Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

Chapter 46

Exhausted, Kahlan was about ready to fall off the back of the big horse. She could tell by its uneven stride that the lathered horse, too, was ready to drop. Her rescuer, though, appeared determined to ride the horse to death.

“The horse is not going to last at this pace. Don’t you think we should stop?”

“No,” he said back over his shoulder.

In the faint light of false dawn, Kahlan could at last see the black shapes of a few trees beginning to appear. It was a relief to know that they would soon be free of the open Azrith Plain. Out on the plain, once the sun was up, they could be spotted for miles from any direction. She didn’t know if they were being followed, but even if they weren’t there were liable to be patrols that could easily catch sight of them.

She really didn’t think, though, that Jagang was simply going to allow her to race away without sending special soldiers to hunt her down. He had some grand plan that involved extracting revenge, and he was not simply going to give up on that plan. As soon as the Sisters healed the emperor, he would no doubt be in an ugly mood and determined to do whatever he had to do in order to get her back. Jagang was not a man who tolerated being denied what he wanted.

No doubt the Sisters would be coming after her as well. For all Kahlan knew it was possible they were already on her heels. Even without being able to spot her and Samuel the Sisters could probably use their powers to follow Kahlan’s trail.

Perhaps Samuel was wise not to stop.

But if they killed the horse, that would only put them in worse peril.

She wished they could have gotten another horse. It wouldn’t have been all that difficult, as far as Kahlan was concerned. She was, after all, invisible to almost all the men in the camp. She could have slipped down off the horse when they’d ridden near others and collected one. Samuel was dressed as one of them—that was how he’d gotten through the camp in the first place. No one would have raised an eyebrow if he had stopped, and they couldn’t see Kahlan. She could have gotten another horse. For that matter she could easily have collected some spare mounts so that they could have rotated and had fresher animals to carry them away all the faster.

Samuel, though, had been adamant that she not even attempt such a thing. He thought the risk was too great. He feared that they would be throwing away their best chance to escape.

Considering what had been at risk, she supposed that she couldn’t blame him for wanting to get away as fast as possible.

She wondered why she wasn’t invisible to Samuel. Like Richard, he appeared to have come to the camp specifically with the intention of helping her to escape.

Kahlan felt sick that Richard hadn’t been able to get away as well. The memory of seeing him there, on the ground, not only haunted her, but broke her heart. She felt ashamed that she hadn’t stayed and helped him. Even now, as frightening as the thought was, she felt the urge to go back. Being invisible, she might be able to do something. She desperately wanted to try.

And it wasn’t only Richard whom Kahlan was sick about leaving, it was Nicci and Jillian as well. Nicci had already been through so much and now it was probably only going to go worse for her, if that was even possible. Jagang had also threatened to hurt Jillian if Kahlan ever again caused him trouble or disobeyed his orders. She hoped that, without her there for Jagang to torment, hurting Jillian would be pointless.

As much as she wished she would have stayed and helped them, there was just something about Richard’s command for Kahlan to leave that moved her to do as he said. It was as if he had given up everything to see her get away, and if she threw away the chance he had bought with his life it would have made everything he’d done all go for nothing. It would have rendered everything he’d sacrificed meaningless.

She couldn’t remember ever being so torn over anything.

Kahlan knew that the Sister would not have treated him well. The soldiers, too, would have been all too eager for his blood. She wondered if he was already dead . . . or being tortured.

Tears ran down her cheeks as they rode.

She couldn’t put her thoughts of him out of her mind, and she couldn’t stop her tears as long as she thought about him. She simply couldn’t get that image of Richard there on the ground, helpless, out of her mind.

What made it even worse was that she had been so close to having answers. She knew that Richard would have been able to fill in many of the blanks. He seemed to know so much about her. He even seemed to know about Samuel and the magnificent sword that Samuel carried. She remembered Richard yelling at Samuel.

“Samuel, you idiot! Use the sword to cut the collar off her neck.”

Those words still rang in Kahlan’s memory.

No sword could cut through metal. But Richard knew that the sword Samuel had could.

