Temple of the Winds (20 page)

Kahlan couldn’t imagine what it would take to cause a Mord-Sith to scream like that.

Whatever was happening to Cara, it was killing her, there was no doubt in Kahlan’s mind.

Kahlan’s foot slipped through a rung. Her shinbone whacked painfully against the rung above. She yanked her leg back, in a rush to get to Jagang. Her flesh grazed the side, catching and driving a long splinter into her calf. She cursed in pain and charged up the ladder.

Clambering through the opening at the top, she slipped and fell to her hands and knees in a chaos of viscera. Sergeant Collins stared up at her with dead eyes. Jagged white ends of rib bones stuck up, holding back the ripped leather and mail of his uniform. His entire torso was rent from his throat to his groin.

A dozen or so men writhed in agony on the floor. Others were still as death. Swords were embedded to their hilts in the stone walls. Axes lodged there, too, as if stuck in soft wood.

An enemy with magic had scythed through these men, but not without cost; close by lay an arm, severed above the elbow. By what it was wearing, she recognized it as Marlin’s. The fingers of the hand clenched and unclenched with measured regularity.

Kahlan pushed herself up and turned to the door. She clasped wrists with Nadine and helped her up into the hall.

“
Careful.”

Nadine gasped at the bloody sight. Kahlan expected her to faint, or scream hysterically. She didn’t.

Men bristling swords, axes, pikes, and bows were charging up the hall from the left. The hall to the right was empty, silent, and dark beyond a lone torch. Kahlan went right. To her credit, Nadine chased right after her.

The screams coming from the pit sent shivers up Kahlan’s spine.

Beyond the last, hissing torch, the hall disappeared into blackness. A soldier lay in a crumpled heap to the side, like dirty laundry waiting to be collected. His blackened sword lay in the center of the hall, its blade fractured into a tangled fray of twisted steel strips.

Kahlan paused and studied the still silence ahead. Just as there was nothing to be seen, there was nothing to be heard. Marlin could be anywhere, hiding around any intersection, crouched in any corner, with Jagang’s self-satisfied smirk on his face as he lingered in the darkness to put an end to the pursuit.

“
Nadine, stay here.”

“
No. I told you, we protect our own. He wants to kill Richard. I’ll not let him get away with it, not as long as I have a chance to help.”

“
The only chance you will have is to get yourself killed.”

“
I’m going.”

Kahlan had neither the time nor desire to argue. If Nadine was going to go, at least she could make herself useful; Kahlan needed her hands free.

“
Then grab that torch.”

Nadine yanked it from the bracket and waited expectantly.

“
I have to touch him,” Kahlan told her. “If I touch him, I can kill him.”

“
Who, Marlin or Jagang?”

Kahlan’s heart pounded against her ribs. “Marlin. If Jagang could get into his mind, I expect he can get out. But who knows? If nothing else, at least Jagang will be gone, and his minion will be dead. That will end it. For now.”

“
That’s what you were trying to do back in the pit? What did you mean about making a choice, one life for all the others?”

Kahlan grabbed her face, squeezing her cheeks. “You listen to me. This isn’t just some Tommy Lancaster wanting to rape you; this is a man who is trying to kill us all. I have to stop him. If anyone else is touching him when I do, they will be destroyed along with him. If you or anyone else is touching him, I won’t hesitate. Do you understand? I can’t afford to hesitate. Too much is at stake.”

Nadine nodded. Kahlan released her. She redirected her anger to the task at hand.

She could feel blood dripping from the ends of the fingers of her left hand. She didn’t think she could lift her left arm, and she needed her right arm to touch Marlin. At least Nadine could hold a torch for her. Kahlan hoped that she wasn’t making a mistake, hoped that Nadine wouldn’t slow her.

She hoped she wasn’t letting Nadine come for the wrong reasons.

Nadine took Kahlan’s right hand and placed it to her bleeding left shoulder. “We don’t have time to fix this, now. Hold that wound closed as tight as you can, until you need your hand, or you’ll lose too much blood and not be able to do what you must.”

A bit chagrined, Kahlan squeezed the wound. “Thanks. If you’re going to come, then stay behind me, and just light the way. If soldiers can’t stop him, you can’t hope to do better. I don’t want you getting hurt for nothing.”

“
Got it. Right behind you.”

“
Just remember what I said, and don’t get in my way.” Kahlan stretched up, looking back behind Nadine to the soldiers. “Use arrows or spears if you get a shot, but stay behind me. Get some more torches. We need to corner him.”

Some of them trotted back to retrieve torches as Kahlan started away. Nadine held her torch out ahead of her as she trotted to keep up. The flame fluttered and roared in the wind of their flight, illuminating the walls, ceiling, and floor for a short distance around them, creating an undulating island of light in a sea of blackness. Close behind, men with torches created their own islands of light. Heavy breathing echoed through the hall as they ran, along with the thud of boots, the jangle of chain mail, the clang of steel, and the roar of flame.

Above it all, in her mind, Kahlan could still hear Cara’s screams.

Kahlan halted at an intersection, panting to get her breath as she looked ahead, and then down the corridor that branched to the right.

“
Here!” Nadine pointed to blood on the floor. “He went this way!”

