Blood of the Fold

Chapter 35

“Don’t touch anything,” Richard reminded them again as he scowled over his shoulder, “I mean it.”

The three Mord-Sith didn’t answer. They turned to look up at the high ceiling of the arched entry and then at the huge, intricately joined blocks of dark granite just inside the raised, massive portcullis marking the entrance to the Wizard’s Keep, Richard glanced back past Ulic and Egan, to the wide road that had led them up the mountainside and at last over a stone bridge two hundred and fifty paces long that spanned a chasm with near vertical sides that dropped away for what seemed thousands of feet. He wasn’t sure of the full depth of the yawning abyss because in the far distance below, clouds hugging the ice-slicked walls obscured the bottom. Walking over the bridge and looking down into that dark, jagged maw made him dizzy and light-headed. He couldn’t imagine how the stone bridge could have been erected over such an obstacle.

Unless one had wings, there was but this single way into the Keep.

Lord Rahl’s official escort of five hundred men waited back on the other side of the bridge. They had intended to come with him into the Keep until they had reached that spot, having just rounded a switchback, and every eye, including his, had looked up at the vastness of the Keep, its soaring walls of dark stone, its ramparts, bastions, towers, connecting passageways, and bridges, all of which presented an unmistakable sensation of sinister menace jutting from the stone of the mountain, somehow looking alive, as if it were watching them. Richard’s knees had gone weak at the sight, and when he ordered them to wait there, none had raised so much as a single word of protest.

It had taken considerable will for Richard to force himself to go on, but the idea of all those men seeing their Lord Rahl, their wizard, balk at going into the Wizard’s Keep kept his feet moving when he would have wished otherwise. Besides, he needed to do this. Richard summoned courage by remembering Kahlan telling him that the Keep was protected by spells, and that there were places even she couldn’t go because those spells so sapped one of courage that they couldn’t proceed. That’s all it was, he assured himself, just a spell to keep the curious away, only a feeling, and not a real threat.

“It’s warm here,” Raina said, her dark eyes looking about in astonishment.

Richard realized she was right. Once they were beyond the iron portcullis, the air had lost its chill with each step, until it was like a fine spring day inside. The somber, steel gray sky into which the sheer mountainside ascended above the Keep, and bitter wind on the road up, held no hint of spring, though.

The snow on his boots was beginning to melt. They all took off their heavy mantles and tossed them in a pile to the side, against the stone wall. Richard checked that his sword was clear in its scabbard.

The towering, arched opening they passed beneath was a good fifty feet long. Richard saw that it was merely a breach in the outer wall. Beyond, the road continued through an open area before tunneling into the base of a high stone wall and disappearing into the gloom beyond. Probably just went to the stables, he told himself. No reason to go in there.

Richard had to resist the urge to shroud himself in his black mriswith cape and become invisible. He had been doing that more and more of late, finding comfort not only in the solitude it provided, but in an odd, indefinably pleasurable sensation it invoked, almost like the reassurance of the magic of the sword at his hip, always there, always at his beck and call, always his ally and champion.

All around, intricate junctures of masonry walls created of the bleak courtyard a craggy canyon, its walls dotted by a number of doors. Richard chose to follow a stepping-stone path through the gravel of granite fragments, to the largest of the doors.

Berdine suddenly clutched his arm so hard he winced in pain, turning away from the door to pry off her fingers.

“Berdine,” he said, “what are you doing? What’s the matter?”

He extricated his arm from her grasp, but she grabbed it again. “Look,” she finally said in a tone of voice that made the hair at the back of his neck stand on end. “What do you suppose that is?”

Everyone turned to see where she pointed with her Agiel.

Rock fragments and stones rolled in waves, as if some huge stone fish swam beneath their surface. As the unseen thing underneath came closer, they all inched toward the center of their stepping-stone. The gravel crunched and gnashed as it undulated in waves, like water in a lake.

Berdine’s grasp on his arm tightened painfully as the crest of the waves approached. Even Ulic and Egan gasped with the rest of them as it seemed to pass beneath the stepping-stones under their feet, the waves lapping stone chips up onto the rocks upon which they stood. Once beyond, the rolling movement of the gravel abated until all was still.