More than that, though, it told Kahlan what Richard thought of Samuel. It also told her that even with as little as Richard thought of the man, he wanted to see her safe badly enough that he was even willing to let it be Samuel who helped get her away.

“What do you know about Richard?” she asked.

Samuel rode in silence for a moment. Finally he answered.

“Richard is a thief. Someone not to be trusted for any reason. He hurts people.”

“How did you know him,” she asked the man she had her arms around.

He half looked back over his shoulder. “Now is not the time to discuss it, pretty lady.”

Richard, flanked by Mord-Sith, Ulic and Egan, and men of the First File, hurried toward the tomb room that had been the breach into the palace from the catacombs beneath.

Nicci was at his side. Despite the fact that she was far from recovered, she insisted that she be there close to him. Richard knew that she was worried about the beast returning and that the next time he might not be able to stop it without her help. She wanted to be near in order to provide that help if need be. Cara, despite her concern for Nicci, had been won over by Nicci’s argument for Richard’s safety. Nicci had promised that as soon as Richard saw to this, she would rest. Richard thought that her promises to rest would soon be irrelevant because he expected that she very well might collapse.

As they moved onward through the broad corridors, they passed countless burned corpses frozen in grotesque poses. The white marble walls bore scorch marks where men, on fire, had crashed blindly into them and left their impression. Those sooty silhouettes looked a little like manifestations of ghosts, except for the smears of blood that stood as mute evidence that it had been men who had made the marks, not apparitions.

In the rooms and passageways to the sides Richard saw yet more dead Imperial Order soldiers. They had been using the blocked-off corridors as hidden staging areas.

“You kept your promise,” Nicci said in a tired tone of not simply gratitude but amazement.

“My promise?”

She smiled through her crippling weariness. “You promised that you would get that thing off my neck. When you said it I never believed you. I couldn’t answer, but I never believed you could do it.”

“Lord Rahl always keeps his promises,” Berdine said.

Nicci smiled as best she could. “I guess he does.”

Nathan spotted them all making their way down the corridor so he stopped at an intersection and waited for them to catch up. He had been coming from a hallway to the right.

Astonishment overcame him. “Nicci! What happened?”

“Richard’s gift returned. He was able to get the collar off my neck.”

“And then a beast appeared,” Cara added.

Nathan’s brow drew tight as he peered at Richard. “The beast that’s after you? What happened to it, then?”

“Lord Rahl shot it,” Berdine said. “Those special bolts for the crossbows that you found worked.”

“This time,” Nicci said under her breath.

“I’m relieved they ended up being of use,” Nathan said as he laid a hand on Nicci’s head. “I had thought they might,” he mumbled absently as his thumb lifted Nicci’s eyelid. As he looked closely into her eye he made a sound in his throat that said he wasn’t entirely pleased by what he saw there. “You need to rest,” he finally announced.

“I know. I will, soon.”

“What about all the corridors down here?” Richard asked Nathan.

“We’ve just finished clearing them all. Found quite a few Order soldiers trying to hide. Fortunately, the area they had blocked off with the slab of stone had no other way up into the palace. It was a dead end.”

“That’s a relief,” Richard said.

One of the officers of the First File leaned out past Nathan. “We eliminated them all. Fortunately they hadn’t yet gotten vast numbers up into the palace. We’ve cleared everything all the way to the tomb room where they got in. We have men there, waiting for us.”

“I was just about to do as you suggested,” Nathan said, “and purge the catacombs of any more of them.”

“Then we need to collapse some tunnels, or something, to make sure that no one else can get in.” Richard knew that enemy soldiers were not their biggest worry. Sisters of the Dark getting into the palace could be far worse.

“I’m not sure that’s possible,” Nicci said.

Richard glanced over at her. “Why not?”

“Because we don’t know how extensive the catacombs actually are. We can shut off the place where they got in, but they very well might find another passageway that we’re unaware of in a completely different area. There could be miles and miles of tunnels down there. The whole network down there is not just vast but a complete unknown.”

Richard sighed. “We need to think of something.”

No one spoke up to argue.

As they made their way through the white marble corridor Nicci glanced over at Richard with a look that he recognized. It was the look of a disapproving teacher.

“We need to talk about those symbols in red paint all over you.”

