“Orsk! That’s Orsk! He was Kahlan’s guard!”
“General Reibisch said to tell you that there was no sign that she or anyone else with her was killed. It appears that they put up a furious fight, but then they were captured.”
Richard grabbed the soldier’s arm. “Do the trackers have any idea which direction they went?” Richard was furious with himself because he hadn’t gone. If he had gone, he would already be on the trail. Now it would take him weeks to catch up.
“General Reibisch said to tell you that the trackers are pretty sure they went south.”
“South? South?” Richard had been sure that Brogan would flee with his prize to Nicobarese. With that many bodies, Gratch must have fought furiously. They must have captured him, too.
“They said they couldn’t be sure because it happened so long ago. It snowed more, and now the snow is melting, so it’s hard to track, but he believes they went to the south, and his whole force is going after your queen.”
“South,” Richard murmured. “South.”
He raked his fingers back through his hair, trying to think. Brogan had fled rather than join with Richard and his cause against the Order. The Blood of the Fold had joined with the Imperial Order. The Imperial Order ruled the Old World. The Old World was to the south.
General Reibisch was tracking her south—going after his queen. South.
What was it the mriswith in the Keep had said?
The queen needs you, skin brother. You must help her.
They were trying to help him. His mriswith friends were trying to help him.
Richard snatched up his sword and shoved his head through the loop of leather baldric. “I have to go.”
“We go with you,” Cara said. Ulic nodded his agreement.
“You can’t go where I go. Take care of things for me.” He turned to the soldier. “Where’s your horse?”
He pointed. “Out that way and over in the next courtyard. But she’s pretty footsore.”
“She only has to get me to the Keep.”
“The Keep!” Cara clutched his arm. “Why are you going to the Keep?”
Richard pulled his arm away. “That’s the only way to get to the Old World in time.”
She started objecting, but he was already running down the hall. Others were joining in the rush to catch up with him. He could heard the jangle of armor and weapons behind, but he didn’t slow. He didn’t listen to Cara’s pleas as he tried to think.
How was he going to do it? Was it possible? It had to be. He would do it.
Richard burst out the door, pausing for only an instant, and then tore off toward the courtyard where the soldier said he had left his horse. He stumbled to a stop when he came upon the horse in the darkness. He gave the sweaty animal a quick pat of introduction as she danced sideways, and then he vaulted up into the saddle.
As he pulled the horse around by the reins, he could just hear Berdine’s voice in the distance as she ran toward him.
“Lord Rahl! Stop! Take off the cape!” Richard gave the horse his heels as he saw Berdine waving Kolo’s journal. He didn’t have time for her. “Lord Rahl! You must take off the mriswith cape!”
Not likely, he thought. The mriswith were his friends.
“Stop! Lord Rahl, listen to me!” The horse leapt into a gallop, the black mriswith cape billowing out behind. “Richard! Take it off!”
The weeks of tedious, patient waiting seemed to be exploding into the sudden need for desperate action. His passion to get to Kahlan overwhelmed all other thought.
The sound of thundering hooves drowned out Berdine’s voice. The wind tore at his cape, the palace rushed by in a blur, and the night swallowed him.
“What are you doing here?”
Brogan turned to the voice. He hadn’t heard the Sister coming up behind them.
He scowled at the older woman with long white hair tied loosely behind her back. “What business is that of yours?”
She clasped her hands. “Well, since this is our palace, and you are a guest, that makes it your business when one of our guests goes places in our home where he has been specifically forbidden to go.”
Brogan squinted with indignation. “Do you have any idea just who you be speaking to?”
She shrugged. “Some petty, self-important officer, I would say. One too pompous to know when he is treading on dangerous ground.” She cocked her head. “Have I gotten it right?”
Brogan closed the distance. “I be Tobias Brogan, lord general of the Blood of the Fold.”
“My, my,” she mocked. “How impressive. Now, it seems I don’t recall saying, ‘You may not visit the Mother Confessor unless you are the lord general of the Blood of the Fold.’ You hold no value for us except that which we assign you. You do no task but what we assign you.”
“Which you assign me! The Creator Himself assigns me task!”
She snorted with a laugh, “The Creator! My, but don’t you think a lot of yourself. You are a part of the Imperial Order, and you do what we tell you."
Brogan was an inch away from slicing this disrespectful woman into a thousand pieces. “What be your name,” he growled.
“Sister Leoma. Do you think you can remember that much in your tiny brain? You were told to remain with your fancy troops in the barracks. Now, get yourself back there, and don’t let me catch you in this building again, or you will cease to be of value to the Imperial Order.”
Before Brogan could explode in anger, Sister Leoma turned to Lunetta. “Good evening, my dear.”
“Good evening,” Lunetta said in a cautious voice.
“I’ve been meaning to have a talk with you, Lunetta. As you can see, this is a house of sorceresses. Women with the gift are greatly respected here. Your lord general here is of little value to us, but one of your ability would be most welcome. I would like to offer you a place with us. You would be held in high esteem. You would have responsibility and respect.” She glanced down at Lunetta’s outfit. “We would certainly see to it that you were better clothed. You wouldn’t have to wear those ugly rags.”
