He rushed to try to read what the scroll was saying about Regula. Right off the top of his head it wasn’t making a lot of sense. His sense of alarm was making it difficult to think clearly.
Nicci leaned in, pointing again. “Look at this formula.”
Richard puzzled at it. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before. Something about death, but I don’t know what it means.”
“I recognize that particular set of expressions,” Nicci said. “They were used by Sisters of the Dark. They have to do with the underworld.” She looked up at him out of the corner of her eye. “It’s talking about the world of the dead.”
“I see it now,” Richard said, nodding as he unfurled more of the scroll. “It’s speaking of banishment.”
“Banishment?” Kahlan asked, peering around the side of him at the scroll. “Banishment to the world of the dead? You mean like the Temple of the Winds was sent to the underworld?”
Gooseflesh tingled along Richard’s arms.
“No. Not to the underworld. This has to do with a banishment from the world of the dead.”
“Banishment from the underworld?” Kahlan shook her head. “What could that be about?”
“I don’t know,” Richard said as he rolled the scroll back up and started pulling others out of the cubbyholes, holding them in the crook of his arm. “Help me take them over to the desk.”
“How many do you want?” Nicci asked.
“All of them.”
Kahlan looked over at him. “All of them?”
“Yes. Bring them all over to the desk. This is what we came to find. It’s not the prophecies that hold what we’re looking for, it’s these Cerulean scrolls. This is what Hannis Arc used to bring Sulachan back from the dead.”
“Are you sure?” Kahlan asked.
Richard waggled one of the scrolls. “Why do you think he has these symbols tattooed all over himself? It has something to do with the scrolls, not prophecy. The scroll has elements and symbols linked to occult magic. It mentioned Regula. It’s all tied together with what’s in these scrolls.
“I need to know what all of them say. I need to get to work to translate them to find out what Hannis Arc knows and what he is doing.”
“Richard,” Kahlan said in a confidential tone, “we don’t have time for this.”
He stopped pulling scrolls out of the cubbyholes to look at her. “What are you talking about?”
“The sickness you carry. We have to get it out of you or you are going to die before you can use any of this to stop Sulachan and Hannis Arc. You need to be cured first.”
Richard went back to pulling out scrolls and stuffing them under his other arm. “We can’t make it to the People’s Palace in time. I told you that before, it’s too far. But maybe there is another way. Maybe these will help us to solve that problem in a different way.”
As he rushed to pull scrolls out of the cabinet, he saw Kahlan and Nicci share a look. He understood their concern, but he knew he had a limited amount of time before the poison grew strong enough to stop him from thinking clearly. It wouldn’t be long after that until it killed him.
He knew, too, that even in the best of circumstances they couldn’t make it to the People’s Palace in time. Even if they made it there, Sulachan’s half people would already have the plateau surrounded, preventing them from being able to get in. They couldn’t fight their way through all of Sulachan’s forces.
He started back to the desk with his armload of scrolls. The others followed behind, carrying their own armloads of scrolls.
He needed to find out what was going on. He needed to know how Hannis Arc had brought Sulachan back through the veil. Such things weren’t supposed to be possible. The dead were supposed to stay dead. He knew that those answers were the key to everything.
For that matter, even though there were some unique circumstances involved, it shouldn’t have been possible for Kahlan and him to come back to life. And yet they had. It all made sense, and yet it didn’t. Not really. He suspected that those events were related to everything else taking place with Hannis Arc and Emperor Sulachan.
Richard remembered the bone woman, Adie, telling him about the skrin being a force that was a part of the veil between life and death. That force guarded in both directions. The force of the skrin repelled all from the cusp where the world of the living and the world of the dead touched.
The skrin kept the spirits in the underworld from crossing back into the world of life.
So how did Sulachan cross back?
Richard needed to find the answer to that question.
CHAPTER
27
As she came down the hall, walking through patches of early-morning light coming in the windows, Kahlan could see Vale and Laurin, both wearing their red leather, standing at their posts before the door to Hannis Arc’s recording room. They would have been there the whole night, making sure that no one could disturb Richard.
Men of the First File stood guard everywhere in the halls of the citadel, always at the ready for any trouble that might arise. On her way back from the kitchen, Commander Fister had asked Kahlan to come get him if she needed anything. She had assured him she would.
Vale reached out as she stepped away from the door, offering to take the tray.
“No, it’s all right,” Kahlan said. “I have it.”
Vale moved back out of the way to let Kahlan through. “Did you get any sleep, Mother Confessor?”
Kahlan nodded. “Yes, thankfully.” It had not been enough, but it had been better than nothing. “How about you two?”
Vale gestured to Laurin. “We took turns resting a little now and then.”
Kahlan didn’t believe that for a moment. The Mord-Sith would not have left their posts guarding Richard for anything, especially now that there seemed to be a heightened sense of urgency to what he was doing in the recording room. Mord-Sith didn’t know much about magic, or about ancient scrolls for that matter, but it was not at all difficult to tell that Richard was stirred up over the discovery.
