Another, mouth opened wide, sprang at Kahlan.
Before he even got close, a sword swept around and took off the head of the half-naked half person. It was General Zimmer who had acted just in time to protect her. The head bounced heavily on the floor, leaving a trail of blood as it rolled away. Another soldier stabbed the man grappling with Nyda.
Soldiers raced down the stairs and quickly cut down the dozen or so half people in the hallway.
“Sorry, Mother Confessor.” General Zimmer wiped blood off his forehead with the back of his wrist. “I tried to stop them before they got that close, but there were a lot of them.”
Nyda pushed the dead half person off her and sprang up, furious that she had been blindsided.
“What’s going on?” Kahlan asked.
General Zimmer pointed with his sword. “They created a breach of some sort down in the area of the crypts, down where the walls were melting. I wasn’t there at the time so I didn’t see it. The men said they were trying to keep the enemy from getting out of the area where we have them contained.
“Apparently more of them managed to get in somewhere else and come up behind my men. It was a bloody battle, but they managed to fall back to a secondary defensive zone. Nathan was using wizard’s fire to help keep them from breaking through and flooding into the palace.”
“Show me the way,” Nicci said. “I need to go help him.”
CHAPTER 55
“Richard! What are you doing here?” Chase asked.
The big man rubbed sleep from his eyes with one hand and used his other for leverage against his knee as he stood. He had apparently been sleeping while sitting against the wall just outside the tower room.
Richard slipped the baldric of his sword over his head and strapped the belt around his waist as he headed for the stairs to the hallway he needed on the next level.
“I’m in a hurry, Chase.”
Chase arranged the knives along his belt, then straightened the sword at his hip before checking that the sword strapped over the back of his shoulder was secure.
Chase followed quickly after them. “Well, all right, but where are you in a hurry to?”
“I need to get back to that place we came out of, back to the catacombs.”
Chase caught his sleeve, stopping him, and with his other hand pointed down a side hall. “Then this way is quicker.”
Richard nodded. “Lead the way.” He looked over at Cassia as they hurried down the starkly plain stone corridor. “Are you all right?”
Cassia tugged down the sleeves of her red leather outfit at the wrists. “I’m fine. I’m just not sure I’m getting any more comfortable traveling in that liquid silver.”
“What’s this about?” Chase asked. “What’s going on?”
“Long story.”
Chase frowned over as he pointed Richard down a stairwell. “You seem to be full of a lot of long stories. Is there a short version?” Chase snatched Richard’s shirt. “Nope. That way shields a library with books of magic. You need to take this intersection to the right, then take the stairs down a level, then the hall, then back up to get around it.”
Richard nodded. “The short version is that Emperor Sulachan and Hannis Arc have an entire nation of those half people surrounding the People’s Palace. They are soon going to get in, if they haven’t already.”
“So then what are you doing here?”
“I came to get something I left behind.”
“You mean your sword? So you can fight?”
“Yes, that too.”
“What did you leave behind in the catacombs?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Chase pointed. “That one. Take that hall. The big chamber is just beyond. So try me. What wouldn’t I believe?”
Just as he had said, they soon found themselves in the massive room with the entrance to the catacombs. Torches in brackets down each side lit the area well enough. Richard headed for the entrance to the lower world.
“If you want, you can come with us and see for yourself.”
“Good. You might need my sword, too.”
“Your sword won’t be of any help where we’re going.”
Cassia glanced over at Chase with a long-suffering look. “Don’t feel bad. He hasn’t told me, either. He said it isn’t good to know how you might die.”
“Ah,” the big man said. “At least he has a good reason.”
“I haven’t told either of you because in the first place I wouldn’t know how, and in the second place I’m not even sure I can do this.”
The slits at the top of the chamber revealed that it was night. How deep in the night Richard wasn’t sure, but since Chase had been asleep, it seemed pretty clear that it was the heart of darkness.
Richard spotted the alcove set back in shadows and headed for it. Without delay he pressed his palms to the metal statues, closing his fingers around the shepherds. He felt them warm as before, and as before the stone groaned as it began to swing open.
“Get some torches,” Richard said.
Chase grabbed one for himself and handed Cassia a lantern. He gave Richard a torch.
Richard started in. “There are lots of steps. It goes down really deep into the mountain. The first flights are constructed, but you need to be careful once we get lower because they are carved from the rock and they aren’t even.”
“What’s the rush?”
Richard turned and looked at Chase. “A lot of people back at the palace are going to be slaughtered by half people before I can get back. It could even be that everyone there will die. I’m hoping to make it back before that happens. But even if it does, everyone else is going to die after that. I need to try to stop what is going to happen. I think this is the only way. Kahlan’s life hangs in the balance. Everyone’s life hangs in the balance. I don’t know if I will live through what I am going to do, but I have to save everyone I can. That’s the rush.”
Chase grunted his understanding and followed Richard when he started down, taking two steps at a time, half descending stairs, half falling the entire way. They went past landing after landing, racing down.
The torches suddenly revealed the chamber with the round table and the various tunnel openings. Richard ducked under the opening and went into the ninth one on the right, plunging down the shaft cut through the stone, down rough-cut stairs, the torches flapping in the wind as they raced ever downward.
They began encountering the dead in their carved resting places. Richard paid attention to where he was going, ignoring the hundreds upon hundreds of corpses they hurried past. Chase, though, looked to each side with big eyes. He hadn’t known the catacombs were there, beneath the Keep all this time. For that matter, generations had lived at the Keep without ever being aware of what lay below.
The long, winding, descending journey finally brought them to the arched opening into the precisely cut, square, broad passageway.
“This place is making the hairs at the back of my neck stand on end,” Chase said.
“Me too,” Cassia added.
“I know,” Richard said. “Come on. This way.”
At the end of the broad corridor, Richard stopped before the cloth hanging at the end. On the other side it was painted with wards to keep spirits from crossing.
“What is this place?” Chase asked, looking around at the carefully carved straight walls and precisely cut, flat ceiling, and especially the strange piece of cloth hanging across their way ahead.
Richard turned back to Chase. “It’s called the Sanctuary of Souls.”
“You mean … there are spirits, ghosts, down here?”
“Yes.” Richard gestured to the cloth. “There are these things, these cloth panels, hanging all throughout the maze. Some, like this one, have ancient wards painted on them. Those wards are powerful spell-forms that keep the spirits from crossing. It keeps them on the other side. Yet other cloth panels have spell-forms meant to draw the spirits to this place.”