Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

Chapter 21

Lifting the skirts of her black dress, Nicci stepped over the raised edge of the pedestal that held the coffin. She gripped the edge of the opening to steady herself as she started down the steep run of stairs. The first two Sisters were already making their way down. The wavering glow of their torches showed nothing but a nearly vertical shaft of steps.

Once Sister Armina had climbed in after Nicci, she pushed a lever back into the wall, then took a torch for herself. Overhead, the coffin pivoted back into place, sealing them in.

It looked to Nicci like they were about to descend into the underworld itself.

The stairs wound downward haphazardly. The shaft was only wide enough for one person at a time. Descending at a steep angle, the steps turned at small landings only to continue tunneling downward in what seemed to be random directions. The stairs themselves had been crudely hewn; they were uneven and not all the same size, making the descent treacherous. It appeared that whoever had carved the stairs had followed softer veins in the rock whenever they were available. Such work resulted in a meandering, crooked route.

The stairs dropped so sharply that Nicci found herself having to breathe the smoke of the two torches carried by the Sisters right under her. As her mind raced, trying to think out her options, she briefly gave consideration to throwing herself down the precipitous shaft in the hope that she could break her neck, maybe even taking the two below her down as well, but with as narrow as the opening was she expected that she would probably get wedged to a stop before falling far. The landings, too, were numerous, so while the stairs were steep they paused frequently to make turns. She would probably only break an arm, not her neck.

They climbed downward for what began to feel to Nicci like hours. Descending at such a steep angle made her thighs burn. By the way they labored to breathe, the three Sisters were feeling the strain as well. They clearly weren’t up to the demanding effort and were tiring.

While Nicci was getting tired as well, she wasn’t having the trouble the others were. The Sisters had to pause a number of times to take brief rests. When they stopped, they would sit on a step, leaning back against the wall, panting as they caught their breath. They made Nicci stand.

None of the three liked Nicci. As she had told Ann, she was different from the rest of the Sisters of the Dark. They’d always thought that they deserved eternal rewards. Nicci always thought that she deserved eternal punishment. It was a grim irony that only after she had finally realized the value of her life, would she have the punishment she’d thought she deserved—Jagang would see to that.

When it seemed she could not make it down another flight, they came to a flat spot. At first, Nicci thought that it might only be another landing, but it turned out to be a level passageway.

The way ahead burrowed in a wandering course in much the same way the stairs had, only it was flat. In places the tight tunnel was so low that they had to duck down under low hanging rock. The walls had been carved from that same rock, and were irregular, making it almost look like nothing so much as a cave. Some spots were a tight squeeze to get through. In the small places the choking smoke from the torches made Nicci’s eyes burn.

The narrow tunnel abruptly widened into a proper passageway easily wide enough for two people to walk side by side. The walls, rather than being hewn from bedrock, were made of blocks of stone. The ceiling, made of huge stone blocks spanning the width of the passageway, was low and blackened by soot from torches, but at least it wasn’t so low that Nicci had to bend.

Before long they began encountering intersections and halls to the sides. It quickly became apparent that there was a warren of passageways branching in every direction. As they passed bisecting intersections, the light of the torches briefly illuminated long, dark halls. In some of the side openings, though, Nicci saw rooms with low niches carved into the walls to the sides.

Her curiosity got the better of her. She glanced back over her shoulder at Sister Armina.

“What is this place?”

“Catacombs.”

Nicci hadn’t known that there were catacombs beneath the People’s Palace. She wondered if anyone up above them knew—Nathan, Ann, Verna, the Mord-Sith. At the same time the question came to mind she knew the answer. No one knew.

“Well, what are we doing down here?”

Sister Julia turned back to give Nicci a bloody, toothless grin. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

Now that she knew what the place was, Nicci realized that what she had seen stacked in some of the rooms to the sides were bodies, bodies in the thousands, wrapped in burial shrouds and covered with dust over the dark, still, silent centuries. As they passed other tightly spaced rooms she began to see recesses in the walls that held not individual remains, but mounds of bones. The bones were stacked in staggering numbers, all fit neatly into the recesses, filling them completely. As the torchlight fell into rooms to each side, Nicci saw skulls stacked together from floor to ceiling. The orderly rows of skulls went as far back as the light penetrated. There was no telling how far those rooms of snugly stacked skulls ran into the darkness.

Nicci found it appalling to contemplate all the individuals she was seeing. These had all once been living people who had been born, grown up, and lived lives probably filled with family and love. Now there were only bones to say that they had ever existed.

Nicci swallowed at the frightening thought that she would soon end up as yet another anonymous skull that someone might one day see and wonder about. Just as she didn’t know anything about these people, what they dreamed, what they believed, what they loved, or even how they had looked in life, she would be nameless bones slowly crumbling to dust.

She had such a short time ago been up among the beauty of the palace, among color and life. Now she found herself among nothing but dust and dirt and death, on her way to her own.

The two Sisters in front lead them through a confusing series of intersections. Some of the passageways they took sloped downward. In several places they had to descend yet more flights of stairs to halls even deeper in the ground.

