CHAPTER 36

Richard swiftly, but silently, raised the sword before himself in preparation for an attack-what kind of attack he wasn't sure, but he fully intended to be ready. He touched the cold steel of the blade to his sweat-slick forehead.

He spoke the words «Blade be true this day» in a softly inaudible whisper, fully committing himself and his sword to whatever was necessary.

A few fat drops of rain splashed against his bare chest. At first sporadic, the fitful rain gradually began to increase a bit. The soft whispering sound of raindrops against the thick canopy of leaves began to spread through the quiet of the woods. Richard blinked drops of water from his eyelashes.

At the sound of the limbs moving, he then heard the sudden rush of footsteps starting to run toward him. He recognized Cara's unique gait. Apparently, she had been patrolling around the perimeter of their campsite and had heard the same sounds as he had. Knowing Cara, he wasn't in the least surprised that she had been paying close attention.

But under the cover of the sound of the rain, all around him, Richard could hear branches and limbs slowly pulling past one another. Here and there a few small twigs snapped as something drew in closer all around him. Something touched his left arm. He flinched backed a step, pulling his arm away from the gummy contact. The burn throbbed painfully. Warm blood now trickled down his arm in two places. He felt something catch the back of his pant leg. He tugged his leg away from the sticky contact.

Cara crashed through the trees not far away. Subtle, she was not. She threw open a small door on the shield around the lantern she carried, letting a weak beam of light fall across the campsite.

Richard was able to see what he thought looked like a strange, dark web of something crisscrossed all around him, woven through trees, shrubs, limbs, and brush. It looked like thick cords of some sort, but organic and gummy, he couldn't imagine what it was or exactly how it had gotten itself every where around him.

«Lord Rahl! Are you all right?»

«Yes. Stay where you are.»

«What's going on?»

«I'm not sure, yet.»

The sound came closer as the still, dark strands all around him again began to draw tighter. One of them pressed against his back. He flinched away, spun, and slashed with the sword.

As soon as he cut it, the whole of the tangle all around him tensed and contracted in toward him.

Cara threw open the entire shield around the lantern, hoping to see better. Richard could suddenly see that the glistening threads were nearly cocooning him. He even saw lines of the stuff crisscrossing overhead. As close in as it all was, he was running out of clear space to maneuver.

With a flash of comprehension, he understood the silken sound he had heard at first. The fluid, continuous movement was something spinning the filaments around him as if he were a meal for a spider. These filaments, though, were as thick as his wrist. What exactly they were, he had no idea. What he did know was that when they had touched him, sticking to his pant leg, his left arm, and his back, they delivered painful burns.

He could see Cara and her lantern as she dodged this way and that, looking for a way to get through to him.

«Cara, stay back! It will burn you if you touch it.»

«Burn?»

«Yes, like acid, I think. And, it's sticky. Keep away from it or you're liable to get caught in it.»

«Then how are you to get out of the middle of it?»

«I'll just have to cut my way out. You stay there and let me come to you.»

When the strands pulled in tighter to the left side, he finally swung the sword and struck out at them. The blade flashed in the light of Cara's lantern, slashing through the enveloping tangle of sticky fibers. As they were parted by the blade, they whipped around as if they'd been undo tension. Some stuck to trees or limbs, hanging down like murky moss. In the light of the lantern, he could see the leaves shrivel up, evidently from being burned when they were touched by the strands.

Whatever was creating the webs of the stuff, Richard didn't see it.

The rain began to come down a little harder as Cara darted from side to side, trying to find a way in. «I think I can.»

«No!» he yelled at her. «I told you-keep away from it!»

Richard swung the sword at the thick, dark ropes wherever they drew in toward him, trying to check their constriction and weaken their integrity, but he was forced not to do so unless he had no choice because the sticky strands were beginning to cling to the blade.

«I need to help you stop this thing!» she called back, impatient to set him free.

«You'll just get caught up in it. If you do that, then you can be of no help to me. Stay back. I told you, let me cut my way out and come to you.»

That, at least, looked to have finally dissuaded her from any immediate attempt to try to fight her way through. She stood half crouched, lips pressed tight in frustrated fury, Agiel in her fist, not knowing what to do —not wanting to go against what he told her and realizing the sense of what he'd said-but at the same time not wanting him to have to fight his way out all by himself.

