Warheart

CHAPTER 49

With Kahlan at his side, Richard led Nicci, the two Mord-Sith, Verna, Chase, and Rachel through a wide hallway that would take them to the round tower room. The plastered walls helped brighten the passageway. There were occasional tables holding a small statue or vase placed along the wall. They passed a variety of rooms to the sides, some small libraries or casual reading rooms with comfortable-looking chairs and others that were dark and hid their contents.

Both Cassia and Vale chewed mouthfuls of cold roast venison as they casually glanced around along the way, taking in the sights, slowing a little when their attention was snagged by a tapestry or painting. They never seemed surprised or astounded by anything they saw, including a shallow display case holding strange, framelike items made out of carved bones that Richard knew to be objects invested with magic. Even though Mord-Sith didn’t especially like anything to do with magic, they did like to look at it all. He supposed that having originally come from the People’s Palace, where Darken Rahl once ruled, they didn’t find Keep nearly as impressive, but there were many strange and unexpected things about the Keep that they apparently liked looking at. They gazed at the art on their way by and noticed the strangely patterned marble floors they walked across.

Along the short journey they had passed through a number of shields. Chase was apparently used to having someone gifted helping him get through the shields. Richard wasn’t, because in the past his gift had enabled him to pass through any of them by himself, even ones requiring Subtractive Magic that few others could pass through. Now, with his gift not working, they had to skirt some of the strongest shields protecting dangerous magic and Nicci had to help him get through the rest.

Kahlan had been able to glide through most of them, as she had been doing since she was little and wandered the halls of the Keep on her own. But this was a place, guarded by powerful shields, that she had never seen when she had been a young Confessor in training. Powerful shields that she couldn’t get through had kept her out. Richard knew that it was by design. There were dangerous objects of magic that could hurt the innocent or the unsuspecting, so the shields protected those areas. Nicci had to help her pass through those shields.

“Do you want any more?” Verna asked, holding out a wrapped piece of venison to Richard and Kahlan.

Kahlan put a hand over her stomach. “Thank you, no. I’ve had plenty.”

“So have I,” Richard said when Verna offered it to him. He’d eaten enough to keep up his strength, but for a variety of reasons he had no appetite. He supposed the headache didn’t help. The poison was growing steadily stronger, but that was only to be expected.

Like Richard and Kahlan, Nicci had also had enough. Also like Richard and Kahlan, she had a lot more important matters on her mind than eating.

Cassia and Vale took the meat when it was offered to them. They seemed to have boundless appetites. Despite whatever concerns might have been on their minds, they seemed to have no trouble eating and worrying all at the same time. It reminded Richard of Zedd.

“Take these, too,” Rachel said to the Mord-Sith. “Eat them when you have time.”

“What are they?” Cassia asked as she took the small item wrapped in linen from the girl.

“Honey cakes,” Rachel said with a proud smile.

As they reached the end of the corridor, Cassia made a delighted groan at the sound of honey cakes.

“I made them fresh this morning. Emma–she likes me to call her Mother–is teaching me how to cook.”

“That sounds like a useful skill for a girl,” Cassia said as she chewed a mouthful of venison while scanning a room to the side. It was filled with long tables and benches.

Rachel pulled one of the knives from a sheath at her belt and twirled it between her fingers, finally walking it across her knuckles, flipping it and catching it by the point. “Chase teaches me to use weapons.”

Cassia’s face warmed with a conspiratorial smile. “An even more useful skill. You are a girl after my own heart.”

“She knows how to cut it out for you, if you’d like,” Chase said with obvious pride.

Cassia held up the last three fingers of the hand holding the venison. “No, I believe you.”

The corridor ended at a landing partway up the inside of a round tower room at least a hundred feet across. Even though there were slits open to the outside up near the top, the openings weren’t very big, leaving the place rather dark. Rainwater running down the stone walls collected in a pool at the bottom. Stairs wound their way up around the inside of the immense stone tower, and at irregular intervals small landings interrupted the steps for doors at different levels along the way.

They all descended the stairs in single file to reach the iron rail of the walkway around the outer edge at the base of the tower. From the openings high above, the weak shafts of light pierced the darkness, but it wasn’t enough to banish the gloom from the lower reaches. In the center, at the bottom of the tower, lay the pool of black water fed over time by the rain leaking in. Rocks broke the surface of the water here and there.

Gripping the railing, Cassia and Vale leaned over to peer down over the edge into the inky waters. The big eye of a salamander resting on one of the rocks swiveled to watch them.

Richard’s mind was occupied with wondering why there would be a sanctuary for spirits down below the catacombs. He was particularly struck by the cloth hangings covered with wards.

He pointed across the tower to the hole broken through the stone wall, letting Cassia and Vale know where they were headed. It was the opening into Kolo’s room, as Richard had once called it because after the wall had been blown open for the first time since the great war, he had discovered the remains of a wizard who had once stood watch over the sliph in case an enemy were to try to enter the Keep that way. Sometime during that war the man had been sealed in and eventually died at his post. He had left a number of journals that had been helpful to Richard in understanding some of the things that had happened back in Kolo’s time.

