As they made steady progress ever higher, they entered low clouds. The soft gray blankets rolled over the jutting towers of rock as if trying to find a way down. As they climbed upward into the clouds it made the granite the horses had to walk over slick and the footing dangerous. In places the horses had difficulty on the steep ground only made worse in the wet. Their hooves slipped repeatedly before they could find adequate grip.
He knew that in such steep country going back down would be considerably more difficult for the horses than going up. It would likely be too dangerous in many places to ride down. For much of the way down he knew they would have to do the descent on foot, letting the horses pick their way without having to also deal with a rider who would make it more difficult for them to balance.
But first they had to find the plant Shale had sent them for. That was all that mattered.
Vika followed behind without comment. She was his sworn protector, after all, and in addition to wanting to find the mother’s breath, as Mord-Sith, Richard’s safety was her first responsibility. She knew how desperate he was to keep going despite how dark and dangerous it was getting, so she didn’t object. With the way the trees found places to grow in among the rocks they were picking their way over, even without the fog the canopies were too dense for them to see higher up and how much farther they would need to go.
Not long before, through an opening in the trees and despite the thickening fog, in a rare moment of clear sky he had been able to catch a brief glimpse of the mountains towering above them. Through that opening in the trees he had seen that the tree line was still a great distance away.
As it grew darker, he was having trouble picking out a passable route. On top of the darkness, the fog was making it difficult to see very far. Besides cutting visibility, the fog was creating an icy mist that was both miserable and slippery.
As they came up into a broad area that was somewhat level, their progress blocked by a fragmented granite wall, Richard frantically looked for a way up. Worried they were again going to have to backtrack, he suddenly spotted something in among the trees atop that vertical granite barrier.
“I think I see a trail.”
Vika rode up beside him and frowned. She looked to each side, seeing that there was clearly no way around.
“A trail? Are you sure?”
Richard pointed up at the top of the granite. “Look over there to that split in the granite wall. I think it might be a way up.”
“We can’t take the horses up that. It’s way too steep.”
“Yes, but it looks like there are boulders and rock jammed into that crevice that would allow us to climb up it on foot. Look at the top of the wall over to the left by that mass of tree roots coming down over the edge. What do you see?”
Vika rested her wrists on the horn of her saddle as she stood in the stirrups and leaned forward, squinting up at the top of the wall.
“That’s strange. It’s foggy and hard to see, but it looks like it might be several stones stacked atop one another.”
“Exactly.” Richard dismounted. “It’s a cairn.”
She frowned over at him. “What’s a cairn?”
“It’s a way to mark a trail in difficult areas where it would be easy or even dangerous to get lost and go the wrong way. If I’m right, and it’s not something natural, it would mean we have come across a long-forgotten trail.”
Vika held her long, single blond braid in her fist over the front of her shoulder as she frowned up at the top of the wall. “Why would there be a trail up here?”
“It could very well be an old trail leading over a pass. It has to be from before the boundary that ran up the spine of these mountains. If I’m right, it may be a way not only to get up higher to the tree line, but to get over these mountains. It could be a trail that leads over a pass and into the Midlands.”
“The horses can’t get up there, that’s for sure.”
“You’re right about that,” Richard said as he dismounted.
Once on the ground, he started to unbuckle the saddle girth strap. “We are going to have to leave them and go the rest of the way on foot. If it really is a trail, this would be an incredible stroke of luck. Once we find the mother’s breath and heal Kahlan, then we might even be able to get over the mountains on this trail. That would save us a lot of time getting to Aydindril.”
Vika scanned the area before she climbed down out of her saddle. “It’s pretty flat here, but what if the horses wander off?”
“It’s a risk we will have to take. Let’s get the saddles and tack off them,” he said.
“Should we take anything with us?” she asked.
Richard nodded. “We’d better at least take our packs.”
“We should also take some dried meat and whatever supplies we can carry,” she suggested.
“I have some oats tied to the back of my saddle. I will leave some of it out for the horses. That should keep them around.” Richard gestured to the left. “There is a little water running down off the rocks over there. It’s collecting enough for them to get a drink. After we get the saddles off we need to break out the travel candles. The light is fading fast, but if that really is a trail up there, the candles will help enough that we should be able to keep going.”
Vika glanced up toward the mountain they could no longer see. “Candles in the tin traveling cases won’t provide much light.”
“With the fog, even if it was still light out, we wouldn’t be able to see very far anyway. With the candles you can wait at that cairn up there while I scout ahead to see if I can find the next one. When I do, you can come catch up and then wait at that one until I find the next. In that way, if it really is a trail marked with cairns, we can keep going even in the dark.”
Richard dragged the saddle off his horse and set it on a rock. As Vika did the same, he spread some oats on a flat area of rock. The horses were eager to eat. After giving them a pat on the neck, he swung his pack and his bow up on a shoulder. Vika untied supplies from her saddle. She hoisted her pack up onto her shoulder.
