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  “We try not to have torches around the horses and all the hay,” the gray-haired man said as he replaced his hat on his head. “We have plenty of lanterns, though.”

  When he gestured the order, one of the men rushed to retrieve a lantern. He pulled one off a hook on the corner of the closest building and rushed back to hand it to Richard.

  “Thanks. You can all go back to what you were doing. I’ll take it from here.”

  Lantern in hand, Richard marched off to have a look for himself. Berdine followed close on his heels.

  Going around the building where he had last seen Vika, Richard started searching the soft ground looking for any sign. In the shadows between the buildings, and with the clouds, it was quite dark, but the lantern gave him enough light to see what he needed to see. There were a lot of footprints. Most of those prints were older, while a few were from the men who had just checked for Richard, looking for Vika.

  Before long, the confusion of prints sorted themselves out in his mind and Richard found what he was looking for: prints from Vika’s boots. He recognized the size and the shape. None of the prints from the men’s boots looked similar. Had there been more light, he would have been able to also recognize Vika’s unique gait from the angle and depth of the impressions made by her boots, along with her height and weight.

  He followed her footprints between the buildings to the end where she had turned behind the building to Richard’s left. He also saw larger prints from a man, but it was hard to tell if Vika had been following him or he had been following her.

  Then Richard saw something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

  5

  Richard squatted down, holding the lantern out close to the ground to better highlight the ridges and depressions. There, in the soft dirt, he could see where Vika had come to a stop, and a short distance beyond that, where she had gone to her knees.

  His blood ran cold when he saw that the man’s prints tracked around her while she had been there on her knees to turn and stand before her. In his mind, as he stared at the prints, Richard could picture a big man standing over Vika.

  It made no sense, but the tracks were clear in the story they told.

  “Someone has taken her,” he whispered to himself.

  Berdine leaned in with alarm. “Taken her? That’s crazy. Who in the world could take a Mord-Sith?”

  Richard gestured behind, then along the building, and finally to the prints on the ground before him. “Her footprints came from between the buildings, where I saw her go, then around behind the back of this building to right here.”

  Berdine smoothed a hand back over her hair as she straightened after peering at the ground. “If you say so, Lord Rahl. I can read books, but I can’t read footprints.”

  “Well, I can. Look,” he said urging Berdine to lean in again as he pointed. “See there, those impressions? That’s where Vika walked up to here and right there is where she knelt down.”

  “Knelt down?” Her nose wrinkled skeptically. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. See this?” He hovered his hand over the indentations made by Vika’s knees. “See this depression? That’s not a footprint. It’s a knee print. It’s deeper where her knees bend and gets shallower as it goes back toward her ankles. See those little round impressions? Those are from the toes of her boots as she was on her knees. She knelt down right here.”

  Berdine squinted in the lantern light. “I guess I can see what you’re talking about. It does make sense now that you explain the depressions in the ground.”

  He touched the edge of the indentations. “See this? You can see where the wrinkles of her leather outfit as she knelt made these rows of little marks.”

  Berdine leaned in, looking more closely this time. “All right, I see what you’re talking about now. But why would Vika kneel down in the dirt back here, in such a dark, out-of-the-way place?”

  With his fingertips, Richard touched a couple of the other footprints. “These prints here are from a man who is big, but not as big as me. They come in here beside Vika’s prints—not in front of or behind, but beside her prints—then … ” He leaned over to point out the important part. “… then, see here? He walked around Vika right here, when she went to her knees. Right there. See that? See the prints turned around right there, the toes pointing toward her, right in front of her knee prints?

  “That shows that he stood in front of Vika when she was on her knees.”

  Berdine blinked as the meaning of it all sank in.

  “Look at these prints here. After he stood there in front of her, she got back up. See that sideways indentation? That’s the side of the sole of her boot pushing the dirt sideways from her putting weight on her right foot as she got back to her feet in front of the man. That’s her prints standing, then, right in front of where she had been kneeling, right in front of the man facing her.”

  Berdine was staring, her eyes wide. Her face had gone ashen.

  Richard flicked a hand. “Then, the man’s prints twist around and they both go off in that direction, down that way, with the man leading, Vika right behind him.”

  Berdine swallowed. Her blue eyes welled up with tears.

  “He took her,” she said in a meek voice choked with those tears. “Lord Rahl, he took her.” She gasped back a sob. “It can’t be, but that’s the only explanation for why Vika would leave you without her protection, and why she would go to her knees like this.”

  Richard finally stood. He whistled for the others; then he looked down at Berdine. “Berdine, what are you talking about? Do you know something about this?”

  She choked back another sob as the others rushed around the building and came to an abrupt halt, looking expectantly at the two of them. Richard signaled them to be quiet and wait.

  “It can’t be,” Berdine said to no one in particular as she stared off in the direction he had taken her. “But it has to be.”

  She sounded forlorn and terrified. While Berdine was bubbly and cheerful, it was always filtered through a Mord-Sith’s iron temperament. Richard had never seen her behave in such a normal human way. Human feelings were suppressed in Mord-Sith. But with Richard as the Lord Rahl, he always hoped that their humanity would return to them. He had seen a number of instances where it rose to the surface. This seemed to be one of those times, yet not a joyful one. It made him ache for all she had been through.

