All the men who had been quietly gathering in the dark corridor appeared to be experienced fighters. The battle had come sooner than they had planned, but now that it was upon them they fought with wild fury. These weren’t the regular Imperial Order soldiers, the men who had joined for glory and plunder. These were professional warriors, well-trained and experienced men who knew what they were doing. They were universally powerful men, all wearing at least leather armor. Some were additionally outfitted with chain mail. All of them were carrying well-made weapons.
They fought with measured moves meant to tear through an enemy defensive line.
As good as they were, they’d been caught off guard and surprised by the sudden darkness followed by swift violence. They had believed that as they quietly crept into enemy territory they were safely hidden. In a moment of confusion and alarm when it had gone dark in the corridor they had been gripped by overpowering fear of the unknown. In those brief bewildering moments men had begun dying without understanding how or why.
Richard had used that surprise to tear through their ranks as swiftly as possible. The last thing he had wanted to do was get bogged down in hand-to-hand fighting. His purpose had been to get through, not to engage the enemy. With Nicci, Jillian, and Adie to escort, it was all he, Bruce, and General Meiffert could do to cut their way through without slowing when confronted. Within the palace Adie’s ability to help them had diminished.
That had been trouble.
As surprised as the hiding Order troops had been when in the dark, they had quickly recovered and were now in their element: battle. These were the men the Order typically used to lead an invasion, to overwhelm an opponent in a powerful attack meant to slice all opposition to pieces.
Fortunately for Richard, he, Bruce, and General Meiffert at last didn’t have to fight alone. Cara dropped any men she could get near and climbed over others to get at those trying to hack Richard to pieces. These men were familiar with armed opposition; they knew little about Mord-Sith. Already they were trying to back away from Cara, only to have other Mord-Sith spring up and take them down. Richard saw Berdine and Nyda ramming their Agiel to the backs of heads or thrusting and twisting them against big chests to kill instantly. Everywhere men screamed in agony.
Not far away the First File charged into the Imperial Order soldiers from both sides at once. Richard saw General Trimack leading his men into the teeth of the battle. The First File were the elite of the elite, more than a match for the Order soldiers not only in size but in ability. The D’Haran troops were all battle-hardened men who were well versed in deadly tactics that gave them a feared and well-deserved reputation.
Several men in dark leather armor, their faces twisted in hate and rage, rushed toward Richard. Before he could bring his sword to bear, yet other big men stepped right in front of them, blocking their ability to get to Richard. With lightning strikes from the elbows of the two men, the necks of the Order soldiers were ripped open, severing carotid arteries.
Richard blinked when he saw that it was Ulic and Egan, two great blond-headed bodyguards to the Lord Rahl. The dark leather straps, plates, and belts of their uniforms were molded to fit like a second skin over the prominent contours of their muscles. Incised in the leather at the center of their chests was an ornate letter “R,” and beneath that were two crossed swords. They wore metal bands just above the elbows specially designed for close-quarters fighting. Those bands had razor-sharp projections. It soon became apparent to the invading soldiers that anyone close enough to encounter Ulic and Egan was not just going to die, but going to die in a most gruesome manner.
Yet other troops pouring out of the breach in the wall were cut down by gifted means cast at them by Nathan. Flashes of explosive light sliced through men in chain mail, sending shards of hot steel ricocheting off the walls, floors, and ceilings. It was a grim, one-sided contest, with the soldiers never having a chance to even raise their swords against the tall prophet before they were torn apart by a focused use of his gift.
General Meiffert ducked under swinging axes as he charged through the smoke, Jillian cowering behind the cover of his sword with Adie being held up by his other arm.
Richard saw that Adie was covered in blood.
Cara froze in her tracks. “Benjamin?”
“Here! Take Adie!”
“I have to protect Lord Rahl.”
“Do as you’re told!” he yelled at her over the roar of the battle. “Help her!”
