Blood of the Fold

Richard glanced to Mistress Sanderholt's wide, brown eyes. Mistress Sanderholt, the head cook at the Confessors' Palace, was still uneasy about Gratch, and not entirely confident in Richard's assurances that the gar was harmless. The ominous growl wasn't helping.

She had brought Richard out a loaf of freshly baked bread and a bowl of savory spice soup, intending to sit on the steps with him and talk about Kahlan, only to discover that the gar had arrived a short time before. Despite her trepidation over the gar, Richard had managed to convince her to join him on the steps.

Grateh had been keenly interested at the mention of Kahlan's name; he had a lock of her hair that Richard had given him hanging on a thong around his neck, along with the dragon's tooth. Richard had told Grateh that he and Kahlan were in love, and she wanted to be Gratch's friend, just as Richard was, and so the inquisitive gar had sat down to listen, but just as Richard had tasted the soup, and before Mistress Sanderholt had been able to begin, Gratch's mood had suddenly changed. He looked savagely intent, now, on something that Richard couldn't see. "Why is he doing that?" Mistress Sanderholt whispered.

"I'm not sure," Richard admitted. He brightened his smile and shrugged offhandedly when the creases in her brow deepened. “He must just see a rabbit or something. Gars have exceptional eyesight, even in the dark, and they're excellent hunters."

Her concerned expression didn't ease, so he went on. "He doesn't eat people. He Would never hurt anyone," he reassured her. "It's all right, Mistress Sanderholt, really, it is."

Richard glanced up at the sinister-looking, snarling face. "Grateh," he whispered out of the side of his mouth, "stop growling. You're scaring her."

'Richard," she said as she leaned closer, "gars are dangerous beasts. They are notpets. Gars can't be trusted."

"Gratch isn't a pet, he's my friend. I've know him since he was a pup, since he was half my size. He's as gentle as a kitten."

An unconvincing smile twitched onto Mistress Sanderholt's face. "If you say so, Richard." Dismay suddenly widened her eyes, "He doesn't understand anything I'm saying, does he?"

"It's hard to tell," Richard confided. "Sometimes he understands more than I think possible."

Gratch appeared oblivious of them as they talked. He was frozen in concentration, seeming to have either the scent or the sight of something he didn't like. Richard thought he had seen Gratch growling like that one time before, but he couldn't place where or when. He tried to recall the occasion, but the mental image kept slipping away, just out of grasp. The harder he tried, the more elusive the shadowy memory became, "Gratch?" He clutched the gar's powerful arm. "Gratch, what is it?"

Stone still, Gratch didn't react to the touch. As he had grown, the glow in his green eyes had intensified, but never before to this ferocity. They were glowing brightly.

Richard scanned the shadows below, where those green eyes were fixed, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were no people among the columns, or along the wall of the palace grounds. It must be a rabbit, he decided at last; Gratch loved rabbit.

Dawn was just beginning to reveal wisps of purple and pink clouds above the brightening horizon, leaving but a few of the brightest stars to glimmer in the western sky. With the faint first light came a gentle breeze, unusually warm for winter, that ruffled the fur of the huge beast and billowed open Richard's black mriswith cape.

When he had been in the Old World with the Sisters of the Light, Richard had gone into the Hagen Woods, where lurked the mriswith — vile creatures looking like men half melted into a reptilian nightmare. After he had fought and killed one of the mriswith, he had discovered the astonishing thing its cape could do; it had the ability to blend with its background so perfectly, so flawlessly, that it made the mriswith, or Richard when he concentrated while wearing the cape, seem invisible. It also prevented anyone with the gift from sensing them, or him. For some reason, though, Richard's own gift allowed him to sense the presence of the mriswith. That ability — to sense the danger despite its cloak of magic — had saved his life.

Richard found it difficult to focus on Gratch's growling at rabbits in the shadows. The anguish, the numb misery, of believing that his beloved, Kahlan, had been executed, had evaporated in a heart-pound ing instant the day before when he had discovered she was alive. He felt blind joy that she was safe, and exultant at having spent the night alone with her in a strange place between worlds. His mind was in song this beautiful morning, and he found himself smiling without even realizing it. Not even Gratch's annoying fixation with a rabbit could dampen his mood.