Blood of the Fold tsot-3

by Terry Goodkind

  “Lord Rahl! Lord Rahl!”

  Berdine flew at him like a squirrel flinging itself for a branch. She landed on him, webbing him in arms and legs, knocking him back off the wall and into the fountain full of snowmelt.

  She sat up on his stomach. “Lord Rahl! You did it! You took the cape off like I told you! You heard my warning after all!”

  She fell on him again, clutching him in red arms. Richard held his breath as he went under. Though the icy water wouldn’t have been his choice, he was glad for the excuse to wash off some of the stinking mriswith blood. He gasped for air when she grabbed his shirt in her fist and hauled him up. She sat in his lap, legs around his middle, and hugged him again.

  “Berdine,” he whispered, “my shoulder is hurt. Please don’t squeeze so hard.”

  “It’s nothing,” she announced in true Mord-Sith disregard for pain. “We were so worried. When the attack came, we thought we would never see you again. We thought we had failed.”

  Kahlan cleared her throat. Richard held out an introductory hand. “Kahlan, these are my personal guards, Cara, Raina, and this is Berdine. Ladies, this is Kahlan, my queen.”

  Berdine, making no attempt to get off his lap, grinned up at Kahlan. “I’m Lord Rahl’s favorite.”

  Kahlan folded her arms as her green-eyed glare darkened.

  “Berdine, let me up.”

  “You still smell like a mriswith.” She shoved him back in the water and again hauled him up by his shirt. “That’s better.” She pulled him closer. “You ever run off like that again without listening to me, I’ll do more than give you a bath.”

  “What is it about you and women and baths?” Kahlan asked in an even tone.

  “I don’t know.” He looked out over the battle still raging, and then back to Berdine’s blue eyes. He hugged her with his good arm. “I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. The price of my foolishness was too great.”

  “Are you all right?” she whispered in his ear.

  “Berdine, get off me. Let me up.”

  She flopped off his lap to the side. “Kolo said that the mriswith were enemy wizards who traded their power for the ability to become invisible.”

  Richard gave her a hand up. “I nearly did, too.”

  She stood in the water on her tiptoes and pulled his shirt collar aside, inspecting his neck. She let out a relieved sigh. “It’s gone. You’re safe. Kolo said how the change came, how their skin began to scale over. He said that that ancestor of yours, Alric, created a force to battle the mriswith.” She pointed. “Gars.”

  “Gars . . . ?”

  Berdine nodded. “He gave them the ability to sense mriswith, even when they were invisible. That’s what gives the gars’ eyes that green glow. Because of this interrelationship of magic all the gars share, those who dealt directly with the wizards accrued dominance over the others, becoming something like the wizards’ generals among the gar nation. These intermediary gars were greatly respected by the other gars, and got them to fight with the people of the New World against the enemy mriswith, driving them back to the Old World.”

  Richard stared in astonishment. “What else did he say?”

  “I haven’t had time to read any more. We’ve been kind of busy since you left.”

  “How long?” He stepped out of the fountain and addressed Cara. “How long have I been gone?”

  She glanced to the Keep. “Nearly two days. Night before last. Today, at dawn, the sentries came in a lather and said the Blood of the Fold were right on their heels. They attacked shortly after. The fighting has been going on since this morning. At first, it was going well, but then the mriswith . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Kahlan put an arm around his waist to steady him as he spoke. “I’m sorry, Cara. I should have been here.” He stared in a daze at the sea of dead. “This is my fault.”

  “I killed two,” Raina announced without any attempt to mask her pride.

  Ulic and Egan came at a run and spun to a stop in defensive positions. “Lord Rahl,” Ulic said over his shoulder, “are we ever glad to see you. We heard the cheer, but every time we got to you, you were somewhere else.”

  “Really?” Cara said, lifting an eyebrow. “We managed.”

  Ulic rolled his eyes and turned toward the battle.

  “Are they always like this?” Kahlan whispered in his ear.

  “No,” he whispered back. “They’re on their best behavior for you.”