Richard was surprised to see Cara immediately abandon her argument to help lift Adie from General Meiffert’s care. He seized Jillian with his newly freed hand and pulled her around to the other side of him, away from two men who were charging in from his right. He ducked as he thrust his sword, running one man through. Bruce was right there, but down low so as not to get in the way of the general’s blade. From that low position Bruce cut the second attacker down at the knees. When a third man reached for the general, Egan wrapped a muscled arm around the soldier’s neck and wrenched it around. The man went limp. Egan tossed him aside like a rag doll and immediately went after another Order soldier.
“Get back!” General Meiffert yelled at Cara when she returned to rush back into the thick of the battle.
“I have to—”
“Move!” he yelled at her at the same time he rammed her back with a hand. “I said move!”
“Nathan!” Richard cried out over the roar of noise when he saw the opportunity that General Meiffert had just opened up by forcing Cara back out of the way with him. When the prophet turned to his name, Richard pointed to the dark corridor the general had just cleared. “That’s all of us! Do it!”
Nathan understood and didn’t waste an instant. He immediately brought his hands up. Light ignited between his palms. Wizard’s fire erupted into life from the gathering light, sending glimmering colors and light flickering over the scene of the pitched battle.
Without pause Nathan cast the wizard’s fire into the enemy.
The deadly sphere of bubbling, boiling, liquid light tumbled away. The white-hot inferno expanded as it hurtled through the air. Even over the noise of the battle echoing through the stone halls Richard could hear the wail of it flying toward the dark corridor full of Imperial Order troops all pushing forward to get into the palace and join the battle.
The wizard’s fire shot down the corridor, casting an orange-red light across the white marble. The sound alone was enough to stiffen men in panic.
It was a horrific sight as burning death splattered across living flesh. The growing sphere of liquid fire stayed aloft as it skipped across the heads of the men, all the while spilling death down on them until the tumbling inferno burst into a cascade of molten light and flame splashing down into the terrified mass of men.
The shrieks of agony drowned out the clash of steel in the battle.
Nathan conjured yet more wizard’s fire. In an instant it, too, was away.
The sphere of fire tumbled down the dark corridor, careening off walls and men, spilling flames, catching everything ablaze. The liquid flame was so tenacious, so sticky, so fiercely alive with searing heat that it melted its way through tough leather armor and sloshed right through chain mail to cling to flesh as it burned. Men on fire tore at their clothes, trying to get the fire off them, but they couldn’t. Wizard’s fire, once on a person, would often burn down to bone before it went out. Even as men started to pull off leather armor plates that the sticky, liquid fire was burning through, it was too late. Their clothes were already melted to their skin and they only ended up pulling off their own flesh.
Fire enveloped faces. Gasping in shock, men sucked swirling flames into their lungs. The stench of burning flesh was overpowering. The sound of the screams was horrifying.
The men already in the hall knew that they would have no one coming from behind to help them. The men of the First File were already bearing in, rolling them under, spearing men who couldn’t move in the crushing weight pressing in from both sides.<
br />
They had no choice but to fight for their lives. In this battle, there would be no surrender allowed.
General Meiffert hacked a man across the shoulder. Bruce used both hands on the hilt of his sword to thrust it down into a man who fell sprawling on the floor at his feet. As another man, his face twisted with rage and hate, went for Richard, Richard swung, burying his sword halfway through the man’s head just below his eyes. He yanked his sword back as the man dropped to his knees crying out in unexpected fright. Berdine, in her red leather like all the Mord-Sith, stepped in and pressed her Agiel to the base of his skull, finishing him off.
Nathan launched another expanding, tumbling, twisting sphere of wizard’s fire down the hall. The relentless inferno of death was sickening to behold as it splashed down through crowds of men who had thus far avoided it. Men on fire frantically tried to escape the growing conflagration. There was no escape. They were trapped not just by the flames, but by their numbers and by the dead all around them. They had no choice but to scream in agony and desperate panic as they burned alive. Whorls of flame curled in the open mouths of those shrieks. Richard was certain that near the back men would have abandoned the attack and already be racing back to the safety of the catacombs.