“All right, just what was that?” Berdine blurted out. “And what would have happened to us if we had gone a different way, to one of the other doors, instead of along the only path to this one?”

“How should I know?”

She blinked up at him. “You’re a wizard. You’re supposed to know these things.”

Berdine would have fought Ulic and Egan by herself, without a second thought, if he were to command it, but unseen magic was something altogether different. All five of them were fearless against steel, but none of them were the least bit shy about letting him see their anxiety toward magic. They had explained it to him any number of times: they were the steel against steel, so that he could be the magic against magic.

“Look, all of you, I’ve told you before that I don’t know very much about being a wizard. I’ve never been to this place before. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know how to protect you. Now, will you do as I asked, and wait with the soldiers on the other side of the bridge? Please?”

Ulic and Egan folded their arms in mute reply.

“We’re going with you,” Cara insisted.

“That’s right,” Raina added.

“You can’t stop us,” Berdine said as she finally released his aim.

“But it could be dangerous!”

“And we must protect you,” Berdine said.

Richard scowled down at her. “How? By squeezing the blood out of my arm?”

Berdine turned red. “Sorry.”

“Look, I don’t know about the magic here. I don’t know the dangers, much less how to stop them.”

“That is why we must go,” Cara explained with exaggerated patience. “You don’t know how to protect yourself. We might be of help. Who’s to say that an Agiel—” She lifted a thumb to Ulic and Egan. “—or muscles, aren’t what will be needed? What if you fall down a simple hole with no ladder, and there is no one to hear you call for help? You could be hurt by something not magic, you know.”

Richard sighed. “Well, all right. I guess you have a point.” He shook a finger at her. “But if you get your foot bitten off by some stone fish or something, don’t you complain to me about it.”

The three women grinned in satisfaction. Even Ulic and Egan smiled. Richard let out a weary sigh.

“Come on, then.”

He turned toward the twelve-foot-tall door set back in an alcove. The wood was gray and weathered, and spanned with simple but massive iron straps spiked on with cut nails as big as his fingers. Above the door, words were carved in the stone lintel, but they were in a language none of them could understand. As Richard reached for the lever, the door began to move inward on silent hinges.

“And he says he doesn’t know how to use his magic,” Berdine mocked.

Richard checked the resolve in their eyes one last time. “Remember, don’t touch anything.” They nodded. He heaved a resigned sigh and turned toward the doorway, scratching the back of his neck.

“Didn’t the unguent I brought rid you of your rash?” Cara asked as they stepped through the doorway into the cheerless room beyond. It smelled of damp stone.

“No. Not yet, anyway.”

Inside the vast entry chamber their voices echoed off the beamed ceiling, which was some thirty feet high. Richard slowed as he peered around the near empty room and came to a halt.

“The woman I bought it from promised me it would cure your rash. She said it was made with the usual, common ingredients, like white rhubarb, juice of laurel, butter, and soft-boiled egg, but when I told her that it was most important, she added some special, costly elements. She said she put in betony, pig’s ulcer, a swallow’s heart, and because I am your protector, she had me bring her my moon blood. She stirred it in with a red hot nail. I stayed and watched, just to make sure.”

“I wish you had told me this before I’d used it,” Richard muttered as he started ahead into the gloomy chamber.

“What?” He waved off her question. “Well, I warned her that it had better work, for the amount I paid, and told her that if it didn’t, I would be back and she would rue the day she failed. She promised it would work. You did remember to put some on your left heel, like I told you, didn’t you?”

“No, I just put in on the rash.” Now he wished he hadn’t.

Cara threw her hands up. “Well, no wonder. I told you that you had to put it on your left heel, too. The woman said the rash was probably a disruption in the basing of your aura, and you had to put it on your heel, too, to complete the connection to the earth.”

Richard only half listened to her; he knew she was merely trying to find courage in the sound of her own voice, by keeping the subject mundane.

