Blood of the Fold

If there were any bodies at the farm, the men had removed them by the time Kahlan reached it. They had started a fire in the roughly built hearth, but it hadn't had time to thaw the iron chill from the deserted home.

Cyrilla was carefully carried to the remains of a straw mattress in a back bedroom. There was another cramped room with two pallets, probably for children, and the main room with a table and little else. By the broken bits of a cupboard and chest, and the remains of personal items, Kahlan knew the Order had been through here on their way to Ebinissia. She wondered again what the men had done with the bodies; she didn't want to find them in the night if she had to go outside to relieve herself.

Zedd peered around at the room as he rubbed his hands on his stomach.

"How long until dinner is ready?" he asked in a cheery tone.

He wore heavy maroon robes with black sleeves and cowled shoulders. Three rows of silver brocade circled the cuffs of his sleeves. Thicker, gold brocade ran around the neck and down the front, the outfit gathered at the waist with a red satin belt set with a gold buckle. Zedd hated the flashy accoutrements that Adie had insisted he purchase as a disguise. He preferred his simple robes, but they were long gone, as was his fancy hat with the long feather that he had «lost» somewhere along the way.

Kahlan grinned in spite of herself. "I don't know. What are you cooking?"

"Me? Cook? Well, I suppose.."

"Dear spirits, spare us that man's cooking," Adie said from the doorway. "We would be better served to eat bark and bugs."

Adie limped into the room, followed by Jebra, the seer, and Ahern, the coach driver who had carried Zedd and Adie on their recent journeys. Chandalen, who had accompanied Kahlan from the Mud People's village months ago, had departed after Kahlan had been with Richard one wondrous night in a place between worlds. He wanted to return to his home and people. She couldn't blame him; she knew what it was to miss friends and loved ones.

With Zedd and Adie, she felt as if they were almost all together. When Richard caught up with them, then truly they would all be together again. Though it would probably be weeks yet, Kahlan still couldn't help being excited by each breath, because each breath brought her one moment closer to having her arms around him.

"My bones do be too old for this weather," Adie said as she crossed the room.

Kahlan retrieved a simple wooden chair and dragged it along as she took Adie's arm and walked her to the fire. She put the chair close to the flames and urged the sorceress to sit and warm herself. Unlike Zedd's original clothes, Adie's simple, flaxen robes, with yellow and red beads sewn at the neck in ancient symbols of her profession, had survived their journey. Zedd scowled every time he saw them thinking it more than a little odd that her simple robes had managed to make the journey and his had been lost.

Adie always smiled and said it was a wonder and insisted that he looked grand in his fine clothes. Kahlan suspected she really did like him better in his new outfit. Kahlan, too, thought Zedd looked grand, though not so wizardlike as his traditional fashion made him look. Wizards of his high rank wore the simplest robes. There was no rank above Zedd: First Wizard.

"Thank you, child," Adie said as she warmed her hands near the flames.

"Orsk," Kahlan called.

The big man scurried forward. The scar over his missing eye was white in the firelight. "Yes, mistress?" He stood ready to carry out her instructions. What they might be was of no importance to him, his only concern being that he had a chance to please her.

"There's no pot in here. Could you get us one, so we can make some dinner?"

His dark leather uniform creaked as he bowed and turned to hurry from the room. Orsk had been a O'Haran soldier from the Imperial Order's camp. He had tried to kill her, and in the struggle she touched him with her power, the magic of the Confessors destroying forever who he had been and filling him with blind loyalty to her. That blind loyalty and devotion was a wearing presence to Kahlan, a constant reminder of what and who she was.

She tried not to see the man he had been: a D'Haran soldier who had joined with the Imperial Order, one of the killers who had participated in the slaughter of the helpless women and children of Ebinissia. As the Mother Confessor, she had sworn no mercy on any of the men of the Order, and there had been none. Only Orsk still lived. Though he lived, the man who had fought for the Order was dead.