What only a moment before had been a frantic battle was suddenly dying down. Imperial Order soldiers still alive were shown no mercy as they were finished off by the First File.
Cara shoved over a man she had just killed. He toppled backward and landed with a numb thud. General Meiffert was close by. She looked more angry at him than at the man she had just killed.
“What do you think you’re doing yelling at me—telling me what to do?”
“My job. You were in the way of what Lord Rahl was attempting to do. I needed you out of the way.”
Cara glanced back. “Well, I don’t care—”
“I don’t have time for debate.” His anger looked the match of hers. “As long as I’m in charge, you will do as you’re told. That’s the way it has to be.”
She turned her scowl to the corridor where men still moved as they burned alive. Arms become torches waved slowly, uselessly, in the inferno.
Richard had known that there had been too many soldiers filling the corridors to fight them all. He had been trying to get the general, Bruce, Jillian, and Adie out of the way so that Nathan could bring wizard’s fire to bear. The general had realized Richard’s intention. Cara had been in the way. Being a general in charge, he couldn’t allow anyone to question his authority—especially not in the midst of a battle.
Once Cara realized the truth of it, she abandoned the dispute and immediately turned to join Richard as he scrambled across the blood-slick floor to Nicci, who was lying on her back against the wall.
“Nicci?” Richard gently slipped a hand behind her neck. “Hold on. Nathan is here.”
Her eyes were rolled up in her head. She was convulsing in pain. Richard could only imagine that Jagang was trying to kill her, but the spell around the palace was impeding that effort. It was putting her through a slow and agonizing death.
He turned. “Nathan! We need you!”
Past the fallen forms of dead Imperial Order soldiers, Richard saw Nathan kneeling beside someone. Richard had a terrible feeling that he knew who it was. Nathan looked up, staring sadly, helplessly at Richard.
“Nicci—hold on. Help is coming. I promise I’ll get that collar off you. Hold on.” He seized Cara’s arm and pulled her close. “Stay with her. I don’t want her to think she’s alone. I don’t want her to give up.”
Cara nodded, her blue eyes looking liquid. “Lord Rahl, I’m really glad to see you.”
He laid a hand on her shoulder as he stood. “I know. Let me tell you, I’m pretty glad to see you, too.”
Richard raced over the top of dead Order soldiers rather than taking the time to find a clear path. It felt surreal to see so many corpses, dismembered limbs and heads, so much blood, defiling the sacred white marble corridors of the palace.
As he swiftly made his way across the tangle of dead, his fears were confirmed when he saw that Nathan was kneeling beside Adie. The old sorceress was hardly breathing.
Richard bent down beside the prophet. “Nathan, you have to help her.”
General Meiffert and Jillian knelt on the other side of the old woman. Jillian took up Adie’s hand and held it to her breast.
Nathan stared with tired, watery eyes. “I’m sorry, Richard, but this may be beyond my ability.”
Richard swallowed back the lump in his throat as he looked down at Adie. She gazed up at him with her completely white eyes, looking very much at peace despite what had to be terrible pain.
“Adie, we made it. Your plan worked. You did it. You got us through.”
“I be pleased, Richard.” She smiled just a little. “But now you must help Nicci.”
“Worry about yourself for now.”
She clutched his arm, pulling him a little closer. “You must help her. My part be done. She be your only chance, now, to save all we hold dear in this world.”
“But—”
“Help Nicci. She be your only hope now. Promise me you will help her.”
Richard nodded as he felt a tear run down his cheek. “I promise.”
Her smile widened, pushing back the fine wrinkles of her cheeks.
Richard couldn’t help smiling at realizing what she had just done. Zedd had once told him about how sorceresses never tell all they know and in that way lull you into agreeing to things you might not otherwise accept.