High overhead to their right, a row of small windows poured long slanting shafts of daylight across the room. Ornately carved wooden chairs stood watch to each side of an arched opening at the far end. Beneath the row of windows hung a tapestry, its image too faded to be discerned. The opposite wall held a row of candles in simple iron sconces. A heavy trestle table sat near the center of the room, bathed in a brilliant shaft of light. The room was otherwise bare.

They crossed the floor, accompanied by the echoes of the sounds of their boots on the tiles. Richard saw that there were books on the table. His hopes elevated; books were why he had come. It could be weeks yet before Kahlan and Zedd made it back, and he feared that he might need to take action to protect the Keep before then. He was becoming restive and worried while he waited.

With the D’Haran army holding Aydindril, his biggest threat right now was an assault to seize the Keep. He hoped to find books that might impart some knowledge, maybe even tell him how to use some of his magic, so that if someone with magic attacked, he might gain a key to warding them off. He feared the Order would try to snatch some of the magic preserved in the Keep. Mriswith, too, were in his thoughts.

There were nearly a dozen books on the table, all the same size. The words on the covers were not in a language he could understand. Ulic and Egan stood with their backs to the table while Richard slid some of the books aside with a finger to better see ones underneath. Something looked familiar about them.

“They look like the same book, but in different languages,” he remarked, half to himself.

He turned around one that caught his eye so he could look at the title, and suddenly realized that though he couldn’t read it, he had seen the language before, and he recognized two of the words. The first, fuer, and the third, ost, were words he knew only too well. The title was in High D’Haran.

A prophecy that Warren had shown him in the vaults at the Palace of the Prophets had referred to Richard, calling him fuer grissa ost drauka: the bringer of death. The first word in this title, fuer, meant “the,” and the third, ost, meant “of.”

“Fuer Ulbrecken ost Brennika Dieser.” Richard let out a frustrated sign. “I wish I knew what it meant.”

“The Adventures of Bonnie Day, I think.”

Richard turned to see Berdine looking past his shoulder at the table. She stepped back, her blue eyes glancing away as if she thought she had done something wrong.

“What did you say,” he whispered. Berdine pointed at the book on the table.

“ ‘Fuer Ulbrecken ost Brennika Dieser.’ You said you wished to know what it meant. I think it means The Adventures of Bonnie Day. It’s an old dialect.”

The Adventures of Bonnie Day was a book Richard had owned since his early youth. It had been his favorite book, and he had read it so often he practically knew it by heart.

Only after going to the Palace of the Prophets in the Old World had he discovered that the book had been written by Nathan Rahl, a prophet and Richard’s ancestor. Nathan had written the book as a primer on prophecy, he said, and had given it to boys who had potential. Nathan had told Richard that with the exception of Richard, all who had possessed the book had met with fatal accidents.

When Richard was born, the Prelate and Nathan had come to the New World and stolen the Book of Counted Shadows from the Keep in order to prevent it from falling into Darken Rahl’s hands. They gave it to Richard’s stepfather, George Cypher, and extracted his promise to make Richard memorize the entire book, word for word, and then destroy it. The Book of Counted Shadows was needed in order to open the Boxes of Orden, back in D’Hara. Richard still knew that book by heart—every word.

Richard remembered fondly the happy times of his youth, living at home with is father and brother. He had loved his older brother, and looked up to him. Who knew then the treacherous turns life would take? There was no going back to those innocent times.

Nathan had also left behind a copy of The Adventures of Bonnie Day for him. He must have also left these copies, in other languages, here at the Keep when he had been here right after Richard had been born.

“How do you know what it says?” Richard asked.

Berdine swallowed. “It’s in High D’Haran, but an old dialect of the tongue.”

Richard realized, by the way her eyes had gone wide, that he must have a frightening look on his face. He put in an effort to smooth his features.

“You meant to say that you understand High D’Haran?” She nodded. “I was told that it’s a dead language. A scholar I know who could understand High D’Haran told me that almost no one anymore knows it. How do you?”

“From my father,” she said. The emotion left her voice. “It was one of the reasons Darken Rahl chose me to be Mord-Sith.” Her face had gone emotionless, too. “Few people still understood High D’Haran. My father was one of them. Darken Rahl used High D’Haran to work some of his magic, and he didn’t like that there were others who knew the old tongue.”

