Wasteland

21

Kahlan crawled over to Shale. The soaking-wet sorceress was lying on her back in a puddle of water. Her face was ashen. Kahlan felt the side of her neck and was alarmed to find that while the sorceress still had a pulse, her breath gurgled with water.

“She thought she was saving me from the fire,” Kahlan told Richard. “That’s why she pushed me through the door.”

Kahlan slapped the woman, hoping to revive her. She shook her shoulders, but Shale still didn’t respond. A few bugs hiding under her collar and hair ran out. At the sides of the hall, there were masses of the glossy black bugs trying to get into the spaces between the stone blocks and the floor. Kahlan pulled out one tangled in her own hair and tossed it against the wall. She flicked one off as it crawled across Shale’s face.

“She risked her life thinking she was saving me and the babies from that fire. We have to help her. It doesn’t sound like she’s breathing right. It sounds like maybe she has water in her lungs. What can we do to help her?”

Richard leaned over, putting his ear close to her mouth for a moment, listening to her breathing. “You’re right, she’s in trouble.”

He quickly placed a hand in the center of her chest and another on her forehead. He closed his eyes as his head lowered in concentration. For a time, as Kahlan watched, nothing seemed to be happening. Each of Shale’s breaths gurgled with water.

Kahlan then saw a warm glow around each of Richard’s hands. It lit his veins, pulsing with each of his heartbeats. The glow warmed in color as it began to flow through into the sorceress, pulsing with the power of Richard’s gift. For a long time, Richard didn’t move and neither did Shale.

Richard had healed her before, so Kahlan knew how good he was at using his gift to heal. When he had done it to her, it had brought her back from the cusp of death. She hoped it could for Shale as well.

Then, after a time, Shale abruptly gasped in a deep breath. She rolled to her side, hoarsely coughing out water. Richard put both hands on her back, letting his power continue to flow into her, helping her clear her lungs of the water until she was finally able to take in breath after breath more normally. Between breaths, she spat out more water.

Richard finally sat back on his heels as they waited, giving the sorceress the time she needed to recover and gather her wits. After a short time, she was finally able to get air free of water in and out of her lungs.

“What happened?” Shale managed to ask in a grating voice as she panted. She lifted both arms, looking at the sleeves of her dress as they dripped water. “Why am I all wet?”

Richard stood and retrieved a glowing sphere from a nearby bracket on the wall. It grew even brighter in his hands. With one hand, he held the light sphere out through the doorway to show her.

Shale staggered to her feet, finally standing with Kahlan’s help. Once she had her balance, she went to the doorway to see what he wanted to show her. She put a hand on the doorframe for support as she leaned in a little and looked down into the gloom.

“Water? Why is there no floor? What is water doing down in there?” She shot Richard an angry look. “Why would there be water in there? That’s just crazy!”

“I don’t know,” he said. “What I do know is that the complication spell-form doesn’t call for it. It could simply be a deep pit that over time filled with water.”

Kahlan wondered if it could be something else.

“Well, that’s just—”

“I told you to get behind me,” Richard said, cutting off the sorceress’s heated rant before it could get a good start. He lowered his head, giving her a serious look from under his brow. “You should have listened to me. I knew what I was doing. My sword acts as a shield against conjured fire. You would have been safe behind me, but instead, thinking you were protecting her, you dove with Kahlan through this doorway. I appreciate that you thought you were saving her from the fire, but as you can see, there is no floor and you both ended up nearly drowning. Had it simply been a deep pit, you both could have fallen to your deaths. In a way, it’s fortunate that the pit is filled with water.”

“Very foul water,” Kahlan added. “We both were fortunate that Richard was able to help us get back out. He pulled you up while you were unconscious. He saved your life.”

Shale looked between the two of them, appearing mortified. “I could sense myself at the veil. How did you manage to bring me back from the brink of death? What did you do?”

Richard arched an eyebrow. “You aren’t the only one who can use your gift to heal.”

Shale had calmed down considerably. “Thank you. None of that could have been easy.”

“It had to be Michec who conjured that fire. We must be getting close, so he tried to kill us. Fortunately, you and Kahlan survived your little swim.”

Shale put her hand to her head and winced. “Why does my head hurt?”

“You hit your head on something down there when we fell in,” Kahlan told her. “I think you cracked your skull on a decapitated head that was bobbing in the water.”

Shale made a face that revealed her disgust. “There are human remains down there?”

“Yes.” Kahlan shuddered as she flicked a waxy white chunk of flesh off her leg. She could see that it looked like human skin on one side of it. “But what I don’t understand is how some kind of creature could be living down there.”

“Creature?” Shale asked, her alarm rising again. “What creature?”

“I don’t know. I thought it might be a snake nearly as thick as my leg that had me, but with the way it whipped me around under the water, I think it had to have been something big and powerful that grabbed me with a tentacle. Richard attacked it with his knife and managed to get it off me. But how could something that big live down there? Other than the random person who fell in, and a lot of bugs, what would it eat?”

Shale considered briefly. “I suspect it might not have been a real creature.”

Kahlan’s jaw dropped. “Not real? Are you kidding me? It was real enough to whip me around underwater and nearly drown me.”

“I think you must be right that a monster of that size couldn’t live down there.” The sorceress gazed off down the hall. “A witch man could have conjured such a thing. Michec probably knew we fell in and conjured it. That’s the most likely explanation. It had to be him trying to kill you.”

“Considering how real it behaved, how powerful it was, and how it reacted and bled when Richard cut it, if it wasn’t real then how are we to be able to tell what’s real from what’s not?” Kahlan asked.

Shale regarded her with a grim expression. “With any kind of witch that powerful, you often can’t.”

“Then how can we possibly fight back?”

“When you are fighting the illusion, you are, in a way, fighting the witch. When you cut the thing attacking you, slashing it as Lord Rahl apparently did, you are, in a way, harming the witch, because the illusion is partially an extension of them. Odd as it may seem, it’s not entirely an illusion, not an independent creature. It’s conjured but also real and as such, in certain aspects, connected to them.”

“We don’t have time to discuss it right now,” Richard interrupted. “We’re all alive. We need to go after Michec. I have a feeling that Nyda, Cassia, Vale, Berdine, and Rikka don’t have any defense against the man, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to capture Vika. Come on. Conjured fire and creatures, real or not, I need to catch him before he can get far.”

“What are we going to do when we catch him?” Shale asked.

“Kill him,” Richard said without pause as he started out.