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A boiling ball of flame exploded from around the bend. Raging yellow and blue flame, filling the entire tunnel, tumbled as it raced toward them with a wail.
Liquid fire seething with all-consuming menace.
Wizard’s fire.
Kahlan snatched Nadine by the hair. “Hold your breath!”
Pulling Nadine with her, Kahlan dived into the water just ahead of the angry fury of roiling flame. The icy water was such a shock that she almost gasped it in.
Under the churning water, it was difficult to tell up from down. Kahlan opened her eyes. She saw the wavering glow of the inferno overhead. Nadine was struggling to get to the surface. Kahlan jammed her left hand against the underside of a stepping stone to hold herself under, and with her good arm held Nadine under with her. Nadine, in the panic of drowning, fought to escape. Panic clawed at Kahlan, too.
When everything went black, Kahlan, her lungs burning for air, thrust her head above the water, pulling Nadine up with her. Nadine choked and coughed as she gasped. Long sodden strands of hair covered both their faces.
Another tumbling ball of wizard’s fire raced up the tunnel.
“Get a big breath!” Kahlan screamed.
She sucked a deep breath herself and went under, dragging Nadine down with her. They went under without an instant to spare. Kahlan knew that, given a choice, Nadine would have chosen to die in the fire rather than drown, but the water was their only chance. Wizard’s fire burned with deadly determination, with the resolve of the wizard who conjured it.
They couldn’t keep doing this. The water was so cold she was shivering uncontrollably already. She knew that cold water, by itself, could kill a person. They couldn’t stay in the water; it would end up killing them as sure as the wizard’s fire.
They couldn’t get to Jagang through Marlin’s wizard’s fire. If they were to reach him in time, there was only one way: they would have to go under the fire. Under the water.
Kahlan repressed her panic at the thought of drowning, made sure she had a good grip around Nadine’s waist, and then pushed away from the stepping stone she had been gripping for dear life.
The wet wrath of water swept them away in its frigid flux.
She could feel herself tumbling under the water as she scraped and bumped along the stone. When her shoulder hit on something, she almost screamed, but the thought of losing her breath instantly locked her throat shut even tighter.
With frenzied need of air, and blackness disorienting her, she knew she had to come up. She was holding Nadine in a death grip with her good arm. With her other hand, she managed to hook a stone. With Nadine’s weight in addition to her own, it felt as if the rush of water would rip her arm from its socket.
When her head cleared the surface, there was light. Not twenty feet away was a stone lattice. Late afternoon light poured in through the openings above the water level.
As Kahlan pulled Nadine’s head above the water, she clamped a hand over the woman’s mouth.
On one of the stepping stones to the side, near the stone grate, facing away, stood Marlin.
Kahlan could see the broken shafts of at least a half dozen arrows sticking from his back. By the way Marlin was staggering as he stepped to the next stone she knew he couldn’t live much longer.
If only she could count on him dying before he reached the Keep. The stump of his left arm wasn’t bleeding. Jagang was obviously driving the wounded man relentlessly onward. She had no idea what Jagang was capable of, in controlling the man’s mind, to keep him alive and moving. He had no concern for the life he occupied, and she knew he would be willing to let Marlin suffer any damage to accomplish Jagang’s wishes.
Marlin lifted a hand, fingers spread, toward the stone grate. Kahlan had grown up around wizards; Marlin was conjuring air. A section of the lattice grate exploded outward in a cloud of dust and stone fragments. More light poured in through the blasted opening.
The suddenly wider spillway let the water flood out with yet greater force. Kahlan’s injured arm had no strength, and the mounting might of the discharge tore her away from the stone step. She lost her grip on Nadine.
In the powerful clutch of the water, Kahlan grasped frantically for a handhold, but found none. She twisted and tumbled under the water, trying with her arms and legs to grapple something. She hadn’t had a chance to get a good breath, and she struggled, too, to fight her terror at her exigent need for air.
Her fingers caught the sharp stone at the edge of the blasted hole. The water sucked her under and jammed her hard against the lower part of the grate. She could only force her head and part of one shoulder above the surface. It seemed she was breathing more water than air.
Kahlan looked up. Jagang’s wicked smile greeted her. He was only a few feet away.