Kahlan looked up the dark hall ahead. It led to the stairwells and up into the palace. The other corridor that branched off to the right led under the palace in a labyrinth of storerooms, abandoned areas once used in the excavation of the bedrock the palace was built atop, access tunnels to inspect and maintain the foundation walls, and drainage tunnels for the springs the builders had encountered. At the ends of the drainage tunnels, massive stone grates let the water out through the foundation walls, but prevented anyone from getting in.

“
No,” Kahlan said. “This way—to the right.”

“
But the blood,” Nadine protested. “He went this way.”

“
We’ve seen no blood until this place. The blood is a diversion. That way leads up into the palace. Jagang went this way, to the right, where there are no people.”

Nadine followed after as Kahlan started down the corridor to the right. “But why would he care if there are people? He killed and wounded all those soldiers back there!”

“
And they managed to take off an arm. Now Marlin is wounded. Jagang won’t care if we kill Marlin, but, on the other hand, if he can escape, then he can use Marlin to cause more harm.”

“
What more harm could he cause than hurting people? Hurting all those people upstairs and the soldiers?”

“
The Wizard’s Keep,” Kahlan said. “Jagang doesn’t have command of magic, other than his ability as a dream walker, but he can use a person with the gift. From what I’ve seen so far, though, he doesn’t know much about using another’s magic. The things he did back there, simple use of air and heat, are far from inventive for a wizard. Jagang only thinks to do the simplest of things with their magic, things of brute force. That is to our advantage.

“
If I were him, I would try to get to the Keep, and use the magic there to cause the most destruction I could.”

Kahlan turned down an ancient stairwell carved from rock, taking the steps two at a time. At the bottom, the rough, tunnel-like hall ran in two directions. She turned to the soldiers still racing down the stairs behind.

“
Split up—half each way. This is the lowest level. When you encounter more junctures, cover them all. Remember which way you went at each turn, or you could be lost down here for days.

“
You’ve seen what he can do. If you find him, don’t take a chance trying to take him. Post sentries so we know if he backtracks, and then send runners to come get me.”

“
How will we find you?” one asked.

Kahlan looked to the right. “At every choice, I’ll take the one to the right, so you can follow where I went. Now hurry. I think he’s headed for any opening out of the palace he can find. We can’t let him get out. If he gets to the Keep, he can get through shields there that I can’t.”

With Nadine and half the men, Kahlan rushed on through the dank hall. They encountered several rooms, all empty, and before long, several more corridors. At every branch, she divided the men and took her continually dwindling force to the right.

“
What’s the Wizard’s Keep?” Nadine asked as they moved on through the darkness.

“
It’s a massive fortress, a stronghold, where wizards used to live. It predates the Confessors’ Palace.” Kahlan lifted a hand, indicating the palace above them. “In ages long forgotten, nearly everyone was born with the gift. Over the last three thousand years the gift has been dying out in the race of man.”

“
What’s in the Keep?”

“
Living quarters, long abandoned, libraries, rooms of every sort. And things of magic are stored there. Books, weapons, things like that. Shields protect important or dangerous parts of the Keep. Those without magic can’t pass through any of the shields. Since I was born with magic, I can pass through some of them, but not all.

“
The Keep is vast. It makes the Confessors’ Palace look like a cramped cottage, by comparison. In the great war, three thousand years ago, the Keep was filled with wizards and their families. Richard says it was a place filled with laughter and life. At that time, the wizards had both Subtractive and Additive Magic.”

“
And now they don’t?”

“
No. Only Richard has been born with both sides.

“
There are places in the Keep that I, and the wizards I grew up with, could not enter because the shields are so powerful. There are other places that have not been entered in thousands of years because they are shielded with both sides of the magic. No one could get past the shields.

“
But Richard can. I fear Marlin can, too.”

“
Sounds a dreadful place.”

“
I’ve spent a good portion of my life there, studying books of language, and learning from the wizards. I never thought of it as anything but part of my home.”

“
Where are these wizards now? Can’t they help us?”

“
They all killed themselves, at the end of last summer, in the war with Darken Rahl.”

“
Killed themselves! How awful. Why would they do that?”

Kahlan was silent for a moment as they moved relentlessly onward into the darkness. It all seemed a dream from another life.

“
We needed to find the First Wizard, to have him appoint the Seeker of Truth to stop Darken Rahl. Zedd was the First Wizard. He was in Westland, on the other side of the boundary. The boundary was linked to the underworld, the world of the dead, so no one was able to cross it.

“
Darken Rahl was also hunting Zedd. It took all the wizards to conjure magic to get me through the boundary to go after Zedd. If Darken Rahl had captured the wizards, he might have used his vile magic to make them confess what they knew.

“
To give me the time to have a chance to succeed, the wizards killed themselves. Darken Rahl still managed to send assassins after me. That was when I met Richard. He protected me.”

“
Blunt Cliff?” Nadine said in questioning amazement. “There were four huge men found dead at the bottom of the cliff. They had leather uniforms, and weapons of every sort. No one had ever seen men like them before.”

“
That was them.”

“
What happened?”

Kahlan gave her a sidelong glance. “Something like you and your experience with Tommy Lancaster.”

“
Richard did that? Richard killed those men?”

Kahlan nodded. “Two of them. I took another with my power, and he killed the last. Those were probably the first men Richard had ever encountered who wanted to do more to him than simply give him a beating when he chose to protect someone. To protect me. Richard has had to make a lot of hard choices since that day on Blunt Cliff.”