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"What were you doing with that man!"
She blinked in surprise. "He was the captain of the guards. He was making the rounds with a whole detachment. I convinced him to send the guards away for a while. I did the only thing I could think of to keep fifty men from trapping you down there."
Chandalen grumbled that maybe it made sense. As they headed on, Kahlan told Jebra that she had done a brave thing, and that she understood what courage it took to do it. Jebra protested that she was no heroine, and didn't want to be one.
At an intersection with a vaulted corridor, Mistress Sanderholt was waiting. Letting out a cry, Kahlan threw her arms around the woman. Mistress Sanderholt held her bandaged hands out.
"Not now, Mother Confessor. You must escape. This way is clear."
As the others rushed in the direction Mistress Sanderholt indicated, Kahlan went the other way. They all turned and ran after.
"What are you doing!" Chandalen protested. "We must escape!"
"I must get something from my room."
"What could be more important than escaping!"
"Grandfather's knife," she said as she ran.
When they realized they were not going to be able to change her mind, they all followed after as she led them up through the labyrinth of smaller and less frequently patrolled halls. Several times they did encounter guards. Orsk fiercely hacked them to pieces when they charged after her.
As she came around a corner at the top of a stairway, a surprised guard spun to her. With all her strength, Kahlan buried her axe in the center of his chest. His sword skittered across the floor as he went down on his back.
As he thrashed on the floor, Kahlan put a foot against his heaving stomach and tried to pull the axe out. Bubbles of air and blood frothed forth, but the axe was stuck tight in his breast bone, so she scooped up his Keltish sword instead. Chandalen lifted an eyebrow. Before they reached her room, she had cause to use the sword, and with similar, deadly effect.
The others waited in the outer room, recovering their wind, while she rushed into her bedroom. She froze when she saw her blue wedding dress. She swept it up and held it to her breast. That was what she had come for. She was never returning to this place, and didn't want to leave it. Kahlan shed a tear on the dress, rolled it into a tight bundle, and stuffed it in her pack.
All the other clothes from her pack were cleaned, too, and laid out for her. She stuffed them in the pack after strapping the bone knife around her left arm. She threw the mantle around her shoulders. Hurriedly, she strung the bow.
She swept through the outer room, her pack and quiver on her back, and her bow on her shoulder. She had everything she wanted. Everything that meant anything to her. She paused a moment, looking at her room for the last time as she idly turned the round bone on her necklace, and then led the others out and down a back way, headed for an outside door.
She lost count of how many men Chandalen took out with his troga or knife. When a big guard charged out of a side hall and tried to roll them down, Kahlan ran him though with the sword. The four of them were grim death moving through the Palace. The great alarm bells rang frantically in the tower.
On the landing leading to the great staircase, Orsk lopped off a guard's head. The body rolled down the stairs, spilling a trail of blood, as if unrolling a red carpet for them. The headless man flopped to a stop against the statue of Magda Searus, the first Mother Confessor.
They ran down the stone steps, the sound echoing in the vast chamber. Near the bottom, a sudden stab of pain took Kahlan's feet out from under her. She tumbled down the last few steps. The others shouted and rushed to her, wanting to know how she was hurt. She told them that she had just stumbled.
She hadn't stumbled.
Kahlan pulled her bow off her shoulder and pointed with it. "Down that hall. All of you, head down that hall. Turn right at the end. I'll catch up with you. Go."
"We're not leaving you!" Chandalen insisted.
"I said go!" Kahlan stood against the blistering pain in her legs. "Orsk, get them moving, now. I'll catch up. I will be displeased with you if you fail to get them out of here."
Orsk raised his axe and growled. The other two backed toward the hall as they pleaded with her. They protested that they had risked their lives to rescue her, and they would not leave her, now.
"Orsk! Get them out of here!"
"Why!" Chandalen and Jebra yelled together.
Kahlan pointed with her bow. Across the great chamber, up in one of the distant arcades, stood a shadowed figure. "Because otherwise he'll kill you."
