“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.
22
Richard lifted his arm out to the side to keep Kahlan and Shale back. He could tell by the route they had taken that they were near the heart of the spell-form. They all felt the increased sense of danger.
He wanted to carefully peek around the corner to see what lay ahead, and he didn’t want either Shale or Kahlan showing themselves. Not that they were going to be able to sneak up on the witch man. He obviously knew they were coming after him. Besides whatever gifted ability he might have, their mere presence made the light spheres begin to glow. Even with their faint green glow off down the halls, it was hard to see, because the stone walls of the passages in the complication were so dark it seemed to suck up the light.
While the lights beginning to illuminate made it possible to see, it would also alert anyone to their presence, which made stealth impossible.
Even before looking, Richard felt something. He couldn’t quite determine what it was he felt, but it gave him a feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. He decided that the feeling had to be from the continual state of heightened tension. His grandfather would have told him to fear what he knew, not what he was afraid of. But Zedd hadn’t ever given him any advice on complication spells or witch men.
Richard slowly moved his head out just enough so that he could see down the dark passageway with one eye.
In the faint green glow, he saw something down low far off down the dark stone hallway. He couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
As he squinted, he suddenly realized what it was he was looking at.
Richard let out a curse under his breath. He held up a finger without looking back to prevent Kahlan asking what would have made him use that kind of language.
As slowly and quietly as possible, Richard drew his sword. The gleaming black blade hissed with lethal fury as it came out of the scabbard, its power joining with his own rising anger, eager to be unleashed on the enemy. It was a contest as to what lusted to kill Michec more, Richard’s rage or the sword’s.
Kahlan leaned in close behind him. “What is it?” she whispered.
He looked back over his shoulder. “I think I see the Mord-Sith.”
“You think?” Shale asked.
“What about Michec?” Kahlan whispered. “Do you see him?”
Richard peered into the distance, then looked back over his shoulder. “No. There is a broad opening of some kind. It’s a lot wider than a doorway or an intersection with a hall. There is light coming from inside—light from light spheres. That means there has to be someone inside. I’ll give you one guess as to who that would be.”
“No need to guess,” Shale said. “Not only can I smell him, I can sense him with my gift. I can sense how powerful he is. Let me tell you, it’s an uncomfortable feeling.”
“I know,” Richard said. “I feel it too. Stay behind, and out of the way of my sword. If I can get close enough, I intend to separate Michec’s head from the rest of him.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea to simply go in there?” Kahlan asked.
“Not really, but I doubt he is going to come out and surrender. I don’t know how else we will have any chance of eliminating him other than going in there after him. Since he conjured fire, that means he can defend against it, so I can’t burn him out.”
With Kahlan and Shale following close on his heels, Richard came out from around the corner and moved carefully but swiftly down the hallway. He looked back from time to time, as did the other two, checking for any threat from the rear. He didn’t see the witch man anywhere, but he couldn’t yet see into the room. It was likely he was hiding inside.
As they reached the broad opening of the vast room, lit from within, they found what Richard feared he had seen.
The five Mord-Sith were lined up on their knees just in front of the broad entrance, each with both hands held out, their Agiel resting in their upturned palms.
Keeping an eye on the room beyond, Richard touched Berdine’s shoulder, the first of the five kneeling side by side in a row. She didn’t react. He urgently whispered her name as he waved his hand in front of her eyes. She didn’t so much as blink. He shook her shoulder; she didn’t react.
“Any idea what he’s done to them?” he asked Shale.
Shale knelt in front of Berdine and placed her hands to either side of her head. Berdine stared ahead without seeing, without blinking, without moving. After bowing her head a moment, Shale finally stood and let out a troubled sigh.
“Nothing. I sense nothing. They might as well be statues.”
“How is that even possible?” Richard frowned at her. “What does it mean?”
Shale regretfully shook her head. “He has somehow blanked them out. That’s the only way I can explain it. Berdine doesn’t give off any sign of life. I can see that they are alive, but I can feel no sign of life in her. Despite their eyes being open, they are not conscious.”
Kahlan gently shook Berdine’s shoulder. There was no reaction from the Mord-Sith.
“The only way you are going to get them back is if you can get Michec to release them,” Shale told them. “They are captives of his power.”
“What if I simply kill him?”
Shale shrugged. “That would work.”
Richard
couldn’t imagine what the witch man could have done to make the five Mord-Sith kneel and offer their Agiel.
