Into Darkness Page 17

  She was being taken to a place where she was told she would be held until she gave birth and then her babies would be killed. Shota said that she would then be released. While Shota was brutally honest about what she intended to do with Kahlan’s babies, she didn’t think Shota was being so honest about the second part of it. As if that mattered to her now.

  When Kahlan looked up through the upper branches of trees, she finally saw the snowcapped peaks that were the formidable spires that surrounded Agaden Reach like a ring of thorns. The view was quickly lost again as they followed a trail that disappeared ahead of them into thick forest of fir and pine trees. She took out some of her frustration kicking pine cones out of her way as she hiked along the trail.

  The canopy high above cut off most of the light, so the plants that grew in abundance on the forest floor, such as the ferns, were those that thrived in shade. Most of the brush, unlike the ferns that were turning brown, would keep their leaves all winter. They helped add to the shadowed gloom.

  Kahlan could see that past all the women, out ahead, they would come to a branch in the trail, with the right fork leading lower and the left fork leading higher. Without delay or hesitation Shota took the left fork. The rest of them followed in a single-file line.

  The witches following close behind Kahlan, and bringing up the rear, kept a close eye on her, making sure she didn’t try to go another way or suddenly bolt and run. When they hadn’t been looking, Kahlan had tried to vanish into the thick underbrush several times. The swift punishment taught her a painful lesson that escape was hopeless. At least for now. She was determined, though, that if she saw a chance to get away, she would take it.

  Ravens followed them, as they had since they’d left the fortress town of Bindamoon, sailing effortlessly through open limbs of winter-bare branches of oaks, maples, and linden trees. In the thicker foliage of the weeping spruce, tamaracks, and red pines, where they couldn’t easily sail, they swerved and darted through any opening they could find. Sometimes they flew above the forest canopy, only to swoop down unexpectedly, giving Kahlan a start as they suddenly appeared to surprise her.

  The leaves, long since fallen, leaving the branches bare, blanketed rocks and in other places lay rotting in damp piles. The boots of the women ahead scuffed over rocks hidden under leaves. As weary as Kahlan was, when she wasn’t paying enough attention, those hidden rocks sometimes tried to twist an ankle when she inadvertently stepped on them wrong. Thick lines of leaves suggested deep gaps in the rock that could break a leg, so she was careful to avoid stepping there.

  The bull of a witch with the sour expression lumbered along just ahead of Kahlan, swaying from side to side to keep her low, squat bulk moving. Despite the obvious effort of walking, she didn’t seem to tire and never complained. In fact, she had so far not spoken a word. The scary, bony one with the big, black eyes was directly in front of her. They were the two who had pulled her out of the way of the falling rock when the palace had begun to collapse. They had dragged her into the tunnels, saving her life and at the same time capturing her. As they were hauling her away, Kahlan hadn’t been able to see in all the swirling dust if Richard had escaped the mass of falling stone. Since he’d been in the center of the enormous room, she didn’t see how he could have made it out in time.

  The scariest witch guarding her, while not at all ugly as most of the others certainly were, was the ill-tempered witch with the stringy red hair veiling her face. Kahlan had learned that her name was Nea. She followed behind Kahlan as they hiked through the woods, glaring at her the entire time, waiting for Kahlan to try to run, or to give her some other excuse to hurt her. For seemingly no reason, other than her bad temper, she occasionally murmured blood-curdling threats and promises. The worst were what she intended to do to her babies.

  From the interactions Kahlan had observed during their journey, Nea was apparently Shota’s lieutenant, her favorite, the one she trusted most, and the one she had put in charge of watching over Kahlan. Every once in a while, as they walked, Nea would lean forward and whisper in Kahlan’s ear what she intended to do if Kahlan would just give her an excuse. Kahlan believed her.

  Kahlan, though, wasn’t so much worried about herself as she was for the two unborn children she was carrying, and she knew quite well what these witch women had planned for them. Kahlan couldn’t stand the thought of the twins never having the chance at life.

