Blood of the Fold

Richard did find the guttural sound distracting, though, and obviously Mistress Sanderholt found it alarming; she sat woodenly on the edge of a step beside him, clutching her wool shawl tight. "Quiet, Gratch. You just had a whole leg of mutton and half a loaf of bread. You couldn't be that hungry already."

Although Gratch's attention remained riveted, his growling lessened to a rumbling deep in his throat, as if he was absently trying to comply.

Richard directed a brief glance once more toward the city. His plan had been to find a horse and hurry on his way to catch up with Kahlan and his grandfather and old friend, Zedd, Besides being impatient to see Kahlan, he dearly missed Zedd; it had been three months since he had seen him, but it seemed years. Zedd was a wizard of the First Order, and there was much that Richard, in light of his discoveries about himself, needed to talk to him about, but then Mistress Sanderholt had brought out the soup and freshly baked bread. Good mood or not, he had been famished, Richard glanced back, past the white elegance of the Confessors' Palace, up at the immense, imposing Wizard's Keep embedded in the steep mountainside, its soaring walls of dark stone, its ramparts, bastions, towers, connecting passageways, and bridges, all looking like a sinister encrustation growing from the stone, somehow looking alive, as if it were peering down at him from above. A wide ribbon of road wound its way up from the city toward the dark walls, crossing a bridge that looked thin and delicate, but only because of the distance, before passing under a spiked dropgate and being swallowed into the dark maw of the Keep. There had to be thousands of rooms in the Keep, if there was one. Richard snugged his cape closer under the cold, stony gaze of that place, and looked away. This was the palace, the city, where Kahlan had grown up, where she had lived most of her life until the previous summer when she had crossed the boundary to Westland in search of Zedd, and had come across Richard, too.

The Wizard's Keep was where Zedd had grown up and lived prior to leaving the Midlands, before Richard was born. Kahlan had told him stories about how she had spent much of her time in the Keep, studying, but she had never made the place sound in the least bit sinister. Hard against the mountain, the Keep looked baleful to him now.

Richard's smile returned at the thought of how Kahlan must have looked when she was a little girl, a Confessor in training, strolling the halls of this palace, walking the corridors of the Keep, among wizards, and out among the people of this city.

But Aydindril had fallen under the blight of the Imperial Order, and was no longer a free city, no longer the seat of power in the Midlands.

Zedd had produced one of his wizard's tricks — magic — to make everyone think they had witnessed Kahlan's beheading, allowing them to flee Aydindril, while everyone here thought she was dead. No one would chase after them now. Mistress Sanderholt had known Kahlan since she was born, and was delirious with relief when Richard told her that Kahlan was safe and well.

The smile touched his lips again. "What was Kahlan like when she was little?"

She stared off, a smile on her lips as well. "She was always serious, but as precious a child as I've ever seen, who grew to be a stalwart and beautiful woman. She was a child not only touched by magic, but also of a special character.

"None of the Confessors were surprised by her accession to Mother Confessor, and all were pleased because her way was to facilitate agreement, not to dominate, though if someone wrongly opposed her they'd find her cast with as much iron as any Mother Confessor ever born. I've never known a Confessor with her passion for the people of the Midlands. I've always felt honored to know her." Drifting into memories, she laughed faintly, a sound not nearly as frail as the rest of her appeared. "Even one time when I swatted her bottom after I discovered she had made off with a just roasted duck without asking."

Richard grinned at the prospect of hearing a story about Kahlan misbehaving. "Punishing a Confessor, even a young one, didn't give you pause?"

"No," she scoffed. "Had I pampered her, her mother would have turned me out. We were expected to treat her respectfully, but fairly."

"Did she cry?" he asked, before he took a big bite of bread. It was delicious, coarse ground wheat with a hint of molasses.