Witch's Oath

21

Richard had to judge the distance to the bracket where the fourth light sphere would be by counting his paces between the previous brackets. He began to smell the witch man even though he couldn’t see him. He didn’t know what a witch was supposed to smell like, but a big man sweating from running and from fear and panic was a smell Richard had no trouble recognizing.

He moved forward a little on his tiptoes. Before he had gone far, as he listened for the wasps and the heavy breathing, trying to judge the exact distance, a big hand came out of nowhere and backhanded him, knocking him back several steps. The surprise, more than anything, knocked him off balance.

Richard immediately regained his footing and dove in the direction of where he now knew Michec was standing. As he crashed into the man, he managed to get an arm around his neck. Michec twisted and struggled to break away. Richard reached up and gripped the wrist of the arm he had around Michec’s neck and then used it to help increase the pressure. He knew it would be only moments until the blood supply was cut off to cause unconsciousness.

“Shale! Light!”

All of a sudden, the walls to each side ignited in flame.

In the bright light of the leaping flames, Richard saw Vika standing right in front of them, knife in her right hand.

“Now!” he yelled at her.

As Richard struggled to hang on to the brawny man trying to wrestle his way out of the choke hold, Vika slammed her blade into the witch man’s belly. She grabbed the hilt with both hands and grunted with the effort of pulling it sideways, ripping him open.

Vika pulled the blade back and then thrust her left hand into the gaping wound. She pulled her bloody hand back out holding a fistful of entrails. She twisted her body to yank out a long, glistening length of intestine. Michec gasped with the shock of what had just happened.

The corridor suddenly lit with a blindingly bright flash of white-hot light that ignited around the witch man. Richard and Vika both were thrown back, slammed into the flaming wall. They landed on their backs and slid a short distance across the floor back up the corridor. It felt to Richard like they had been struck by lightning.

Richard and Vika both were momentarily stunned by the shock of the blast. Every nerve in his body rang with pain. Richard rolled to his side, his arms going numb. He was blinded by the intensity of the flash.

Michec, lit by the wavering flames of the walls, glared down at them both. He started to draw his hands up. Richard suspected he was going to fry them with another lightninglike strike. He knew that if he did, it could kill both him and Vika.

Despite the pain, Richard forced himself to jump to his feet, and without an instant’s delay he crashed into Michec, grabbing him with both hands around his throat. The full force of the impact threw Michec’s arms back, stopping him from what he had been just about to do to them. Richard knew that he couldn’t allow the man to gather his wits and his power or it would all be over.

With all his might he rammed the big man into the wall. He gritted his teeth with a growl as he used all of his strength to lean in and force Michec’s head back into the flames. Richard could smell the witch man’s spiky hair burning. Michec reacted to the pain of the fire by thrashing wildly, trying to get away, but Richard held him tight as he used all his strength to choke the life out of him. His muscles bulged with the effort.

Something as thick as his leg whipped around Richard’s middle and forcefully yanked him back. Despite his best effort, he couldn’t hold on. Richard saw the red leather of some of the other Mord-Sith charging in for Michec, but another blindingly bright flash of light threw them back to land at Kahlan’s and Shale’s feet.

As Richard was dragged back, with the thick thing squeezing the air out of him, he thought that it had to be a tentacle of some sort, like the one he and Kahlan had fought in the water. He couldn’t see its source. He put his hands on it to try to push it away and found that it wasn’t soft, like living tissue, but rough and hard, like a rapidly expanding tree root.

As he twisted his body, trying to get away from its grasp, he saw yet more of the tendrils sprouting up out of the floor, breaking the stone apart as they rose up, growing fatter as they rose up. Before he was able to do anything about the one tightening painfully around his middle, another, lengthening and curling as it grew up out of the floor, coiled around his legs. Yet another rose up to grab his arms.

The rootlike tendrils grew in thickness and strength as they threw yet more coils around his arms and legs. He looked over and saw that the same kind of tendrils were climbing up Vika, thickening rapidly as they encased her, squeezing the air from her lungs.

Michec panted, trying to recover his strength. Wisps of smoke rose from his singed hair and the back of his robes. A long length of bloody intestine hung down to the floor. Blood from the gash soaked his filthy robes and began to puddle around his feet.

He grabbed hold of the intestine in his fist, and with a flash of knifelike light from his other hand severed it and cast the length aside as if it was no longer needed. He lifted a hand out to each wall, and the flames started to dim as the fire rapidly began to extinguish.

Michec turned to Vika. “Seems you made the same mistake you warned me of. Trying to teach a lesson of revenge rather than simply killing me. I am no longer going to bother with lessons for any of you. I’m just going to kill you all.”

Suddenly, the corridor shimmered as a wave of light shot through the air. Richard could no longer move his head, but he could turn his eyes just enough to see Shale, Kahlan, and the rest of the Mord-Sith running in to help. The wavering light hit Michec, staggering him, but it failed to do any visible damage. He took a few steps back as he regained his balance and his senses.

Richard could feel the roots around his chest constricting. Every time he breathed out, they tightened, taking up the extra space, so that he couldn’t get his full breath back. Each time he exhaled, it ratcheted him another notch toward suffocation. He tried panting with shallow breaths, but even those were being squeezed out of him.

Michec cast a grim look over the people trying to kill him and then lifted an arm. When he did, it brought up a wall of fire of his own. The searing flames blocked the advance of the women. Pleased that it drove them back, Michec turned and hurried off down the corridor, disappearing into the darkness.

The roots that had Richard and were growing thicker by the moment had finally cut off his air. His vision narrowed to a pinpoint of light in the center of blackness. He could hear Vika also struggling unsuccessfully to breathe.

A flash shower of rain came out of nowhere and dumped buckets’ worth of water in the corridor, extinguishing the fire that Michec had used to block the others from coming after him.

Kahlan, Shale, and all the Mord-Sith raced to Richard.

“Hold on,” Kahlan said as she frantically started sawing away with her knife at the roots and vines that had encased him.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see the red leather of a few of the others rushing over to try to help Vika.

“I can’t use magic on this,” Shale said as she desperately cut at the roots with her knife. “I can feel that Michec shielded them and his magic can overcome whatever I try to do. We have to do it with our knives. Hold on.”

Kahlan gritted her teeth as she furiously cut through a thick root. Fortunately, it was relatively soft, rather than woody, and she was finally able to sever it, releasing the pressure and allowing him to at last draw a breath. His vision started to return from the blackness. He gasped air, angry at himself that he had let this happen.

It took some time before Richard and Vika were finally cut free enough that they were able to untangle themselves from the network of fibrous tendrils.

Once back on his feet, Richard lifted the sword a few inches and let it drop back, making sure the scabbard hadn’t been bent or crushed and that he would still be able to draw it.

“Michec is pretty badly wounded,” Richard managed to say between deep breaths. He winked at Vika. “Vika managed to hurt him more than I did.”

Vika smiled her appreciation that he had kept his promise to let her cut him good.

“Vika has lived up to the honor as your favorite for today,” Berdine said.

Richard wanted to respond but didn’t feel up it right then.

“We need to go after Michec,” he said instead. “I want to kill him in case he doesn’t bleed to death. Is everyone all right?”

A quick glance revealed nods all around.

“All right, then, let’s go.”