Into Darkness

3

Not long after daybreak they had made it up near the tree line and left the trail to search for mother’s breath among where the snow had started to stick in patches. As eager as he was to find the plant, he had to be careful when he moved across the rocky ground they were searching. If he fell off the mountain, he wouldn’t be able to help Kahlan, and in the place where they were searching, there was certainly a danger of falling. With the fog now down below them, there was no telling how far it was down some of the drop-offs.

The trail they had found was marked well enough with cairns and took a route that made for much easier climbing, at last saving them a lot of time. Richard was sure the trail had to have been laid out long before the boundary between the Midlands and D’Hara had gone up because, like the mountain range, the boundary divided the lands, so there would have been no purpose for a trail over a pass that would have been cut off once the boundary was there. It was fortunate that the cairns were still standing after all that time, and even more fortunate that he and Vika had happened across it.

It had worked surprisingly well for Vika to wait at each cairn they found while Richard went ahead to find the next one. Then she would climb to him by the light of his candle and wait at that cairn while he went on ahead to find the next. It was slow going to do it that way, but still a lot faster than wandering aimlessly up the mountains and having to backtrack from dead ends or being forced to climb in difficult and dangerous areas, especially when there was no way to tell if after a lot of hard climbing it would end up providing a way to continue. Sometimes it didn’t.

They had climbed on the trail, following the cairns, throughout the entire night. Richard was too driven to find the plant that could save Kahlan to stop and sleep. Vika was Mord-Sith. Mord-Sith were trained to do without sleep.

Once it had gotten light enough to see, they had been able to make much faster progress following the trail. But their method of continuing to cover ground throughout the night had helped make critically important progress. Now that they were finally up to where the trees were thinning out and they had daylight, they left the trail to search at the base of where the snow had begun to stick, hoping to find mother’s breath not yet killed by the ever-descending snow line.

“Lord Rahl!” Vika called out.

Richard had been using his hands to help keep his balance on the steep ground as he searched under brush and the lower sides of rock ledges that were still free of snow. Shale had told him that she needed living plants with their roots; she couldn’t use them if they had been killed by the snow.

He stood and looked off to his right. “What is it?”

“I found it!”

It felt as if his heart came up in his throat. He scrambled over a rounded projection of rock and through several patches of snow, then held on to low-growing, thick juniper brush to help keep from sliding down loose scree.

Richard found Vika sprawled on her belly in front of an opening in the rock. The rising sun was at their backs, so it lit the entrance to the small cave.

Vika pointed. “Look! It’s mother’s breath. It’s protected in here from the snow, so it’s still alive.”

There were three plants to her left, where she was pointing, and a couple more to the right side, just inside the cave’s maw. They had fist-shaped leaves just as she had told him. She had been right; after seeing those odd, lopsided leaves, he knew they were a plant that he would never forget. Just inside the opening of the cave, where Vika was on her belly, wouldn’t quite be high enough to stand in, but it was enough to protect the plants.

Richard looked deeper and suddenly saw what Vika hadn’t noticed in her desperate search for the rare plant, and her excitement at having found it.

In the snow to either side of the cave, and in the soft ground of the entrance, were the prints of a large cat. Farther back in the cave, where rays of the rising sun reached, he spotted a variety of bones.

Farther still, back in the darkness, Richard saw a pair of eyes reflecting the light.

When he thought he heard the low rumble of a throaty growl, he drew his sword.

Vika looked back over her shoulder when she heard the distinctive sound of his blade being drawn. “What’s the matter?”

Richard gestured with his sword. “There’s a mountain lion back in there.”

Vika froze. “What do we do?”

Richard carefully put one knee down beside her and leaned in, holding the blade protectively out over the top of her. He put his left hand on the back of her shoulder to keep her down as he spoke quietly, so as not to alarm the animal hiding back in the darkness.

“Dig up the three plants right there by your left hand. Shale said she needed the whole plant, so dig out the roots. We need to get all of the roots you can dig out. Three plants should be more than enough. Leave the other two on the other side to help them regrow. While you dig these three out, I’ll watch and make sure that mountain lion stays back.”

“All right,” she said as she quickly pulled her knife from the sheath at her side, drove it into the ground, and used it to help her start digging.

With her fingers and the blade she dug down through the relatively soft, rocky dirt, frantically flicking it back like a badger digging a den. As she worked, the animal back in the cave crept forward into the light enough for Richard to see its face and yellow eyes. It was indeed a formidably large mountain lion, and by its low, rattling growl, an unhappy one at that.

The creature drew back its upper lip, revealing big teeth, as it opened its mouth a little to let out a louder guttural growl. As it took another step forward with a big, broad paw, Richard poked the blade toward its face just enough to make his defensive intentions clear.

It took two steps closer, head hunched down, ears laid back, eyes locked on him. Powerful muscles in its shoulders flexed as it growled while taking another step closer.

“Don’t make me kill you,” Richard said to the beast. “I don’t want to kill you, but I will if I have to. Just wait a moment until we’re done here and then we will be on our way.”

For the time being, the blade was keeping it back. The mountain lion stopped, almost as if it understood his words. More likely, it understood the blade in its way.

Vika dug with her fingers as fast as she could, throwing the dirt back, trying to dig down and expose the roots without damaging them. All the while Richard and the mountain lion stared each other down.

Vika clawed at the ground and was finally able to bring the first plant out of the deep hole she had dug. It had a long, thick taproot. She got almost all of it out, shook the dirt off the roots, set it aside, then went back to excavating the other two. Richard could see that it wasn’t easy digging while on her belly, but she worked as fast as she could, letting out little grunts of effort. Her fingers were bloody, but that didn’t slow her down.

Richard carefully reached down with his left hand, as he kept the mountain lion at bay with the sword in his right, and set the mother’s breath already out of the ground safely up on a small ledge that formed the roof of the cave. When Vika, panting with the effort, brought out the second, he took it from her and set it up with the first. Having loosened the ground as much as she needed to with her knife, she returned it to the sheath and went back to clawing out the dirt around the roots of the third mother’s breath plant and flicking it behind.

“Got it!”

With the third plant in her left hand, Vika squirmed back. When she was back far enough, she got to her hands and knees under the protection of Richard’s sword and collected the other two as he continued to guard her.

After she had the three mother’s breath plants clutched in her hand, the two of them slowly retreated from the mouth of the cave. The mountain lion matched their movement, slowly slinking out with them while maintaining a safe distance, until it emerged from the darkness and into the light.

Richard gripped Vika’s arm with one hand and pulled her behind him while he held the sword out with the other. Together they moved off to the side away from the angry animal.

Once they had left it enough room to escape, the mountain lion emerged from the cave, gave them a long, uncomfortable look, and then gracefully bounded off to their right, over the snow and among the sparse trees.

“It’s heading toward the trail,” Vika said as she pulled out a blanket to wrap up the plants. “That’s an odd coincidence.”

Richard watched where the mountain lion was slipping away. “We’re long and well past the realm of coincidence.”