Finally, she returned to a stop not far away. She turned toward them as she placed her second hand on the staff. Richard knew that they didn’t have any time to waste. If this ceremony didn’t end pretty soon he was going to have to put an end to it himself. The palm of his left hand rested on the hilt of his sword. They needed to get to the containment field in Saavedra. These people were either going to help or he would have to sweep them aside and get through the pass.
Finally, the blindfolded woman tipped the staff forward to tap Kahlan once on each shoulder.
“You,” she said. “The oracle will see you, and no one else.”
Richard was about to say he wouldn’t allow it when Kahlan stepped forward and spoke before he had a chance.
“Thank you. Please take me to the oracle at once. We have no time to spare.”
Two of the straw men crossed their staffs before Richard when he started to take a step forward.
“You will wait while the oracle speaks with her,” the straw man said.
Kahlan held a hand back toward Richard, urging him to stay put. “It’s all right, Richard. Just wait here.”
“I don’t like—”
“I am the Mother Confessor. I have been doing this sort of thing my whole life. We don’t have any time to waste. Let me get this over with so we can be on our way. That’s what matters.”
He wanted to say that when she had done this sort of thing in the past, she had always had access to her power. Now, she didn’t. But she was right that this would be the fastest way to get past, and less risky than a fight.
As long as it went well.
Richard heaved a sigh. “You’re right. We will wait here.”
“Call out if you need help,” Nicci said. “I will hear you.”
Kahlan nodded and then followed after the blindfolded woman with the staff.
Richard didn’t know exactly what was going on, but he did know that he didn’t like it one bit.
CHAPTER
64
Kahlan followed the blindfolded woman as she walked through the center of their village. The woman in the henna-colored blouse seemed to be better able to navigate now that she was holding the staff one of the straw men had given her, almost as if it were showing her the way as she walked down the center of the opening between buildings. The people of the village stood to the sides, silently watching her pass. Children, holding the frames of window openings, rested their chins on their hands. None of them spoke.
Kahlan didn’t like how somber they appeared to be over what they were witnessing.
It reminded her of people watching a funeral procession.
“What is your name?” Kahlan asked the woman she was following.
The woman, walking with her chin lifted, turned an ear back toward Kahlan. “I am the one the oracle has chosen to use. I am the one who is in service to her this day.”
“I see,” Kahlan said half to herself.
At the far edge of the village they plunged back into the somber woods made up entirely of the strange trees. The ground, still barren, dead, and dark, started to incline under the obscuring canopy of leaves. After a time until Kahlan noticed rock bluffs to the sides funneling them ahead.
When they came to a place where the passage narrowed somewhat, more normal-looking trees began to take over from the strange forest. Shrubs and plants dotted the ground among white birch and linden thick with fragrant, fluffy yellowish blossoms.
The blindfolded woman stopped at the fringes of where the dark trees grew.
“This is as far as I am allowed to go,” she said.
“And what am I to do?” Kahlan asked.
The woman tilted the staff ahead. “You are to go on alone. I cannot go beyond here. You must go the rest of the way alone.”
“How will I know the way?”
The woman tilted the staff again. “The oracle is that way. You will find her if you go that way.” When she sensed Kahlan hesitating, she tilted her head in gesture back toward the village. “This is your last chance to turn back. Think carefully on what you are about to do. Not many are pleased to hear what the oracle would tell them.”
“People are rarely satisfied by hearing such things,” Kahlan said. “But I don’t have a choice.”
The woman nodded. “I can feel the sickness in you.”
Kahlan took a deep breath as she looked off into the woods ahead. “Thank you for bringing me.”
“Do not thank me before you see the oracle. Afterwards, for bringing you here, you may yet curse the day I was born.”
“I choose to thank you. Neither of us has a choice in what we do today.”
The woman smiled. “In that you are right. While you speak with the oracle, I will wait back in our village with those you travel with. If the oracle decides that you may pass, I will know and I will bring them.”
Once the blindfolded woman turned back toward the way they had come, Kahlan started off in the other direction. She was glad at least to once again be in a more normal-looking forest rather than the spooky black wood. She found a small brook, where gloomy light filtered down to the lacy leaves of some of the young trees growing along the mossy rocks along the bank. Kahlan fanned her hand in front of her face as she passed through little clouds of gnats hovering above the brook.
Up on the banks to the sides grew thickets of brush and larger trees. Even with the gnats and other buzzing bugs, it was easier to walk along the brook than to make her way through the congested forest to the sides. She could occasionally see through gaps in the trees that the rock walls that had narrowed the passage had receded back to become the lower reaches of forested mountains rising up to either side.
The brook eventually led her through a stand of birches. The dark spots on the white bark looked like a thousand eyes watching her. The birches eventually thinned out as she moved along the brook into a more open grassland. The dark wall of forest receded into the distance to the sides, leaving a flat, grassy plain. The brook broadened out in a series of shallow pools as crystal-clear water moved quietly over gravel beds.