  When she saw soft ground with the leaves mostly clear from the center, all the witch women ahead of her walked off to the side to avoid the mud. Kahlan deliberately walked straight on through it in order to leave her tracks. She knew that if he had somehow been able to survive, Richard would come for her. He would recognize her tracks and know for sure where she was being taken. Sometimes, when a branch was close to her when she passed, she would break the tip and leave it hanging down as a sign for him.

  She also did whatever she could along the way, from minor things like feigning having difficulty getting up a rise of rocks or having to often empty her bladder from the pressure of the twins, to bigger things like sitting and saying she needed to rest, all in order to delay them. She used all those little diversions to slow the coven down, hoping Richard would catch up with them. She didn’t know what he could do to stop all of these witches, but, well, he was Richard, so she was sure he would come up with something if only he could get to them in time.

  Kahlan did her best not to consider the possibility that Richard wasn’t still alive, but her mind frequently didn’t cooperate and fed her a steady stream of fears to haunt the dark corners of her thoughts. It would make her feel a sense of growing panic if she let herself think about him being crushed under a mountain of rubble, so she did her best not to.

  After the trail went up a steep switchback and then doubled back on itself, she could look down and see through the branches of white cedar and spruce trees where they had just been a short time before. After they had doubled back, the path came to another fork. This time they took the one to the right. Knowing where it went, she dreaded the choice that was made for her.

  The trail the witch women took immediately began an increasingly difficult climb up a series of switchbacks and up over ledges. In places it was so steep it required them to use their hands to hold on to the gnarled roots of the trees growing close in on each side of the trail. Those handholds helped them to continue to climb ever upward. The sour-faced witch woman ahead of Kahlan often had to wait for the assistance of the younger, stronger women ahead to help hoist her up.

  The climb required that Kahlan frequently use her hands, so much so that the rough roots gave her cuts and increasingly painful blisters. The web of roots coming down the rocky ground surrounded chunks of granite, holding them in place like powerful, living claws so that it couldn’t fall. Since they provided places for water to collect and moss to grow, the twisting roots frequently made for slippery footing, or slimy handholds.

  More than once, Kahlan’s boot slipped off a root and she had to catch herself with a tenuous grip on a rock or a root above as her feet momentarily swung free out in space. Each time it made her gasp. She worried about doing anything that could hurt the babies, so she did her best to quickly regain a foothold rather than let herself drop back down to a previous ledge. Once, Nea reached up, caught her ankle in a powerful grip, and placed her foot atop a shelf of rock so that she wouldn’t fall.

  Kahlan panted with the effort of the climb. She was drained and exhausted by the time she could again see the snowcapped spires around Agaden Reach off through the trees. But down in the dark woods where they were climbing the trail, it was growing increasingly difficult to see where she could put each foot to help support her when they had to climb. The farther they went, though, the more often she had increasingly open glimpses of that crown of thorns. She knew they would soon be up to the tree line and then they would have to make their way across open, windswept ledges.

  When she reached a level place, Kahlan plopped down in exhaustion
on a smooth piece of rock to get her breath.

  Nea immediately was in her face. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Why don’t you try climbing this steep trail when you’re this far along in a pregnancy? See if you can do it.”

  Sorrel, one of the nastier of the witch women up ahead, gave the bull of a witch a hand up. Once she had helped the big woman up, she then knelt to lean back down over the top of where Kahlan sat. She had long, pointed nails, and both of her hands looked like she regularly dipped them in red wax. Her hair was done in neat rows of short spikes, all of them tipped with the same red wax, or paint, or whatever it was. At least, Kahlan didn’t think that it was blood.

  “No one told you that you could sit down,” Sorrel growled down at Kahlan.