“Yes,” Nathan said with a frown. “I would like to be a part of that conversation.”

Richard cast a look Nicci’s way. “Good. While we’re having those discussions, I’d like to hear all about how you put the boxes of Orden in play in my name.”

Nicci winced just a little. “Oh, that.”

Richard leaned toward her a little. “Yes, that.”

“Well, like you said, we’ll have to talk about it. As a matter of fact, some of those symbols painted on you have a direct bearing on the boxes of Orden.”

Richard wasn’t at all surprised by that. He knew that some of the symbols had to do with the power of Orden. He even knew what they meant. That was, after all, why he had painted them on his men and on himself in the first place.

Nicci pointed. “Here it is. This is where they got in—in that tomb.”

Richard gazed around as they entered the rather simple room. Words in High D’Haran were inscribed in the stone walls, words about those long buried. The casket had been pushed aside, exposing the stairway down. When they had rushed up, getting back into the palace from the catacombs, it had been pitch black, so Richard hadn’t seen their surroundings. Adie had been leading them in total darkness. Richard hadn’t even known where they were once they’d gotten back in the palace.

Nicci gestured down into the darkness. “This is where the Sisters first got in.”

“So they still have Ann, then,” Nathan said after looking down the dark well.

Nicci hesitated. “I’m sorry, Nathan. I thought you knew.”

His frown darkened. “Knew what?”

She clasped her hands loosely before herself. Her gaze dropped away. “Ann was killed.”

Nathan stared for a moment. Richard hadn’t known about Ann’s death, either. He felt terrible for Nathan, for the shock of Nicci’s news. Richard knew how close the prophet was to the prelate. It almost seemed impossible that Ann was actually gone.

“How?” was all Nathan could ask.

“The last time I was here—when Ann and I came down here. We were surprised by three Sisters. They had linked their gift so that they would be able to use their power in here. Ann was killed before we even realized they were there. Jagang wanted me captured alive, or I’m sure they would have been only too happy to kill me, too.”

Nicci laid a hand lightly on the prophet’s arm. “She didn’t suffer, Nathan. I don’t think she was even aware of it as it happened. She died in an instant. She didn’t suffer.”

Nathan, staring off into distant memories, nodded.

Richard put a hand on Nathan’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

Nathan’s brow drew down with what looked to be dark thoughts. By the iron edge in his glare, Richard didn’t have any trouble imagining the kinds of things the prophet was contemplating. Richard thought they must be the same sorts of things he often contemplated.

In the awkward silence, Richard gestured down inside the exposed stairwell. “I think we need to insure that there are none of them hiding down there.”

“Gladly,” Nathan said.

Wizard’s fire ignited between his inward-turned palms. The angry ball of liquid flame began turning, throwing hot light around the room as it slowly rotated, waiting to do his bidding.

Nathan leaned over the dark opening and released the deadly inferno. It dropped away into the darkness, howling with fury as it went, lighting the carved stone walls along its swift flight.

“After it does its work,” Nathan said, “I’ll go down there and collapse the tunnel where they got in to make sure that at least they can’t get in that same place again.”

“I’ll help put up some shields of Subtractive Magic to insure they don’t just dig it out again,” Nicci offered.

Nathan nodded absently, lost in his own thoughts.

“Lord Rahl,” Cara asked in a low voice, “what is Benjamin doing here?”

Richard looked out into the corridor where the general stood, patiently waiting. “I don’t know. He hasn’t had time to tell me yet.”

Leaving Nathan to his private thoughts as he stared down into the catacombs, Richard, with Cara and Nicci at his side, stepped out of the room to a waiting General Meiffert.

“What are you doing here, Benjamin?” Cara asked before Richard had the chance. “I thought you were supposed to be in the Old World laying waste to the Order.”

“That’s right,” Richard said. “Not that I don’t appreciate the help, but why are you here? You said before that you needed to find me to give me a report about some kind of trouble you’ve run into.”

He pressed his lips tightly together for a moment. “That’s right, Lord Rahl. We’ve run into a big problem.”

“A big problem? What sort of big problem?”

“A red one. With wings. Ridden by a witch woman.”