Wasteland Page 11

  Then, when she grasped something to get it out of her way, she suddenly realized that she had her fingers in the eye sockets of a partly decomposed skull. She pushed it away as forcefully as she could.

  As she did, something long and dark slid through the water close by.

  Just as she was starting to head for the surface again, she spotted Shale’s hand. Kahlan grabbed the arm floating motionless in the water and with all her strength swam upward toward the light.

  She broke the surface just as she was running painfully out of air. She pulled in lungful after lungful of air as she worked to paddle with her feet and one arm, trying to keep Shale’s face above the water. Wooden chunks of the broken door, covered with the beetles, floated nearby. The big black bugs crawled up onto Shale as if she were an island. Kahlan spat out more of the fat beetles.

  “Breathe! Breathe! Shale! Breathe!”

  Kahlan thought that the sorceress might have gasped in some air and spat out some water, but as the light faded, it was hard to tell.

  And then, the fire above was completely extinguished, leaving them alone in the dark, dirty water with the big beetles crawling all over their faces. The sound of Kahlan’s splashing echoed around her. It stank so bad that she was reluctant to breathe in the air, but she desperately needed it.

  “Richard,” Kahlan cried out. “Richard! Help!”

  He suddenly appeared in the doorway up above. He was on his hands and knees, peering down into the darkness.

  “Here,” he called down. “Catch this.”

  He tossed a light sphere down toward her. Kahlan held Shale’s head above water with one hand and struggled to keep her own head above the surface, having to swipe the bugs away from her mouth and eyes as best she could. The sphere wasn’t what she needed. She let it splash down close by and sink.

  “Shale’s unconscious!” Kahlan called up. “We’re in water! I can’t hold her up much longer!”

  As the light sphere Richard had tossed down sank, it lit the water under her with eerie green light. When it did, Kahlan saw a long dark shape glide silently past.

  “Richard!” Kahlan yelled, on the ragged edge of panic. “Help! There’s something in the water!”

  Once he realized the situation, Richard pulled the baldric off over his head. Gripping the empty scabbard in one hand, he leaned out and held the rest of it down toward her.

  “Grab hold!” Richard called down.

  Kahlan turned over and backstroked with one arm to try to pull Shale closer to the dangling loop of leather that was the baldric.

  Splashing the water as she reached for it, she missed it over and over as it swung back and forth just out of reach. She suspected that up in the hallway lit by the light spheres, he probably couldn’t see down where she was and didn’t realize that he wasn’t holding it still enough.

  When she finally reached the vertical wall below the door, she managed to hook an arm through the baldric. The fat black beetles scuttled up her arm and onto the baldric. For a moment, she simply held on and panted from the effort of keeping Shale’s head above the churning surface of the water. Large, floating mats of the hard-backed bugs collected around her. Kahlan had never felt so dirty in water before.

  “Can you put the loop of the baldric around her?” Richard called down. His voice echoed around the empty space above the water. “See if you can put her arms and head through and I’ll pull her up.”

  With great effort, Kahlan managed to slip the broad leather baldric over Shale’s head and then, one at a time, under both arms so that she finally hung limp in the sling. As soon as she had the loop of the baldric around her, Richard pulled up on the scabbard, taking up the weight of the unconscious woman. Slowly, hand over hand, he pulled the scabbard up, lifting Shale’s dead weight. Water and big bugs sluiced down off her. Finally, Richard was able to get a hand on the baldric. Once he did, he was able to grab it with both hands and lift. He managed to pull the unconscious sorceress up to the doorway’s threshold and drag her in.

  As soon as Richard was able to pull the loop of the baldric off her, he lay back down and, holding the scabbard, lowered the loop of the baldric down to Kahlan.

  Kahlan frantically reached for it. Bugs tried to crawl up her nose. She had to swipe them away.

  As she reached for the baldric again, the slimy thing under the water coiled around her legs and abruptly pulled her under. She only had time to gasp in half a breath. It filled her mouth with wriggling bugs.

