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?”