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  Richard finally retrieved his sword from where he had left it leaning against the stone wall of the well. He slipped the baldric back over his head before attaching the scabbard at his left hip. He looked at each of them in turn. “Until we get to the Keep and the gifted there who may be able to help, it must be us nine against everyone else because everyone else is a potential threat.”

  Vika turned a sly smile to her sister Mord-Sith. “We are Mord-Sith. We have no desire to babysit soldiers, anyway.” She turned back to Richard. “Unless you think it best to travel on foot, we are going to need to get horses. That’s not a problem at the palace.”

  “Except that Lieutenant Dolan and the First File know we’re leaving the palace,” Richard said, “so they will likely assume we’re leaving on horseback. That means we have to assume the goddess knows that as well and will be watching for it. But she won’t know which direction we go unless the soldiers see us leaving. It would obviously be easier and quicker getting to the Keep if we had horses, but taking them would mean that soldiers would by necessity see us collecting them. Any number of the First File standing watch on the high ramparts would easily spot us leaving on horseback and know which way we went.”

  Kahlan’s concern was evident in her expression. “That means the goddess could see all of that through any of their eyes.”

  Richard agreed with a nod. “Getting away on horses without being seen is a problem.”

  “Then stop thinking of the problem, and think instead of the solution,” Shale said.

  “What would the solution be, then?” Richard asked her.

  Shale leaned toward him. “Think. Who do you have with you on this journey?”

  The way the sorceress asked the question reminded him of so many gifted people who had taught him valuable lessons.

  Richard shrugged, not sure what she meant. “We have the nine of us. Kahlan, me, six Mord-Sith—”

  Shale flashed him a cunning smile. “And me.”

  3

  The stables were partway across the sprawling city-palace. Once they had horses, then Shale would need to do her part, but before they reached the stables they needed to avoid being seen by people throughout the palace. Being spotted would expose them to the risk that the goddess could also see them and send Glee to attack.

  To keep out of sight after leaving the room with the sliph’s well, the nine of them had to make their way through a labyrinth of underground passageways and tunnels that few people other than the Mord-Sith knew about or used, then climb iron ladders in ventilation shafts and a series of ancient, rusty, iron spiral service stairs. They managed to remain unseen the entire journey through the rarely used areas of the palace.

  Nyda, in the lead, brought the party to a halt when she reached a small metal access door. She carefully pulled it open just enough to peek out. Once satisfied it was safe, she pulled open the door, letting short, wavy-haired Berdine go through first. The tall, blond Nyda went next. When Richard poked his head through, he saw that they were behind some of the storage buildings. Beyond was a staging area and then a number of buildings with stables. The buildings had roofs to protect them from the open sky above, which revealed fading daylight. The first of the strange, new stars in that sky were just beginning to appear.

  Not far away, between the dark shape of the buildings to each side of them, was a large manure pile waiting for eventual use in the many gardens throughout the palace grounds. Besides the food transported in by vendors who brought it up the internal passage, the gardens and greenhouses in the palace were an abundant source of fresh food to feed all the people living in the palace. The manure fed those crops.

  That large manure pile served to hide the nine of them, but because of the stink it wasn’t a pleasant place to hide. Richard reminded himself that it wasn’t nearly as bad as the horrific stench of the remains deep down in the foundation area.

  “Something smells funny,” Shale said.

  Richard turned to her with an incredulous look. “Maybe it has something to do with this big pile of manure right in front of us?”

  As Shale leaned out to peer into the distance, the sarcasm didn’t seem to register with her. “No. It’s something else,” she murmured, half to herself.

  “Like what?” he asked.

  The sorceress’s attention finally returned to him. She shook her head unhappily. “I’m not sure. It’s not something I’ve exactly smelled before, but for some reason I feel like I should know what it is.”

