Warheart

CHAPTER 18

Kahlan flinched when Nicci suddenly gasped and opened her eyes. Red flinched as well and jerked her fingers back from where they had been resting on Nicci’s shoulders.

The sorceress’s face looked gray in the candlelight. Her hands trembled. Her beautiful features reflected the anguish of what she had just experienced. The witch woman, while not as ashen as Nicci, looked gravely troubled.

Kahlan hadn’t been able to see what Nicci was seeing beyond the veil, but she felt some of it, even if distantly, and she could read the tension of Nicci’s face as tears ran down her cheeks. It was clear that it had been a profoundly difficult journey. What Kahlan most wanted to know, though, was if it had been successful. Nicci gave no clue.

The terrible, inky darkness surrounded them, isolating them inside the circle of light from the candles set out at the points of the Grace. The darkness also shut away the sounds of the world of life around them.

As that darkness gradually began to recede, Kahlan could begin to make out the walls of the room. She saw the window materialize. She could also begin to hear distant sounds.

As the darkness receded, taking the underworld with it, she was finally able to see the bed again. She stood in a rush and carefully stepped over the lines drawn with her blood to get out of the Grace. Once free of it and past the candles, she rushed to the bed and put a knee up beside Richard, leaning over him, looking for a sign, looking for life, expecting–hoping–to see him smile up at her.

His lifeless hands still gripped the sword. He had not drawn a breath. Kahlan had been sure that Nicci would have been able to do something and that now Richard would at last draw a breath. She had hoped against hope that he would somehow return to life, return to her.

She had hoped to see his eyes open to look at her.

Instead, he remained as dead and still as he had been before.

Nothing had changed.

Kahlan laid her fingers tenderly over his big hand. There was no warmth of life in it. His eyes were still closed, closed to the world of life. His soul had not returned from exile to his worldly form.

“Dear spirits,” she whispered, “why haven’t you sent him back to us?” She felt a tear run down her cheek. “Dear spirits, I need him. We all need him.”

She remembered the dark ones enveloping him with clawed arms and black wings. She remembered the terrible sight of him being smothered by those inky demons and taken down into the darkness.

Nicci joined her to stand beside the bed. “Kahlan … I’m sorry.”

Kahlan wiped a tear from her cheek. “Why didn’t it work?”

The witch woman hurried to join Nicci, looking exhausted and confused. “What happened?”

The sorceress shook her head. “It’s hard to explain.” She glanced back over her shoulder at Red. “With your help at least I was able to find Isidore and Naja. They were able to find Richard.”

Kahlan grabbed Nicci’s arm. “You found Richard?”

Nicci nodded. “The dark ones had him, just as you said. Zedd and a great many others came to help us. There was a battle among spirits. Zedd helped us free Richard from the dark ones. Because he was there, we won the battle.”

“Then why isn’t Richard back?” Kahlan asked, trying to control her voice as well as her pounding heart.

She couldn’t help thinking of the wood stacked in a funeral pyre down in the citadel square, waiting for Richard if this last hope didn’t work. The terror of having to consign him to the flames was returning. She couldn’t go on living if that was going to be his fate. She didn’t want to live without him.

Nicci’s gaze left Kahlan’s. “There is more to it. They couldn’t send him back. They said–”

When she heard a distant scream, Kahlan turned away from the bed to stare at the closed doors. It was the kind of scream that sent a chill up her spine and made the fine hairs at the back of her neck stand on end.

Red’s eyes were closed, as if she was consulting an inner voice. “They come.”

Both Kahlan and Nicci turned to the witch woman.

Kahlan frowned. “Who? Who comes?”

“The ones who never sleep. The ones who walk like men,” the witch woman said. Her blue eyes opened. “They are close.”

Kahlan was about to ask what she was talking about when beyond the door more screams ripped the night. They were a lot closer. She heard heavy thuds and then the sound of furniture breaking.

Nicci grabbed their arms and pulled them both back toward the Grace just as the doors exploded inward, banging back against the wall and barely hanging by their hinges. A shower of splintered woodwork filled the room.

A roar came from out in the hall and then a man lurched into the room. In the soft candlelight Kahlan could see half a dozen broken spears jutting from the man’s chest and back, along with a cluster of knives and several broken sword blades that had completely penetrated his body. There was no blood.

The eyes of the man glowed crimson in the near darkness, as if lit by the fires of the underworld. The torn, withered skin of his face hung down in places. Teeth showed through holes in the dried flesh of his cheeks. His clothes looked like the dirt in which he had long ago been buried. A fine net of tree roots had grown into his clothes, and some of the bigger roots had even grown through his wrist. Maggots wriggled in open wounds of his abdomen. Ribs showed through splits in his rotted shirt.

The gagging stench of death the man brought with him filled the room.

This was probably one of the dead summoned from his grave by Sulachan’s minions. Occult powers, rather than life, gave him purpose and strength.

The three women backed away, keeping out of his reach. The dead man, one ankle broken so that his foot lay completely over to one side, staggered forward as he roared at them. His eyes glowed with hatred and fury.

A soldier raced in and with all his strength drove a spear through the dead man. Kahlan heard it splinter bone, but it had no more effect than the other weapons stuck through the man.

Another brawny soldier leaped onto the dead man’s back, trying to wrestle him to the ground. The raging corpse seized the soldier by an arm and whipped him around as if he were but a child. A desiccated arm lashed around with impossible speed, ripping open the soldier’s chest. An arc of blood splashed across the wall. The soldier dropped in a lifeless heap against the wall. The other soldier ducked back through the door so as to not be caught by the man’s arm.