Out in the open at last, Kahlan was finally able to better see the true enormity of the mountains. They stood like hazy, pale gray-blue walls rising up to either side. She couldn’t see any other way through the towering, snow-covered peaks. As far as she could tell, they had indeed found the pass through the mountains that would lead them to Saavedra.
Now, all she had to do was get the oracle to give her blessing for them to travel through the pass.
In among small, grassy, rolling rises she found the source of the brook. The water, looking to be fed from a spring below, flowed up through a split in a knee-high boulder and down the sides. Through the clear water in the pool around the boulder, she spotted minnows above the gravelly bottom swimming into the gentle current. The place vaguely reminded Kahlan of something she had seen before, but she couldn’t bring it to mind.
Beyond the spring, over a grassy rise, she saw a broad valley forested with huge oaks and maples. The massive trunks of the spreading oaks created a beautiful, natural cathedral below the crowns. Had her mission not been so vital, and her worry for Richard so great, Kahlan would have marveled at the size and beauty of the trees set among the lush expanse of grass.
As she walked through the waist-high grass, something began crunching under her feet. Sometimes the grasses collapsed inward when her foot broke through. She paused and looked down. Among the tussocks, she saw something slightly round just under the brown thatch of dead grass. She noticed that the ground all around looked lumpy. With the side of her boot, she scraped at the thick layer of dead grass down at the base of the new green shoots. Her foot exposed something that looked like bone.
Kahlan scanned the entire area all around her, and saw that all of it was cluttered with the smallish round humps. Those round bulges were what had been crunching and collapsing inward as she had stepped on them. With the side of her boot, she worked to expose more of the round mound.
It was a skull. She squatted and pulled it out so she could turn it over. Empty eye sockets stared blindly up at her.
The skull was human.
Kahlan stood in a rush. She peered out over the grassy area and saw that there were small round mounds everywhere, as far as she could see. Even in the distance she could detect the telltale rounded spots down beneath the grass. They were all so close together that it would be impossible not to tread on a skull with every step.
There had to be hundreds of human skulls littering just the area close in around her. By the way the ground in all directions was mounded, Kahlan suspected that the skulls were not merely lying on the surface of the ground, but heaped up in deep piles. She had no idea how many human skulls she was standing on, but she quickly changed her estimate from hundreds to thousands.
She had no idea what had happened in this place, but she told herself that if she didn’t get permission for her and everyone with her to pass, and they tried to pass without that permission, they very well might end up here, with grass growing up out of their bones.
But if she didn’t get permission to pass, she and Richard would be dead within days. Nicci had told her how short their remaining lives would be if the poison was not removed.
With no time to waste, she couldn’t worry about the dead she was walking over. Her only concern now had to be for the living, not only her and Richard, but everyone else who depended on them.
Making her way through the monarch oaks, eyeing songbirds flitting about up in the branches, she saw that the trees gave way to a central area that looked like it should have been sunlit, but the murky day would not cooperate. She could see someone—no doubt the oracle—sitting on a stone bench near the center of that open area.
Kahlan wasted no time contemplating what she had to do, or what she might say. She marched straight toward the woman.
When she finally reached her, Kahlan came to a stop, waiting behind the woman sitting sideways on the gray granite bench, facing away. Her hair was a thick mass of dozens and dozens of matted ropy locks of hair hanging loosely down on all sides. Her hair was bright red.
“Good afternoon, Mother Confessor,” the woman said in a silken voice without turning. “Thank you for coming.”
It was then that Kahlan noticed Hunter sitting quietly off to the side, watching with big green eyes.
Kahlan knew in that instant that there was a lot more going on than she had at first realized.
CHAPTER
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The woman on the bench finally turned, gazing up at Kahlan for a moment before standing. Her gray dress looked far too elegant for the woods. Kahlan saw no home, or building of any sort.
The woman’s piercing sky-blue eyes made her tight thatch of ropy red locks by contrast look all the more red. They were the sort of eyes that could easily be cruel. They were the kind of eyes that had witnessed many terrible things.
Kahlan thought that the oracle might have been rather attractive, had she not painted her lips black.
“Thank you for seeing me,” Kahlan said.
The woman gracefully bowed her head. “Of course. I am honored to have the Mother Confessor herself come to see me. My name is Red.”
“Red,” Kahlan repeated, glancing to the woman’s strange hair, thinking that the name was pretty obvious.
The woman’s black lips widened in a slightly amused smile. “You think I am called Red because of my hair.”
“It had crossed my mind,” Kahlan said.
“Of course it did. But you would be wrong.” The tolerant smile stayed on her face, not touching any other of her smooth features. “I am called Red because there have been times when this pass through the mountains”—she swept an arm out first in the direction Kahlan needed to go and then in the direction from which they had come—“has run red with blood. There have been times when I have turned this pass to a river of blood.” She shrugged. “So, that was how I came to be called Red. The hair came after.” The smile widened. “Because I liked the name.”
“I see,” Kahlan said.
“You needn’t sound so reproachful, Mother Confessor. After all, there have been times when you, too, have turned the countryside red with blood.”
