Temple of the Winds

Chapter 12

They made excruciatingly slow process back up the drainage tunnel. The blind trek, groping along the cold, slimy stone, with the water coursing about their ankles, and the constant fear of falling into the raging water in the darkness, was at least devoid of the terror that Marlin might pop up, grab their legs, and pull them in. When Kahlan heard the sound of the water change, and its echo into the hall, she held Nadine’s hand and probed with a foot until she found the step stone across the channel.

Partway back through the dark labyrinth of tunnels and halls, the soldiers found them and led the way with torches. In a numb haze, Kahlan followed the wavering flames of the torches as they plunged ever onward into the black nothingness. It was an effort to put one foot in front of the other. Kahlan wished for nothing more than to lie down, even if it were on the cold, wet stone.

Outside the pit, the halls were crowded with hundreds of grim soldiers. Archers all had arrows nocked. Spears were at the ready, as were swords and axes. Other weapons, from the fight with Marlin, were still embedded in the stone. She doubted that anything short of magic would remove them. The dead and wounded had been cleared away, but blood boasted where they had lain. Screams were no longer coming from the pit.

Kahlan recognized Captain Harris, who had been up in Petitioners’ Hall earlier in the day. “Has anyone gone down there to help her, captain?”

“No, Mother Confessor.”

He didn’t even have the decency to look sheepish about it. D’Harans feared magic, and felt no loss of pride admitting it. Lord Rahl was the magic against magic; they were the steel against steel. It was as simple as that.

Kahlan couldn’t bring herself to reprimand the men in the hall for leaving Cara alone. They had shown their bravery in the fight with Marlin. Many of them had been killed or seriously injured. Going down into the pit was different from fighting something that came out; defending their selves was different, in their minds, from going out and looking for trouble with magic.

For their part of the bargain, the steel against steel, D’Haran soldiers fought to the death. They expected their Lord Rahl to do his part, and his part was dealing with magic.

Kahlan read the apprehension in all the waiting eyes. “The assassin, the man who escaped the pit, is dead. It’s over.”

Soft sighs of relief could be heard up and down the hall, but by the anxious expression still on the captain’s face, she knew she must look quite a mess. “I think we should get you some help, Mother Confessor.”

“Later.” Kahlan started for the ladder. Nadine followed. “How long has she been silent, captain?”

“Maybe an hour.”

“That was about when Marlin died. Come with us, and bring a couple more men so we can get Cara out of there.”

Cara was on the far side of the room, near the wall where Kahlan had seen her last. Kahlan knelt on one side, Nadine or the other, as the soldiers held torches so they could see.

Cara was in convulsions of some sort. Her eyes were closed, and she was no longer screaming, but she shook violently, her arms and legs thrashing against the stone floor.

She was choking on her own vomit.

Kahlan gripped the shoulder of Cara’s red leather and yanked her onto her side. “Open her mouth!”

Nadine leaned over from behind and pushed her thumb against the back of Cara’s jaw, forcing it forward. With her other hand, she pressed down on her chin, keeping her mouth open. Kahlan swept two fingers through Cara’s mouth several times until she had cleared her airway.

“Breathe!” Kahlan yelled. “Breathe, Cara, breathe!”

Nadine slapped the prone woman on the back, eliciting gurgling, wet, choking coughs that finally brought a semblance of clear, if gasping, breathing.

Although she was able to breathe, it didn’t halt the convulsions. Kahlan felt helpless.

“I better go get my things,” Nadine said.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“I don’t really know. A paroxysm of some sort. I’m no expert, but I think we need to stop it. I might be able to help. I might have something in my bag.”

“You two, go show her the way. Leave a torch.”

Nadine and the two soldiers raced up the ladder after one of them shoved a torch in a bracket on the wall.

“Mother Confessor,” Captain Harris said, “just a little while ago a Raug’Moss showed up in Petitioners’ Hall.”

“A what?”

“A Raug’Moss. From D’Hara.”

“I don’t know much about D’Hara. Who are they?”

