Since they were moving so swiftly, the scouts hadn’t been able to push beyond this point, but Richard had grown up in the woods, scouting trackless woods and picking passages through rugged country. He studied the lay of the land ahead, looking for possible routes and making mental notes of what to avoid.
“What do you think?” Kahlan asked. “It doesn’t look promising to me. Do you see a way?”
“It may not look promising, but we have to go in this direction. We don’t have a choice.” Richard pointed to where two mountains met, creating folds and rugged canyons. “We need to get down there. I can’t see what’s down in between all those twisting chasms, but that’s the way we need to go.”
“What about that way,” Nicci asked as she pointed a little more to the left. “It looks easier without all those bends and turns in the chasms. It looks sketchy down in there. Going more to the left avoids that.”
“It only looks easy from this distance.” Richard leaned close to her and pointed, letting her sight down his arm. “See that there? If we go that way the ground drops away in sheer cliffs. They don’t look that bad from here, but I can tell you they are impassable. Trying to climb down is harder than climbing up, and that’s a nasty descent. I wouldn’t try it, and I know what I’m doing.”
Nicci let out a frustrated sigh. “Looks like the chasms, then.”
“What about that spot?” Kahlan asked, pointing. “The land is gentler off that way.”
“It is,” Richard said, gesturing, “until you get to that scree slide. We’d never be able to climb that. It’s so eroded that it wouldn’t take much for it all to come down on us, or take us down with it. Follow the skirt of it with your eye and see what happens when you try to go around.”
“Oh,” Kahlan said as she squinted into the distance. “That’s nasty.”
“It is. Worse, if we got down that far we’d find ourselves in a dead end and then we would have to backtrack and go around on a different route. We would lose half a day, at least, maybe more. We can’t afford to make mistakes. We have to get it right the first time.”
Kahlan sighed. “So, do you see a way?”
Ricard nodded. “There is a way, but it isn’t going to be easy. It’s easier than wasting extra days going around, though. Our best route is to push on and get through the area down in those chasms.”
He was worried about making it to the citadel in time. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake in finding a way through the wilderness ahead. In a way, he didn’t care. The world seemed empty. He was in the mood to give up and wait for the blackness to take him.
But that same blackness would come for Kahlan. In his numb pain at the loss of his grandfather, the one thing that really mattered to him was Kahlan. He wanted more than anything for her to be safe. He couldn’t stand the thought of losing her, too. He would do whatever it took to keep her safe and make sure she was healed.
Zedd had told him that living for those you love was the best part of living. Richard clung to that idea. He cared that Kahlan lived, and he would do whatever it took to protect her.
Richard’s gaze followed a few streams down lower, mentally testing the lay of the land, looking at where they led.
“I can’t believe it’s this hard to get to the place,” Commander Fister said.
“Nothing is ever easy,” Richard said, Zedd’s frequent words coming to mind.
“We’re coming in from the wrong direction,” one of the men said. “This is the back door, you might say.”
Richard nodded his agreement. “From what Irena knows and what Ned was able to tell us before he left for the palace, there are roads and trails that are well used by traders and merchants coming and going between other cities and towns in Fajin Province and then beyond to the rest of D’Hara. The problem is, none of those roads and trails head off in this direction because there is no real civilization back where we came from—that’s why the barrier was placed there in ancient times. The people back in the great war wanted to put evil in the most remote, deserted place they could find.”
Saavedra was located in a hook of a river, and Richard knew that they were headed in the right direction, so he knew that the easiest way to get to the city would be to get through the wilderness to the streams and then follow those tributaries downstream to the river. When they got close enough they would finally encounter roads and trails. Either the river or a road would lead them to Saavedra and the citadel. He knew where to go; it was getting there that was going to be the problem.