“Who are you?” Kahlan asked as she pushed Nadine back with her toward the ladder.
Marlin shook with a belly laugh. “Why, none other than your worst nightmare, my little darlins.”
“Jagang?” Kahlan whispered incredulously. “Is that it? Are you Jagang?”
The belly laugh boomed around the stone walls of the pit. “You have me cornered. I confess. It is I, the dream walker himself. I’ve borrowed this poor fellow’s mind, just so I could pay you a little visit.”
Cara slammed her Agiel against the side of his neck. A puppet arm swept her aside.
Cara returned almost instantly, crashing into his kidneys, trying to take him down. He didn’t budge. With jerky movements, he reached down, caught her braid, and flung her back against the wall behind him as if she were a stick doll. Kahlan winced at the sound of Cara smacking the stone. She rolled facedown on the floor, blood soaking into her blond hair.
Kahlan shoved Nadine toward the ladder. “Get out!”
Nadine seized a rung on the ladder. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ve seen enough. This ends now.”
Kahlan went for Marlin, or Jagang, or whoever it was. She had to end it with her power.
Screaming, Nadine shot past Kahlan and across the floor as if she were sliding across ice. Marlin caught the flailing woman, spun her around, and gripped her by the throat in one hand. Nadine, her eyes wide, choked for air.
Kahlan skidded to a halt as Marlin twitched up a cautionary finger. “Tut-tut. I’ll crush her throat.”
Kahlan retreated a step. Nadine gulped air when he released the pressure.
“One life, for all those you will otherwise kill? Do you think the Mother Confessor would be unwilling to make such a choice?”
At Kahlan’s words, Nadine, in renewed panic, writhed in his grip, her fingers digging frantically at his hands. Even if Marlin didn’t crush her throat, he was touching her, and if Kahlan took him with her power, Nadine would be lost, too.
“Perhaps you would, but don’t you want to know what I’m doing here, darlin? Don’t you want to know my plans for your love, the great Lord Rahl?”
Kahlan turned and screamed up the shaft of light. “Collins! Shut the door! Lock it!”
Above, the door slammed shut. Only the spitting torches remained to light the pit. The sound of the door clanging shut added its echo to the hissing torches.
Kahlan turned back to Marlin. Keeping her eyes on him, she began slowly edging around the room. “What are you? Who are you?”
“Well, actually, that’s a difficult philosophical question to answer in terms you would understand. A dream walker is able to slip into the infinite spaces of time between thoughts, when a person, who they are, their very essence, doesn’t exist, and inhabit that person’s mind. What you see before you is Marlin, a loyal little lapdog of mine. I’m the flea on his back that he brought into your house with him. He is a host, which I thought to use for… certain things.”
Nadine thrashed against her captor, causing him to squeeze tighter to maintain his grip. Kahlan pursed her lips and urged her to shush. If she continued fighting him, she would get herself strangled. As if snatching the lifeline of Kahlan’s command, Nadine stilled in his grip, and was able at last to pull breaths.
“Your host will shortly be a dead host,” Kahlan said.
“He’s expendable. Unfortunately, for you, the damage has already been done, thanks to Marlin.”
With a furtive glance to the side, Kahlan checked her slow progress toward the facedown Cara. “Why? What has he done?”
“Why, Marlin has brought you and Richard Rahl down for me. Of course, you have yet to suffer what I have wrought, but he has done it. I had the privilege of witnessing the glory of it.”
“What have you done? What are you doing here in Aydindril?”
Jagang chuckled. “Why, I’ve been enjoying myself. Yesterday, I even went to watch a Ja’La game. You were there. Richard Rahl was there. I saw you both. I wasn’t pleased to see that he changed the broc, replacing it with a lightweight one. He’s turned it into a game for the weak. It’s meant to be played with a heavy ball, and by the strongest, the most aggressive and brutish players—those with the true lust to win.
“Do you know what Ja’La means, darlin?”
Kahlan shook her head as she ran through a list of her options and priorities. Foremost on the list was using her power to stop this man before he escaped the pit, but first she had to find out all she could, if they were to stop his plans. She had already failed once at that task. She couldn’t fail again.
“It’s from my native tongue. The full and proper name is Ja’La dh Jin—The Game of Life. I don’t like the way Richard Rahl corrupted it.”