Kahlan had been up for ages, it seemed. The anguish of returning to the world of life only to learn that Richard had given his life to send her back had been beyond endurance. The realization that Richard was dead had denied her the ability to sleep, except fitfully. After that, the effort of helping Nicci when she went to the underworld to bring him back had been strenuous, on top of having so little sleep.
And then, the euphoria of having Richard return from that dark realm had been muted by Cara giving her life to make it possible.
The wild swing of emotions had been draining. The relief of at last having Richard back was tempered by the fact that the poison of death still infected him, to say nothing of the ordeal of standing all day beside Cara’s funeral pyre. Kahlan had been near to dropping from exhaustion. Her lack of sleep had begun to make it nearly impossible for her to think clearly any longer.
When Richard told her to go get some rest, she hadn’t had the energy to argue. She wanted him to come with her and get a few hours’ sleep, but he said that he had to stay and work on trying to understand what was in the scrolls and what they might have to do with everything that was happening. She’d reminded him that he needed sleep in order to think clearly. Richard had told her that he’d gotten a good long rest while he had been dead. That made her smile.
With Nicci and the three Mord-Sith saying that they would stay and watch over him, Kahlan had given in and made her way back to the bedroom to get some sleep. She’d fallen asleep almost as soon as she hit the bed. It hadn’t been as restful as she had expected or hoped, probably because she missed having Richard there beside her. Even as short as it had been, it had at least done her some good.
“It smells delicious,” Laurin said of the eggs and bacon Kahlan had on the tray. “Make sure Lord Rahl eats it all. He needs his strength if he is to be the magic against magic.”
Kahlan smiled as she nodded. “I asked some of the workers down in the kitchen to bri
ng you up some as well. They should be along shortly. I want you to eat, too. You three need your strength to be able to protect him.”
As she opened the door, Laurin promised that they would be sure to eat. Inside the quiet, windowless room, Cassia looked over from her post beside the door. Kahlan saw Nicci curled up in one of the overstuffed chairs, sound asleep, with one arm draped over the side. The scribe, Mohler, had gone off to bed just before Kahlan, and had not yet returned.
“How is everything?” Kahlan asked in a whisper so as not to wake Nicci.
Cassia glanced at Richard briefly before answering. “I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think things are going well.”
Concern tightened Kahlan’s brow. “What do you mean?”
Cassia pressed her lips tight as she considered how to explain it. “I don’t know. It seems like he is in a really bad mood.”
“A bad mood? Why, what happened?”
“Nothing, really. I can’t exactly put my finger on anything specific,” Cassia said. “I don’t know him well enough to know what he is like most of the time, but just from as long as I’ve been with him, I don’t think he is usually this upset. From what I am able to gather, I think he’s angry about something he is reading.”
“Did he say something?” Kahlan asked the Mord-Sith.
“No, nothing.” Cassia drew her hand down the long, single blond braid she had pulled over the front of her shoulder. “But I can see the muscles in his jaw flex from time to time as he grits his teeth. Once I saw his knuckles turn white because he was gripping the hilt of his sword so tightly.”
Kahlan didn’t at all like the sound of that. “Well, maybe having something to eat will make him feel better.”
Cassia nodded. “I hope so. He needs his strength. I can hardly believe that we have him back. I want him to get over his sickness and be well. I want him to be with us forever.”
From knowing Cara so well, Kahlan understood what it meant to the Mord-Sith to have a Lord Rahl like Richard come into their lives. Kahlan lifted Cara’s Agiel hanging on the chain around Cassia’s neck.
“I understand. I am a sister of the Agiel.”
Cassia, her eyes widening, tilted her head forward. “You are? Really?”
Kahlan smiled as she nodded. “Sisters of the Agiel know what is best for him. We all have to stick together in order to take care of him.”
Cassia flashed a conspiratorial smile. “You have that right.”
At the desk, Kahlan set the tray down to the side, out of Richard’s way. “The sun is up,” she said. “Well, it’s actually too cloudy to see it, but it’s light out, anyway. I brought you breakfast.”
Richard glanced up briefly to give her a perfunctory smile.
“Have some food, Richard. You need to eat.”
Without argument he briefly glanced over at the tray and retrieved a piece of bacon. He munched on it as he continued to study the scroll laid out on the desk before him. A candle in a heavy silver base held down one corner, a lantern the other. More scrolls lay in disorderly stacks all over the desk. Beyond the desk, the stuffed bear stood on its hind legs, towering over them, claws raised as it glared in a frozen, menacing roar.
Once he finished the bacon, Richard kept reading. Kahlan handed him another piece. He took it, offering a grunt of thanks, and kept studying the scroll without looking over.
Kahlan leaned a hip against the desk and folded her arms. “So, have you learned anything?”
“Too much,” he muttered.
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said without looking up at her, “that I’m beginning to wish I wouldn’t have come back from the world of the dead.”
Kahlan took hold of the wooden armrest and pulled his chair around so that he was facing her. She was not going to be ignored. When he started to protest she put a forkful of scrambled eggs in his mouth.
“You need to eat to keep up your strength,” she told him. “Fighting off that poison inside you is a constant effort. You need to eat.”