Unfortunately, the journals had not revealed the true extent of what had been going on. He thought that perhaps Kolo didn’t know. It was likely that very few people did.

Cassia and Vale swiveled their heads, inspecting the impressive damage as they walked through the broken and partially melted stone of the opening into the large room. Kolo’s chair and small table still sat to the back of the round room. Unlike the room with Lucy’s well, this room was nearly sixty feet across, and even though it was much larger, it also was capped with a high, domed ceiling that was nearly as high as the room was wide.

The well itself was nearly thirty feet across–considerably larger than Lucy’s. Richard speculated that the sliph had more volume to her, and needed a bigger well, because she traveled to so many more places. Maybe Lucy had been created for a singular purpose, whereas the sliph was at one time in frequent use, taking wizards to a variety of places.

As Richard walked toward the waist-high stone well, he was surprised to see the quicksilver face of the sliph rise above the edge of her surrounding stone wall. The rising liquid bulge formed into glossy metallic features that reflected the lamplight and the room itself in what seemed like a living mirror.

The attractive face was smiling with fluid grace. “Master. It pleases me to see you again.” The eerie voice echoed around the room. “Have you come to travel?”

“Yes,” Richard said, surprised that she was already there and he didn’t have to wake her. “But what are you doing here? Why aren’t you asleep with your soul?”

The face distorted with concern. “I was with my soul and at peace, but then you came into the spirit world. I saw you. We all saw you. We all saw the dark ones chasing you. You still had life in you. I could tell that you did not belong there. I was worried for you, so I came here, hoping that you would return to this world and come to me again so that I might help you.”

Richard stepped closer. “I’m glad you’re here. We do need your help. We need to get to the People’s Palace as soon as possible.”

“I know the place.” A smile widened on her face. “Come, we will travel.” She drifted closer to him. Her voice lowered to an intimate murmur. “You will be pleased.”

“We came here in Lucy,” Kahlan said, her tone not at all intimate. “We traveled in her to get here. Do you know her?”

The silver face turned with a cold look back to Richard. “Why did you not come to me? Did she please you more than I do?”

Richard shook his head, eager to dispel the notion. He needed this strange creature to get them to the palace. The last thing they needed would be for her to vanish down her well.

Richard gently put his fingers on Kahlan’s arm, urging her to take a step back. “No, it’s not at all like that,” he told the sliph. “We were trapped in Stroyza. Do you know the place?”

The sliph frowned as she considered. “Stroyza,” she said, carefully pronouncing the name. “No, I have not heard of the Stroyza place. I cannot travel there.”

With all the other problems he had to worry about, Richard didn’t need to have difficulty with a jealous sliph, so he tried to dismiss the significance of traveling via Lucy. “We were forced to travel in her to get here–get here to you.”

The silver frown eased. “You wish to travel with me? Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am. We need to travel to the People’s Palace. We need to get there quickly. We had to get out of Stroyza and get back here to you so we could travel with you and be pleased. You see? We had to travel in Lucy in order to get back to you.”

She regarded him coolly. “So that I could please you.”

“Yes, that’s right.” He waved an arm, gesturing his displeasure. “It was terrible traveling in Lucy. It did not please me at all, but we had to do it to get here to you.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Kahlan folding her arms in annoyance. He didn’t know why she would be getting jealous of the sliph, but he could tell by her green-eyed look that she was.

The reflective silver face began to distort as the smile returned. “You returned because you would rather travel in me?”

He tried to make his voice sound more businesslike. “Yes, exactly. We wanted to come back so we could travel in you.”

The smile brightened. “You will be pleased, Master. Come, we will travel.”

Richard lifted his sword partway from its scabbard.

“When I traveled in Lucy I brought this with me. She said I could travel in her with it.”

The sliph leaned over a little, looking down at the sword he was holding halfway out of the scabbard.

“I told you before, Master. That object is not compatible with life while it is in me. If you take it you all will die.”

Richard waved a hand at the notion. “I know, I remember. But things have changed. You remember–you saw me in the world of the dead. Lucy said that because I have death in me, now, I could bring it and it wouldn’t harm us.”

“This other, this Lucy, she let you take this with you in her?”

“Yes, but she said it was only because I have a sickness in me. She said I’m already dead–you said that you yourself saw me in the world of the dead. She said this couldn’t kill me again.”

The sliph looked skeptical as she considered for a moment before extending a glossy silver arm. The end of it formed into a hand with graceful fingers. She sensuously cupped the metallic-looking hand to his face the way a woman might caress a lover.

The arm withdrew back into the well as concern settled into her reflective expression.

“Master, you are dying.”

Kahlan stepped forward, grasping his arm. “Can you help him in any way? Is there anything you could do, since you are partly in that world of death, to help remove the sickness from him and take it back to the world of the dead with you to where it belongs?”

The sliph turned a sad look toward Kahlan. “No, I am sorry, but I can only travel in this world.”

“Can you at least tell from touching him how much time he has?”

