“You were expecting us?” Kahlan asked.
Red frowned. “Yes, of course.” She gestured off toward the ledge outcropping where Hunter sat watching. “I sent your little friend to get you.”
Kahlan nodded. “I thought that might be the case.” She held a hand out to her right. “This is Cassia, Laurin, and Vale.” She lifted her other hand out. “This is Nicci.”
Red smiled indulgently. “Yes, I know, the sorceress you were supposed to kill.”
Kahlan ignored the reprimand. “I hope you don’t mind that I brought them with me.”
Red shrugged. “No, of course not. I have my own protection. I don’t begrudge you yours. In fact, considering the deteriorating state of affairs, I consider it a mark of wisdom.”
“That’s what I needed to talk to you about … the state of affairs and all that is at stake. At stake for all of us.”
“Yes, yes, now won’t you all pull up a rock, so to speak, and have a seat? Lunch is ready.”
Kahlan and Nicci shared a look.
“You made us all lunch?” Kahlan asked.
“Yes,” Red said. “I’ve been expecting the five of you, and I know that you are all hungry. I don’t think it’s wise to have a serious discussion about the world of the dead on an empty stomach.”
CHAPTER
8
Beside the stream, low rocks lay scattered through the area of gravel in more than enough numbers for each of them to have their choice of places to sit close to the fire. Kahlan had more urgent matters on her mind than lunch, but it did smell good and she was starving.
Red used a forked stick to push sizzling meat off the spits onto a flat rock where a pile of already cooked meat was cooling. It appeared by how much there was that she had been cooking all morning. Not only was there a variety of several different things, from what looked like boiled eggs to rabbit to fish, but there looked to be more than they could all eat. There were even some wild plums to the side.
Red gestured as she handed them each a sharpened, forked stick. “Go on, help yourselves. I know that you have been traveling hard and are all in need of a good meal.”
Cassia glanced at Kahlan. When Kahlan gave her a slight nod, Cassia and Laurin stabbed pieces of the rabbit meat. Kahlan started out with a couple of eggs. Nicci chose a piece of fish.
“Snake!” Vale said with delight as she found a long string of meat in the pile. “I haven’t had snake since I was young. It was always one of my favorites.”
“I know,” the witch woman said without looking up from setting aside the cooking rod. “That’s why I prepared it.”
“Thank you,” Vale said as she held up the string of meat between a finger and thumb. She bit off a long chunk from the bottom and chewed with obvious delight. “Delicious,” she told Red.
Red smiled.
Gravel crunched under Kahlan’s boots as she went to a rock on the opposite side of the bed of hot coals from where Red sat. Red’s rock of choice was taller than all the rest, so that once they were seated she looked down on them a little. Kahlan had seen enough queens holding court to get the point. As the Mother Confessor, she ruled over those queens, but at the moment that was about the last thing on her mind. She was content to let Red hold court if that was what pleased her.
Kahlan cracked the shell of an egg and started peeling it off. “What are you doing here, in this place?” She deliberately glanced around. “What brings you here?”
“Why, you do, Mother Confessor.”
“There must be more to it,” Kahlan said, not buying the simplicity of the answer. “We were on our way to see you at your home. You would have seen me there. Why come here, instead?”
“Well,” Red said with a flick of her hand, “I’m afraid that my place is a bit of a mess right now. I don’t mind it, but I wouldn’t feel right receiving guests there.”
Kahlan looked up from under her brow as she popped the shell off the small end of the egg. “What do you mean, it’s a mess? It’s a mountain pass. How could it be a mess?”
She bit off half the egg and chewed as Red’s sky-blue eyes studied her for a moment.
“Do you remember me telling you how I got my name?”
Kahlan swallowed the egg as she peeled the second one. It was a great relief to be eating something warm and fresh.
“Yes, you said it was because there were times when you made that mountain pass run red with blood.”
A small smile spread on the woman’s lips. “That’s right.”
“Are you saying that you had some sort of trouble there?” Nicci asked.
The witch woman ignored Nicci and instead glanced at the Mord-Sith in their red leather outfits–outfits designed to obscure the shocking sight of blood. The sight didn’t bother Mord-Sith, but it did others. All three were taking bites of meat off their forked sticks, but their gazes stayed on the witch woman. Kahlan could read Mord-Sith well enough to know that they considered the witch woman to be a potential threat. She was used to having Mord-Sith protecting her and Richard. She was glad to have them along. Like most Mord-Sith, these three were as guileless as they were deadly.
Kahlan missed Cara something fierce, but not as fiercely as she missed Richard.
“You see,” Red finally went on, looking from the other four back at Kahlan, “the demon–”
“Demon?” Nicci interrupted again. “What demon?”
The witch woman’s unsettling gaze glided to Nicci. “The one who belongs in the underworld. The one who came into this world where he does not belong. The one who would unbalance the worlds of life and death.”
“You mean Sulachan,” Nicci said, not the least bit intimidated by the look the witch
woman was giving her.
“Of course.”
“So, what were you going to tell us about this demon, Sulachan?” Nicci asked.
“He seeks to bend the forces of the Grace until they break. In his time he–”
“We know,” Nicci said as she licked white flakes of fish from a finger. “What does this have to do with your home being a mess?”
Red idly rolled a red lock of hair around a finger as she studied Nicci with a hint of disapproval. “You are a very forward woman, aren’t you?”
Nicci shrugged as she stabbed another piece of fish from the pile on the rock. “We didn’t come for a social visit,” she said as she sat back down. “Every moment counts if we are to send the demon back to the underworld where he belongs. Time is precious–at least it is here in this world. I don’t think we have a lot of time to lose.”
Red conceded the point with a nod. “Well, from what I saw in the flow of time, he knew that you had escaped those he sent after you. He wanted all the soldiers annihilated. He wanted some, like Lord Rahl, the Mother Confessor, and anyone else gifted, captured and brought to him. He had plans for all of you and was furious that you escaped his grasp.
“The demon knew where you were headed, so he sent another force of his half people after you. A large force. He believed that this time they would not fail him.”
Kahlan glanced at Nicci out of the corner of her eye. This was news. She had expected that Sulachan might send more half people after them, but didn’t know that he had.
“So what happened?” Kahlan asked.
“The route you traveled to get to Saavedra took you through the only mountain pass in that area of the mountains. If the horde of half people wanted to get to you, they had to follow the same route and come through that same pass, my home, first.”
Kahlan swallowed some of her egg. Nicci paused eating her fish.
Cassia’s eyes widened. “You mean the half people chased you out of your home?”
The witch woman frowned at the Mord-Sith. “I don’t get ‘chased out’ of my home by anyone.”
“How close are they?” Nicci asked. “How much time until they reach us?”