Just as the invader turned back to them, Nicci threw a fist of air at the man. It knocked him back toward the door. He spread his arms, grabbing the wall at the sides to keep from falling through the splintered doorway. From behind, out in the hallway, Laurin rammed her Agiel into the small of his back. Even though her Agiel didn’t work, he roared and spun, backhanding her hard enough to send her flying. She hit the wall and slid down into an unconscious heap.

A soldier stabbed his sword through the dead man’s chest, but it did no more than the collection of steel already there. Another soldier swung, trying to hack off an arm, but with the dead man’s otherworldly strength he effortlessly deflected the strike. The soldiers kept coming but the dead man knocked them back or took them down as fast as they came. The risen dead were not easily stopped by worldly weapons.

Before more of them could join the battle, the soldiers were set upon from behind by howling hordes of half people racing up the hall. The soldiers were forced to turn to meet the new attack.

Kahlan looked across the room to Richard’s sword lying along the length of his body. His hands around the hilt were still where she had placed them. That sword could stop these dead men driven by occult magic. She just needed to get to it.

Before she could try to get across the room to grab the sword, the dead man lurched farther into the room, blocking her from getting to Richard. In the gloom, the glowing red eyes looked all the more menacing as they tracked her dodging first left, then right.

Before Kahlan could try to dart around the growling dead man, Nicci pulled her and the witch woman farther back, dragging them both over the lines of the Grace, until the three of them stood in the center beside the drop of Richard’s blood. Nicci apparently hoped the Grace would be protection from such otherworldly forces.

They stood close together as the man came to a stop on the other side of the candles. He looked unsure what to do and reluctant to step into the Grace to get at them.

Kahlan wondered how long his reluctance would last. She eyed the sword across the room even though she knew that she had little chance to make it. The dead man would likely snatch her in an instant.

But she also knew that the sword could stop the threat.

Out in the hall a battle raged. Kahlan caught glimpses of half people racing toward the bedroom only to be slaughtered by soldiers of the First File. Other soldiers were dragged down by half people as other men of the First File pulled them off. She saw flashes of the Mord-Sith’s red leather as well.

Just as Kahlan was about to again try to make it to the sword, another dead man, this one bigger, stepped through the splintered doorway and into the bedroom. He was more decomposed than the first and smelled even worse. Flaps of dried skin with hair attached hung down over an ear. One arm didn’t work right. Even so, he moved well enough. Like the first, his glowing red eyes appraised the room, the bed with Richard on it, and the three women standing in the center of the Grace.

Several soldiers charged in, hacking wildly at the intruders, trying to take them down. It was futile. Their weapons chopped off bits of the dried bodies, but did little to stop the dead men. With a mighty swipe of his one good arm, the dead man knocked down several soldiers.

“We have no power to stop them,” Red whispered even as her hands turned, trying to work some kind of witch-woman magic. Whatever it was she was doing, none of it was working.

Nicci again threw fists of air that staggered the first of the dead men back. The second man ducked to the side so that Nicci’s next attempt blew out the edge of the doorway, sending chunks of wood flying.

“Are we safe in the Grace?” Kahlan asked.

Almost as if to answer, one of the two dead men charged across the room. He lunged, swinging an arm like a big hook, trying to snag one of the women as they stepped back just in time. He no longer seemed concerned by the lines of the Grace drawn in blood and stepped right into the midst of it.

When he took another step forward, the three of them split up and went in three different directions. Nicci moved around to the side of the man, hammering him with fists of air. It wasn’t enough to stop him, but it distracted him, keeping his attention. When she hit him again in quick succession it knocked the man sideways. Because of his broken ankle he stumbled, but caught himself on the windowsill.

As soon as he was at the window, Nicci conjured a ball of wizard’s fire between her palms. It lit the room with harsh yellow-orange light as it ignited into being. The sphere of liquid flame tumbled and rolled obediently between her hands, hissing and bubbling with need.

Almost as soon as she had created it, Nicci cast it out. The lethal inferno howled as it raced across the bedroom, lighting everything in blinding yellow-orange light. It hit the man with a thud that Kahlan could feel in her chest.

The liquid flame exploded against the dead man, enveloping him in a sticky, white-hot blaze. The man erupted in flames that rolled up the wall and billowed across the ceiling.

Before it could set the entire room on fire, Nicci threw yet more fists of air, but this time the man, frantically concerned with the impossible effort of putting out the flames, didn’t see it coming. The compressed wall of air hit him hard. With a whoosh of swirling flame it knocked the dead man through the window. His burning body tumbled out and fell through the night, lighting the walls of the citadel. Kahlan heard the thud when he hit the ground.

Fire was one of the few ways to stop the walking dead men. As they turned back to the other one, yet another had joined him, so there were again two in the room, stalking the three women.

Kahlan knew that Nicci couldn’t do the same thing with the other two unless she also got them near the window. If not done carefully, as she had done with the first man, wizard’s fire unleashed inside the room could easily trap them in a burning inferno. It could set the whole place on fire and kill countless soldiers as well.

The sorceress lifted her hands and recalled the power from the wizard’s fire she had unleashed. With another gesture she extinguished the burning tapestry before it was too late.

“You were lucky with that other one and knocked him out the window,” Kahlan told the sorceress. “Be careful or you will catch the bed on fire. We might be able to run, but Richard can’t.”

It would be all too easy to accidentally turn the bed into Richard’s funeral pyre. It wouldn’t take much for it to go up in flames.

Kahlan danced one way and then the other, trying to get past the growling predators. She needed to get to the sword. Either one or the other of the two dead men matched every move she made, blocking her from getting to the sword. At the same time as they blocked her, they were advancing, moving the three women back toward a corner.

Out in the hallways Kahlan could see that a full-blown battle had erupted.

Half people howled as they attacked, and screamed as they were cut. Soldiers savagely fought the flood of half-naked bodies racing up the hallway.