“No, I am sorry. I can only tell that death already has him and his life force is leaving him.”

“I know that much,” Richard said. “So, since in a way I’m already dead the sword can’t really kill me, right?”

The sliph considered him for a time before speaking. “This is a bad business, Master. It is as you say–you could bring it, and you would not die because death already has you. The object is linked to you, focused on the death in you, so it would not harm the others as it ordinarily would.”

“Good,” Richard said, sighing with relief. “Then it would please me to take it with me.”

An arm rose from the churning quicksilver pool to hold up a hand forestalling him. “Master, it is not that simple.”

“Yes it is. I did it before.”

“Perhaps because this other did not care what happened to you.” The sliph drifted a little closer. “Did this other not tell you what would happen when you traveled with this object?”

“Well, yes,” Richard admitted. “She said it would take some of my remaining life.”

“And it did,” the sliph confirmed. “It took that which you have very little to give. The life is draining away from you as death replaces it. That object is created to bring death. When you traveled, having that object of magic with you took much of your remaining life. It took time from you, giving you over to death much sooner.”

Richard waved a hand, wanting to get on with it and get to the palace. “I know. So I can take it. That would please me.”

“It would not please me to do such a thing with you,” the sliph said in a scolding tone. “You may have done it once, but now you do not have much life left to give. Your life is draining away as it is. Traveling with that object would drain away even more of what little you have left. By the time you reach the People’s Palace, you would have almost no life left. Where life had been it would be replaced with death instead.

“Taking that object would not kill you, but it would cost most of your remaining time in the world of life.”

“That settles it,” Kahlan insisted. “You can’t take it, Richard. You have to leave it here.”

“We only have to get to the palace,” he said.

Kahlan leaned closer. He could see the anger in her green eyes, a deep anger she rarely directed at him. “And then you must stop Sulachan. You have to be alive to do that. How is having only a little time left going to help us all?”

“Sulachan?” the sliph asked in alarm. “You are fighting Emperor Sulachan?”

“Yes,” Richard said. “Do you know him?”

The glossy head floated back to the far side of the well. “I know him from the time when I was created. He is evil. He died and travels the world where my soul rests. He is evil. He belongs to the dead, now. How can he be here, in this world?”

“I’m afraid that he has crossed back over,” Richard said, not thinking it would be useful to tell her how. “He is on his way to capture the People’s Palace. If he does, he will tear the veil and destroy all of us–both those living and those souls in that world. I have to get to the palace to stop him. I need to send him back to the world of the dead where he belongs.”

“Come, we will travel,” she said with a sense of urgency as she floated closer. “You will be pleased.”

“I need to bring my sword.”

“No, you don’t need to bring your sword,” Kahlan said through gritted teeth. “It will do you no good if you are dead, or if you don’t have enough life left in you to fight. We haven’t come this far, gone through this much, to have you throw away your life–all of our lives–just to hold on to your sword. You have to leave it here. The sword isn’t what’s important right now.”

“It will be if Sulachan sends the dead against us. The sword can stop them. How am I supposed to fight his army of the dead without my sword?”

Kahlan leaned close, fire in her green eyes. “If you send Sulachan back to the underworld, then there will be no dead to worry about, now will there? We need to get going. You need to take the sword off and leave it here.”

“You should listen to her, Master. What the Mother Confessor is telling you is wise advice. She is one who pleases you, too. You should do as she says.”

“Thank you,” Kahlan told the sliph, but not in the kindest of tones.

Richard drew a deep breath, debating what to do.

“I suppose you’re both right.”

He reluctantly pulled the baldric off over his head. He set the point of the scabbard on the floor and leaned the hilt of the sword up against the stone wall of the well.

“No one will bother it, Richard,” Chase offered. “I will see to it. No one will come in here. You can rest easy, knowing the sword is safe for now.”

Rachel offered him a confident smile. “Once you fix everything, you can come back and get it. We’d really like to see you again and spend more time with all of you.”

Richard wished he shared her confidence. Even though he didn’t, he smiled to her as if he did.

He climbed up on the wall, then wasted no time in helping to pull the four women up with him.

Before he stepped off into the rolling quicksilver, Verna lifted a hand, catching his attention.

“Richard … if, if things don’t work out, the Grace carries us all into the eternal world of peace. We know you will do your best, but if things don’t work out, well, we will all be together again in that world.”

Richard slowly shook his head. “No, if things don’t work out, we won’t.”

She touched her fingers to her chin. “What do you mean?”

“Without victory, there is no survival,” Richard said. “Of anything.”

He looked back over his shoulder. “Sliph, we need to travel. Please take us to the People’s Palace.”

“Come into me, Master. You will be pleased.”

All of them holding hands, he looked to Nicci and Vale on his left, then Kahlan and Cassia on his right. “Like the last time, let your breath go and breathe her in. Try to keep hold of one another so we can stay together.”

Both Mord-Sith, even though they looked apprehensive, nodded.

With that, and the urgency of the situation displacing any second thoughts, he stepped off the edge with the rest of them into the silvery pool.