The Third Kingdom

Catching her breath, she flattened herself back against the wall behind the door just as several more of the same kind of people charged through the doorway and into the room.

Like a pack of hungry scavengers, the people dove onto the body of the Mord-Sith. Some of them tore into the exposed flesh of her face and neck while others lapped at the blood. Others, unable to get in to feed, ripped open the black leather to get at her.

Kahlan, her eyes wide at the ghastly sight, quickly slipped out of the room behind them. Once out of the room, she raced down the dark hallway, not knowing where she was going. She saw Otto, or what was left of him, down a side hall with at least a dozen of the whitewashed savages growling and tearing at him with their teeth. She realized that the thud she had heard at first was probably the attackers taking Otto down.

When she heard someone in the distance, and saw shapes coming around the corner, Kahlan quickly ducked down a stairwell. She bounded down the stairs three at a time and then raced down the dark hall at the bottom. She didn’t know how many bloodthirsty monsters were after her, or how close they might be. She ran for her life without looking back.

She could hear the noise of other terrified people running. Racing past rooms, she looked through one open door and saw a number of the whitish figures piled on several servants lying dead on the floor, tearing at them with their teeth or lapping up the blood. She thought that the underworld itself must have opened up and the dead were feasting on the living.

As she raced down the hall, she heard someone coming from the other end. As they rounded a corner, she saw that they were more of the cannibals. When they saw her, they broke into a dead run toward her.

Kahlan ducked into a room to the side. She slammed shut the door but there was no bolt.

Fortunately, there was no one inside. She stood with her back against the door, panting to get her breath. There was a small fire going in the fireplace.

Bodies crashed against the other side of the door. She used all her weight and strength and managed to hold it shut each time an attacker rammed into it. As she looked around, she spotted a sword on a table.

After the next time they thudded into the door, she let go and raced for the table. Behind her, the door crashed open.

Kahlan drew the sword as she turned, flinging the scabbard aside. Without an instant’s pause, she swung, nearly decapitating the first man to rush at her. She spun out of the way of the next man and as she came back around she thrust the blade through his heart from behind.

Kahlan had grown up learning how to use a sword, but it wasn’t until Richard had given her lessons that she really became an expert with the weapon.

Now, with a weapon in her hands, she felt that she at least had a fighting chance. She used all her skill and knowledge to desperately slash, hack, and stab the onslaught of attackers and defend herself. It wasn’t as hard as it might have been, because the men all rushing in at her were not armed, and they weren’t trying to fight back. They only seemed to want to bite her, so the only weapon they used was their teeth.

Still, there were too many of them. More were rushing into the room all the time. As they raced into the room, some fell over the bodies on the floor. Kahlan stabbed them as fast as she could.

Between frantic slashes and stabs, she glanced over her shoulder at the window. The room was on the ground floor.

Right after a particularly frenzied, hacking attack to drive the men back, when she had a brief opening before they piled in at her again, she turned and raced across the room.

She dove feet-first through the window. Fortunately, the two side-hinged halves of the window flew open rather than the glass breaking and slashing her. She landed hard and rolled across the ground.

As she sprang to her feet she saw the ashen people pouring like a flood out through the window. Others prowling the grounds outside saw her come out of the building and joined in the pursuit. There was no way she could fight them all.

Kahlan turned and ran. The enemy was right on her heels.

CHAPTER

84

Rounding the corner of a vine-covered stone outbuilding at full speed, branches of shrubs flashing past her face, slapping her arms, the savages right behind her, Kahlan ran headlong into a wall of a man.

It was Richard.

In that first fraction of an instant, that infinitesimal spark of time, her thought was that she had to be mistaken. It was impossible for it to be Richard. She thought she must be dead and this was some afterlife delusion. In that spark of time, she was heartbroken and crushed because she thought that she had to be wrong.

In the second infinitesimal spark of time, she knew that it was real. As impossible as it was, it was real.

Richard had his sword out. She could see the magic of its rage in his gray eyes.