Witch's Oath

by Terry Goodkind

Hooking her arm through Shale’s to be safe, Kahlan ushered her back away until they reached the others.

  She finally stood on her own, wiping tears from her cheeks. “I’ve never in my life felt magic that powerful.”

  “It’s not something pleasant, that’s for sure,” Richard said. “I have absolutely no idea why it’s here. All I can tell you is that it shouldn’t be. As far as I know, there is no one powerful enough to call up that boundary. I’m sorry for what you saw in there, but I felt that you needed to see it, feel it, for yourself.”

  Shale stared in wonder at him. She looked too stunned to speak. Kahlan knew, though, that it wasn’t the world of the dead that had her looking so shocked. It was something else.

  The sorceress abruptly reached out and put fingers to Richard’s temples. “Hold still.”

  Richard turned a worried glance toward Kahlan, as if to ask what to do.

  “Do as she asks,” Kahlan said. “Hold still.”

  From not far away, the Mord-Sith, looking in ill humor, all watched. They didn’t particularly like anyone but Kahlan touching Lord Rahl. It aroused their protective instincts. Kahlan held a hand out low in their direction, letting them know it was all right and to stand down.

  All at once, Shale drew both hands back with a gasp, as if the touch had burned her fingers. She took a step back away from Richard, clearly in fear.

  Kahlan was alarmed by her reaction. “What is it?”

  Shale’s terrified eyes looked from Kahlan back to Richard.

  “Shale,” Kahlan asked again, “what is it that you sense?”

  Shale blinked at her. “It’s him.”

  Both Richard and Kahlan shared a bewildered look.

  “What are you talking about?” Kahlan asked. “What’s him?”

  Shale gathered her long, dark hair together and held it in both fists. She drew her lower lip through her teeth.

  Her face had gone ashen. “It’s his.”

  Growing impatient, Kahlan made a face. “His what?”

  She hesitated. “The boundary. It’s Lord Rahl’s magic.”

  Richard closed the distance to the sorceress and grabbed her by an arm. “What are you talking about?”

  “You created this, this …” She waggled a hand toward where they had just been. “… this boundary. This fracture in the world of life. This opening into the world of death. It’s your magic that created it. I can feel it. I can feel your gift in its composition. You did this.”

  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 tow
ard 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.”

  36

  As they followed the natural lay of the land to begin the ascent up into the mountains to try to find a pass, the forest thinned as it struggled to grow among the granite ledges and masses of rock that rose up all around. The exposed rock was covered in colorful medallions of lichen. Fluffy moss and small plants with deep green, heart-shaped leaves grew in low clefts in the ledges.

  In the more rocky places, scraggly trees struggled to hold on to the rock with roots like claws. The roots grew in fat, twisting clusters over and around walls of stone and down over granite that looked like disorderly stacks of giant blocks. Ferns found a home in the crooks of those roots, and in the ferns, dirt collected to allow spotted mushrooms and other small plants to grow. Thin trailers of vines hung down from small ledges in the stone. Where water seeped down sheets of sloped granite, green slime grew, and in the laps of rock that collected the water small, colorful frogs waited for bugs.

  Squirrels in the upper branches followed the progress of the invaders, chattering warnings as they leaped from branch to branch. Mockingbirds flitted about, or called out as they flicked their long tails. Richard saw ravens perched on branches high up in the larger spruce trees, watching them pass below. When they took to wing, the massive trees left plenty of space for them under the canopy to swoop through the forest. They sent out loud calls as they soared among the trees.

  Richard heard a strange moan from Kahlan. He slowed and turned in his saddle.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Kahlan doubled over. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  He leaped off his horse when he saw her start to slump to the side and begin to slide off her saddle. He rushed in under her just in time to catch her fall enough to ease her limp form to the ground. The others all jumped off their horses when they saw her go down.

  Kahlan crossed her arms over her middle as she let out a groan of agony. As Richard brushed her hair back from her face so he could see her eyes, he saw that she was covered in sweat. Her pupils were dilated. She looked up at him with panic in those green eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She clutched his sleeve, pulling herself up toward him, and opened her mouth, but she couldn’t bring forth words before the pain overwhelmed her and her arm went slack. Her eyes rolled up in her head as she sagged back to the ground.

