Blood of the Fold (78 page)

He glanced over the gears and levers, and then tied the reins to the end of a gear shaft instead. The place he had at first started tying the reins was the release lever to the huge gate. A good yank, and the portcullis could come crashing down on the horse.

Without waiting for the others, Richard started into the Wizard’s Keep. He was furious that no one had awakened him. A light is burning in the windows of the Keep for half the night, he thought, and no one has the nerve to wake the Lord Rahl and tell him.

And then, not an hour before, he had seen the lightning, and the bloom of light racing outward in an expanding ring through a clear sky, leaving in its wake a smoky layer of clouds.

A thought coming to him, Richard paused before he went into the Keep and turned to look down on the city. At the bottom of the Keep road other roads branched off, leading away from Aydindril.

What if someone had been in the Keep? What if they had taken something? He had better tell the soldiers to hold anyone trying to leave. As soon as the others reached the Keep, he would send one back down to tell the soldiers to bring back anyone leaving and to seal the roads.

Richard watched the people on the road. Most were coming into the city, not leaving. There were a few leaving, though: what looked to be a few families with handcarts; some soldiers going out on patrol; a couple of wagons with trade goods; and four horses, close together, trotting past the people on foot. He would have them all stopped and checked.

But checked for what? He could take a look at the people himself, after the soldiers brought them back, and maybe tell if they carried anything magic.

Richard turned back toward the Keep. He didn’t have the time. He needed to find out what had been going on up here, and besides, how would he know if it were a thing of magic? It would be a waste of time better spent. He needed to get to work with Berdine and translate the journal, not paw through families’ belongings. People were still leaving, not wanting to live under D’Haran rule. Let them.

He marched through the shields inside, knowing that the others would be blocked when they arrived. The five of them would be upset he hadn’t waited for them. Well, maybe the next time they would wake him if they saw lights in the Keep.

Shrouded in his mriswith cape, he made his way upward, toward where he had seen the lightning hit the Keep. He avoided passageways that he could sense were dangerous, and found other routes that at least didn’t raise the hair at the back of his neck. Several times he sensed mriswith, but they didn’t come near.

In a wide room with four corridors leading from it, Richard stopped. Several doors stood closed. One had a trail of blood leading to it. He squatted and inspected the smeared trail of blood and determined that it was actually two trails: one leading into the room, and one leading out.

Richard flung open the mriswith cape and drew his sword. The clear ring of steel echoed down the corridors. With the point of the blade, he pushed the door open.

The room was empty, but it was far from ordinary. The wood floor was scorched. Sooty, jagged lines were seared into the stone as if an enraged lightning storm had been trapped in the room. Most puzzling, though, was the stone block of the walls; here and there huge blocks of stone hung halfway from the wall, as if they had come near to toppling out their place. The room looked like it had nearly come apart in an earthquake.

There were blood splatters all over the floor, and to the side a big pool of it, but because of the fire that had blackened the floor, it was all dry as dust, and told him little.

Richard followed the trail of blood from the room until it led to a door to the outer rampart. He stepped out into the cold air and immediately saw the splashes of of blood spilled across the stone. It was recent—within the last day.

Mriswith, and parts of mriswith, littered the windswept rampart. Even though they were frozen, now, they still stank. Against one wall, a good five feet up, was a huge splat of blood, and below it, on the ground, a dead mriswith, its scaled hide burst open. If the spray of blood had been on the ground, instead of the wall, Richard would have thought it had fallen from the sky and been killed from the impact.

His eyes gliding over the mess, Richard thought it looked like what was left when Gratch fought mriswith. He shook his head in dismay, wondering what had happened.

He followed a trail of blood to a notch in the crenellated wall and found blood staining the stone to each side. He stepped into the notch and peered over the edge. It was a dizzying sight.

The stone blocks of the Keep plunged nearly vertically, flaring slightly toward their foundation far below, and beneath that the stone of the mountain itself fell away for what looked to be several thousand feet. From the notch in the wall, a trail of blood ran down the face, disappearing in the distance below. There were several big splotches in the bloody trail; something had gone over the edge, smacking the wall on the way down. He would have to send soldiers out to see what, or who, had gone over the edge.

He ran a finger through different trails of blood at the edge; most of it reeked of mriswith. Some did not.

Dear spirits, what had happened up here? Richard pressed his lips together as he shook his head. He drew the black mriswith cape around himself and vanished as he pondered, thinking, too, for some reason, about Zedd. He wished Zedd were here with him.

This time, when Verna saw the little flap open at the bottom of the door, she was ready. She dove toward it, shoving the tray aside and putting her face against the floor, trying to see out.

“
Who’s out there! Who is it! What’s going on? Why am I being held here? Answer my questions!” She could see a woman’s boots and the hem of a dress. Probably a Sister who cared for those in the infirmary. The woman straightened. “Please! I need another candle! This one’s almost gone!”

She could hear the disinterested footfalls vanish back up the hall, and then the sound of the door and the big bolt being dropped into place as she ground her teeth and pounded her fist on the door. Verna finally slumped down on the pallet, comforting her hand. She had been pounding the door too often, of late. Her frustration was overcoming her sense, she knew.

In the windowless room, she had no idea anymore if it was day or night. She assumed that they brought her food in the day, and so tried to keep track of time in that way, but sometimes it seemed they brought food only hours apart, and at other times she was nearly starved to death before they brought it. She sorely wished they would do something about the chamber pot.

