“She gets so angry, so focused,” Kahlan said, “that she forgets about her own safety. When we were in the gorge when the army of half people were chasing us, she was bringing the mountain down atop them and I had to snatch her up and carry her away or it would have come down on top of her, just like this.”
Nicci was nodding in agreement. “I saw that immaturity in her. It frightened me from the first. Her ability exceeded her capacity to handle it.”
That bloody arm had a ghostly appearance to it, a dark shadow that moved as if it were alive whereas the arm was dead still. As Richard watched, that shadow faded away into nothing. The demon that had been with her, helping her, had melted back beyond the veil. Without a worldly form to possess and hold it in the world of life, it could not keep the skrin from pulling it back into the world of the dead.
For now, some of those forces still held. At least, to a certain extent.
“I can’t believe she so willfully killed those men,” Kahlan said. “She knew them. She liked them. At least, she did at one time. She had helped them. I can hardly believe she would so easily kill them.”
Richard felt a twinge of sadness for the girl whose ability made her so out of place and who had been trying so hard to become a woman. She’d had such potential. He guessed that the potential and talent did her no good in the end when she instead let herself be ruled by hate. In the end, hate destroyed her.
“She killed her entire village as well,” Richard said. “The people she had grown up with and had hoped to protect.”
Nicci glared at the bloody, splintered arm. “I told you she was dangerous, that her anger was dangerous.”
“One of the Wizard’s Rules I learned long ago,” Richard said. “Passion rules reason. I’m sorry that I didn’t see the indications in her sooner. Had I paid more attention to the signs I might have been able to help her to choose positive things rather than the dishonesty of hate. I guess I was blind to it, thinking she just needed to grow up a little.”
“A lot,” Nicci grumbled. “You couldn’t have helped her, Richard. It was what was inside her. It was her inborn nature. None of us could have changed her.”
Richard squatted down and touched the red leather that had belonged to Laurin.
“She gave her life trying to protect you, Lord Rahl,” Cassia said in comfort. “Any of us would have done the same. She died a noble death.”
“As did all those men,” he said. “But they are all still dead.”
He picked the Agiel out of the black crystallized pieces that were all that was left of Laurin. He stood and showed it to Vale. “Now you must wear the Agiel of a brave Mord-Sith, a sister of the Agiel, as does Cassia, and gain strength from it.”
She bowed her head as he placed the chain around her neck. “I’m sorry that those men and Laurin had to die this day.”
“Those men of the First File and Laurin died to protect you, Lord Rahl,” Cassia said. “That was their chosen calling. They died doing what they wanted most to do. They were all honored by your trust in them. They died heroes in their mission to make sure you and the Mother Confessor were safe, now.”
He smiled his thanks for her words.
“We’re not exactly, safe, though,” Richard said as he looked up at the solid wall of rock. “I’m afraid we’re trapped in here.”
CHAPTER 38
“What do you mean we’re trapped in here?” Nicci asked with a mix of suspicion and concern. “There were passageways everywhere. There have to be interconnecting tunnels running all through this place. There has to be a way to get around this collapsed section of ceiling.”
As his gaze swept over the wall of rock, Richard slowly shook his head. “You’re right that the tunnels interconnect. A little farther back we could have gone down some of those side intersections and they would take us a different way around to the opening at the top of the cliff. But not this far back in this particular corridor.
“We’re now in a dedicated corridor that runs back deeper into the mountain. This passageway is unlike the rest. It has a primary purpose, so it doesn’t have the typical intersecting routes that crisscross in and out of the general network of tunnels. The builders apparently intended to limit access to it.
“It does have side branches with a number of rooms, some of them places where people lived, but those side passageways are all part of this limited-access area, so none of them lead back out. They all dead-end. From back here the only way back out, back into the general tunnel complex, is through this collapsed wall of rock.”
“Maybe it’s not as big a problem as it seems,” Cassia said, trying to sound positive. “Maybe the five of us can dig our way out. It probably wouldn’t be as hard as it looks.”
Richard frowned over at her. “Look at it.” He gestured to the wall of rock. “Cassia, it’s solid granite. It’s not a pile of rubble that maybe we could dig through. It’s a single, massive block of granite.
“Granite is often layered in thick lifts like this. Some of those slabs can be dozens of feet thick and they can run on horizontally for quite some distance. Weather will create and open up natural breaks, but protected inside a mountain like this, these lifts are massive. It must have fractured along a natural horizontal split higher up in the rock and because of what Samantha was doing, the unsupported weight all dropped down into this void.”
“Maybe it’s not very wide, though,” Kahlan offered. “People cut granite into blocks to use in buildings.”
“Sure,” Richard said, “but that takes specialized chisels and wedges to split the rock. We don’t have any of that.”
Kahlan turned hopefully to Nicci. “Maybe you can use your gift to open up a hole–maybe crack the rock or something–to get us through to the other side? Move some of it aside?”
Nicci frowned her incredulity. “There’s no way. The entire face of the mountain was weakened by what Samantha was doing. Remember what she did in that mountain gorge? This here all dropped down into the void of the caverns, like stepping on an anthill. The whole network of tunnels from this point back is crushed. It’s solid rock from here to what used to be the mouth of the cavern.”
“How far is that?” Vale asked, hopefully.
Richard made a bit of a face at her. “How long were we running to get away from her?”
Vale looked sheepish. “A pretty long way, I guess.”
“You guess right. It’s hundreds of feet. We might as well be inside the middle of the mountain.”
He pointed to the side. “Look at the way the softer stone is pushed out into this void back here. That’s a good indication of the massive size and weight of all the granite that came down from above. As extensive as the network of caves may be, to the mountain it’s like the anthills Nicci mentioned. From here to the outside there are no longer any caves. They are all crushed. There is nothing to dig through or cut through. The original people who made these caves surely had hundreds of workers and the tools necessary for such an undertaking. We don’t.”
Kahlan folded her arms. “What are we doing here, Richard?”
Richard looked over at her. “What do you mean?”
“Richard, we’re all afraid. We’re going to die in here if there isn’t another way out. You wanted to come here because you said it was too far to make it back to the People’s Palace. There isn’t a containment field here where Nicci could extract that poison from you.
“So why are we here? What’s really going on?”
Richard pressed his lips together a moment. “Well, I figured you all would think I was crazy, so I wanted to find it first.”
Kahlan kept her admonishing gaze fixed on him. “Find what?”