Blood of the Fold

The board suddenly whacked down on top of the fleshy slits atop the queen's head. She staggered back in howling pain, her wings flapping wildly, and her claws raking the air. Kahlan hooked an arm through his and helped pull him away as the red body lifted. They bom tumbled back into the stagnant water.

"I got them all," Kahlan said. "Let's get out of here."

"I have to get her," Richard said, "or she'll just lay more."

But the mriswith queen, seeing all her eggs destroyed, switched from attack, to escape. Her wings beat madly, lifting her into the air. She lunged at the wall, fastened her claws to the stone, and began to climb toward a large opening high up on the tower.

Richard and Kahlan pulled themselves out of the reeking pool and onto the walkway, Richard started for the stairs that wound their way up around the inside of the tower, but when he put weight on his leg, he crashed to the floor.

Kahlan helped him stand. "You can't get to her now. We broke all the eggs, we'll just have to worry about her later. Is your leg broken?"

Richard leaned against the railing, rubbing the painful bruise as he watched the queen climb out the opening high up in the tower. "No, she just mashed it against the rock. We have to get down to the city."

"But you can't walk."

"I'll be all right. The pain is easing up. Let's go."

Richard took one of the glowing spheres to light the way and, with Kahtan giving him support, they started out of the belly of the Keep. She had never been in the rooms and halls he took her through. He had to hold her in his arms to help her get through the shields, and constantly caution her what she mustn't touch, and where she must not step. She repeatedly questioned his warnings, but followed his insistent orders, muttering to herself that she had never known these peculiar places existed in the Keep.

By the time they had wound their way up through the rooms and halls to the top, his leg, though it still hurt, was working better. He could walk, if with a limp.

"At last, I know where we are," Kahlan said when they came up to the long hall before the libraries. "I was worried we would never get out from down there."

Richard headed toward the corridors he knew to be the way out. Kahlan protested that he couldn't go that way, but he insisted that that was the way he always went, and she reluctantly followed. He held her to get her through the shield into the great hall at the entrance, and they were both glad for the excuse.

"How much farther?" she asked as she looked around the near barren room.

"Right here. This is the door out."

When they went through the door to the oulside, Kahlan turned around twice in astonishment. She snatched his shirt and gestured to the door. "There? You went in there! That's the way you went into the Keep?"

Richard nodded. "That's where the stone path led."

She pointed angrily above the door. “Look what it says! And you went in there?

Richard glanced up at the words carved in the stone lintel above the huge door, "I don't know what those words mean."

"Tavol de ator Mortado," she said, reading the words aloud. "It means 'Path of the Dead. »

Richard glanced briefly at the other doors beyond the expanse of stone chips and gravel. He remembered the thing that had come for them under the gravel.

"Well, it seemed the biggest door, and the path led right to it, so I thought that was the way to go in. Kind of makes sense, when you think about it. I am named 'the bringer of death. »

Kahlan rubbed her arms in dismay. "We were frightened you would come up into the Keep. We were scared to death you would go in there and be killed. Dear spirits, I can't believe you weren't. Not even the wizards would go in this entrance. That shield just inside wouldn't allow me to pass without your help; that alone means it's perilous beyond. I can pass all the shields except those protecting the most dangerous places."

Richard heard a crunching of rock, and saw movement in the gravel. He pulled Kahlan back onto the center of a stepping-stone as the thing took a snaking course toward them, "What's the matter?" she asked.

Richard pointed. "Something's coming."

Kahlan cast him a frown over her shoulder and walked out onto the gravel. "You're not afraid of this, are you?" She squatted and burrowed her hand into the gravel as the thing beneath came to her. She wiggled her hand around as if scratching a pet.

"What are you doing!"

Kahlan grappled playfully with the thing under the gravel. "It's just a stone hound, Wizard Giller conjured him up to frighten away a woman who was pestering him all the time. She was afraid to cross the gravel, and of course no one in their right mind would dare to go into the Path of the Dead." Kahlan stood. "You mean.. don't tell me you were afraid of the stone hound."

"Well… no, not exactly… but..»

Kahlan put her fists on her hips. "You went into the Path of the Dead, and through (hose shields, because you were afraid of a stone hound? That's why you didn't go to the other doors?"