Kahlan had almost reached Cara. “So you infested this man’s mind so that you could come and watch children play a game? I thought that the great and all-powerful Emperor Jagang would have better things to do.”
“Oh, I’ve had better things to do. Much better.” His grin was maddening. “You see, you thought I was dead. I wanted you to know that you failed to kill me at the Palace of the Prophets. I wasn’t even there. I was enjoying the charms of a young woman, at the time, actually. One of my newly captured slaves.”
“So you aren’t dead. You could have sent us a letter, and not have to go to all this trouble. You came for some other reason. You were here with a Sister of the Dark.”
“Sister Amelia had a little task to perform, but I’m afraid she’s no longer a Sister of the Dark. She betrayed her oath to the Keeper of the Underworld, so that I could destroy Richard Rahl.”
Kahlan’s foot touched Cara. “Why didn’t you tell us all this before, when we first captured Marlin? Why wait until now?”
“Ah, well, I had to wait until Amelia returned with what I sent her for. I’m not one to take chances, you see. Not anymore.”
“And what did she steal from Aydindril for you?”
Jagang chuckled derisively. “Oh, not from Aydindril, darlin.”
Kahlan squatted down beside Cara. “Why would she no longer be sworn to the Keeper? Not that I’m unhappy about it, but why would she betray her oath?”
“Because I placed her in a double bind. I gave her the choice of being sent to her master, where she would suffer for eternity at his merciless hands for her past failure with your love, or to betray him, and escape his grasp for now, only to intensify his anger for later.
“And, darlin, you should be unhappy about it, very unhappy, as it will be the downfall of Richard Rahl.”
Kahlan forced herself to speak. “An empty threat.”
“I don’t make empty threats.” His smile widened. “Why do you think I went to all this trouble? To be there at its doing, and to let you know that it is I, Jagang, who has brought it upon you. I’d hate to have you think it was simply chance.”
Kahlan shot to her feet and took an angry stride toward him. “Tell me, you bastard! What have you done!”
Marlin’s hand jerked up, raising one finger. Nadine made a strangling sound. “Careful, Mother Confessor, or you’ll be denying yourself hearing the rest of it.” Kahlan stepped back. Nadine gasped for air. “That’s better, darlin.
“You see, Richard Rahl thought that by destroying the Palace of the Prophets, he kept me from gaining the knowledge it contained.” Marlin’s puppet finger waggled. “Not so. Prophecies were not unique to the Palace of the Prophets. There have been prophets about, elsewhere, and there are prophecies elsewhere. Here, for example, there are prophecies in the Wizard's Keep. In the Old World, there are prophecies, too. I found a number of them when I excavated an ancient city that once thrived at the time of the great war.
“Among them, I found one that will be Richard Rahl’s undoing. It is an extraordinarily rare type of prophecy, called a bound fork. It enforces a double bind on its victim.
“I have invoked the prophecy.”
Kahlan didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about. She quick
ly squatted and lifted Cara’s head. Cara scowled up at her.
“You idiot,” Cara whispered under her breath, “I’m fine. Leave me. Get answers. Then signal, and I will use my link to kill him.”
Kahlan dropped Cara’s head and stood. She started inching back toward the ladder.
“You’re talking babble, Jagang.” She moved more quickly, hoping Jagang would think she had found Cara dead. She was halfway to the ladder, although she had no intention of trying to escape. She intended to unleash her power on him. Nadine, or no Nadine. “I don’t know anything about prophecy. You’re making no sense.”
“Well, darlin, it’s like this, either Richard Rahl lets the firestorm of what I have wrought rage out of control, fulfilling one fork of the prophecy, in which case it kills him, too, or he tries to stop what I have done, fulfilling the other fork of the prophecy. On that fork, he is destroyed. See? He can’t win, no matter which he chooses. Only one of two events can now evolve, only one of the two forks. He has the power to choose which one, but either will be his doom.”
“You are a fool. Richard will choose neither.”
Jagang roared with laughter. “Oh, but he will. I’ve already invoked the prophecy, through Marlin. Once invoked, there is no turning back from a bound fork prophecy. But enjoy your delusions, if it will please you. It will make the fall all that much more painful.”
Kahlan paused in her tracks. “I don’t believe you.”