When Rikka had gone, Cara asked, “What evidence?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet.” Richard turned to Nicci. “Don’t forget what I told you before. You have to breathe in the sliph once we go under. At first you’ll want to hold your breath, but that just isn’t possible. Once we arrive and come up out of the sliph, you must let her out of your lungs and again breathe in the air.”
Nicci was looking more than a little nervous. Richard took her hand. “I’ll be with you, as will Cara. We’ve both done this before. I won’t let go of you. It’s hard to make yourself breathe in the sliph for the first time, but once you do, you will see that it’s quite a remarkable experience. It’s rapture to breathe the sliph.”
“Rapture,” Nicci repeated with more than just a little incredulity.
“Lord Rahl is right,” Cara said. “You’ll see.”
“Just remember,” Richard added, “when it ends you will not want to let go of the sliph and breathe air again—but you must. If you don’t, you’ll die. Do you understand?”
“Of course,” Nicci said with a nod.
“Come on then.” Richard started to climb up on the wall, pulling Nicci up with him.
“Where will we travel, Master?”
“I think we should go to the People’s Palace, in D’Hara. Do you know the place?”
“Of course. The People’s Palace is a central site.”
“A central site?”
If living quicksilver could be said to look puzzled by a question, the sliph looked puzzled. “Yes, a central site. Like this place here is a central site.”
Richard didn’t understand, but didn’t think it was relevant and so didn’t press the issue. “I see.”
“Why the People’s Palace,” Nicci asked.
Richard shrugged. “We have to go somewhere. We’ll be safe at the Palace. But more importantly, they have libraries there with rare ancient books. I’m hoping that maybe we can find something about Chainfire. Since the Sisters have Kahlan, I’m thinking that Chainfire might have something to do with some kind of magic.
“From what we’ve heard, the D’Haran army is somewhere in the vicinity on their way south. What’s more, the last time I saw Berdine, another Mord-Sith, was when I left her here in Aydindril, so she will probably be either close to our troops or the palace. I need her to help me translate some of the material from the books I’m bringing along. Besides that, she has Kolo’s journal and she may already know something helpful.”
He glanced at Cara. “Maybe we can see General Meiffert and see how things are going with the troops.”
Cara’s face lit with surprise and a broad grin.
Nicci nodded thoughtfully. “I guess all that makes sense, and I guess it’s as good a place as any. It gets you out of immediate danger and that’s what matters most right now.”
“All right, sliph,” Richard said, “we wish to travel to the People’s Palace in D’Hara.”
A liquid silver arm came up and slipped around all three of them. Richard felt the warm, undulating grip compressing to get a firm grasp on him. Nicci had his hand in a death grip.
“Lord Rahl?” Cara asked.
Richard held up the hand that wasn’t holding Nicci’s to halt the sliph before she could lift them into the well. “What?”
Cara bit her lip before finally speaking. “You’re holding Nicci’s hand. Will you hold my hand, too? I mean, I wouldn’t want the three of us to get separated.”
Richard tried not to smile at the worry on her face. Cara feared magic, even if she had already done this before.
“Sure,” Richard said as he took her hand. “I wouldn’t want us to get separated.”
A sudden thought struck him.
“Wait!” he said, stopping the sliph before she could start.
“Yes, Master?”
“Do you know a person named Kahlan? Kahlan Amnell, the Mother Confessor?”
“This name means nothing to me.”
Richard sighed in disappointment. He hadn’t really expected the sliph to know Kahlan. No one else did, either.
“Would you happen to know a place called the Deep Nothing?”
“I know several places in the Deep Nothing. Some have been destroyed, but some still exist. I can travel to them if you wish.”
Richard’s heart quickened in surprise. “Are any of these places in the Deep Nothing also a central site?”
“Yes, one of them,” the sliph said. “Caska, in the Deep Nothing, is a central site. Would you like to travel there?”
Richard glanced to both Nicci and Cara. “Do either of you know this place, Caska?”
Nicci shook her head.
Cara was frowning. “I think I remember hearing something about it when I was little. I’m sorry Lord Rahl, but I don’t remember exactly what—just that the name sounds familiar from old legends.”
“What do you mean, legends?”
Cara shrugged. “Old D’Haran legends…something about dream casters. Stories people told. Something about the history of D’Hara. It seems like Caska is a name from olden times.”
Olden times. Dream casters. Richard remembered that when he’d skimmed through some of the book Gegendrauss that he’d found back in the shielded room, he had seen something about casting dreams, but he hadn’t translated the passage. Even though Richard was the leader of the D’Haran Empire, he knew very little about the mysterious D’Hara.
Even if Cara didn’t know more, Richard still felt as if he had just taken a step closer to finding Kahlan.
“We wish to travel,” he said to the sliph. “We wish to travel to Caska, in the Deep Nothing.”
It had been a long time since Richard had traveled in the sliph and he felt a bit apprehensive. But his excitement that he was finally making connections to find the answers that had for so long eluded him swept away any concern.
“We travel to Caska, then,” the sliph said, her voice echoing around the stone room where once Kolo had died standing guard over her as the great war had come to an end. At least, everyone thought it had come to an end, but those ancient conflicts had not ended so easily and now they had again flared to life.