He really didn’t want Kahlan coming with him, but there was little choice—he judged it more dangerous to leave her behind. Michec would probably love to catch her alone and capture her. That would give him even more power over Richard.
“Can you do anything to block what he can do?” he asked Shale.
Her hopeless look told him all there was to know.
“If I can get close enough, I can use my Confessor’s power on him,” Kahlan said. “That would render him harmless.”
“With his ability, he’d likely incapacitate you the way he did the Mord-Sith,” Shale told her. “I don’t know if it would even work on him, but you would never get the chance to try.”
“Just stay clear of my sword,” Richard said as he made his way past the five unmoving, kneeling Mord-Sith. “Shale, if you can do anything to slow him or hinder his ability, please do.”
23
As he moved between the five Mord-Sith and through the opening, the glass spheres inside brightened enough to reveal what was in the room. As he took in what he was seeing, it felt like Richard’s heart came up in his throat.
The room was a central complex in the complication spell. Because of that, it was huge. But that was not what was so terrifying about the room.
In a gridwork pattern about eight or ten feet apart, throughout a large portion of the room, in row after row, bodies hung on chains by manacles on their wrists. In the ghostly green glow from spheres around the room, it almost looked like a forest in an eerie fog; the bodies resembled tree trunks. The silence was haunting.
Besides the gagging stench, it was clear from their condition that the people hanging from chains hooked to the beamed ceiling were long dead. Some of the bodies were charred a bubbled black from head to foot. Most, though, had been skinned alive, their flesh in a bloody pile beneath their feet. The heads, from the neck up, still had their skin, presumably to preserve the expressions of stark terror and pain frozen on their faces. Their hands, held by manacles around their wrists, also had skin, making it look like they were wearing pale gloves. Everything else had been carefully skinned, even the toes. With the red muscles and white tendons exposed, the figures all looked grotesquely naked.
Her face contorted in disgust, Kahlan held a hand over her mouth and nose, the same as Shale. The stench of death was overpowering.
Richard’s rage relegated the smell to a distant distraction.
All those bodies hanging motionless above bloody piles of their skin, a mist drifting among them in the near darkness, with the faint green light from all the light spheres filtering among the carcasses and casting multiple fingers of shadow across the floor, was just about the creepiest thing Richard had ever seen. This had obviously been done by a deranged person who very much enjoyed the grisly work.
As Richard moved into the kill room, through the forest of motionless, hanging bodies, he spotted a faint movement in the distance. He wove his way quietly among the hanging corpses, sword held in both hands, ready to kill Michec.
As Richard came around one of the stiff corpses, he suddenly came face-to-face with Vika. His breath caught and he froze in his tracks.
She was naked, hanging in manacles hooked by a chain to a bolt in one of the beams of the ceiling. Her red leather had been thrown aside. Unlike all the others hanging in the room, she was still alive, if barely, and still had her skin. Her brow tightly bunched, her eyes tracked him as he moved in among the corpses.
Tears streamed down her cheeks, blood down her chin.
She had obviously been beaten to within an inch of her life, but far worse, there was a knife slit that had opened a wound in her belly. A long length of intestine had been pulled out of that incision. It hung down in front, along one bloody leg, some of it at the end coiled on the floor in a puddle of blood beneath her feet.
The end of Vika’s Agiel was sticking out of the open wound in her belly, the fine gold chain hanging down from the end.
Had Richard not been so enraged at what had been done to her, he might have thrown up.
“Please,” she whispered, hardly loud enough to be heard. “Please, Lord Rahl … kill me. Please …”
He stepped close. “Stay with me, Vika. I’m going to take care of you.”
Her whole body shook slightly, partly from the beating and the open wound in her belly, but mostly from the pain her Agiel was giving her. It had been pushed into the wound, into her exposed insides, to add unrelenting agony to everything else he had done to her.
Through her pain, she managed to whisper, “Lord Rahl … run …”
Richard started to reach for the Agiel, to pull it out and at least stop that much of her pain, but he stepped back when he heard a soft chuckling. With a hand, he urgently shepherded both Kahlan and Shale around behind him, backing them up to give himself room to use his sword.
He couldn’t tell where the chuckling was coming from. It seemed to echo out from everywhere. As he looked all around for the threat, dark smoke, clinging low to the floor, glided in under the hanging corpses. It snaked slightly as it moved among the bloody piles of skin. It seemed almost alive, the way it moved.