  Richard realized she was serious, but it didn’t make any sense and he didn’t want to take the time to discuss the unknowable. Instead, he advanced in a crouch and then leaned out from behind a manure cart to survey the area. He wanted them to be able to get out of the palace and on their way to the Wizard’s Keep without being seen. Anyone who saw them meant that it was possible the goddess could see them, too. If they could get away cleanly, then the journey to the protection of the Keep’s shields and gifted would be that much less hazardous.

  In the distance Richard saw soldiers on horseback just returning from patrol, likely around the base of the plateau. Horses were also occasionally used in the palace’s special passageways meant for mounted soldiers, enabling them to quickly get to distant areas or trouble spots. Sometimes they used ramps up through the inside of the plateau that were also used exclusively by troops. Less commonly they used the narrow road that wound around the outside of the plateau.

  That was the road they were going to need to use to get down to the Azrith Plain. One of the problems with that was that there was a drawbridge with soldiers stationed at it. Richard was trusting that Shale had some witch woman’s trick to make those soldiers think they were someone else, or even not see them at all. He didn’t care what she did, only that it worked.

  Vika pointed at stable workers taking the horses as the tired soldiers dismounted. “Over that way, where the man is lighting the lamps on the outside wall of the stables, is one of the buildings where the fresh horses are kept for men to take out on patrol.”

  Kahlan rested a hand on the hilt of the knife sheathed at her belt as she came up in a crouch close to Richard and Vika. As beautiful as Richard thought she looked in the singular dress of the Mother Confessor, she looked just as good to him in her traveling clothes with a knife sheathed at her side. Some of her long hair fell forward over her shoulder as she carefully leaned out to take a look.

  “How many fresh horses do you think are in there?” she asked. “Do you think there are enough?”

  Vika looked a little surprised by the question. “There are a lot of stables all throughout this one area. There are hundreds and hundreds of horses. I’m not sure of the exact number. With as many horses as I’ve seen here and other areas combined while living and working at the palace under Darken Rahl’s rule there might even be thousands.”

  Richard was jarred by her saying “while living and working at the palace under Darken Rahl’s rule.” Before Richard defeated Darken Rahl, as under the tyrants of the House of Rahl before him, the work of a Mord-Sith living at the People’s Palace was the work of torturing people for information or simply because the Lord Rahl wanted them tortured to death as punishment. The Mord-Sith were experts at keeping their captives on the cusp between life and death for prolonged periods of time to extend their agony.

  The Mord-Sith didn’t come by that work easily. They themselves were taken captive as young women and broken through years of the same kind of torture they learned to use on others. They became the chattel of evil men—property, weapons those men used for their own ends.

  That training eventually drove those women to madness. Richard had once been the captive of an especially ruthless Mord-Sith, Denna, who had introduced him into that hopeless, surreal world of madness.

  Vika’s words had brought all those unwelcome memories unexpectedly flooding back to him. As he had done so often, Richard forced those memories from his mind.

  “Vika is right,” Berdine said as she snuck up
closer behind them. “The palace must have at least a thousand horses in all. For all I know, it’s possible the true number is twice that. And that’s only counting the horses belonging to the First File.”

  “Then they shouldn’t miss the dozen and a half we’ll need,” Shale said as she and the rest of the impatient Mord-Sith, ducking low, joined Richard.

  Berdine gave her a reproachful look. “You think cavalrymen don’t know every horse? Know how many there are, and which stables house them? They live with those horses. Many sleep in barracks at the rear of the stables so as to be at hand should they be needed on a moment’s notice. They would miss one set of reins, to say nothing of a saddle. One missing horse would be noticed immediately.”

  “We aren’t out to steal them,” Richard said. “We merely need you to collect what we need. The stables provide horses and supplies to the Lord Rahl all the time. That’s what you are doing this time as well. It’s nothing unusual.”

  Vika nodded. “I got the horses for you the last time, remember?”

  “When we went down to see Nolo’s people,” he said as he turned back to watch the stablehands leading the horses into the stables to unsaddle, water, and feed them.