The arm lifted all three of them off the wall and plunged them down into the silver froth. Nicci’s grip on his hand tightened and she gasped in a breath before going under.
Chapter 60
With an arrow’s speed, Richard flew through the silken silence of the sliph, yet at the same time he glided with the slow grace of a raven riding the stilled currents above towering trees on a moonlit night. There was no heat, no cold. In the silence, sweet sounds filled his mind. His eyes beheld light and dark together in a single, spectral vision, while his lungs swelled with the sweet presence of the sliph as he breathed her into his soul.
It was rapture.
Abruptly, it ended.
Grainy darkness exploded in his sudden vision. There seemed to be blocky shapes all around as he broke the surface. Nicci’s hand gripped his in terror.
Breathe, the sliph told him.
Richard let out the sweet breath, emptying his lungs of the rapture. With a needful gasp, he sucked in the alien air. Cara, too, gasped in the hot, dusty air.
Nicci floated face down, rocking gently in the silver fluid.
Richard threw an arm over the stone wall at the side of the sliph, pulling Nicci with him. He took his bow off his back to get it out of his way and quickly set it against the outside of the wall. With the sliph’s help, he hopped up on the wall, and then with the sliph lifting her, pulled the dead weight of Nicci up enough to get her shoulders and head up into the warm, dark air.
Richard slapped her on the back. “Breathe, Nicci. Breathe. Come on, you have to let go of the sliph and breathe. Do it for me.”
At last she did. She gasped in the air, her arms flailing in terror at being confused and lost in such strange surroundings. Richard pulled her close as he helped her get her arms over the side and, panting, climb up on the wall.
&n
bsp; Brackets on the walls nearby held glass spheres, like back at the Keep, that glowed brighter as he climbed out of the well.
“What do you think this place is?” Cara asked as she peered around in the dim light.
“That was…rapture,” Nicci said, still under the sway of the experience.
“I told you,” Richard said as he helped her climb out.
“It looks like we’re in a stone room of some kind,” Cara said as she walked around the perimeter of the room.
Richard made his way toward the darkness at one end and two larger spheres in tall iron brackets brightened with an eerie green glow. He saw that they flanked steps. The steps, though, marched up to the ceiling.
“That’s pretty strange,” Cara said as she stood on the second step, inspecting the dark ceiling.
“Here,” Nicci said. She was leaning over to the side of the steps. “There’s a metal plate.”
It was the kind of metal plate Richard had seen in other places. They were trigger plates for shields. Nicci tapped her palm against it but nothing happened.
Richard pressed his hand to the icy cold plate and stone started grating as it moved. Dust came down in streamers.
The three of them ducked back as they all peered around in the gloomy light, trying to figure out what, exactly, was moving. The ground trembled. It felt like the whole room might be shifting and somehow changing shape. Richard then realized that it was actually the ceiling that was pulling aside.
A growing patch of moonlight fell across the steps.
Richard had no idea where they were, other than down in a stone room that appeared to be buried. He didn’t know where Caska was, other than the sliph said that it was in the Deep Nothing, and he didn’t know where that was, so he didn’t really know what to expect. He felt decidedly uneasy.
He reached for his sword.
The sword wasn’t there. For what felt like the thousandth time, he felt the sinking regret of realizing why and where it now was.
He drew his long knife instead as he started up the steps in a crouch, ducking low not only so as not to hit his head on the ceiling before it had moved out of the way, but out of caution for who might be outside and have heard stone sliding aside. Cara, seeing him draw his knife, spun her Agiel up into her fist. She tried to get out ahead of him, but he held his arm out, keeping her behind to the left. Nicci was close behind to his right.
As he came up out of the ground, he saw the shadowed shapes of three people standing not far ahead. He knew that from being in the sliph, until he fully recovered, his vision was more acute than ordinary. He could probably see them better than they could see him.
With that sharp vision, Richard saw that the big man in the middle was holding a slender girl back against him. He had one hand over her mouth. He could see the girl squirming. Moonlight gleamed off the blade he held to her throat.
“Drop your weapons,” the man holding the girl growled, “and surrender to the Imperial Order, or you will die.”
Richard flipped the knife into the air, let it make a half turn, and caught it by the tip. An inky shape suddenly swooped atop the man’s head. The bird let out a piercing caw. The man flinched. Richard didn’t take the time to wonder at such an unexpected assault. He heaved the knife.
On broad wings, the bird lifted into the air. The blade hit the man in the center of his face with a solid thunk. Richard knew that the blade was long enough to have penetrated all the way through the man’s brain and that the tip would have pierced the back of the skull. The man dropped straight down behind the trembling girl—dead before he could think to do her harm.
Before the men to either side of the girl could take a half a step, Nicci unleashed a scything whisper of power that took the heads off the other two men. The only noise it made was the sound of the heads hitting the ground with twin, dull thuds. The bodies toppled to either side of the girl.
The night was still but for the drone of cicadas.
The girl hesitantly stepped closer and dropped to her knees. She bent forward before the steps until her forehead touched the stone at his feet.
