Blood of the Fold tsot-3

by Terry Goodkind

  Berdine pointed to a place in The Adventures of Bonnie Day. “I need these two words. Can you tell me what this sentence says?”

  Richard’s hopes rose. It was the beginning of a chapter. He had had the most success with the beginnings of chapters because the starting places were memorable.

  “Yes! This is the chapter where they leave. I remember. It starts, ‘For the third time that week, Bonnie violated her father’s rule about not going into the woods alone.’ ”

  Berdine leaned over, looking at the line. “Yes, this is ‘violated,’ I’ve already got that one. This word here is ‘rule,’ and this one ‘third’?”

  Richard nodded when she glanced up. Grinning with the thrill of discovery, she dipped her pen in the bottle of ink and started writing on one of the sheets of paper she had brought, filling in a few of the blank places. When she finished, she proudly slid the paper over in front of him.

  “This is what it says in this bit of the journal.”

  Richard picked up the paper and held it up in the tight coming over his shoulder from the window.

  The arguments rage on among us. Wizard’s Third Rule: Passion rules reason, I fear this most insidious of rules may be our ruin. Though we know better, I fear some of us are violating it anyway. Each faction presses that their course of action is reason, but in the desperation, I fear all are passion. Even Alric Rahl sends frantic word of a solution. Meanwhile, the dream walkers scythe through our men. I pray the towers can be completed, or we are all lost. Today I said good-bye to friends leaving for the towers. I wept to know I will never see those good men again in this world. How many will die in the towers for the cause of reason? But alas, I know the worse cost should we violate the Third Rule.

  When Richard finished the translation, he turned away, toward the window. He had been in those towers. He knew that wizards had given their life force into them to ignite the tower’s spells, but they had never seemed real people to him before. It was chilling to read the anguish in the words of the man whose bones had lain in that room in the Keep for thousands of years. Through the words in the journal, his bones seemed to be coming to life.

  Richard thought about the Third Rule, trying to reason it out for himself. Before, for the first and second, he had had Zedd, and then Nathan to explain it for him, to make him see how the rules worked in life. He would have to work this one out himself.

  He recalled going down to the roads leading out of Aydindril, to talk to some of the people fleeing the city. He had wanted to know why they would leave, and had been told by fearful people that they knew the truth: that he was a monster who would slaughter them for his twisted pleasure.

  When pressed, they quoted rumor as if it were fact seen with their own eyes, rumor of how the Lord Rahl had children as slaves in the palace, how he took countless young women to his bed, leaving them senseless from the experience to wander the streets naked. They claimed to know young women and girls whom he had gotten pregnant, and furthermore knew people who had actually seen the miscarriages of some of these poor victims of his rape, and they had been hideous, misshapen freaks, the spawn of his evil seed. They spat at him for the crimes he committed against helpless people.

  He asked them how they could be so frank with him if he were such a monster. They said that they knew he wouldn’t do them harm in the open, that they had heard how he pretended to be compassionate in public so as to fool people, so they knew he would do nothing to them in front of the crowds, and they would soon have their womenfolk away from his evil clutches.

  The more Richard tried to put to rest the baffling beliefs, the more tenaciously the people clung to them. They said they had heard these things from too many others for it to be anything but true. Such common knowledge could not be false, they said, as it would be impossible to fool so many people. They were passionate in their belief and their fear, and would hear no arguments of logic. They simply wanted to be left alone to run to the protection they had heard was offered by the Imperial Order.

  Their passion was going to bring them to true ruin. He wondered if this could be how violation of the Third Rule hurt people. He didn’t know if it was a solid enough example. It seemed tangled with the First Rule: People would believe any lie, either because they wanted it to be true, or because they feared it was. It seemed in could be several rules mixed together, violated in tandem, and he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

  And then Richard recalled the day back home in Westland when Mrs. Rencliff, who could not swim, had wrenched her arms from the men trying to hold her back, refusing to wait for the rowboat, and had leapt into a flood swollen river after her boy who had fallen in. The men rushed up a few minutes later with the rowboat and saved the boy’s life. Chad Rencliff grew up without a mother; they never found her body.

