Unlike the others, though, it continued to smolder. No flames erupted, but the whole thing, including the uniform that Richard could now see was not actually a uniform of cloth, leather, and armor, but actually a part of the beast itself, melted and bubbled. The dissolving mass began to coagulate into a blackened mass. As everyone stood stunned, watching, it burned without flame, drying and cracking and curling until only ashes were left.
“You used your gift,” Nicci said, her head hanging. “It found you.”
Richard nodded to no one in particular. “Berdine, please get Nicci to somewhere where she can get some rest.”
Richard hoped that she could recover, that she would be all right. He didn’t just care about her, he needed her. Adie had said that Nicci was his only hope.
CHAPTER 45
“My, my, my. Aren’t you the clever one.”
Rachel jumped, letting out a squeak as she spun to the wire-thin voice.
The unblinking gaze of blanched blue eyes was fixed on her.
It was Six.
Rachel’s instinct was to run, but she knew that it would do no good to run farther back into the rear of the cave, and Six was blocking the way out, so there was nowhere to run. Rachel had a knife, but even a knife suddenly felt ridiculously inadequate.
All alone with her like this, the witch woman was even more frightening than Rachel remembered. Her black hair looked as if it had been woven by a thousand black widow spiders. Her tight skin looked ready to split open over her knobby cheekbones. Her black dress was almost invisible in the shadows, leaving the pallid face and hands looking as if they were floating all by themselves in the dead-still cave.
She almost would rather have the ghostie gobblies after her than Six.
Rachel wondered how long the witch woman had been standing in the darkness watching. She knew that Six could move as silently as a snake, and that she had no difficulty getting around in complete darkness. It wouldn’t surprise Rachel in the least if she found out that the woman had a forked tongue as well.
Rachel had been so deep in concentration as she’d worked on the drawing of Richard that she had not just lost track of time, but she had, to a degree, forgotten where she was. She had been so absorbed in what she’d been doing that she had forgotten her sense of caution. She didn’t know that she could be so absorbed in anything.
She felt stupid for being careless and getting herself caught, for making such a foolish mistake. Chase would have shaken his head in shame and asked if she hadn’t paid any attention at all to the things he’d taught her.
But she had desperately wanted to undo what had been done to Richard. She knew what it was like to be at the center of one of these spells. She knew how terrifying it was. She knew how helpless it made you feel. She didn’t want that to happen to Richard, and he’d had that spell around him a lot longer than she’d had a spell around her. She had wanted to help him escape the hold of these evil drawings.
She had known that she was taking a risk, but Richard was her friend. Richard had helped her so many times that she wanted to help him for once.
Six glanced to the darkness farther back in the cave, the darkness beyond the oil lamp, the darkness where Violet’s bones lay.
“Yes, quite clever.”
Rachel swallowed. “What?”
“The way you dispatched the old queen,” Six said in a silky hiss.
Rachel couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder in confusion. “Old queen?” She looked back at the witch woman. “Violet wasn’t old.”
Six smiled that smile she had that made Rachel nearly wet herself. “The moment she died she was as old as she would ever be, don’t you suppose?”
Rachel didn’t try to untangle the riddle. She was too scared to think.
Six abruptly stepped into the light. “How old do you suppose you are at this moment, little one?”
“I don’t know, for sure,” Rachel said as honestly as she could. She swallowed in terror. “I’m an orphan. I don’t know how old I am.”
Rachel thought of the visit from her mother—if it really had been her mother. As she thought back on it now, it didn’t seem to make sense the way it had at the time. She wondered why her mother would leave her in an orphanage. If it was really her mother, why would she leave Rachel to be all alone? Why would she find her in the middle of nowhere and then just leave her? At the time she walked into Rachel’s camp it had seemed perfectly natural, but now Rachel didn’t know what to think.
Six only smiled at the answer. It was not a happy smile, though. Rachel didn’t think that Six had a happy smile, just that clever one, the one that let people know she was thinking dark, witchy things.
The witch woman aimed a long bony finger at the drawing of Richard. “That was a great deal of work, you know.”
Rachel nodded. “I know. I was here when you and Violet did it.”
“Yes,” Six drawled as she watched Rachel the way a spider watched a fly buzzing in its web. “You certainly were, weren’t you?”
The woman stepped closer to the drawing. “This here”—she waggled the finger at one of the places Rachel had altered—“how did you do this?”
“Well, I remembered what you told Violet about terminal elements.” Rachel didn’t say that she knew what a “terminal element” was, but she did. “I remember you saying how that junction locked it, by means of the azimuth angle, to the person to enable the spell to locate them and then attach the proper parcels. I figured that would make it essential to the function of the whole thing. I altered the ratio so that it would change the position linking it to the subject.”
Six was nodding slightly as she listened. “Thus interrupting a fundamental support for the positional structure,” Six said to herself. “My, my, my.” She shook her head thoughtfully as she peered closer at the drawing. She turned a frown on Rachel. “You are not only quite talented, little one, but quite inventive.”
