The clay shattered in an unexpected manner and a piece fell off. Where the broken piece had been, Richard saw the gleam of metal under the clay. He struck the statue half a dozen times, breaking the clay away to reveal that there was the same metal statue underneath, only properly detailed. The whole thing had been covered with clay slurry to encase it; that was why it looked too bulky to him.
“Why in the world would they make a statue like that?” Kahlan asked as she frowned up at Richard.
“If I’m right, to hide the sliph.”
He used his knife handle to hammer the other sculpture and it, too, shattered to reveal metal under the covering of clay. He reached in and broke off the remaining pieces, exposing the two metal sculptures of shepherds with their flocks.
“My gift doesn’t work,” he said to Nicci. “You try it.”
Nicci reached in and grasped one of the statues. They all glanced around the hallway, expecting something to happen, but the hallway remained silent and still.
He gestured to the other. “Try holding both.”
Nicci reached in and wrapped her hand around the other shepherd, so that she was holding one in each hand. They all looked around the silent hallway.
Still, nothing happened.
With a disappointed sigh, she let her hands slip off the little statues. “I can’t explain why there is metal under the clay, but it apparently isn’t a trigger mechanism for a shield. It must simply be an ancient oddity.”
They all stared in frustration at the small statues of shepherds, trying to imagine their purpose. Nothing about what the original builders of the sentinel village of Stroyza did was random or pointless. Everything had been carefully planned not according to what was happening and what they feared, but according to the things they knew of the star shift and the Twilight Count. It all had a purpose.
He was at a loss to understand what that purpose was.
Cassia gestured with her lantern. “Lord Rahl, I don’t think you are listening to the real meaning of the writing.”
Richard’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“It said ‘Let the shepherd guide you.’”
Richard opened his hands in bewilderment. “I know. Nicci tried it. Nothing happened.”
Cassia gave him a crafty smile. “She isn’t our shepherd. You are our shepherd, Lord Rahl. You are the one who guides us.”
“But my gift doesn’t work.”
She tipped her head at him in a meaningful way. “Maybe it isn’t looking for the gift. Maybe it’s looking for the shepherd.”
Richard stared at her for a moment, and then turned and grabbed both smooth metal statues.
He felt them both warm under his touch. The shelves began to shudder. The stone floor trembled. All the way around the niche, the wall began to crack in straight lines. Bits of stone flaked away from the ever-widening cracks as a section of the wall with the niche broke free and started to move in away from the hallway. The stone cracked and popped until the section of wall with the niche jolted free and swung back into a dark room.
“I don’t understand,” Richard said. “My gift doesn’t work.”
Nicci looked over at him. “You read the Cerulean scrolls, Richard. We’re dealing with forces here that transcend the gift.”
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Nicci slipped in first to provide light from the sphere she’d brought with her. Richard followed, ducking under the short opening so he wouldn’t hit his head. Kahlan did the same, staying close behind him. When the sorceress stepped into the room, a dozen light spheres in iron brackets around the outside of the circular room all brightened at her presence, illuminating the entire room with the same green luminescence common to light spheres.
There, in the center of the room, capped with a domed ceiling, was a short, circular stone wall. It looked like most of the other wells for the sliph that Richard had seen.
Kahlan slipped a hand around his biceps as she stared at the well in amazement. “You were right, Richard. Dear spirits, you were right.”
“It’s hard to believe this has been here for thousands of years,” Nicci said as she, too, stared at the well. “The way the room was sealed, it’s pretty clear that no one has seen this since it was built in the time of the great war.”
“Richard was right,” Kahlan said. “They lost the link to the knowledge of the past and none of them even knew it was here, right by the quarters for the gifted.”
Kahlan beamed with a bright smile as she gazed up at him. She was relieved that they weren’t trapped in the caves after all.
“This will get us to the People’s Palace,” she said. “As soon as we get there, Nicci will finally be able to get the poisonous touch of death out of you.”
Richard only smiled back. For now, he couldn’t let her know that he could never allow that to happen.
Cassia bent over the edge, holding the lantern high to have a look down inside. “I’ve seen this kind of well before, at the People’s Palace.”
“That’s right,” Richard said. “We’ve used that one before.”
Nicci leaned over the short wall beside Cassia, holding out the light sphere to see better down inside.
“No sliph,” she announced.
Richard knew they wouldn’t see the sliph yet. He stepped up beside Nicci. “We’ll have to wake her.”
“How do we do that?” Vale asked.
“I have to call her,” Richard said back over his shoulder. “I’ve done it before.”
“When your gift worked,” Kahlan reminded him.
Richard let out a deep sigh. “You’re right.” He gestured to Nicci. “Put down that sphere so you can help me. Add your gift to what I do and maybe together we can wake her.”
