Warheart

CHAPTER 45

Richard pushed the cloth aside, letting more of the light penetrate farther into the darkness. It looked like an empty hallway. He slipped past the cloth and stepped out into the desolate corridor.

The hall appeared to have been carved from the soft stone of the mountain, rather than built up of granite blocks the way he had always seen before down in the foundation area under the Keep. The walls, ceiling, and floor of the hallway had been cut square and flat, rather than simply being hollowed out like most of the passageways in Stroyza. It seemed a lot of trouble to go to for what looked to be a useless, empty hallway that merely led to the room with Lucy’s well.

It also made no sense to him why this cold, empty place would be a sanctuary for souls.

The rest of them followed Richard out into the corridor. Nicci let the cloth fall back down across the doorway. Richard checked that everyone was close behind him before starting out. He didn’t want to have to go looking for one of them in the pitch-black tunnel. As they moved through it in their confining cocoon of light, the only thing he could see was the pale brown stone of the walls. There was no plaster, no paint, no words carved in the wall, no furnishings, nothing to indicate what the place was for, other than getting to the well room.

He kept thinking about the words “Sanctuary of Souls” over the doorway into the corridor. It made no sense why this place had been built. Souls had the eternity of the underworld. What did they need with some stone tunnels?

Before they had gone far, a doorway appeared to the right. When they reached the opening, Richard let Cassia slip in ahead of him with her lantern. The room was good-sized and square, with the ceiling the same height as the hallway. There were no furnishings or markings of any kind. The walls were flat, without any niches cut into them. It was simply an empty, square room.

“Nothing,” Cassia said as she stepped back out.

Just as he started away, he thought he caught sight of movement back in the room. He stopped and stared back through the doorway. It seemed something shadowlike withdrew out of the pale light, shrinking back into the inky darkness inside the room.

“What?” Kahlan asked.

Richard stood frozen as he stared for a moment, and then he drew his sword. The sound of steel rang through the hallway, echoing back from the distance.

“What is it?” Nicci asked.

“There is something or someone in that room.”

Cassia slipped past him before he could stop her. She raced back into the room with her lantern, looking for what he might have seen.

She stuck her head back out the doorway. “Nothing, Lord Rahl. There isn’t anyone in here. There isn’t anywhere someone could possibly hide.”

“No one alive,” Richard said under his breath as he stared into the empty room.

He saw a shadow of movement behind Cassia. His grip tightened on the sword.

Nicci shoved him.

“We need to get out of here, Richard. You heard Lucy. She said to be careful in here. Standing around waiting for something to happen is not being careful. Looking for trouble is not being careful. Waiting for it to find you is not being careful. The sooner we get out of here and up into the Keep, the better.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Kahlan said.

“You’re both right,” he admitted as he started out again, hurrying his pace.

They soon came to an intersection with opposing hallways branching off to the right and left. Cassia held her lantern up, looking down the one to the left while Vale held hers up to peer down the opposite corridor. Both passageways looked identical in width and height to the one they were in.

Vale pointed. “I think I see openings down there.”

Before Richard could stop her, she darted down the hallway to investigate. The cocoon of lamplight went with her as she trotted down the hallway, looking as if she were in a glowing bubble floating through the underworld. When she came to a doorway she turned to immediately disappear inside. He could see only the light through the opening moving about as she searched inside.

After a long moment of silence she emerged. “Nothing,” she called back, her voice echoing. “It looks just like the other room we saw.”

She moved down the hallway and looked in a half dozen of the other openings spaced at irregular intervals. After emerging from each she called back to report that it was empty. She searched all of the rooms in the area before finally returning.

Vale pointed a thumb back over her shoulder. “There are more intersections down there. I saw more dark doorways down other halls. Should I go look in them?”

“We shouldn’t waste time looking in all of the rooms and down all the passageways,” Nicci said. “There is no telling how many there might be, and the rooms aren’t what matters. What really matters is that we get out of here.”

“Which way do you think we should go?” Kahlan asked him.

Richard stared off into the darkness. He knew how easy it was to become lost in a place you didn’t know, especially a place with no landmarks to enable you to keep track or orient yourself. Wandering aimlessly was dangerous.

“I have no way of knowing for sure. For now, let’s keep going straight.”

They soon came to another cloth hanging to their left. When Richard pulled it aside he saw yet another pitch-black hallway. He let the cloth drop back so he could look at the symbols. These were facing toward him. Some he recognized as messages of comfort of a sort–he wasn’t exactly sure of what they were trying to convey–and other symbols he didn’t think he had ever seen before.

He gestured at the symbols before looking over his shoulder at Nicci. “Do you know what these mean? They look like they are meant to be comforting.”

“That’s right. They are attractant spells.”

“Attractant spells?” Kahlan asked. “What are they attracting?”

“Spirits.” Nicci flicked a hand back the way they had come. “Some of the spell-forms, like back at the well room, are meant to keep spirits away. These are the opposite. They are meant to attract spirits.”

Richard imagined they must be something like fishing nets. What he couldn’t figure out was why these were placed in the underground rooms to attract spirits, and others meant to keep them out.

As they moved on into the darkness the hallway made an abrupt right turn just before a cloth hanging across their way ahead, but when he pulled it aside there was only a wall. Since the hallway didn’t continue on straight, they had to take the turn. They encountered more rooms, the doorways of many covered with the strange hanging cloth. Some were the silky material, while others were heavier material, something like burlap.

