Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Chapter 36

Kahlan stepped carefully among the rubble of ancient buildings that had over the millennia crumbled and eventually toppled, sending sections tumbling down the steep hillside. Dusty pieces of brick and stone lay scattered everywhere among the dry, decomposing dirt of the slope. It would be easy to stumble and fall in the dark, and it was a long way down. Jillian, a shadowy, lithe shape just ahead of them, climbed the scrabble as effortlessly as a mountain goat. Sister Ulicia, ahead of Kahlan, and the other two Sisters, behind her, huffed and puffed with the effort of the arduous ascent. As eager as they were to press on, the Sisters were getting tired. They frequently lost their footing and slipped, nearly falling from the bluff.

Kahlan thought that they would be well advised to wait until daylight to finish climbing up into the ruins of the city of Caska. She wasn’t about to give them that advice, though. The Sisters did what the Sisters wanted to do and there was nothing Kahlan could do about it. In the end, the only result of any suggestion she might offer would be a beating for interfering.

Kahlan would have been happy to see any one of the Sisters fall and break her neck, but she knew that the other two would be no less trouble than all three. For that matter, one of the Sisters was more than capable of making Kahlan’s life a torturous nightmare. Any of them could easily use her power through the iron collar around Kahlan’s neck to put her in a state of unendurable agony. So, she climbed without commenting on the wisdom of doing such a thing by the light of the moon alone.

Since Jillian’s trail was so treacherous, they’d had to leave the horses at the base of the headlands. There were certain items, though, that the Sisters would not let out of their sight, much less leave behind, and so Kahlan was made to carry them, along with what other packs she could lift. It was a grueling effort to lug the heavy load up the precipitous trail. Jillian had wanted to help with some of the packs, but the Sisters refused to allow it, saying that Kahlan was a slave and meant for a slave’s work. They told Jillian to worry about guiding them to Tovi. Kahlan signaled Jillian with her eyes to do as the Sisters wanted and move out. She silently reminded herself that such work would only make her stronger, while the Sisters, shunning any effort, would only grow weaker.

Kahlan wanted to remain strong. Someday she was going to need her strength. But it had been a long day and that strength was flagging.

At least they were nearing the end of the lengthy, headlong journey. Soon enough the Sisters would all be reunited and then maybe they would settle in for a time, be a little less tense, a little slower to anger. While Kahlan looked forward to a respite of a day or two, she was troubled by what it would mean.

The Sisters had given the clear impression that this was to be the end of the journey, the end of their struggle, and the beginning of a new era. Kahlan could not imagine what that could mean, but it worried her greatly. The Sisters often talked among themselves of the reward that awaited them being nearly in their grasp. More than once, Sister Ulicia had remarked, in answer to the others’ impatience, “It won’t be long, now.”

Kahlan had no idea what their plan was, what great event was about to take place, but she was certain that it involved the boxes she carried on her back—Lord Rahl’s boxes. The two Sisters following behind kept a careful watch on those boxes. The night before, Kahlan had overheard the Sisters say that when they reached Tovi, and the third box, the preparations would begin.

Kahlan sighed in relief when they at last reached the top of the steep incline, finding themselves standing at the base of a decomposing wall. In places gullies had undermined and washed out sections of the wall. Kahlan took one last look out over the moonlit plain far below before following Jillian through one of the dark gaps in the wall. Once into the breach in under the wall still remaining overhead, Kahlan discovered that the wall was as thick as a small house. Whatever people built such a wall must have been decidedly worried about what might come to attack them.

The steep trail leveled out on the other side of the wall and led them among buildings set close together. Many places near to the edge had crumbled or were leaning and about to fall. The massive wall had held much of the decaying rubble back, but in places parts of falling buildings had gone over the top. Over time, broken bricks, blocks, and mortar had also been washed down through the gullies.

They soon found themselves on a narrow street among buildings that were in better shape. The outer fringe of structures had seemed to take the brunt of the weather and as a result were the most deteriorated. From the confinement of buildings they made their way out into a graveyard. In the moonlight it was a haunting sight. Statues stood here and there like phantoms among the dead.

Making their way among the graves, Kahlan saw that higher up the buildings lay like an endless carpet over the rolling landscape. In the clear sky she spotted Jillian’s raven, Lokey. The girl had never pointed it out, apparently hoping the Sisters would think it just a wild bird, but when Kahlan glanced her way Jillian would sometimes signal with her eyes to look up. Lokey would do aerial tricks that would make Jillian, if the Sisters were looking the other way, smile. She seemed a girl searching for some small reason for joy among the desolation of what had befallen her and her grandfather because of the Sisters. When Sister Armina once noticed the raven, she thought that it was a vulture following them across the desolate landscape. Kahlan didn’t correct her.

