his gift to create the boundaries must have somehow, in some way, been passed on to you along with his gift. You are a powerful and gifted war wizard, in many ways one of the most talented ever to live. Although you have never created a boundary before, the ability to do so is surely inborn in you.”

Richard pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to get a grip on the anger clearly boiling right at the surface. His head finally came up and he tried hard to maintain his composure.

“All right, let’s say that I have the inherent ability. Fine. But I didn’t do it. I would know if I used my gift to create something this profound.”

“I think that has to be true,” Shale agreed. “But that means that someone else used your gift to pull up that curtain of death across our path.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “If I didn’t do it, then who could have?”

Shale looked at a loss to explain it. “I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, but until now, if I hadn’t felt it myself—with my own gift—I would never have imagined such a thing was even possible. But then again, having been raised in the Northern Waste, my knowledge of the gift and all its capabilities is limited to what I learned from my father and mother. All I can say is that it has to be that someone powerful is usurping your gift.

“I can only imagine that it would take great power to do such a thing. You said there is no longer anyone powerful enough to do such a thing. But you told me before that gifted people can join their abilities together in order to do what none of them could do alone. Remember?”

His fists on his hips, he nodded. He stared at the sorceress for a time, his sense of reason finally rising up through his anger. He cooled considerably.

“That has to be the explanation. It has to be gifted people joining their power to be able to do this. That means that we’re likely not dealing with a single gifted person, but a group of them.”

“One gifted person, or a group, it has been done.” Kahlan spread her arms in frustration. “Either way, at this point the more relevant question is why would they do such a thing?”

“If they wanted to kill us, it’s highly unlikely that those powerful enough to do such a thing would think we would be foolish enough to simply walk into the boundary and be killed.” The calm demeanor of the Seeker was back. “The strange wood wasn’t life-threatening, it simply slowed us down. The boundary they put up must also be meant to stop us, not kill us. After all, stopping people from passing was the purpose of the boundaries.”

“But why?” Kahlan asked.

He paced off a ways, then turned and came back with a look that worried her. “I think they don’t want us getting away with the twins. I think their purpose is to keep us from going to the Keep where the twins would be safe.”

Kahlan looked off toward the new boundary. “That’s a frightening thought.”

Richard let out a sigh of resignation. He held up a hand as he thought out loud.

“We can’t get through that boundary to get any farther to the southwest in order to go around the mountains, so at this point our only two choices are to either go back to the People’s Palace or try to get to Aydindril by going straight northwest over the mountains. Back toward the palace, we will be attacked relentlessly by the Glee. They are determined to slaughter us. If we try to get to Aydindril by trying to get over those mountains, I can only assume we will encounter those who are doing all of this.”

Kahlan felt a rising sense of panic. “They want the babies.”

“We all will protect the twins,” Shale said.

With one hand on a hip, Richard rubbed his forehead with the fingertips of his other hand as he paced off a ways before finally returning to look at Shale.

“If it’s my gift doing this, then is there a way for you to … to, I don’t know, cut my gift off from it so that the boundary will lose its viability and come down?”

Shale looked off toward the boundary, as if she could still see it and hear the call of the dead.

“I suspect that now that it’s up, it no longer needs your magic to persist. Once it’s up, it’s up. After all, once your grandfather used his gift to create the ones before, they were there and they didn’t then need his gift to continue to exist, did they?”

“No,” he admitted. He let out a sigh. “What matters is that someone doesn’t want us to go south to take the twins out of reach.” He gestured toward the mountains. “We have nowhere else to go except that way.”

“Then it’s surely a trap,” Vika said as she stepped forward, unable to remain silent any longer. “We shouldn’t indulge them and walk into their trap. Especially since they have already proven that they have enough power that they can use your gift.”

Richard gave her a curious look. “Since when have the Mord-Sith not wanted to run headlong into trouble?”

“If it was me, and the others, we would do so in a heartbeat and without a second’s thought.” Vika gestured at Kahlan. “But the Mother Confessor carries the children of D’Hara and our hope for the future. It is for her that I am reluctant to take the risk.”

“Well,” he said, wiping a weary hand over his face, seeming a little surprised at how much sense she was making, “whoever used my gift has to be off that way. We don’t know what other unexpected things they might do if we don’t find them and stop them. Better on our terms than theirs.”

Kahlan felt trapped by the unknown. “But they obviously want us to try just that so they can get our children.”

Richard looked sympathetic but determined. “All the more reason we must find them and put a stop to it. The only way to protect the twins is to stop whoever is doing this, or just like the Glee, they will come after us in another way when we least expect it.”

Despite the terror of the implications, Kahlan knew he was right. She tried to sound positive. “I guess if we can stop this threat and, in the process, find a way over the mountains, we will end up much closer to Aydindril and we will reach the Keep all that much sooner.”

Richard smiled. “That’s what I’m hoping.” He gestured to the mountains. “The threat is that way. There are nine of us, so we have the Law of Nines on our side. The sooner we find and eliminate the threat, the better. With winter closing in those mountains will become even more treacherous. We need to get over them before the worst of it sets in. We can still make some distance before we need to make camp for the night so I think we should press on.”

He looked around at all the faces watching them. “Just be aware that going through those mountains will be difficult and dangerous even if we can beat the weather, and even without the threat that’s out there.”

Everyone gave him a grim nod.

With the decision made, everyone mounted up.

As soon as they started out, Kahlan rode up close to Richard so the others wouldn’t hear her. “I can tell by that ‘Seeker look’ in your eyes that you might know who could be waiting for us in that trap up there in those forbidding mountains.”

He rode in silence for a time before he gave her an unreadable look. “I have a nasty suspicion, but I’m not ready to say it out loud, yet.”

“Richard Cypher,” she admonished in the name she knew him by when she first came to know him and fall in love with him, a name that touched on deep history and meaning for them both, “don’t give me that. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

He gave her a look for using that name and then rode on for a time before answering. “I think we’re making it too complex. I think it all boils down to one simple question.”

Kahlan stared over at him as she swayed in her saddle. “What question?”

“When he was dying, Michec said that the witch’s oath didn’t begin and end with him. So who, then?”

Kahlan felt an icy jolt of realization wash through her veins.

“Shota.”