Seeing an opportunity with Michec wounded, Kahlan cried out in fury of her own to startle him as she charged in at him sword-first. Even if the magic didn’t work against him, the sharp blade would. Ordinarily, Kahlan would have been unsure that it would be so simple that she could kill him with Richard’s sword, but the way Vika had driven her knife into him had clearly hurt the man. From behind Vika came flashes of red leather as the rest of the Mord-Sith raced to Vika and Kahlan’s aid.
Hurt from Vika’s first strike with her blade, Michec held one hand back to comfort the wound as he desperately swept his other hand up as if lifting a curtain before himself.
As his hand came up, the glass light spheres abruptly dimmed.
And then, the quickly waning light revealed nightmarish creatures densely packed together coming at them out of nowhere, all of them reaching with fury and lust.
They were terrors from a child’s nightmares, larger than a person, most with veined, membrane wings like bats. Those wings stretched and flapped. At the first joint of the leading edge of their wings they had a large, hooked claw that raked the air as they swept their partially folded wings forward, trying to snag Kahlan or one of the Mord-Sith.
The pale, wrinkled, ulcerated flesh of the monsters was hairless. In places that flesh looked rotted away, exposing gooey green slime and fibrous tissue beneath, like the damp, rotting, decomposing tissue of a corpse. They glided in just above the floor, their wings flapping to enfold their prey. As they got closer, they opened huge mouths full of fangs.
Their jaws opened wide as they roared, so wide that it distorted and stretched the skin of their faces. That flesh tore in places, exposing the decomposing sinew beneath. Under the tears in the stretched flesh she could see their jaw and cheek bones. Flesh hung in ragged flaps as it ripped apart when their mouths stretched even wider to snap at Kahlan and the others frantically backing away.
Kahlan and all the Mord-Sith continued to scramble back, trying to avoid being caught by the grotesque creatures as they hurtled in out of the rapidly gathering darkness. Their deafening howls echoed through the room. In the fading light, Kahlan saw that the creatures were not all the same. Not all were winged like bats.
Some of the things had no wings, but instead had long, skeletal arms. They grasped at the air with bony fingers as they rushed in, reaching for Kahlan and the others. Some were missing part of their skull, exposing the festering brain and internal structures. Some of the forms had only scraps of skin attached to bones. That kind, their joints separating from the effort, ripped themselves apart as they struggled to leap through the air to be the first at Kahlan and the Mord-Sith.
Others, with long gangly limbs, crabbed sideways across the floor, ducking in under the winged creatures. Others staggered with stiff limbs and a halting gait. Most of their mouths opened impossibly wide, as if they intended to devour Kahlan and the others whole in one bite.
It was a collection of creatures beyond imagining. None of them could possibly be anything that existed in the world of life.
And yet, Kahlan realized that she had seen these things before.
A whole army of the monsters charged in at her, wings made of stretched skin flapping, raptorlike claws extended, lips pulling back in snarls over fangs. As Mord-Sith leaped toward her to help, Kahlan swung the sword, ripping through the monsters. The sword seemed to tear them apart rather than cut them. Their bodies disintegrated as if made of crumbly dirt and dust. Flesh and bone fell to pieces as she swung the blade as fast as she could.
It was growing so dark so rapidly that she already couldn’t see the women fighting near her. But she could see the glowing red eyes of ever more of the things coming for her. She swung the sword as fast and hard as she could, knowing that if she stopped, they would be all over her. No matter how many she destroyed, their numbers pressing in at her seemed to multiply.
Only brief, terrifying moments after the battle had started, the room was plunged into total darkness. The blackness was filled with the terrible angry howls and ravenous screeches of the things coming at her and the others. Kahlan used their cries to find them, swinging the sword around when she heard them trying to get behind her. She had no hope but to keep fighting.
The darkness was so complete that the red glow of their eyes went dark, too, so that she could no longer even tell where the swirling mass of creatures were. In desperation Kahlan kept swinging the sword, hoping none of the Mord-Sith were close enough to get hit by the blade. She could feel the resistance each time it crashed through the monstrous things. She felt bony bits and reeking, wet scraps smacking into her as they disintegrated.
And then, when she knew that all hope was lost, the air suddenly seemed to explode. Flames filled the room, twisting, spiraling, rolling as if inside the inferno of a blast furnace. It was so bright Kahlan had to close her eyes and cover her face with a forearm against the blinding light and intense heat as she turned away. She feared she would be consumed in the conflagration.
Instead, the billowing flames were gone almost as soon as they had erupted, so fast that they didn’t burn her as she had thought they surely would; they didn’t so much as singe her hair.
As the flames vanished and the room was once again plunged into blackness, the air was filled with a swirl of burning embers that slowed and finally drifted down, sparking out as they touched the stone floor. In the faint light of those glowing embers, Kahlan saw the Mord-Sith nearby, like her with their weapons held up defensively.