Richard leaned over the well and crossed his wrists, placing the ancient symbols on the silver bands he wore over one another, pressing them tightly together. As he had done in the past, he envisioned the sliph coming to him. He had called her from her sleep before and brought her to him, but he didn’t know if it was actually his gift that powered that call.
He had traveled in the sliph a number of times before. Sometimes he had been reluctant. This time he was eager. Time was running out and he needed to get to the palace.
Nicci placed her hands over his fists, closing her fingers tightly over his. He could feel the tingling warmth of her magic flowing into the bands at his wrists, heating them with that power. It was a decidedly uncomfortable feeling, but not painful. He knew that sometimes magic, even magic being used for good, felt that way.
Richard closed his eyes. “Come to me,” he whispered. “I need you. Come to me.”
For the longest time, they stood leaning in over the sliph’s well, Richard pressing the wristbands together, Nicci’s hands closed over his. When he slitted his eyes to check down into the darkness to see if the sliph was coming yet, he could see that the stones lined the inside of the well to quite a depth, but they gradually faded away into the darkness.
He saw that his silver wristbands, covered in symbols made up of the language of Creation, were glowing with an intense yellowish light. That light at his wrists–whether from Nicci’s magic or her magic plus something she was pulling from him, he didn’t know–was so intense that he could see the bones of his wrists right through his flesh. He could also see the bones in both his hands and Nicci’s. That light lit the inside of the dome above them and shot down into the depths of the well, disappearing into the darkness far below as if headed on a mission to find the sliph.
For the longest time they all stood still, barely breathing, as they focused on their need for the sliph to come to them. For all that time there was only silence from below.
Richard felt the soles of his boots tingling, and then the ground abruptly began to rumble. His heart beat faster as the trembling became stronger. Dust was shaken free from the walls.
As he listened, he could hear a rushing sound deep down in the well. Small pebbles and grit on the ground danced
with the vibration. Dust rose from the stone floor.
A column of air, driven up from far below, suddenly blew Richard and Nicci’s hair upward as it blasted out of the well. They both quickly pulled back, fearing they might be hit by the sliph as she raced up from below.
Silvery liquid shot up to the top of the rim, threatening to explode out of the confines of the well, but it slopped along the sides of the stone enclosure as it abruptly stopped. The roaring sound stopped. The rumbling stopped. The room fell quiet again.
The liquid in the well drew up in the center, rising in a reflective column that looked like nothing so much as molten silver. The continually undulating surface drew into features as a face formed. The face, like a polished silver statue, had risen nearly to eye level with Richard. It looked around the room briefly but then the gaze finally settled on him.
“You summoned me?” the sliph announced. It didn’t exactly sound happy about it. The voice had a strange quality that seemed to echo around the room even though the rest of their voices didn’t.
“Yes!” Richard said as he urgently leaned toward the sliph. “We need to travel.”
“Very well,” the sliph said. “Will you be traveling alone?”
“No.” Richard swept an arm around the room. “All of us will be going. All of us need to travel.”
The silver face coolly appraised the four women before looking back at Richard. “As you wish. All of you will need to step forward to allow me to see who among you may travel.”
Richard thought the sliph was being uncharacteristically reserved and distant. Usually she was as eager to please as she was to travel. In the past the sliph had always been solicitous, bordering on pandering, always wanting to travel with him. Although he was somewhat confused by the chilly reception, he ignored it as he urged the others to step forward.
As they stood close around the well, the sliph extended a silvery arm, brushing it briefly across the foreheads of Cassia, Vale, Nicci, and Kahlan, touching Richard last.
“Not ideal,” the sliph announced, “but each of you has enough of what is needed. I can take you all if you insist.”
“We’re trapped in here,” Richard said, his frustration with her strange behavior growing by the moment. His annoyance increasingly crept into his tone. “Anyone left here will die. So, yes, I insist that we all travel.”
The sliph assessed him for a moment with her liquid quicksilver gaze before finally answering. “Very well.”
Richard lifted his sword a few inches from its scabbard and then let it drop back down. “We have no other way out of here. I need to take my sword with me.”
“Your need for that object is not important to me.”
He had to put an effort into keeping his temper in check. “I know that in the past traveling with it was lethal. Is there a way for me to bring it this time? That’s what I need to know.”
The lustrous metallic face studied him a moment before the sliph again reached out to glide a silvery hand along his brow, then moved it down to touch the sword resting in its scabbard.
“This dangerous thing belongs to you,” the cool voice said.
“Yes. It’s my sword.”
“I mean, it is linked to you through magic. It is bonded to you.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“In addition to that link to this object, you now have death in you. Because of the link to you, it will not harm the others.”
“What about me?” Richard asked. “Will it harm me?”
The silver face showed no emotion. “I told you. You have death in you.”
It wasn’t a question. “Yes. What of it?”
“If you did not have death within you, it would kill them once they entered me. That object would bring death to you as well if you brought it with you, except that you already have death in you. Since you already have death in you, it can’t bring death into you.”
