Blood of the Fold

Zedd threw his skinny arms up. "I can't leave you defenseless!"

"I have Adie."

"What if the mriswith come, as Richard is worried about? Then you wouldn't have Gratch. Adie can't help with a mriswith."

Kahlan clutched his black sleeve. "If Richard goes in the Keep, he could be killed. If the Order gets the Wizard's Keep, and the magic in it, then we are all dead. This is more important than my life. This is about what happened to everyone in Ebinissia. If we let them win, then a great many will die, and the living will be condemned to slavery. Magic will be extinguished. This is a battle decision.

"Besides, no mriswith has come yet. Just because they've attacked Aydindril, that doesn't mean they will attack anywhere else. Anyway, the spell hides mv identity. No one knows the Mother Confessor is alive, or that I am she. They have no reason to come after me."

"Flawless logic. I can see why you were chosen as the Mother Confessor. But I still think it's foolhardy." Zedd appealed to the sorceress. "What do you think?"

"I think the Mother Confessor be right. We must consider what be the most important action we can take. We must not risk everyone for a danger to a few."

Kahlan stood before Gratch. With the way he was squatting down, she was eye to eye with him. "Gratch, Richard is in great danger." Gratch's tufted ears twitched. "He needs Zedd to help him. And you too. I'll be safe enough; no mriswith have been here. Can you gel Zedd to Aydindril? He's a wizard and can make himself easy for you to carry. Will you do it for me? For Richard?"

Gratch's glowing eyes moved among the three of them, considering. At last he rose. His leathery wings spread as he nodded. Kahlan hugged the gar, and he returned the tender embrace.

"Are you tired, Gratch? Do you want to rest, or can you leave right now?"

Gratch flapped his wings in answer.

In growing alarm, Zedd looked from one to the other. "Bags. This is the most foolish thing I've ever done. If I was meant to fly, I'd have been born a bird."

Kahlan offered a weak smile. "Jebra said she had a vision of you with wings."

Zedd planted his fists on his bony hips. "She also said she saw me being dropped into a ball of fire." He lapped his foot. "All right. Let's get going, then."

Adie stood to seize him in a hug. "You be a brave old fool."

Zedd grumbled in disgust. "Fool, indeed." He finally returned the embrace. He let out a sudden yelp when she pinched his bottom.

"You look handsome in your fine robes, old man."

Zedd was overcome with a helpless grin. "Well, I guess I do." A frown returned. "A little anyway. Take care of the Mother Confessor. When Richard finds out I left her to make her own way back, he may do more than pinch me."

Kahlan threw her arms around the skinny wizard, feeling suddenly forsaken. Zedd was Richard's grandfather, and it had made her feel at least a little better having that much of Richard with her.

When they parted, Zedd cast a wincing glance to the gar. "Well, Gratch, I guess we had best be on our way."

In the cold night air, Kahlan caught the wizard's sleeve. "Zedd, you have to talk some sense into Richard." Her voice heated. "He can't do this to me. He's being unreasonable."

Zedd studied her face in the dim light. He spoke softly, at last. "History is rarely made by reasonable men."

CHAPTER 35

Don't touch anything," Richard reminded them again as he scowled over his shoulder, "I mean it."

The three Mord-Sith didn't answer. They turned to look up at the high ceiling of the arched entry and then at the huge, intricately joined blocks of dark granite just inside the raised, massive portcullis marking the entrance to the Wizard's Keep, Richard glanced back past Ulic and Egan, to the wide road that had led them up the mountainside and at last over a stone bridge two hundred and fifty paces long that spanned a chasm with near vertical sides that dropped away for what seemed thousands of feet. He wasn't sure of the full depth of the yawning abyss because in the far distance below, clouds hugging the ice-slicked walls obscured the bottom. Walking over the bridge and looking down into that dark, jagged maw made him dizzy and light-headed. He couldn't imagine how the stone bridge could have been erected over such an obstacle.

Unless one had wings, there was but this single way into the Keep.

Lord Rahl's official escort of five hundred men waited back on the other side of the bridge. They had intended to come with him into the Keep until they had reached that spot, having just rounded a switchback, and every eye, including his, had looked up at the vastness of the Keep, its soaring walls of dark stone, its ramparts, bastions, towers, connecting passageways, and bridges, all of which presented an unmistakable sensation of sinister menace jutting from the stone of the mountain, somehow looking alive, as if it were watching them. Richard's knees had gone weak at the sight, and when he ordered them to wait there, none had raised so much as a single word of protest.