  Richard’s skin prickled as if ice had touched it. He understood. Wizard’s Third Rule: Passion rules reason.

  It was a distressing hour of detailing the way people’s passion instead of reason brought them to harm, and worse, wondering how magic could add ruin to the equation, as he knew it would, before Ulic finally returned with the general.

  General Reibisch clapped a fist to his heart as he entered the room. “Lord Rahl, Ulic said you were in a hurry to see me.”

  Richard gripped the bearded man’s dark uniform. “How long will it take you to get men ready to leave on a search?”

  “Lord Rahl, they’re D’Harans. D’Haran soldiers are always ready to leave on a moment’s notice.”

  “Good. You know my bride-to-be, Queen Kahlan Amnell?”

  General Reibisch nodded. “Yes. The Mother Confessor.”

  Richard winced. “Yes, the Mother Confessor. She’s on her way here from the southwest. She’s past due, and there may be trouble. She had a spell over her to protect her identity as the Mother Confessor, so that her enemies couldn’t hunt her. Somehow, the spell has been removed. It might be nothing, but it could be that it means trouble. For sure, her enemies will now know of her.”

  The man scratched his rust-colored beard. His grayish green eyes came up at last. “I see. What would you like me to do?”

  “We have close to two hundred thousand men in Aydindril, with another hundred thousand scattered all around the perimeter of the city. I don’t know exactly where she is, except that she’s supposed to be to the southwest and on her way here. We have to protect her.

  “I want you to get a force together, half the troops in the city, a hundred thousand at least, to go out after her.”

  The general stroked his scar as he heaved a sigh. “That’s a lot of men, Lord Rahl. Do you think we need to take that many from the city?”

  Richard paced between the desk and the general. “I don’t know exactly where she is. If we take too few we could miss her by fifty miles and wander off without ever making contact. With that many men we can fan out as we go, cast a wide net, covering all the roads and trails so we don’t miss her.”

  “You will be going with us, then?”

  Richard desperately wanted to go find Kahlan and Zedd. He glanced to Berdine sitting behind the desk as she worked, and thought about the words of warning from a three-thousand-old wizard. Wizard’s Third Rule: Passion rules reason.

  Berdine needed his help to translate the journal. He was already learning important things about the last war, and the towers, and the dream walkers. A dream walker again walked the world.

  If he did go, and Kahlan slipped past him where he searched, it might take longer for him to join with her than if he simply waited in Aydindril. And then there was the Keep. Something had happened at the Keep, and it was his duty to guard the magic there.

  Richard’s passion told him to go—he desperately wanted to go search for Kahlan—but in his mind’s eye, he saw Mrs. Rencliff diving into the dark, rushing water, refusing to wait for the boat. These men were his boat.

  The troops could find Kahlan and protect her. He could do nothing to add to that protection. Reason told hi
m to wait here, as much anxiety as that would cause him. Like it or not, he was a leader now. A leader had to act with reason, or everyone would pay the price of his passion.

  “No, General. I’ll remain in Aydindril. Get the troops together. Take the best trackers.” He looked to the man’s eyes. “I know I don’t have to tell you how important this is to me.”

  “No, Lord Rahl,” the general said in a compassionate tone. “Don’t worry, we’ll find her. I’ll go with the men to make certain that everything is done with the same care as you would do it if you were there.” He put his fist to his heart. “Every one of our lives before harm touches your queen.”

  Richard laid a hand to the man’s shoulder. “Thank you, General Reibisch. I know I could do no more than you will. May the good spirits be with you.”

  Chapter 44

  “Please, Wizard Zorander.”

  The skinny wizard didn’t glance up from spooning beans and bacon into his mouth. She didn’t know how the man could eat as much as he did.