  Richard saw white flags flying among the Blood of the Fold. No one paid them any heed.

  “D’Harans give no quarter,” Cara explained when she saw where he was looking. “It is to the finish.”

  Richard hopped down off the fountain. When he strode off, his guards immediately followed.

  Kahlan caught up with him before he had taken three strides. “What are you doing, Richard?”

  “I’m putting a stop to this.”

  “You can’t do that. We have sworn to kill the Order to a man. You must let it be done. That’s what they would have done to us.”

  “I can’t do it, Kahlan. I can’t. If we kill them all, then others of the Order will never surrender, knowing it would mean death. If I show them that we will take them prisoner instead of killing them, then they’ll be more willing to quit. If they are more willing to quit, we win without losing the lives of so many of our men, and that makes us stronger. Then, we win.”

  Richard started shouting orders. They were carried through the ranks of his men, and the din of battle slowly began subsiding. The eyes of thousands began turning to him.

  “Let them through,” he told a commander.

  Richard went back to the fountain and stood on the wall, watching the commanders of the Blood of the Fold lead their men to him. All around, D’Harans, bristling steel, stood guard. A corridor opened, and the crimson-caped men stepped forward, glancing from side to side as they came.

  An officer halted at their lead before Richard. His voice was hoarse, and subdued. “Will you accept our surrender?”

  Richard folded his arms. “Depends. Are you willing to tell me the truth?”

  The man glanced about at his quiet, bloody men. “Yes, Lord Rahl.”

  “Who told you to attack the city?”

  “The mriswith gave us instructions, and many of us were instructed in our dreams, by the dream walker.”

  “Do you wish to be free of him?”

  They all nodded or spoke up in weak voices. They also readily agreed to telling everything they knew about any plans that they knew of that the dream walker and the Imperial Order had.

  Richard was so exhausted, and in such pain, that he could hardly stand. He drew anger from the sword to sustain himself.

  “If you wish to surrender and be subjects of D’Haran rule, then go to you knees, and swear loyalty.”

  In the fading light, accompanied by the groans of the wounded, the remaining Blood of the Fold went to their knees and gave the devotion as they were instructed by the D’Harans who joined in.

  In one mass voice that carried through the city, they all bowed heads to the ground and took the oath.

  “Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

  As the men all tore off their crimson capes, casting them in fires as they were led away to be guarded for now, Kahlan turned to him.

  “You have just changed the rules of the war, Richard.” She looked out over the carnage. “So many have died already.”

  “Too many,” he whispered as he watched the empty-handed Blood of the Fold marching off into the night, surrounded by the men they had tried to kill. He wondered if he was crazy.

  “ ‘In your mercy we are sheltered,’ ” Kahlan quoted from the devotion. “Perhaps it is meant to be this way.” She put a comforting hand to his back. “I know it somehow feels right.”

  Not far off, Mistress Sanderholt, ho
lding a bloody meat cleaver, smiled her agreement.

  Glowing green eyes gathered in the square. Richard’s black mood brightened when he saw Gratch’s gruesome grin. He and Kahlan hopped down and hurried to the gar.

  It had never felt so good to be enfolded by those furry arms. Richard laughed with tears in his eyes as he was lifted from the ground.

  “I love you, Gratch. I love you so much.”

  “Grratch luuug Raaaach aaarg.”

  Kahlan joined the hug, and then received her own, separate embrace. “I love you, too, Gratch. You saved Richard’s life. I owe you everything.”

  Gratch gurgled with satisfaction as he stroked a claw down her hair.

  Richard swished at a fly. “Gratch! You have blood flies!”

  Gratch’s self-satisfied grin widened. Gars used the flies to help flush out their quarry, but Gratch had never had any before. Richard didn’t want to swat Gratch’s blood flies, but they were becoming more than annoying. They were stinging his neck.

  Gratch bent, scooped a claw through the gore of a dead mriswith, and smeared it across the taut, pink skin of his abdomen. The flies obediently returned to feast. Richard was astonished.