As it came close, it gathered into a thick, greenish-gray cloud. That increasing mass of murky smoke rose up, so heavy it obscured everything beyond it.
Richard took a mighty swing with the sword through the smoke. Wisps of it curled away when the blade passed through and disturbed the air, but there was nothing solid in it.
He heard the soft chuckling again. He gripped his sword tighter as he stepped back from the tall, hazy mass of smoke.
The smoke seemed caught up in a sudden wind, and with a swirl, as if something had passed close by, it spun as it faded away into the air.
When it was gone, there was Moravaska Michec standing before them.
He was a big, barrel-chested man past his middle years. His face was coarse, as if made up of chunky blocks of clay that had hardened together before being refined into proper features. His heavy brow nearly obscured dark eyes peering out from narrowed eyes. A dark, pockmarked complexion scarred his cheeks and bulbous nose.
He wore what had once been white robes, similar to the white robes Richard remembered Darken Rahl always wearing. But Michec’s white robes were stained with what looked like years of blood and gore, as if they had never been washed. Richard could understand why Nyda said that he was called the Butcher. It looked much like he was wearing a butcher’s apron.
Richard could easily understand the other reason, hanging all around the room, he was called Michec the Butcher.
There was a cloth stole, such as a priest would wear, around the back of his neck and draped down over the front of his shoulders. It was embroidered with layers of designs in golds and purples. Richard guessed that it had denoted his high rank back when Darken Rahl ruled. But like his robes, it was soiled with blood and dark stains.
The man’s full head of short hair was salt-and-pepper, and stuck up from his scalp in greasy spikes. The thick mass of his beard, confined for the most part to the rim of his broad jaw and chin, had been braided into dozens of long, fat strands hanging to mid-chest. They looked like nothing so much as snakes hanging from the rim of his face.
His fat fingers, ending with jagged, broken nails, were stained with messy black muck under the nails and in the crevices and wrinkles, obviously from many years of his sadistic fixations.
His sly smile conveyed abject cruelty.
“So tell me,” he said as he gestured all around. “Really, was this your plan? To simply walk in here and kill me? That was your plan? You think yourself that powerful? Powerful enough to rule, to protect those loyal to you?” He clucked his tongue with amusement. “My, my. Such arrogance.”
Richard didn’t answer. His mind was spinning with a thousand thoughts. For some reason, though, it felt like he couldn’t connect those fragments of thoughts, couldn’t make his mi
nd work.
The man’s cunning smile widened. “You all are probably are wondering why your meager abilities aren’t working. Well, I must confess: I spelled this room. And you simply walked right in here, distracted by my collection of pretty people. So you see, like the Mord-Sith, you three aren’t as powerful as you imagine yourselves to be, because in here, even what powers you do have are blocked.” He lifted his heavy brow. “Just like all your pretty little Mord-Sith. Not even your bond protected them.”
Richard tried to summon the gift he knew was there, somewhere, deep inside, but it simply didn’t respond. By the look on Shale’s face, she was having the same problem.
Michec gestured to Vika. “She’s mine, you know. Darken Rahl himself assigned her to me for training. After that, she was given to me. I only loaned her to Hannis Arc. He was supposed to return her. When he died—because of you—she was obligated to come back to me. An inviolable duty she chose to ignore.” A dark look came over his features. “I am seeing to it that she fully regrets her disobedience.” He reached out and with the tip of his first finger pushed the Agiel a little deeper into the gaping belly wound.
Vika’s eyes rolling back in her head; her chin quivered as a shudder of agony went through her.
“I will similarly deal with her equally disloyal sister Mord-Sith.” He glanced toward the opening into the room where they were kneeling before looking back at Richard. He smiled with menace. “Once I deal with you and your lovely wife.”
He lifted a hand as he walked off a few paces, then turned back. “Once I do, I will be richly rewarded. You see, the Golden Goddess has become … annoyed, shall we say, by your stubborn resistance.” He stepped closer. “I assured her I could handle the situation. We came to … an arrangement.”
Richard was horrified to learn that Michec was working with the Goddess. Even though he was filled with rage, he couldn’t make his gift respond to that fury. Try as he might to call it forth, it felt like there was nothing there. Whatever kind of spell the witch man had used, besides blocking his gift, it also made Richard’s thinking foggy.
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