  Vika nodded. “That’s right. I’ve been to the stables many times before. The soldiers and workers aren’t going to dare to ask a Mord-Sith why she wants a dozen and a half horses and supplies. I’ve been here a number of times and they know it’s always on orders from Lord Rahl. Not you, Lord Rahl—your father. That Lord Rahl. Anyway, they won’t give a second thought to my request for horses and supplies.”

  “That hardly seems like the secrecy we need,” Kahlan said. “The whole point is that we don’t want the goddess to know that we’re collecting horses, otherwise she will be watching to see where we are headed. If these men know, then it’s possible if not probable she would know as well.”

  Shale gestured dismissively. “Leave that to me.”

  Richard looked over at her. “What can you do?”

  “She’s a witch woman,” Kahlan reminded him in a low voice so that the stablehands wouldn’t hear her.

  Richard turned his frown toward her. “What does that have to do with it?”

  Kahlan put a hand on the side of his shoulder. “Witch women are masters of illusion, remember? People see what a witch woman wants them to see. Red appeared beautiful and young to me, much like Shale, but she appeared to others as an elderly woman.”

  When Richard looked back over his shoulder at Shale, she showed him a sly smile. “Let me worry about the solution to this problem.”

  Richard realized that he knew what Kahlan meant. Witch women could make you see what they wanted you to see. More than once Shota had appeared to him as his mother. He knew what Shota looked like, or at least how she presented herself to him when she wasn’t creating the illusion that she was his mother. But he couldn’t be entirely sure if that was her real appearance or not. He suspected that the same thing was true of Shale.

  “All right,” he said to Vika. “Why don’t you go and tell the stable master that you need a dozen and a half horses, with saddles for nine of them. And supplies. We will need traveling supplies—food, water, sleeping gear. He doesn’t need to know who it’s all for. Let him assume what he will. Have them hitched over there at that staging area. Once he gets what we need, we will let Shale do her part so we can collect the horses and leave. The sooner the better, so be quick about it.”

  Vika gave him the kind of smooth, confident smile that few people other than a Mord-Sith could do so well. “No problem. Wait here. I’ll be back as soon as I arrange it.”

  4

  Shale leaned in impatiently. “What could be taking her so long?”

  Richard let out a frustrated sigh. “I can’t imagine. They should have been able to have the horses saddled and the supplies ready long ago.”

  “Could the soldiers or stable workers be giving her any grief?” Kahlan asked.

  Richard turned an incredulous look on her. “A Mord-Sith. Give a Mord-Sith grief.”

  Kahlan let out an exasperated sigh. “I guess that was kind of a silly question.”

  It had long since grown dark. For a time, the stars had been out, but as they waited clouds had rolled in. It was starting to smell like rain was on the way.

  Richard leaned out a little, scanning the area, but he still couldn’t see Vika anywhere. What was just as troubling, he couldn’t see any sign that the stable workers were hurrying to carry out her instructions. He had long ago expected to see the freshly saddled horses brought out to the staging area while the supplies were collected and loaded.

  Vika had walked over to the buildings, around the corner of one of them, and that was the last they saw of her.

  “Maybe they’re having trouble getting supplies together,” Kahlan suggested. “Maybe they had to send someone down to the storehouses to get the kind of traveling food we need.”

  Richard nodded as he watched the entire area, looking for any sign of Vika. “I suppose that could be the case. It could be that the kind of supplies she asked for have to be collected from a distant storehouse. But still, I can’t imagine Vika not coming back and telling us what the delay was all about.”

  “Well, maybe she slipped and fell and hit her head or something,” Shale whispered. “Maybe she’s hurt and needs help.”

