He tucked the end of the girth strap through the buckle and yanked it tight. He gave Bonnie a gentle pat before turning around. Sister Verna was still holding out the sword.
"Until now I had no idea just how dangerous you are."
"Not anymore. You have the sword now."
"I cannot accept it," she whispered. "It was my duty to take the sword from you when you came back—to test you. There was only one thing you could have done to prevent losing it. And you have done it." She lifted the sword to him. "There is no man more dangerous that one who is unpredictable. There is no way to forecast what you will do when pushed. It is going to be great trouble. For you. For us."
Richard didn't know what she was talking about. "There is nothing unpredictable about it. You wanted the sword, and I am weary of the things I do with it, so I gave it to you."
"You understand, because it is the way you think. Others don't think that way. You are an enigma. Worse, your inexplicable behavior comes at the times you need it most. That is the gift at work. You are using your Han without understanding what you are doing. That is dangerous."
"One reason for the collar is to open my mind to the gift. That is what you said. If I am using the gift, which is what you want me to do, and if it is what I need, then I don't see how that is dangerous."
"What you need and what is right are not necessarily the same. Just because you want something, that does not make it right." She nodded to the sword. "Take it back. I cannot accept it now. You must keep it."
"I told you, I don't want it."
"Then throw it in the fire. I cannot take it. It is tainted."
Richard snatched it out of her hands. "I'm not throwing it in the fire." He put his head through the baldric and straightened the scabbard at his hip. "I think you are too superstitious, Sister. It is just a sword. It is not tainted."She was wrong. It was the magic that was tainted, and he had not offered that to her. Even if he wanted to be rid of its magic, all magic, he could not. It was part of him. Kahlan had seen that, and she had rid herself of it. Of him.
She turned from him and mounted Jessup. Her voice was cold and distant. "We must be on our way."
Richard settled into his saddle and followed after. He hoped the little gar would have a chance at life, after the meal it had needed. He said a silent goodbye to it as he rode into the night behind Sister Verna.
Though he had meant what he said about giving her the sword, he felt strangely relieved to have it back. It belonged with him, and somehow made him whole. Zedd had given it to him; it was what had changed him, but it was also all he had to remind him of his friend and home.
25
The horse was exhausted, but still ran with heedless abandon. Adie held a tight grip on Zedd's waist as he leaned over the horse's withers, clutching her mane. Muscles bunched and flexed rhythmically beneath him. Trees in the tight forest flashed by in an endless blur. The horse leapt over rocks and logs without pause.The skrin was only a heartbeat behind. Being taller that the horse, it struck branches as it ran. Zedd could hear the limbs snap and splinter. He had tried felling trees across the way right behind them, but it didn't slow the bone beast. He had tried tricks and spells and wizardry of every sort. None had worked, but he refused to admit defeat. Admitting defeat established a mental state of resignation that made it certain.
"I fear the Keeper has us this time," Adie called at his back.
"Not yet he doesn't! How did he find us? The bones of the skrin have been in your house, hiding you, for years! If they have been hiding you, then how did he find us?"
She had no answer.
They were running the path where the boundary had been, headed toward the Midlands. Zedd was thankful the boundary walls were no longer there, or they could have inadvertently run into the underworld by now. Boundary or not, this couldn't go on for much longer, and then the skrin would have them. Boundary or not, the underworld would have them. The Keeper would have them.
Think, he ordered himself.
Zedd was using magic to lend strength and stamina to the horse, but even so, heart, lungs and sinew could not endure long past their natural limits. He was nearly as weary as the frightened animal. This couldn't go on much longer.
He had to stop trying to slow the skrin, and put his mind to solving the problem. But that could be dangerous shift in tactics. It could be that although what he was doing wasn't stopping the skrin, it was keeping it from them.
He thought he saw a flash of green light to the left. A shade of green he had seen from only one place: the boundary. From the underworld. Impossible, he thought. The horse's hooves thundered on.
"Adie! Do you have anything with you that the skrin would recognize?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know! Anything! It has to have found us by something. Something to connect us to the underworld."
"I have nothing. It must have found us by the bones at my house."
"But the bones have been what have been hiding you!"
There was no mistaking the flash of green light this time. It was to the right. Another came to the left.
"Zedd! I think the skrin be bringing up the underworld, to force us into it!"
Bones.
"Can it do that?"
Her voice wasn't as loud this time. "Yes."
"Bags," he muttered into the cold wind at his face.
Eerie green light flickered between the trees. It was closer. If he didn't think of something, they were going to die.
Think.
The green light seemed to ignite suddenly into a solid wall to each side. It made a thump he could feel deep in his chest when it arrived, whole, in this world. The horse galloped down the path between them. The way between the walls was narrowing.
Bones.
&nb
sp; Skrin bones.
"Adie! Give me the necklace around your neck!"
The luminous green walls of the boundary pressed in to each side. They were out of time. They were out of options.
Adie pulled off her necklace and put her arm around him again, holding out the bone necklace. Her hand was slick with blood. Zedd yanked his own necklace over his head and snatched hers in the same hand.
"If this doesn't work, I'm sorry, Adie. I just want you to know I've enjoyed sharing time with you."
"What are you going to do?"
"Hold tight!"
The green walls of the boundary closed together ahead of them. Zedd held the horse firmly and gave her a silent command.
She dug her hooves in and spun around to a halt just before the trail ended in a wall of the underworld.
Zedd flung the two necklaces made with skrin bone into the green light, between a wide gap in the trees.
The skrin was upon them. Without pause, it followed the necklaces as they sailed into the boundary, into the green light. There was a flash, and a booming clap, like a lightning strike, as the skrin went through.
The green light, and the skrin, flickered and were gone. The dark forest was silent but for ragged breathing.
Adie laid her head wearily against his back. "You be right, old man. Your life be one act of desperation after another."
Zedd patted her knee before sliding off the sweaty horse. The poor animal was so exhausted it was at the brink of death. Zedd held its head between his hands and gave it a dose of strength, and his sincere thanks. He laid the side of his face against her nose as he closed his eyes and gave reassuring strokes to her cheeks for a moment before going to check on Adie.
Blood still oozed from the wound on her arm. The size of the horse made Adie appear smaller that she really was. Her slumped shoulders and hanging head didn't help diminish the illusion. She didn't acknowledge any pain as Zedd inspected the wound.
"I be a fool," she said. "The whole time I thought I be hiding under the Keeper's nose, he be hiding under mine. He knew where I be the whole time. All these years."