Temple of the Winds (103 page)

As he reached the edge of the cliff at the end of the road, Kahlan threw herself on him, dragging him to a halt.

The sky was a savage show of violent discharges. Thunder thumped in her bones. Lightning ripped across the sky followed by deafening booms. Beyond the edge, when the most powerful of those bolts struck, the Temple of the Winds was there—but only during those fierce strikes. Between those strikes, there was nothing but empty space.

“
Richard, what are you going to do?”

“
I’m going to stop the plague.”

“
When will you be back? I’ll wait here. When will you be back?”

He stared into her eyes a long moment as the storm raged around them.

“
There is nothing here for me.”

Kahlan clutched at him. “Richard, you have to come back. Come back. I’ll be here, waiting. I love you. Dear spirits, I need you. Richard, you have to come back to me!”

“
You have a husband. You have given him an oath … and everything else.”

“
Richard, don’t leave me alone,” Kahlan wailed, on the edge of hysteria. “If you don’t come back, I’ll never forgive you.”

Richard turned to the edge of the cliff.

“
Richard, you have a wife! You have to come back!”

Thunder shuddered the mountain.

He looked back over his shoulder. “Nadine is dead. I am no longer bound by my oath to her. You have a husband, and an oath. There is nothing here for me.”

Brutal cords of lightning slammed into the road beyond the edge of the cliff, bringing the Temple of the Winds into full view.

Golden cloak billowing out behind, Richard leaped into the lightning.

“
Richard! I’m here! I’m here for you! We can find a way! Please come back to me!”

When the frenetic flash cut off, the temple was gone. Another flash came, and the soaring towers were back for a second, weaker this time, and then gone again.

Kahlan dropped to the ground, clutching Richard’s black shirt to herself. She had destroyed him.

From the side, Kahlan saw a streak of red. It was Cara, racing for the edge of the cliff. She leaped just as another flash erupted, lighting the Temple of the Winds into the world of life. She landed on the road in the sky, and when the flash was gone, so was the Temple of the Winds, Richard, and Cara.

Devastated, Kahlan stared silently at the rampaging storm, seeing from time to time the towering, phantom temple in another world. It never looked solid enough again, or she would have jumped across. She should have. She couldn’t understand why she hadn’t. Why had she just stood here?

Because Richard didn’t want her. She had betrayed him.

How could he do this to her? He said he would always love her. He said they would be together in the next world. He made her promises. He swore his eternal love.

So had she, and she had betrayed him.

From somewhere out in the storm, Kahlan heard the distant sound of laughter. The malevolent chuckle made her skin crawl.

Drefan strolled up beside her. He was alone.

“
Where’s Nadine?” Kahlan asked.

Drefan cleared his throat. “When the lightning came, and she saw it was me, and not Richard, she screamed. She went crazy. She leaped over the edge of the mountain.”

Kahlan stared up at him. Richard knew. He told her Nadine was dead. Richard was a wizard. She had seen that, too, in his eyes, at the end, before he jumped across. She saw magic in his eyes.

“
Where’s Richard?”

Kahlan stared out at the empty air, at the black wall of night. “Gone.”
 

On the road to the Temple of the Winds, in the eerie silence, Richard drew his sword. Its alien feel surprised him for an instant, until he recalled whose sword it was.

He was no longer the Seeker of Truth. He had had all the truth he could stand.

It wasn’t night, here, nor day, yet there was light. It wasn’t like sunlight—more like an overcast day, with no hint of exactly where the sun was. But he knew that there was no sun here. This was not the world of life.

This was a part of the underworld—an isolated, remote, obscure niche in the world of the dead. It was as if the wizards had found an out-of-the-way hole in which to hide the Temple of the Winds. It had been similarly hidden when in the world of life.

The dark walls of the immense Temple of the Winds rose up before him, the twin towers soaring up into trailers of mist. The entire side of Mount Kymermosst was here—the whole part that was missing in the world of life.

Richard knew where he was going. He knew more than he had ever known before. Knowledge was flooding into his mind. He was a war wizard. The Temple of the Winds had opened a floodgate into his mind. It was feeding him all he needed to know, and more.

He felt as if he were sentient for the first time.

Recompense, for the price demanded.

“
Lord Rahl!”

A breathless Cara ran up beside him. Agiel in hand, she took up a defensive position. Her Agiel would be useless here. For that matter, it would be useless back in the world of life now.

Richard turned to the winds and started out again. It wasn’t far. Not far at all. He knew the way in.

“
Cara, go home. You don’t belong here.”

“
Lord Rahl, what happened? I—”

“
Go home.”

She scowled at him as she pushed past to clear his way of any danger. She had no concept of the dangers here.

“
I am Mord-Sith. I am here to protect the Lord Rahl.”

“
I am no longer the Lord Rahl,” Richard whispered.

