His questioning, handsome face turned her way. “Then what?”
“I think they want it to look like they’re sending troops past us so we will send men way out here after them.”
“A diversion?”
“I think so. It’s just close enough to us to be likely we would discover them, yet far enough away and through difficult enough terrain that it would require us to split our forces in order to do anything about it. Besides, every one of our scouts came back.”
“Isn’t that good?”
“Sure it is. But what if they have gifted with them, as you believe? How is it that not one of our scouts failed to make it back to report these massive troop movements?”
Warren thought that over a moment as the three of them carefully made it over a high spot, sliding on their bottoms down the far side of the slippery sloping rock.
“I think they’re fishing,” Cara said as her boots thumped down on solid ground behind them. “Their gifted don’t try to net the small fry, hoping to draw bigger fish close.”
Kahlan brushed the snow from her backside. “Like us.”
Warren looked skeptical. “You think this is all just some sort of elaborate trap to snare officers or gifted?”
“Well, no,” Kahlan said. “That would only be a bonus for them. I think their main intent is to spur us into splitting our forces to deal with what they want us to believe is this threat.”
Warren scratched his head of curly blond hair. His blue eyes twitched back in the direction the three of them had come down off the ridge, as if trying to look again at what he could not see.
“But if they’re sending great numbers of troops north—even if it is to draw away some of our forces—shouldn’t that concern us?”
“Of course it should,” Kahlan said. “If it were true.”
Warren glanced over at her as they struggled through deeper snow drifted under crags they passed beneath on their way up a steep little rise. Her legs were weary with the effort. Warren held out his hand to help her up a high step. He did the same for Cara. Cara gestured that she didn’t need the hand, but she didn’t level a scowl at him, either. Kahlan was always pleased to see evidence that Cara was learning that offers of modest aid were simply a courtesy and not necessarily accusations of weakness.
“Then I’m confused,” Warren said as he panted.
Kahlan came to a halt to let them all catch their breath. She lifted an arm back toward the enemy troops off beyond the ridge.
“Yes, if it were true that great numbers of troops were going out around us and heading north, that would concern us. But I don’t believe they are.”
Warren swiped a blond lock off his forehead. “You don’t think all those men are heading north? Where, then?”
“Nowhere,” Kahlan said.
“That many men? You’ve got to be joking.”
She smiled at the look on his face. “I believe it’s a trick. I think it’s only a small number of men.”
“But the scouts have been reporting mass numbers of men moving north for three days now!”
“Hush,” Cara warned, getting even with an air of mock scolding.
Warren covered his mouth with both hands when he realized he’d shouted.
They had their breath back, so Kahlan started out again, taking them over the top of the little rise onto flatter ground, following their footsteps back the way they had come.
“Remember what the scouts said yesterday?” she asked him. “They tried to go over to the mountains on the other side to have a look at the lay of the land beyond and the enemy troops moving north through it, but the passes were too heavily guarded?”
“I remember.”
“I think I’ve just figured out why.” She gestured by looping her hand around as she went on. “I think what we’re seeing is a relatively small group of the same men just going around in a big circle. We’re only seeing them at the point where they pass up this valley. We see troops marching by continuously for days and we assume they’re moving a lot of men, but I think it’s just a circle of the same ones going round and round.”
Warren stopped to stare at her. His face turned grave at the implications. “So if we’re tricked into thinking they’re moving an army up this way, then we will split our army in response and send part of them out after this phantom force.”
“We’re already outnumbered,” Cara said as she nodded to herself, “but we have the advantage of defending terrain that suits our purpose. However, if they could reduce our numbers substantially simply by getting us to send a large percentage off on some mission, first, their entire army might finally be able to overrun a smaller number of remaining defenders.”
“Makes sense.” Warren stroked his chin in thought, looking back at the ridge. “What if you’re wrong?”
