Jason suddenly blushed at having to explain it. “The consul general is a… well, a large man, I guess you could say. Because of his size he has bad knees. He has difficulty standing for any length of time, much less walking very far at all. But lately he has been going on walks—alone, by his choice, without any of his top advisors.” Jason gestured to some of the men behind him in the more elaborately embroidered robes.
Richard’s gaze swept across the huddled group again, pausing to take in the higher-ranking advisors. “Do any of you know why he went for these walks, where he went, or if he met anyone while out on these nightly jaunts?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“And no one questioned him about his knees and how they fared on these walks?” Everyone shook their heads again. “What else has he been doing that is out of the ordinary? Perhaps he said something about the walks, where he went, or someone he might have spoken with?”
Once again, everyone shook their heads.
Richard took a step closer, Vika, his ever-present shadow, moving with him. “What else, Jason, has the consul general done that you thought was strange? No matter how small it may have seemed, I want you to tell me about it.”
Jason put a finger to his lower lip as he squinted in recollection. “Yes.” He took the finger away from his lip and shook it as he remembered. “He did say something odd this morning before he left.”
“Like what?”
“He said he had to go see the shiny man. But he didn’t say it to us, exactly. He mumbled it to himself.”
Richard frowned. “The shiny man. What does that mean, the shiny man?”
“I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, but I haven’t the slightest idea. It was early this morning. He simply said that he had to go see the shiny man. We saw him say this to himself, then he left without saying a word to any of us. We didn’t know what he meant and we certainly didn’t suspect that he was going up to the palace. We were all bewildered by his behavior. We haven’t seen him since.”
8
Richard, his arms folded over his chest, leaned his shoulders back against one of the small granite columns that stood on each side of the corridor as he brooded. That corridor was the only way into the entry area outside the master bedroom. The single broad corridor led out to a network of passageways. Soldiers were stationed back a ways in that corridor as well as in every branching hall. The large entry area outside the master bedroom was elaborately decorated with raised panels of book-matched crotch mahogany polished to a high luster. Detailed layers of crown molding finished off the look.
Richard’s gaze was locked on the double doors on the opposite side of the entryway. They were carved with ornate designs that mimicked the spell-form the palace itself was laid out to. Kahlan was on the other side of those closed doors. He was beside himself with worry about what was going on and why it was taking so long. If he could, he would have willed the doors open.
As he agonized about Kahlan, he also thought about his meeting with the Estorians. He didn’t trust anything they had told him, even if he had to admit that on the surface it had all seemed to ring true. But these were diplomats who were versed in making any argument sound reasonable. For all Richard knew, they could be lying through their teeth and they could have all been part of an elaborate plot to assassinate him and Kahlan. Richard was no longer taking anything for granted. His suspicious, questioning nature was on full alert.
For the time being, the Estorians weren’t going anywhere. Their tent had been rolled up by the soldiers and put in storage. Meanwhile, Richard saw to it that they all were placed in “guest” rooms and asked not to leave until the situation could be straightened out.
To ensure they didn’t decide to leave, they were being heavily guarded with instructions that they remain confined. Richard didn’t want them wandering off in case more questions came up, or if anything they said turned out not to be true. He especially didn’t want them wandering around loose in the palace if it turned out they were part of an assassination plot.
Richard shifted his weight to his other leg as he waited. The soldiers stationed in the corridors had told him that Shale hadn’t come out yet. Neither had any of the Mord-Sith in there watching over Kahlan.
Since it was deep in the middle of the night, Richard had sent Vika off, against her objections, to get some sleep. She complied, but grumbled as she stormed off like a pouty child sent to bed early.
The constant worry was wearing on him. He considered going in to see what was happening and why it was taking so long, but he didn’t want to interrupt the sorceress if the healing was at a critical juncture. He knew from experience that in the very intense process of healing a seriously injured person, he wouldn’t want someone coming up to tap him on the shoulder and ask how it was going.
Just then the door opened. It was Shale coming out.
Richard rushed across the elaborate, deep-blue-and-orange-carpeted entryway to meet her. She was once again in the black outfit she had been wearing when he had first seen her.
He knew that, with a witch woman, there was no telling what their clothing really looked like or for that matter what they even really looked like. They somehow had the ability to bend things into an illusion, or perhaps it was an ability to alter a viewer’s vision to what they expected to see. Shota had been able to change her appearance at will. From his experience, a witch woman showed you only what she wanted you to see, or what you expected to see, not what was really there to see. Shale obviously had at least some of that same ability. He wondered how much she wanted him to see of her true self.
As she approached, before he could even ask, Shale lifted a hand. “Your wife is going to be fine, Lord Rahl. I am relieved to report that she is past the biggest danger. There is more I will need to do, but for now I want to let her get some sleep. For the rest of the healing she first needs a good night’s sleep.”
Richard craned sideways to look into the room before Berdine closed the double doors. She flashed him a smile that looked more brave than happy. He was able to look past her to see Kahlan lying in the bed, her hands folded over her stomach, her eyes closed. She looked to be resting peacefully. He was also relieved to see that she was in a clean nightdress, rather than her bloody, white Confessor dress.
“What do you mean?” Richard asked, looking back at Shale. “What more do you need to do?”
The sorceress let out a weary sigh. “There was another puncture wound in her right side that we didn’t see before because of all the blood. It was another wound from a claw—like the one that tore up her left arm. I think that whatever attacked her must have impaled her with a claw into her side to incapacitate her while it tore her arm apart with its other claw. It caused a kind of wasting damage to some internal organs.”
Richard’s alarm rose to a new level. “Wasting damage—you mean like from snake venom?”
“Something like that. Fortunately it moves through the victim more like molasses than venom so it’s not as aggressive as a viper’s poison would be. It’s as lethal, just not as fast. I found that it had caused similar tissue damage in her arm.”
“So then she’s been poisoned?”
“Yes… but not exactly.” Shale made a face, trying to think of how to explain it. She looked up when it came to her. “You know how when a cat claws you it may not look very bad, but then in a day or two your whole arm is red and swollen to twice its size?”
“I suppose so.”
“It’s something like that. More than an infection and less than poison. I’m able to heal it, but it’s more complicated than simply healing an ordinary wound.”