Temple of the Winds

"There are places in the Keep that I, and the wizards I grew up with, could not enter because the shields are so powerful. There are other places that have not been entered in thousands of years because they are shielded with both sides of the magic. No one could get past the shields. "But Richard can. I fear Marlin can, too." "Sounds a dreadful place."

"I've spent a good portion of my life there, studying books of language, and learning from the wizards. I never though, of it as anything but part of my home." "Where are these wizards now? Can't they help us?"

"They all killed themselves, at the end of last summer, in the war with Darken Rahl."

"Killed themselves! How awful. Why would they do that?" Kahlan was silent for a moment as they moved relentlessly onward into the darkness. It all seemed a dream from another life.

"We needed to find the First Wizard, to have him appoint the Seeker of Truth to stop Darken Rahl. Zedd was the First Wizard. He was in Westland, on the other side of the boundary. The boundary was linked to the underworld, the world of the dead, so no one was able to cross it.

"Darken Rahl was also hunting Zedd. It took all the wizards to conjure magic to get me through the boundary to go after Zedd. If Darken Rahl had captured the wizards, he might have used his vile magic to make them confess what they knew.

"To give me the time to have a chance to succeed, the wizards killed themselves. Darken Rahl still managed to send assassins after me. That was when I met Richard. He protected me."

"Blunt Cliff?" Nadine said in questioning amazement. "There were four huge men found dead at the bottom of the cliff. They had leather uniforms, and weapons of every sort. No one had ever seen men like them before."

"That was them." "What happened?"

Kahlan gave her a sidelong glance. "Something like you and your experience with Tommy Lancaster." "Richard did that? Richard killed these men?"

Kahlan nodded. "Two of them. I took another with my power, and he killed the last. Those were probably the first men Richard had ever encountered who wanted to do more to him than simply give him a beating when he chose to protect someone. To protect me. Richard has had to make a lot of hard choices since that day on Blunt Cliff."

For what seemed hours, but she knew couldn't be more than fifteen or twenty minutes, they continued on into the dark, stinking halls. The stone blocks were larger, some so huge that single blocks ran from floor to ceiling. They were roughly cut, but fit with no less precision than the other mortarless jointwork elsewhere in the palace.

The halls were wetter, too, with water running down the walls in places, draining into small tiled weep holes at the edges of the floor that had a crown to direct the water to the drains. Some of the drains were plugged with debris, allowing shallow pools to form.

Rats used the tiled drains as tunnels. They squeaked and scurried away at the approach of light and sound, some taking to the drains, some running on ahead. Kahlan thought again of Cara, and wondered if she was still alive. It seemed too cruel that she should die before having a chance to taste life without the madness that shadowed her.

A series of connecting tunnels finally reduced Kahlan's company to Nadine and two men. The way was so narrow that they had to proceed single-file. The low, arched ceiling forced them to trot in a crouch.

Kahlan saw no blood-Jagang probably used his control of Marlin's mind to cut the flow-but in several places she did see that the slime on the wall was smeared in horizontal streaks. As low and narrow as the passageway was, it would be difficult to avoid grazing the close walls. Kahlan brushed against the wall more than she wished to; it hurt her shoulder when the knuckles of her hand over the wound struck the slimy stone. Marlin-Jagang-had to have been through the passageway and brushed against the same wall.

She felt both a rush of heady relief that she was on his tail, and terror at the prospect of catching him.

The arched passageway narrowed again, and the ceiling became even lower. They had to hunch into a deep crouch to proceed. The flames from the torches folded to lap at the stone close overhead, and the smoke billowed along the ceiling, burning their eyes.

As the passageway started into a steep descent, they all slipped and fell more than once. Nadine skinned her elbow as she fell on it while maintaining a grip on the torch. Kahlan slowed, but didn't stop, as one of the soldiers helped Nadine regain her feet. The other three quickly caught up. Ahead, Kahlan heard the rush of water.

The narrow passageway opened into a large, tubular tunnel. Water rushed in a torrent down the round tunnel that was part of the drainage system below the palace. Kahlan paused at the edge.

"What now, Mother Confessor? ' ore of the soldiers asked. "Stick to the plan. I'll go with Nadine downstream, to the right. You two go upstream to the left."