“Lord Rahl, I am your humble servant. Thank you for coming and protecting me. I live only to serve. My life is yours. Command me as you will.”
Even as the girl was still speaking in a quavering voice, Cara and Nicci were spreading out to the sides, searching for other threats. Richard crossed his lips with a finger to let them know to be quiet about it so as not to alert any other troops that might be near. Both saw his signal and nodded.
Richard waited, listening for any threat. Since the girl was on the ground, he let her stay there, out of harm’s way. He heard the whisper of feathers against air as the raven landed on a nearby limb and then the soft rustle as it folded in its wings.
“It’s clear,” Nicci announced in a quiet voice as she returned from the shadows. “My Han tells me there are no others in the immediate vicinity.”
Relieved, Richard let the tension go out of his muscles. When he heard the girl weeping in quiet terror, he sat down on the top step right near her. He suspected her terror was fear that she might be killed just as the three men had been. Richard wanted to assure her that she was not going to die.
“It’s all right,” he told her as he gently grasped her shoulders and urged her up. “I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe, now.”
As she came up he gathered the frightened girl into his arms, embracing her protectively, holding her head to his shoulder when she glanced to the three dead men as if they still might jump up and snatch her away. She was a slender lithesome creature, the kind of girl on the brink of being a woman, yet looking as frail as a bird about to leave the nest. Her slender arms came gratefully around Richard as she wept with relief.
“The bird a friend of yours?” he asked.
“Lokey,” she confirmed with a nod. “He watches over me.”
“Well, he did a good job tonight.”
“I thought you weren’t going to come, Master Rahl. I thought it was my fault, that I wasn’t a good enough priestess for you.”
Richard ran a hand down the back of her head. “How did you know I was coming here?”
“The tellings say it is so. But I already waited so long that I thought they might be wrong. I was near to despairing that you would find us not worthy, and then I feared it was my failing”
He surmised that the “tellings” must mean prophecy of some sort. “You are a priestess, you say?”
She nodded as she pulled back to look up at his smile. Richard saw then that her big copper-colored eyes peered out from a dark mask painted in a band around her face. It was a disturbing visage.
“I am the priestess of the bones. You have returned to help me. I am your servant. I am the one meant to cast the dreams.”
“Returned?”
“To life. You have come back from the dead.”
Richard could only stare.
Nicci squatted down beside the girl. “What do you mean, he returned from the dead?”
The girl pointed behind them, at the structure from where they had emerged. “From the world of the dead…back to we the living. It says his name there, on his tomb.”
Richard turned and indeed did see his name carved in the monument. The thing that came immediately to mind was seeing Kahlan’s name carved in stone, too. Both of them were alive, despite their graves.
The girl glanced at Cara and then at Nicci. “The tellings say that you will come back to life, Lord Rahl, but they did not say that you would bring your spirit familiars.”
“I haven’t come back from the dead,” Richard told her. “I came through the sliph—down there, in that well.”
She nodded. “The well of the dead. The tellings mention such mysterious things, but I never knew their meaning.”
“Do I call you ‘priestess,’ or by your name?”
“You are Master Rahl; you can call me as it pleases you. My name is Jillian, though. I have had that name my whole life. I’m af
raid I have not been a priestess a long time, and so I’m not very good at it, I don’t think. My grandfather said that when it is time, it matters not how old I am, but that it is time.”
“How about if I call you Jillian, then?” he asked with a smile.
She appeared still too frightened to return the smile. “I would like that, Master Rahl.”
“My name is Richard. I’d like it if you called me Richard.”
She nodded, still with that look of awe filling her round eyes. Richard didn’t know if her awe was at the Master Rahl, or a dead man returned to life and walking up out of his grave.
“Now look, Jillian, I don’t know anything about your tellings, yet, but you need to understand that I haven’t returned from the dead. I traveled here because I have trouble and I’m looking for answers.”
“You have found the trouble, then. You killed three of them. The answer is for you to help me cast the dreams so that we might drive these evil men away. They have driven most of my people into hiding. The older ones are down there.” She pointed down the dark slope. “They tremble in fear that these men will kill them if they do not find what they seek.”
“What are they looking for?” Richard asked.
“I’m not sure. I have been hiding among the spirits of our ancestors. The men must have made someone down there tell them of me because they knew my name when they finally chased me down, today. I have been staying out of their grasp for a long time. Today they were hiding where I had cached some food. The men grabbed me and wanted me to show them where the books are.”
“These aren’t the regular Imperial Order troops,” Nicci explained to the frowning look on his face. “They’re advance scouts.”
Richard glanced at the bodies. “How do you know?”
“Because regular Imperial Order troops would never ask you to put down your weapons and surrender. Only the scouts, searching routes through strange lands and hunting for any information they can uncover would take prisoners. They question people. Those who won’t talk are sent back to be tortured. These scouts are the men who first find stashes of books that are then collected for the emperor to see. Scouts like this find not only the best routes for the troops, but they are meant to find something even more important for the emperor: knowledge, especially that in books.”
Chainfire Page 71