He chewed as he watched her eyes. She knew he couldn’t argue the point. Without pause, she scooped up more eggs and fed them to him each time he swallowed.
When he had finished eating most of the eggs, she handed him the cup of tea and smiled. “Good?”
He took a swallow, his gray, raptor gaze staying on her the whole time. “Yes, thanks. I didn’t realize how hungry I was.” He gestured vaguely to the disorderly stack of scrolls. “I’ve been absorbed in all these.”
Now that he had stopped and eaten something, she expected he would be more forthcoming. “So, do you want to tell me about it?”
He finally let out a deep sigh. “I don’t know. I guess I feel like the whole world has been turned upside down. It turns out that the things I’ve learned in recent years and I thought I knew hardly even scratched the surface. They were true, but only in a way, and only as far as they went. It turns out that nothing is like what I thought. I had no idea of what was actually going on beneath the surface–or even how much there was beneath the surface. I feel like I’ve been kept in the dark.”
“Really? Kept in the dark for how long?”
“Remember the day I first met you in the Hartland woods, and I told you that some men were following you?”
“Of course.”
“Since then.”
Kahlan gave him a smiling admonishment. “Richard, it can’t be that bad. Look at all we’ve overcome already. Besides, just because you’re reading something in these scrolls, that doesn’t mean it’s true. How many times have we thought we understood something because of what we read, only to find out later that it wasn’t true?”
“Unfortunately, this has proven to be true.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Emperor Sulachan would not be back in the world of the living right now if it weren’t true. You wouldn’t be alive if this were not true. I wouldn’t be alive. I had no idea of how much more there is to what is going on than I thought.”
“What’s not like you thought?”
“Everything.”
CHAPTER
28
“Everything,” Kahlan repeated. “Such as?”
Richard leaned back, letting out a deep sigh as he drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, apparently considering where to begin.
“Do you know where prophecy comes from?” he began.
Kahlan thought it an odd question. “Real prophecy comes from prophets.”
“Dead prophets.”
Kahlan tilted her head forward. “What are you talking about?”
“When a prophet–a wizard gifted with prophecy–goes into a trance and prophecy comes to him, that prophecy is coming from dead prophets in the underworld. That is the source of prophecy.”
Kahlan gaped at him a moment. “You can’t be serious.”
Richard looked up from under his brow. “In the language of Creation, the symbol for prophecy can be translated in two different ways. One meaning of the symbol is ‘prophecy,’ the other translation is ‘the voice of the dead.’”
He turned to the desk and swept an arm over a scroll held open at each side with ledger books. “These scrolls are full of information about the nature of the world of life and the nature of the underworld. I never imagined that this much comprehensive information could be contained in one place. There is more information–important information–in these scrolls than all the libraries at the People’s Palace. It’s like everything we’ve ever found before, everything we’ve ever looked for, everything we’ve learned, only scratched the surface of what these scrolls contain.”
Kahlan didn’t like the sound of that. “Such as?”
Richard wearily rubbed the tips of his fingers against his temples. “Everything that has happened ever since I met you–for that matter everything since you and I were born–is in here. These scrolls tie all the loose ends together. They tie everything together.”
“Everything?” Kahlan couldn’t
fathom what he was talking about. “Richard, I’m not following what you’re getting at. Everything … like what?”
He looked up at the ceiling. “Where do I even begin?”
“Pick a place and start,” she said in as calming a voice as she could muster.
His head came down and he fixed her in his gaze. “Everything from the boxes of Orden to Sulachan to Regula to Hannis Arc to me is tied up in all of this. I don’t even know where to start or really even how to begin to explain it to you.”
Kahlan folded her arms. “Take it one thing at a time, Richard. Start with Regula. What does it say about the omen machine?”
Richard peered up from under his brow. “Regula is part of the power of the underworld. In a way, it’s death itself in our world, in our midst, in the world of life.”
She held up a hand to stop him. “Back up. It’s buried under the People’s Palace. Where did it come from?” she asked, trying to be as patient as she could to get him to calm down. “How did it get there?”
Richard tapped the side of his thumb on the desk for a moment. “I’m not exactly sure, yet, of the whole explanation. There are a lot of Cerulean scrolls left to go through.”
“I understand, but you said that it was in a way death itself in our midst. You must have a reason for saying that. What does that mean?”
He leaned forward. “Regula–its power, what makes it alive in a sense–was banished to the world of life, banished from the underworld.”
Kahlan made a face. “Banished to the world of life? From the underworld? I’m sorry, Richard, but I don’t understand.”
“Well, remember how the wizards back in the great war banished the Temple of the Winds to the underworld to protect the dangerous magic it contained?”
Kahlan had some pretty unpleasant memories of the Temple of the Winds. “It would be impossible for me to forget that even if I tried.”
“Well,” Richard said, using his hands as he talked, “part of the bargain–the balance for that–was that the world of life had to take the power of Regula and keep it hidden here.”
Kahlan squinted at him. “Wait–what is it? What is Regula? What is the power that was banished here?”