"We must escape! He will kill you, too!"
"If he lives, he will hunt us down, with magic, and kill us all."
A bolt of yellow lightning arced across the broad room. Stone crashed down, nearly covering the opening where the others stood.
Kahlan drew one of Chandalen's flat bladed, man-killer arrows from her quiver.
"Mother Confessor!" Chandalen screamed. "You cannot make that shot! I could not make that shot! You must run!"
She didn't tell them that the wizard was sending slashing shards of pain through her, and she couldn't run. It was all she could do just to stand. "Orsk! Get them out! Now! I'll catch up!"
Another bolt of lightning sent stone flying everywhere, and the three of them running down the hall, Orsk pushing them along.
Kahlan put a knee to the floor to steady herself as she nocked the arrow. She drew the string to her cheek. The blade of the arrow was horizontal in her line of sight. She could hardly see Ranson, he was so far away, and the pain was blurring her vision.
But she could hear him laugh as he sent violent splinters of magic ripping through her. It sounded like Darken Rahl's laugh. She bit the inside of her cheek against the pain, against the scream trying to fight its way out. She couldn't hold back the clipped whimpers.
"An archer, Mother Confessor?" he called from the distance. His laughter echoed off the stone around her. "Your freedom was brief, Mother Confessor. I hope it was worth it to you. You will spend a good long time in the pit, thinking about it."
He was too far away. She had never made a shot from this far. Richard had. She had seen him do it. Please, Richard, help me. Show me how, like you did that day. Help me.
Stone vines tore from the panel next to her and whipped around her middle, squeezing. The shearing pain made her shriek.
She brought up the bow again. With her last breath, if need be, she told herself. Her arms shook. She could hardly see the wizard. He was too far away. The vines held her tight. She couldn't run, even if she wanted to.
Help me Richard.
Another brutal wave of pain seared up her legs and through her insides. Burning tears ran down her cheeks as she shuddered and gasped. She couldn't hold the bow up.
Lightning arced around the great staircase. The sound wa
s deafening. Stone chips whistled past. Clouds of dust rose as a column collapsed with a crash.
She heard Richard's words in her mind: You have to be able to shoot no matter what is happening. Just you and the target, that's all there is. Nothing else matters. You have to be able to block everything else out. You can't think about how afraid you are, or what will happen if you miss. You have to be able to make the shot under pressure.
She remembered how he had whispered to her, whispered for her to call the target.
With a jolt, the target came to her, as if the wizard were standing right in front of her. She could see the flashes of liquid light jumping from his fingertips.
She could see her target—the bump in his throat bobbing up and down as he laughed. She let her breath flow out, as Richard had taught her. The arrow found the notch in the air.
As gentle as a babies breath, the arrow left the bow.
She saw the feathers clear the bow. She saw the string hit her wrist. The stone vine wrapped around her throat. She kept her eyes on the target. She watched the feathers of the arrow as it flew. The pain tearing her insides rose with his laughter.
The wizard's laughter cut off abruptly. Kahlan heard the thunk of the blade hitting his throat. When the stone vine suddenly dropped away, she fell forward on her hands and knees, tears dripping from her face, as she waited for the pain to melt away. It went with merciful swiftness.
Kahlan staggered to her feet. "To the Keeper with you, too, wizard Neville Ranson!"
There was an ear-splitting crack, like a lightning strike, but instead of a flash of light, a ripple of total darkness swept across the room. Bumps rippled up her arms. The lamps flickered back on.
Kahlan knew—the Keeper had indeed taken wizard Neville Ranson.
She heard a grunt, and turned just in time to see a guard leaping down the steps toward her. Kahlan ducked and came up under him as he landed. She used his momentum to loft him over the railing, into the well below.
He snatched at her as he went over, but his fingers caught only her necklace. It tore from her, and went down with him. Kahlan bent over the railing, seeing him smack the stone floor, three flights down. She saw the necklace tumble from his hand when he hit, and slide across the floor.
