AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“The captain here will explain my orders,” Richard said as he put a foot in the stirrup and swung up onto the saddle. “I have to go.”
“We will have every wagon checked, Lord Rahl,” the captain said. “Will you be going with some of the men, then?”
Richard had to have the wagons searched, just in case, but he doubted that they would find her. There was more to this, something that he had not yet figured out.
He thought about the machine’s warning that the hounds would take her from him. He thought about all the trouble that had started after they had seen the boy, Henrik, down in the market the morning after Cara’s wedding.
Their recent troubles seemed bound up in prophecy. A number of representatives had decided that they wanted to follow Hannis Arc from Fajin Province because he used prophecy. That was why so many had left that night.
One of the first omens had been “Queen takes pawn.” Nicci had told Richard that the prophecy was also a move in a game called chess, a game that was played in Fajin Province in the Dark Lands. Henrik, the sick boy who had given the first warning that there was darkness in the palace, had been to a place called Kharga Trace in the Dark Lands of Fajin Province.
Richard remembered the boy’s mother saying that she had taken him to see the Hedge Maid in Kharga Trace. He remembered the way her eyes had darted about when she had mentioned the Hedge Maid. He also remembered how nervous Abbot Dreier had gotten at the mention of the Hedge Maid.
Nicci had warned Richard about how dangerous Hedge Maids were.
He also remembered the boy’s mother saying that Henrik had been bothered by hounds coming around their tent.
The captain was still waiting for Richard to tell him where he was going.
“I’m not going with any of the men to search the wagons.” Richard’s horse danced around, eager to be away. “Tell General Meiffert and Zedd that I’m going to Kharga Trace and I don’t have the time to wait for them. I don’t have a moment to waste, and besides, they would only slow me down.”
“Kharga Trace?” one of the men of the patrol asked. “In the Dark Lands?”
Richard nodded. “You know the place?”
The man stepped forward. “I know that you don’t want to go there, Lord Rahl.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’m from Fajin Province. You don’t want to go to Kharga Trace. Desperate people go there to see some kind of woman said to have dark powers. A lot of people who go there, though, don’t come back. That kind of thing isn’t all that unusual in the Dark Lands. I was happy to leave to join the D’Haran army. I was fortunate enough to be accepted into the First File so that I might serve here. I don’t ever want to go back.”
Richard wondered if the man might simply be superstitious. When he had been a woods guide, back in the Hartland woods of Westland, he never encountered any dark malevolence haunting the trackless forests, but he did encounter country people who feared such things and believed wholeheartedly in them. Such stories, though, didn’t tarnish his fond memories of home.
“Now that the war is over,” he said to the soldier, “you really don’t want to go home?”
“Lord Rahl, I don’t know much about the gift, but in the war I came to see a great deal of magic to fear. What’s back in the Dark Lands is different. The cunning folk there, as they’re called, use occult conjuring— dark magic— that deals in things dead. It’s very different in the Dark Lands than the magic of the gift I’ve seen since leaving.”
“Different? Different in what way?”
The man looked around, almost as if he feared that the shadows might be listening. “The dead walk the Dark Lands.”
Richard rested his forearm over the pommel of the saddle and frowned down at the man. “What do you mean, the dead walk the Dark Lands?”
“Just what I said. The Dark Lands are demon ground, hunted by scavengers of the underworld. If I never go back there it will be too soon for me.”
Richard thought such superstitious fears sounded even more strange coming from a strong young man, a man who had faced war and terrors no one should ever have to face.
But then he remembered Nicci telling him that a Hedge Maid’s powers were different and that he had no defense against them. Nicci had not only once been known as Death’s Mistress, she had been a Sister of the Dark and had served the cause of the Keeper of the underworld. She knew about such things.
The thought of Kahlan going to a place like that had his heart pounding. Richard knew that the one place he didn’t want Kahlan going to was the Dark Lands, and especially to the Hedge Maid. But too many things pointed in that direction to be coincidence.
Richard nodded. “Thanks for the warning, soldier. I hope to catch up with the Mother Confessor long before then.”
The man clapped a fist to his heart. “May you come home soon, Lord Rahl. Come back safe with the Mother Confessor before you ever have to set foot in the Dark Lands.”
Richard tightened the reins to keep the horse still. “Captain, be sure to tell Nicci, too, where I’m going. Be sure to tell her that I said that I think the Mother Confessor may be headed to the Hedge Maid in Kharga Trace. I am going to try to catch her before she can get there.”
One of the other soldiers ran up and threw saddlebags over the back of the horse. “At least take some supplies, Lord Rahl.”
Richard lifted his sword from its scabbard just a bit and let it drop back, making sure that it was clear. He nodded his thanks to the men and then urged the horse toward the road that led down the side of the plateau.
As Richard gave the horse reins and leaned over its withers, it complied instantly and thundered off into the night.
CHAPTER 77
Kahlan woke with a start. She squinted out at the surrounding woods in the faint, first light of dawn. She didn’t see the hounds down on the ground, at least, not yet.
They always came back.
She knew that it was only a matter of time.
She’d gotten only a few hours of sleep, and it was neither good nor enough. At least she hadn’t fallen out of the tree. The lap of several branches had made a somewhat safe, if uncomfortable, place to rest.
The days of terror seemed endless and had blended one into another until she had completely lost track of time. She was exhausted from the relentless chase. Overwhelming fatigue was the only thing that brought on sleep.
At night, when it got dark enough, the hounds would seem to disappear for the night. She thought that maybe they went off at night to search for food and to rest. At first, she had entertained the hope that they had tired of the chase and had given up.
The first few nights after leaving the palace, when she had still been out on the Azrith Plain and the hounds had vanished at night, Kahlan had thought that it was her chance to escape, to put distance between her and her pursuers, but no matter how fast she ran, no matter how many hours, no matter if she rode all night without stopping, the hounds were always right there when day broke, and then they would come for her again.
Because the sun rose ahead and to the right and set behind her, she knew that she was headed roughly northeast. That told her the direction that the palace would be in. She had tried several times after the hounds had disappeared at night to circle around and head back, but doing so took her back into an ambush by the dogs. She had barely escaped with her life. As they came after her she had to turn back to the northeast, her only thought to outrun them, to put distance between her and her would-be assassins.
There were times when she had wanted to give up, to simply quit running and let it end. But the memory of Catherine’s gruesome end was too horrifying to allow Kahlan to surrender. She kept telling herself that if she could stay alive, if she could stay ahead of the pack of wild dogs, she had a chance. As long as she could outrun them she would stay alive. As long as she was alive, there was hope.
The thought of Richard also kept her from giving up. The thought of him finding her torn apart by the hounds was so cru
shingly heartbreaking that it made her fight all the harder to stay alive.
After she had left the Azrith Plain and had gotten into mountainous terrain, it had become, for the most part, impossible for her to run the horse at night. She was afraid of the animal breaking a leg in the dark. Without the horse, the dogs would easily catch her.
The horse was her lifeline. She took good care of it. At least, she took as good care of it as was possible. She knew that if she lost the horse, she would be dead in short order. On the other hand, if she didn’t push the horse hard enough, the hounds would pull her down.