  “Are you listening?”

  It wasn’t like her to yell, but she was near the end of her patience. This was proving to be even more trouble than she had envisioned. She knew she had to do this, to cultivate his hostility, but this was too much.

  With a pleased sigh, Wizard Zorander tossed his tin bowl down with their packs. “Good night, Nathan.”

  Nathan lifted an eyebrow as Wizard Zorander crawled into his bedroll. “Good night, Zedd.”

  Nathan, too, was becoming dangerously difficult to deal with since she had captured the old wizard. He had never had such a talented cohort before. Ann sprang to her feet and stood with her fists on her hips as she glared down at the white hair sticking from the blanket.

  “Wizard Zorander, I’m begging you.”

  It infuriated her to implore his aid in such a humble fashion, but she had learned the hard way what the results could be when she used the power of his collar to bring him to task through unpleasant means. How the man could manage to get those tricks through the block she had locked on his collar mystified her, but get them through he did, to the great amusement of Nathan. She was not amused.

  Ann was near tears. “Please, Wizard Zorander.”

  His head turned up, the firelight casting the lines of his bony face in harsh shadows. His hazel eyes fixed on her.

  “If you open that book again, you will die.”

  With ghostlike stealth, he slipped spells around her shields when she least expected it. She was at a loss to understand how he had put a light spell on the journey book. She had opened it that night and had seen the message from Verna that she had been captured and put in a collar, and then everything had gone terribly wrong.

  Opening the book had triggered the light spell. She had seen it swell and flare. A bright, burning cinder had shot up into the air, and the old wizard had calmly told her that if she didn’t close the book by the time the glowing spark of light hit the ground, she would be incinerated.

  With one eye on the hissing spark as it descended, she had managed only to scrawl a hurried message to Verna that she must escape and get the Sisters away. She had closed the book just in time. She knew he was not jesting about the deadly nature of the spell around the book.

  She could see the softly glowing spell around it now. She had never seen one quite like it, and how he had managed to set it when she thought she had his power blocked, she couldn’t fathom. Nathan didn’t understand it either, but he seemed quite interested. She knew of no way to open the book without being killed.

  Ann squatted down beside the bedroll. “Wizard Zorander, I know you have good reason to rail against me, but this is a matter of life and death. I must get a message through. The lives of Sisters are at stake. Wizard Zorander, please. Sisters could die. I know you are a good man, and wouldn’t want that.”

  He brought a finger out from under the blanket and pointed it at her. “You bonded me into slavery. You have brought this upon yourself and your Sisters. I told you, you broke the truce, and have sentenced your Sisters to death. You are endangering the lives of ones I love. They could die because you wouldn’t let me help them. You took me from protecting the things of magic in the Keep. You are endangering the lives of my people in the Midlands. They could all die because of what you have done to me.”

  “Can’t you understand that all our live are tied together? This is a war against the Imperial Order, not between us. I have no wish to harm you, only to have you help me.”

  He grunted. “Don’t forget what I told you: either you or Nathan had better remain awake at all times. If I catch you asleep, and Nathan isn’t awake to protect you, you will never wake again. Fair warning, though you don’t deserve it.”

  He rolled over and pulled the blanket up.

  Dear Creator, was this happening the way the prophecy intended, or had everything gone terribly wrong? Ann moved around the fire to Nathan.

  “Nathan, do you think you could talk some sense into him?”

  Nathan glanced down at her. “I told you that this part of the plan is the true madness. Collaring a young man is one thing, collaring a wizard of the First Order is quite another. This is your plan, not mine.”

  She clenched her teeth as she snatched his shirt. “Verna could be killed in that collar. If she is killed, our Sisters could die, too.”

