Warheart

CHAPTER 43

Breathe, a stern voice in his head commanded.

He couldn’t bring himself to obey. He didn’t care to obey.

Greenish light felt like an apparition moving to and fro in his mind’s vision. Even though his eyes were closed, the light made his eyes hurt as if someone were gouging their thumbs against his eyeballs. He heard harsh, jarring sounds, but couldn’t make them out. He also heard echoing voices, as if they were coming to him through a long tube. He didn’t know what those voices were saying.

He didn’t care what they were saying. He didn’t care if he ever moved again. He didn’t care if he ever breathed again.

It seemed like too much of an effort to care about anything.

Breathe, the stern voice in his head commanded again.

Someone hooked their arms under his. More hands grabbed his shirt and others his belt at the small of his back. People yelled and cursed as they struggled with him. Despite how hard he tried, he couldn’t understand the words. He stopped trying and instead let himself sink back down into the numb, silvery haze.

The hands all over him tugged harder at his clothes, his arms. They finally hauled him up above the undulating surface. The rolling surface tossed his limp form about, making him feel sick. He began to drift away from the hands.

Again the hands grabbed hold and lifted him as the people pulling him to the edge grunted with the effort. They finally succeeded in flopping him over the top of the wall. His head and arms hung down, the silver liquid running off him.

A hand repeatedly slapped him on the back hard.

“Breathe, Richard! Breathe!”

He recognized that it was Nicci’s voice. She sounded desperate. He wasn’t exactly sure why.

“Breathe!” That time it was Kahlan. She sounded even more desperate. He could hear panicked tears in her voice.

That sparked something in him. He didn’t want Kahlan to feel desperate. He didn’t want her to worry for him, to cry for him.

“Breathe!” she called out again through gritted teeth.

Richard did as she said and expelled the silver liquid from his lungs. It ran down the side of the stone wall of the well into a puddle on the floor.

He saw blood in the silvery liquid collecting on the floor. He thought that maybe there was more blood than silver liquid.

With his lungs emptied he felt the urgent need for air. He gasped a breath. It burned. He held his breath, not wanting to take another.

“Breathe, Richard!” Kahlan yelled in his ear. “Breathe!”

He drew another breath for her. It was difficult, it was painful, but he did it. His throat made a hoarse noise as he pulled in another breath. More blood ran in strings into the puddle under him.

He ached all over. His head felt like it was being crushed. He recognized that the sick feeling and the pain were from the poison of death in him. It had grown stronger. He could feel that he was running out of time.

Cassia, Vale, and Nicci gripped his arms and belt to pull him the rest of the way out of the well. He couldn’t help. As his legs came over the wall, they laid him on the ground. They were panting with the effort.

Richard lay on the ground for a time, each breath shallow and painful. He coughed up more blood. He could feel it running over the side of his face. He didn’t think he could get up.

And then he felt a searing jolt of magic explode in his mind as Nicci pressed her hands to the sides of his head. It sent such a shot of energy through him that it made his eyes open wide. It brought him crashing back to the world of life.

He was suddenly and fully conscious again.

He sat up in a rush, panting, wiping the blood from his chin on his shirtsleeve.

“Where are we? Are we there? Are we in the Keep?”

Nicci and Kahlan shared a look.

“What?” Richard asked, looking from one to the other. “What’s wrong?”

“We’re not exactly sure,” Kahlan said. She aimed a thumb over her shoulder at the silver face leaning over, looking down at him. “She insists this is the Wizard’s Keep.”

“It is the Keep,” the voice from the well said.

Richard worked to catch his breath as he drew his knees up and leaned back against the side of the well. He put his elbows on his knees and held his head for a moment. What Nicci had done made him feel much better, but he still felt far from good.

He squinted in the greenish light, looking around, trying to figure out where they were. It most certainly was not the place where the sliph’s well was. The round room with a domed ceiling was much the same as the place they had come from. And like the place they had left in the caves, with the exception of the round well made of mortared stones, this place was also entirely carved from soft rock rather than built of granite blocks. The difference from the caves back in Stroyza was that there was a doorway with no door.

Instead, just outside the doorway and dimly lit by the light from the glass sphere and candle lanterns in the well room, he saw a hanging cloth almost completely covering the opening. Oddly enough, the off-white, silky cloth had symbols painted all over it.

Richard at last stood, getting his balance for a moment, then drew his sword. The distinctive ring of steel echoed around the room as he checked the weapon. The sword appeared to have suffered no ill effects from being in the quicksilver liquid. It looked fine. In fact, it looked more than fine. It had a dark metallic gleam to it, unlike anything he had ever seen before.

When he looked up, Nicci was watching him. “It has been touched by the world of the dead.”