  He peered around at all the glowing green eyes watching him. “Gratch, you look like you’ve had quite an adventure. You gathered all these gars together?” Gratch nodded with a clear look of gar pride. “And they did what you asked?”

  Gratch thumped his chest with authority. He turned and grunted. The rest of the gars returned the odd grunt. Gratch smiled, showing his fangs.

  “Gratch, where’s Zedd?”

  The leathery smile withered. The hulking gar sagged a bit as he looked over his shoulder, up at the keep. He turned back, his glowing green eyes dimming a bit as he shook his head sorrowfully.

  Richard swallowed back the anguish. “I understand,” he whispered. “Did you see him killed?”

  Gratch thumped his chest, pulled his fur out atop his head, apparently a sign for Zedd, pointed at the Keep, and put his claws over his eyes—Gratch’s sign for mriswith. Through his signs, and Richard’s questions, Richard was able to determine that Gratch had brought Zedd to the Keep, there had been a fight with many mriswith, Gratch had seen Zedd lying unmoving on the ground with blood running from his head, and then Gratch could no longer find the old wizard. The gar had then gone in search of help to fight the mriswith and protect Richard. He had worked hard to find the other gars, and to gather them to his purpose.

  Richard hugged his friend again. Gratch held him in a long embrace, and then backed away, looking for the other gars.

  Richard felt a lump rising in his throat. “Gratch, can you stay?”

  Gratch pointed one claw at Richard, another at Kahlan, and then brought them together. He thumped his chest and then pointed behind at another gar. When it came forward to stand beside him, Richard realized it was a female.

  “Gratch, you have a love? Like I have Kahlan?”

  Gratch grinned and thumped at his chest with both claws.

  “And you want to be with the gars,” Richard said.

  Gratch nodded reluctantly, his smile faltering.

  Richard put on his best smile. “I think that’s wonderful, my friend. You deserve to be with your love, and your new friends. But you can still visit us. We would love to have you and your friend any time. All of you, in fact. You’re all welcome here.”

  Gratch’s smile returned.

  “But Gratch, can you do one thing for me? Please? It’s important. Can you ask them not to eat people? We won’t hunt gars, and you won’t eat people. All right?”

  Gratch turned to the others, grunting in an odd guttural language that the others understood. They offered grumbling murmurs of their own, and a conversation of sorts seemed to ensue. Gratch’s growling words rose in pitch, and he thumped his massive chest—he was at least as big as any of them. They all finally offered a hooting assent. Gratch turned to Richard and nodded.

  Kahlan hugged the furry beast again. “Take care of yourself, and come see us when you can. I’m always in your debt, Gratch. I love you. We both do.”

  After a last embrace with Richard that needed no words, the gars took to wing and vanished into the night.

  Richard stood beside Kahlan, surrounded by his guards, his army, and the specter of the dead.

  Chapter 54

  Richard awakened with a start. Kahlan was curled up with her back to his chest. The wound in his shoulder from the mriswith queen ached. He had let an army surgeon put a poultice on it, and then, too exhausted to stand any longer, he had fallen onto the bed in the guest room he had been using. He hadn’t even taken off his boots, and the uncomfortable pain in his hip told him that he still wore the Sword of Truth, and he was lying on it.

  Kahlan stirred in his arms, a feeling that swelled him with joy, but then he remembered the thousands of dead, the thousands who were dead because of him, and his joy evaporated.

  “Good morning, Lord Rahl,” came a cheery voice from above.

  He frowned up at Cara and groaned in greeting. Kahlan squinted in the sunlight streaming in the window.

  Cara waggled a hand over the two of them. “It works better with your clothes off.”

  Richard frowned. His voice came as a hoarse croak. “What?”

  She seemed mystified by the question. “I believe you will find such things work better without clothes.” She put her hands to her hips. “I thought you would know at least that much.”

  “Cara, what are you doing in here?”

  “Ulic wanted to see you, but was afraid to look, so I said I would. For one so large, he can be timid at times.”

