Wasteland

19

Hitting the water was an icy shock that helped drive out what little air Kahlan still had in her lungs from Shale crashing into her.

Shale still had her shoulder in Kahlan’s middle with an arm around her waist as they plummeted down underwater. Shale had thought she was saving Kahlan from the blast of conjured fire. Instead she had driven them both into the unknown.

As they hit the water, Kahlan heard Shale’s head hit something hard. It made a terrible clonk of skull bone on something just as hard.

As Shale went unconscious, she lost her grip on Kahlan. Kahlan tumbled under the water, unable to get a breath, and lost track of up and down. She panicked with complete disorientation, not knowing which way was up toward the air. She thrashed at the water but, being underwater, her arms couldn’t move very fast.

She felt something slimy slide past her arm.

She was desperate to pull in a breath, but she knew that if she tried to breathe, her lungs would only fill with water and she would drown. Her throat had clamped closed with the terror of being underwater. She didn’t know which way to swim to get to the surface.

Thrashing wildly, blind, desperate for air, Kahlan thought suddenly of her two babies. Were they to die in this forsaken place? Was she to be yet another corpse left for good in this awful place? Were her two babies to die before they had a chance at life?

As her mind started going black, her arms and legs lost their power and slowly stopped their frantic thrashing. As her body went still, she finally bobbed to the surface. When the air hit her face, she gasped it in. She was horrified by what else she gasped in. Coughing, she had to spit out a mouthful of bugs. The surface was covered with floating mats of beetles. They crawled up onto her face as she struggled to keep her head above water.

As she swiped the fat bugs off her face, she saw that light came from the doorway, but it was up above her. It was too high up for her to reach for the threshold. She could feel the legs of the beetles getting tangled in her hair as it floated out on top of the water. They clung to her floating hair as if it were a raft.

Kahlan gasped and gulped air as she struggled to tread water enough to keep her head above the surface. Big, glossy, hard-backed bugs swam into her mouth. She spat them out and tilted her head back to get a breath. The surface of the water was covered with the beetles. More scrambled up on her face as soon as she swiped them off.

Overhead, she saw fire roaring past the doorway, sending flickering red, orange, and yellow light down into the dark place where she struggled to keep her head above the choppy surface of the water. She couldn’t seem to stop the beetles from crawling over her eyes. They tried to burrow into her nose.

As she got more air and was able to think more clearly, she jerked around, left, then right, looking for Shale. The raft of black bugs floated over her face on waves she stirred up. She didn’t see the sorceress anywhere. She knew that as soon as the fire above stopped, it would be pitch black.

Fearing to lose a second of the light, Kahlan upended herself and dove under the water to try to find Shale. The water was murky, so she couldn’t see far, but at least it got most of the bugs off her. With her eyes open under the water, even though the visibility was poor, she could see that the water was full of all kinds of debris. She had to push things aside as she searched.

Kahlan had to surface, gasping in air for a moment, more beetles trying to cling to her face when she came up; then she upended and returned to searching underwater. She swam down and down, thinking the sorceress might have sunk to the bottom, but she didn’t have enough air to reach the bottom and she didn’t have any idea how deep the water really was. She desperately raced up to the surface again and gasped in some more air, swiping the clinging bugs from her face before getting a big breath and then going back down.

As she pushed the underwater debris aside, she saw that some of it was the handle and hinges of the door they had broken through, slowly sinking with wood still attached.

Then, when she grasped something to get it out of her way, she suddenly realized that she had her fingers in the eye sockets of a partly decomposed skull. She pushed it away as forcefully as she could.

As she did, something long and dark slid through the water close by.

Just as she was starting to head for the surface again, she spotted Shale’s hand. Kahlan grabbed the arm floating motionless in the water and with all her strength swam upward toward the light.

She broke the surface just as she was running painfully out of air. She pulled in lungful after lungful of air as she worked to paddle with her feet and one arm, trying to keep Shale’s face above the water. Wooden chunks of the broken door, covered with the beetles, floated nearby. The big black bugs crawled up onto Shale as if she were an island. Kahlan spat out more of the fat beetles.

“Breathe! Breathe! Shale! Breathe!”

Kahlan thought that the sorceress might have gasped in some air and spat out some water, but as the light faded, it was hard to tell.

And then, the fire above was completely extinguished, leaving them alone in the dark, dirty water with the big beetles crawling all over their faces. The sound of Kahlan’s splashing echoed around her. It stank so bad that she was reluctant to breathe in the air, but she desperately needed it.

“Richard,” Kahlan cried out. “Richard! Help!”

He suddenly appeared in the doorway up above. He was on his hands and knees, peering down into the darkness.

“Here,” he called down. “Catch this.”

He tossed a light sphere down toward her. Kahlan held Shale’s head above water with one hand and struggled to keep her own head above the surface, having to swipe the bugs away from her mouth and eyes as best she could. The sphere wasn’t what she needed. She let it splash down close by and sink.

“Shale’s unconscious!” Kahlan called up. “We’re in water! I can’t hold her up much longer!”

As the light sphere Richard had tossed down sank, it lit the water under her with eerie green light. When it did, Kahlan saw a long dark shape glide silently past.

“Richard!” Kahlan yelled, on the ragged edge of panic. “Help! There’s something in the water!”

Once he realized the situation, Richard pulled the baldric off over his head. Gripping the empty scabbard in one hand, he leaned out and held the rest of it down toward her.

“Grab hold!” Richard called down.

Kahlan turned over and backstroked with one arm to try to pull Shale closer to the dangling loop of leather that was the baldric.

Splashing the water as she reached for it, she missed it over and over as it swung back and forth just out of reach. She suspected that up in the hallway lit by the light spheres, he probably couldn’t see down where she was and didn’t realize that he wasn’t holding it still enough.

When she finally reached the vertical wall below the door, she managed to hook an arm through the baldric. The fat black beetles scuttled up her arm and onto the baldric. For a moment, she simply held on and panted from the effort of keeping Shale’s head above the churning surface of the water. Large, floating mats of the hard-backed bugs collected around her. Kahlan had never felt so dirty in water before.

“Can you put the loop of the baldric around her?” Richard called down. His voice echoed around the empty space above the water. “See if you can put her arms and head through and I’ll pull her up.”

With great effort, Kahlan managed to slip the broad leather baldric over Shale’s head and then, one at a time, under both arms so that she finally hung limp in the sling. As soon as she had the loop of the baldric around her, Richard pulled up on the scabbard, taking up the weight of the unconscious woman. Slowly, hand over hand, he pulled the scabbard up, lifting Shale’s dead weight. Water and big bugs sluiced down off her. Finally, Richard was able to get a hand on the baldric. Once he did, he was able to grab it with both hands and lift. He managed to pull the unconscious sorceress up to the doorway’s threshold and drag her in.

As soon as Richard was able to pull the loop of the baldric off her, he lay back down and, holding the scabbard, lowered the loop of the baldric down to Kahlan.

Kahlan frantically reached for it. Bugs tried to crawl up her nose. She had to swipe them away.

As she reached for the baldric again, the slimy thing under the water coiled around her legs and abruptly pulled her under. She only had time to gasp in half a breath. It filled her mouth with wriggling bugs.