Because the wall had been compromised, it caused yet more stone to drop down. Both capitals fell and rolled back down the corridor toward the Glee. The whole area filled with thick, choking stone dust. He could see that it covered some of the wet, leading Glee in the dense pack coming for him, turning them from black to gray.
After that brief look, Richard turned and started running, arms spread wide, ushering the others, who had only gone a short distance, out ahead, urging them to hurry.
“Why would you do that?” Kahlan asked, confused as to why he would waste the time to take out a pair of columns on each side of the corridor.
“Something I learned in the underworld.”
She cast a look back over her shoulder at him as she ran. “What?”
“Keep going. Provided I was quick enough, you’ll see.”
And then he heard the painfully piercing, distinctive sound of massive blocks of granite cracking. It made a ripping, crackling sound something like rolling thunder but higher-pitched as the fractures raced through the stone, making a popping sound as they went.
Richard couldn’t help slowing down to turn and look. He had to be sure. If it didn’t work, they were going to be in a lot of trouble. Everyone else stopped with him to look behind.
Back down the corridor, with the key support elements of the fat columns suddenly shattered, the huge ceiling blocks of stone, as wide as the corridor, had nothing to hold them up. All at once they began to fall free. The sound was horrific, and despite their desire to get away, Richard and the others all stood transfixed by the astounding sight.
The closest block came crashing down first, crushing the leading Glee. Blood and gore shot out from under the block as it hit the stone floor. A few arms, their reaching claws still twitching, stuck out from under the immense block of granite that only an instant before had been the ceiling of the corridor.
As soon as that first massive ceiling block had started falling free, the second, with its support now gone, immediately broke loose and started coming down, then the third, then the fourth, and then each of the rest of the ceiling blocks all the way back through the spiraled dead end came crashing down in swift succession.
That dead end became a killing field as the massive blocks of stone, each as wide as the corridor and nearly as thick, plummeted down with a thunderous sound in a series of deafening booms that reverberated through the passageways. The whole place shook with jolt after jolt as the massive granite blocks came to ground, each crushing the Glee packed into the hall on back into the spiral.
It all happened so suddenly and so swiftly that Richard doubted any of the Glee had enough time to vanish back to their own world. He was pretty sure that every single one of them had been crushed to death instantly as the ceiling of the entire corridor crashed down on top of them. He almost felt sorry for them. Almost.
Kahlan stood in stunned silence beside him, looking at the massive block of stone that now completely filled the corridor, blocking off what had once been beyond. The corridor now had a new dead end, one much closer. Clouds of dust that had been forced out from under the blocks as they fell now filled the passageway, some of it still swirling through the dimly lit air.
The Mord-Sith stared in awe at what had just happened.
Shale turned to him. “How did—”
“Come on,” Richard said, cutting her off. She looked like a thousand questions were bottled up inside her. “We can discuss it later. Right now we need to catch Michec. Stay behind me.”
With that, Richard pushed his way through the knot of Mord-Sith and raced out ahead of all of them.
20
Richard needed to be the one to get to the witch man first. He realized, though, that even while Michec was already injured and now being tormented by wasps, he was still profoundly dangerous. The biggest worry was that Richard had no idea what the man was capable of in spite of his condition. He was aware that they could easily get caught up in a trap they weren’t expecting, so they had to be on the lookout for things that they weren’t expecting.
Richard only knew that he needed to kill him before he could use any of his dark talents. He especially needed to kill the man before he could harm Kahlan. And, with the Glee showing up everywhere more frequently all the time, they needed to be done with the witch man so they could get to the Keep.
Richard sprinted down halls and corridors, watching for anything unexpected as he took turns instinctively from the mental map in his head and also from his knowledge of where the witch man was headed. Eager to get at Michec, Richard didn’t wait for the others, and had soon pulled out a substantial lead over the rest of them. Checking back over his shoulder from time to time, he made sure not to get too far ahead of them lest they lose sight of him and not know which way he went.
If any of them fell behind and made a wrong turn down in the confusing maze of the complication, it could easily be fatal. He just wanted to stay far enough ahead that Kahlan and the others wouldn’t fall into the witch man’s grasp before Richard could get his hands on the man.
Richard was well aware that Michec was running in a blind panic, taking the swarm of wasps with him, running haphazardly, taking turns at random but still intent on where he was going. He simply wanted to get to a place of safety. That was fine with Richard, because despite the witch man’s random course he knew where Michec would end up. Every once in a while, he could hear Michec in the distance, crying out and cursing as the wasps stung a particularly tender spot on his face.
Richard slowed a little to let the others get a bit closer. His blood was up and he wanted to get to the witch man, but he didn’t want to let his anger cause him to run out too far ahead and have the others lose sight of him. He looked back over his shoulder at Shale as he ran.
“Those are your wasps, right?”
Shale nodded.
Richard gestured to let them know his intended direction before he cut down a narrow hallway to the right. “Why isn’t he simply making them vanish? Kahlan said he made the snake you conjured vanish.”
