Blood of the Fold (63 page)

Kahlan smiled. “Of course, captain. It would be my honor.”

Kahlan stared after the Captain as he moved off to see to things. “I shouldn’t have been pushing on after dark.”

Zedd stroked a reassuring hand along the back of her head. “Accidents can happen in broad daylight. This very likely would have happened in the morning, had we stopped sooner, and then it would be blamed on being still half asleep.”

“
I still feel to blame. It just doesn’t seem fair.”

His smile marked no humor. “Fate does not seek our consent.”

If there were any bodies at the farm, the men had removed them by the time Kahlan reached it. They had started a fire in the roughly built hearth, but it hadn’t had time to thaw the iron chill from the deserted home.

Cyrilla was carefully carried to the remains of a straw mattress in a back bedroom. There was another cramped room with two pallets, probably for children, and the main room with a table and little else. By the broken bits of a cupboard and chest, and the remains of personal items, Kahlan knew the Order had been through here on their way to Ebinissia. She wondered again what the men had done with the bodies; she didn’t want to find them in the night if she had to go outside to relieve herself.

Zedd peered around at the room as he rubbed his hands on his stomach.

“
How long until dinner is ready?” he asked in a cheery tone.

He wore heavy maroon robes with black sleeves and cowled shoulders. Three rows of silver brocade circled the cuffs of his sleeves. Thicker, gold brocade ran around the neck and down the front, the outfit gathered at the waist with a red satin belt set with a gold buckle. Zedd hated the flashy accoutrements that Adie had insisted he purchase as a disguise. He preferred his simple robes, but they were long gone, as was his fancy hat with the long feather that he had “lost” somewhere along the way.

Kahlan grinned in spite of herself. “I don’t know. What are you cooking?”

“
Me? Cook? Well, I suppose …”

“
Dear spirits, spare us that man’s cooking,” Adie said from the doorway. “We would be better served to eat bark and bugs.”

Adie limped into the room, followed by Jebra, the seer, and Ahern, the coach driver who had carried Zedd and Adie on their recent journeys. Chandalen, who had accompanied Kahlan from the Mud People’s village months ago, had departed after Kahlan had been with Richard one wondrous night in a place between worlds. He wanted to return to his home and people. She couldn’t blame him; she knew what it was to miss friends and loved ones.

With Zedd and Adie, she felt as if they were almost all together. When Richard caught up with them, then truly they would all be together again. Though it would probably be weeks yet, Kahlan still couldn’t help being excited by each breath, because each breath brought her one moment closer to having her arms around him.

“
My bones do be too old for this weather,” Adie said as she crossed the room.

Kahlan retrieved a simple wooden chair and dragged it along as she took Adie’s arm and walked her to the fire. She put the chair close to the flames and urged the sorceress to sit and warm herself. Unlike Zedd’s original clothes, Adie’s simple, flaxen robes, with yellow and red beads sewn at the neck in ancient symbols of her profession, had survived their journey. Zedd scowled every time he saw them, thinking it more than a little odd that her simple robes had managed to make the journey and his had been lost.

Adie always smiled and said it was a wonder and insisted that he looked grand in his fine clothes. Kahlan suspected she really did like him better in his new outfit. Kahlan, too, thought Zedd looked grand, though not so wizardlike as his traditional fashion made him look. Wizards of his high rank wore the simplest robes. There was no rank above Zedd: First Wizard.

“
Thank you, child,” Adie said as she warmed her hands near the flames.

“
Orsk,” Kahlan called.

The big man scurried forward. The scar over his missing eye was white in the firelight. “Yes, mistress?” He stood ready to carry out her instructions. What they might be was of no importance to him, his only concern being that he had a chance to please her.

“
There’s no pot in here. Could you get us one, so we can make some dinner?”

His dark leather uniform creaked as he bowed and turned to hurry from the room. Orsk had been a D’Haran soldier from the Imperial Order’s camp. He had tried to kill her, and in the struggle she touched him with her power, the magic of the Confessors destroying forever who he had been and filling him with blind loyalty to her. That blind loyalty and devotion was a wearing presence to Kahlan, a constant reminder of what and who she was.

She tried not to see the man he had been: a D’Haran soldier who had joined with the Imperial Order, one of the killers who had participated in the slaughter of the helpless women and children of Ebinissia. As the Mother Confessor, she had sworn no mercy on any of the men of the Order, and there had been none. Only Orsk still lived. Though he lived, the man who had fought for the Order was dead.

Because of the death spell Zedd had cast over her to aid in their escape from Aydindril, few knew Kahlan as the Mother Confessor. Orsk only knew her as his mistress. Zedd, of course; Adie; Jebra; Ahern; Chandalen; her half brother, Prince Harold; and Captain Ryan knew her true identity, but everyone else thought the Mother Confessor was dead. The men she had fought with knew her only as their queen. Their memory of her being the Mother Confessor had been confused and muddled into remembering her as Queen Kahlan, no less their leader, but not the Mother Confessor.

After snow had been melted, Jebra and Kahlan added beans and bacon, cut up a few sweet roots to toss into the pot, and spooned in some molasses. Zedd stood rubbing his hands as he watched the ingredients being added. Kahlan grinned at his childlike eagerness and, from a pack, retrieved some hard bread for him. He was pleased, and ate the bread while the beans boiled.

While dinner cooked, Kahlan thawed leftover soup they had brought in a small pot and took it in to Cyrilla. She set a candle on a slat she stuck in a crack in the wall and sat on the edge of the bed in the quiet room. She wiped a warm cloth on her half sister’s forehead for a while, and was happy to see Cyrilla’s eyes open. A panicked gaze darted around the dim room. Kahlan grabbed Cyrilla’s jaw and forced her to look up into her eyes.