  20

  As she was pulled under, Kahlan sacrificed some of her air to blow out the mouthful of clawing, clinging bugs. She could see ghostly, glowing green light below from the sphere that Richard had thrown down.

  The thing compressing around her legs suddenly spun her around, over and over, making her dizzy and nauseous. Then it began whipping her around under the water like a rag doll. She was helpless to fight against the power of it.

  Kahlan thought of her two babies. At the thought, terror for them, more than for herself, overwhelmed her. This wasn’t only attacking her; it was trying to kill them as well. She tried to swim toward the surface, but each time she did, the thing that had her by her legs tightened forcefully and yanked her back under. It was hard to keep her eyes open to see because the water burned. Things under the water, some hard, some squishy-soft, bumped against her as she was flung helplessly about.

  She saw torn parts of bodies suspended in the water as she was dragged past. She saw an arm still attached to a shoulder with a couple of rib bones and dangling flesh. A hand, the tissues where it had been ripped off at the wrist waving gently in the water, floated past her face when the thing that had her paused for a moment. She also saw other, unidentifiable meat with patches of skin or hair drift by under the water. She just wanted air.

  Desperate to get away, Kahlan pulled the knife at her belt. With all her strength, she bent herself over to reach the thing that had her legs. Every time she stabbed it, it tugged her, jerking her straight as it dragged her through the water. As the thing thrashed, spinning and pulling her around in dizzying loops, she briefly broke the surface of the water.

  Gasping in air, she saw Richard dive off from the doorway above. She heard him hit the water just as she was violently yanked back underwater so hard she feared it might rip her legs off. She wondered if that was what had happened to the disembodied limbs she’d seen floating in the turbid water.

  With the way the thing sharply whipped her around, Kahlan again began having trouble telling up from down, and even more trouble holding her breath. She was exhausted, making it more difficult all the time.

  Each time it slowed, giving her some slack, she frantically swam for the surface. She managed to break above the water for just long enough to gulp in another breath before the coil around her legs tightened painfully and submerged her yet again. It almost seemed as if it wanted her to get a breath to keep her alive so it could continue to play with her, like a cat playing with wounded prey, encouraging it to try to get away so it could pounce again.

  As she was pulled back down with frightening speed, she suddenly felt Richard’s hands grab on to her. He dragged himself downward along the length of her, clutching at her clothes hand over hand to pull himself down far enough to reach the muscly body coiled around her legs. She saw that he had a knife between his teeth. The powerful thing that had hold of her effortlessly dragged them both through the water, Kahlan feet-first, Richard, holding her leg with one hand, face-first, as they were both twisted around and around.

  As the snakelike tentacle flexed, tightening painfully, she saw Richard start to hack away at it with his knife. He stabbed the fat gray tentacle over and over. With each stab she could feel the thing flinch and twist, its powerful muscles constricting more each time.

  Since it still wouldn’t release her, Richard sawed at it with his blade, trying to cut it off her. The blade opened great, gaping wounds, but the creature pulled away before he could finish cutting it off her. Gouts of dark blood poured
out, filling the water with inky clouds. Richard clung to her leg and kept stabbing away, over and over and over, desperately trying to get it off her.

  Then he was gone, shooting toward the surface for air. In what seemed like only an instant, he was back with renewed determination, hacking away more furiously than ever as Kahlan could feel herself going limp, her vision dimming from lack of air.

  At last, with the slimy tentacle slashed and cut nearly in two and bleeding profusely, the pressure on her legs flexed once more and then finally relaxed. Richard kept cutting and stabbing until it finally fell away, freeing her legs. Once it did, with him helping her, Kahlan swam for the surface. She broke above it, her lungs burning, finally able to gasp in air, bugs clinging to her face and hair. She didn’t care anymore. She just wanted to be able to breathe.

