Stone of Tears (74 page)

She ignored the screams and sought the silence within.

The wizard stumbled backwards and fell. He came to his feet whirling his arms. Fire formed in the air at the arc of his fingertips.

Though there was confusion all about, only one thing filled her vision. The wizard.

She couched the lance, tucking the base under her right armpit, jamming her grip tight against the leather stop. Gritting her teeth, she used all her strength to lift the heavy lance over Nick’s bobbing head, to the left side, so as not to unbalance herself in the saddle.

Nick took her direction as if he could read her mind. She steered him at full speed, but it seemed to her that the last ten yards took hours, as a race between her charge and the wizard calling forth fire.

Wizard Slagle looked up to direct the fire just as her lance caught him in the chest. The impact shattered the lance to splinters at mid length and nearly tore the wizard in half. She and her horse flew through a spray of blood.

Kahlan swung the half lance at a man lunging for her, catching him across the head. The impact tore it from her grip. She wheeled the horse and leaned forward over his withers as she galloped at full speed back through the confusion around the command tents. Her heart pounded as fast as the horses hooves.

One of the D’Haran officers from the table was up and screaming for a horse. Men leapt onto horses bareback. As she began putting distance between them, she could hear him yell that if they failed to catch her they would be drawn and quartered to a man. A quick glance showed a good three dozen riders joining the chase.

Away from the command tents, back the way she had come, men didn’t know what was happening, and saw a galloping rider as simply part of the drunken festivities. None moved to stop her. Men, tents, fires, polearms and lances stuck upright in the snow, stacks of pikes, horses, and wagons all flashed by in a blur.

Nick jumped anything he couldn’t dodge. The threat of him not jumping or dodging had men diving for cover. Men at games tumbled out of the way, coin and dice flying into the air. Tents pulled up when their lines crossed Nick’s legs flew up and billowed in a tangle behind, catching up her pursuers. Horses and riders crashed to the ground. Others ran over their own men in their frenzied attempt to keep her in sight.

Kahlan spotted a sword hanging in a scabbard that was fastened to the side of a wagon, and as she ran past, she pulled it free. Galloping past picket lines, she swung the sword, cutting the lead lines. She hacked the rump of one horse as she charged past. He kicked and screamed in fright and pain, panicking the rest of the horses. They bolted headlong in every direction. Lanterns on poles toppled onto tents, setting them afire.

The horses in pursuit balked at the fires, rearing and bucking, throwing their riders to the ground. A man lunged suddenly into her path, avoiding Nick’s flying hooves and grabbing for her. Kahlan drove the sword home through his chest as she flew by. The hilt tore from her hand. She leaned forward and held on as Nick raced through the endless camp. The men chasing weren’t as close, but they were still coming.

Suddenly, she was free of the camp, galloping through the open snow. Kahlan followed her own tracks across the flat by the waning light of the moon. The muscular horse plowed through the snow almost as if it weren’t there.

She reached the trees at last, and before plunging in and ascending the steep slopes, she checked over her shoulder.

A good fifty men were not three minutes behind. She would be able to open the lead as she went up along the forest trail, but they would still catch her.

She would see to that.

“Easy now,” she cautioned. One hesitant hoof slipped. “Back, back, back. Come on boy, back.”

From down the slope behind, she could hear the sounds of the chase; a man, probably one of the D’Haran officers, yelling angrily at the top of his lungs not to let her get away, and others urging their horses up the steep trail. When they reached the flat where she was, they would be in a full gallop again.

Kahlan tugged gently on the reins. Nick lifted his hoof from the ice and backed up, into the tight gap between the snow crusted pines, back along his trail.

She found the long branch, with the forked end she had whittled to a pushing pole, stuck upright in the snow where she had left it beside the twin trunked spruce. She hefted it up, and started pushing the heavy, snow-laden branches. Her shoulder ached from having the lance shattered as she held it under her arm.

As she backed Nick between the trees, off her trail, she held the long push-stick out over his head, jostling the limbs. Relieved of their loads, they sprang up, partly screening the gap between the trees. More importantly, the snow tumbled to the ground, piling over her tracks. She pushed at a branch here, another there, sprinkling their snow over Nick’s backing trail, covering it in, making it look natural, like wind had simply freed the branches of their load.

She said a silent thank you to Richard, for teaching her about tracks. He had said he would make a woods woman of her. She ached for Richard. She was sure he wouldn’t approve of the desperate risk she was undertaking with the aid of what he had taught her.