Once Richard lit a strip of birch bark with a steel and flint and it flared up into flame, he then used that to light the candles. They immediately started out into the foggy darkness, climbing up the narrow split in the granite wall.
3
Not long after daybreak they had made it up near the tree line and left the trail to search for mother’s breath among where the snow had started to stick in patches. As eager as he was to find the plant, he had to be careful when he moved across the rocky ground they were searching. If he fell off the mountain, he wouldn’t be able to help Kahlan, and in the place where they were searching, there was certainly a danger of falling. With the fog now down below them, there was no telling how far it was down some of the drop-offs.
The trail they had found was marked well enough with cairns and took a route that made for much easier climbing, at last saving them a lot of time. Richard was sure the trail had to have been laid out long before the boundary between the Midlands and D’Hara had gone up because, like the mountain range, the boundary divided the lands, so there would have been no purpose for a trail over a pass that would have been cut off once the boundary was there. It was fortunate that the cairns were still standing after all that time, and even more fortunate that he and Vika had happened across it.
It had worked surprisingly well for Vika to wait at each cairn they found while Richard went ahead to find the next one. Then she would climb to him by the light of his candle and wait at that cairn while he went on ahead to find the next. It was slow going to do it that way, but still a lot faster than wandering aimlessly up the mountains and having to backtrack from dead ends or being forced to climb in difficult and dangerous areas, especially when there was no way to tell if after a lot of hard climbing it would end up providing a way to continue. Sometimes it didn’t.
They had climbed on the trail, following the cairns, throughout the entire night. Richard was too driven to find the pl
ant that could save Kahlan to stop and sleep. Vika was Mord-Sith. Mord-Sith were trained to do without sleep.
Once it had gotten light enough to see, they had been able to make much faster progress following the trail. But their method of continuing to cover ground throughout the night had helped make critically important progress. Now that they were finally up to where the trees were thinning out and they had daylight, they left the trail to search at the base of where the snow had begun to stick, hoping to find mother’s breath not yet killed by the ever-descending snow line.
“Lord Rahl!” Vika called out.
Richard had been using his hands to help keep his balance on the steep ground as he searched under brush and the lower sides of rock ledges that were still free of snow. Shale had told him that she needed living plants with their roots; she couldn’t use them if they had been killed by the snow.
He stood and looked off to his right. “What is it?”
“I found it!”
It felt as if his heart came up in his throat. He scrambled over a rounded projection of rock and through several patches of snow, then held on to low-growing, thick juniper brush to help keep from sliding down loose scree.
Richard found Vika sprawled on her belly in front of an opening in the rock. The rising sun was at their backs, so it lit the entrance to the small cave.
Vika pointed. “Look! It’s mother’s breath. It’s protected in here from the snow, so it’s still alive.”
There were three plants to her left, where she was pointing, and a couple more to the right side, just inside the cave’s maw. They had fist-shaped leaves just as she had told him. She had been right; after seeing those odd, lopsided leaves, he knew they were a plant that he would never forget. Just inside the opening of the cave, where Vika was on her belly, wouldn’t quite be high enough to stand in, but it was enough to protect the plants.
Richard looked deeper and suddenly saw what Vika hadn’t noticed in her desperate search for the rare plant, and her excitement at having found it.
In the snow to either side of the cave, and in the soft ground of the entrance, were the prints of a large cat. Farther back in the cave, where rays of the rising sun reached, he spotted a variety of bones.
Farther still, back in the darkness, Richard saw a pair of eyes reflecting the light.
When he thought he heard the low rumble of a throaty growl, he drew his sword.
Vika looked back over her shoulder when she heard the distinctive sound of his blade being drawn. “What’s the matter?”
Richard gestured with his sword. “There’s a mountain lion back in there.”
Vika froze. “What do we do?”
Richard carefully put one knee down beside her and leaned in, holding the blade protectively out over the top of her. He put his left hand on the back of her shoulder to keep her down as he spoke quietly, so as not to alarm the animal hiding back in the darkness.
“Dig up the three plants right there by your left hand. Shale said she needed the whole plant, so dig out the roots. We need to get all of the roots you can dig out. Three plants should be more than enough. Leave the other two on the other side to help them regrow. While you dig these three out, I’ll watch and make sure that mountain lion stays back.”
“All right,” she said as she quickly pulled her knife from the sheath at her side, drove it into the ground, and used it to help her start digging.
With her fingers and the blade she dug down through the relatively soft, rocky dirt, frantically flicking it back like a badger digging a den. As she worked, the animal back in the cave crept forward into the light enough for Richard to see its face and yellow eyes. It was indeed a formidably large mountain lion, and by its low, rattling growl, an unhappy one at that.
The creature drew back its upper lip, revealing big teeth, as it opened its mouth a little to let out a louder guttural growl. As it took another step forward with a big, broad paw, Richard poked the blade toward its face just enough to make his defensive intentions clear.