Rachel didn’t think she had better say thank you. Six, despite the smile on her thin lips, was probably not at all happy to discover all the damage Rachel had done to the drawing—and Rachel understood pretty well how much damage she really had done.
Six pointed the bony finger. “This here. Why did you add that line? Why didn’t you simply erase the junction?”
“Because I reasoned that it would only weaken the hold of the spell if I did that.” Rachel pointed at several other elements. “These here support the main elements as well, so if I erased that junction it would have still held. Near as I could figure, if I added that variance to it, instead, then it would redirect the link it had established and in that way break it, rather than merely loosen it.”
Six shook her head to herself. “What good ears you have. I never knew a child could pick such things up so quickly.”
“It wasn’t quick,” Rachel said. “You had to keep telling Violet those same things over and over. It would be pretty hard not to catch on after a while.”
Six chuckled to herself. “Yes, she was quite stupid, wasn’t she?”
Rachel didn’t answer. She wasn’t feeling very smart herself at the moment, what with being so easily caught and all.
Six folded her arms as she paced before the huge drawing, inspecting Rachel’s handiwork. She made little noises to herself as she carefully looked over the whole thing. Rachel was disheartened to see that she looked right at every alteration Rachel had made. The witch woman didn’t miss a single one.
“Quite impressive,” she said without looking back. She flicked a hand in the air. “You’ve completely undone the whole thing.” Six turned to Rachel. “You ruined the entire spell.”
“I’m not sorry I did it.”
“No, I don’t expect you are.” She heaved a sigh. “Well, no harm done, really. It served its purpose. I suppose there is no further need for it.”
Rachel was disappointed to hear that.
“This hasn’t been a total loss, however.” Six, her arms still folded, directed a sly look at Rachel. “I??
?ve gained myself a new artist. One who is quicker to learn than the last one. You might very well prove to be quite useful. I think I’ll keep you alive for the time being. What do you say to that?”
Rachel stiffened her courage. “I won’t draw things that hurt people.”
The smile returned, wider yet. “Oh, we will see about that.”
CHAPTER 46
Exhausted, Kahlan was about ready to fall off the back of the big horse. She could tell by its uneven stride that the lathered horse, too, was ready to drop. Her rescuer, though, appeared determined to ride the horse to death.
“The horse is not going to last at this pace. Don’t you think we should stop?”
“No,” he said back over his shoulder.
In the faint light of false dawn, Kahlan could at last see the black shapes of a few trees beginning to appear. It was a relief to know that they would soon be free of the open Azrith Plain. Out on the plain, once the sun was up, they could be spotted for miles from any direction. She didn’t know if they were being followed, but even if they weren’t there were liable to be patrols that could easily catch sight of them.
She really didn’t think, though, that Jagang was simply going to allow her to race away without sending special soldiers to hunt her down. He had some grand plan that involved extracting revenge, and he was not simply going to give up on that plan. As soon as the Sisters healed the emperor, he would no doubt be in an ugly mood and determined to do what ever he had to do in order to get her back. Jagang was not a man who tolerated being denied what he wanted.
No doubt the Sisters would be coming after her as well. For all Kahlan knew it was possible they were already on her heels. Even without being able to spot her and Samuel the Sisters could probably use their powers to follow Kahlan’s trail.
Perhaps Samuel was wise not to stop.
But if they killed the horse, that would only put them in worse peril.
She wished they could have gotten another horse. It wouldn’t have been all that difficult, as far as Kahlan was concerned. She was, after all, invisible to almost all the men in the camp. She could have slipped down off the horse when they’d ridden near others and collected one. Samuel was dressed as one of them—that was how he’d gotten through the camp in the first place. No one would have raised an eyebrow if he had stopped, and they couldn’t see Kahlan. She could have gotten another horse. For that matter she could easily have collected some spare mounts so that they could have rotated and had fresher animals to carry them away all the faster.
Samuel, though, had been adamant that she not even attempt such a thing. He thought the risk was too great. He feared that they would be throwing away their best chance to escape.
Considering what had been at risk, she supposed that she couldn’t blame him for wanting to get away as fast as possible.
She wondered why she wasn’t invisible to Samuel. Like Richard, he appeared to have come to the camp specifically with the intention of helping her to escape.
Kahlan felt sick that Richard hadn’t been able to get away as well. The memory of seeing him there, on the ground, not only haunted her, but broke her heart. She felt ashamed that she hadn’t stayed and helped him. Even now, as frightening as the thought was, she felt the urge to go back. Being invisible, she might be able to do something. She desperately wanted to try.
And it wasn’t only Richard whom Kahlan was sick about leaving, it was Nicci and Jillian as well. Nicci had already been through so much and now it was probably only going to go worse for her, if that was even possible. Jagang had also threatened to hurt Jillian if Kahlan ever again caused him trouble or disobeyed his orders. She hoped that, without her there for Jagang to torment, hurting Jillian would be pointless.