It was a strange, confounding, nonviolent kind of battle. There looked to be no rush. The gashes he inflicted didn't seem to cause the thing any pain. The slow, inexorable approach of the surrounding tangle seemed to be trying to lull him into holding back, inasmuch as there appeared to be plenty of time to analyze the situation.

Despite that quiet appearance, that deceptive calm, Richard found the implacable advance of the surrounding trap alarming in the extreme. Not wanting to give in to that appeal to inaction, Richard swung the sword again, driving into the walls of the tangled web.

He could see more of the strands appearing in the woods all around him even as he tried to fight his way through it. It was reinforcing itself, adding a backdrop even as he slashed the part closest to him. For every dozen strands he cut, two dozen more enfolded him. He kept scanning the forest, trying to see what was creating the growing entanglement so that he could attack the cause and not the result. Try as he might, he couldn't see a lead end or what was spinning the morass, but the viscous ropes of it were moving swiftly through the trees and brush, the strands lengthening and multiplying all the time, endlessly adding to and forming more of themselves all around him.

Even though it seemed like he had ample time to figure a way out, he knew that such a notion was a fool's empty hope. He was well aware that his time was swiftly running out. His level of alarm rose steadily. His burned flesh throbbed in pain, reminding him of what fate awaited him if he didn't get out. There would come a point, he knew, when action would no longer be possible. He knew that once the intricate trap contracted enough, he would die, but he doubted that it would be a quick death.

As the net reinforced itself around him and moved inward, Richard attacked, slashing furiously, making a mad effort to hack his way through the tightening entrapment. Every time he swung the sword, though, the blade was further ensnared in the tacky substance that made up the strands. The more of it he cut, the more of it stuck to what was already clinging tenaciously to his sword. The unwieldy mass was getting heavy and making it ever more difficult to cut through the wall.

As he tried to hack and slash his way through, a knot of the filaments not only continued to tangle together in a clotted mass around his blade, but began to adhere to the wall of the trap, making it a formidable task just to move the sword. He felt like a fly caught in a spiderweb. It took a mighty effort to pull the sword away from the wall of the strands. They, in turn, sticking to the sword, stretched and pulled away in gummy strings.

This was the first time that Richard had ever encountered an adversary of any sort that gave the sword such difficulty. He had cut through armor and iron bars with it, but this sticky substance, even though it yielded to being cut, simply fell away and stuck to everything.

He remembered Adie once asking him which he thought was stronger, teeth or tongue. She had made the point that the tongue was stronger, even though it was much softer, and would endure long after the teeth gave out. Although it was in a different context, it had a frightening significance in this instance as well.

Some of the gooey strings stretched out and stuck to his pant legs. As he pulled his sword back, a string fell across his right arm. He cried out in pain and dropped to his knees.

«Lord Rahl!»

«Stay there!» he called before Cara had a chance to try again to reach him. «I'm all right. Just stay where you are.»

Snatching up a handful of leaves, bark, and dirt, he used the debris lo protect his hand as he pulled the dark, clinging substance from his arm.

The searing pain caused him to nearly forget everything else except getting it off.

As the surrounding fibrous structure drew tighter, the thick strands pulled small saplings over. Branches snapped. Limbs were torn from trees. The woods were filled with a pungent, burning smell.

Even with the fury of the sword storming up through him, pulling his anger forth, Richard realized that he was losing the battle. Wherever he cut it, a great many of those cut strands fell back to stick together with others and close the gap. Despite his cutting through the snarled mass of the webs, the net only tangled together and stuck to itself, creating an ever more tightly woven web.

His calm frustration began to give way to the panicked realization that he was trapped. That fear powered his muscles as he put all his effort into swinging his sword. He could imagine the strange, dark mass miring him, burning his flesh, congealing as it enfolded itself around him, eventually to suffocate him if it didn't first kill him by scorching the flesh off his bones.

With all his might Richard brought the sword down over and over, slashing through a wall of the stuff. More strands beyond those he cut caught up the ones he had severed as they whipped around and fell back. The ones he cut only served to cross over strands beyond and reinforce them. He was not simply failing, but in so doing helping to strengthen his executioner.

