Terry Goodkind - The Law of Nines

When she handed him the knife, he started to wipe the blood off. Jax stopped him. “No, leave it.”

Alex frowned at her. “Why?”

“These blades were made to draw blood. It should have a taste to wake it from its long sleep to its purpose.”

Alex gazed into her resolute eyes for a moment, then slid the knife, still stained with blood, into its sheath on his belt.

He and Jax silently went about the task of getting their gear together. It was already early afternoon. Fixing the truck and the drive up had taken most of the morning. He knew that there was no way they would make it all the way in to Castle Mountain that day. They would have to set up a camp and make it the rest of the way to their destination the next day.

He supposed that Radell Cain, Sedrick Vendis, and Yuri the pirate could simply pop in at Alex’s destination without having to go through the effort of a long hike. He certainly had no doubt that they would show up.

Alex was looking forward to finally meeting the visionary artist who was creating a new reality. His blood boiled with rage in anticipation of meeting him.

Jax looked like she knew what she was doing with the camping gear. She got her pack together quickly and efficiently, then hoisted it up onto her back and buckled the waist strap. Alex did the same. Their packs had collapsible water containers and they also had water bottles hooked on utility belts.

As they left the Jeep and started into the woods the calls of birds echoed through the trees. Walking along side by side in the more open areas, they shared a couple of packages of rolled-up meat and cheese. They had preserved food, but the meat wouldn’t keep, so they ate it all as they made their way deeper into the gloom.

Farther in, the trail became less defined, but it wasn’t difficult to follow. The security people probably used the trail into the interior of the property, and over the time that the Daggett Trust had protected the land the trail had become a reasonably well-defined route. Besides the roads, Hal had also marked such trails on the property. There weren’t a lot of them, but they provided access to just about any corner of the land. As he walked along, Alex could see that there were deer trails that could probably be followed if need be.

As the afternoon wore on, the land began rising. At first it was gentle slopes, but it soon began to get rocky and more difficult to climb. They were both breathing hard as they ascended a series of ridges, having to go down the back side of each one before going up again to get over the next.

After the ridges, the trail took switchbacks up a steep area with a series of cliffs. Each of the rock faces wasn’t all that high, but negotiating them was difficult, especially carrying all the gear they had. In some of the places Jax’s legs weren’t long enough and Alex had to lie on the upper trail and reach down to help pull her up so that she wouldn’t have to take time to climb around. Other than that, he was having a hard time keeping up with her.

As they went higher, the mist thickened. It felt cool on Alex’s sweaty face. The land finally leveled a little. The trail wound its way up through trees with gnarled roots clinging to seams in areas of exposed granite ledge. Leaving the ledges behind, they plunged back into thicker woods. Moss underfoot made it a quiet walk.

“It won’t be long until dark,” Jax said back over her shoulder. “With the cloud cover there won’t be any moon or stars. It’s going to be a pitch-black night. Hiking in this kind of terrain after it gets dark is dangerous. You could walk off a rock face, or break a leg in a hole. We’re going to have to think about setting up camp pretty soon.”

Alex sighed. He was weary from their pace, but he hated to have to stop. He had wanted to get closer to their destination, but he knew that she had a lot more experience at this kind of thing and so he took her advice seriously.

“How about if we keep pushing for just a little longer. We can always use flashlights to help us set up camp.”

She agreed, but told him that it wouldn’t be long until it would be too dark to push on. Everything soon began losing its color, making the trees look gray. Darkness was falling quicker than he would have thought.

And then they came out of the closed trail to a small opening in the woods that for the first time gave them a view into the distance. They halted together, surprised by the unexpected sight.

Silhouetted against the fading gray sky while at the same time lit a little from the obscured sun setting to the left stood Castle Mountain, rising up before them from the undulating, rolling landscape.

It didn’t really look at all like a castle to Alex. It looked more like a plateau rising up out of the surrounding forests. Its top wasn’t flat, though, instead looking somewhat crenellated with irregular rock outcroppings rising and falling across the surface of the top.

“Dear spirits,” Jax whispered.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“I don’t believe it.”

“What don’t you believe?”

“It looks very much like a place in my world called the People’s Palace.” She shook her head. “I can hardly believe what I’m seeing, but I guess, when I think about it, I’ve somehow expected all along to see it.”

“Sure doesn’t look much like a castle to me. What’s so special about the People’s Palace?”

“It’s the place where our worlds were split apart. Up there, at least up there in my world, is a place called the Garden of Life. From there, at the end of a long struggle, people were banished to this world. It only makes sense for that to be the place of connection, the place where the gateway would be.”

The enormity of such a concept gave Alex pause.

She pointed. “Can you see that line rising up diagonally from the bottom left toward the top right?”

Alex squinted into the gathering darkness. “Okay, I see it now.”

“It looks like a narrow, angled ridge. In my world that’s a road up the plateau to the palace at the top.” She let out a sigh. “From here it’s probably a hike of four hours to get there. We’d better look for a place to camp and get some sleep.”

THE TRAIL SOON TOOK THEM BACK into the shelter of the woods. They found a place that Jax liked for a camp because there was a rock overhang to protect them in case it started to rain. In the gloom they quickly set up their tent and unrolled the sleeping bags.

“Tonight we should stand watches,” she told him as she used rocks to make a fire ring around an area she had quickly scraped clear of forest litter. “A fire could possibly be seen, but it’s more important that we can see them — and not die of exposure.”

Gathering wood nearby, he looked back over his shoulder. “You think that watches are necessary?”

“I hope not,” she said. “But being this close I wouldn’t want both of us to be asleep and have Yuri and his friends show up in the dark.”

Alex built kindling up in the center of the fire ring and lit it with a match. He had been about to argue the point of a watch, but her words gave him pause. “All right. But only if you will take the gun on your watch.”

She said she would. He handed her a foil pouch and a plastic spoon. In the dark he wasn’t sure if he had pulled out meatloaf or roast pork. His was meatloaf. They ate in silence, listening to the coyotes in the distant mountains. It was a spooky sound to hear all alone so far out in the woods.

When they were finished Jax said that if it was all right with him she was really tired and would rather sleep first and take her watch the second half of the night. Alex agreed. She found a comfortable place on a flat rock just out of the ring of light from the fire and told him that it was a good place to keep his eye on things without being blinded by the fire. She told him to make sure to keep wood on the fire.