Everywhere there were rooms filled with bones, some with skulls, some with other bones stacked neatly in every available space, all bearing silent witness to lives once lived. Some of the passageways they passed through were made of brick but most had been constructed of stone. By the varying sizes of stone and styles of construction it seemed like they were passing from one era to another, each age preferring a different method to add to the ever-growing catacombs for their dead.

The next turn took them past a room with a different kind of entrance. Thick stone slabs that had closed off the cavern beyond had been slid aside. Nicci was surprised to see another Sister standing guard there. Beyond, back inside, in the shadows, there were big Imperial Order guards. Judging by their size, the type of chain mail they wore, the leather straps crossing their chests, along with the tattoos back across their shaved heads, these were some of Jagang’s most trusted, and skilled, soldiers.

Back behind them Nicci saw that the low room was tightly packed with shelves holding countless books. Beyond, behind the rows in various places, the light from lamps revealed where people were searching through the volumes. Jagang had teams of scholars devoted to scouring caches of books for him. They were specially trained and knew the sorts of things Jagang was looking for.

The place reminded Nicci of nothing so much as the catacombs down in Caska. That was where, with the help of Jillian, Richard had discovered the Chainfire book. Nicci realized that these catacombs as well were liable to have a number of rooms with books.

“You,” Sister Armina said to one of the guards, “come here.”

When the man came to a stop out in the hall and leaned on his lance, she gestured back the way they had come. “Get some workmen together and—”

“What kind of workmen?” the man interrupted. Men like these were not intimidated by Sisters of the Dark—mere captives, slaves of the emperor.

“Men who know how to work with stone,” she said, “with marble slabs. Sister Greta will go with you and show you what must be done. His Excellency doesn’t want anyone to know that we’ve discovered a way into the palace.”

Jagang, being a dream walker, frequently entered the minds of the Sisters. It was becoming increasingly obvious to the soldier that Sister Armina was operating under the direction of the emperor himself, so he nodded without objection as she went on.

“There is a place right near where we entered up top where the stone has been damaged. It’s a small secondary network of halls. You will need to pull some of the undamaged slabs off the walls in the area with the damage and use them to block off that branch of halls. From the other side it needs to look like part of the wall of the main corridor. It needs to fool anyone who goes down that corridor into thinking there is not supposed to be an opening there. It needs to be done immediately.” She tipped her head toward Nicci. “Before anyone looking for her discovers the damage.”

“Won’t people who know the place realize that an intersection has been blocked off?”

“Not if it looks seamless, if it looks like it’s always been that way. It’s the tomb area of the palace. The Lord Rahl uses it to visit his ancestors, but only if he ever wishes to do such a thing. It’s likely to be rare for anyone else to go down there, so no one else is likely to notice that an intersection is missing—at least, not until it’s too late.”

The man cast a forbidding look at Nicci. “Then what was she doing down there?”

When Sister Armina turned a questioning look at her, Nicci felt a sudden shock of pain caused by the collar.

Sister Armina lifted an eyebrow. “Well? Answer the man’s question.”

Nicci gasped in a breath against the razor-sharp pain searing down her back and legs. “Just going for a walk . . . to have a private conversation . . . where no one would bother us,” she managed between gasps of agony.

The Sister seemed indifferent to Nicci’s explanation. She turned back to the soldier. “See? It’s mostly an unused area. But before anyone goes down there looking for her, and the woman we killed, it needs to be done. Work as swiftly as possible.”

The man smoothed a hand back over his bald, tattooed head. “All right. But it seems a lot of work to hide some damage.” He shrugged. “After all, if they see it, they won’t know why it’s damaged. They’ll probably think it’s from before. There have been battles in the palace in the recent past.”

Sister Armina did not look pleased to have the man second-guess her. “His Excellency does not want anyone up there to know that we’ve found a way in. This is of paramount importance to him. Would you like me to tell him that you suggest the work is not worth the effort and he should simply not worry?”

The man cleared his throat. “No, of course not.”

“Besides that, it will give us a place to assemble and prepare without anyone knowing that we are all right there, just on the other side of a thin veneer of marble.”

He dipped his head. “I will see to it at once, Sister.”

Nicci felt sick. Once that opening was covered with marble slab the Order would be able to gather a sizable assault force veiled from those in the palace. No one would know that the enemy had found a way in. They were expecting the Order to have to finish the ramp before they could attack. The defending forces within the palace would be caught off guard.

A jab of pain started Nicci moving again. Sister Armina guided her with that pain, rather than simply telling her where she needed to turn. They walked down endless corridors, all made of stone block and with barrel ceilings, that seemed to connect clusters of rooms and networks of corridors.

As they rounded a corner, Nicci saw a knot of people in the distance lit by torches. As they got closer she saw a ladder ascending into darkness. She had long since understood where they had to be, and where they were going.

Royal guards had massed around a place broken open in the barrel ceiling. These men were the elite. They knew their business.

At the thought of what was up that ladder, Nicci feared her legs might give out.

One of the royal guard, who obviously recognized Nicci, stepped aside, never taking his eyes off her.

“Start climbing,” Sister Armina said.