Kahlan turned to look back toward the ridge, too. “Well, if I’m wrong, then…”
Kahlan frowned at a fat old maple tree not ten feet away. She thought she saw the bark move. The dusting of snow on the scaly gray, furrowed bark began disappearing, melting away in an ever widening area. Like dross floating on the surface of a boiling cauldron, the bark moved.
Kahlan gasped as Warren seized her and Cara by the collar and flung them both down on their backs. The wind knocked from her lungs, Kahlan tried to sit up, but Warren dived to the ground between them, pinning them both down.
Before Kahlan had a chance to get her breath or ask what was wrong, blinding light flashed in the still woods. A deafening boom rent the air and jolted the ground beneath her. Splintered wood, from toothpick-size fragments to fence-post-size sections, howled past inches above her face. Huge sections of wood thunked as they rebounded off rocks. Others spun, caroming off tree trunks. Pieces tumbling along the ground kicking up snow peppered with frozen chunks of dirt. The air went white as the shock from the blast blew a wall of snow up into the air.
If any of them had been standing, they would have been torn to shreds.
As soon as the last pieces of timber, trailing smoke, thudded to ground, Warren rolled toward her. “Gifted,” he whispered.
Kahlan frowned at him. “What?”
“Gifted,” he whispered again. “They focused their power to boil the frozen tree inside and make it explode. That’s how we lost so many men when we gathered back in that valley during the first battle, back just before you came to us. They surprised us.”
Kahlan nodded. She peeked up, but saw no one. She glanced over to see if Cara was all right.
“Where’s Cara,” she asked in an urgent whisper.
Warren cautiously peered off, searching the empty scene. Kahlan lifted herself a little on an elbow and saw only the disturbed snow where Cara had been.
“Dear Creator,” Warren said. “You don’t suppose they’ve snatched her, do you?”
Kahlan saw tracks where there had been none before, leading off to the side. “I think—”
A scream that would have made a brave man blanch reverberated through the trees. It trailed off in an agonizing echo.
“Cara?” Warren asked.
“I don’t think so.”
Kahlan carefully sat up and saw that a hole had been torn open in the crowded growth of the forest crown, letting harsh light penetrate the shaded woodland sanctuary below. The ground all around was littered with splintered wood, broken branches, huge limbs fallen to ground, and boughs ripped from other trees. Gouges down through the white layer of snow into the dark forest floor radiated from a ragged bowl-shaped depression where the tree had been. Fragments of wood and root lay on the ground everywhere and were even caught up in the surrounding trees.
Warren put a hand to her shoulder, urging Kahlan to stay down as he rolled into a crouch. She flipped over onto her stomach and cautiously rose up onto her hands and knees.
Kahlan jumped up and pointed. “There.”
Through the trees, she saw Cara returning. The Mord-Sith was herding a small man in obvious pain along before her. Each time he stumbled and fel
l, she kicked him in the ribs, rolling him through the snow before her. He cried out, his words coming as a whining cry that Kahlan couldn’t make out because of the distance. The words weren’t hard to imagine, though.
Cara had captured one of the gifted. It was for tasks such as this that Mord-Sith had been created. For someone with the gift, trying to use magic against a Mord-Sith was a mistake that cost them their control over their own ability.
Kahlan stood, brushing snow from herself. Warren, his violet robes crusted with snow, rose beside her, transfixed by the sight. This was one of the wizards responsible for killing so many men when the D’Harans had gathered in the valley after the Order began moving north. This was the vicious animal who did Jagang’s bidding. He didn’t seem like a vicious animal, now, as he wept and begged before the implacable captor driving him on before her.
He was a bundle of rags, flinging out around him as he rolled through the snow with a final mighty kick that deposited him at Kahlan and Warren’s feet. He lay facedown, whimpering like a child.
Cara bent, seized him by his tangled mat of dark hair, and yanked him to his feet.
It was a child.
“Lyle?” Warren stared incredulously. “Lyle? It was you?”
Tears ran from wintery eyes. He wiped his nose on the back of a tattered sleeve as he glared at Warren. Young Lyle looked to be a boy of perhaps ten or twelve years, but since Warren knew him, Kahlan realized he was probably from the Palace of the Prophets, too. Lyle was a young wizard.