“That’s true,” Kahlan admitted. She sought to clarify the idea with a bit of context. “Sometimes people need killing.”
Red laughed. “Yes, indeed they do.” The laughter died out as she leaned a bit closer, looking hard into Kahlan’s eyes. “I’m glad that you feel that way.”
Kahlan glanced over at Hunter sitting quietly, watching.
She gestured at him. “Do you know that small creature?”
Red didn’t bother looking. “So cute, isn’t he? His mother is a … protector of mine. I would not describe her as cute, though. You would never guess from looking at the little fellow just how big she is, or how ferocious. He is quite the good little boy. I sent him to you.”
Kahlan frowned. “Why?”
“To make sure that you made it here. I put the thorn in his paw so that you two would become friends. Though he is still small, like his mother, he is quite the fierce protector.”
Kahlan was still frowning. “How did you know that he would find me, or that I would find the thorn and take it out? For that matter, how did you know that we would come this way?”
“Oh come now, Mother Confessor, what kind of oracle would I be if I did not see such important events in the flow of time.”
The flow of time … It suddenly came to Kahlan why the clear spring coming up from the boulder and the cathedral of trees looked familiar.
“You’re a witch woman.”
Red smiled indulgently. “Yes. The simple people here have never imagined such a thing. I don’t think they would understand. I give them little bits from the flow of time, such as I did when I told them that all of you would come through their home place. So, they think I am an oracle.”
Kahlan cocked her head. “I’ve had dealings with a witch woman in the past. Do you know Shota?”
Red flicked her hand dismissively. “Never heard of the witch.”
Kahlan glanced around. “So, where are all your snakes?”
Red made a show of visibly shuddering. “Snakes. Horrid creatures. I hate them.”
“Me too,” Kahlan said, feeling just the slightest bit better. Maybe Red was not the trouble Shota had proven herself to be. “Shota is rather fond of snakes.”
“Disgusting,” Red said, shuddering again. “I much prefer worms.”
Kahlan blinked. “Worms?”
Red nodded earnestly. “Much more agreeable creatures than snakes. More obedient and much more useful as well.”
“What good are worms?”
Amused, Red leaned closer. “You’re joking.”
“No, really.”
Red gestured vaguely behind Kahlan, back toward the mounds of skulls. “Well, for one thing, the little ones are good at cleaning up messes.”
Kahlan cocked her head. “The little ones?”
Red straightened. She looked back over her shoulder.
“Worm! Come to me!”
Kahlan had never heard of worms that would come when called. She wondered briefly if Red had all her senses. In a moment, though, she began to feel the ground beneath her feet trembling. And then it shook as if from an earthquake.
Abruptly, not far behind Red, the ground broke open. Dirt flew up and away as something big erupted from under the sod.
Kahlan stared in disbelief. A worm as big around as the trunk of a midsize oak lifted part of itself up and out of the dirt. It stretched its wet head up over Red’s shoulder. There was no face, no eyes, only an enormous round mouth ringed with teeth. The opening of the mouth undulated along with the rest of the distended, banded sections of the never-still, rippling body. The teeth clacked together when the mouth snapped closed and open again.
“Worm eats snakes for the fun of it,” Red said, amused by the startled look on Kahlan’s face.
With that, sh
e bent and snatched a snake up from under the bench. Smiling at Kahlan, she flipped the writhing snake back over her shoulder. The enormous worm snapped it out of midair like a dog snapping up a table scrap tossed its way.
Red waved a hand without looking back, dismissing the thing. The worm’s massive body ripped in muscular waves as it pulled itself back down into the ground. The dirt and sod collapsed in around the hole as it vanished beneath the ground.
“Your little furry friend’s mother is even more formidable,” the witch woman said.
“I can only imagine,” Kahlan said as she glanced over at Hunter. “Red, you obviously went to a lot of trouble getting me to come here.”
“Not a lot of trouble,” Red said with a shrug. “I saw in the flow of time that you would come this way. I didn’t want you to be ripped apart and eaten back there in the chasms, so I sent your little friend to show you the way and keep you alive.”
“Thank you” was all Kahlan could think to say. “But what am I doing here? We need permission to go through here. We need to be on our way. What is it you want from me?”
“Ah,” Red said, “direct and to the point. Well, with the condition you and Lord Rahl are in, I suppose that you have no time to waste, so we had best get right to our business.”
“My business is getting to Saavedra,” Kahlan told the woman. “We’re in a hurry. We don’t want any trouble. We simply need you to give us your permission to go through this pass.”
“Yes,” Red drawled, “but first we have important business.”
Kahlan frowned again. “What business?”
Red’s piercing blue eyes fixed on her. “I need you to kill someone for me.”
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“You need me to kill someone?” Kahlan asked. She didn’t see why a witch woman with this much ability and reach couldn’t do her own killing if it was so important. “I’m not an assassin. Not for anyone, including you.”
“Yes, that’s all well and good, but you need to do this killing, so I need to make you understand how important it is so that you will not fail.”
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