  He put a hand to the side of her face and called her name again. He didn’t think she had even heard him that time.

  Shale rushed in and urgently dropped to the ground on the other side of Kahlan. The sorceress took one look at Kahlan’s ashen face and immediately started unbuttoning her shirt stretched tight over her round belly.

  “Loosen her trousers,” she told Richard. After a quick look, she said, “Get them off. She’s bleeding.”

  Richard felt numb. He did as the sorceress asked and then sat back on his heels. He didn’t know what to do. He had never felt so afraid and helpless.

  Shale placed the flats of her hands on the sides of Kahlan’s belly, then on the top and near the bottom. She lifted Kahlan’s eyelids, looking into her eyes. She put an ear to Kahlan’s chest and listened to her heart and her breathing.

  She looked up at last, her expression grim.

  “She’s miscarrying.”

  Richard blinked, the words seeming to come at him from some faraway place.

  “What?”

  “She’s losing the babies.”

  “She can’t,” he said.

  Shale looked up at him with as bleak an expression as he’d ever seen. “If we don’t act quickly, we are going to lose her as well.”

  Richard sat frozen in terror, his skin feeling icy cold with goose bumps. He couldn’t lose her. She couldn’t lose her children.

  Shale placed one hand on Kahlan’s belly and the other on her forehead. She muttered a curse under her breath.

  Richard looked up at the Mord-Sith all standing around them, as if to implore their help. They looked as alarmed and lost as he felt.

  Kahlan groaned again as she folded both arms across her middle and sat halfway up with the cramping pain that made her cry out. She muttered something incoherently.

  Shale put an arm under Kahlan’s head and helped her ease back down. Vale rushed to her horse and quickly returned. She reached in to hand the sorceress a folded blanket. Shale put it under Kahlan’s head. Someone gave Richard another blanket, which he laid over Kahlan’s bare legs. Sweat was pouring off her face despite the chilly air.

  “But she will be all right,” Richard insisted.

  Ignor
ing his words, Shale finally sat back up on her heels. “I need you to do something.”

  “Anything. Name it.”

  “I need you to get me some mother’s breath.”

  Richard’s mind felt blank. “Mother’s breath?”

  Shale glanced up, giving him a look as if to say she didn’t have time for questions. “Yes, it’s a plant with leaves that—”

  “I know what it is,” Vika said. “I grew up in mountainous country. That’s where mother’s breath grows—in the high country.”

  Richard looked around frantically. “Would there be any around here?”

  Vika took a worried look over her shoulder at the mountains towering above them. She pointed.

  “It grows much higher up, near the tree line. There is already snow in a lot of places up there. Mother’s breath dies out when the snows come.”

  Richard shot to his feet, snatching up the reins to his horse. “We need to get up there and find some.”

  Shale looked up at them both. “I need the whole plant, roots and all.”

  Vika cast a troubled look up the mountain. “It’s liable to be covered in snow by now. Snow kills off mother’s breath until it comes back in the spring.”

  Shale shook her head vehemently. “It can’t be dead and dry. If it’s not still living and supple it turns to a poison that would kill her.”

  “It’s an extremely rare plant.” Vika hesitated. “I’ve only seen it a few times in my whole life. It doesn’t grow in many places. What if we can’t find any?”

  Shale gave them both a look. “She’s losing the babies. I don’t know if I can save her. Go find the mother’s breath. It’s her only chance, now.”

  “What about the twins?” Richard asked.

  Shale pointedly wouldn’t look up at him. “Go. Hurry.”

  Richard and Vika shared a look; then each stuffed a foot in a stirrup and leaped up into their saddles.

  “The rest of you,” Richard said, gesturing to the Mord-Sith, “watch over them until we’re back.”

  He looked down at Kahlan. Her eyes were half closed. She trembled in pain. She truly did look like she was dying. Richard swallowed and gestured to Vika.