Temple of the Winds

Chapter 11

On her way down, Nadine swung the torch and caught Marlin square across the bridge of his nose. He let go of her as he madly groped to wipe the burning pitch from his eyes. The current swept him away.

Kahlan gripped Nadine’s arm, still holding the torch above the water, and helped her back up on the stepping stone for a second time. They flattened themselves against the wall, gulping air and shaking in shock. “Well,” Kahlan said at last, “at least we know which way he went.”

Nadine was shivering violently from her second dunking. Her hair was plastered to her head and neck. “I can’t swim. Now I know why I never wanted to learn. I don’t like it.”

Kahlan smiled to herself. The woman had more pluck than she would have thought. Her smile wilted when she remembered why Nadine was there, and who had sent her.

Kahlan realized that in the surprise of the ambush she had missed her chance to get Jagang. “Let me go first.”

Nadine held the torch up with both hands. Kahlan put her arms around Nadine’s waist as they twisted around on tiptoes to change places on the stone. The woman was as cold as a fish in winter. Kahlan wasn’t much warmer from being in the frigid tunnels with the icy water lapping around her ankles. Her toes were numb.

“What if he swims upstream and escapes?” Nadine asked, her teeth chattering.

“I don’t think that likely, with only one arm. He was probably holding a stone, keeping just his face above the surface as he lurked in the water, waiting for us.”

“And what if he does it again?”

“I’m in front now. It will be me he grabs hold of, and that will be the last mistake he makes.”

“And what if he waits until you pass, and pops up and grabs me again?”

“Then hit him harder the next time.”

“I hit him as hard as I could!”

Kahlan smiled and gave Nadine a reassuring squeeze on her arm. “I know you did. You did the right thing. You did well.”

They inched along the wall, passing several more gentle turns, watching the water the whole time for Marlin’s face peering up at them. Both started at things they saw in the water, but it always turned out to be nothing more than pieces of flotsam.

The torch was sputtering more, and looked to be near its end. The drains all led outside, and they had traveled a goodly distance in this one. Kahlan knew that the tunnel must end soon. She realized the thought was more hope than knowledge; as a girl she had explored the tunnels and drains down here, though not when they had been so swollen with run-off, and although she had a good idea of where she was, she didn’t know their exact location. She remembered that some drainage tunnels seemed to go on forever.

As they moved along, the sound of the roaring water seemed to change pitch. Kahlan wasn’t sure what that meant. Ahead, the tunnel bent to the right.

A thump that she could feel in her chest more than hear made her stop. She held out a hand, not only to halt Nadine, but to signal silence.

The wet stone of the walls ahead brightened, glistening with a reflected bluish glow from something beyond the bend. A low howl rose in pitch until they could hear it clearly over the rush of the water.

A boiling ball of flame exploded from around the bend. Raging yellow and blue flame, filling the entire tunnel, tumbled as it raced toward them with a wail. Liquid fire seething with all-consuming menace. Wizard’s fire.

Kahlan snatched Nadine by the hair. “Hold your breath!” Pulling Nadine with her, Kahlan dived into the water just ahead of the angry fury of roiling flame. The icy water was such a shock that she almost gasped it in.

Under the churning water, it was difficult to tell up from down. Kahlan opened her eyes. She saw the wavering glow of the inferno overhead. Nadine was struggling to get to the surface. Kahlan jammed her left hand against the underside of a stepping stone to hold herself under, and with her good arm held Nadine under with her. Nadine, in the panic of drowning, fought to escape. Panic clawed at Kahlan, too.

When everything went black, Kahlan her lungs burning for air, thrust her head above the water, pulling Nadine up with her. Nadine choked and coughed as she gasped. Long sodden strands of hair covered both their faces. Another tumbling ball of wizard’s fire raced up the tunnel. “Get a big breath!” Kahlan screamed.

She sucked a deep breath herself and went under, dragging Nadine down with her. They went under without an instant to spare. Kahlan knew that, given a choice, Nadine would have chosen to die in the fire rather than drown, but the water was their only chance. Wizard’s fire burned with deadly determination, with the resolve of the wizard who conjured it.

They couldn’t keep doing this. The water was so cold she was shivering uncontrollably already. She knew that cold water, by itself, could kill a person. They couldn’t stay in the water: it would end up killing them as sure as the wizard’s fire. They couldn’t get to Jagang through Marlin’s wizard’s fire. If they were to reach him in time, there was only one way: they would have to go under the fire. Under the water. Kahlan repressed her panic at the thought of drowning, made sure she had a good grip around Nadine’s waist, and then pushed away from the stepping stone she had been gripping for dear life. The wet wrath of water swept them away in its frigid flux. She could feel herself tumbling under the water as she scraped and bumped along the stone. When her shoulder hit on something, she almost screamed, but the thought of losing her breath instantly locked her throat shut even tighter.