Richard gave her a crooked smile. “It wears death well.”

Nicci and Kahlan both smiled, even though they hadn’t looked like they expected to.

He looked back over his shoulder at Lucy. “How long? How long did it take us to get here? How long have we been traveling?”

The silver face regarded him with a puzzled look. “How long? As long as from there to here. That is how long it is.”

“No, I mean time. How long has it taken us to get here from back in the caves? How much time?”

“You were in me,” she said as if that should explain it. “It was that long.”

Before he could question Lucy in more detail, Nicci touched his arm to stop him. “Her soul is in the world of the dead. She is partly a creature of that world.”

“Well I don’t–”

“A part of that timeless world,” Nicci said, lifting an eyebrow at him to prompt him.

He paused. “Oh. I see what you mean.”

“We never traveled this far in the sliph,” Kahlan said. “By how hungry I feel, I can tell you that it has to be a number of days.”

“I would have to agree,” Nicci said. “I wish I could say it was only a few days, but I think it was more. It was a long way from the Dark Lands all the way back to the Keep.”

Cassia tugged on some loose red leather at her waist. “Long enough for me to lose some weight.”

Richard nodded. “By the looks of your faces, I’d say we’ve all gone without food for close to a week.”

“That’s about the way my stomach feels,” Vale confirmed. “If there are any rats down here, I’d happily eat one.”

Richard looked around at the room he didn’t recognize, at the strange cloth hanging just beyond the doorway. “So, where in the Keep are we, exactly? We need to go find the sliph. As long as we’re here, we ought to let Verna and Chase know what’s going on.” He glanced at Vale, showing her a small smile. “And maybe grab a bite to eat.”

“Well, that’s a good question.” Kahlan glanced toward the doorway with the cloth hanging over it. “Lucy says that we’re in the Keep, but I don’t know where in the Keep. I’ve never seen this place.”

“If this really is the Keep,” Nicci said under her breath so that Lucy wouldn’t hear her. “It’s possible she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about. Maybe those who created her also deceived her and as a result she is only repeating what she was told. Maybe she is only telling us that this is the Keep because someone wants us to believe that.”

Richard frowned at both of them. “I don’t understand. Kahlan, you grew up here. If anyone knows the Keep it would be you. One look out there should tell you whether or not it’s the Keep.”

“You would think,” she said, cryptically in a confidential voice.

Richard stood up straighter, finally feeling steady on his feet. “Let’s go have a look, then. It shouldn’t take long to find out one way or another.”

He took a step away from the well, then stopped and turned back. The silver face was staring at him.

“Thank you, Lucy. Is there anything you were supposed to tell us when you brought us here? Any message?”

“Message? No. I was simply to bring travelers to the Keep. That is my purpose.”

He considered all he had learned in the scrolls and how the people in the great war, like Sulachan, had been using that knowledge as well as prophecy in moves that spanned millennia. He had a thought and rephrased the question.

“Did you know who you would be bringing here?”

The silver face twitched in recognition. “Before, when I first came to be as I am now and was given my purpose, I was told that I might bring the shepherd here.”

Richard glanced at Kahlan before again addressing the restless, undulating quicksilver face. “The shepherd. Anything else you were told? Anything at all?”

“No, just that.”

“All right,” Richard said as he straightened the baldric on his shoulder and the sword at his hip. “I’m the shepherd, I guess, so you’ve completed your task. You may go back into the long sleep. There should be no reason to return from where you brought us, so we will likely never have need of your services again, but if we do, I will call you.”

“Are you saying that you are the shepherd?”

Richard nodded. “That’s right.”

“There is one thing I was supposed to tell the shepherd about this place.”

“And what would that be?”

“I was told to tell you that when you enter the place out there beyond my room, you must be careful.”

Richard looked toward the doorway and the strange cloth hanging just beyond. “‘Be careful out there.’” That sounded like good advice, but it seemed strange that they would have wanted to pass that message on but nothing as to why or what the danger might be. “Anything else? Were you told why we were to be careful?”

“No, that was all. I don’t know what it means, but that is what I was to tell you.”

Richard took a deep breath as he glanced again to the doorway. “Thank you for your service, Lucy. You may go back to sleep and be with your soul. Rest in peace.”

“That would please me.”

It would please him as well, but he didn’t say so.

With that, the reflective silver face melted back down into the churning silver pool, and then the entire liquid mass began to sink with ever-increasing speed. Richard looked over the side and saw one last reflection and then it was gone. He could see only darkness down in the well.

He turned back to the others. “That was strange.”

“Not as strange as what is beyond that doorway,” Nicci said.

“Well, there was no other way out of the caves of Stroyza except to come here. It’s not like we had any choice.”

None of them could argue.