“
It’s me, Kahlan, my sister. You are safe, alone with me. You are safe. Be at ease. Everything is all right.”

“
Kahlan?” Cyrilla clutched at Kahlan’s white fur mantle. “You promised. You won’t go back on your word. You mustn’t.”

Kahlan smiled. “I promised, and I will keep the promise. I am the queen of Galea, and will be the queen until the day you wish the crown back.”

Cyrilla sagged back in relief, still clutching the fur mantle. “Thank you, my queen.”

Kahlan urged her to sit up. “Come on, now. I’ve brought you some warm soup.”

Cyrilla turned her face from the spoon. “I’m not hungry.”

“
If you want me to be the queen, then you must treat me as queen.” A questioning frown came to Cyrilla’s face. Kahlan smiled. “This is an order from your queen. You will eat the soup.”

Only then would Cyrilla eat. When she had finished it all, and had started shaking and crying again, Kahlan hugged her tight until she slipped into a trancelike state, staring blindly up at nothing. Kahlan tucked the heavy blankets tight around her and kissed her forehead.

Zedd had scrounged up a couple of barrels, a bench, a stool from the barn, and somewhere found another chair. He had asked Prince Harold and Captain Ryan to join Adie, Jebra, Ahern, Orsk, Kahlan, and himself for dinner. They were close to Ebinissia, and had to talk about their plans. Everyone crowded around the small table as Kahlan broke up hard bread and Jebra dished out steaming bowls of beans from the pot sitting in the fire. When the seer was finished, she sat down on the short bench beside Kahlan, all the while giving Zedd puzzled looks.

Prince Harold, a barrel-chested man with a head of long, thick, dark hair, reminded Kahlan of her father. Harold had only that day returned with his scouts from Ebinissia.

“
What news have you from your home,” she asked him.

He broke his bread with his thick fingers. “Well,” he sighed, “it was the same as you described it. It doesn’t look as if anyone else has been there. I think it’ll be safe enough for us there. With the Order’s army destroyed—”

“
The one in this area,” Kahlan corrected.

He conceded the point with a wave of his bread. “I don’t think we’ll have any trouble for now. We don’t have many men yet, but they’re good men, and we have enough to protect the city from up in the passes in the mountains all around, as long as they don’t come in numbers like before. Until the Order brings more men, I think we can hold the city.” He gestured toward Zedd. “And we have a wizard.”

Zedd, busy spooning beans into his mouth, only slowed enough to grunt in agreement.

Captain Ryan swallowed a big mouthful of beans. “Prince Harold is right. We know these mountains. We can defend the city until they bring a large force. By then, maybe we’ll have more men joining with us, and we can start to move.”

Harold dunked his bread in his bowl, scooping up a chunk of bacon. “Adie, what do you judge our chances of getting help from Nicobarese?”

“
My homeland be in turmoil. When Zedd and I were there, we learned that the king be dead. The Blood of the Fold has moved to seize power, but not all the people be pleased about it. The sorceresses be most displeased. If the Blood takes power, those women will be hunted down and killed. I expect them to back the forces in the army who resist the Blood.”

“
With civil war,” Zedd said, interrupting his speedy spoon work, “it doesn’t bode well for sending troops to aid the Midlands.”

Adie sighed. “Zedd be right.”

“
Maybe some of the sorceresses could help?” Kahlan asked.

Adie stirred her spoon in her beans. “Maybe.”

Kahlan looked to her half brother. “But you have troops from other areas you can call in.”

Harold nodded. “We sure do. At least sixty or seventy thousand, perhaps as many as a hundred thousand could be marshaled, though not all of those will be well trained or well armed. It’ll take time to get them organized, but when we do, then Ebinissia will be a force to be reckoned with.”

“
We had nearly that many here before,” Captain Ryan reminded them without looking up from his bowl, “and it wasn’t enough.”

“
True,” Harold said flourishing his bread. “But that’s just for a beginning.” He looked to Kahlan. “You can bring more of the lands together, can’t you?”

“
That’s our hope,” she said. “We must rally the Midlands around us, if we’re to have a chance.”

“
What about Sanderia?” Captain Ryan asked. “Their lances are the best in the Midlands.”

“
And Lifany,” Harold said. “They make a lot of weapons, and know how to use them.”

Kahlan picked a soft pinch out of the center of her bread. “Sanderia relies on Kelton for summer grazing for their sheep herds. Lifany buys iron from Kelton, and sells them grain. Herjborgue relies on Sanderia’s wool. I think they all might go where Kelton goes.”

Harold stabbed his spoon into his beans. “There were Keltish dead among the ones who attacked Ebinissia.”

“
And Galeans.” Kahlan put the bread in her mouth and chewed for a moment as she watched him clench his spoon as if it were a knife. He glared into his bowl.

“
There were insurgents and murderers from many lands who joined them,” she said after she had swallowed. “That does not mean their homelands will. Prince Fyren of Kelton had committed his land to the Imperial Order, but he’s dead, now. We are not at war with Kelton; they are part of the Midlands. We are at war with the Imperial Order. We need to stand together. If Kelton joins with us, the others will almost have to, but if they go with the Order, then we will have trouble convincing the others to join us. We need to win over Kelton and bond them to us.”

“
I’d bet on Kelton joining with the Order,” Ahern said. Everyone turned his way. He shrugged. “I’m Keltish. I can tell you that they’ll go where the Crown goes; its the way of our people. With Fyren dead, then that would make Duchess Lumholtz next in line. She and her husband, the duke, will go to the side they think will win, no matter who that may be. At least that’s my opinion from what I’ve heard about her.”