  When he reached out and gently held her by her shoulders, he could feel her trembling. He shook her just enough to make her look up at him.

  “Berdine, what are you saying? Do you know who took her?”

  “Moravaska.”

  “Moravaska? Who is Moravaska?”

  Her big eyes brimmed with tears. “Moravaska Michec.”

  Richard frowned at her. The tears began to run down her cheeks as she shook. He could only imagine what would make a Mord-Sith tremble in fear.

  “Berdine, who is Moravaska Michec?”

  Berdine wiped tears back off her cheek as she swallowed. Her eyes turned away from him in embarrassment for having shown such emotion.

  “A bad man. A very, very bad man.”

  Kahlan gently circled a comforting arm around Berdine’s shoulders as she looked back at Richard. “What’s going on?”

  When Richard saw the faces of the other Mord-Sith, there was no doubt that they all knew who Moravaska Michec was. But Berdine’s reaction was the strongest.

  He gestured to the tracks to explain it to Kahlan. “See here? These are Vika’s tracks. She came around this building.” He pointed. “She stopped and knelt down there. A man walked around in front of her while she was kneeling, and then the two of them walked away in that direction.”

  “Are you sure, Lord Rahl?” Shale asked, sounding more than a little skeptical. “You really believe you can tell all that just by looking at the ground?”

  “Richard can track a cricket through a field of tall grass in a rainstorm at midnight,” Kahlan said to
the sorceress.

  Shale arched a cynical eyebrow.

  “Figure of speech,” Kahlan said. “But Richard knows tracks. It’s what he was raised doing, what he used to do as a woods guide. If Richard says that’s what happened, then that’s what happened.”

  Richard looked around at the Mord-Sith standing in a semicircle. “Who is Moravaska Michec?”

  Nyda was the one who spoke up. “Michec was Vika’s trainer. She was taken when she was twelve and given to Michec to be trained. He tortured her for three years. After that first phase of her training, he eventually tortured her mother to death in front of her, but after keeping her alive for a long, long time to numb Vika to another’s pain. As her last stage of training to be Mord-Sith, when ordered, Vika had to torture her father, keeping him alive for a protracted period of time to demonstrate that she could keep a captive on the cusp of life and death for as long as she wanted. She was finally ordered by Michec to kill him. When she completed her training, and had been broken those three times, Michec took her as his mate.”

  Richard knew all too well about a Mord-Sith’s training, but even so he stood in pain for a moment in the dragging silence. “Was Michec gifted?”

  Nyda huffed. “Oh yes. That was part of how he was so easily able to control his trainees. Michec was feared here at the People’s Palace. Darken Rahl let him indulge his sick appetites, not merely with the Mord-Sith in training but on others as well. Darken Rahl ordinarily didn’t trust having strongly gifted people around him, but Moravaska Michec was so loyal and devoted to the cause that Darken Rahl trusted him.”

  “Then that must have been how he captured her, here,” Richard said. “With his gift and the power he had over her.”

  “She would have been kneeling in front of him,” Nyda said in a flat tone that unlike Berdine’s seemed devoid of all emotion, “so that he could have put a training collar back around her neck and attached a chain to it.”

  Richard knew all too well about the collar and chain.

  In the terrible silence, Berdine, still turned away, said, “Vika wasn’t the only one Moravaska Michec trained. Not the only one he took as his mate.”

  Now he understood Berdine’s reaction.

  “But Vika was with Hannis Arc,” Richard said. “That’s where I first came into contact with her. She was his most trusted protection, always at his side. When they had me captive for a time, I told her that her life could be her own. She eventually came to believe me. She’s the one who killed Hannis Arc to join with us.”

  Nyda nodded. “Long before that, Vika belonged to Michec. He gave her to Hannis Arc on the condition that if and when he no longer had need of her services, she was to be returned to him. Hannis Arc liked the status of having a Mord-Sith at his side. But Vika always belonged to Moravaska Michec. She was his property.”

  Richard rested the palm of his left hand on the pommel of the sword in the scabbard at his left hip. “So then when she killed Hannis Arc, she was supposed to go back to Michec.”

  “Yes,” Nyda said. “But she instead swore loyalty to you. Against all the training and despite being the property of Moravaska Michec.”

  Richard was incensed at such a concept. “She belongs to no one but herself.”

  “We have to go find her,” Berdine said, the strength returning to her voice. “We have to.”

  “What we have to do,” Shale said in a sympathetic but firm tone, “is get the horses and supplies we need and get away from the palace. It’s dark. Sentries won’t be able to see which way we ride off. I can help to make sure of it.”

  “That would mean the death of Vika,” Richard said.

  “A very long and torturous death,” Nyda added.

  Shale didn’t shy away from Richard’s glare. “Vika knows the possible price of her loyalty to you. She knows that her sacrifice might be necessary to protect you. It was what she chose. For your safety, for the Mother Confessor’s safety, and for the future hope of everyone in this world carried in the gift of those babies, we need to get to the Keep. Delay would risk everything.”

