Kahlan pulled her lower lip through her teeth as she studied his grim expression for a long moment. Richard hadn’t grown up around magic—it was all new to him. In some ways, though, that was a strength, because he didn’t have preconceived notions about what was possible and what wasn’t. Sometimes, the things they’d encountered were unprecedented.
To Richard, just about all magic was unprecedented.
“So, what do you think we should do?” she finally asked in a confidential tone.
“What we planned.” He glanced over his shoulder to see Cara scouting a goodly distance off to their left side. “It has to be connected to the rest of it.”
“Cara only meant to protect us.”
“I know. And who knows, maybe it would have been worse if she hadn’t touched it. It could even be that by doing what she did, she actually bought us time.”
Kahlan swallowed at the feeling of dread churning in her. “Do you think we still have enough time?”
“We’ll think of something. We don’t even know yet for sure what it could mean.”
“When the sand finally runs out of an hourglass, it usually means the goose is cooked.”
“We’ll find an answer.”
“Promise?”
Richard reached over and gently caressed the back of her neck. “Promise.”
Kahlan loved his smile, the way it sparkled in his eyes. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that he always kept his promises. His eyes held something else, though, and that distracted her from asking if he believed the answer he promised would come in time, or even if it would be an answer that could help them.
“You have a headache, don’t you,” she said.
“Yes.” His smile had vanished. “It’s different than before, but I’m pretty sure it’s caused by the same thing.”
The gift. That’s what he meant.
“What do you mean it’s different? And if it’s different, then what makes you think the cause is the same?”
He thought about it a moment. “Remember when I was explaining to Jennsen about how the gift needs to be balanced, how I have to balance the fighting I do by not eating meat?” When she nodded he went on. “It got worse right then.”
“Headaches, even those kind, vary.”
“No…” he said, frowning as he tried to find the words. “No, it was almost as if talking about—thinking about—the need not to eat meat in order to balance the gift somehow brought it more to the fore and made the headaches worse.”
Kahlan didn’t at all like that concept. “You mean like maybe the gift within you that is the cause of the headaches is trying to impress upon you the importance of balance in what you do with the gift.”
Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. “I don’t know. There’s more to it. I just can’t seem to get it all worked out. Sometimes when I try, when I go down that line of reasoning, about how I need to balance the fighting I do, the pain starts to get so bad I can’t dwell on it.
“And something else,” he added. “There might be a problem with my connection to the magic of the sword.”
“What? How can that be?”
“I don’t know.”
Kahlan tried to keep the alarm out of her voice. “Are you sure?”
He shook his head in frustration. “No, I’m not sure. It just seemed different when I felt the need of it and drew the sword this morning. It was as if the sword’s magic was reluctant to rise to the need.”
Kahlan thought it over a moment. “Maybe that means that the headaches are something different, this time. Maybe they aren’t really caused by the gift.”
“Even if some of it is different, I still think its cause is the gift,” he said. “One thing they do have in common with the last time is that they’re gradually getting worse.”
“What do you want to do?”
He lifted his arms out to the sides and let them fall back. “For now, we don’t have much of a choice—we have to do what we planned.”
“We could go to Zedd. If it is the gift, as you think, then Zedd would know what to do. He could help you.”
“Kahlan, do you honestly believe that we have any chance in Creation of making it all the way to Aydindril in time? Even if it weren’t for the rest of it, if the headaches are from the gift, I’d be dead weeks before we could travel all the way to Aydindril. And that’s not even taking into account how difficult it’s bound to be getting past Jagang’s army all throughout the Midlands and especially the troops around Aydindril.”
“Maybe he’s not there now.”
Richard kicked at another stone in the path. “You think Jagang is just going to leave the Wizard’s Keep and all it contains—leave it all for us to use against him?”
Zedd was First Wizard. For someone of his ability, defending the Wizard’s Keep wouldn’t be too difficult. He also had Adie there with him to help. The old sorceress, alone, could probably defend a place such as the Keep. Zedd knew what the Keep would mean to Jagang, could he gain it. Zedd would protect the Keep no matter what.
“There’s no way for Jagang to get past the barriers in that place,” Kahlan said. That much of it was one worry they could set aside. “Jagang knows that and might not waste time holding an army there for nothing.”
“You may be right, but that still doesn’t do us any good—it’s too far.”
Too far. Kahlan seized Richard’s arm and dragged him to a halt. “The sliph. If we can find one of her wells, we could travel in the sliph. If nothing else, we know there’s the well down here in the Old World—in Tanimura. Even that’s a lot closer than a journey overland all the way to Aydindril.”
Richard looked north. “That might work. We wouldn’t have to make it past Jagang’s army. We could come right up inside the Keep.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “First, though, we have to see to this other business.”
Kahlan grinned. “All right. We take care of me first, then we see to taking care of you.”
She felt a heady sense of relief that there was a solution at hand. The rest of them couldn’t travel in the sliph—they didn’t have the required magic—but Richard, Kahlan, and Cara certainly could. They could come up right in the Keep itself.
The Keep was immense, and thousands of years old. Kahlan had spent much of her life there, but she had seen only a fraction of the place. Even Zedd hadn’t seen it all, because of some of the shields that had been placed there ages ago by those with both sides of the gift, and Zedd had only the Additive side. Rare and dangerous items of magic had been stored there for eons, along with records and countless books. By now it was possible that Zedd and Adie had found something in the Keep that would help drive the Imperial Order back to the Old World.
Not only would going to the Keep be a way to solve Richard’s problem with the gift, but it might provide them with something they needed to swing the tide of the war back to their side.
Suddenly, seeing Zedd, Aydindril, and the Keep seemed only a short time away.
With a renewed sense of optimism, Kahlan squeezed Richard’s hand. She knew that he wanted to keep scouting ahead. “I’m going to go back and see how Jennsen is doing.”
As Richard moved on and Kahlan slowed, letting the wagon catch up with her, another dozen black-tipped races drifted in on the air currents high above the burning plain. They stayed close to the sun, and well out of range of Richard’s arrows, but they stayed within sight.
Tom handed a waterskin down to Kahlan when the bouncing wagon rattled up beside her. She was so dry that she gulped the hot water without caring how bad it tasted. As she let the wagon roll past, she put a boot in the iron rung and boosted herself up and over the side.
Jennsen looked to be happy for the company as Kahlan climbed in. Kahlan returned the smile before sitting beside Richard’s sister and the puling Betty.
“How is she?” Kahlan asked, gently stroking Betty’s floppy ears.
Jennsen shook her head. “I’ve never seen her like this. It’s breaking m
y heart. It reminds me of how hard it was for me when I lost my mother. It’s breaking my heart.”