“They’re a secret sect. I don’t know much about them myself. The Raug’Moss keep to themselves, and are rarely seen—”

“Get to the point. What’s he doing here?”

“This one is the Raug’Moss High Priest himself. The Raug’Moss are healers. He says he sensed that a new Lord Rahl had become Master of D’Hara, and he came to offer his services to his new master.”

“A healer? Well, don’t just stand there—go get him. Maybe he can help. Hurry.” Captain Harris clapped a fist to his head before racing up the ladder. Kahlan pulled Cara’s shoulders and head into her lap and held her tight, trying to calm her convulsions. Kahlan didn’t know what else to do. She knew a lot about hurting people, but little about healing them. She was so sick of hurting people. She wished she knew more about helping people. Like Nadine.

“Hold on, Cara,” she whispered as she rocked the shaking woman. “Help is coming. Hold on.”

Kahlan’s eyes were drawn to the top of the opposite wall. The words incised in the stone stared back. She knew nearly every language in the Midlands, all Confessors did, but she knew nothing about High D’Haran. High D’Haran was a dead language; few people knew the ancient tongue.

Richard was learning High D’Haran. He and Berdine worked together translating the journal they had found in the Keep—Kolo’s journal, they called it—which had been written in High D’Haran, in the great war three thousand years before. Richard would be able to translate the prophecy on the wall.

She wished he couldn’t. She didn’t want to know what it said. Prophecy was never anything but trouble.

She didn’t want to believe that Jagang had unleashed some unknown festering plague of torment on them, but she couldn’t find a good reason to doubt his word.

She pressed her cheek to the top of Cara’s head and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see the prophecy. She wanted it gone.

Kahlan felt tears running down her face. She didn’t want Cara to die. She didn’t know why she should feel so much for his woman, except perhaps because no one else did. The soldiers wouldn’t even come down to see why she had stopped screaming. She could have choked to death on her own vomit. Something as simple as that, not magic, could have killed her because they were afraid, or perhaps because no one cared if she died.

“Hold on, Cara. I care.” She smoothed the Mord-Sith’s hair back from her clammy forehead. “I care. We want you to live.”

Kahlan squeezed the quaking women, as if trying to squeeze her words, her concern, into her. It occurred to her that Cara wasn’t so different from herself; Cara was trained to hurt people.

When it all came down to it, Kahlan was much the same. She used her power to destroy a person’s mind. She knew that she was doing it to save others, but it was still hurting people. Mord-Sith hurt people, but to them, it was to help their master, to preserve his life, and that in turn was to save the lives of the D’Haran people.

Dear spirits, was she no more than this Mord-Sith she was trying to bring back from madness?

Kahlan could feel the Agiel hanging around her neck pressing against her chest as she held Cara. Was she a sister of the Agiel in more ways than one?

If Nadine had been killed in the beginning, would she have cared? Nadine helped people; she didn’t make a life of hurting them. No wonder Richard had been attracted to her.

She wiped her cheek as the tears ran more freely.

Her shoulder throbbed. She hurt all over. She wanted Richard to hold her. She knew he was going to be angry, but she needed him so badly at that moment. It was hurting her shoulder to hold the trembling woman in her lap, but she refused to let go. “Hold on, Cara. You’re not alone; I’m with you. I won’t leave you. I promise.”

“Is she any better?” Nadine asked, as she scurried down the ladder.

“No. She’s still unconscious and shaking like before.”

As she knelt, Nadine let her bag drop to the floor beside Kahlan. Things inside banged together with muffled sounds.

“I told those men to wait up there. We don’t want to move her until we can bring her out of it, and they’ll just be in the way.”

Nadine started pulling things out of her bag, little folded cloth packages, leather pouches with markings scratched on them, and stoppered horn containers, likewise scratched with symbols. She briefly inspected the markings before setting each item aside.