  Kahlan looked up at Sorrel’s black gums, revealed whenever she snarled, wishing she could drive her knife through the woman’s heart. But they had taken her knife and her pack, lest she get the idea to use her blade on one of them. Shota didn’t want to take a chance on losing one of the thirteen witches, because that would break the coven. That coven gave her powers over and above those she possessed on her own. The kind of magic she had used back in the chamber below the palace had made those frightening powers all too evident. As if Shota hadn’t been frightening enough without them.

  “I’m exhausted,” Kahlan told Sorrel as she gestured to the side. “Look, there’s a pretty level place, here, on this ledge. It’s sheltered by that rock face you’re kneeling on. I think we should stop for the night. Besides being spent, we can’t climb this mountain in the dark. I could easily fall and split my skull.”

  Grinning, Nea put a hand on Kahlan’s shoulder and pulled her around to face her. “That would solve everything, then, now wouldn’t it? We are only keeping you alive because that’s Shota’s wish, not because it’s ours.”

  Worry for her unborn babies immediately came to the forefront of Kahlan’s thoughts. “Shota is the grand witch. You had better do as she tells you and keep me alive.”

  Kahlan didn’t think that Shota really cared if she died, but it was a bluff that seemed to give Nea pause.

  Nea reached up and parted the strands of hair hanging down over her face so that she could better peer out at Kahlan. “True, but if you took a nasty fall and broke some bones … who is to say it’s the fault of anyone but your own clumsy feet?”

  33

  Shota pushed her way through the tight knot of witch women crowded around on the ledge just above Kahlan. She leaped down the last few feet, landing with surprising grace. She had fire in her eyes.

  Kahlan stood. She didn’t know exactly why. Somehow, she felt compelled to stand and face a coldly angry Shota, whether by her own volition or Shota’s she wasn’t entirely sure.

  Kahlan remembered how terrified she had been the first time she had gone to Agaden Reach with Richard to face the witch woman. There had been times since then when her fear of the woman had ebbed and flowed, but at the moment, she was back to remembering how much she had feared that first encounter, when Shota had put snakes all over her. The witch woman knew how much Kahlan feared snakes. Had Richard not been able to stop her and make her remove her snakes, they very well might have bitten her, and she surely would have died. But Richard was not with her this time.

  “Do you think I don’t know what you are doing?” Shota asked in a smooth voice, suddenly looking and sounding like Kahlan’s mother.

  Such an image hurt Kahlan’s heart, but she dared not show how much it got to her.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about, Shota.”

  Kahlan put emphasis on the witch woman’s name to let her know that she wasn’t going to break down in helpless emotion at seeing an image that appeared to be her mother. It was thievery of cherished memories from her own mind in order to use them in cruel trickery. As much as Kahlan had loved her mother, she didn’t appreciate Shota using her mother’s image in such a cold-blooded manner.

  “Do you think I haven’t noticed you deliberately leaving your tracks, or breaking a branch here and there so that Richard can follow you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Kahlan hooked some of her hair behind an ear. “I’m simply walking. I don’t know how you expect me to walk and not leave tracks.”

  Shota, reverting to looking again like Shota—a very angry Shota—seized Kahlan’s chin between her thumb and the knuckle of her first finger. She narrowed her eyes as she leaned in.

  “Don’t feed me that. I know what you’re doing. I am also well aware that you have been trying to slow us down so that Richard can catch up with us and ‘rescue’ you.”

  Kahlan retreated to her Confessor face, showing no emotion.

  “Why would you fear he would be alive?” Kahlan asked. “The entire palace fell in on him.”

  “Fear it? There is hardly anything to fear.” Shota released Kahlan’s chin, instead regarding her with an intense look that held her in no less of a powerful grip. “On the contrary. I made sure the palace fell in on him. But you foolishly hold out hope that he somehow got out in time. Am I right?”

  Kahlan shrugged. “Well, you know Richard. He often manages to come out of impossible situations wondering why anyone would have been worried about him. So, were I you, I wouldn’t be so smug that he isn’t this minute coming up this mountain after you and your coven.”