After a moment of total darkness and dead silence once all the burning embers were gone, the light spheres around the edge of the room slowly began to brighten again. In the faint greenish glow, she could see that all the corpses were still hanging throughout the room. She had thought they might have been ripped to shreds by the ravenous creatures or burned to cinders in the flames, but they looked untouched. Apparently, the beasts had only come for the living and the flash of fire was too brief to consume the bodies.
But the fire had incinerated the creatures, burning them to ash. It left behind the stench of sulfur.
“What were those things?” Vale asked in a panting whisper.
Kahlan knew what they were but was afraid to say it out loud.
“Where did he go?” Rikka asked in a heated voice as she and the others raced around, searching among the forest of bodies for the witch man.
Cassia dropped to the floor to look under all the hanging corpses to see if Michec was hiding behind one of them, perhaps in the distance. She finally jumped back up.
“I don’t see him anywhere.”
Shale raced up, coming in protectively close to Kahlan.
“What in the world were those things?” Nyda asked as she worked to catch her breath. “I’ve had nightmares that haven’t been as scary as that.”
Shale cast a sidelong look at Kahlan. “I can only conjure snakes. Apparently, the witch man has the power to conjure demons.”
“Demons! Like from the underworld?” Nyda shook her head. “That can’t be true.”
“I’ve seen such things before,” Kahlan said.
Nyda looked incredulous. “Where?”
“In the world of the dead,” Kahlan finally told them in a troubled voice.
“You can’t be serious,” Shale said.
They all looked at Kahlan expectantly, awaiting more of an explanation.
“They’re called soul eaters.”
“Soul eaters!” Berdine exclaimed. “How could Michec bring demons from the underworld into the world of life?” She swept an arm out. “And what happened to them at the end? It was like they were suddenly exploded and burned to cinders.”
“I have no idea,” Kahlan said. “But from the smell of sulfur it seems clear to me that Michec somehow opened the veil enough to pull those things into this world to do his bidding.”
“It doesn’t matter, now. They’re gone.” Vika grabbed Kahlan’s arm. “We have to help Lord Rahl. He healed all of us. We have to help him.”
When a last, quick check around the room confirmed that Michec was nowhere to be seen and they knew that he wasn’t about to set upon them again, Kahlan rushed over to Richard, dropping to her knees to see if he had started breathing yet. She was alarmed when she found that not only wasn’t he breathing, he had no pulse.
“Richard!” She pounded his chest with her fist. “Richard!”
Shale leaned in close. She put a hand on his forehead, closed her eyes, and was silent for a moment.
The sorceress at last drew her hand back as if the touch had burned her fingers. She looked up at Kahlan, her eyes reflecting her horror. “He’s … gone.”
The Mord-Sith stared at her in stunned silence.
“He’s not gone,” Kahlan insisted. “He just needs our help to find his way back.”
Shale’s eyebrows lifted in disbelief. “From the dead? How do we help him do that?”
“He’s not dead.” Kahlan swallowed back her rising sense of panic as a vision of her children never knowing their father flashed through her mind. “He’s just lost.”
Shale gave the Mord-Sith watching her a troubled look before she looked back at Kahlan. “And how do you propose that we get him … unlost?”
12
Kahlan pressed her fingertips to her forehead as she frantically ran through memories and what she knew of the underworld, trying to come up with a way to get Richard back from that dark place. She stubbornly refused to believe the finality of it. She couldn’t let herself believe the finality of it. But while she believed it might be possible to get him back, she also knew that the window to do so—even if it still existed—was rapidly closing.
At last, her head came up. She looked to all the faces watching her.
“The Law of Nines. Richard said that the Law of Nines is a trigger for magic.”
Shale threw her hands up. “How is that supposed to help us? He is with the good spirits, now. He is beyond what we can do with magic.”
“But for a precious bit of time, he still has a link here, in this world.” Kahlan gestured. “Everyone gather around. Shale, you go on the other side of him and take his hand. I’ll take this one.” She urgently motioned the Mord-Sith to all come in closer. “The rest of you, kneel down around him and hold hands between Shale and me. We need to link us all together with Richard between me and Shale.”
While they clearly didn’t understand what it was that Kahlan thought they could do, they all gathered around Richard anyway, taking up each other’s hands even though they all looked confused as to why they were doing it, hoping that somehow she knew some secret solution and could do what none of them could imagine.
“We all need to bow our heads and close our eyes,” Kahlan told them.
Vale leaned in expectantly. “And then what?”
“And then … think about Richard. Think about how much we all want him back. How much we all need him back.”
The Mord-Sith shared skeptical looks.
Kahlan thought of something else. She released his hand and picked up the Sword of Truth. She placed the hilt in his hand, then put her hand over the other side and intertwined her fingers with Richard’s, locking their hands together around the hilt of the sword. The word “TRUTH” on her side pressed into her palm. She knew that the same word on the other side was pressing into Richard’s palm. That physical sensation was intimately familiar to both of them. More than that, the Sword of Truth was an ancient weapon with unfathomable magic. She hoped that magic would also help guide Richard back to them.
