Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind [108]
Richard looked down at him in surprise and then grinned. Smiling quenched some of the fire of his rage. “When I first saw you,” Richard said, “my thought was that you were not a devious man. I find I was mistaken.”
Richard and Kahlan pulled their hoods up and urged their horses on into the dark rain, toward the bone woman.
The rain had quickly drowned the lights from Southaven and left the travelers to grope their way through the blackness. Chase’s horses had carefully picked their way down the trail; trained by the wardens for this kind of duty, they were comfortable in the adverse conditions. Dawn had struggled interminably at bringing light to the new day. Even after Richard knew the sun was up, the world still hung in half-light between night and day, a ghost of morning. The rain had helped to cool his hot rage.
Richard and Kahlan knew that the last member of the quad was loose somewhere, and they watched every movement as a potential threat. They knew that, sooner or later, he would come at them. The uncertainty of when ate at their concentration. Worry over what Bill had said, that Zedd and Chase wouldn’t last long, gnawed at his spirit. If this woman, Adie, couldn’t help, he didn’t know what he would do. If she couldn’t help, his two friends would die. He couldn’t imagine a world without Zedd. A world without his tricks and help and comfort would be a dead world. He realized that he was getting a lump in his throat thinking about it. Zedd would tell him not to worry about what might be, but to worry about what was.
But what was seemed almost as bad. His father had been murdered. Darken Rahl was close to obtaining all the boxes. Richard’s two oldest friends were near death. He was alone with a woman he cared about, but wasn’t supposed to care about. She still kept her secrets closed to him, locked away.
He could tell she fought a constant battle over it in her mind. Sometimes when he felt he was getting closer to her, he saw pain and fear in her eyes. Soon they would be in the Midlands, where people knew what she was. He wanted her to be the one to tell him; he didn’t want to learn it from someone he didn’t know. If she didn’t tell him soon, he would have to ask her. Against his nature or not, he would have to.
So deep was he in thought, he hadn’t realized they had been on the trail for over four hours. The forest was drinking in the rain. Trees loomed dark and huddled in the mist; the moss on their trunks was vibrant and lush. It stood out on the bark of trees, and in round humps on the ground, green and spongy. The lichen on the rocks shone bright yellow and rust in the damp. In some places water ran down the trail, turning it into a temporary creek. The poles of Zedd’s litter splashed through it, going over rocks and roots, rocking the old man’s head from side to side on the rougher sections. His feet rode inches from water when they crossed runoff streams.
Richard smelled the sweetness of woodsmoke in the stillness. Birch wood. He realized that the area they were entering had changed somehow. It looked the same as it had for hours, yet it was different. Rain floated down in quiet reverence for the forest. The whole place felt somehow sacred. He felt like an intruder, disturbing the peace of timeless ages. He wanted to say something to Kahlan, but it seemed as if talking would be a sacrilege. He understood why the men from the inn wouldn’t come up here; their foul presence would be a violation.
They came to a house that so blended with its surroundings, it was almost invisible next to the trail. A wisp of woodsmoke curled from its chimney, up into the misty air. The logs of the walls were weathered and ancient, matching the color of the surrounding trees, with nothing other than the ground it sat upon disturbed. The house seemed to be growing from the forest floor, with trees towering around it protectively. The roof was covered in a mass of ferns. A smaller, slanted roof covered a door and a porch large enough for only two or three people to stand on at once. There was a square, four-paned window in