“Blue cohosh,” she mumbled to herself as she squinted at the cryptic marks on one of the leather pouches. “No, I don’t think it would do, and she’d have to drink cups of it.” She took out several more leather pouches, before pausing at another. “Pearly everlasting. Might work, but we’d have to get her to smoke it, somehow.” She sighed irritably. “That won’t do.” She considered a horn. “Mugwort,” she muttered as she set it aside. “Feverfew?” She put that horn in the damp sling of her dress in her lap. “Yes, betony might be of some good, too,” she said as she considered another. She added the horn to her lap.

Kahlan picked up one of the horns Nadine had set aside and pulled its cork. The pungent smell of anise made her pull back. She pushed the cork back in and set it down.

She picked up another. Two circles were deeply scratched into the patina of the horn. A horizontal line ran through both circles. Kahlan wiggled the carefully carved wooden stopper, trying to pull it free.

Nadine slapped the horn out of Kahlan’s hands. “Don’t!”

Kahlan looked up in surprise. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snoop in your things. I was—”

“No, it’s not that.” She picked up the horn with the two circles struck through with a line and held it up. “This is powdered canin pepper. If you aren’t careful when you open it, you could get it on your hands, or worse, in your face. It’s a powerful substance that will immobilize a person for a time. If you had opened it carelessly, you would have been on the floor, blind and gasping for air, convinced you were about to die.

“I thought about using it on Cara, to stop her shaking by paralyzing her, but I decided it best not to. It immobilizes a person partly by interfering with their breathing. It feels like it’s burning your eyes out of your head; it blinds you. Your nose feels on fire, you’re sure your heart is going to burst, and you can’t get your breath. You’re helpless. Trying to wash it off only makes it worse, because the powder is oily and just spreads.

“It doesn’t cause any real harm, and you’d recover completely in a short time, but until then, you’re disabled and totally helpless. I don’t think immobilizing Cara in that fashion would be good, since she’s already having trouble breathing. In her state, it might make her worse, instead of helping her.”

“Do you know what to do, to help her? You do know what to do, don’t you?” Kahlan asked, trying not to sound critical.

Nadine’s hand paused on the edge of her bag. “Well, I . . . I think I do. It’s not so common a problem that I’m sure, but I’ve heard of it. My father has mentioned it in passing.”

Kahlan wasn’t reassured. Nadine found a small bottle in her bag and held it up in the torchlight. She pulled the cork and turned the bottle upside down on a finger. “Hold her head up.”

“What is it?” Kahlan asked as she turned Cara over. She watched Nadine rub the substance on Cara’s temples. “Oil of lavender. It helps with headaches.”

“I think she has more than a simple headache.”

“I know, but until I find something else, it might help ease the pain, and that might help calm her. I don’t think I have any one thing that by itself will do it. I’ll need to try to add things together.

“The problem is that with the convulsions we can’t get her to drink decoctions or teas. Motherwort and linden help calm people, but we can’t get her to drink a whole cup of it in water. Black horehound would help stop the vomiting, but she’d have to drink five cups a day. I don’t see how we can get her to drink the first until we stop the convulsions. Maybe we could get her to swallow some feverfew. But there is one thing I’m hoping . . .”

Nadine’s long, damp hair hung around her face as she pawed through her bag. She came up with another small, brown bottle. “Yes! I did bring it.”

“What is it?”

“Tincture of maypop. It’s a strong sedative and also a painkiller. I’ve heard my pa say that it settles people who are in a state of nervous shakes. I think he may have meant shakes like convulsions. Since it’s a tincture, we can put some on the back of her tongue; she’ll swallow it, that way.”

Cara shuddered violently in Kahlan’s arms. Kahlan embraced her tighter until she settled a bit. She didn’t know if she liked the idea of having to rely on Nadine’s “I think,” but Kahlan had no better solution. Something had to be done.

Nadine was working her thumbnail at the wax seal on the little brown bottle of tincture of maypop when the shaft of light coming from the doorway above darkened. Nadine’s hands stilled.

A motionless, silhouetted figure filled the doorway, seeming to consider them at length. With nary a flutter of his long cloak, he wheeled and started down the ladder. In the silence, but for the hissing torch, Kahlan absently stroked a protective hand over Cara’s brow as she watched the man in a hooded cloak descend the ladder.