Blood of the Fold

She heard more talking outside, something about replacing the runners on the coach with wheels. Through the window, she saw Ahem, at swordpoint, climb up to the driver's seat. The man in the red cape followed him up, and then another of the mriswith.

Kahlan felt her legs trembling. Where were they taking them? She was so close to Richard. She clenched her teeth, holding back a wail. It wasn't fair. She felt a tear roll down her cheek.

Adie's hand slid between their legs, and by its little movement against her thigh, she read the comfort in that touch.

The mriswith leaned toward them as its slit of a mouth seemed to widen in a grim smile. It lifted the three-bladed knife in its claw, giving it a little wiggle before their eyes.

"Try to esssscape, and I will ssslice the bottoms of your feet." It cocked its smooth head. "Understand?"

Kahlan and Adie both nodded.

"Speak," it added, "And I ssslice out your tonguesss."

They nodded again.

It turned to Lunetta. "With your gift, through the collar, seal their power. Like I show you." It put a claw to Lunetta's forehead. "Understand?"

Lunetta smiled with comprehension. "Yes. I see."

Kahlan heard Adie grunt, and at the same time she felt something tighten in her own chest. It was the place where she always felt her power. In dismay, she wondered if she would ever feel it return. She remembered the forlorn emptiness when the Keltish wizard had use magic to make her lose the connection with her power. She knew what to expect.

"She bleeds," the mriswith said to Lunetta. "You must heal her. Skin brother would not be pleased if she were scarred."

She heard the whip snap, and Ahern's whistle. The coach lurched ahead. Lunetta leaned forward to heal her wound.

Dear spirits, where were they taking her?

CHAPTER 40

Ann's eyes stung with tears as a shuddering cry escaped her throat. She had long ago forsaken her determination to keep from crying out. Who but the Creator would hear, or care?

Valdora lifted the knife, greasy with blood. "Hurt?" A gap-toothed grin came to her as a chuckle fought its way out. "How do you like it when someone else chooses what will happen to you? That's what you did. You chose how I would die. You denied me life. Life I could have had at the palace. I would still be young. You chose to let me die."

Ann flinched as the knife point pricked her side. "I asked a question. Prelate. How do you like it?"

"No more than you, I would expect."

The grin returned. "Gooood. I want you to know the pain I've lived with all these years."

"I left you with a life the same as everyone else has. A life to live as you would. You were left with what the Creator gave you, the same as everyone else come into this world. I could have had you executed."

"For casting a spell! I'm a sorceress! That's what the Creator gave me, and I used it!"

Though Ann knew the arguments were pointless, she favored them over Valdora going back to her silent knifework.

"You used what the Creator gave you to take from others what they would not have given willingly. You thieved their affections, their hearts, their lives. You had no right. You sampled devotion like candies at a fair. You bound them to you with glamours and then cast them away to snare another."

The knife pricked her again. "And you banished me!"

"How many lives did you bring to ruin? You were counseled, you were warned, you were punished. Still, you continued. Only after all this were you put out of the Palace of the Prophets."

Ann's shoulders throbbed with a dull ache. She was stretched out naked on a wooden table, her wrists bound with magic over her head at one end, and her ankles at the other. The spell chafed worse than coarse hemp rope. She was as helpless as a hog hung up to be bled.

Valdora had used a spell, something else she had learned who knew where, to block Ann's Han. She could feel it there, like a warm fire on a winter's night, just beyond a window, inviting, promising warmth, but out of reach.

Ann stared up at the window near the top of the wall in the little stone room. It was nearing daylight. Why hadn't he come? He should have come to rescue her by now, and then she was to somehow capture him. But he hadn't come.

It still wasn't daylight. He still might come. Dear Creator, let him come soon.

Unless it was the wrong day. Panic raced through her mind. What if they had miscalculated? No. She and Nathan had gone over the charts. This was the right day, and besides, it was the events, more than the day itself, that fueled the prophecy. The fact that she had been captured said that it was the right day. If she had been captured a week before, then that would have been the right day. This day was within the window of opportunity. The prophecy was being fulfilled. But where was he?

Ann realized that Valdora's face was gone. She wasn't beside her. She should have kept talking. She should…