  Richard surfaced beside her, gasping for air along with her. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Kahlan wondered how, but she didn’t have the energy to ask.

  With an arm around her, under hers, Richard helped her swim over to the side. He hooked the baldric with a hand. “Can you climb up.”

  Kahlan was gulping air, too exhausted to answer or even swipe the crawling bugs from her face, nearly too spent to tread water enough to stay afloat. She shook her head.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m going to climb up. As soon as I start up, put your arms through the baldric, like you did with Shale. Once I’m up, I’ll pull you up after me. Do you think you can at least do that much?”

  Kahlan nodded, unable even to say “Yes,” unable even to use her fingers to rake the hard-backed bugs from her face.

  She managed to grab the dangling leather strap with a hand as she watched him climb up the baldric and leather belt until he reached the doorway and then drag himself the rest of the way out. He immediately turned around, his head and arms hanging over the edge, water and big black beetles pouring off his hair, to grab the leather belt.

  “Put your arms through the loop. Kahlan—you have to put your arms through so I can lift you. You won’t be able to hold on, otherwise. You need to loop it under your arms.”

  Kahlan tried. Her arms wouldn’t respond to her wishes. She was so spent from fighting for her life as she was being dragged under the water and whipped around when she tried to stab the thing that her arms felt as heavy as lead. She tried, but she couldn’t lift them.

  “Kahlan! Put your arms through!”

  She felt numb. It was starting to seem unimportant. She didn’t even have the strength to claw at the bugs trying to crawl their way into her nose. She tried to blow them out, but that didn’t work. She just wanted to drift into eternal sleep and not have to fight any longer.

  “Kahlan, do it for our children!”

  She looked up at his face in the dim light. “What … ?”

  “Put your arms through. You have to do it to save the twins!”

  The twins … that thought sent a searing jolt of panic through her. She couldn’t let them die before they had even been born just because she was exhausted. That was no excuse.

  With a final effort, she struggled awkwardly to flop her arms through the loop of the baldric, finally lunging up enough to hook it around her under her arms. That was all she could do. The big black beetles scurried up her arms and up the baldric.

  As she hung limp in the leather strap, she could abruptly feel herself being lifted. Water and bugs sluiced off her body. The toes of her boots dragged slowly up the stone wall as she was pulled up clear of the water. She could hear Richard grunting with the frenzied effort of pulling her up as fast as he could. In her mind, she was helping him, but her body wasn’t actually doing anything useful to help.

  The loop of the leather baldric lifted her until she saw over the threshold of the doorway. Richard gave another mighty pull, lifting her another few feet, then managed to get first one arm around her, then another. Once he had her in his arms, he straightened to lift her up and out. He fell back with her through the doorway, hugging her tightly to him, him on his back, Kahlan sprawled atop him.

  What looked like hundreds of fat black beetles fled off them both and scurried across the floor, going for cracks in the stone walls at the sides of the hallway.

  Kahlan could feel his heavy breathing and her own as she clung to him, thankful to be alive. He had saved her. He had saved the twins. The terror leaving her body left her trembling.

  After she had recovered for a moment, she pushed away and frowned in confusion. “Who held the scabbard for you to climb back up? Did Shale wake up and hold it?”

  Richard sat up with her. “No.” He gestured. “I saw that something had to have ahold of you because you kept being pulled under with such force. I put the blade through the metal loop where it attaches to the scabbard, then I stuck the sword in the stone floor for an anchor point. After that, I tossed the rest of the baldric over the edge and jumped in. I was hoping it would be long enough. Fortunately, it was.” Then he said, “By the way, here is your knife back. You managed to stick it in that thing.”

  21

  Kahlan crawled over to Shale. The soaking-wet sorceress was lying on her back in a puddle of water. Her face was ashen. Kahlan felt the side of her neck and was alarmed to find that while the sorceress still had a pulse, her breath gurgled with water.

  “She thought she was saving me from the fire,” Kahlan told Richard. “That’s why she pushed me through the door.”

