Into Darkness

32

The few rays of the late-day sun that made it through the thick balsam limbs reflected off a layer of long-fallen leaves, making a golden-colored path ahead of them leading the way between dark woods to each side. The beauty of the place was overlaid in Kahlan’s mind by the sinister nature of where they were taking her. The smell of wet, decaying leaves piled up in corners of rocky outcroppings and under the dense brush only added to her sense of foreboding.

She was being taken to a place where she was told she would be held until she gave birth and then her babies would be killed. Shota said that she would then be released. While Shota was brutally honest about what she intended to do with Kahlan’s babies, she didn’t think Shota was being so honest about the second part of it. As if that mattered to her now.

When Kahlan looked up through the upper branches of trees, she finally saw the snowcapped peaks that were the formidable spires that surrounded Agaden Reach like a ring of thorns. The view was quickly lost again as they followed a trail that disappeared ahead of them into thick forest of fir and pine trees. She took out some of her frustration kicking pine cones out of her way as she hiked along the trail.

The canopy high above cut off most of the light, so the plants that grew in abundance on the forest floor, such as the ferns, were those that thrived in shade. Most of the brush, unlike the ferns that were turning brown, would keep their leaves all winter. They helped add to the shadowed gloom.

Kahlan could see that past all the women, out ahead, they would come to a branch in the trail, with the right fork leading lower and the left fork leading higher. Without delay or hesitation Shota took the left fork. The rest of them followed in a single-file line.

The witches following close behind Kahlan, and bringing up the rear, kept a close eye on her, making sure she didn’t try to go another way or suddenly bolt and run. When they hadn’t been looking, Kahlan had tried to vanish into the thick underbrush several times. The swift punishment taught her a painful lesson that escape was hopeless. At least for now. She was determined, though, that if she saw a chance to get away, she would take it.

Ravens followed them, as they had since they’d left the fortress town of Bindamoon, sailing effortlessly through open limbs of winter-bare branches of oaks, maples, and linden trees. In the thicker foliage of the weeping spruce, tamaracks, and red pines, where they couldn’t easily sail, they swerved and darted through any opening they could find. Sometimes they flew above the forest canopy, only to swoop down unexpectedly, giving Kahlan a start as they suddenly appeared to surprise her.

The leaves, long since fallen, leaving the branches bare, blanketed rocks and in other places lay rotting in damp piles. The boots of the women ahead scuffed over rocks hidden under leaves. As weary as Kahlan was, when she wasn’t paying enough attention, those hidden rocks sometimes tried to twist an ankle when she inadvertently stepped on them wrong. Thick lines of leaves suggested deep gaps in the rock that could break a leg, so she was careful to avoid stepping there.

The bull of a witch with the sour expression lumbered along just ahead of Kahlan, swaying from side to side to keep her low, squat bulk moving. Despite the obvious effort of walking, she didn’t seem to tire and never complained. In fact, she had so far not spoken a word. The scary, bony one with the big, black eyes was directly in front of her. They were the two who had pulled her out of the way of the falling rock when the palace had begun to collapse. They had dragged her into the tunnels, saving her life and at the same time capturing her. As they were hauling her away, Kahlan hadn’t been able to see in all the swirling dust if Richard had escaped the mass of falling stone. Since he’d been in the center of the enormous room, she didn’t see how he could have made it out in time.

The scariest witch guarding her, while not at all ugly as most of the others certainly were, was the ill-tempered witch with the stringy red hair veiling her face. Kahlan had learned that her name was Nea. She followed behind Kahlan as they hiked through the woods, glaring at her the entire time, waiting for Kahlan to try to run, or to give her some other excuse to hurt her. For seemingly no reason, other than her bad temper, she occasionally murmured blood-curdling threats and promises. The worst were what she intended to do to her babies.

From the interactions Kahlan had observed during their journey, Nea was apparently Shota’s lieutenant, her favorite, the one she trusted most, and the one she had put in charge of watching over Kahlan. Every once in a while, as they walked, Nea would lean forward and whisper in Kahlan’s ear what she intended to do if Kahlan would just give her an excuse. Kahlan believed her.

Kahlan, though, wasn’t so much worried about herself as she was for the two unborn children she was carrying, and she knew quite well what these witch women had planned for them. Kahlan couldn’t stand the thought of the twins never having the chance at life.

When she saw soft ground with the leaves mostly clear from the center, all the witch women ahead of her walked off to the side to avoid the mud. Kahlan deliberately walked straight on through it in order to leave her tracks. She knew that if he had somehow been able to survive, Richard would come for her. He would recognize her tracks and know for sure where she was being taken. Sometimes, when a branch was close to her when she passed, she would break the tip and leave it hanging down as a sign for him.