But she couldn’t allow these men to track her back to the Galean boys. There was a chance that some would carry word of what they had seen back, and then the Galeans would be slaughtered. If none of these men returned, it would be a long while before any more were sent, if ever.

Even if they were, by then it would be too late; she would have long been up and over the passes from which she had come, where the wind howled and drifted the snow constantly, and her tracks would be lost to them. They would not know where she had gone. From there, the mountains and forests went on in endless tracts, and her trail would have been last seen leading steadily away from her true destination. Those back at camp would have confidence that these soldiers would have her sooner or later, and with the prospect of plunder only days away, they would turn their attention to it instead.

The snow-muffled thundering of hooves brought her mind back to what she was doing. The men had reached the flat, and were charging at full speed again. Steadily, she worked her way back into the trees, shaking branches, covering her trail, backing toward the way she had come on her way to the army of the Imperial Order. The sounds of chase were almost upon her.

Kahlan leaned almost all the way over, stroking an arm along her horse’s neck. She whispered toward his ears, and they swiveled back to the sound of her voice.

“Quiet now, Nick. Please don’t move or make a sound.” She stroked his sweaty neck again. “Good boy. Quiet now.”

It sounded, to her, as if anyone would be able to plainly hear her heart beating in her chest.

The pursuers had reached her. As they charged along her trail, right in front of her, they broke through the screen of trees to her left, not ten yards away, at full speed. Kahlan held her breath.

She heard the clop of hooves as they hit the sloping ice hiding in the moon shadows beyond those trees, beyond her false trail. She had led her tracks between those trees, to the edge of a steep, rocky stream, where its water would tumble, were it not frozen, over a cliff.

It was a small stream, but as it froze, more water had bubbled and frothed over that which was already frozen, growing the area into an ice palace. Snow had been washed away as it fell, leaving the rounded, downward sloping humps of ice bare and slick.

As the men broke through the trees, they had not twenty feet to halt their headlong rush before the cliff’s edge, before the rock and ice halted, and only thin air lay beyond. And they had to do it on cascading mounds of ice. Were it flat ice, like a lake, the horses could have dug their iron shoes in, and tried to skid to a halt. But this was not flat, it was water slicked tumble-down ice, and as they slipped and slid and tripped and fell at a charge, they had no chance.

Kahlan could hear the pop of horses legs breaking as thousands of pounds of muscle moving at full speed could not be stopped by hooves catching in crevices. The bareback riders were helpless passengers.

The men shouted encouragement to their mounts, and the ones behind didn’t recognize quickly enough the change in shrieking from anger to fright. Those behind crashed into those ahead, tumbling over and past each other. Bareback, with only halters and no aggressive battle bits, the riders didn’t have the control they were accustomed to, and were carried helplessly forward.

Some leapt from their mounts as they came through the trees, and could see what lay ahead, but their momentum was too great, the distance too short, their fate beyond retrieval. The horses behind, their leg bones snapping, crashed down atop the ones already fallen who were desperately grasping for a hold. There was none. It became a waterfall of living flesh, cascading over the edge.

Kahlan sat still, wearing her Confessor’s face, as she listened to the screams of man and horse mingled together into one long wail as they disappeared over the mountainside. In the span of mere seconds, it was finished; more than fifty men and their mounts had plunged to their deaths.

When the night had been silent for a time, she dismounted and circled around, to keep her false trail free of any off-leading tracks, to the edge of the ice flow. In the dim light she could see the dark stains of blood over the ice mounds. Blood from broken legs, blood from cracked skulls. There were none of the enemy left on the cliff.

As she turned to leave, she heard low grunts of desperation. Kahlan pulled her knife and carefully inched her way to the source of the sounds, toward the edge. Grasping a stout limb, she leaned out over the slanting ice flow. Forest debris was frozen in the ice; Sticks and leaves had made a small dam at the edge, to be covered over as the ice grew. It left a few branches sticking out of the wall of ice.

Around one of these branches, were clutched fingers. A man clung by his fingertips to the branch, his legs dangling over a drop of close to a thousand feet. He was grunting with effort as he tried to catch his feet up on the ice, but it was too slippery to give him any toehold.

Kahlan stood at the edge, holding the branch for support, as she watched him shivering. Dribbles of water bubbled over the ice, over his face, matting his hair and soaking his Keltish uniform. His teeth chattered.

He looked up to see her standing over him in the moonlight. “Help me! Please help me!” He couldn’t have be past her age.