With frenzied need of air, and blackness disorienting her, she knew she had to come up. She was holding Nadine in a death grip with her good arm. With her other hand, she managed to hook a stone. With Nadine’s weight in addition to her own, it felt as if the rush of water would rip her arm from its socket.

When her head cleared the surface, there was light. Not twenty feet away was a stone lattice. Late afternoon light poured in through the openings above the water level.

As Kahlan pulled Nadine’s head above the water, she clamped a hand over the woman’s mouth.

On one of the stepping stones to the side, near the stone grate, facing away, stood Marlin.

Kahlan could see the broken shafts of least a half dozen arrows sticking from his back. By the way Marlin was staggering as he stepped to the next stone, she knew he couldn’t live much longer.

The stump of his left arm wasn’t bleeding. If only she could count on him dying before he reached the Keep. Jagang was obviously driving the wounded man relentlessly onward. She had no idea what Jagang was capable of, in controlling the man’s mind, to keep him alive and moving. He had no concern for the life he occupied, and she knew he would be willing to let Marlin suffer any damage to accomplish Jagang’s wishes.

Marlin lifted a hand, fingers spread, toward the stone grate. Kahlan had grown up around wizards; Marlin was conjuring air. A section of the lattice grate exploded outward in a cloud of dust and stone fragments. More light poured in through the blasted opening.

The suddenly wider spillway let the water flood out with yet greater force. Kahlan’s injured arm had no strength, and the mounting might of the discharge tore her away from the stone step. She lost her grip on Nadine.

In the powerful clutch of the water, Kahlan grasped frantically for a handhold, but found none. She twisted and tumbled under the water, trying with her arms and legs to grapple something. She hadn’t had a chance to get a good breath, and she struggled, too, to fight her terror at her exigent need for air.

Her fingers caught the sharp stone at the edge of the blasted hole. The water sucked her under and jammed her hard against the lower part of the grate. She could only force her head and part of one shoulder above the surface. It seemed she was breathing more water than air.

Kahlan looked up. Jagang’s wicked smile greeted her. He was only a few feet away.

The force of the water ramming against her crushed her tight to the broken grate. She didn’t have the muscle to overcome the pounding weight of the water. Try as she might, she couldn’t get to him. It was all she could do to get a breath.

She glanced over her shoulder. What she saw took the breath for which she had fought so hard. They were on the east side of the palace—the high side of the foundation. The water roared out of the drainage gateway to plunge for a good fifty feet before crashing to the rocks below.

Jagang chuckled. “Well, well, darlin, how nice of you to drop by to witness my escape.”

“Where are you going, Jagang?” she managed.

“I thought I’d go up to the Keep.”

Kahlan gasped for air and caught a mouthful of water instead. She coughed and choked it out. “Why do you want to go to the Keep? What’s there that you want?”

“Darlin, you’re deluding yourself if you think I would reveal anything I don’t want you to know.”

“What did you do to Cara?”

He smiled but didn’t answer. He lifted Marlin’s hand. A blast of air shattered more of the grate to the side.

The stone she was holding gave way. Her back scraped over the broken edge. Kahlan snatched for a solid piece and just caught it with her fingers before she was ejected from the drain. When she looked down, she was looking at the rocks below the foundation. Water thundered above her.

She worked her fingers over the sharp stone, struggling desperately to pull herself back behind what was left of the grate. Panic powering her effort, she regained the inside of the stone lattice, but she couldn’t get away from it. The water kept her pinned.

“Problem, darlin?”

Kahlan wanted to scream at him, but she could only gasp for air as she fought to keep from being swept through the opening. Her arms burned with the effort. She could think of nothing to do to stop him. She thought of Richard.

Jagang lifted Marlin’s hand again, spreading his fingers.

Nadine popped up from the water right behind him. With one hand she held a stone step. In her other, she still gripped the dead torch. Looking as if she was at the ragged edge of madness, she took a mighty swing, clubbing him across the back of his knees.

Marlin’s legs folded under him and he toppled into the water right in front of Kahlan. He caught himself on the broker grate with his one hand. When he saw what waited outside, he frantically tried to push himself back. Apparently, he hadn’t anticipated that there might be no way down from the drain tunnel. Nadine clutched a stepping stone and held on for dear life. Kahlan reached behind with her injured arm, stuffed her left hand through a grate opening under the water, and made a fist to lodge it fast. With her other hand, she seized Marlin by the throat.

“Well, well,” she said through gritted teeth. “Look what I have here: the great and all-powerful Emperor Jagang.”

He grinned, showing broken teeth. “Actually, darlin,” he said in Jagang’s grating, impudent voice, “you have Marlin.”

