“It was a strange place,” Rikka confirmed from behind. “I feel like I didn’t really wake up until Lord Rahl got us out of there.”
“Speaking of Lord Rahl,” Nyda said, using the opportunity to walk her horse up closer, “what do you think could be taking him so long?”
Kahlan couldn’t imagine. She had been trying not to worry about that very thing.
“He and Vika have been gone way too long,” Berdine said. “I think we should go after him.”
Kahlan hooked some of her long hair behind an ear as she looked back. “He told us to wait here while he scouted ahead.”
Berdine leaned forward in her saddle to gesture. “That’s the other thing. Why would he do that? It doesn’t make any sense. He is always saying that the nine of us have to stay together because of his magic law thing.”
“The Law of Nines,” Kahlan murmured. “But now that I think about it, it did seem like maybe he was looking a bit restless and distracted, like something was wrong.” She turned back in her saddle to look at all the Mord-Sith in their red leather. “Did any of you pick up on that?”
After sharing blank looks, they all shook their heads.
“We don’t know his small mannerisms nearly as well as you do,” Nyda said. “You would be the first to recognize it if he was acting differently.”
Kahlan idly rubbed her palm on the saddle’s horn as she started to remember the odd little signals that told her something was bothering him. She hadn’t put them together at the time. She should have.
“Now that I think about it, why wouldn’t he tell us all we could go ahead and dismount, if he was planning to be gone this long?” That was one more thing that confirmed to her that she had good reason to worry.
“Do you want to go look for him?” the sorceress asked.
Kahlan thought it over briefly, finally forcing out an unhappy breath. “No. The woods in this area are pretty dense. There are low spots with bogs making it a maze to get through. We don’t know the route Richard took. He knows where we are and how to find us as long as we stay here. We shouldn’t take the chance on going a different way and getting separated.”
Too troubled to sit still any longer, she swung her leg over the back of her horse to get down. “But I’m tired of sitting in the saddle.”
The rest of them agreed with her sentiment and were happy to dismount. After staring off into the distant woods for a while longer, Kahlan tied the reins of her horse to a branch so she could pace. A few of the others sat on a nearby outcropping of granite ledge covered with colorful splotches of lichen, and a couple of the others on a log. Kahlan saw a squirrel, up on a branch, chirping down at them to get out of its territory.
As she paced, she had a sudden thought. “When we were in that wood, do any of you remember seeing any animals?”
Shale thought it over briefly. “No, as a matter of fact, I can’t say that I do. But now, when I try to remember that strange wood, for some reason, the memory of the place seems dim and distant, like a dream you forget later on.”
Cassia snapped her fingers. “That’s it, exactly. That’s how I feel thinking back on it. Like it was a dream. Now that I think about it, I can’t even say that we were really there.”
The others agreed about that part of it. None of them, though, could remember ever seeing any wildlife.
Kahlan looked up at the bare bark of the maple trees. To the right, a breeze rattled the exposed branches of the birches. As she stared around at the thinning trees, she ran her hand over the swell of her belly.
She unexpectedly began to worry about how long they had actually been there in those woods, traveling around in big circles. It made her apprehensive to realize that she could be a lot farther along in her pregnancy than she thought. If that was true, how was she to judge when the babies would be due?
“There were no birds,” she said at last, picturing the place in her mind. “I remember thinking at the time that it was strange that I didn’t see any birds.” She looked over at the others. “Anyone remember seeing birds there?”
No one did.
They sat around, or paced, for what had to be several more hours, growing more edgy the whole time. Picking at the reindeer moss on the rough trunk of an oak tree, Kahlan glanced up and saw the sun sinking low in the sky. Like time itself, the day was slipping away on them. She worried that Richard wasn’t back.
As she was flicking a piece of moss off the tree, Kahlan heard something. She rushed forward a few steps, peering into the distance. Everyone looked expectantly toward the noise off in the shadows. They were all relieved when they saw Richard and Vika on their horses riding back into view among young pines.
As soon as they reached Kahlan and the small group, rather than apologizing for how long it had taken them, Richard and Vika hurriedly jumped down off their horses.
“We have a problem,” Richard said without any greeting.
Kahlan looked from Richard’s face to Vika. Both of them were sweaty and looked pale.
“What is it?” Kahlan stepped closer and gripped his forearm. “What happened?”
As they all came closer to gather around Kahlan, Richard ran his fingers back through his hair as he tried to think of a way to explain it.
“We ran into the boundary.”
Kahlan squinted as she leaned in toward him. “The boundary? What boundary?”
He gestured irritably back over his shoulder. “The boundary. You know, the boundary.” Then he gestured off at the mountains to the west. “Remember the boundary that used to run down those mountains between D’Hara and the Midlands? Like the boundary that was between the Midlands and Westland—the one you came through with Shar. That boundary.”
“Who is Shar?” the sorceress asked.
Kahlan flicked her hand and shushed the woman.
She was having difficulty in her own mind making sense of what he was saying. He was pretty upset. She thought he had to mean something else and she just wasn’t understanding him.
“What did it look like?”
