There were oozing masses of the dirty ends of viscera that had been tossed on the pile. They almost looked alive as maggots wriggled all through them. Larger bones of legs and arms, and even sections of rib cages, protruded from the continually moving soft mass. Many of the skulls, with rows of white lines gouged down into the bone from teeth that had raked the scalps and faces off of them, had rolled off the pile to litter the floor.
The pile of remains was slightly taller than Richard, and at least a dozen and a half feet across. A quick calculation in his head from the numbers of leg and arm bones, as well as the skulls, told him that these were the remains of possibly several hundred people.
It quickly became clear to Richard what this was.
“They brought their kills down here—or even live captives—to feed off them,” he said to the sergeant. “They tossed the bones and things they didn’t want to eat on the pile.”
Sergeant Barclay nodded. “So it would appear, Lord Rahl.”
Kahlan gasped back a sob as she pointed. “Those smaller bones are from children. It’s not only adults. There are children among the remains.”
A watchful Shale reached a hand out to steady Kahlan.
Richard finally turned his gaze from the horror to look at the sergeant. “How did you find this?”
The man let out a troubled sigh. “A number of my men were approached by people looking for missing loved ones. They helped search and took down the names. I knew something was odd when none of the missing people could be found. Not a one. We often encounter frantic people looking for a lost child or a relative. We almost always find the missing loved ones. But now, we weren’t finding any of the missing people, not the missing husbands, not the missing wives, and not the missing children. It was like they all had simply vanished.
“That was strange enough, but then I realized that some of my men were missing as well.
“I started checking and soon discovered who the missing men were.”
“Who were they?” Richard asked.
The burly soldier leaned closer. “The thing was, Lord Rahl, the missing men were the ones who were supposed to be guarding the landings on the way down here—the landings with the doors, like the one I showed you. The men had been posted to guard those doors to the inner areas of the plateau where the public comes and goes from the palace. There had only been one man at each post, and now those men were gone.
“So, I took a squad and we went searching. On our way down here, we found bloody handprints here and there, on the corner of hallways, at doorways, even along the walls. It was where the victims were dragged in here, still alive, trying to grab onto a corner or doorway, anything to try to help them get away. None did.
“We kept going, following the bloody smears and the blood that had dripped on the floor.” He gestured to the remains. “Eventually we discovered this. I can only imagine how terrified these poor people were as they were dragged in here and eaten alive. Down here, no one would be able to hear their screams.
“I recognized a couple of the pieces of armor. They belonged to my men. Some have a mark that identify their owner. That’s how I know who they were and that this was where they had vanished to.”
Richard boiled with rage, and at the same time he was heartsick at the discovery. It was especially painful seeing that children were among the remains.
He also felt a rising sense of panic that everyone depended on him to stop this slaughter, and he didn’t have the foggiest idea how he was going to do that.
“They were using this place as a base to hunt from.” Richard gestured back up the way they had come. “After they killed your men, they used the doors out to the dark landings where people were coming and going from the palace. They were snatching unsuspecting people from the shadows on the landings outside those doorways.”
“If ever there was a nightmare come to life, that is it,” Kahlan said.
The sergeant nodded. “That was why I wanted to show you the dark landings beyond the doors when we were on our way down here. I wanted you to see where they were likely snatching most of the victims.”
Richard took the torch from the sergeant, and alone stepped among the skulls—both of adults and children—scattered on the floor in order to get a closer look at the heap of remains. He had to walk through the sickening pools of blood and fluid. None of the others looked the least bit inclined to want to go with him, except, of course, Vika. She followed closely in his footsteps, her Agiel in her fist, as her analytical gaze swept over the scene.
Richard wanted to get a closer look to burn the full horror of it into his memory so that he would never fail to use every last bit of strength and resolve to stop these hateful things, as Kahlan had called them.
But more importantly, he wanted to see what he could learn about the predators who had done this. He squatted down next to a small skull. It was obviously from a child probably six or seven years old. The scalp and face had been mostly scraped off. Only a little patch of blood-soaked hair remained, above where an ear would have been. With a finger, he turned it around and around to get a better look at it in the torchlight.
The back of the skull was missing. Jagged marks revealed that it had been teeth that had opened the skull, most likely to get at the brains, as the skull was mostly empty.
He bent closer, holding the torch near to see better.
The deep gouges across the top of the skull and down toward the brow were made by a row of many, many sharp, pointed teeth all close together. By the way they were deeper in the center, and lighter and lighter as they moved farther to the side, it told him that the thing had a very large mouth. Only the front teeth had done this damage as they were raked across the bone. He looked around at some of the other skulls littering the floor. They had the same kind of deep gouges raking across the bone, indicating the same thing—a very large mouth with a lot of very sharp, pointed teeth, all close together, tightly lined up across the top and bottom jaws.
Vika shadowed him as he stood and returned to the others, where he handed the torch back to the sergeant.
“What did you learn?” Kahlan asked.
“Without realizing it, they have revealed a little bit about themselves. From the evidence left on the skulls, I can tell that rather than fangs like many predators have that would leave puncture holes, they have a lot of needle-sharp teeth, all about the same length, lined up closely together side by side. Some of the large bones were bitten clean in half, so their jaws are powerful. From the evidence on some of the skulls, it also looks like their mouths are big enough to gnaw on a skull, like we might bite at an apple. From the confusing mass of indistinct footprints, they don’t wear boots. From the size of those prints I’d guess they must be half again my size.”
“Dear spirits,” Kahlan said as she slowly shook her head. “We are in a lot of trouble.”
11
They left the site of the slaughter, grateful to be away from the gagging stench of death, and made the long, tiring climb mostly in silence. When they finally reached the uppermost landing of the service stairs, Richard gently grabbed the sergeant’s arm and brought him to a halt.
“There is no way we will ever be able to identify all those people. You said you have a list of the names of missing people. I think it’s safe to assume that the missing are those we saw down there.”
The man nodded. “So, what do you want to do, Lord Rahl?”
Richard felt overwhelmed, frustrated, and angry. “We can’t really bring the whole rotting mess back out of there for a proper burial. It would be to no real purpose, since we wouldn’t have any way to put the remains of individuals together or identify any of them so that people could grieve and bury their loved one. There is no way we would know who we’re burying or if the missing are for sure among them, even though it seems likely that they are. And we certainly can’t bring their families down there to the site and tell them that their loved ones are likely among the remains in the pile.