“Why not?” Nicci asked, clearly not convinced.
The sliph lifted her brow at the sorceress. “Because you can’t be killed twice. He is already dead. At least, to a degree and as far as the magic is concerned. He is already crossing the veil, already irretrievably beyond hope of escaping that death taking him, beyond hope of remaining alive. Since death already has him in its grip, it can’t take him a second time.”
“We don’t have death in us,” Nicci pressed. “So why wouldn’t it kill the rest of us?”
The silver face looked displeased to have to explain it. “The object is designed to kill. It seeks to bring death to the living. He is living, but he has death in him, so as long as he is in me along with you, the magic within the object is locked on him. It has a purpose designed into it. It cannot go outside that purpose. You might say that because of his condition, the object is fixated on him for now, so you are able to slip through without drawing its lethal magic.”
“So then I can bring it,” Richard said, eager not to have to discuss it. Kahlan was already looking more than a little alarmed and he didn’t want to get her any more upset than she already was.
“Yes,” the sliph said. “But you must understand that it will increase the death in you.”
Kahlan planted her fists on her hips. “What does that mean?”
The reflective gaze turned to her. “It means that it will steal some of the life from him and it will add instead to the power of death within him. It will be doing its job. It will move the placement of the veil within him. It will shift the balance toward death.”
Kahlan glared. “You mean it will cut the time he has in the world of life so that he will die sooner.”
“Yes. Traveling with that object will draw away some of his life and add power to the force of the other side of the veil, add power to the death he already has in him, but since he is already in the grip of death it cannot kill him.”
“By how much time?” Kahlan asked. “How much time will it steal from his life?”
“I am no expert and I can’t say for certain. But I am able to tell that it will drain away some of his remaining life force.”
Kahlan grabbed his sleeve. “Richard, you can’t afford to take that risk. You need to leave the sword here.”
He remembered the sliph telling him before that when he put her to sleep she went to be with her spirit. That meant that at least some part of her had been called from the underworld, and that concerned him. The sliph would have direct knowledge of that line between life and death.
He turned to Kahlan. “We don’t have a way to get back in here, except through her. I can’t come back for it, and I can’t leave the sword here.”
“Yes you can,” she insisted. “Richard, this is about your life.”
“No, it’s about everyone’s life.” He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “It’s the key to something. Something mentioned in the Cerulean scrolls.” He cocked his head to the side, expecting her to complete that concept without having to say it aloud.
Recognition suddenly appeared in her eyes. The sword was the key to the power of Orden. The power of Orden had to do with the Twilight Count, prophecy, and everything else that was happening. The key to that kind of power was far too valuable to abandon.
The sliph would know of the line and the balance between worlds. He had no doubt that she was correct about the cost of taking the sword with him.
But it was a cost that really didn’t matter.
“All right, then,” he said, turning from Kahlan back to the sliph. “Let’s get going. We need to hurry.” He put a foot up on the wall. “We need to get to the People’s Palace.”
The silvery face frowned. “Where?”
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Richard paused and looked up. “The People’s Palace. In D’Hara. We need to travel to the People’s Palace.”
The sliph stared without comprehension. “I don’t know of such a place. I can’t travel there.”
Richard let his foot slip off the wall and back down on the floor. “What are you talking ab
out? Of course you can. I’ve traveled with you to and from the People’s Palace in the past.”
The sliph shook her head. Little silver droplets fell back into the well to join the rolling quicksilver.
“I have never seen you before,” the sliph insisted. “You have never traveled with me.”
Richard stared, trying to figure out why she would say such a thing. “Of course you have.” He swept an arm out, as if to indicate the places far away they had gone together. “I’ve traveled with you a number of times. You have pleased me.”
A frown of displeasure grew on the silver brow. “It is not my responsibility to please anyone, even you. If you want to travel, we will travel, but I am not required to please you as well. Now, do you still wish to travel?”
Richard and Kahlan shared a look. He cleared his throat and started over.
“We need to travel. We have to get out of here. You are our only way out of here. We must all travel. If you are no longer able to take us to the People’s Palace–”
“I told you, I have never been to such a place. I cannot take you there.”
Richard forced himself to be patient. “All right, then, where are you able to take us?”
The sliph looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “To the place I am supposed to take you.”
Richard wiped a hand back across the side of his face as he reminded himself to be patient. He dared not anger her and have her vanish. The sliph, after all, was their only way out of the caves.
“Where are you supposed to take us? Are you able to name the place?”
“Of course,” the sliph said with cool detachment as the head drew back a bit. “The Wizard’s Keep.”
“The Keep,” he repeated as he stared at her. “You can go to the Keep. And where else can you travel? What other places?”
The frown on her silver brow returned. “Other places? There are no other places. There is only here and the Keep. Those are the only two places. You summoned me. I am here to take you from here to the Keep.”
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