Lunetta clutched her colored patches tighter and inched closer to Brogan’s side. “I be loyal to my lord general. He be a great man.”
Sister Leoma smirked. “Yes, I’m sure he is.”
“And you be wicked women,” Lunetta said in a suddenly steady, suddenly dangerous tone. “My mamma told me so.”
“Sister Leoma,” Brogan said. “I will remember the name.” He tapped the trophy case at his belt. “You can tell the Keeper that I will remember your name. I never forget the name of a baneling.”
A malicious smile spread across Leoma’s face. “The next time I speak with my Master in the underworld, I will tell him your words.”
Brogan pulled Lunetta around and headed for the door. He would be back, and the next time, he would have what he wanted.
“We need to go talk to Galtero,” Brogan said. “I’ve had about enough of this nonsense. We’ve wiped out nests of banelings bigger than this one.”
Lunetta touched a worried finger to her lower lip. “But, Lord General, the Creator has told you to do as these women say. He told you that you must give the Mother Confessor to them.”
Brogan took long strides through the darkness once outside. “What did mamma tell you about these women?”
“Well . . . she said . . . that they be bad.”
“They be banelings.”
“But Lord General, the Mother Confessor be a baneling. Why would the Creator tell you to give her to these women if they be banelings?”
Brogan turned his eyes down to her. In the faint light, he could see her looking up in confusion. His poor sister didn’t have the intellect to figure it out.
“Isn’t it obvious, Lunetta? The Creator has revealed himself through his treacherous ways. He be the one to create the gift. He tried to trick me. It be up to me, now, to purge the world of evil. Everyone with the gift must die. The Creator be a baneling.”
Lunetta gasped i
n awe. “Mamma always said you be the one headed for greatness.”
After setting the glowing sphere on the table, Richard stood before the great, silent well in the center of the room. What was he to do? What was the sliph, and how did he call her?
He paced around the waist-high round wall, looking down into the darkness, but saw nothing.
“Sliph!” he called down into the bottomless hole. His own voice echoed back up.
Richard paced back and forth, pulling on his hair, frantically trying to think of what to do. The tingle of a presence flushed across his flesh. He halted his pacing and looked up to see a mriswith standing near the door.
“The queen needs you, skin brother. You must help her. Call the sliph.”
He rushed over to the dark, scaled creature. “I know she needs me! How do I call the sliph!”
The slit of a mouth spread in what looked to be a smile. “You are the first to be born in three thousand years with the power to wake her. You have already broken the shield keeping us from her. You must use your power. Call the sliph with your gift.”
“My gift?”
The mriswith nodded, its beady eyes staying on Richard. “Call her with your gift.”
Richard finally turned away from the mriswith and went back to the stone wall around the great pit. He tried to remember how he had used his gift in the past. It always came on instinct. Nathan had said that that was the way it worked with him, with a war wizard: need—through instinct.
He had to let his need bring forth the gift.
Richard let the need burn through him, through the calm center. He didn’t try to summon the power, but he screamed with the need of it.
He thrust his fists into the air, tilting his head back. He let the need fill him. He wanted nothing else. He let the unconscious restraints go. He didn’t try to think of what to do, he simply demanded it be done.
He needed the sliph.
He let out a silent cry of fury.
Come to me!
He loosed the power, like letting out a deep breath, demanding the task be done.
Light ignited between his fists. That was it—the call—he knew it, he felt it, he understood it. He knew, too, what to do. The softly glowing mass rotated between his wrists as lacy veins of light twisted up his arms, flowing into the pulsing force between.
When he felt the power reach its peak, he cast his hands downward. With a howl, the orb of light shot away, down into the blackness.
As it descended, its light illuminated the stone in a ring around it. The ring of light and the glowing mass became smaller and smaller, the howl diminishing in the far distance, until he could neither hear nor see what he had unleashed.
Richard hung over the stone wall, looking into the bottomless abyss, but all was silent and dark. He could hear only his own panting. He stood and glanced over his shoulder. The mriswith watched, but made no move to help; what was needed was up to Richard. He hoped it would be enough.
In the stillness of the Keep, in the quiet of the mountain of dead stone towering around him, there came a distant rumbling.
A rumbling of life.
Richard leaned back over the wall, looking down, but saw nothing. Yet, he could feel something. The stone beneath his feet quaked. Stone dust floated in the jittering air.
Richard looked down in the well again and saw a reflection. The well was filling—not filling as water fills, but something was racing up the shaft with impossible speed, roaring with a howling shriek of velocity as it came. The howl grew as the thing rushed upward.
Richard flung himself back from the stone wall, scarcely fast enough. He was sure it would shoot out of the well and blast through the ceiling. Nothing moving that fast could stop in time. Yet it did.
All was abruptly still. Richard sat up, propping himself up with his arms behind on the floor.
A lustrous metallic hump slowly mounded above the edge of the stone wall surrounding the well. It drew up into a bulk, rising impossibly of its own accord, like water standing in the air, only it wasn’t water. Its glossy surface reflected everything about it, like polished armor, distorting the images reflected off its surface as it grew and moved.