She regarded him without emotion. He had big eyes, the kind of eyes girls would surely have swooned over. But the girls in Ebinissia would not have swooned when they saw those eyes.

“In the name of the good spirits, help me!”

Kahlan squatted down, closer to him. “What is your name?”

“Huon! My name’s Huon! Now please help me!”

Kahlan laid down on the ice, hooking a foot around a tangled root, taking a good grip on the stout spruce limb with one hand. She extended her other hand partway out, but not far enough for Huon to reach.

“I will help you Huon, on a condition. I have sworn no mercy, and none shall be granted. If you to take my hand, I will release my power into you. You will be mine, now and forever. If you are to live, it will be as one touched by a Confessor. If you would think to pull me over the edge with you before I can release my magic, let me assure you I would not make the offer were there that chance. I have touched more men than I can count. You will have no time. You will be mine.”

He blinked icy water dripping down on him from his eyes, shook it from his face, and stared up at her.

Kahlan extended her hand toward him. “From now on, Huon, either way, your old life is ended. If you live it will not be as who you are now. That man will be gone forever. You will be mine.”

“Please,” he whispered, “just help me up. I won’t hurt you. I swear to let you be on your way. It would take me hours to make it back to camp on foot, and you will be long gone by then anyway. Please, just help me up.”

“How many people in Ebinissia did you hear beg for their lives? To how many did you grant mercy?” Her words came as cold as the ice she lay on. “I am the Mother Confessor. I have proclaimed war without quarter on the Imperial Order. The oath stands as long as one of you lives. Choose, Huon. Death, or to be touched by my power. Either way, who you are dies.”

“The people of Ebinissia got what they deserved. I would rather take the hand of the Keeper himself, than be touched by your filthy magic. The good spirits would never accept me to them if I were touched by your dark and profane magic.” His lip curled in a sneer. “To the Keeper with you, Confessor!”

Huon threw his arms open and silently dropped away into the darkness.

As she rode back to the Galean recruits, she thought about the things Riggs, Karsh and Slagle had told her. She also thought about the creatures of magic living in the Midlands

She thought about the beautiful land of the night wisp, with open fields deep in ancient, remote forests, where the wisps gathered at twilight to dance together in the air above the grasses and wild flowers, like joyous fire flies. She had spent many a night lying on her back in the grass as they hovered above her, and spoke with her of things common to all life: of dreams and hopes; of loves.

She thought about the creatures living in Long Lake, translucent things hard to see, seeming almost made of liquid glass, or of the water that was their home, with whom she had never spoken, but who she had watched emerge at night to bask in the moonlight on rock and shore; creatures who had no voice, but with whom she had shared understanding, and had promised to protect.

She thought about the whispering tree people, who she had spoken with in a hauntingly beautiful experience, frighteningly eerie, but somehow gently peaceful at the same time.

The whispering tree people were all joined as one, through their roots touching under the earth, and each spoke as if they were all but one, as if there were no individuals; yet each had a name to whisper to you if you made it promises of simple favors, a mass community that was at the same time all only one. To cut down a tree there would be to bring the pain of that one’s death to all; they could not escape the contact they felt with each other. If people went into that land and cut down the trees, it would be torture to all. Kahlan had seen them in pain before. Their wails could make the stars cry.

There were other creatures, too, that were magic, and people, too, who possessed it. Sometimes it was hard to place a line between creature of the wild, and people. Some people of the Midlands were part creature, or perhaps some creatures were part people. They were strange and delightful, and very shy.

And so it went throughout various forms of magic, from the simplest things in the Howling Caves that could let you peek through solid rock to see their nests, to people like the Mud People, who had only simple magic that would do but one thing.

As Mother Confessor, all these, and many more, were her charges, and as Mother Confessor, she commanded all to protect these magic places, so no one people would bear the brunt of burden against others. It was an arrangement backed by Confessors and wizards extending back for thousands of years.

The twilight beings, Riggs had called them. That was the name given to these magical creatures by the Blood of the Fold, among others, because many of them came out only at night. For this reason, the Blood associated them with darkness, and so, out of fear, with the darkness of the Keeper of the dead.

The Blood considered magic the force through which the Keeper extended his influence into this world, into the world of the living. The Blood were as unreasonable and thickheaded as any men alive. And, they considered it their duty to send to the land of the dead any who they thought served the Keeper. That was just about anyone who disagreed with their view of things. In some lands the Blood were outlawed, and in some, like Nicobarese, they were encouraged and paid by the Crown.