The force of the water ramming against her crushed her tight to the broken grate. She didn’t have the muscle to overcome the pounding weight of the water. Try as she might, she couldn’t get to him. It was all she could do to get a breath.
She glanced over her shoulder. What she saw took the breath for which she had fought so hard. They were on the east side of the palace—the high side of the foundation. The water roared out of the drainage gateway to plunge for a good fifty feet before crashing to the rocks below.
Jagang chuckled. “Well, well, darlin, how nice of you to drop by to witness my escape.”
“Where are you going, Jagang?” she managed.
“I thought I’d go up to the Keep.”
Kahlan gasped for air and caught a mouthful of water instead. She coughed and choked it out. “Why do you want to go to the Keep? What’s there that you want?”
“Darlin, you’re deluding yourself if you think I would reveal anything I don’t want you to know.”
“What did you do to Cara?”
He smiled but didn’t answer. He lifted Marlin’s hand. A blast of air shattered more of the grate to the side.
The stone she was holding gave way. Her back scraped over the broken edge. Kahlan snatched for a solid piece and just caught it with her fingers before she was ejected from the drain. When she looked down, she was looking at the rocks below the foundation. Water thundered above her.
She worked her fingers over the sharp stone, struggling desperately to pull herself back behind what was left of the grate. Panic powering her effort, she regained the inside of the stone lattice, but she couldn’t get away from it. The water kept her pinned.
“Problem, darlin?”
Kahlan wanted to scream at him, but she could only gasp for air as she fought to keep from being swept through the opening. Her arms burned with the effort. She could think of nothing to do to stop him.
She thought of Richard.
Jagang lifted Marlin’s hand again, spreading his fingers.
Nadine popped up from the water right behind him. With one hand she held a stone step. In her other, she still gripped the dead torch. Looking as if she was at the ragged edge of madness, she took a mighty swing, clubbing him across the back of his knees.
Marlin’s legs folded under him and he toppled into the water right in front of Kahlan. He caught himself on the broken grate with his one hand. When he saw what waited outside, he frantically tried to push himself back. Apparently, he hadn’t anticipated that there might be no way down from the drain tunnel.
Nadine clutched a stepping stone and held on for dear life.
Kahlan reached behind with her injured arm, stuffed her left hand through a grate opening under the water, and made a fist to lodge it fast.
With her other hand, she seized Marlin by the throat.
“Well, well,” she said through gritted teeth. “Look what I have here: the great and all-powerful Emperor Jagang.”
He grinned, showing broken teeth. “Actually, darlin,” he said in Jagang’s grating, impudent voice, “you have Marlin.”
She pulled herself close to his face. “Think so? Do you know that a Confessor’s magic works faster than thought? That’s why onc
e we’re touching someone, they have no chance. None. The magic bond of my loyalty to Richard Rahl denies a dream walker access to my mind. Marlin’s mind is our field of battle now. Do you suppose that my magic might work faster than yours? What do you think? Do you think I can take you, along with Marlin?”
“Two minds at once?” he said with a smirk. “I don’t think so, darlin.”
“We’ll see. Maybe I’ll get you, too. Maybe we’ll end the war, and the Imperial Order, right here and now.”
“Oh, darlin, you are a fool. Man is destined to free his world from the shackles of magic. Even if you could kill me here and now, which you can’t, you will not end the Order. It will survive any one man, even me, because it is the struggle of all mankind to inherit our world.”
“Do you really expect me to believe that you don’t do this for yourself? For naked power?”
“Not at all. I relish rule. But I simply ride a horse already in full charge. It will run you down. You are a fool who follows the dying religion of magic.”
“A fool who has you by the throat—the great Jagang, who professes to want man to triumph over magic, yet uses magic!”
“For now. But when magic dies, I will be the one with the daring, and the muscle, to rule—without magic.”
Fury erupted through Kahlan. This was the man who had ordered the deaths of thousands of innocent people. This was the butcher of Ebinissia. This was the man who would enslave the world.
This was the man who wanted to kill Richard.
In the silence of her mind, in the core of her power, where there was no cold, no exhaustion, no fear, she had all the time in the world. Though he made no attempt to escape, even if he had, it would have been hopeless. He was hers.