Richard threw up his hand. “You know what the boundary looks like, Kahlan! As you get close it becomes a big green wall. The closer you get, you start melting into it, the green grows stronger and then turns dark. The voices on the other side start to call to you. You start seeing their faces—faces of people you know, people calling you by name.”
Kahlan looked over at Vika’s ashen face. “You saw the same thing?”
The Mord-Sith swallowed. “When we got close enough, the surroundings disappeared as everything turned dark. My mother called to me from the other side of that dark wall. I saw her.” Her eyes welled with tears. “She reached out for me.” Vika swallowed back the tears again. “I tried to go to her. Lord Rahl pulled me back just in time, or I would have been lost.”
Shale looked exasperated. “What in the world are you people talking about? What in the name of Creation is a boundary?”
“It’s nothing from Creation.” Richard took a breath, trying to regain his patience so he could explain it. “Think of it as a kind of fracture in the world of life. It lies like a curtain across the land. That curtain is death itself in this world. If you were to walk far enough into it, it’s like walking off the edge of a cliff and falling into the underworld.”
The sorceress stammered as if such a thing were unreasonable. “But what if someone comes along and walks into it without knowing what it is?”
Richard leaned toward her. “Then they die, right then and there.”
Shale’s gaze shifted about uneasily, as if she was searching for some kind of answer that made sense to her. “Well, how long is this curtain of death? Can’t we simply ride around the end of it?”
Kahlan could see the muscles in Richard’s jaw flex as he gritted his teeth.
“That’s why it took Vika and me so long to get back,” he finally said. “We rode a long way in each direction trying to see if it ends somewhere. It doesn’t. If you go to the right, it goes straight west. To t
he left it starts hooking back up this way as it goes to the northeast.”
“Could we all go farther than you were able to go and find an end, do you think?” Kahlan asked.
Richard gave her a look she understood all too well. “Could we have done that with the boundaries before? The ones between our lands? Could we have gotten around it that way? Their nature is to be a boundary, to restrict passage, so while I can’t say for sure, but knowing what the boundary from before was like, it isn’t likely that it has an end we could simply travel around. It completely blocks us from our plan of going south to get around the worst of the mountains.”
Kahlan searched around for a solution. “Can’t you find us a way through, like you did before?”
Richard had obviously already considered that and had an answer ready. “That boundary was failing. This one isn’t. It’s much more powerful than the last one I saw. We aren’t going to be able to get through it.”
“Then what are we going to do?” Kahlan asked, feeling a rising sense of panic at the thought of having her children exposed, out in the middle of nowhere.
The Glee were likely to be somewhere behind, looking for them. They needed to get to the safety of the Keep before they found her and the twins. Every moment they were out in the open increased the danger.
Richard averted his eyes and reluctantly gestured to the west. “We have no choice but to go west, directly over that imposing mountain range. We have no choice.”
“Well,” she finally said, trying to find a reason for optimism, “if we can find a way over the mountains, that would be a shorter route to get to Aydindril.”
The sorceress wasn’t about to be placated. “Show me this boundary thing.”
34
Richard reined in his horse and pulled it sideways to block the others. “It’s too dangerous to ride our horses any farther,” he told them. “We need to get off here and go the rest of the way in on foot.”
Once they had handed the reins of their horses to the Mord-Sith, he told them that he wanted them all to wait where they were and take care of the horses. They weren’t happy about leaving Richard and Kahlan without their protection, but because it involved dangerous magic, they were happy to keep their distance. Only Vika insisted on coming with them. Richard agreed with a nod.
Richard led Shale, Kahlan, and Vika on foot forward through an eerie stand of dead spruce. The silver-gray skeletons stood in dried, cracked, black ground that had once been thick mud. The grove of spruce were devoid of all but a few stubby, bare branches draped with long trailers of dull green moss that hung motionless in the dead-still air. The place smelled as dead as it looked. Kahlan walked behind with Vika, gazing warily around at the dead trees.
The ground descended gradually into a wet area growing thick with bog weed that now had died off until next spring. The long reeds around the open water had previously been blown over by heavy gusts of wind and were likewise brown and dead. It was difficult to slog their way through the tangled mat. Small, unseen things darted away in the murky water.
Bugs buzzed around their heads. Kahlan had to use her fingernails to pull out biting flies crawling on her neck under her hair. From time to time Richard and Vika tried to swish the cloud of insects away. It did little good. They all swatted at the flies that bit them. Shale held her dark cloak tightly closed against the insects. That morning there had already been a frost, so she knew that while the bugs were a nuisance, they would all soon be gone with the first hard freeze.
Kahlan didn’t hear any other sounds, but she kept looking around for anything unexpected. She was sure the place had to be full of snakes so she was careful of where she stepped.
As they came up through thick grasses onto higher ground, Richard lifted a hand to bring them all to a halt.
“This is the place.”
“This is what you’re worried about?” Shale looked off in both directions. “I don’t see anything.”
“Stay where you are and watch,” he said.
