Blood of the Fold

It had taken considerable will for Richard to force himself to go on, but the idea of all those men seeing their Lord Rahl, their wizard, balk at going into the Wizard's Keep kept his feet moving when he would have wished otherwise. Besides, he needed to do this. Richard summoned courage by remembering Kahlan telling him that the Keep was protected by spells, and that there were places even she couldn't go because those spells so sapped one of courage that they couldn't proceed. That's all it was, he assured himself, just a spell to keep the curious away, only a feeling, and not a real threat.

"It's warm here," Raina said, her dark eyes looking about in astonishment.

Richard realized she was right, Once they were beyond the iron portcullis, the air had lost its chill with each step, until it was like a fine spring day inside. The somber, steel gray sky into which the sheer mountainside ascended above the Keep, and bitter wind on the road up, held no hint of spring, though.

The snow on his boots was beginning to melt. They all took off their heavy mantles and tossed them in a pile to the side, against the stone wall. Richard checked that his sword was clear in its scabbard.

The towering, arched opening they passed beneath was a good fifty feet long. Richard saw that it was merely a breach in the outer wall. Beyond, the road continued through an open area before tunneling into the base of a high stone wall and disappearing into the gloom beyond. Probably just went to the stables, he told himself. No reason to go in there.

Richard had to resist the urge to shroud himself in his black mriswith cape and become invisible. He had been doing that more and more of late, finding comfort not only in the solitude it provided, but in an odd, indefinably pleasurable sensation it invoked, almost like the reassurance of the magic of the sword at his hip, always there, always at his beck and call, always his ally and champion.

All around, intricate junctures of masonry walls created of the bleak courtyard a craggy canyon, its walls dotted by a number of doors. Richard chose to follow a stepping-stone path through the gravel of granite fragments, to the largest of the doors.

Berdine suddenly clutched his arm so hard he winced in pain, turning away from the door to pry off her fingers.

"Berdine," he said, "what are you doing? What's the matter?"

He extricated his arm from her grasp, but she grabbed it again. "Look," she finally said in a tone of voice that made the hair at the back of his neck stand on end. "What do you suppose that is?"

Everyone turned to see where she pointed with her Agiel.

Rock fragments and stones rolled in waves, as if some huge stone fish swam beneath their surface. As the unseen thing underneath came closer, they all inched toward the center of their stepping-stone. The gravel crunched and gnashed as it undulated in waves, like water in a lake.

Berdine's grasp on his arm tightened painfully as the crest of the waves approached. Even Ulic and Egan gasped with the rest of them as it seemed to pass beneath the stepping-stones under their feet, the waves lapping stone chips up onto the rocks upon which they stood. Once beyond, the rolling movement of the gravel abated until all was still.

"All right, just what was that?" Berdine blurted out. "And what would have happened to us if we had gone a different way, to one of the other doors, instead of along the only path to this one?"

"How should I know?"

She blinked up at him. "You're a wizard. You're supposed to know these things."

Berdine would have fought Ulic and Egan by herself, without a second thought, if he were to command it, but unseen magic was something altogether different. All five of them were fearless against steel, but none of them were the least bit shy about letting him see their anxiety toward magic. They had explained it to him any number of times: they were the steel against steel, so that he could be the magic against magic.

"Look, alt of you, I've told you before that I don't know very much about being a wizard. I've never been to this place before. I don't know anything about it. I don't know how to protect you. Now, will you do as I asked, and wait with the soldiers on the other side of the bridge? Please?"

Ulic and Egan folded their arms in mute reply.

"We're going with you," Cara insisted.

"That's right," Raina added.

"You can't stop us," Berdine said as she finally released his aim.

"But it could be dangerous!"

"And we must protect you," Berdine said.

Richard scowled down at her. "How? By squeezing the blood out of my arm?"

Berdine turned red. "Sorry."

"Look, I don't know about the magic here. I don't know the dangers, much less how to stop them."