As much as she wished she would have stayed and helped them, there was just something about Richard’s command for Kahlan to leave that moved her to do as he said. It was as if he had given up everything to see her get away, and if she threw away the chance he had bought with his life it would have made everything he’d done all go for nothing. It would have rendered everything he’d sacrificed meaningless.
She couldn’t remember ever being so torn over anything.
Kahlan knew that the Sister would not have treated him well. The soldiers, too, would have been all too eager for his blood. She wondered if he was already dead…or being tortured.
Tears ran down her cheeks as they rode.
She couldn’t put her thoughts of him out of her mind, and she couldn’t stop her tears as long as she thought about him. She simply couldn’t get that image of Richard there on the ground, helpless, out of her mind.
What made it even worse was that she had been so close to having answers. She knew that Richard would have been able to fill in many of the blanks. He seemed to know so much about her. He even seemed to know about Samuel and the magnificent sword that Samuel carried. She remembered Richard yelling at Samuel.
“Samuel, you idiot! Use the sword to cut the collar off her neck.”
Those words still rang in Kahlan’s memory.
No sword could cut through metal. But Richard knew that the sword Samuel had could.
More than that, though, it told Kahlan what Richard thought of Samuel. It also told her that even with as little as Richard thought of the man, he wanted to see her safe badly enough that he was even willing to let it be Samuel who helped get her away.
“What do you know about Richard?” she asked.
Samuel rode in silence for a moment. Finally he answered.
“Richard is a thief. Someone not to be trusted for any reason. He hurts people.”
“How did you know him?” she asked the man she had her arms around.
He half looked back over his shoulder. “Now is not the time to discuss it, pretty lady.”
Richard, flanked by Mord-Sith, Ulic and Egan, and men of the First File, hurried toward the tomb room that had been the breach into the palace from the catacombs beneath.
Nicci was at his side. Despite the fact that she was far from recovered, she insisted that she be there close to him. Richard knew that she was worried about the beast returning and that the next time he might not be able to stop it without her help. She wanted to be near in order to provide that help if need be. Cara, despite her concern for Nicci, had been won over by Nicci’s argument for Richard’s safety. Nicci had promised that as soon as Richard saw to this, she would rest. Richard thought that her promises to rest would soon be irrelevant because he expected that she very well might collapse.
As they moved onward through the broad corridors, they passed countless burned corpses frozen in grotesque poses. The white marble walls bore scorch marks where men, on fire, had crashed blindly into them and left their impression. Those sooty silhouettes looked a little like manifestations of ghosts, except for the smears of blood that stood as mute evidence that it had been men who had made the marks, not apparitions.
In the rooms and passageways to the sides Richard saw yet more dead Imperial Order soldiers. They had been using the blocked-off corridors as hidden staging areas.
“You kept your promise,” Nicci said in a tired tone of not simply gratitude but amazement.
“My promise?”
She smiled through her crippling weariness. “You promised that you would get that thing off my neck. When you said it I never believed you. I couldn’t answer, but I never believed you could do it.”
“Lord Rahl always keeps his promises,” Berdine said.
Nicci smiled as best she could. “I guess he does.”
Nathan spotted them all making their way down the corridor so he stopped at an intersection and waited for them to catch up. He had been coming from a hallway to the right.
Astonishment overcame him. “Nicci! What happened?”
“Richard’s gift returned. He was able to get the collar off my neck.”
“And then a beast appeared,” Cara added.
Nathan’s brow drew tight as he peered at Richard. “The beast tha
t’s after you? What happened to it, then?”
“Lord Rahl shot it,” Berdine said. “Those special bolts for the crossbows that you found worked.”
“This time,” Nicci said under her breath.
“I’m relieved they ended up being of use,” Nathan said as he laid a hand on Nicci’s head. “I had thought they might,” he mumbled absently as his thumb lifted Nicci’s eyelid. As he looked closely into her eye he made a sound in his throat that said he wasn’t entirely pleased by what he saw there. “You need to rest,” he finally announced.
“I know. I will, soon.”
“What about all the corridors down here?” Richard asked Nathan.
“We’ve just finished clearing them all. Found quite a few Order soldiers trying to hide. Fortunately, the area they had blocked off with the slab of stone had no other way up into the palace. It was a dead end.”
“That’s a relief,” Richard said.
One of the officers of the First File leaned out past Nathan. “We eliminated them all. Fortunately they hadn’t yet gotten vast numbers up into the palace. We’ve cleared everything all the way to the tomb room where they got in. We have men there, waiting for us.”
“I was just about to do as you suggested,” Nathan said, “and purge the catacombs of any more of them.”
“Then we need to collapse some tunnels, or something, to make sure that no one else can get in.” Richard knew that enemy soldiers were not their biggest worry. Sisters of the Dark getting into the palace could be far worse.
“I’m not sure that’s possible,” Nicci said.
Richard glanced over at her. “Why not?”
“Because we don’t know how extensive the catacombs actually are. We can shut off the place where they got in, but they very well might find another passageway that we’re unaware of in a completely different area. There could be miles and miles of tunnels down there. The whole network down there is not just vast but a complete unknown.”
Richard sighed. “We need to think of something.”