Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind [119]
“I do not think I could forget if I wanted to. I will tell the warden your words. What would you have me tell the wizard?”
Richard smiled. “That I’m sorry we couldn’t wait for him, but I know he will understand. When he is able, he will find us by the night stone. I hope by then to have found one of the boxes.”
“Strength to the Seeker,” Adie said in a rasp, “and you too, child. Grim times lie ahead.”
CHAPTER 18
The trail was wide enough to allow Richard and Kahlan to walk side by side after they left Adie’s place. Clouds hung thick and threatening, but the rain held off. Both wrapped their cloaks tight. Damp, brown pine needles matted the path through the forest. There was little brush among the big trees, allowing an open view for a good distance. Ferns covered the ground in feathery swaths through the trees, and dead wood lay in it here and there as if asleep in a bed. Squirrels scolded the two of them as they hiked along, while birds sang with monotonous conviction.
Richard picked at the branch of a small balsam fir as they walked past, stripping the needles between his thumb and the crook of his first finger.
“Adie is more than she seems,” he said at last.
Kahlan looked up at him as they walked. “She is a sorceress.”
Richard glanced sideways at her in surprise. “Really? I don’t know exactly what a sorceress is.”
“Well, she is more than us, but less than a wizard.”
Richard smelled the aromatic fragrance of the balsam needles, then cast them aside. Maybe she was more than he, Richard thought, but he wasn’t at all sure she was more than Kahlan. He remembered the look on Adie’s face when Kahlan had grabbed her by the wrist. It had been a look of fear. He remembered the look on Zedd’s face when he had first seen her. What power did she have that could frighten a sorceress and a wizard? What had she done that had caused thunder without sound? She had done it twice that he knew of, once with the quad, and once with Shar, the night wisp. Richard remembered the pain that had followed. A sorceress greater than Kahlan? He wondered.
“What’s Adie doing living here, in the pass?”
Kahlan pushed some of her hair back over her shoulder. “She became tired of people coming to her all the time, wanting spells and potions. She wanted to be left alone to study whatever it is a sorceress studies; some sort of higher summons, as she called it.”
“Do you think she will be safe when the boundary fails?”
“I hope so. I like her.”
“Me too,” he added with a smile.
The trail, climbing sharply in places, forced them to go single file at times as it twisted along steep rocky hillsides and over ridges. Richard let Kahlan go first so he could keep an eye on her, make sure she didn’t wander off the path. At times he had to point out the trail, his experience as a guide making it plain to him, but not to her unpracticed eye. Other times the trail was a well-defined rut. The woods were thick. Trees grew from splits in the rock that pushed up above the leaf litter. Mist drifted among the trees. Roots bulging from cracks provided handholds as they climbed the abrupt inclines. His legs ached from the effort of descending extreme drops in the dark trail.
Richard wondered what they were going to do once they reached the Midlands. He had depended on Zedd to let him know the plan once they crossed the pass, and now they were without Zedd, without a plan. He felt kind of foolish to be charging into the Midlands. What was he going to do once they crossed over? Stand there and look around, divine where the box was and then be off after it? Didn’t sound like a good plan to him. They didn’t have time to wander about aimlessly, hoping they would come across something. No one was going to be waiting for him, waiting to tell him where to go next.
They reached a steep jumble of rock. The trail went straight up the face. Richard surveyed the terrain. It would be easier to go around, rather than climb over the jut of rock, but he finally decided against it, the thought that the boundary could be anywhere making up his