Wasteland

18

Kahlan followed closely behind Richard as he moved quickly down the side hallway. Shale brought up the rear, watching over her shoulder so that they wouldn’t be surprised from behind. None of them said anything about it, but they were all worried about what could have caused the stone bridge to collapse. After all, it had been there since the palace had been built, and it certainly hadn’t looked like it was weak.

They were even more worried, though, about the Mord-Sith being separated from them. After all, Michec had separated Vika from them. The bridge giving way felt too much by design.

Despite being in a hurry, Richard stopped briefly at each room they encountered. Each time he took a glass light sphere from a nearby bracket and used it so he could quickly check inside the dark rooms. Most were empty. Several were not.

The first one they found that wasn’t empty had a mummified corpse of a man. Even though his clothes were covered with a thick layer of gray dust, they could still see that the dead man was wearing a fancy outfit. Under his embroidered coat there was a shirt with ruffles at the neck and cuffs, that Kahlan recognized as likely a sign of nobility. Expensive-looking rings were still on three of his fingers.

“Do you think,” she wondered aloud, “that some of your wicked ancestors might have put people they didn’t like behind the locked doors of this complication to let them wander around, looking for a way out, only to eventually die a slow and terrifying death in the darkness?”

Richard, on a knee taking a quick look at the dead noble, looked back over his shoulder. “I never thought of that, but you certainly could be right. What better way to rid yourself of a pesky detractor vying for power than to put them down here where they would never be found? I think that Darken Rahl, though, favored more public demonstrations of his displeasure.”

Kahlan nodded. “He liked to make examples of people, so these bodies are likely from long before his time. The ones we’ve see so far look to have been down here for hundreds of years.”

In several places on their way down the hall, they came across yet more desiccated remains with leathery skin, and a few that were mostly bare bones. All the bodies, though, were still dressed in clothes. They found both men and women where they had finally collapsed and died. It was surprising to Kahlan to see how many people had managed to get into the remote place. Or were locked in. Despite the numbers they had found, she supposed that given the timespan it was rare for anyone to find their way in.

When they reached an odd-shaped room, Richard stopped to look in with the aid of the light sphere. Kahlan saw skeletal remains in a far, acutely pointed corner. Before Richard saw the remains, Kahlan was sure she saw the bones move.

“Look,” she said, pointing.

Richard took the light sphere closer. He bent over at the waist to look, then straightened.

“Just bones. Did you see something?”

“I saw them move,” she said.

“Did you see what Kahlan saw?”

Shale shook her head. “I didn’t see them until she said to look.”

“Might have been a trick of the light. The light the spheres give off can be strange at times.”

Richard turned back and with the toe of a boot pushed at the bones. They collapsed inward with a hollow clacking sound. The skull toppled off the spine and rolled a short distance. Richard used his boot to push it back toward the rest of the remains. After it stopped, facedown, it slowly rolled back over, as if to look up at him.

“Whatever did that, we don’t have time to worry about it,” he said as he left the room. “We need to get to the Mord-Sith.”

Kahlan knew she had been right about the bones moving, and the way the skull had rolled back over was creepy, but she was more worried about getting to the Mord-Sith before Michec did. He had already captured Vika, so he obviously had the gifted ability to deal with Mord-Sith.

As they took a turn at an intersection and rushed onward down yet another gloomy, filthy stone corridor, Richard abruptly stopped. Kahlan noticed a room to the right. The door was closed, but Richard hadn’t stopped to look in the room.

He instead stood frozen, staring ahead at something.

“What is it?” Shale asked from behind his left shoulder.

“I thought I heard something …”

All of a sudden, Kahlan heard a roar from somewhere off down the corridor. Blinding light ignited in the distance and rushed out from around a corner.

Richard drew his sword. The sound of the steel being freed from the scabbard was drowned out by the wail of the fearsome fireball as it grew in size and speed.

Richard dropped to his left knee. Holding the sword’s hilt in his right fist, he grabbed the tip of the blade with his left hand.

“Get behind me!” he screamed at them. “Get behind me!”

As he was saying it a second time, the corridor out ahead filled with a bigger explosion of expanding, whirling fire. The yellow-orange flames boiled up as the blaze spilled over the top of itself in its reckless, onward rush. The fire completely filled the corridor as it raced toward them.

Kahlan could feel the heat given off by the inferno. Black smoke swirled in great swaths with the flames breaking through as the fire erupted and rolled toward them down the hallway.

Richard held the sword up like a shield. “Get behind!”

Kahlan crouched down behind him. She had seen Richard use the sword very effectively as a shield against conjured fire.

Shale obviously had not.

As Richard again yelled for them to get behind him, Shale charged at Kahlan, ramming a shoulder into her middle, colliding with such force that it lifted Kahlan from her feet and drove them both into the closed door to the side. Their combined weight smashed the door off his hinges. It fell out ahead of them as together they both flew through the doorway.

Rather than hitting the floor, Kahlan felt herself falling through space.

She realized as she saw the yellow-orange light through the doorway far above her that there was no floor in the room.

Kahlan had just started to scream when she hit the water.