“How much farther?” Sister Ulicia asked as she paused among the grave markers. For some reason, Kahlan thought that she sounded suspicious of Jillian.

Jillian pointed. “Not far. Up there, through that building. It’s the passageway to the dead.”

Sister Cecilia snorted. “Passageway to the dead. Tovi always did have quite the sense of drama.”

Sister Armina shrugged. “Seems pretty appropriate to me.”

“Go on, then,” Sister Ulicia said as she gestured for the girl to get moving again.

Jillian started out at once, leading them out of the maze of the graveyard and up into the empty city. Kahlan couldn’t tell for sure by the light of the moon alone, but it seemed that everything—every wall, roof, street, every part of everything—was the same color of dust and death. The ghostly silence in among the buildings shrouded the night with an eerie sense of stillness. Kahlan felt as if she were walking through the immense skeleton of a city, as if every bit of tissue and life had been stripped away and all that was left was crumbling beige bones.

Along a broad thoroughfare that, by the look of the decorative, curving stone walls to each side, must once have been beautiful, Jillian slipped like a shadow through the arches fronting one of the larger buildings. Inside, it was hard to see. Kahlan heard the girl’s feet crunching across bits of crumbled mortar. The Sisters didn’t seem to notice the mosaic underfoot. Where moonlight fell across the floor Kahlan could see faded little tiles that made up a picture of trees, paths, and a wall surrounding a graveyard. There were even mosaic people.

Looking at the sweep of the picture across the floor as she lugged her heavy load, Kahlan tripped on a missing section of tile and fell to her knees. Sister Ulicia immediately struck her across the back of her head, knocking Kahlan sprawling on her face.

“Get up, you clumsy ox!” Sister Ulicia shouted as she kicked Kahlan in the ribs.

Kahlan was trying, but with the weight of the load on her back it was easier said than done. “Yes, Sister,” she said, gasping between the kicks, hoping to gain time to stand.

Jillian stepped between them. “Leave her be!”

Sister Ulicia straightened with a glower. “How dare you interfere. I’ll wring your scrawny neck.”

“I think we ought to skin her alive,” Sister Armina said, “and leave her bleeding corpse out there for the vultures.”

Sister Ulicia snatched Jillian’s collar. “Get out of the way so I can teach this lazy ox a lesson.”

“Leave her be,” Jillian repeated, refusing to back down.

“Let’s just cut the little brat’s throat and be done with her,” Sister Cecilia complained. “We don’t have time for this. We can find Tovi on our own, now.”

Knowing that she had to pacify the Sisters before they carried out their threats to harm the girl, Kahlan finally managed to regain her feet. She immediately took Jillian’s arm and pulled her back out of harm’s way.

“I’m sorry—it’s my fault,” Kahlan said. “We can go now.”

Kahlan half turned to start out, but she didn’t take a step. She knew better than to do so without permission. Sister Ulicia didn’t move. She had murder in her eyes.

“Not until she sees you get the kind of lesson we’ve owed you for quite a while now,” she said. “You’re getting far too used to being treated lightly at your every transgression.”

“You will leave Kahlan be,” Jillian said from halfway behind Kahlan, trying not to be pushed any farther into the background.

Sister Ulicia planted her fists on her hips. “Or what?”

“Or I’ll not show you where Tovi is.”

“You foolish child,” Sister Ulicia growled. “We already know where Tovi is. She’s in here. You’ve already led us to her.”

Jillian slowly shook her head. “There are miles of passageways down there. You’ll get yourselves lost among the bones. You leave Kahlan be or I’ll not show you the way.”

“I can sense Tovi,” Sister Cecilia said with a dismissive sigh. “Cut the girl’s throat. We’re close enough that I can find Tovi, now, with my gift alone.”

“I, too, can sense her,” Sister Armina said.

“Sensing that she is near,” Jillian said, “doesn’t mean that you will be able to find the correct passageway to get to her. Down there, down with the bones, you may be only a short distance from her but if you take one wrong turn among many you must make, you will go for miles and never reach her. People have gone down there and died because they couldn’t find their way back out.”