Warren reached out to cup the boy’s bloody chin. Kahlan snatched Warren’s wrist. The boy lunged to bite Warren’s hand. Cara was quicker. She snatched him back by the hair as she rammed her Agiel into his back.
Shrieking in pain, he crumpled to the ground. She kicked the injured lad in the ribs.
Warren held his hands out, imploring. “Cara, don’t—”
Her icy blue eyes turned up to challenge him. “He tried to kill us. He tried to kill the Mother Confessor.”
She ground her teeth and, while looking Warren in the eye, kicked the whimpering boy again.
Warren licked his lips. “I know…but…”
“But what?”
“He’s so young. It isn’t right.”
“And so it would be better if we just let him kill us? Would that make it right for you?”
Kahlan knew Cara was right. As difficult as it was to witness, Cara was right. If they died, how many men, women, and children would the Imperial Order go on to slaughter? Child though he was, he was a tool of the Order.
Nonetheless, Kahlan gestured Cara that that was enough. When Kahlan signaled, Cara again seized his tangled mat of dirty hair in her fist and hauled him to his feet. With Cara’s thighs at his back, he stood shivering, blood running down his face, pulling short, ragged breaths.
As Kahlan stared down into terrified, tear-filled brown eyes, she put on her Confessor’s face, the face her mother had taught her when she was but a little girl, the face that masked her inner tumult.
“I know you’re, there, Jagang,” she said in a quiet voice devoid of emotion.
The boy’s bloody mouth turned up in a smile that was not his own.
“You made a mistake, Jagang. We’ll have an army soon on its way to stop them.”
The boy smiled a vacant bloody smile, but said nothing.
“Lyle,” Warren said, his voice brittle with anguish, “you can be free of the dream walker. You must only swear loyalty to Richard and you will be free. Believe me, Lyle. Try. I know what it’s like. Try, Lyle, and I swear I’ll help you.”
Kahlan thought that, with Warren there, a man he knew, he might throw himself toward the unexpected light coming from the open dungeon door. The boy behind the smile that was not his own watched Warren with longing that slowly curdled to loathing. This was a child who had seen the struggle for freedom bring horror and death and knew that servile obedience brought rewards and life. He was not old enough to understand what more there was to it.
With a gentle touch of her fingers, Kahlan urged Warren to back away. He reluctantly complied.
“This isn’t the first of Jagang’s wizards we’ve captured,” she said, offhandedly, to Warren. Her words, though, were not meant for Warren.
Kahlan looked up into Cara’s stern blue eyes and then glanced off to the side, hoping the Mord-Sith understood the instruction.
“Marlin Pickard,” Kahlan said, as if recalling the name for Warren, but her words were still meant for Cara. “He was grown, and even with this pompous pretend emperor directing him, Marlin still wasn’t able to give us much trouble.”
Marlin had in fact given them a great deal of trouble. He had nearly killed Cara and Kahlan both. Kahlan hoped Cara remembered how tenuous was her control over someone possessed by the dream walker.
The mood in the quiet woods was still and tense as the boy glared up at Kahlan.
“We discovered your scheme in time, Jagang. You made a mistake thinking you could get by our scouts. I hope you’re with those men, so that when we wipe them out we can cut your throat.”
The bloody grin widened. “A woman like you is wasted on the side of the weak,” the boy said in the menacing voice of a man. “You’d have a much better time serving strength, and the Order.”
“I’m afraid my husband likes me right where I am.”
“And where is your husband, darlin? I was hoping to say hello.”
“He’s around,” Kahlan said in the same dispassionate voice.
She saw Warren, when she had spoken the words, move in a way that was a little too much like surprise.
“Is he, now?” The boy’s eyes turned from Warren, back to Kahlan. “Why is it I don’t believe you?”
