Blood of the Fold (7 page)

He scrubbed the palms of his hands on his wool trousers. “I looked at their knives, at those three blades they have. That appears to be what did it.” His expression darkened. “The news is spreading on a near panic. People have been killed. Thing is, no one saw what done it. Those killed all had their bellies slit open by something with three blades.”

With an anguished sigh, Richard wiped a hand across his face. “That’s the way mriswith kill; they disembowel their victims, and you can’t even see them coming. Where were these people killed?”

“
All over the city, at about the same time, right at first light. From what I heard, I reckon it had to be separate killers. By the number of these mriswith things I’d wager I’m right. The dead mark lines, like the spokes of a wheel, all leading here.

“
They killed whoever was in their way: men, women, even horses. The troops are in an uproar, as some of their men got it, too, and the rest seem to think its an attack of some sort. One of these mriswith things went right through the crowd gathered out in the street. The bastard didn’t bother to step around, just slashed his way right through the middle.” Hank cast a sorrowful glance to Mistress Sanderholt. “One came through the palace. Killed a maid, two guards, and Jocelyn.”

Mistress Sanderholt gasped and covered her mouth with a bandaged hand. Her eyes slid closed as she whispered a prayer.

“
I’m sorry, Mistress Sanderholt, but I don’t think Jocelyn suffered; I got to her right away, and she was already gone.”

“
Anyone else of the kitchen staff?”

“
Just Jocelyn. She was on an errand, not in the kitchens.”

Gratch silently eyed Richard as he glanced up the mountain, at the stone walls. The snow above was flushed pink in the dawn light. He pursed his lips in frustration as he looked out over the city again, bile raising in his throat.

“
Hank.”

“
Sir?”

Richard turned back. “I want you to get some men. Carry the mriswith out in front of the palace and line them up along the grand entrance. Get it done now, before they freeze solid.” The muscles in his jaw stood out as he ground his teeth. “Put the loose heads on pikes. Line them up nice and neat, on each side, so than anyone entering the palace has to walk between them.”

Hank cleared his throat, as if about to protest, but then he glanced to the sword at Richard’s hip and instead said, “At once, sir.” He bobbed his head to Mistress Sanderholt and rushed to the palace to get help.

“
The mriswith must have magic. Maybe the fear of it will at least keep the D’Harans from the palace for a while.”

Worry lines creased her brow. “Richard, as you say, apparently these creatures had magic. Can anyone but you see these snake men when they’re sneaking up, changing color?”

Richard shook his head. “From what I’ve been told, only my unique magic can sense them. But obviously Gratch can, too.”

“
The Imperial Order preaches on the evil of magic, and those who have it. What if this dream walker sent the mriswith to kill those with magic?”

“
Sounds reasonable. What’s your point?”

Her expression grave, she watched him for a long moment. “Your grandfather, Zedd, has magic, as does Kahlan.”

Goose bumps tingled up his arms at hearing her voice his own thoughts aloud. “I know, but I may have an idea. For now, I must do something about what’s going on here; about the Order.”

“
What can you hope to accomplish?” She took a breath and softened her tone. “I mean no offense, Richard. Though you have the gift, you are ignorant of its use. You are not a wizard; you can be of no help here. Flee, while you can.”

“
Where! If the mriswith can reach me here, they can reach me anywhere. There is no place to hide for long.” He looked away, feeling his face heat. “I know I’m no wizard.”

“
Then what—”

He turned a raptor’s glare on her. “Kahlan, as the Mother Confessor, in the name of the Midlands, has committed the Midlands to war against the Order, against its tyranny. The Order’s cause is to exterminate all magic and rule all people. If we do not fight, all free people, and all those with magic, will be murdered or enslaved. There can be no peace for the Midlands, for any land, for any free people, until the Imperial Order is crushed.”

“
Richard, there are too many here. What can you hope to accomplish, alone?”

He was tired of being surprised and never knowing what was coming after him next. He was tired of being held prisoner, of being tortured, of being trained, of being lied to, of being used. Of seeing helpless people slaughtered. He had to do something.

Though he was no wizard, he knew wizards. Zedd was only a few weeks away, to the southwest. Zedd would understand the need to rid Aydindril of the Imperial Order, and of protecting the Wizard’s Keep. If the Order destroyed that magic, who knew what would be lost for all time?

If need be, there were others, at the Palace of the Prophets in the Old World, who might be willing, and able, to help. Warren was his friend, and although not fully trained, he was a wizard, and knew about magic. More than Richard, anyway.

Sister Verna, too, would help him. The Sisters were sorceresses and had the gift, though not as powerfully as a wizard. He trusted none but Sister Verna, though. Except, perhaps, Prelate Annalina. He didn’t like the way she kept information from him, and bent the truth to serve her needs, but it had not been out of malevolence; she had done what she had to out of concern for the living. Yes, Ann might help him.

And then there was Nathan, the prophet. Nathan, living under the palace’s spell for most of his life, was close to a thousand years old. Richard couldn’t even imagine what that man knew. He had known that Richard was a war wizard, the first to be born in thousands of years, and helped him to understand and accept its meaning. Nathan had helped him before, and Richard was reasonably sure he would again; Nathan was a Rahl, Richard’s ancestor.

Desperate thoughts churned through his mind. “The aggressor makes the rules. Somehow, I must change them.”

“
What are you going to do?”

Richard glared out at the city. “I must do something they don’t expect.” He ran his fingers over the raised, gold wire spelling out the word TRUTH on the hilt of the sword, and at the same time felt the seething texture of its magic. “I wear the Sword of Truth, conferred on me by a real wizard. I have a duty. I am the Seeker.” In a haze of simmering rage that rose at the thought of the people murdered by the mriswith, he whispered to himself, “I vow to give this dream walker nightmares.”