She also did whatever she could along the way, from minor things like feigning having difficulty getting up a rise of rocks or having to often empty her bladder from the pressure of the twins, to bigger things like sitting and saying she needed to rest, all in order to delay them. She used all those little diversions to slow the coven down, hoping Richard would catch up with them. She didn’t know what he could do to stop all of these witches, but, well, he was Richard, so she was sure he would come up with something if only he could get to them in time.

Kahlan did her best not to consider the possibility that Richard wasn’t still alive, but her mind frequently didn’t cooperate and fed her a steady stream of fears to haunt the dark corners of her thoughts. It would make her feel a sense of growing panic if she let herself think about him being crushed under a mountain of rubble, so she did her best not to.

After the trail went up a steep switchback and then doubled back on itself, she could look down and see through the branches of white cedar and spruce trees where they had just been a short time before. After they had doubled back, the path came to another fork. This time they took the one to the right. Knowing where it went, she dreaded the choice that was made for her.

The trail the witch women took immediately began an increasingly difficult climb up a series of switchbacks and up over ledges. In places it was so steep it required them to use their hands to hold on to the gnarled roots of the trees growing close in on each side of the trail. Those handholds helped them to continue to climb ever upward. The sour-faced witch woman ahead of Kahlan often had to wait for the assistance of the younger, stronger women ahead to help hoist her up.

The climb required that Kahlan frequently use her hands, so much so that the rough roots gave her cuts and increasingly painful blisters. The web of roots coming down the rocky ground surrounded chunks of granite, holding them in place like powerful, living claws so that it couldn’t fall. Since they provided places for water to collect and moss to grow, the twisting roots frequently made for slippery footing, or slimy handholds.

More than once, Kahlan’s boot slipped off a root and she had to catch herself with a tenuous grip on a rock or a root above as her feet momentarily swung free out in space. Each time it made her gasp. She worried about doing anything that could hurt the babies, so she did her best to quickly regain a foothold rather than let herself drop back down to a previous ledge. Once, Nea reached up, caught her ankle in a powerful grip, and placed her foot atop a shelf of rock so that she wouldn’t fall.

Kahlan panted with the effort of the climb. She was drained and exhausted by the time she could again see the snowcapped spires around Agaden Reach off through the trees. But down in the dark woods where they were climbing the trail, it was growing increasingly difficult to see where she could put each foot to help support her when they had to climb. The farther they went, though, the more often she had increasingly open glimpses of that crown of thorns. She knew they would soon be up to the tree line and then they would have to make their way across open, windswept ledges.

When she reached a level place, Kahlan plopped down in exhaustion on a smooth piece of rock to get her breath.

Nea immediately was in her face. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Why don’t you try climbing this steep trail when you’re this far along in a pregnancy? See if you can do it.”

Sorrel, one of the nastier of the witch women up ahead, gave the bull of a witch a hand up. Once she had helped the big woman up, she then knelt to lean back down over the top of where Kahlan sat. She had long, pointed nails, and both of her hands looked like she regularly dipped them in red wax. Her hair was done in neat rows of short spikes, all of them tipped with the same red wax, or paint, or whatever it was. At least, Kahlan didn’t think that it was blood.

“No one told you that you could sit down,” Sorrel growled down at Kahlan.

Kahlan looked up at Sorrel’s black gums, revealed whenever she snarled, wishing she could drive her knife through the woman’s heart. But they had taken her knife and her pack, lest she get the idea to use her blade on one of them. Shota didn’t want to take a chance on losing one of the thirteen witches, because that would break the coven. That coven gave her powers over and above those she possessed on her own. The kind of magic she had used back in the chamber below the palace had made those frightening powers all too evident. As if Shota hadn’t been frightening enough without them.

“I’m exhausted,” Kahlan told Sorrel as she gestured to the side. “Look, there’s a pretty level place, here, on this ledge. It’s sheltered by that rock face you’re kneeling on. I think we should stop for the night. Besides being spent, we can’t climb this mountain in the dark. I could easily fall and split my skull.”

Grinning, Nea put a hand on Kahlan’s shoulder and pulled her around to face her. “That would solve everything, then, now wouldn’t it? We are only keeping you alive because that’s Shota’s wish, not because it’s ours.”

Worry for her unborn babies immediately came to the forefront of Kahlan’s thoughts. “Shota is the grand witch. You had better do as she tells you and keep me alive.”

Kahlan didn’t think that Shota really cared if she died, but it was a bluff that seemed to give Nea pause.

Nea reached up and parted the strands of hair hanging down over her face so that she could better peer out at Kahlan. “True, but if you took a nasty fall and broke some bones … who is to say it’s the fault of anyone but your own clumsy feet?”