  “You think so?” Shota nodded with a sly smile. “Well, I think you should know that down in that chamber beneath my palace, when I saw that everything was beginning to fall in, just before I escaped out the tunnel with you and my ladies, I turned back and cast a simple little spell to hinder his legs for just long enough to keep him from running to safety in time. He wouldn’t have realized that my spell was there, and, because of it, he would have been unable to get away. As he stood there, momentarily helpless, the entire weight of the palace and a good part of the mountain all fell in on him.”

  Not wanting to give Shota the satisfaction of reacting with the horror and rage she was feeling inside, Kahlan maintained the Confessor face and didn’t say anything.

  “So you see, Mother Confessor, your husband, the man who fathered those two monsters you carry, is dead and buried in a grave so deep his body will never even be recovered for a state funeral. He is entombed under my palace, because of my spell. Quite fitting, don’t you think, since he came to bury me.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “The point is, you no longer have a husband; we no longer have a Lord Rahl; those two children no longer have a father; and he isn’t going to come to rescue you. So you might as well quit bothering with your little tricks.”

  Unable to maintain her Confessor face, Kahlan swallowed.

  “You shouldn’t be so smug about your safety, because if he doesn’t come to kill you, I will do it myself—you have the promise of the Mother Confessor on that.”

  Shota straightened and folded her arms, looking down at her, amused by the threat. “Is that so? Well, I must admit, you are more vicious than I am. My intent is to let you live, not kill you. I simply want to eliminate the threat to the world posed by those two monsters you carry. Fortunately, with Richard dead, no more can ever be created.”

  Against her will, Kahlan felt a tear roll down her cheek.

  “Now,” Shota went on, “you can either get moving and get yourself and those unborn babies to Agaden Reach, where you will give birth to them, or I will see to it that you miscarry here and now.”

  Kahlan lifted her chin. “You mean like you tried and failed to do before?”

  “With everything I have done, my aim was always to simply slow you down so that you wouldn’t get too far away. Were you to get to the Keep I wouldn’t have been able to get to you and do what is necessary for the greater good. I could have killed you any number of times, but I didn’t. None of the things I did, such as that wood where you lost so much time, were an attempt to kill you, now were they?”

  “You did something to make me
start to miscarry after we were out of that wood, and after we were stopped from getting to the Keep by the boundary you put up, but Richard was able to help stop it. You were trying to kill me along with my babies.”

  “On the contrary.” Shota couldn’t seem to hold back a knowing smile, as if she were talking to an ignorant child. “I knew that if I cast a spell to have you start to miscarry, Richard would have to find you a plant called mother’s breath, the only herb that could stop it. I made you start to miscarry and collapse in that particular place on purpose. I knew that when Richard went to look for mother’s breath—mother’s breath transplanted from the fields of Bindamoon and planted there for him to find—he would come across the pass trail, which would eventually lead you all to the pass and to me. My mountain lion returned to let me know that all went as I had planned.

  “So, you see, it wasn’t an attempt to kill you, but instead I went to a great deal of trouble to get you right to the spot where I wanted you. As I have told you, I don’t want to harm you, but to simply eliminate the little monsters you carry.

  “Unfortunately, Richard destroyed my winter palace. Now, I want you to finish the journey into my home of Agaden Reach, where you will be taken care of until you give birth. After that, you will be free to go. But like I say, if you are too difficult about it …”

  Shota touched a finger to Kahlan’s belly. She gasped with a sudden, powerful contraction. The pain was so intense that it doubled her over as Shota followed her down to continue holding the finger on her swollen belly.

  “… then I will simply have you miscarry right here and now and be done with it. So what is it going to be, Mother Confessor? Do you want to finish the journey and give birth in comfort and with help? Or do you want to simply miscarry right here and bleed to death on this mountainside?”