It looked like living quicksilver.
The lump, joined to the body of it in the well as if by a neck, continued to contort, bending into edges and planes, folds and curves. It warped into a woman’s face. Richard had to remind himself to take a breath. He now understood why Kolo called the sliph “she.”
The face finally saw him on the floor. It looked like a smooth statue made of silver—except it moved.
“Master,” she said in an eerie voice that echoed around the room. Her lips hadn’t moved as she spoke, but she smiled as if well pleased. The silver face warped into curiosity. “You have called me? You wish to travel?”
Richard sprang to his feet. “Yes. Travel. I wish to travel.”
The pleasant smile returned. “Come, then. We will travel.”
Richard brushed the stone dust from his hands onto his shirt. “How? How do we . . . travel?”
The silver brow drew together. “You have not traveled before?”
Richard shook his head. “No. But I need to now. I need to get to the Old World.”
“Ah. I have been there often. Come, and we will travel.”
Richard hesitated. “What do I do? What do you want me to do?”
A hand formed up and touched the top of the wall. “Come to me,” the voice said, echoing around the room. “I will take you.”
“How long does it take?”
The frown returned. “Long? From here to there. That long. I am long enough. I have been there.”
“I mean . . . hours? Days? Weeks?”
She didn’t seem to understand. “The other travelers never spoke of this.”
“Then it must not take very long. Kolo never mentioned it, either.” The journal could be frustrating at times because Kolo never explained what was, to his people, common knowledge. He hadn’t been trying to teach, or pass on information.
“Kolo?”
Richard pointed at the bones. “I don’t know his name. I call him Kolo.”
The face stretched out of the well to look over the wall. “I do not remember seeing this.”
“Well, he’s dead. He didn’t look like that before.” Richard decided he better not explain who Kolo was or she might remember and be upset. He didn’t need any emotion, he needed to get to Kahlan. “I’m in a hurry. I’d appreciate it if we could hurry.”
“Step closer so I may determine if you can travel.”
Richard moved up to the wall and stood still while the quicksilver hand came out to touch his forehead. He flinched back. It was warm. He had expected cold. He returned to the hand and let the palm glide over his forehead.
“You can travel,” the sliph said, “You have both sides required. But you will die if you are like this.”
“What do you mean, ‘like this’?”
The quicksilver hand lowered beside him, pointing at the sword, but being careful not to get too close. “That object of magic is incompatible with life in the sliph. With that magic in me, any life also in me will be ended.”
“You mean I must leave it here?”
“If you wish to travel, you must, or you will die.”
Richard was decidedly uneasy about leaving the Sword of Truth unguarded, especially after learning of the men with families who had died to make it. He pulled the baldric off over his head and stared at the scabbard in his hands. He looked over his shoulder at the mriswith watching him. He could ask his mriswith friend to guard the sword.
No. He could ask no one to take the responsibility of guarding something so dangerous and coveted. The Sword of Truth was his responsibility, not anyone else’s.
Richard drew the sword from the scabbard, letting the clear ring of its steel reverberate around the room, die out slowly. The rage of the magic didn’t die out, though; it thundered through him.
He held up the blad
e, looking down its length. He could feel the raised gold wire of the word TRUTH biting into his palm. What was he to do? He needed to go to Kahlan. He needed to have the sword be safe in his absence.
It came to him through the call of need.
He turned the sword down, gripping the hilt in both hands. With a grunt of effort powered by the magic, by the storms of fury it engendered, he thrust the sword downward.
Sparks and stone chips flew as Richard drove the sword up to its hilt into a huge stone block of the floor. When he took his hands away, he could still feel the magic within him. He had to leave the sword, but he still had the magic; he was the true Seeker.
“I’m still linked to the sword’s magic. I retain the magic within me. Will that kill me?”
“No. Only that which engenders the magic is deadly, not that which receives it.”
Richard climbed up on the stone wall, suddenly beginning to worry about this. No, he had to do it. He needed to.
“Skin brother.” Richard turned to the mriswith when it called to him. “You are without a weapon. Take this.” It tossed one of its three-bladed knives up to Richard. As it arced gently through the air, Richard caught it by the handle. The side guards lay against each side of his wrist as he grasped the weapon’s crossways handgrip in his fist. It felt surprisingly good in his hand, like an extension of his arm.
“The yabree will sing to you, soon.”
Richard nodded. “Thank you.”
The mriswith returned a slow smile.
Richard turned to the sliph. “I don’t know if I can hold my breath long enough.”
“I told you, I am long enough to reach where we travel.”
“No, I mean I need air.” He made a display of inhaling and exhaling. “I need to breathe.”
“You breathe me.”
He listened to her voice echo around the room. “What?”
“To live when you travel, you must breathe me. The first time you travel, you will be afraid, but you must do this. Those who do not, die in me. Do not be afraid; I will keep you alive when you breathe me. When we reach the other place, you must then breathe me out, and breathe in the air. You will be just as afraid to do that as you will be to breathe me, but you must do it or you will die.”
Blood of the Fold tsot-3 Page 60