“
My arms do be itching like ants,” Lunetta complained. “It be powerful here.”

Tobias Brogan glanced back over his shoulder. Scraps and patches of tattered, faded cloth fluttered in the faint light as Lunetta scratched herself. Amid the ranks of men bedecked with gleaming armor and mail, draped with crimson capes, her squat form hunched atop her horse looked as if it peered out from a rag pile. Her plump cheeks dimpled with a gap-toothed grin as she chortled to herself and scratched again.

Brogan’s mouth twisted in disgust, and he turned away, knuckling his wiry mustache as his gaze again passed over the Wizard’s Keep up on the mountainside. The dark gray stone walls caught the first weak rays of the winter sun that blushed the snow on the higher slopes. His mouth tightened further.

“
Magic, I say, my lord general,” Lunetta insisted. “There be magic here. Powerful magic.” She prattled on, grumbling about the way it made her skin crawl.

“
Be silent, you old hag. Even a half-wit wouldn’t need your filthy talent to know that Aydindril seethes with the taint of magic.”

Feral eyes gleamed from under her fleshy brows. “This be different from any you have seen before,” she said in a voice too thin for the rest of her. “Different from any I have ever felt before. And some be to the southwest, too, not just here.” She scratched her forearms more vigorously as she cackled again.

Brogan glowered past the throngs of people hurrying down the street, casting a critical eye at the exquisite palaces lining the wide thoroughfare called, he had been informed, Kings Row. The palaces were meant to impress the viewer with the wealth, might, and spirit of the people they represented. Each structure vied for attention with towering columns, elaborate ornamentation, and flamboyant sweeps of windows, roofs, and decorated entablatures. To Tobias Brogan, they looked like nothing more than stone peacocks: an ostentatious waste if ever he had seen one.

On a distant rise lay the sprawling Confessors’ Palace, its stone columns and spires unmatched by the elegance of Kings Row, and somehow whiter than the snow around it, as if trying to mask the profanity of its existence with the illusion of purity. Brogan’s stare probed the recesses of that sanctuary of wickedness, the shrine to magic’s power over the pious, as his bony fingers idly caressed the leather trophy case at his belt.

“
My lord general,” Lunetta pressed, leaning forward, “did you hear what I said—”

Brogan twisted around, his polished boots creaking against the stirrup leather in the cold. “Galtero!”

Eyes like black ice shone from under the brow of a polished helmet beneath a horsehair plume dyed crimson to match the soldiers’ capes. He held his reins easily in one gauntleted hand as he swayed in his saddle with the fluid grace of a mountain lion. “Lord General?”

“
If my sister can’t keep quiet when ordered to” —he shot her a glare— “gag her.”

Lunetta darted an uneasy glance at the broad-shouldered man riding beside her, at his polished-to-perfection armor and mail, at his well-honed weapons. She opened her mouth to protest, but as she returned her gaze to those icy eyes she closed it again, and instead scratched her arms. “Forgive me, Lord General Brogan,” she murmured as she bowed her head deferentially toward her brother.

Galtero aggressively sidestepped his horse closer to Lunetta, his powerful gray gelding jostling her bay mare. “Silence,
streganicha
.”

Her cheeks colored at the affront, and her eyes, for an instant, flashed with menace, but just as quickly it was gone, and she seemed to wilt into her tattered rags as her eyes lowered in submission.

“
I not be a witch,” she whispered to herself.

A brow lifted over one cold eye, causing her to sag further, and she fell silent for good.

Galtero was a good man; the fact that Lunetta was sister to Lord General Brogan would count for nothing if the order were ever given. She was
streganicha
, one tainted by evil. Given the word, Galtero or any of the other men would spill her lifeblood without a moment’s hesitation or regret.

That she was Brogan’s kin only hardened him to his duty. She served as a constant reminder of the Keeper’s ability to strike out at the righteous, and blight even the finest of families.

Seven years after Lunetta’s birth, the Creator had balanced the injustice and Tobias had been born, born to counter what the Keeper had corrupted; but it had been too late for their mother, who had already begun to slip into the arms of madness. From the time he was eight, when the disrepute had delivered his father into an early grave and his mother had finally and fully nestled into the bosom of madness, Tobias had been burdened with the duty of ruling the gift his sister possessed, lest it rule her. At that age Lunetta had doted on him, and he had used that love to convince her to listen only to the Creator’s wishes, and to guide her in moral conduct, the way the men of the king’s circle had schooled him. Lunetta had always needed, in fact embraced, guidance. She was a helpless soul trapped by a curse that was beyond her ability to expunge or her power to escape.

Through ruthless effort, he had cleansed the ignominy of having one with the gift born into his family. It had taken most of his life, but Tobias had returned honor to the family name. He had shown them all; he had turned the stigma to his advantage, and had become the most exalted among the exalted.

Tobias Brogan loved his sister—loved her enough to slit her throat himself, if need be, to free her from the Keeper’s tendrils, from the torment of his taint, if it ever slipped the bounds of control. She would live only so long as she was useful, only so long as she helped them root out evil, root out banelings. For now, she fought the scourge snatching at her soul, and she was useful.

He realized she didn’t look like much, swathed in scraps of different-colored cloth—it was the one thing that brought her pleasure and kept her content, having different colors draped around her, her “pretties” she called them—but the Keeper had invested Lunetta with rare talent and strength. Through tenacious effort, Tobias had expropriated it.