  He took a spoonful of beans. “I’ve been warning you against this plan from the beginning. You were nearly killed at the Keep, but this part of the prophecy is even more dangerous. I’ve talked to him; he’s telling you the truth. As far as he is concerned, you are placing his friends in mortal danger. If he can, he will kill you in order to escape and go help them. No doubt in my mind.”

  “Nathan, after all the years we’ve been together, how could you be so callous about this?”

  “You mean, after all these years of captivity, how can I still rebel against it?”

  Ann turned her face away as a tear ran down her cheek. She swallowed back the lump in her throat.

  “Nathan,” she whispered, “in all the time you’ve known me, have you ever once seen me do anything cruel to someone other than because I had to, to protect lives? Have you ever once known me to struggle other than to preserve life and freedom?”

  “I presume you mean other than my freedom.”

  She cleared her throat. “And I know I will have to answer to the Creator for that, but I do it because I must, and because I care for you, Nathan. I know what would happen to you out in the world. You would be hunted down and killed by people who don’t understand you.”

  Nathan tossed his bowl atop the others. “You want first watch or second?”

  She turned back to him. “If you want your freedom so badly, what’s keeping you from falling asleep on your watch, so I will be killed?”

  His piercing blue eyes took on an acrimonious set. “I want this collar off. The one thing I will not do is kill you to accomplish the task. If I were willing to pay that price, you would be dead a thousand times over, and you know it.”

  “I’m sorry, Nathan. I know you’re a good man, and I’m fully aware of the vital part you’ve played in helping me preserve life. Forcing you to help me makes my heart ache.”

  “Forcing me?” He laughed. “Ann, you’re more fun than any woman I’ve ever met. Most of it I wouldn’t have missed for anything. What other woman would buy me a sword? Or give me need to use it?

  “That foolhardy prophecy says you have to bring him angry, and you’re doing a splendid job of it. I fear it might even work. I’ll take first watch. Don’t forget to check your bedroll. No telling what he might have enticed in there this time. I still haven’t figured out the snow fleas.”

  “Me neither. I’m still itching.” She absently scratched her neck. “We’re almost home. At the rate we’re running, it won’t be long.”

  “Home,” he mocked. “And then you kill us.”

  “Dear Creator,” she whispered to herself, “what choice have I?”

 
Richard leaned back in his chair and yawned. He was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open. When he stretched and yawned, it caused Berdine, sitting next to him, to do the same. Across the room at the door, Raina was infected by their yawns.

  A knock came and Richard shot to his feet. “Come!”

  Egan stuck his head in. “A messenger is here.”

  Richard motioned, and Egan’s head disappeared. A D’Haran soldier in a heavy cape and smelling of a horse hurried in and saluted with a fist to his heart.

  “Sit down. You look like you’ve had a hard ride,” Richard said.

  The soldier straightened his battle axe at his hip as he glanced to the chair. “I’m fine, Lord Rahl. But I’m afraid I’ve nothing to report.”

  Richard sank down in his chair. “I see. No sign? Nothing?”

  “No, Lord Rahl. General Reibisch said to tell you they’re making good time, and are scouring every inch, and wanted me to assure you that our men have missed nothing, but so far they’ve found no sign.”

  Richard signed in disappointment. “All right. Thank you. You’d best go get something to eat.”

  The man saluted and took his leave. Every day for two weeks, starting a week after the force had departed in search of Kahlan, messengers had been returning to give Richard a report. Since the force had started splitting up to cover different routes, each group was sending its own messenger. This was the fifth of the day.

  Hearing the reports of what had happened weeks ago, when the messengers had left their troops, was like watching history happen. Everything he heard unfolding had happened in the past. For all Richard knew, they could have found Kahlan a week ago and were on their way back while he was still hearing reports of failure. He kept that constant hope foremost in his mind.

  He had filled the time and kept his mind from wandering into worried thoughts by working on translating the journal. It gave him much the same feeling as getting the reports every day, like watching history happen. Richard was rapidly coming to understand more of the argot form of High D’Haran than Berdine.