Sister Ulicia clasped her hands, considering, as she peered down her nose at the girl.

“We don’t have time for this right now,” she finally announced. “Get going,” she told Jillian. She turned a meaningful look on the other two Sisters. “Soon enough we will even this score—along with others.”

She turned back with a menacing expression that widened Jillian’s eyes. “You get us to Tovi or she’s liable to get impatient and start breaking your grandfather’s bones . . . one at a time.”

Jillian’s face registered sudden alarm. She immediately led them into a labyrinth of passages and rooms through the back of the building. There were places where the passageways were open to the moonlight. In other places it was cramped and black as death. The Sisters lit small flames that hovered above their palms so that they could see. Jillian looked startled to learn that the women could do such a thing.

They emerged from the building into another graveyard. Without slowing, Jillian led them through the place of the dead, among hillocks covered with gnarled olive trees and rows of graves mottled with wild-flowers. She finally brought them to a halt above a gravestone standing on its side beside a black hole in the ground.

“Down this rat hole?” Sister Armina asked.

“If you want to get to Tovi.” Jillian grabbed a lantern from beside the cover stone and, after a Sister lit it, started down.

They all funneled into the narrow stairway, following Jillian down. The ancient stone steps were irregular, with their leading edges rounded over and worn smooth. For Kahlan, with all the weight she was carrying on her back, the descent was treacherous. The sisters held out wavering flames to help them see. At landings they all turned with the stairs and continued ever deeper into the realm of graves.

When they finally reached the bottom the passage opened into wider corridors that were carved from the solid but soft rock of the ground itself. All around were niches carved in the rock walls. Kahlan noticed that all those recesses held bones.

“Watch your heads,” Jillian said over her shoulder as she went through one of the doorways to the side.

They all ducked as they went through after her and into a room with a ceiling just as low as the doorway. At intersections Jillian took turns without any hesitation, as if she were following a trail painted on the floor. Kahlan noticed that there were a few footprints in the dust, but she also saw footprints going off down many of the different corridors. The prints were bigger than would have been made by the girl’s small feet.

The cramped corridor finally opened into larger chambers. They passed through seemingly endless rooms stacked with orderly piles of bones. Other, narrow rooms were lined with niches stacked full of bones, as if they had begun to run out of places to put all the dead.

There was a series of several rooms filled only with skulls. Kahlan estimated that there had to be thousands of them. They had all been carefully fitted together into large niches, each skull facing out. Each niche was filled right up to the top. Kahlan gazed at all the hollow eyes staring back at her, watching her pass. She reminded herself that these things had once been people. They all had once been alive. Each had once been a living, breathing, thinking individual. They had once lived lives filled with fears and longings. It reminded her of how precious and brief life was, how important it was because once it was gone, for that person it was gone for good. It reminded her yet again of why she wanted her life back.

With Jillian, Kahlan felt that she now had a link back to the world, to who she was. When Jillian saw and remembered her, Kahlan felt just a little more alive, as if she really was somebody, and her life had meaning.

They passed through rooms with leg bones stacked in their own niches, arm bones in yet others. Long stone bins carved at the base of the side walls lined some of the rooms. These bins held smaller bones, all laid in neatly.

Separating the bones of skeletons in such a way seemed to Kahlan a strange thing to do. She thought that, surely, it would be more respectful of the dead to leave the bones of the deceased together. It was possible, she supposed, that they didn’t have the luxury of space, since stacking them this way did save a great deal of space. Maybe it was simply too much work to carve a niche for just one body, or one family, when there were so many dead to bury. Maybe there had been a great sickness that claimed a large portion of the population and they couldn’t be burdened with such niceties.

The city within the walls looked pretty cramped. Space must have been at a premium. If the people, and their dead, were to remain within the walls of the city, the living would have had to make concessions.

It seemed an odd problem, since the land around the city stretched empty from horizon to the horizon. She wondered if it could have been a time of war, when sentimental considerations for the dead had to be abandoned in favor of the needs of the living. The headland did seem the most defensible place around. While parts of the walls were at the edge of the sheer bluffs, they could always have enlarged the city farther back on the headland. She supposed that it could be that expanding such massive city walls was considered too difficult.

She wondered if it could be, too, that the people who had once lived here simply didn’t have the same sentiment for the dead that other peoples did. After all, what real significance was there in bones? The life was gone from them. The individual they once had been was no more. It was life, after all, that really mattered. Their world had ended with their death.