«Lord Rahl-I need to get to you.»

Cara clearly understood the deadly nature of the threat he was under and wanted to find a way to help get him out of the trouble. And, like him, she didn't really have any idea what to do.

«Cara, listen to me. If you get tangled in it, you'll die. Stay away from it-and whatever you do, don't touch it with your Agiel. I'll figure something out.»

«Then hurry up and do it before it's too late.»

As if he wasn't trying. «Just give me a minute to think.»

Panting, trying to catch his breath, he put his back against the protection of a large spruce tree close to his bedroll as he tried to figure out what to do to escape. There was not much room left around the tree, and not much time before that space, too, would be gone. Blood ran down his arms from the wounds where the dark substance had touched him. Those wounds burned and throbbed, making it difficult to think. He needed a way to get across the sticky tangle, to get out of the middle of it, before it finally captured him for good.

And then it came to him.

Use the sword for what the sword could do best.

Without wasting another moment, Richard stepped away from the tree, spun around, drew back, and with all his might swung the sword as hard as he could. Knowing that his life depended on it, he put every bit of fury and energy behind the blade, driving it with all his power. The tip whistled as it came round with lightning speed.

The blade crashed through the tree with a loud boom that sounded like a lightning strike and did just as much damage. The tree's trunk shattered. Jagged splinters flew everywhere. Long fragments spiraled through the air. Smaller chips and a shower of bark were netted by the sticky tangle beyond.

The mighty spruce groaned as the towering crown pulled itself through the tangled canopy above as the tree began to topple. With gathering speed, it plunged through the tight stand of trees, ripping thick branches from other trees as the great weight of the spruce dropped through the crowded forest.

As the tree fell, it ripped the strands where the trunk rose through the tangled web above him, pulling gummy ropes along with it, and then it crashed down atop the entanglement of sticky strands, whipping them down against the ground, burying them under the trunk and the thick thatch of limbs.

Before the web had time to re-form or heal itself and close the yawning gap, Richard leaped up onto the trunk even as it was still rebounding from hitting the ground. He held his arms out and crouched for balance. The rain was picking up and the trunk of the tree was slippery. As the great trunk bounced and settled to the ground, and limbs, bark, branches, needles, and leaves still rained down on him, Richard used the opportunity to race across the length of the spruce, using it like a bridge to cross the sticky net.

Panting, he reached Cara, free at last of the trap. Cara, having seen him coming, had climbed up on a stout limb to be ready to help him across. She seized his arm to keep him from falling on the wet bark as he ran through the snarl of branches.

«What in the world is going on?» Cara asked through the roar of the downpour as she helped him down to the ground.

Richard was still trying to catch his breath. «I have no idea.»

«Look,» she said, pointing at his sword.

The gummy substance still stuck to his sword had begun melting away in the rain.

The mass of strands tangled all through the woods were also beginning to soften and sag. As strands came apart, the rain beat the net down, pulling yet more of the long, thick fibers from the trees. It dropped to the ground in dark masses, where it hissed in the rain and melted like the first snow of the season failing to survive as the storm turned back to rain.

In the gray dawn Richard could see the extent of the mass that had woven its way around him. It was an immense snarl. When the tree ripped the weave of the mesh open at the top it seemed to have undone the integrity of the whole thing, causing its weight to tear itself apart and collapse.

With the cold rain coming down harder all the time, the dark strands were washed from the branches and brush. They lay on the ground looking like nothing so much as the dark viscera of some great dead monster.

Richard wiped his sword on wet bushes and grasses until the sticky substance was all off.

The mass on the ground melted away with increasing speed, evaporating into a gathering gray fog. Back in the shadows of the trees, like steam rising from the entrails of a fresh corpse on a winter day, that dark fog slowly lifted from the ground. Carried on a faint breeze that had come up, murky patches drifted away beyond the thick veil of trees.

Back in the cover of trees, that dark fog shifted abruptly in some vague manner that Richard couldn't quite follow, solidifying into an inky black shadow. In a flash, before he could make sense of it, that sinister apparition disintegrated into a thousand fluttering shapes that darted off in every direction, as if a dark phantom were decomposing into the rainy shadows and mist. In an instant they were gone.