They didn’t bring her enough food, either. Her dress was getting quite loose at the hips and bust. She had wished, for the last several years, that she could be a bit smaller, as she had been before she went on her journey twenty years before. She had been thought attractive, in her youth. Her extra weight always seemed a reminder of that lost youth and beauty.

She laughed maniacally. Maybe they thought so, too, and had decided to put the Prelate on a fast. Her laughter died. She had wished Jedidiah would see what was on the inside, instead of just the outside, and here she was longing for the outside, just as he did. A tear rolled down her cheek. Warren had never ignored what was inside. She was a fool.

“
I pray you are safe, Warren,” she whispered to the walls.

Verna slid the tray across the floor toward the candle. She flopped down and snatched up the tin cup of water. Before she gulped it down, she stopped, cautioning herself to make it last. They never brought her enough water. Too often she gulped it down and then spent the next day lying in her bed daydreaming about diving into a lake with her mouth open, guzzling down as much as she wanted.

She put the cup to her lips and took a dainty sip. When she set it back on the tray, she saw something new, something other than the half loaf of bread. There sat a bowl of soup.

Verna reverently lifted it, inhaling the aroma. It was a thin onion broth, but it seemed a queen’s feast. Nearly in tears with joy, she took a swallow, savoring the rich flavor. She tore off a chunk of bread and dunked it in the soup. It tasted better than chocolate, better than anything she had ever eaten. She broke the rest of the bread into small pieces and dumped them all in the bowl. Swelling in the soup, it made the bread seem more than she could eat. But she did.

As she ate, she worked the journey book from its pouch in her belt. Her hopes sagged again, as there was no new message. She had told Ann what had happened, and she had received back a hastily scrawled message that said only “You must escape and get the Sisters away.” She had received no message since.

After she had tipped up the bowl and drained the last of the soup, she blew out the candle, saving it for later. She put the half cup of water behind the candle so as to help insure she wouldn’t spill it in the dark, and then lay back on the pallet, rubbing her full stomach.

She woke from a dead sleep when she heard the door lever clang as it was lifted. Verna put the back of a hand to her eyes, protecting them from the dazzling illumination that stabbed into the room. She scooted back against the wall as the door closed. A woman stood holding a lamp. Verna squinted in its blinding brightness.

The woman set the lamp on the floor and straightened to fold her hands at her waist. She stood watching, saying nothing.

“
Who is it? Who’s there?”

“
Sister Leoma Marsick,” came the terse reply.

Verna blinked as her eyes finally acclimated to the lamplight. Yes, it was Leoma. Verna could make out her wrinkled face and long white hair hanging back over her shoulders.

Leoma was the one in the Prelate’s office. The one who had put her in here.

Verna sprang for the woman’s throat.

Confused for a moment, she realized she was sitting back on her pallet, and her behind smarted from the rough landing. She felt the disturbing sensation of the Rada’Han preventing her from rising. She tried to move her legs, but they wouldn’t respond. It was a singularly terrifying sensation. She gasped for air, fighting back a cry of panic. She stopped trying to fight it, to stand, and the alarm eased, but the disquieting, extrinsic feeling didn’t.

“
That will be quite enough, Verna.”

Verna made sure her voice was under control before she spoke. “What am I doing in here?”

“
You were being held until your trial had concluded.”

Trial? What trial? No. She would not give Leoma the satisfaction. “That would seem appropriate.” Verna wished she could stand; it was shaming to have Leoma looking down upon her like this. “And has it, then?”

“
That is why I’m here. I’ve come to inform you of the decision of the tribunal.”

Verna bit off her caustic reply. Of course these traitors found her guilty of some fraudulent charge. “And their decision, then?”

“
You have been found guilty of being a Sister of the Dark.”

Verna was struck speechless. She stared up at Leoma, but couldn’t bring forth a word at the pain of having Sisters convict her of that. She had worked nearly her whole life to see the Creator honored in this world. Rage boiled up, but she held it in check, remembering Warren’s admonition about her temper.

“
Sister of the Dark? I see. And how could I have been convicted of such an accusation without evidence?”

Leoma chuckled. “Come now, Verna, surely you would not believe you could get away with such a high crime and leave no evidence.”

“
No, I suppose you managed to find something. Do you intend to tell me, then, or did you simply come here to gloat over having at last managed to make yourself Prelate?”

Leoma lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, I have not been named Prelate. Sister Ulicia was chosen.”

Verna flinched. “Ulicia! Ulicia is a Sister of the Dark! She fled with five of her collaborators!”

“
Quite the contrary. Sisters Tovi, Cecilia, Armina, Nicci, and Merissa have all returned and have been reinstated to their positions of authority as Sisters of the Light.”

Verna struggled mightily, but unsuccessfully, to rise to her feet. “They were caught attacking Prelate Annalina! Ulicia killed her! They all fled!”

Leoma sighed, as if having to explain the most simple of things to an ignorant novice. “And who caught them attacking Prelate Annalina?” She paused. “You. You and Richard.

“
The six Sisters have testified how they were attacked by a Sister of the Dark, after Richard had killed Sister Liliana, and they fled for their lives until they could arrange their return in order to save the palace from your grip. The misunderstanding has been set straight.