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The sorceress shook her head. “It’s hard to explain.” She glanced back over her shoulder at Red. “With your help at least I was able to find Isidore and Naja. They were able to find Richard.”

Kahlan grabbed Nicci’s arm. “You found Richard?”

Nicci nodded. “The dark ones had him, just as you said. Zedd and a great many others came to help us. There was a battle among spirits. Zedd helped us free Richard from the dark ones. Because he was there, we won the battle.”

“Then why isn’t Richard back?” Kahlan asked, trying to control her voice as well as her pounding heart.

She couldn’t help thinking of the wood stacked in a funeral pyre down in the citadel square, waiting for Richard if this last hope didn’t work. The terror of having to consign him to the flames was returning. She couldn’t go on living if that was going to be his fate. She didn’t want to live without him.

Nicci’s gaze left Kahlan’s. “There is more to it. They couldn’t send him back. They said–”

When she heard a distant scream, Kahlan turned away from the bed to stare at the closed doors. It was the kind of scream that sent a chill up her spine and made the fine hairs at the back of her neck stand on end.

Red’s eyes were closed, as if she was consulting an inner voice. “They come.”

Both Kahlan and Nicci turned to the witch woman.

Kahlan frowned. “Who? Who comes?”

“The ones who never sleep. The ones who walk like men,” the witch woman said. Her blue eyes opened. “They are close.”

Kahlan was about to ask what she was talking about when beyond the door more screams ripped the night. They were a lot closer. She heard heavy thuds and then the sound of furniture breaking.

Nicci grabbed their arms and pulled them both back toward the Grace just as the doors exploded inward, banging back against the wall and barely hanging by their hinges. A shower of splintered woodwork filled the room.

A roar came from out in the hall and then a man lurched into the room. In the soft candlelight Kahlan could see half a dozen broken spears jutting from the man’s chest and back, along with a cluster of knives and several broken sword blades that had completely penetrated his body. There was no blood.

The eyes of the man glowed crimson in the near darkness, as if lit by the fires of the underworld. The torn, withered skin of his face hung down in places. Teeth showed through holes in the dried flesh of his cheeks. His clothes looked like the dirt in which he had long ago been buried. A fine net of tree roots had grown into his clothes, and some of the bigger roots had even grown through his wrist. Maggots wriggled in open wounds of his abdomen. Ribs showed through splits in his rotted shirt.

The gagging stench of death the man brought with him filled the room.

This was probably one of the dead summoned from his grave by Sulachan’s minions. Occult powers, rather than life, gave him purpose and strength.

The three women backed away, keeping out of his reach. The dead man, one ankle broken so that his foot lay completely over to one side, staggered forward as he roared at them. His eyes glowed with hatred and fury.

A soldier raced in and with all his strength drove a spear through the dead man. Kahlan heard it splinter bone, but it had no more effect than the other weapons stuck through the man.

Another brawny soldier leaped onto the dead man’s back, trying to wrestle him to the ground. The raging corpse seized the soldier by an arm and whipped him around as if he were but a child. A desiccated arm lashed around with impossible speed, ripping open the soldier’s chest. An arc of blood splashed across the wall. The soldier dropped in a lifeless heap against the wall. The other soldier ducked back through the door so as to not be caught by the man’s arm.

Just as the invader turned back to them, Nicci threw a fist of air at the man. It knocked him back toward the door. He spread his arms, grabbing the wall at the sides to keep from falling through the splintered doorway. From behind, out in the hallway, Laurin rammed her Agiel into the small of his back. Even though her Agiel didn’t work, he roared and spun, backhanding her hard enough to send her flying. She hit the wall and slid down into an unconscious heap.

A soldier stabbed his sword through the dead man’s chest, but it did no more than the collection of steel already there. Another soldier swung, trying to hack off an arm, but with the dead man’s otherworldly strength he effortlessly deflected the strike. The soldiers kept coming but the dead man knocked them back or took them down as fast as they came. The risen dead were not easily stopped by worldly weapons.

Before more of them could join the battle, the soldiers were set upon from behind by howling hordes of half people racing up the hall. The soldiers were forced to turn to meet the new attack.

Kahlan looked across the room to Richard’s sword lying along the length of his body. His hands around the hilt were still where she had placed them. That sword could stop these dead men driven by occult magic. She just needed to get to it.

Before she could try to get across the room to grab the sword, the dead man lurched farther into the room, blocking her from getting to Richard. In the gloom, the glowing red eyes looked all the more menacing as they tracked her dodging first left, then right.

Before Kahlan could try to dart around the growling dead man, Nicci pulled her and the witch woman farther back, dragging them both over the lines of the Grace, until the three of them stood in the center beside the drop of Richard’s blood. Nicci apparently hoped the Grace would be protection from such otherworldly forces.

They stood close together as the man came to a stop on the other side of the candles. He looked unsure what to do and reluctant to step into the Grace to get at them.

Kahlan wondered how long his reluctance would last. She eyed the sword across the room even though she knew that she had little chance to make it. The dead man would likely snatch her in an instant.

But she also knew that the sword could stop the threat.

Out in the hall a battle raged. Kahlan caught glimpses of half people racing toward the bedroom only to be slaughtered by soldiers of the First File. Other soldiers were dragged down by half people as other men of the First File pulled them off. She saw flashes of the Mord-Sith’s red leather as well.

Just as Kahlan was about to again try to make it to the sword, another dead man, this one bigger, stepped through the splintered doorway and into the bedroom. He was more decomposed than the first and smelled even worse. Flaps of dried skin with hair attached hung down over an ear. One arm didn’t work right. Even so, he moved well enough. Like the first, his glowing red eyes appraised the room, the bed with Richard on it, and the three women standing in the center of the Grace.

Several soldiers charged in, hacking wildly at the intruders, trying to take them down. It was futile. Their weapons chopped off bits of the dried bodies, but did little to stop the dead men. With a mighty swipe of his one good arm, the dead man knocked down several soldiers.

“We have no power to stop them,” Red whispered even as her hands turned, trying to work some kind of witch-woman magic. Whatever it was she was doing, none of it was working.

Nicci again threw fists of air that staggered the first of the dead men back. The second man ducked to the side so that Nicci’s next attempt blew out the edge of the doorway, sending chunks of wood flying.

“Are we safe in the Grace?” Kahlan asked.

Almost as if to answer, one of the two dead men charged across the room. He lunged, swinging an arm like a big hook, trying to snag one of the women as they stepped back just in time. He no longer seemed concerned by the lines of the Grace drawn in blood and stepped right into the midst of it.

When he took another step forward, the three of them split up and went in three different directions. Nicci moved around to the side of the man, hammering him with fists of air. It wasn’t enough to stop him, but it distracted him, keeping his attention. When she hit him again in quick succession it knocked the man sideways. Because of his broken ankle he stumbled, but caught himself on the windowsill.