A chill ran up Richard's spine.

Cara stared in astonishment. «Did you see that?»

Richard nodded. «It looked something like what the thing back in Altur'Rang did after it came though the walls after me. It disappeared in much the same way just before it would have had me.»

«Then it has to be the same beast.»

In the early morning downpour, Richard surveyed the shadows among the trees all around them. «That would be my guess.»

Cara, too, watched the woods all around for any sign of threat. «Lucky for us the rain came when it did.»

«I don't think it was the rain that did it.»

She wiped water from her eyes. «Then what did?»

«I don't know for sure, but maybe just the fact that I escaped its trap.»

«I can't imagine a beast with that kind of power being so easily discouraged-the last time or this time.»

«I don't have any other ideas. I know someone who might, though.» He took Cara by the arm. «Come on. Let's get our things together and get out of here.»

She gestured off through the woods. «You go get the horses. Let me pack up our bedrolls. We can dry them out later.»

«No, I want us out of this place right now.» He quickly pulled a shirt out of his pack, along with a cloak to try to keep relatively dry. «We'll leave the horses. With them fenced into a place where they have grass and water they'll be fine where they are for a while.»

«But the horses would get us away from here faster.»

Richard kept an eye on the surrounding woods as he stuffed his arms through the sleeves of his shirt. «We can't take them over the mountain pass-it's too narrow in places-and we can't take horses down into Agaden Reach where Shota lives. They can get a needed rest while we go see the witch woman. Then, when we find out what Shota knows about where Kahlan is, we can come back and get the horses. Maybe Shota will even know how we can get rid of this beast that's following me.»

Cara nodded. «Makes sense, except I'd rather get out of here as quickly as we can and horses would help in that.»

Richard squatted down and started rolling up his sodden bedroll. «I agree with the sentiment, but the pass is close and the horses can't make it over, so let's just get moving. Like I said, the horses need a rest anyway or they're not going to be any good to us.»

Cara stuffed the few things she had out back into her pack. She, too, pulled out a cloak. She lifted the pack by a strap and threw it up onto a shoulder. «We'll need to get things out of our saddlebags, back with the horses.»

«Leave them. I don't want to have to carry any more than we must; it would just slow us down.»

Cara gazed off through the veil of rain. «But someone might steal our supplies.»

«Thieves won't come near Shota.»

She frowned up at him. «Why not?»

«Shota and her companion walk these woods. She's a rather intolerant woman.»

«Oh great,» Cara muttered.

Richard swung his pack around onto his back and started out. «Come on. Hurry.»

She scurried after him. «Have you ever considered that maybe the witch woman is more dangerous than the beast?»

Richard glanced back over his shoulder. «You're a regular little miss sunshine this morning, aren't you?»

CHAPTER 37

The rain had turned to snow after they'd climbed out of the dense forest and made it into the crooked wood at the transition out of the tree line. Because of the harsh conditions common at that elevation, the stunted trees, mantled in meager vegetation, grew in bizarre, windblown shapes. Walking through the crooked wood was like passing among the petrified forms of desiccated souls whose limbs were frozen for all time in tormented stances, as if they had emerged from their graves only to find their feet forever anchored in hallowed ground, preventing them from ever escaping the temporal world.

While there were those who would not enter the surreal world of the crooked wood without some form of mystical protection, Richard wasn't superstitious about the place. In fact, he considered all such beliefs to be the refuge of the willfully ignorant. Richard saw through the trappings to what lay beneath all superstition-nothing less than the call to surrender to the view of man as helpless in accomplishing his own ends and dealing with the reality of the world around him in order to further his own survival, instead embracing the notion that he existed only at the whim of vague and unknowable forces that can only be persuaded to stay their cruel and merciless impulses if man falls to his knees in supplication, or, if they have to enter a spiritual place, by carrying the proper fetish.

While Richard had always found it eerie being in a crooked wood, he knew what it was and why it had grown to be that way, even if it still fell rather haunting to be in such a place. He was aware that there were basically two ways to deal with that primordial emotion. The superstitious solution was to carry sacred talismans and amulets to ward off spiteful demons and incomprehensible dark forces thought to inhabit such places, hoping that the fates would be persuaded to kindly stay their fickle hand.