  “We don’t leave one of ours behind if there is any chance we can save them,” Kahlan said with quiet authority.

  “I understand, Mother Confessor, but—”

  “We would come after you,” Richard said in an equally quiet voice.

  Staring up at him, Shale considered for a long moment. “I am a witch woman. No one would come after me.”

  “We would,” he said without hesitation.

  Her brow twitched as she seemed captured in his gaze, unable to look away. Finally, her voice returned.

  “Let’s go get Vika back.”

  6

  The eight of them hurried through the halls and corridors of the palace urgently going after the ninth. Nyda and Rikka, both tall and blond, were in the lead, Richard, Kahlan, and Shale in the middle, with Vale, Berdine, and Cassia guarding them from the rear. They took the shortest route, which necessarily meant going through the public areas.

  Even at night there were quite a number of people in the sprawling corridors. When they saw the five Mord-Sith in red leather, they kept their heads down and averted their eyes, wanting nothing to do with why they might be rushing through the halls. Richard couldn’t help wondering if the Golden Goddess was also watching them. Right then, what mattered the most was not only getting Vika back, but stopping Michec from running free in the palace.

  Without the Mord-Sith saying anything, Richard knew where they were headed. They were going to the Mord-Sith’s traditional quarters. Vika would once have had quarters there. It seemed unlikely but possible that Moravaska Michec would have taken her back to her room and would be using the adjacent training room to punish her for ever thinking she could walk away from the master who owned her.

  In places the cavernous corridors were open to the sky in order to fill the palace with light. Since it was long after dark, that left the lamps and the isolated, flickering light of torches the task of providing light in the corridors. Many of the shops located in the main corridors closed down at night, but a number of others stayed open for the customers who worked in the palace even in the dead of night. Each of the halls and passageways they used stretched nearly out of sight. Sometimes they took to the private passageways in order to take shortcuts.

  Because the purpose of the shape of the palace was to function as a massive spell-form, there weren’t convenient, direct routes from one place to another. At intervals, wide marble stairs provided a quick way up or down in order to get to other passageways that crossed over constricted areas so they could continue heading in the direction they needed to go.

  In other places they passed statues of people in proud poses. The statues were made of carved and polished stone with different colors of veining, though they were predominantly white. In some areas the statues were twice life size. It had been a very long time since Richard had seen those particular statues. They reminded him in a way of the massive statue he had once carved.

  Nyda led them past a sprawling square open to the sky above a small indoor forest. It was a large enough area that many of the trees were full grown, the branches reaching all the way up through the open roof. Mosses and ferns covered the ground. It was a convincing imitation of being outdoors in a beautiful grove. For a brief moment it reminded him of his forest home in Hartland.

  “I’ve never seen such an indoor forest before,” Shale said in amazement as they made their way along the path of clay tiles through the center of it. “I suppose there must be many different kinds of places here that would surprise me. I wouldn’t have believed such a place existed inside the palace. Did you know this was in here?”

  Richard nodded, not wanting to get into how he knew.

  Nyda and Vale led them past an official palace dining room that never closed. It was for the exclusive use of the many people who worked at the palace, especially those who worked at night. Beyond the dining room, they hurried through the halls to another area open to the sky,
with pillars supporting arches on all four sides.

  Instead of a forest, under the open sky was a square made of short tiled walls filled with white sand raked in concentric lines around an irregular-shaped dark pitted rock in the center. On the top of the rock was a bell to call people to devotion—a devotion that now was key to keeping their world safe from the Golden Goddess and her predator race.

  Devotions used to be hours long. Richard thought that was a waste of time and had shortened them to three repetitions, as was the custom when in the field away from the palace. He judged three repetitions to be more than enough to satisfy the magical connection between the people and the Lord Rahl.

  When Nyda turned off the main corridor, she took them down a passageway that led them to a place Richard knew all too well.

  “These are the Mord-Sith’s quarters,” Nyda said, in a quiet voice in case Michec should be in one of the nearby rooms.

  “Do you know which one was Vika’s room?” Richard asked.

  Nyda gestured. “This one right here.”

  While everyone waited, the Mord-Sith with Agiel in hand and Kahlan standing beside Shale, Richard took a lantern from the wall and went in. With one hand on his sword, and the other holding the lantern, he checked the room. It was small, with a little training room beyond. He opened the wardrobe to be sure, but there was no one hiding in the room, and no place to hide.

  “Empty,” he said when he came back out. “We need to check all the rest of the rooms.”

  The Mord-Sith each looked in rooms, as did Richard. After checking several dark and empty rooms, he went into one with polished wood floors, a window with a pointed top and trimmed with simple drapes open to the darkness outside, and a bed with a blanket and pillow. Richard was abruptly staggered to remember sleeping at the foot of that bed, as well as being in it. Next to it was a nightstand with a lamp. On the other side of the small room were a simple table and chair. Next to a door into the training room were dark wood cabinets built into the wall. He opened the doors and found the cabinets empty.