She pulled herself close to his face. “Think so? Do you know that a Confessor’s magic works faster than thought? That’s why once we’re touching someone, they have no chance. None. The magic bond of my loyalty to Richard Rahl denies a dream walker access to my mind. Marlin’s mind is our field of battle now. Do you suppose that my magic might work faster than yours? What do you think? Do you think I can take you, along with Marlin?”

“Two minds at once?” he said with a smirk. “I don’t think so, darlin.”

“We’ll see. Maybe I’ll get you, too. Maybe we’ll end the war, and the Imperial Order, right here and now.”

“Oh, darlin, you are a fool. Man is destined to free his world from the shackles of magic. Even if you could kill me here and now, which you can’t, you will not end the Order. It will survive any one man, even me, because it is the struggle of all mankind to inherit our world.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that you don’t do this for yourself? For naked power?”

“Not at all. I relish rule. But I simply ride a horse already in full charge. It will run you down. You are a fool who follows the dying religion of magic.”

“A fool who has you by the throat—the great Jagang, who professes to want man to triumph over magic, yet uses magic!”

“For now. But when magic dies, I will be the one with the daring, and the muscle, to rule—without magic.”

Fury erupted through Kahlan. This was the man who had ordered the deaths of thousands of innocent people. This was the butcher of Ebinissia. This was the man who would enslave the world. This was the man who wanted to kill Richard.

In the silence of her mind, in the core of her power, where there was no cold, no exhaustion, no fear, she had all the time in the world. Though he made no attempt to escape, even if he had, it would have been hopeless. He was hers. Kahlan did as she had done countless times before—she released her restraint. For an imperceptible twitch of time, something was different. There was resistance where there had been none before. A wall. Like hot steel through glass, her power crashed through it. The magic exploded through Marlin’s mind. Thunder without sound.

Stone chips fell from the ceiling at the concussion. Water droplets danced. Despite the water’s rush, a ring of ripples raced outward around the two of them, driving a wall of mist and dust.

Nadine, clinging to the stepping stone, cried out in the pain of being so close to a Confessor’s power unleashed.

Marlin’s mouth went slack. Once a person’s mind had been destroyed by a Confessor, they became a vessel needing her command. Marlin offered no such abdication.

Blood streamed from his ears and nose. His head lolled to the side in the rushing torrent. His dead eyes started.

Kahlan released her grip of his throat when his hand went slack on the grate and the water tore him away. Marlin’s body tumbled out through the broken stone lattice and plummeted to the rocks below.

Kahlan knew: she had almost had Jagang, but she failed. His thoughts, his ability as a dream walker, had been too fast for her Confessor’s magic to catch. Nadine was reaching toward her. “Grab my hand! I can’t hold on forever!” Kahlan locked wrists with her. Using her power drained a Confessor of strength. After using her magic, it took even Kahlan, the Mother Confessor, and perhaps the strongest Confessor ever born, several hours before she could use her power again, but longer than that to fully recover her strength. She was exhausted, and couldn’t fight the torrent any longer. Without Nadine’s hold on her, she would have gone over the edge, too.

With Nadine’s help, Kahlan managed to regain the stepping stones. Shivering with the cold, they both dragged themselves up.

Nadine wept at the crest of terror that had passed and had almost taken them. Kahlan was too exhausted to weep, but she knew how Nadine felt. “I wasn’t touching him, when you used magic, but I thought every one of my joints had popped apart. It didn’t . . . do anything to me, did it? Anything magic? Am I going to die, too?”

“No, you’re fine,” Kahlan assured her. “You simply felt the pain because you were too close, that’s all. If you had been touching him, though, it would have been inconceivably worse—you would have been destroyed.”

Nadine nodded in mute reply. Kahlan put an arm around her and whispered a thank you in her ear. Nadine smiled the tears away. “We have to get back to Cara.” Kahlan said. “We have to hurry.”

“How? The torch is gone. There’s no way down the outside, and as soon as we try to go back, it will be pitch black. I don’t want to go back there in the dark. It’s impossible until the soldiers come with torches to light our way.”

“Nothing is impossible,” Kahlan said wearily. “We took every turn to the right, so we have only to put a hand on the left wall and follow it to find our way back.”

Nadine threw her hand out, pointing back into the blackness. “That may be all fine and good in the halls, but when we came into this drainage tunnel, we crossed over to the other side. There aren’t steps on that side. We’ll never find the opening.”

“The water rushing over the step stone in the center of the tunnel had a different sound. Didn’t you notice? I’ll remember it.” Kahlan took Nadine’s hand to give her encouragement. “We have to try. Cara needs help.”

Nadine stared in wordless worry for a moment, and then said, “All right, but wait a moment.”

She tore a strip from the shredded hem of Kahlan’s dress and wound it around Kahlan’s upper arm, closing the wound as best she could. Kahlan winced when Nadine drew the knot tight.

“Let’s go,” Nadine said. “But be careful until I can sew it closed and put a poultice on it.”