Warheart

CHAPTER 54

Kahlan paced down the length of the library, past rows of shelves holding books of prophecy, a thumbnail held tightly between her front teeth as her mind raced. She would look herself, if she knew where to look, but she wouldn’t even know where to start. She came to a halt and looked up when General Zimmer rushed into the room.

“Did you find him?”

He shook his head as he caught his breath. “I’m sorry, Mother Confessor, but no. I have men searching everywhere. No one has seen them.”

Nicci threw her arms up. “It doesn’t make any sense. He’s been missing most of the night. He said he was only going to be a few minutes. How could he simply vanish?”

Vale stepped forward hesitantly. “Could, well, could some of those half people have snuck in and snatched them?”

“There would at least have been blood from any such attack,” Nicci said in a quiet voice.

When she heard nothing, the sorceress glanced up from under her brow at the general.

The general’s face distorted with an uncomfortable expression. “All I can tell you is that none of the men has spotted so much as a drop of blood.”

“Have they spotted anything useful?”

“It’s an awfully big place, Mother Confessor,” the big D’Haran said, clearly uneasy that he had no good news. “There are a thousand places to look.”

Kahlan went back to pacing. “He said he was only going to be gone a few minutes. I felt like something wasn’t right. I had a feeling. I should have trusted that feeling and not have let him go.” She gestured with a hand, angry at herself, blaming herself. “It’s just that he rushed off so fast.”

Kahlan pressed her lips tight for a moment. “He needs to be healed. He doesn’t have much time left before that poison kills him.”

She was on the verge of panic, remembering what it was like seeing him when he was dead. Her whole world had ended. Now, he was near death again from that taint of death within him. Nicci could have removed it. But now he was gone.

Nicci, leaning against a heavy table, watched Kahlan pace. “This is making me start to wonder why he wanted to stop to check on Regula.”

“What do you mean?” Kahlan asked without looking over.

“Richard is so honest that I never suspected he might be lying.”

Kahlan paused in her pacing and looked up. “You think he was lying?”

“At least not telling us the whole truth.” Nicci’s arms came unfolded as she stood up away from the table. “Do you think he had to stop there to check on the machine, talk to Regula alone, and it didn’t tell him anything he could understand? Since when has Richard been so easily stymied? Kahlan, that’s not just a mysterious omen machine. That’s Regula, the controller of the eternal now. It’s an underworld force that has been brought to life in this world, banished here because it’s so dangerous. Spirits sent it here to hide it from Sulachan in the underworld, but Sulachan found it, here, in this world. Richard knows all that.”

Kahlan rubbed her arms against the chill of her fears. “What do you think it told him?”

Nicci let her arms flop down against her sides. “Who knows. Regula knows everything that could happen, everything that will happen.” She looked up with a sudden thought. “We could go ask Regula what it told him.”

Kahlan shook her head. “I don’t know how. It only seems to talk to Richard. Besides, Richard wouldn’t want to know prophecy from the machine. Wasn’t that the point made in the scrolls–that he is the counter to prophecy through free will? He wouldn’t ask what was going to happen. For Richard, action is better than reaction. He would act.”

“Then that brings us right back to not knowing where he is.” Nicci went to one of the long mahogany tables and rested the fingertips of one hand on the polished top as she stared off in thought.

“Did he give any indication–anything at all–that might suggest where he was going?” General Zimmer asked. “Some kind of hint? It might not have seemed important at the time, but maybe he said something to indicate where he was going.”

Kahlan looked up at the big D’Haran general. She remembered him so well from when they were fighting in the war. In the mornings, when Captain Zimmer returned from a night of hunting with his men, he would bring Kahlan a string of ears from the enemy they had killed that night.

“Hunt him, Captain,” she said, deliberately reminding him of those special missions he was so good at.

He smiled at the memory and caught her meaning. “The men will keep looking. Don’t you worry–if he is in the palace, we will find him.”

Kahlan nodded as the man left to continue the search. Kahlan looked up suddenly and turned to Nicci.

“If he is in the palace.”

“What?”

“If they can’t find him, maybe it’s because he isn’t here in the palace.”

Vale frowned at the notion. “Mother Confessor, the entire palace is surrounded by half people. He couldn’t take three steps out of here without them seeing him and jumping all over him. There’s no way he could leave the palace.”

Kahlan stood stiffly, considering it. “Of course there is.”

Nicci folded her arms as she stepped closer. “You think he may have gone somewhere in the sliph?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Then let’s go ask her,” Nicci said.

“Rikka, Nyda, take us on the shortest route to the room where the sliph’s well is located.”

Clapping fists to their hearts, they turned and started away, eager to find their Lord Rahl, happy that they now had a real clue as to what happened to Richard and Cassia.

“We’re lucky the sliph’s well room is in this section of the palace,” Rikka said.

“It could take hours to get there if it were at some distant part of the palace,” Nyda agreed. “We’re not far away from there.”

“That’s how he vanished so fast,” Kahlan said as she followed the two Mord-Sith, angry at herself for not realizing it sooner. “That’s why no one has seen him, I know it.”