Tears ran down Vika’s cheeks as she watched Kahlan position the sword. “If we don’t get him back, I will never forgive myself. He did this for me. He came after me. I told him not to, but he did it anyway. He shouldn’t have. I wish Michec had killed me, then Lord Rahl would not have done what he did and he would be here, alive, and with you all. He would be where he belongs.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Kahlan said, knowing how distraught the Mord-Sith would have to be to show such emotion. “None of us would be here. We would all be dead.”
Vika wiped a tear back from her cheek. “What are you talking about?”
“When Richard found out that Michec had taken you and that he was here at the People’s Palace, he wanted to get you back, but more than that, he knew as the Lord Rahl that we couldn’t leave the witch man here when we leave for the Keep. You, of all people, know what Michec is capable of. He was devoted to Darken Rahl and hated that Richard was now the Lord Rahl. His ambition has no bounds. There is no telling what he might have done, but we do know that he would have worked to defeat all we have fought for. He has the power to undo all the good we have worked to bring about.
“We had to go after that monster. Yes, Richard wanted to rescue you, but he would have gone after Michec even if you were already dead. He had to. We came down here, into Michec’s lair, and he was somehow able to capture us. That’s not your fault. Richard was going after Michec one way or another, with you or without you.”
“Yes but if I had already been dead—”
“Then you couldn’t have saved us.” Kahlan was shaking her head. “Don’t you see? All the rest of us would have been captured whether or not you were alive. But since you were still alive, you were able to interrupt Michec when he was about to start skinning me alive. That gave Richard time to stop him. You saved our lives, Vika.”
“Kahlan’s right,” Shale said. “I think it was that Law of Nines thing he told us about. It caused a change in the outcome. The nine of us together had an effect on what would otherwise have happened.”
Kahlan leaned in a little toward the distraught Mord-Sith. “That’s why Richard came after you: because we need you. Your life is important to all of us. We all need each other. There is power in the nine of us together. I thought he was only going to the cusp of the underworld to help you somehow, but for whatever reason, he crossed over.”
“He came after me,” Vika said, fighting to hold back her tears. “That’s why he crossed over. He did it to heal me.”
Kahlan gave her a hurried nod. “He saved you for a reason. Now, we need to save him.”
“How?” Shale pressed, frantic for some kind of reason to believe it could really work. “He crossed over through the veil. We all know what that means. Dead is dead. How in the world do you propose to bring him back from the dead?”
“Dead is not always as dead as you might think.” Kahlan gritted her teeth against the fear of giving in to the finality of such thinking. “Richard is not dead. Not yet. Not with finality. He has done this before. He’s just lost. There is no sense of direction or scale in the underworld. It’s eternal in every direction. He will be trying to come back to us now that he is finished with what he needed to do there, but he needs the light of our souls to find his way back.”
“But how can we reveal our souls to him when he’s on the other side of the veil?” Shale asked.
“Like I said before, Richard told us that the Law of Nines is a trigger for magic of great power.”
Shale looked far from satisfied. “But how—”
“Enough! We’re wasting what precious little time we have! Bow your heads,” Kahlan ordered, her patience at an end, “and give him a way back before he is gone too long and can’t ever return.”
A worried Berdine glanced over at Richard. “Are you sure he hasn’t already been gone too long?”
“Do it!” Kahlan yelled, her frantic fear powering her voice. “Do it now. Think of Richard and how much he means to each one of you and how much we all need him back. We need to show him the light of our lives on this side to guide him back through the veil. He is the completing link for the Law of Nines, the last one that makes nine of us. He is the Lord Rahl. Our bond to him as the Lord Rahl is our connection to him. Now use it.
“Rikka, Nyda, Cassia, Vale, Berdine, Vika, you have all been to the cusp before. Do that now if you can so that you can bring us all closer to that world.”
When Kahlan was sure that all of the rest
of them were following her orders, she finally bowed her own head.
She refused to allow herself to fear it wouldn’t work. Richard would see the light of their souls on their side of the veil and it would help guide him back. She knew it would.
Just before she let herself slip into the memory of what it was like in that other place, she had a last twinge of fear that Michec might show up and, seeing them all vulnerable, slaughter every last one of them right then and there where they were kneeling.
Among the corpses, the room was dead quiet as she brought up a memory of the world of the dead, and her love for Richard, the father of her two children. Three, she corrected herself. One was gone now, but the twins were still growing in her.
She remembered, then, the first time she knelt before him and swore on her life to protect him. She had been the first ever to swear loyalty to him.
Her breathing along with everyone else’s slowed almost to a stop.
13
Kahlan seemed lost in a quiet, lonely place on the fringes of panic when she heard Richard gasp in a breath.
She looked up into the life in his gray eyes, startled at him returning so abruptly. He smiled at her, too busy getting his breath to speak right then. Her fears, which she had been keeping under tight rein, were unexpectedly dispelled. Joy rushed in to displace despair.
Kahlan needed something more than words, though. She fell on him where he sat, holding him tight, feeling the life in him as his big arm came around to embrace her and pull her tight against him. It was salvation, redeeming her as she had been about to give up all hope.
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