  Richard bit his lower lip as he considered. The same thought had occurred to him as well, but he hadn’t heard anything. It seemed like if she had fallen, then in the quiet of the night they would have heard her calling out, or something. Besides that, there were a few stable workers occasionally coming and going from all the buildings. If she had fallen, it seemed like one of them would have seen her on the ground. A Mord-Sith in red leather would be hard to miss. Although, it had grown dark …

  An impatient Berdine leaned close. “Lord Rahl, it couldn’t possibly have taken this long. This doesn’t make sense. She could have had a hundred horses saddled and out here by now.”

  “More than that,” Kahlan added, “there hasn’t been any sign that the stable staff are seeing to her orders. They all seem to be calmly going about their other work. No one is rushing to take care of the things she would have asked for. Surely men would have come running when a Mord-Sith demanded horses to be saddled. Besides that, we would have seen other people rushing off to get supplies. No one is rushing anywhere.”

  “You’re all right.” Richard scratched his eyebrow as he considered what to do. “Something is wrong, I can feel it. I need to find out what’s going on.”

  He abruptly stood up. His feet were numb from squatting down for so long. He rotated each ankle in turn to get the blood started back into his feet as he looked around. All five of the Mord-Sith stood up with him. He turned to Kahlan and Shale, still crouched down behind the manure wagon.

  “Berdine, you come with me. Shale, Rikka, Nyda, Cassia, Vale—in case there is some kind of trouble please stay close to Kahlan for now. For all we know, one of the Glee could have snatched her. It shouldn’t take long to find out what’s going on.”

  The four Mord-Sith squatted back down near Kahlan. If there was any kind of trouble, he knew that in a heartbeat they would all bring their Agiel up into a fist and at the ready to defend her.

  Richard gestured. “Come on, Berdine. It all looks peaceful enough, so something is obviously wrong. Keep a sharp lookout for anything that doesn’t look right to you. Be ready for one of those hateful things to pop out of nowhere.”

  Berdine nodded and then fell in beside him after he went around the manure cart and started across the open stable area. The aroma of haystacks near each building was a pleasant change from the smell of manure. They hadn’t gone far when some of the men saw them. They all abruptly changed course from what they were doing and rushed over to Richard and Berdine.

  “Lord Rahl!” one of them called back into the quiet night in case any of the other workers hadn’t seen him. “It’s Lord Rahl!”

  So much
for stealth, Richard thought. Men who had heard the call ran out of buildings. In short order there were fifteen or twenty men gathered around and more in the distance were coming.

  “What can we do for you, Lord Rahl?” an older man with a flat cloth hat asked. “Do you wish some horses saddled and brought out?”

  “Actually,” he said, still looking around for any sign of her, “I sent a Mord-Sith to do just that quite a while ago. Her name is Vika. Why didn’t you get the horses for her?”

  The men all shared puzzled looks.

  The older man pulled off his cap and smoothed back his thin crop of gray hair. “A Mord-Sith?” He frowned as he gestured at Berdine. “This would be the first of those ladies we’ve seen all night, Lord Rahl.” He turned one way, then the other, looking around at his men. “Anyone see the Mord-Sith?”

  The men all shook their heads, mumbling that they hadn’t.

  Richard gestured. “I thought I saw her go that way, by that building. Would some of you take a look, please, and make sure she didn’t fall and hurt herself or something.”

  “Stranger things have happened,” the older man confirmed.

  Men ran off to do Richard’s bidding. He saw some of then trot off to go between the buildings, checking where he said he had last seen her. It wasn’t long before they all straggled by, looking disappointed and shaking their heads. They all reported that they had found nothing.

  Richard put his hands on his hips as he looked around. It didn’t make any sense. Vika couldn’t have vanished into thin air. A frightening thought that had been in the back of his mind was beginning to seem like the most likely explanation. Could it be that one of the Glee had snatched her and taken her back to the goddess? That seemed far-fetched, especially since he didn’t even know if that was possible. Finally, he had an idea.

  “I need something to see with,” he said to the gathered men. “Bring me a torch or lantern, please.”