“I don’t need a sorceress’s trick to keep my promise to help Nicci. Nathan will get the collar off her neck.”
As she smiled at him, Richard felt her hand tighten just a little. “I not be so sure, Richard. She need help only you can give.”
Richard didn’t know what he could do that Nathan couldn’t. Even if he knew how to use his gift, Richard had long ago lost his connection to it. When Adie’s eyes slipped closed and Jillian started to cry with worry, General Meiffert put an arm around her shoulders.
“Lord Rahl!” Cara called.
Both Richard and Nathan looked back at the Mord-Sith hunched over Nicci.
“Hurry!”
“Hold on,” Nathan whispered to Adie.
He touched a finger to her forehead. Adie sighed, her muscles slackening.
“That will comfort her for the moment,” Nathan said in a confidential tone to Richard. “Maybe with the help of some Sisters I can do something more for her.”
Richard nodded, then seized Nathan under the arm and helped pull the man to his feet. On their way to Nicci’s side they rushed past tangled figures of the dead. Most of the slain were Imperial Order soldiers, but there were also men of the First File scattered throughout the corridor.
Nicci, if it was possible, looked worse. She shook from the unseen power trying to crush the life out of her.
“You have to get the collar off her,” Richard told Nathan. “Jagang has been using the Rada’Han to control her. Now I think he’s trying to kill her with it.”
Nathan, nodding as he lifted Nicci’s eyelid, swiftly evaluated her condition. He reached out, then, and placed both hands on the smooth metal collar around her neck. He closed his eyes for a moment, his brow drawing down with the effort of using unseen powers. The air all around seemed to hum with a soft vibration. After a moment the discordant sensation died away.
“I’m sorry, Richard,” he said in a quiet voice as he finally straightened.
“What do you mean, you’re sorry? It’s still locked on her. You have to get this thing off before it kills her.”
Nathan glanced around at all the dead, his azure eyes looking a little wetter than they had a moment before. His sorrowful gaze finally returned to Richard.
“I’m sorry, my boy, but there’s nothing I can do.”
“Yes there is,” Cara said. “You can get the collar off her!”
“I would if I could”—with a dejected look he shook hi
s head—“but I can’t. It’s held on with both sides of her gift. I have only Additive.”
Richard couldn’t accept it. “The palace amplifies your ability. You’re a Rahl. Your power is greater in this place. You have more power here. Use it!”
“My Additive side is strengthened here . . . but I have no Subtractive ability to amplify. Without the Subtractive side to counter the lock, I can do nothing.”
“You can try!”
Nathan rested a hand on Richard’s shoulder. “I already tried. My ability is not enough. I’m sorry, my boy. I’m afraid that I can do nothing.”
“But if you don’t, she’ll die.”
Looking into Richard’s eyes, Nathan slowly nodded. “I know.”
General Meiffert appeared behind Nathan. “Lord Rahl.”
Both Nathan and Richard looked up.
He hesitated for an instant, looking between them both. “We have to do something before they can send more men through those tunnels. There’s no telling how many soldiers are still down there in the other halls and rooms, waiting to come up and renew the attack. We must act now.”
“Purge the tunnels,” Richard said, his own voice sounding hollow to him.
“What?” Nathan asked.
“Clear the corridors first—make sure there are no more Order soldiers up here. Then use wizard’s fire. Send it down through the catacombs. The catacombs are places of the dead. Purge them of the living.”
Nathan nodded. “I’ll see to it at once.”
As he stood, Richard, tightly gripping Nicci’s hand, looked up at the tall wizard. “Nathan, there has to be something you can do.”
“I can keep any more of them from getting through.”
“I mean for Nicci. What can we do to help her?”
From the desolate depths of his own inner torment, Nathan gazed down at Richard. “Stay with her, Richard. Be with her until she’s gone. Don’t let her be alone in the last moments. That’s all you can do now.”
With a flourish of his cape he turned and rushed after General Meiffert.
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