Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind [217]
“No!” she whispered back. Her eyes, wide with panic, met his. “If you touch them, or if I move, they will bite me.”
“It’s all right,” he tried to reassure her, “I’ll get you out of this.”
“Richard,” she said in a pleading whisper, “I’m dead. Leave me. Get out of here. Run.”
He felt as if an invisible hand were constricting his throat. In her eyes, he could see how she was struggling to control her panic. He tried to look as calm as he could, to hearten her. “I’m not leaving you,” he breathed.
“Please, Richard,” she whispered hoarsely, “for me, before it’s too late. Run.”
A thin, poisonous banded viper, its tail coiled in her hair, dropped its head down in front of her face. The red tongue flicked at her. Kahlan closed her eyes, and another tear ran down her cheek. The snake wriggled around the side of her face, down over her collarbone. The banded body disappeared into her shirt. She gave out the slightest whimper.
“I’m going to die. You can’t save me now. Please, Richard, save yourself. Please. Run. Run while you still have a chance.”
Richard was afraid she would move deliberately, to be bitten, to try to save him, thinking he then would have no reason to stay. He had to convince her that that would do no good. He gave her a sober look.
“No. I came here to find out where the box is. I’m not leaving until I know. Now be still.”
She opened her eyes wide at what the snake was doing in her shirt. She bit her bottom lip, hard; her eyebrows wrinkled together. Richard swallowed back dryness in his mouth.
“Kahlan, just hold on. Try to think of something else.”
In a rage, he strode over to the woman sitting on the rock with her back still to him. Something inside warned him not to pull the sword, but he could not, would not, hold back his anger at what she was doing to Kahlan. He breathed through gritted teeth.
When he reached her, she stood and gently turned to him, speaking his name in a voice he recognized.
His heart leapt into his throat when he saw the face that matched the voice.
CHAPTER 31
It was his mother.
Richard felt as if a bolt of lightning had struck him. His whole body went rigid. His rage flinched, and the anger dropped its grip from him, recoiling at the idea of lethal intent and his mother in the same mental image.
“Richard.” She smiled sadly at him, showing in that smile how much she loved and missed him.
His mind raced, trying to grasp what was happening, unable to fit what he was seeing with what he knew. This couldn’t be. It was simply impossible.
“Mother?” he breathed in a whisper.
Arms he knew, remembered, slipped around him, comforted him, brought tears to his eyes, a lump to his throat.
“Oh, Richard,” she said soothingly, “how I’ve missed you.” She ran her fingers through his hair, gentling him. “How I’ve missed you so.”
Reeling, he fought to regain control of his emotions. He struggled to focus his mind on Kahlan. He couldn’t let her down again, let himself be fooled again. She was in this trouble because he had allowed himself to be fooled. This wasn’t his mother, it was Shota, a witch woman. But what if he was somehow wrong?
“Richard, why have you come to me?”
Richard put his hands on her small shoulders, gently pushing her back a little. Her hands slipped to his waist, squeezing with familiar affection. She was not his mother, he forced himself to say in his mind, she was a witch woman, a witch woman who knew where the last box of Orden was, and he had to know the answer to that. But why would she be doing this? And what if he was wrong? Could this somehow be true?
His finger went to the little scar above her left eyebrow, tracing the familiar bump. A scar he had put there. He had been at swordplay with Michael, with their wooden swords, and had just jumped off the bed, taking a foolish and wild swing at his older brother, when his mother came through the door. His sword had caught her across the forehead. Her cry had terrified him.
Even the whipping his father had given him didn’t hurt as much as the thought of what he had done to his mother. His