  “He needs to give you lessons.” Richard winced as he sat up. “What does he want?

  “He found a body.”

  Kahlan rubbed her eyes as she sat up. “That shouldn’t have been hard.”

  Cara smiled, but it vanished when Richard noticed it. “He found a body at the bottom of the cliff, below the Keep.”

  Richard swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “Why didn’t you say so.”

  Kahlan rushed to catch up with him as he charged out in the hall to find Ulic waiting.

  “Did you find him? Did you find a body of an old man?”

  “No, Lord Rahl. It was the body of a woman.”

  “A woman! What woman?”

  “She was in bad shape, after all this time, but I recognized those gaped teeth and tattered blanket. It was that old woman, Valdora. The one who sold those honey cakes.”

  Richard rubbed his sore shoulder. “Valdora. How odd. And the little girl, what was her name?”

  “Holly. We saw no trace of her. We found no one else, but there’s a lot of area to search, and animals could have . . . well, we may never find anything.”

  Richard nodded, words failing him. He felt the shroud of death all around him, Cara’s voice turned compassionate. “The funeral fires will begin in a while. Do you wish to go?”

  “Of course!” He checked his tone when he felt Kahlan’s tempering hand on his back. “I must be there. They died because of me.”

  Cara frowned. “They died because of the Blood of the Fold, and because of the Imperial Order.”

  “We know, Cara,” Kahlan said. “We’ll be there just as soon as I see to the poultice on his shoulder and we get cleaned up.”

  The funeral fires burned for days. Twenty-seven thousand were dead. Richard felt as if the flames carried away his spirits, as well as those of the men who had died. He stayed and said the words along with the others, and by night stood guard over the flames along with the others, until it was done.

  From the light of this fire, and into the light. Safe journey to the spirit world.

  Richard’s shoulder worsened over the next few days, getting swollen, red, and stiff.

  His mood was no better.

  He walked the halls and occasionally watched the streets from the windows, but talked to few people. Kahlan strolled at his side, offering her comforting presence, re
maining quiet unless he spoke. Richard couldn’t banish the image of all the dead from his mind. He was haunted by the name the prophecies had given him: the bringer of death.

  One day, after his shoulder had begun to heal, at last, as he sat at the table he used as a desk, staring at nothing, there was sudden light. He looked up. Kahlan had come in, and he hadn’t even noticed. She had pulled the drapes open to let in the sunlight.

  “Richard, I’m starting to worry about you.”

  “I know, but I can’t seem to make myself forget.”

  “It’s right for the mantle of rule to be heavy, Richard, but you can’t let it crush you.”

  “That’s easy to say, but it was my fault that all those men died.”

  Kahlan sat on the table in front of him and with a finger, lifted his chin. “Do you really think that, Richard, or are you just feeling sorry that so many had to die?”

  “Kahlan, I was stupid. I just acted. I never thought. If I would have used my head, maybe all those men wouldn’t be dead.”

  “You acted on instinct. You said that that was the way the gift worked with you, sometimes anyway.”

  “But I—”

  “Let’s play ‘what if.’ What if you had done it differently, as you now think you should have?”

  “Well, then all those people wouldn’t have been killed.”

  “Really? You’re not playing by the rules of ‘what if.’ Think it through, Richard. What if you had not acted on instinct, and had not gone to the sliph? What would have been the result?”

  “Well, let’s see.” He rubbed her leg. “I don’t know, but things would have worked out differently.”

  “Yes, they would have. You would have been here when the attack came. You would have gone to fight the mriswith in the morning, instead of the at the end of the day. You would have been worn down and killed long before the gars arrived at dusk. You would be dead. All these people would have lost their Lord Rahl.”

  Richard tilted his head up. “That makes sense.” He thought about it a moment. “And if I hadn’t gone to the Old World, then the Palace of the Prophets would be in Jagang’s hands. He would have the prophecies.” He stood and went to the window, looking out on the bright spring day. “And no one would have any protection from the dream walker, because I would be dead.”