Terry Goodkind - Chainfire - Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Kahlan’s tracks were gone as well.

The pain, the horror, of wondering if this might be the same thing that had happened to Kahlan nearly buckled his knees. Not even the sword’s rage was enough to shield him from the agony of that pain.

Nicci, right behind him, leaned close. “Richard,” she said in a near whisper, “we need to get out of here.”

Cara leaned in beside Nicci. “I agree.”

Victor lifted his mace. “I want those who did this.” His knuckles were white around the steel grip. “Can you track them?” he asked Richard.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Nicci said.

“Good idea or not,” Richard told them, “I don’t see any tracks.” He looked into Nicci’s blue eyes. “Perhaps you would like to try to convince me that I am imagining this, as well?”

She didn’t break eye contact with him, but she didn’t answer his challenge, either.

Victor gazed up at Ferran. “I told his mother that I’d watch over him. What am I going to say to his family now?” Tears of rage and hurt glistened in his eyes as he pointed with the mace back to the rest of the remains. “What am I going to say to their mothers and wives and children?”

“That evil murdered them,” Richard said. “That you will not rest until you know justice is done. That vengeance will be had.”

Victor nodded, his anger flagging, misery now filling his voice. “We have to bury them.”

“No,” Nicci said with grim authority. “As much as I understand your want to care for them, your friends are no longer here, among these pieces of wrecked bodies. Your friends are now with the good spirits. It is up to us not to join them.”

Victor’s anger resurfaced. “But we must . . .”

“No,” Nicci snapped. “Look around. This was a blood frenzy. We don’t want to get caught in it. We can’t help these men. We need to get out of here.”

Before Victor could argue, Richard leaned close to the sorceress. “What do you know about this?”

“I told you before, Richard, that we needed to talk. But this is not the time or place to do it.”

“I agree,” Cara growled. “We need to get away from here.”

Looking from the remains of Ferran back to the bloody mess beneath the maple, Richard suddenly felt a sense of overwhelming loneliness. He wanted Kahlan so bad it hurt. He wanted her comfort. He wanted her safe. The agony of not knowing if she was alive and well was unbearable.

“Cara is right.” Nicci urgently gripped Richard’s arm. “We don’t know enough about what we’re up against, but whatever did all this, I fear that as weak as you are your sword can’t protect us from it—and right now, neither can I. If it’s still in these woods, now is not the time to confront it. Justice and vengeance need us to see them done. To do that, we must be alive.”

With the back of a hand, Victor wiped tears of grief and anger from his cheek. “I hate to admit it, but I think Nicci’s right.”

“Whatever was looking for you, Lord Rahl,” Cara said. “I don’t want you here if it should happen to return.”

Richard noted the way Cara, in her red leather, no longer seemed out of place in the woods. She blended right in with all the blood.

Still not ready to abandon the search for whatever had killed these men, and with a dark sense of alarm rising within him, Richard frowned at the Mord-Sith. “What makes you think it was after me?”

“I told you,” Nicci said through gritted teeth, answering in Cara’s stead, “now is not the time and this is not the place to talk about it. There is nothing we can hope to accomplish here. These men are beyond our help.”

Beyond help. Was Kahlan beyond help as well? He couldn’t allow himself to believe that.

He looked north. Richard didn’t know where to search for her. Just because the rock that had been kicked out of its resting place had been found to the north of their camp didn’t mean that whoever took Kahlan went that way. They might have simply gone north, trying to avoid contact with Victor and his men and with the soldiers guarding the supply convoy. They might have only been trying to avoid being spotted until they got out of the immediate area. After that, they could have gone anywhere.

But where?

Richard knew that he needed help.

He tried to think of who could help him with something like this. Who would believe him? Zedd might believe him, but Richard didn’t think his grandfather could offer the specific kind of help he needed in this circumstance. It was awfully far to go if it ended up that Zedd’s abilities didn’t fit this particular kind of problem.

Who would be willing to help him, and might know something?

Richard turned suddenly to Victor. “Where can I get horses? I need horses. Where’s the closest place?”

Victor was taken off guard by the question. He let the heavy mace hang and with his other hand wiped rainwater back off his forehead as he considered the question. His brow bunched back up.

“Altur’Rang would probably be the closest place,” he said after a moment’s thought.

Richard slid his sword back into its sheath. “Let’s go. We need to hurry.”

Pleased with the decision to leave, Cara gave him a helpful shove in the direction of Altur’Rang. Suspicion lurked in Nicci’s eyes, but she was so relieved to have him start away from the site of so much death that she didn’t ask why he wanted horses.

Weariness forgotten, the four of them hurried away from men beyond any help. As heartsick as they felt about leaving, each of them understood that it would be too dangerous to stay to try to bury these men. A burial of the dead was not worth the risk to their lives.

With his sword put away, the anger extinguished. In its place welled up the crushing pain of grief for the dead. The forest seemed to weep with them.

Worse yet was the dread of wondering what could have happened to Kahlan. If she was in the hands of this evil—

Think of the solution, Richard reminded himself.

If he was to find her, he would need help. To get help, he needed horses. That was the immediate problem at hand. They still had half a day of daylight. He intended not to waste a moment of it.

Richard led them away through the tangled woods at an exhausting pace. No one complained.

In the deepening gloom of approaching nightfall, Richard and Cara used thin, wiry pine tree roots they’d pulled up from the spongy ground to lash together the trunks of small trees. Victor and Nicci foraged the understory along the base of the heavily forested slope, cutting and collecting balsam boughs. As Richard held the logs together, Cara tied off the ropelike root. Richard cut the excess for use elsewhere and slipped the knife back into its sheath at his belt. Once he had the log framework securely in place against an overhang of rock, he started stacking the balsam boughs along the bottom. Cara tied random branches on from inside to keep them all in place for the night as Richard continued layering more up the poles. Victor and Nicci dragged armfuls of boughs close to keep him supplied as he worked.

The area under the overhanging roof of rock was dry enough, it just wasn’t large enough. The lean-to would expand the shelter so as to provide a snug place to sleep. Without a fire it wouldn’t be especially warm, but at least it would be dry.

Throughout the day, the drizzle had turned to a slow, steady rain. While they had been on the move they had been warm enough because of their exertion, but now that they had to stop for the night, the inexorable embrace of the cold had begun. Even in chilly weather that wasn’t truly cold, being wet sapped a person of their necessary warmth and thus their strength. Richard knew that, over time, constant exposure to even mildly chilly wet weather could steal enough vital heat from the body to severely debilitate and sometimes even kill a person.