  Kahlan slapped the woman, hoping to revive her. She shook her shoulders, but Shale still didn’t respond. A few bugs hiding under her collar and hair ran out. At the sides of the hall, there were masses of the glossy black bugs trying to get into the spaces between the stone blocks and the floor. Kahlan pulled out one tangled in her own hair and tossed it against the wall. She flicked one off as it crawled across Shale’s face.

  “She risked her life thinking she was saving me and the babies from that fire. We have to help her. It doesn’t sound like she’s breathing right. It sounds like maybe she has water in her lungs. What can we do to help her?”

  Richard leaned over, putting his ear close to her mouth for a moment, listening to her breathing. “You’re right, she’s in trouble.”

  He quickly placed a hand in the center of her chest and another on her forehead. He closed his eyes as his head lowered in concentration. For a time, as Kahlan watched, nothing seemed to be happening. Each of Shale’s breaths gurgled with water.

  Kahlan then saw a warm glow around each of Richard’s hands. It lit his veins, pulsing with each of his heartbeats. The glow warmed in color as it began to flow through into the sorceress, pulsing with the power of Richard’s gift. For a long time, Richard didn’t move and neither did Shale.

  Richard had healed her before, so Kahlan knew how good he was at using his gift to heal. When he had done it to her, it had brought her back from the cusp of death. She hoped it could for Shale as well.

  Then, after a time, Shale abruptly gasped in a deep breath. She rolled to her side, hoarsely coughing out water. Richard put both hands on her back, letting his power continue to flow into her, helping her clear her lungs of the water until she was finally able to take in breath after breath more normally. Between breaths, she spat out more water.

  Richard finally sat back on his heels as they waited, giving the sorceress the time she needed to recover and gather her wits. After a short time, she was finally able to get air free of water in and out of her lungs.

  “What happened?” Shale managed to ask in a grating voice as she panted. She lifted both arms, looking at the sleeves of her dress as they dripped water. “Why am I all wet?”

  Richard stood and retrieved a glowing sphere from a nearby bracket on the wall. It grew even brighter in his hands. With one hand, he held the light sphere out through the doorway to show her.

  Shale staggered to her feet, finally standing with Kahlan’s help. Once she had her balance, she went to the doorway to see what he wanted to show her. She put a hand on the doorframe for
support as she leaned in a little and looked down into the gloom.

  “Water? Why is there no floor? What is water doing down in there?” She shot Richard an angry look. “Why would there be water in there? That’s just crazy!”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “What I do know is that the complication spell-form doesn’t call for it. It could simply be a deep pit that over time filled with water.”

  Kahlan wondered if it could be something else.

  “Well, that’s just—”

  “I told you to get behind me,” Richard said, cutting off the sorceress’s heated rant before it could get a good start. He lowered his head, giving her a serious look from under his brow. “You should have listened to me. I knew what I was doing. My sword acts as a shield against conjured fire. You would have been safe behind me, but instead, thinking you were protecting her, you dove with Kahlan through this doorway. I appreciate that you thought you were saving her from the fire, but as you can see, there is no floor and you both ended up nearly drowning. Had it simply been a deep pit, you both could have fallen to your deaths. In a way, it’s fortunate that the pit is filled with water.”

  “Very foul water,” Kahlan added. “We both were fortunate that Richard was able to help us get back out. He pulled you up while you were unconscious. He saved your life.”

  Shale looked between the two of them, appearing mortified. “I could sense myself at the veil. How did you manage to bring me back from the brink of death? What did you do?”

  Richard arched an eyebrow. “You aren’t the only one who can use your gift to heal.”

  Shale had calmed down considerably. “Thank you. None of that could have been easy.”

  “It had to be Michec who conjured that fire. We must be getting close, so he tried to kill us. Fortunately, you and Kahlan survived your little swim.”

  Shale put her hand to her head and winced. “Why does my head hurt?”