“Where would he have gone?” Nicci asked. “And why? It doesn’t make any sense. All of our problems are here. Sulachan, Hannis Arc, and the entire Shun-tuk nation are right outside, surrounding the palace. That’s what Richard needed to deal with. There is nowhere for him to go that would get him any help.”

Kahlan couldn’t argue with that logic, so she didn’t.

It had to be that Richard had already left the palace in the sliph. The more Kahlan thought about it, the more it explained how he had vanished so fast and so completely. She was sure of it, but only the sliph could confirm it. Her thoughts raced as she tried to figure out why he would have left.

“He wouldn’t abandon us here,” Vale said. “Lord Rahl would die before he would abandon us.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Kahlan said under her breath.

The Mord-Sith led them through the private passageways, keeping them away from the crowded public halls that might have slowed them down. With the palace under siege, people were frightened and could become a problem, so it was better to stay out of the public areas if possible.

Everywhere they went, soldiers of the First File, all with weapons to hand, were searching, going into every room off every passageway. When she looked into libraries along the way, Kahlan saw soldiers searching between the rows of shelves, looking for the missing Lord Rahl. Kahlan knew now that they would not find him.

When they reached it, she saw that the door to the sliph’s room was ajar. Kahlan pushed it back, letting it swing in. A lamp hanging from a bracket on the wall was lit.

With Nicci beside her and the three Mord-Sith behind her, Kahlan stepped into the room. The sliph, apparently hearing them coming, rose up in a lump from the well. The mound of liquid silver formed into a smiling face.

“You wish to travel?”

“Maybe,” Kahlan said.

The reflective gaze turned to Rikka and Nyda. “I know that you two can’t travel. You don’t have the required properties.”

Kahlan glanced over at Nicci. “That’s why he took Cassia. He knows she has what is needed to travel.”

“But why?” Nicci whispered back.

Kahlan stepped closer to the sliph. “We need to know where your master went.”

The sliph smiled politely. “I am sorry, but I do not discuss my clients with anyone.”

“I’m his wife,” Kahlan said.

The sliph only stared back.

“This is a matter of life and death. Richard–your master–has a sickness and he needs to be cured.”

“I told you all before that he has death in him.”

“That’s right, and it is getting stronger all the time. If we don’t take him to where we can get that poison out of him, he is going to die. You don’t want that to happen, do you? You don’t want your master to die?”

The silver smile faded a little. “I am sorry, but I cannot help you.”

“He told you not to tell us, didn’t he?” Kahlan asked.

“Do you wish to travel?” the sliph asked in a more formal tone.

Kahlan stepped up and rested her hands on the edge of the well. “Yes, I do wish to travel. Take me to the place you took Richard and Cassia earlier tonight.”

“You must name a place if you wish to travel.”

Kahlan stared at the silver face that from only inches away revealed her own face in the distorted reflection.

“The place where you took Richard.”

The smile widened on the silver face. “Call on me anytime if you decide you would like to travel. Please know your destination when you come back.”

With that, the silver face that was the sliph melted back down into the quicksilver pool.

Kahlan and Nicci shared a look.

“I guess now we know that Richard took the sliph out of the palace.”

“It would seem so,” Nicci agreed. “But why?”

A hard thud jolted the room. Everyone looked up as dust fell from the plastered ceiling.

“That sounded like wizard’s fire,” Nicci said.

“Let’s go.”

Kahlan raced for the door. Everyone followed on her heels. Once they were out in the hallway, Rikka and Nyda closed in to protect Kahlan and Nicci from the front, while Vale protected them from behind. They took several intersections in the plastered halls, and then service stairwells that headed back up into the palace.

As they cleared the top step up into a broad hallway, half people leaped at them from behind the wall to the left. One of them took Nyda from her feet, rolling with her across the floor.

Another, mouth opened wide, sprang at Kahlan.

Before he even got close, a sword swept around and took off the head of the half-naked half person. It was General Zimmer who had acted just in time to protect her. The head bounced heavily on the floor, leaving a trail of blood as it rolled away. Another soldier stabbed the man grappling with Nyda.

Soldiers raced down the stairs and quickly cut down the dozen or so half people in the hallway.

“Sorry, Mother Confessor.” General Zimmer wiped blood off his forehead with the back of his wrist. “I tried to stop them before they got that close, but there were a lot of them.”

Nyda pushed the dead half person off her and sprang up, furious that she had been blindsided.

“What’s going on?” Kahlan asked.

General Zimmer pointed with his sword. “They created a breach of some sort down in the area of the crypts, down where the walls were melting. I wasn’t there at the time so I didn’t see it. The men said they were trying to keep the enemy from getting out of the area where we have them contained.

“Apparently more of them managed to get in somewhere else and come up behind my men. It was a bloody battle, but they managed to fall back to a secondary defensive zone. Nathan was using wizard’s fire to help keep them from breaking through and flooding into the palace.”

“Show me the way,” Nicci said. “I need to go help him.”