She wanted to kick the boy’s teeth in as she watched his cruel grin. Kahlan’s mind raced, trying to figure out what Jagang could possibly know, and what he was trying to discover.
“You’ll see him soon enough, when we get this poor child back to camp. I’m sure Richard Rahl will want to laugh in your cowardly face when I tell him how we discovered the great emperor’s plan to sneak troops north. He’ll want to personally tell you what a fool you are.”
The boy tried to take a step toward her, but Cara’s fist in his hair restrained him. He was a cougar on a leash, still testing its chains. The bloody smile remained, but it was not as self-satisfied as it had been. In the brown eyes, Kahlan thought she saw hesitation.
“Ah, but I don’t believe you,” he said, as if losing interest. “We both know he’s not there at all. Don’t we, darlin?”
Kahlan resolved to take a risk. “You’ll see him for yourself, soon enough.” She made to look as if she were going to turn away, but turned back to him instead.
Kahlan let a sarcastic smile taint her lips. “Oh—you must mean Nicci?”
The smile vanished from the boy’s face. The brow drew down, but he managed to keep any anger out of his voice.
“Nicci? I don’t know what you’re talking about, darlin.”
“Sister of the Dark? Shapely? Blond hair? Blue eyes? Black dress? Surely, you would remember a woman that hauntingly beautiful. Or, besides your other shortcomings, are you also a eunuch?”
The eyes watched, and in them Kahlan could see careful calculations weighing her every word. But it was Nicci’s words about Jagang that Kahlan was remembering.
“I know who Nicci is. I know every private inch of her. One day, I will come to know you as intimately as I know Nicci.”
Such an obscene threat was somehow more chilling, coming as it did from the mouth of a boy. It made her sick to her stomach to hear a child express Jagang’s vile thoughts.
The boy’s arm gestured for his master. “One of my beauties, and quite the lethal lady, besides.” Kahlan thought she detected in Jagang’s gravelly growl a hint of the false bravado of a bluff. Almost in afterthought, he added, “You haven’t really seen her.”
Kahlan heard in the assertion the ghost of a question he dared not ask, and knew by it th
at there was something more to this. She wished she knew what.
She shrugged again. “Lethal? I wouldn’t know.”
He licked the blood from his lips. “That’s what I thought.”
“I wouldn’t know because she didn’t seem all that lethal. She didn’t manage to harm any of us.”
The grin returned. “You lie, darlin. If you really saw Nicci, she would have killed at least some of you, even if she didn’t manage to kill you all. You couldn’t best that one without her scratching someone’s eyes out, first.”
“Really? So sure, are we?”
The boy let out a belly laugh. “Darlin, I know Nicci. I’m sure.”
Kahlan smiled her contempt into the boy’s brown eyes. “You know I’m telling you the truth.”
“Really?” he said, still chuckling. “How’s that?”
“You know it’s the truth because she’s one of your slaves, so you should be able to enter her mind. You can’t, though. I know why you can’t. Even though you aren’t too bright, I don’t suppose you’ll need to think too long to imagine why not.”
Fierce rage fired the boy’s eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
Kahlan shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
“If you saw her, then where is she now?”
As she turned her back on him, Kahlan told him the brutal, bitter truth and let him interpret it his own way. “Last I saw her, she was on her way into oblivion.”
Kahlan heard the bellow behind her. She spun back to see Cara trying to stop him with her Agiel. Kahlan heard the bone in his arm snap. It didn’t even slow him. The boy, in a wild rage, his hands clawed, his teeth bared, lunged for Kahlan.
Half turned back to him, Kahlan lifted her hand against the full weight of the boy crashing toward her as he leaped for her throat. His small chest contacted her hand. His feet were clear of the ground. It felt not as if he were throwing himself at her, but no more than dandelion fluff, floating to her on a breath of air.
Time was hers.
It was not necessary for Kahlan to invoke her birthright, but merely to withdraw her restraint of it. Her feelings could provide her no safe haven; only the truth would serve her now.
This was not a small boy, hurt, alone, afraid.
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