Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind [211]
At last, he allowed that caution to blossom in his mind. How could an old man be out walking him like this, yet look fresh and relaxed? Richard felt his forehead, wondering if he was sick, or had a fever. He did feel hot. Maybe he wasn’t well; maybe there was something wrong with him. They had been pushing hard for days, but not this hard. No, he felt fine, simply winded.
For a while, he watched Kahlan walking ahead of him. She, too, was having difficulty keeping up. She pulled another spiderweb off her face, then trotted to keep up. He could see that, like him, she was breathing hard. For some reason, Richard’s caution was igniting into foreboding.
He caught a brief glimpse of something off to the left, in the woods, keeping pace. Just a small animal, he thought. But it looked like something with long arms, skittering along the ground; then it was gone. His mouth felt dry. It must just be his imagination, he told himself.
He turned his attention back to Old John. The path was wide in some places, narrow in others with branches that reached in tight. When Kahlan and Richard went past, they both sometimes brushed against them, or simply pushed them out of the way. Not the old man. He stayed to the center of the trail, avoiding any errant limb, his arms clutching his cloak tightly to him.
Richard’s eye was caught by the strands of a spiderweb, glistening golden in the setting sun, stretched across the path in front of Kahlan. The web parted against her upper leg when she walked through it.
The sweat on his face instantly turned ice cold against his skin.
How could Old John not have broken the web?
He looked up and saw a branch, its tip sticking out in the path. The old man skirted it. But not the tip. The tip passed through his arm as it would pass through smoke.
Breathing faster, he glanced down at the footprints Kahlan made through an open patch of soft ground. There were none from Old John.
Richard’s left hand shot forward, seized a fistful of Kahlan’s shirt, and yanked her behind him, causing her to cry out in surprise. He tossed her backward as his right hand pulled the sword free.
Old John stopped and half turned at the sound of the sword’s ringing.
“What is it, my boy? See something?” His voice came like the hiss of a snake.
“Indeed.” Richard gripped the sword in both hands, his legs set in a defensive stance, his chest heaving. He felt the anger flooding his fear. “How is it that you don’t break spiderwebs when you walk through them, or leave footprints?”
Old John gave a slow, sly smile, appraising him with one eye. “Did you not expect that an old friend of a wizard would have special talents?”
“Maybe,” Richard said, his eyes darting left and right, checking. “But tell me, Old John, what is your old friend’s name?”
“Why, it’s Zedd.” His eyebrows lifted. “How else would I know, if he weren’t my old friend.” His cloak was pulled tightly around him. His head had sunken into his shoulders.
“I’m the one who foolishly told you his name was Zedd. Now, you tell me your old friend’s last name.”
Old John watched him with a dark frown, his eyes moving slowly, appraising, measuring. Eyes of an animal.
With a sudden roar that made Richard flinch, the old man turned, his cloak flinging open. In the time it took to complete the turn, he mushroomed to twice his previous size.
An impossible nightmare came to life: fur and claws and fangs, where an old man had been an instant before.
A creature of snarl and snap.
Richard gasped as he looked up at the gaping maw of the beast. It roared and abruptly took a giant step forward. Richard took three back. He gripped the sword so hard it hurt. The woods echoed with the earsplitting cry of the thing, deep, savage, vicious. The mouth stretched wide with each roar. It leaned over him, deep-set red eyes glowing, snapping its huge teeth. Richard