The rooms they came across, some with empty openings, were just as bare as all the others they had investigated. In each room Richard had the feeling that there was someone in there, in the darkness, watching him. He kept his sword out. He wasn’t sure it would be of any use against spirits, but it made him feel better to have it in his hand than in its scabbard.

Moving through the darkness, they abruptly came upon a heavy burlap cloth blocking the hallway. Going around it he realized that it was only one of four cloths forming a square, several with passages behind them. One hanging covered in symbols had a blank wall behind it rather than a corridor.

They tried to continue on a straight course, but soon that became impossible as they found themselves in a complex network of passageways turning repeatedly and branching in every direction. To the sides, a few of the inky black tunnels didn’t have hangings covering their opening, while others did.

The hallway split over and over, with intersections everywhere, many at odd angles, making it a dizzying choice of which route to take. In the darkness inside the mountain there was no way to get his bearings. It was as if the angles and corners were intended to disguise direction. Behind some hangings the corridor simply stopped in a dead end, forcing them to backtrack.

Although some rooms had the cloth curtains over them he didn’t see a single door on any of them. Each room was completely barren, without any furniture. None of them looked to have ever been inhabited nor did they seem to have any purpose.

In some places they encountered layers of coarsely woven, raw linen hanging motionless directly across the passageway. It was unnerving to abruptly encounter the walls of cloth with symbols suspended in the darkness, seemingly for no reason. The hangings contributed to the confusion of the place, helping to turn it into an incomprehensible maze.

If the place had a purpose, Richard couldn’t figure it out. If there was any order to its layout, he couldn’t figure that out, either.

The underground hallways were dead quiet in a way that made them all jumpy. Every echoing crunch of crumbled rock underfoot made heads jerk around, searching the darkness behind them.

When he heard a soft sound from behind, Richard spun around, sword in hand, anger rising. There was no mistaking the fact that they hadn’t made the sound.

“What is it?” Kahlan whispered.

“We’re being followed.”

They all stared back into the darkness.

“Followed by who?” Kahlan asked in a whisper.

“If I had to hazard a guess, I would say we are being followed by spirits.”

“Spirits…” She stared into the dark, empty hallway behind them. “I don’t see anything.”

“Nonetheless they’re down here,” he told her. “I don’t know why, but this place is haunted with spirits. Lots of spirits. I can feel them everywhere down here.”

Kahlan’s grip tightened on his left arm. “You can’t know that for sure.”

Nicci gestured to one of the cloth panels hanging over a doorway to the side. “All of these symbols are meant for the dead. They have no purpose except for the dead. The place is called the Sanctuary of Souls, so it only seems logical that there would be spirits here.”

Cassia’s eyes widened. “Are you sure? Why would spirits be here, instead of in the underworld where they belong?”

Nicci glanced at the Mord-Sith but didn’t answer.

The place smelled dusty and dry. Richard lifted his nose a little, trying to smell anything that didn’t belong.

“Do any of you smell anything?”

“Just dust and stone,” Kahlan said.

“What do you think you smell?” Nicci asked.

Richard finally shook his head. “Nothing. That’s why I’m a bit puzzled. I was wondering if we could smell a trace of sulfur.”

Kahlan glanced around. “You think this place is an opening to the underworld?”

“It’s the Sanctuary of Souls,” he said. “Souls belong in the underworld, don’t they?”

Nicci looked skeptical. “Why would someone build an underground maze open to the underworld? I don’t think that explains what this place is doing here. It has some other purpose.”

“Like what?” Richard asked her.

Nicci finally shook her head. “I don’t know. The underworld is infinite. What would it need with some empty rooms and hallways?” She drew some of her long blond hair back over her shoulder as she looked around. “Whatever the purpose of this place, it’s not tied to the underworld. The symbols tell me that much. There is obviously some intent with this place.”

Richard wasn’t really listening to Nicci as he stared back into the darkness. Something else had his attention.

“Wait here. All of you.”

Kahlan snatched his sleeve before he could leave. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I want to go back a ways and have a look at something. I want all of you to wait here.”

Vale held out her lantern. “Take this, at least.”

Richard turned it down with a hand signal. “I need to go have a look. All of you stay here. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

As soon as he started back, he could begin to feel them. The farther he went back into the darkness, the more they closed in around him. As he felt the spirits crowding all around, he could begin to hear their whispers. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the four women in the distance, huddled together in the light of the two lanterns and one light sphere. They looked tiny and insignificant.

“Fuer grissa ost drauka.”

He turned at the whispered words. As soon as he did, he heard the same thing from another side. And then another. Before long the whispered words “Fuer grissa ost drauka” seemed to melt together into a hushed moan from the dead all around him.

“What is it you want?” Richard asked into the darkness.

“Help us,” a soft voice in the darkness answered. Another added the same call. Soon more joined in.

He looked all around but couldn’t see them, and yet he could. He saw amorphous forms and sorrowful, filmy faces out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked toward them, they weren’t there. He realized that there were thousands of them. Maybe tens of thousands. As he saw the forms gathering, he knew there were more than that. The available amount of room had no bearing on their numbers. They didn’t need space so much as a place. They spilled out of rooms and hallways to the sides, coming to see the stranger in their midst.

Richard turned and hurried back to the others.

“What is it?” Kahlan asked, seeing the concern on his face.

“We need to get out of here. We need to get out right now.”