Nadine followed after as Kahlan started down the corridor to the right. "But why would he care if there are people? He killed and wounded all those soldiers back there!"

"And they managed to take off an arm. Now Marlin is wounded. Jagang won't care if we kill Marlin, but, on the other hand, if he can escape, then he can use Marlin to cause more harm."

"What more harm could he cause than hurting people? Hurting all those people upstairs and the soldiers?"

"The Wizard's Keep," Kahlan said. 'Jagang doesn't have command of magic, other than his ability as a dream walker, but he can use a person with the gift. From what I've seen so far, though, he doesn't know much about using another's magic. The things he did back there, simple use of air and heat, are far from inventive for a wizard. Jagang only thinks to do the simplest of things with their magic, things of brute force. That is to our advantage.

"If I were him, I would try to get to the Keep, and use the magic there to cause the most destruction I could."

Kahlan turned down an ancient stairwell carved from rock, taking the steps two at a time. At the bottom, the rough, tunnel-like hall ran in two directions. She turned to the soldiers still racing down the stairs behind. "Split up-half each way. This is the lowest level. When you encounter more junctures, cover them all. Remember which way you went at each turn, or you could be lost down here for days.

"You've seen what he can do. If you find him, don't take a chance trying to take him. Post sentries so we know if he backtracks, and then send runners to come get me."

"How will we find you?" one asked.

Kahlan looked to the right. "At every choice, I'll take the one to the right, so you can follow where I went. Now hurry. I think he's headed for any opening out of the palace he can find. We can't let him get out. If he gets to the Keep, he can get through shields there that I can't."

With Nadine and half the men, Kahlan rushed on through the dank hall. They encountered several rooms, all empty, and before long, several more corridors. At every branch, she divided the men and took her continually dwindling force to the right.

"What's the Wizard's Keep?" Nadine asked as they moved on through the darkness.

"It's a massive fortress, a stronghold, where wizards used to live. It predates the Confessors' Palace." Kahlan lifted a hand, indicating the palace above them. ' In ages long forgotten, nearly everyone was born with the gift. Over the last three thousand years the gift has been dying out in the race of man." "What's in the Keep?"

"Living quarters, long abandoned, libraries, rooms of every sort. And things of magic are stored there. Books, weapons, things like that. Shields protect important or dangerous parts of the Keep. Those without magic can't pass through any of the shields. Since I was born with magic, I can pass through some of them, but not all.

"The Keep is vast. It makes the Confessors' Palace look like a cramped cottage, by comparison. In the great war, three thousand years ago, the Keep was filled with wizards and their families. Richard says it was a place filled with laughter and life. At that time, the wizards had both Subtractive and Additive Magic." "And now they don't?"

"No. Only Richard has been born with both sides.

"There are places in the Keep that I, and the wizards I grew up with, could not enter because the shields are so powerful. There are other places that have not been entered in thousands of years because they are shielded with both sides of the magic. No one could get past the shields. "But Richard can. I fear Marlin can, too." "Sounds a dreadful place."

"I've spent a good portion of my life there, studying books of language, and learning from the wizards. I never though, of it as anything but part of my home." "Where are these wizards now? Can't they help us?"

"They all killed themselves, at the end of last summer, in the war with Darken Rahl."

"Killed themselves! How awful. Why would they do that?" Kahlan was silent for a moment as they moved relentlessly onward into the darkness. It all seemed a dream from another life.

"We needed to find the First Wizard, to have him appoint the Seeker of Truth to stop Darken Rahl. Zedd was the First Wizard. He was in Westland, on the other side of the boundary. The boundary was linked to the underworld, the world of the dead, so no one was able to cross it.

"Darken Rahl was also hunting Zedd. It took all the wizards to conjure magic to get me through the boundary to go after Zedd. If Darken Rahl had captured the wizards, he might have used his vile magic to make them confess what they knew.

"To give me the time to have a chance to succeed, the wizards killed themselves. Darken Rahl still managed to send assassins after me. That was when I met Richard. He protected me."

"Blunt Cliff?" Nadine said in questioning amazement. "There were four huge men found dead at the bottom of the cliff. They had leather uniforms, and weapons of every sort. No one had ever seen men like them before."

"That was them." "What happened?"

Kahlan gave her a sidelong glance. "Something like you and your experience with Tommy Lancaster." "Richard did that? Richard killed these men?"

Kahlan nodded. "Two of them. I took another with my power, and he killed the last. Those were probably the first men Richard had ever encountered who wanted to do more to him than simply give him a beating when he chose to protect someone. To protect me. Richard has had to make a lot of hard choices since that day on Blunt Cliff."

For what seemed hours, but she knew couldn't be more than fifteen or twenty minutes, they continued on into the dark, stinking halls. The stone blocks were larger, some so huge that single blocks ran from floor to ceiling. They were roughly cut, but fit with no less precision than the other mortarless jointwork elsewhere in the palace.

The halls were wetter, too, with water running down the walls in places, draining into small tiled weep holes at the edges of the floor that had a crown to direct the water to the drains. Some of the drains were plugged with debris, allowing shallow pools to form.

Rats used the tiled drains as tunnels. They squeaked and scurried away at the approach of light and sound, some taking to the drains, some running on ahead. Kahlan thought again of Cara, and wondered if she was still alive. It seemed too cruel that she should die before having a chance to taste life without the madness that shadowed her.

A series of connecting tunnels finally reduced Kahlan's company to Nadine and two men. The way was so narrow that they had to proceed single-file. The low, arched ceiling forced them to trot in a crouch.

Kahlan saw no blood-Jagang probably used his control of Marlin's mind to cut the flow-but in several places she did see that the slime on the wall was smeared in horizontal streaks. As low and narrow as the passageway was, it would be difficult to avoid grazing the close walls. Kahlan brushed against the wall more than she wished to; it hurt her shoulder when the knuckles of her hand over the wound struck the slimy stone. Marlin-Jagang-had to have been through the passageway and brushed against the same wall.

She felt both a rush of heady relief that she was on his tail, and terror at the prospect of catching him.

The arched passageway narrowed again, and the ceiling became even lower. They had to hunch into a deep crouch to proceed. The flames from the torches folded to lap at the stone close overhead, and the smoke billowed along the ceiling, burning their eyes.

As the passageway started into a steep descent, they all slipped and fell more than once. Nadine skinned her elbow as she fell on it while maintaining a grip on the torch. Kahlan slowed, but didn't stop, as one of the soldiers helped Nadine regain her feet. The other three quickly caught up. Ahead, Kahlan heard the rush of water.