Shale ran up closer to him so she could speak without having to yell. “Because I intended the snakes for the Glee. I didn’t know that I needed to shield them against a witch man’s magic. I shielded the wasps, though. And, I made sure they were plenty angry. Only I can withdraw them.”
Richard slid to a halt and looked up a set of broad stairs to the left. It was a shortcut that would gain distance on Michec, but it would take them away from his route for a time. He knew that was risky, because Michec, in his distracted state from the wasps, might deviate in his route and end up going someplace Richard wasn’t expecting. But he needed to get to Michec before he could escape. The shortcut was the best way to help close the gap.
Decision made, he started up the stairs two at a time.
“When we get close to him,” he called back over his shoulder to Shale, “I need you to withdraw the wasps so they don’t sting us as well.”
Shale nodded as she ran up the stairs after him. “Don’t worry about the wasps. I’ll make sure they’re gone as soon as we catch him.”
At the top of the short flight of stairs, a corridor branched off to each side. Richard paused to make sure Kahlan wasn’t lagging behind. She wasn’t. The Mord-Sith were surrounding her. Reassured, he went straight on down the dark center corridor between the other two. After a short distance the corridor came to stairs that descended back to the original level, where he again took a right.
As he raced down a corridor with dusty marble columns supporting a barreled, plastered ceiling, he slowed and turned as he trotted backward so he could see all the others.
“What magic is Michec liable to use against me when I catch him? Any guesses?”
Shale turned her palms up. “I’ve been asking myself that same question. I don’t have an answer. I don’t really know anything about witch men, except that they are witches. That’s bad enough, but from what I’ve seen so far, I suspect he can do things I can’t even begin to
imagine.”
“Do you think you will be able to do anything to counter whatever magic he might do?”
Shale shook her head as she hurried along. “He can’t make my wasps vanish. There are limitations for a witch using their power against another witch, which limits what I can do. He is likely to shield anything he does so I can’t stop it. You’re a wizard, why don’t you do something?”
Richard sighed unhappily. “All right. I will just have to deal with whatever he does, if I can’t kill him first. But I need you to be ready to at least create light. Conjure a flame in your palm or something—I don’t care, but I will need light to see. It’s going to be pitch black when I catch him.”
Shale blinked in surprise. “How do you know that?”
“Prophecy,” Kahlan told her. “Richard was in the underworld, remember? There is prophecy in the underworld. Do you think a war wizard would fail to avail himself of any opportunity to gain an advantage against an enemy?”
Richard grinned at her in answer. He thought she was not only the most intelligent person he knew, but sometimes it seemed she could read his thoughts.
Shale looked alarmed. “You mean to say you have been acting on prophecy?”
“How do you think I knew that spiral corridor was packed with Glee waiting to ambush us? Would you rather I knew nothing about it and walked into Michec’s trap?”
“Well, no,” she admitted.
As he went past the second wooden door on the right and slowed down, he hushed her before she could ask any more questions.
“From now on,” he told them all in a low voice, “try to move as quietly as you can. Michec won’t be far ahead, now. He is down this passageway here, to the right. Rikka, Vale, Cassia, Nyda, Berdine, be ready to use your knives on him to protect Kahlan. Shale, be ready to provide light.”
They all nodded as they started out after him down the hallway to the right. As they went farther in, the first light sphere began to brighten, showing them the way. As it was dimming behind them on their way past, the second began to glow. Richard slowed to a stop.
He held up a hand for everyone to be still as he listened into the dark distance. When he heard the echo of heavy breathing, he started running as fast and quietly as he could. He motioned for the others to stay back a ways. He didn’t want Michec to snatch Kahlan or anyone else and use them as a hostage. Kahlan had a knife and knew how to use it, but he didn’t want it to come to that. The witch man was unpredictable, had magic, and, after all, had called all those Glee back in the spiraled corridor to lay a trap for them.
As the second light sphere dimmed in the distance behind, they hurried past the third, and then beyond, on into darkness.
21
Richard had to judge the distance to the bracket where the fourth light sphere would be by counting his paces between the previous brackets. He began to smell the witch man even though he couldn’t see him. He didn’t know what a witch was supposed to smell like, but a big man sweating from running and from fear and panic was a smell Richard had no trouble recognizing.
He moved forward a little on his tiptoes. Before he had gone far, as he listened for the wasps and the heavy breathing, trying to judge the exact distance, a big hand came out of nowhere and backhanded him, knocking him back several steps. The surprise, more than anything, knocked him off balance.
Richard immediately regained his footing and dove in the direction of where he now knew Michec was standing. As he crashed into the man, he managed to get an arm around his neck. Michec twisted and struggled to break away. Richard reached up and gripped the wrist of the arm he had around Michec’s neck and then used it to help increase the pressure. He knew it would be only moments until the blood supply was cut off to cause unconsciousness.
“Shale! Light!”
All of a sudden, the walls to each side ignited in flame.
In the bright light of the leaping flames, Richard saw Vika standing right in front of them, knife in her right hand.
