The blond Mord-Sith, Agiel in her fist, charged right for Samantha, daring her to try to use magic against her. Richard was able to catch Vale and prevent her from joining Laurin.
Samantha never moved. Her head was bowed, her eyes closed. The shadowy spirit of the demon seemed to writhe with gleeful menace.
Before Richard could do anything to go after Laurin, the air of the cave jolted with a hard impact, as if the entire mountain had been struck with a giant hammer. At the same time, Laurin’s form exploded in a shower of black bits, like crystals of a night stone. Her red leather collapsed to the floor, the black crystals that had been Laurin spilling out of the openings at the wrists and ankles. There was nothing left of the Mord-Sith but charred black bits scattered across the floor.
Cassia and Vale both screamed in rage as they charged for Samantha. Richard snatched each one in an arm just in time and yanked them back behind the corner of the intersection.
As he tumbled back with the two Mord-Sith, falling at Nicci and Kahlan’s feet, the walls began to shudder as if in a violent earthquake. Thunderous explosions hammered through the cavern, ringing in his ears.
“She’s doing it,” Nicci said through gritted teeth. “She’s bringing the rock down on us.”
“We need to get out of here,” Kahlan said.
But there really wasn’t anywhere to run. All they could do was try to stay out of Samantha’s direct line of fire.
To the left, a slab of rock exploded, sending fragments ricocheting and bouncing up and down the passageway as the main section dropped heavily to the floor. One side of another small slab of the granite ceiling let go and fell, coming to rest on the floor while the other half remained lodged up in the softer rock of the ceiling.
Richard pushed the two Mord-Sith back, giving them an unmistakable warning look. Kahlan and Nicci grabbed them and held them back so he could take a quick look around the corner.
When the explosion paused briefly, he was able to peek around the corner to get a good look. He saw Samantha, with that grim black shadow of the demon twisting with rage in the same place as the girl as she marched toward them. Her arms were still stiff, her hands in fists, her head lowered.
When she spotted him she glared with unrestrained rage and hate and kept coming. She was coming for him.
CHAPTER 37
Richard wondered if he could get close enough to her to use the sword. That ruled out using the sword as a shield, first, because it gave her too much time with him in the open. In his mind he planned what he would need to do. He decided that he would race out from cover to draw her attention. She would change the focus of an attack toward him. That shift of her attention would take a fraction of a second, making her redirected attack less accurate. As she rushed to cast out another lightning bolt of power, he could throw himself to the ground, roll under it, and then spring up in front of her. If he could get in that close, he was pretty sure he would be able to take her down with the sword before she could react.
If she didn’t miss, though, it would all be over. He would be dead. Sulachan and Hannis Arc would win. Prophecy would live–at least until the world of life died out.
He gripped the sword tighter in both hands and gritted his teeth, readying himself to charge at the young sorceress.
Samantha stopped. She growled in rage, her whole body trembling with fury. When he snuck a quick glance, Richard could see the shape of the demon in the same place as her, in much the way that Sulachan’s spirit occupied his desiccated corpse in the same place at the same time.
But Samantha was not an innocent victim who was possessed by an evil spirit. She had invited that hateful spirit into her with her irrational, out-of-control anger and hate. Now they were one in purpose. Now they both were determined to kill.
The dark one was using her, encouraging her, and Samantha was willingly summoning the full power of her unbridled wrath.
As she shook with anger, the rock of the cave trembled in response. He knew what she was doing. He had, after all, taught her to do it.
Richard knew that he had no time to lose. If he was going to stop her, it had to be now, before she brought the rock down on them. He had no hesitation about the need to kill her. If that dance with death had taught him anything, it was that his life and the lives of innocent people couldn’t be forfeited for sentiment. A lethal threat had to be recognized for the reality of what it was. Such threats had to be stopped.
Before he could charge out, Richard had to duck when a slab of thicker stone behind them blew apart. Jagged shards of rock whistled through the air, one going over the top of his bowed head, just missing him.
Then another area out in front of him and down a side tunnel exploded apart. All up and down the passageways rock began exploding in a ripping string of thunderous blasts. The cave trembled with the unfathomable force Samantha was focusing into the rock, blowing it apart. The echo of explosions rippled throughout the cave.
Thunderous blasts rang out painfully in the confined space as the explosions of rock came almost one atop another. Richard was pelted with pieces of rock that sailed through the passageway and ricocheted off walls. The whole mountain shook. He had to close his eyes and turn his face away from debris clouds that blew past him. The sound of it was deafening.
And then, out in front of him, where he was just about to charge out at Samantha and tumble under anything she could throw at him, the entire ceiling let out a reverberating, crackling boom as it was abruptly driven downward by a thunderous explosion. The massive section of the mountain above them had suddenly collapsed.
The force of the entire ceiling giving way shook the mountain so violently that Richard, Kahlan, Nicci, Cassia, and Vale were all knocked from their feet. Along with the Mord-Sith, Richard immediately rolled up onto a hand and a knee, with his other foot on the ground, ready to spring into the fight. Kahlan was on her hands and knees, looking dazed. They all turned their faces away from the blast of wind forced out from under the rock as it came crashing down. The blast of the shock wave caught Nicci off-balance and knocked her flat on her back. The two Mord-Sith were also sent tumbling back by the wall of air.
Richard braced for the next blast, looking to the sides to try to find a place for them to run, a shelter where they could get away from the flying rock, but there was no other intersection. There was no immediate route for an escape. Cassia and Vale scrambled to their feet, picking up their torches off the ground as they did so.
The torches hissed and sputtered, but other than that, the debris settled, rocks rolled to a stop, and everything began to go quiet. The rumbling and shaking had stopped. The explosions had stopped. The echoes of it all gradually died out.
Richard wondered what would be coming next, what power Samantha would unleash. He needed to stop her, first.
In the sudden silence he finally peeked around the corner and saw something out ahead of them, beyond the nearly empty red leather Mord-Sith outfit. He took a torch from Vale and cautiously inched out from the protection of the jut of rock where he had been to see if it was what he thought it was.
He stood to his full height when he saw that he had been right. It was Samantha’s bloody arm sticking out from beneath a massive section of granite that had collapsed from overhead. It had crushed the young woman.
“Well, isn’t that something,” Cassia said as she stepped up beside Richard, holding her torch up with one hand as she brushed the dirt off herself with the other.
The wavering light of their torches lit the bloody forearm and fist–the only thing they could see of Samantha. The rest of her was buried under countless tons of stone that had let go and come down atop her.