It took two steps closer, head hunched down, ears laid back, eyes locked on him. Powerful muscles in its shoulders flexed as it growled while taking another step closer.
“Don’t make me kill you,” Richard said to the beast. “I don’t want to kill you, but I will if I have to. Just wait a moment until we’re done here and then we will be on our way.”
For the time being, the blade was keeping it back. The mountain lion stopped, almost as if it understood his words. More likely, it understood the blade in its way.
Vika dug with her fingers as fast as she could, throwing the dirt back, trying to dig down and expose the roots without damaging them. All the while Richard and the mountain lion stared each other down.
Vika clawed at the ground and was finally able to bring the first plant out of the deep hole she had dug. It had a long, thick taproot. She got almost all of it out, shook the dirt off the roots, set it aside, then went back to excavating the other two. Richard could see that it wasn’t easy digging while on her belly, but she worked as fast as she could, letting out little grunts of effort. Her fingers were bloody, but that didn’t slow her down.
Richard carefully reached down with his left hand, as he kept the mountain lion at bay with the sword in his right, and set the mother’s breath already out of the ground safely up on a small ledge that formed the roof of the cave. When Vika, panting with the effort, brought out the second, he took it from her and set it up with the first. Having loosened the ground as much as she needed to with her knife, she returned it to the sheath and went back to clawing out the dirt around the roots of the third mother’s breath plant and flicking it behind.
“Got it!”
With the third plant in her left hand, Vika squirmed back. When she was back far enough, she got to her hands and knees under the protection of Richard’s sword and collected the other two as he continued to guard her.
After she had the three mother’s breath plants clutched in her hand, the two of them slowly retreated from the mouth of the cave. The mountain lion matched their movement, slowly slinking out with them while maintaining a safe distance, until it emerged from the darkness and into the light.
Richard gripped Vika’s arm with one hand and pulled her behind him while he held the sword out with the other. Together they moved off to the side away from the angry animal.
Once they had left it enough room to escape, the mountain lion emerged from the cave, gave them a long, uncomfortable look, and then gracefully bounded off to their right, over the snow and among the sparse trees.
“It’s heading toward the trail,” Vika said as she pulled out a blanket to wrap up the plants. “That’s an odd coincidence.”
Richard watched where the mountain lion was slipping away. “We’re long and well past the realm of coincidence.”
4
Quiet darkness was settling into the woods when Richard spotted Nyda on watch long before she spotted him and Vika. When she finally did see him, she ran out and whistled a birdcall he had taught the Mord-Sith to alert the others that they had returned.
Rikka then emerged from the thick underbrush behind him. He hadn’t spotted her. He was glad to see that they were using the tactic of positioning one person on watch so as to be spotted and distract anyone approaching. If it turned out to be a threat, the one still hidden could then take out that threat from behind. Even though he was glad to see them using their heads, he had more important things on his mind.
Richard and Vika were both exhausted from the long ride up the steep terrain, climbing the trail in the dark the entire night before, the hunt along the steep and difficult ground for the mother’s breath, the tense encounter with the mountain lion, and then the difficult journey back down the mountains to where they had left Kahlan, Shale, and the rest of the Mord-Sith.
As they galloped into camp, Richard leaped off his horse. Berdine ran in and took the reins of both horses as Vika jumped down and handed Richard the blanket with their precious cargo
. Shale was adding a stick of wood in the fire when she saw them ride in.
She stood and then rushed to meet them, brushing crumbs of bark from her hands. “Do you have it?”
Richard flipped open the blanket to show her. “How is Kahlan?”
Shale gently lifted out all three plants, using it as an excuse to divert her gaze. She looked amazed that they had actually found some mother’s breath.
“Three! This is wonderful, and you managed to recover them with their taproots intact. I had dared not hope you would find even one. This is exactly what we need.”
“I asked how Kahlan was.”
Shale looked up from under her brow. “The Mother Confessor is asleep.”
Richard gently grabbed Shale’s upper arm. “I asked how she is.”
The sorceress considered the intensity in his eyes briefly before answering. “She was losing the babies and her life along with theirs. The only thing I could think to do until you returned with the mother’s breath was to use my gift to immerse her in a form of very deep sleep. I had to put her in that place between life and death. You called it the cusp. My hope is that inducing such a profound sleep will slow down all the functions in her body enough to keep her from miscarrying. It was the only way I could think of to save her and the twins. So far, she still has the babies and she is still breathing.”
“But she will be all right.” It came out more like a command than a question. He didn’t like to hear that the sorceress had pushed Kahlan to the cusp between life and death. He didn’t like it one bit. But he didn’t want to second-guess her decisions. He knew the extent of the emergency, and that Shale would do everything she could to save Kahlan. “Now that we have the mother’s breath, will she be all right?”
Into Darkness Page 2