“Now!” he yelled at her.
As Richard struggled to hang on to the brawny man trying to wrestle his way out of the choke hold, Vika slammed her blade into the witch man’s belly. She grabbed the hilt with both hands and grunted with the effort of pulling it sideways, ripping him open.
Vika pulled the blade back and then thrust her left hand into the gaping wound. She pulled her bloody hand back out holding a fistful of entrails. She twisted her body to yank out a long, glistening length of intestine. Michec gasped with the shock of what had just happened.
The corridor suddenly lit with a blindingly bright flash of white-hot light that ignited around the witch man. Richard and Vika both were thrown back, slammed into the flaming wall. They landed on their backs and slid a short distance across the floor back up the corridor. It felt to Richard like they had been struck by lightning.
Richard and Vika both were momentarily stunned by the shock of the blast. Every nerve in his body rang with pain. Richard rolled to his side, his arms going numb. He was blinded by the intensity of the flash.
Michec, lit by the wavering flames of the walls, glared down at them both. He started to draw his hands up. Richard suspected he was going to fry them with another lightninglike strike. He knew that if he did, it could kill both him and Vika.
Despite the pain, Richard forced himself to jump to his feet, and without an instant’s delay he crashed into Michec, grabbing him with both hands around his throat. The full force of the impact threw Michec’s arms back, stopping him from what he had been just about to do to them. Richard knew that he couldn’t allow the man to gather his wits and his power or it would all be over.
With all his might he rammed the big man into the wall. He gritted his teeth with a growl as he used all of his strength to lean in and force Michec’s head back into the flames. Richard could smell the witch man’s spiky hair burning. Michec reacted to the pain of the fire by thrashing wildly, trying to get away, but Richard held him tight as he used all his strength to choke the life out of him. His muscles bulged with the effort.
Something as thick as his leg whipped around Richard’s middle and forcefully yanked him back. Despite his best effort, he couldn’t hold on. Richard saw the red leather of some of the other Mord-Sith charging in for Michec, but another blindingly bright flash of light threw them back to land at Kahlan’s and Shale’s feet.
As Richard was dragged back, with the thick thing squeezing the air out of him, he thought that it had to be a tentacle of some sort, like the one he and Kahlan had fought in the water. He couldn’t see its source. He put his hands on it to try to push it away and found that it wasn’t soft, like living tissue, but rough and hard, like a rapidly expanding tree root.
As he twisted his body, trying to get away from its grasp, he saw yet more of the tendrils sprouting up out of the floor, breaking the stone apart as they rose up, growing fatter as they rose up. Before he was able to do anything about the one tightening painfully around his middle, another, lengthening and curling as it grew up out of the floor, coiled around his legs. Yet another rose up to grab his arms.
The rootlike tendrils grew in thickness and strength as they threw yet more coils around his arms and legs. He looked over and saw that the same kind of tendrils were climbing up Vika, thickening rapidly as they encased her, squeezing the air from her lungs.
Michec panted, trying to recover his strength. Wisps of smoke rose from his singed hair and the back of his robes. A long length of bloody intestine hung down to the floor. Blood from the gash soaked his filthy robes and began to puddle around his feet.
He grabbed hold of the intestine in his fist, and with a flash of knifelike light from his other hand severed it and cast the length aside as if it was no longer needed. He lifted a hand out to each wall, and the flames started to dim as the fire rapidly began to extinguish.
Michec turned to Vika. “Seems you made the same mistake you warned me of. Trying to teach a lesson of revenge rather than simply killing me. I am no lon
ger going to bother with lessons for any of you. I’m just going to kill you all.”
Suddenly, the corridor shimmered as a wave of light shot through the air. Richard could no longer move his head, but he could turn his eyes just enough to see Shale, Kahlan, and the rest of the Mord-Sith running in to help. The wavering light hit Michec, staggering him, but it failed to do any visible damage. He took a few steps back as he regained his balance and his senses.
Richard could feel the roots around his chest constricting. Every time he breathed out, they tightened, taking up the extra space, so that he couldn’t get his full breath back. Each time he exhaled, it ratcheted him another notch toward suffocation. He tried panting with shallow breaths, but even those were being squeezed out of him.
Michec cast a grim look over the people trying to kill him and then lifted an arm. When he did, it brought up a wall of fire of his own. The searing flames blocked the advance of the women. Pleased that it drove them back, Michec turned and hurried off down the corridor, disappearing into the darkness.
The roots that had Richard and were growing thicker by the moment had finally cut off his air. His vision narrowed to a pinpoint of light in the center of blackness. He could hear Vika also struggling unsuccessfully to breathe.
A flash shower of rain came out of nowhere and dumped buckets’ worth of water in the corridor, extinguishing the fire that Michec had used to block the others from coming after him.
Kahlan, Shale, and all the Mord-Sith raced to Richard.
“Hold on,” Kahlan said as she frantically started sawing away with her knife at the roots and vines that had encased him.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see the red leather of a few of the others rushing over to try to help Vika.
Witch's Oath Page 10