She gazed up at the huge black stone pillars beside the entrance ahead. Beside them on walls of inky stone banded with copper-colored caps, frozen in raven-black granite, stood the skrin, guardians of the boundary between worlds. Frozen only to Cara’s eyes, not to his.

Cara lifted a hand, bidding him to stay back as she peered down the passageway to the distant entry, checking for danger. There were bones at their feet.

“
Lord Rahl, what is this place?”

“
You can’t go in here, Cara.”

“
Why not?”

Richard turned and looked back toward the way he had come—at everything he was leaving behind. At nothing.

“
Because this is the Hall of the Betrayed.”

Richard glanced up at the twin skrin, guardians that had left the bones of two wizards here on this walkway, at their feet.

Richard remembered well the message the sliph had passed on from Wizard Ricker:
Ward left in.
Richard now knew what that meant.

He lifted his left arm, fist out, toward the skrin perched on the stone wall at the right. Ward left told him which arm to use and which skrin to ward. The wrong arm would have denied him entry into this place in the world of the dead. One of Ricker’s traps for the enemy.

His wristband heated. The leather pad protected his flesh from the power he focused in that band. A green glow enveloped his fist. The skrin to the right, to which he directed his birthright of authority, glowed in sympathy with his fist, immobilized for now, to allow Richard to enter.

Richard glanced up at the guardian of raven-black granite to his left. Richard called out its name, a guttural sound to which it answered. Black stone cracked and crumbled as the skrin turned to its master, awaiting instruction.

Richard made the sound of its name again. He lifted his hand to Cara.

“
This one does not belong here. Ward her back to the world of life. Do not harm her. After, return to your post.”

The skrin sprang from the stone wall, enveloping Cara.

“
Lord Rahl! When will you be home?”

Richard gazed into her blue eyes. “I am home.”

Light flared and silent thunder shook the soundless world as the skrin vanished on its journey with Cara, back to the world of life.

Richard turned to the winds. The four winds and the seer watched from their place up on the wall. Richard scanned the solid gold runes running up each side of the wall beside the entrance to the hall, reading the messages and warnings placed there by wizards past.

In a world without wind, Richard’s cloak billowed out behind, a telltale in a place with eddies of power and currents of force, as he strode onward, into the Hall of the Betrayed.
 

Kahlan threw up an arm before her face as lightning suddenly cracked before her. The road into the Temple of the Winds lit for an instant. In the distance, Kahlan could see Richard’s back as he strode resolutely into a passageway.

Cara tumbled to the ground on the road at the edge of the cliff, at Kahlan’s feet.

With the boom of thunder, the temple, and Richard, were gone.

Cara rolled to her feet. With wild fury, she seized Kahlan by the shoulders.

“
What have you done!”

Kahlan hurt too much to speak. She stared at the ground.

“
Mother Confessor, what have you done! I fixed it for you. What did you do to him?”

Kahlan’s head came up. “You what?”

“
I swore an oath. We are sisters of the Agiel. I swore an oath to you that if anything ever happened, if anything went wrong, I would see to it that it was you, and not Nadine, who was with Richard.”

Kahlan’s mouth fell open. “Cara, what did you do?”

“
What you wanted! I spoke the words of the winds as they came to me, but when I took you and Nadine to the buildings, I switched you both. I took Nadine to Drefan, and I took you to Lord Rahl.

“
I wanted you to be with the man you truly loved. I took you to Richard! Didn’t you trust in me? Didn’t you have faith in me?”

Kahlan fell into Cara’s arms. “Oh, Cara, I’m sorry. I should have believed in you. Dear spirits, I should have trusted you.”

“
Lord Rahl said he was going into the Hall of the Betrayed. I asked when he would be coming home. He said he was home. He isn’t coming back! What have you done!”

“
The Hall of the Betrayed …” Kahlan crumpled to the ground. “I have fulfilled the prophecy. I have helped Richard get into the Temple of the Winds. I have helped him stop the plague.

“
In so doing, I have destroyed him.

“
In so doing, I have destroyed myself.”

“
You have done more than that,” Cara whispered.

“
What do you mean?”

Cara lifted her Agiel in her fist. “My Agiel. It has lost its power. The power of a Mord-Sith works only in the presence of the bond to our Lord Rahl. It exists to protect the Lord Rahl. Without a Lord Rahl, there is no bond. I have lost my power.”

“
I am Lord Rahl now,” Drefan said as he strode up behind Kahlan.

Cara sneered at him. “You are no Lord Rahl. You do not have the gift.”

Drefan met her glare. “I’m all the Lord Rahl you have, now. Someone has to hold the D’Haran empire together.”

Kahlan clutched Richard’s black shirt to her stomach. “I am the Mother Confessor. I will hold the alliance together.”

“
You, my dear, have lost your power, too. You are no longer a Confessor, much less the Mother Confessor.” He reached down and gripped Kahlan under her arm. His powerful fingers tightened painfully as he lifted her. “You are my wife, now, and you will do as I tell you to do. You have sworn an oath to obey me.”