But the people here must have had an attachment to these bones, to the people they had been, considering how difficult it would have been to construct such an underground city for the dead. Kahlan noticed, too, the faded, carefully drawn and carved decorations around the niches. No, those alive cared. They mourned for those who had died.

She wondered if, when she died, anyone would remember who she had been, or ever even know that this person, Kahlan, once had lived, had loved life. She felt an odd jealousy for all these bones. Friends and family of each set of bones down in this place had known the person they had been, grieved for them, and put these talismans of that valued individual to rest in a way that the living would remember those who had passed.

Kahlan wondered what had happened to all the people who had lived in this place, to the people who buried these bones. She wondered who had buried them. After all, the empty buildings bore silent testament that no one was left. Except Jillian. From what Kahlan had learned, Jillian lived with a small band of nomadic people who came to this place from time to time.

They abruptly arrived at a section of the passageway that looked like it had partially collapsed, leaving the floor strewn with rubble. Sister Armina snatched the girl’s arm. “This tour of the catacombs is getting ridiculous. You had better not be leading us on some silly roundabout lark.”

Jillian lifted an arm to point. “But we’re almost there. Come on and you’ll see.”

“All right,” Ulicia said, “get on with it, then.”

Jillian stepped around a huge slab of stone that looked like it might have once sealed what was beyond. There were gouges on the floor where it had been slid aside to clear the passageway and allow access to what lay beyond. When Jillian went in, Kahlan could see that her lantern lit a chamber beyond with shelves carved from the solid rock. The shelves were all loaded with books. The colors of the leather spines were faded, but they looked to once have been mostly an assortment of rich reds and deep blues, with the rest being a variety of other colors from pale green to gold.

The Sisters marveled as they gazed at all the books. They were suddenly in good spirits. Sister Armina let out a low whistle as she slowed to peer around at the shelves. Sister Cecilia laughed out loud. Even Sister Ulicia smiled as she ran her fingers over the dusty spines.

“This way,” Jillian said to move them along.

They happily followed the girl as she went through a series of rooms, mostly small and cramped, with shelves all stuffed full of books. Jillian wound her way through a warren of passageways carved though the soft rock, taking them ever deeper into the underground library. The Sisters’ heads swiveled, seemingly lost in reading what titles they could make out as they shuffled along behind Jillian and Kahlan. The light of the lantern fell into dark rooms they passed, revealing yet more books.

“Curse the Light,” Sister Ulicia whispered to herself in delight. “We have found the central site in Caska. This is the place where the book will be. I bet that Tovi has been spending her time searching for it.”

“I bet she’s already found it,” Sister Cecilia said, excitement animating her voice.

Sister Ulicia grinned. “I have a feeling you’re right.”

Through a more finely carved, barrel-ceilinged hallway adorned with a vineyard mural that had long ago faded to a ghost of what it once had been, they rounded a corner and arrived at a set of double doors. The two doors, carved with simple designs of grape vines and leaves, were each narrow enough that they could easily have been one wide door. Kahlan supposed that the two doors made the entrance a little grander, for some reason.

“I sense Tovi beyond—at last,” Sister Cecilia said with a sigh of relief.

“I think we should start the rituals tonight,” Sister Armina said in a bubbly voice.

Sister Ulicia nodded as she laid a hand on the bronze lever. “If Tovi has managed to find the book—and I bet that by now she has—then, with the three boxes finally back together, I don’t see why it can’t begin at once.” She smiled distantly. “The sooner the Keeper is freed from his prison, the sooner we will have our reward.”

Kahlan wondered if there was any way she could ruin their plans. She was sure that once they accomplished whatever it was they intended to do, there would be no going back—for anyone. She considered the boxes she was carrying, and wondered what would happen if, when the Sisters were distracted with finally seeing Tovi again, she were to smash at least one of the boxes. She might even have time to smash both.

Kahlan knew that such an act would do more than incur the full wrath of the Sisters; she expected that they would probably kill her. But then, Kahlan had come to believe that if the Sisters succeeded, she would be as good as dead anyway.

Sister Armina leaned in. “And, as our first act, I think we should settle an old score.” Her expression turned venomous. “I remember all too well being sent to the tents by that arrogant brute. I’ll never forget what his soldiers were allowed to do to us.”

Sister Ulicia’s brow drew down with a murderous glare. “Oh, I think that is one score we will all relish settling.” A baleful smile spread through the glare. She twisted the bronze lever. “Let’s get on with it.”