Terry Goodkind - Blood of the Fold

Gratch gurgled with satisfaction as he stroked a claw down her hair.

Richard swished at a fly. “Gratch! You have blood flies!”

Gratch’s self-satisfied grin widened. Gars used the flies to help flush out their quarry, but Gratch had never had any before. Richard didn’t want to swat Gratch’s blood flies, but they were becoming more than annoying. They were stinging his neck.

Gratch bent, scooped a claw through the gore of a dead mriswith, and smeared it across the taut, pink skin of his abdomen. The flies obediently returned to feast. Richard was astonished.

He peered around at all the glowing green eyes watching him. “Gratch, you look like you’ve had quite an adventure. You gathered all these gars together?” Gratch nodded with a clear look of gar pride. “And they did what you asked?”

Gratch thumped his chest with authority. He turned and grunted. The rest of the gars returned the odd grunt. Gratch smiled, showing his fangs.

“Gratch, where’s Zedd?”

The leathery smile withered. The hulking gar sagged a bit as he looked over his shoulder, up at the keep. He turned back, his glowing green eyes dimming a bit as he shook his head sorrowfully.

Richard swallowed back the anguish. “I understand,” he whispered. “Did you see him killed?”

Gratch thumped his chest, pulled his fur out atop his head, apparently a sign for Zedd, pointed at the Keep, and put his claws over his eyes—Gratch’s sign for mriswith. Through his signs, and Richard’s questions, Richard was able to determine that Gratch had brought Zedd to the Keep, there had been a fight with many mriswith, Gratch had seen Zedd lying unmoving on the ground with blood running from his head, and then Gratch could no longer find the old wizard. The gar had then gone in search of help to fight the mriswith and protect Richard. He had worked hard to find the other gars, and to gather them to his purpose.

Richard hugged his friend again. Gratch held him in a long embrace, and then backed away, looking for the other gars.

Richard felt a lump rising in his throat. “Gratch, can you stay?”

Gratch pointed one claw at Richard, another at Kahlan, and then brought them together. He thumped his chest and then pointed behind at another gar. When it came forward to stand beside him, Richard realized it was a female.

“Gratch, you have a love? Like I have Kahlan?”

Gratch grinned and thumped at his chest with both claws.

“And you want to be with the gars,” Richard said.

Gratch nodded reluctantly, his smile faltering.

Richard put on his best smile. “I think that’s wonderful, my friend. You deserve to be with your love, and your new friends. But you can still visit us. We would love to have you and your friend any time. All of you, in fact. You’re all welcome here.”

Gratch’s smile returned.

“But Gratch, can you do one thing for me? Please? It’s important. Can you ask them not to eat people? We won’t hunt gars, and you won’t eat people. All right?”

Gratch turned to the others, grunting in an odd guttural language that the others understood. They offered grumbling murmurs of their own, and a conversation of sorts seemed to ensue. Gratch’s growling words rose in pitch, and he thumped his massive chest—he was at least as big as any of them. They all finally offered a hooting assent. Gratch turned to Richard and nodded.

Kahlan hugged the furry beast again. “Take care of yourself, and come see us when you can. I’m always in your debt, Gratch. I love you. We both do.”

After a last embrace with Richard that needed no words, the gars took to wing and vanished into the night.

Richard stood beside Kahlan, surrounded by his guards, his army, and the specter of the dead.

Richard awakened with a start. Kahlan was curled up with her back to his chest. The wound in his shoulder from the mriswith queen ached. He had let an army surgeon put a poultice on it, and then, too exhausted to stand any longer, he had fallen onto the bed in the guest room he had been using. He hadn’t even taken off his boots, and the uncomfortable pain in his hip told him that he still wore the Sword of Truth, and he was lying on it.

Kahlan stirred in his arms, a feeling that swelled him with joy, but then he remembered the thousands of dead, the thousands who were dead because of him, and his joy evaporated.

“Good morning, Lord Rahl,” came a cheery voice from above.

He frowned up at Cara and groaned in greeting. Kahlan squinted in the sunlight streaming in the window.

Cara waggled a hand over the two of them. “It works better with your clothes off.”

Richard frowned. His voice came as a hoarse croak. “What?”

She seemed mystified by the question. “I believe you will find such things work better without clothes.” She put her hands to her hips. “I thought you would know at least that much.”

“Cara, what are you doing in here?”

“Ulic wanted to see you, but was afraid to look, so I said I would. For one so large, he can be timid at times.”

“He needs to give you lessons.” Richard winced as he sat up. “What does he want?

“He found a body.”

Kahlan rubbed her eyes as she sat up. “That shouldn’t have been hard.”

Cara smiled, but it vanished when Richard noticed it. “He found a body at the bottom of the cliff, below the Keep.”

Richard swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “Why didn’t you say so.”

Kahlan rushed to catch up with him as he charged out in the hall to find Ulic waiting.

“Did you find him? Did you find a body of an old man?”

“No, Lord Rahl. It was the body of a woman.”

“A woman! What woman?”

“She was in bad shape, after all this time, but I recognized those gaped teeth and tattered blanket. It was that old woman, Valdora. The one who sold those honey cakes.”

Richard rubbed his sore shoulder. “Valdora. How odd. And the little girl, what was her name?”

“Holly. We saw no trace of her. We found no one else, but there’s a lot of area to search, and animals could have . . . well, we may never find anything.”

Richard nodded, words failing him. He felt the shroud of death all around him, Cara’s voice turned compassionate. “The funeral fires will begin in a while. Do you wish to go?”

“Of course!” He checked his tone when he felt Kahlan’s tempering hand on his back. “I must be there. They died because of me.”

Cara frowned. “They died because of the Blood of the Fold, and because of the Imperial Order.”

“We know, Cara,” Kahlan said. “We’ll be there just as soon as I see to the poultice on his shoulder and we get cleaned up.”

The funeral fires burned for days. Twenty-seven thousand were dead. Richard felt as if the flames carried away his spirits, as well as those of the men who had died. He stayed and said the words along with the others, and by night stood guard over the flames along with the others, until it was done.

From the light of this fire, and into the light. Safe journey to the spirit world.

Richard’s shoulder worsened over the next few days, getting swollen, red, and stiff.

His mood was no better.

He walked the halls and occasionally watched the streets from the windows, but talked to few people. Kahlan strolled at his side, offering her comforting presence, remaining quiet unless he spoke. Richard couldn’t banish the image of all the dead from his mind. He was haunted by the name the prophecies had given him: the bringer of death.

One day, after his shoulder had begun to heal, at last, as he sat at the table he used as a desk, staring at nothing, there was sudden light. He looked up. Kahlan had come in, and he hadn’t even noticed. She had pulled the drapes open to let in the sunlight.