He walked forward cautiously. As he did, Kahlan could see a green glow, at first hardly perceptible, form around him. It grew brighter in the area immediately around him until after a few more steps it brightened to a sheet of glowing green light that looked like it was pressing in around him. The ominous, wavy, distorted green wall grew larger with every step he took. The green light was stronger close to him and faded away to the sides and above.
Kahlan was able to see the forest and sky beyond the lighter portion of the wavering green light. As Richard finally turned and walked back to them, the green glow faded until he was far enough away, where it vanished completely.
Kahlan folded her arms, feeling a little sick at seeing such a thing again. She never thought she would. She did her best to force the terrible memories it brought back from her mind.
“What does it feel like when you get close like that?” Shale asked in a low voice, finally concerned. “I don’t see why you say it’s an opening to the underworld. I admit, it’s strange-enough-looking, but it doesn’t look like a wall of death, as you described it to us. It’s just that unusual green light.”
“You would know why if you got close to it,” Vika told her.
Shale stared at the Mord-Sith a moment, then turned back to Richard. “I need to get closer. I need to be as close as possible if I’m to try to sense the nature of its magic.”
Richard nodded his agreement. “Now that I’ve shown you that much of its characteristics, I’ll take you in so you can see it and feel it for yourself.” He gestured to Vika. “Why don’t you wait here.”
The Mord-Sith nodded. “Seeing it once is enough for me.”
Shale didn’t look the least bit reluctant to see what didn’t look all that frightening from where they were. When Richard started out, Kahlan, knowing what was coming, walked beside Shale.
“Easy, now,” Richard said as he finally locked arms with the sorceress.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just keep hold of my arm. I’ll stop you when we’ve gone far enough.”
“What do you mean, when we’ve gone far enough?”
Despite her reluctance, Kahlan locked her arm with Shale’s other arm. “It’s best if you let us hold on to you. You’ll see.”
As they walked closer and a faint green glow began, it was different-looking than when they had watched from the outside as Richard walked close by himself. It almost felt like it was humming. Shale looked up and then to the sides.
As they went farther in, Kahlan started hearing that awful, high-pitched buzzing sound, like a thousand bumblebees. With each step, the sound became not only louder but deeper in tone. Kahlan knew, though, what the sound actually was. That knowledge ran a shiver up her spine.
As they continued in, the green light deepened in color. The woods all around became darker, too, as if it were twilight.
Abruptly, an entire sheet of green materialized, the greenish glow everywhere around them. Kahlan looked back. She could no longer see the others. The woods and everything beyond had been swallowed in darkness. The cloud of insects dispersed rather than go any farther in.
“Easy,” Richard warned them as he stepped carefully.
After a few more steps, the green vanished as the whole world darkened to black. It felt like a moonless, starless night, where she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. The buzzing vibrating deep in Kahlan’s chest was so strong that it was starting to make her feel sick to her stomach.
She put a hand over her babies, suddenly worried, wondering if it was a mistake to take them close to such an evil place.
The darkness abruptly became a distinct, darkly transparent wall, like looking out on a night through glass that had grease smeared all over it. Kahlan could see the shapes moving beyond.
“This is as far as we dare go,” Richard said.
Kahlan realized that she was putting pressure on Shale’s arm to draw her back. She eased up on the pressure to let her go farther forward. Th
e sorceress needed to know what they were really facing. They had to let her get a little closer.
Shale’s jaw fell open as inky black shapes swept by, close, in the gloom on the other side of that dark wall. Kahlan knew they were specters in the deep, the dead in their lair. The swirl of inky shapes was at first bewitching, but Kahlan knew better.
She felt overwhelmed by the darkness and then began to feel that old sense of longing for what lay beyond. She heard voices murmur her name, calling to her. Kahlan knew they would be calling to Richard by name. By the way that Shale’s eyes opened wider, she knew they were calling to her by name as well. Those thousands of distant voices of the souls beyond were the buzzing they had heard at first. Now, each of those sounds resolved into uncountable individual voices, the appeals of the dead.
When Shale cried out and tried to lift her arms toward the dark wall, Richard and Kahlan had to forcefully pull her arms back. She let out a long, mournful wail. As they pulled the sorceress back, she struggled to reach out toward the dead, to get to them, trying to tear herself out of Richard’s and Kahlan’s arms. As they dragged her back, she dug in her heels, not wanting to be pulled away from what she saw.
When they were far enough back, Shale sagged in their arms, weeping. Knowing the agony of what she had seen, Kahlan felt a pang of sadness for her. She wished they hadn’t had to show it to her, but she needed to see it to truly understand. Richard and Kahlan had to continue struggling, pulling the sorceress back away from the wall of death.
When they were far enough back, to where Vika waited, Shale finally grasped the magnitude of what she had seen and reacted in horror to what she had tried to do. As she fell to tears, Kahlan took the sorceress in her arms.
“Think of something else,” Kahlan told her. “Shale, listen to me. You have to think of something else. Try to remember every town you passed through on your way to come to the People’s Palace. Think. Try to remember them in order.”
After a few moments Shale pushed back and swallowed. “I’m all right.”
Witch's Oath Page 17