Richard didn’t have to ask what had happened to her father.

“I’m sorry, Berdine.”

He knew that in their training, those forced into the bondage of becoming Mord-Sith were compelled to torture their fathers to death. It was called the third breaking, their final test.

She showed no reaction. She had retreated behind the iron mask of her training. “Darken Rahl knew that my father had taught me some of the old tongue, but being Mord-Sith, I was no threat to him. He consulted with me, on occasion, to hear my interpretation of various words. High D’Haran is a difficult language to translate. Many words, especially in the older dialects, have shades of meaning that can only be understood by their context. I am no expert, by any means, but I understand some. Darken Rahl was a master at High D’Haran.”

“And do you know the meaning of fuer grissa ost drauka?”

“A very ancient dialect. I’m not terribly well versed in versions that old.” She thought a moment. “I think the literal translation is ‘the bringer of death.’ Where did you hear this?”

He didn’t want to think of the complications of the other meanings at the moment. “An old prophecy. It gives me this name.”

Berdine clasped her hands behind her back. “Unfairly, Lord Rahl. Unless it is in reference to your skill at handling your enemies, not your friends.”

Richard smiled. “Thank you, Berdine.”

Her smile returned, like the sun from behind fading storm clouds.

“Let’s go see what else we can find of interest in here,” he said, heading for the arched opening at the far end of the chamber.

As he went through the doorway, Richard felt a tingling, tickling sensation pass across his flesh in a razor’s-edge line. Once beyond the opening, it was gone. He turned when he heard Raina call his name.

The rest of them, on the other side, pressed their hands up against the air as if it were a sheet of impenetrable glass. Ulic beat his fist against it, but to no avail.

“Lord Rahl!” Cara called out. “How do we pass through?”

Richard returned to the doorway. “I’m not sure. I have magic that allows me to pass shields. Here, Berdine, give me your hand. See if that will work.”

He stuck his hand back through the invisible barrier, and she gripped his wrist without hesitation. Slowly, he pulled her hand toward him until it penetrated the shield.

“Oh, that’s cold,” she complained.

“You all right? You want to try the rest of the way?”

When she nodded, he pulled her on. Once through, she shuddered and shook herself as if she were crawling with bugs.

Cara put her hand out toward the doorway. “Now me.”

Richard began to reach for her, but stopped. “No. The rest of you wait here until we come back.”

“What!” Cara shrieked. “You have to take us with you!”

“There are dangers I know nothing about. I can’t be watching out for all of you and at the same time pay attention to what I’m doing. Berdine is enough in case I need protection. The rest of you wait here. If anything happens, you know how to get out.”

“But you have to take us,” Cara pleaded. “We can’t leave you without protection.” She turned. “Tell him, Ulic.”

“She’s right, Lord Rahl. We should be with you.”

Richard shook his head. “One is enough. If something happened to me, then you wouldn’t be able to get back out through the shield. If anything happens, and we don’t return, I’m depending on you to carry on. If anything happens, you are in charge, Cara. If anything happens, get help for us, if you can. If you can’t, well, take care of things until my grandfather Zedd and Kahlan get here.”

“Don’t do this!” Cara looked more distraught than he had ever seen her. “Lord Rahl, we can’t afford to lose you.”

“Cara, it will be all right. We’ll be back, I promise. Wizards always keep then promises.”

Cara huffed in anger. “Why her?”

Berdine flipped her wavy brown braid back over her shoulder as she flashed Cara a self-satisfied smile. “Because Lord Rahl likes me best.”

“Cara,” Richard said as he scowled at Berdine, “it’s because you’re the leader. If anything happens to me, I want you to be in charge.”

Cara stood a moment, considering. A self-satisfied smile of her own finally spread on her lips. “All right. But you better never pull a trick like this again.”

Richard winked at her. “If you say so.” He looked up the gloomy corridor. “Come on, Berdine. Let’s go have a look around so we can finish and get out of this place.”