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.”
CHAPTER
55
“Richard! What are you doing here?” Chase asked.
The big man rubbed sleep from his eyes with one hand and used his other for leverage against his knee as he stood. He had apparently been sleeping while sitting against the wall just outside the tower room.
Richard slipped the baldric of his sword over his head and strapped the belt around his waist as he headed for the stairs to the hallway he needed on the next level.
“I’m in a hurry, Chase.”
Chase arranged the knives along his belt, then straightened the sword at his hip before checking that the sword strapped over the back of his shoulder was secure.
Chase followed quickly after them. “Well, all right, but where are you in a hurry to?”
“I need to get back to that place we came out of, back to the catacombs.”
Chase caught his sleeve, stopping him, and with his other hand pointed down a side hall. “Then this way is quicker.”
Richard nodded. “Lead the way.” He looked over at Cassia as they hurried down the starkly plain stone corridor. “Are you all right?”
Cassia tugged down the sleeves of her red leather outfit at the wrists. “I’m fine. I’m just not sure I’m getting any more comfortable traveling in that liquid silver.”
“What’s this about?” Chase asked. “What’s going on?”
“Long story.”
Chase frowned over as he pointed Richard down a stairwell. “You seem to be full of a lot of long stories. Is there a short version?” Chase snatched Richard’s shirt. “Nope. That way shields a library with books of magic. You need to take this intersection to the right, then take the stairs down a level, then the hall, then back up to get around it.”
Richard nodded. “The short version is that Emperor Sulachan and Hannis Arc have an entire nation of those half people surrounding the People’s Palace. They are soon going to get in, if they haven’t already.”
“So then what are you doing here?”
“I came to get something I left behind.”
“You mean your sword? So you can fight?”
“Yes, that too.”
“What did you leave behind in the catacombs?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Chase pointed. “That one. Take that hall. The big chamber is just beyond. So try me. What wouldn’t I believe?”
Just as he had said, they soon found themselves in the massive room with the entrance to the catacombs. Torches in brackets down each side lit the area well enough. Richard headed for the entrance to the lower world.
“If you want, you can come with us and see for yourself.”
“Good. You might need my sword, too.”
“Your sword won’t be of any help where we’re going.”
Cassia glanced over at Chase with a
long-suffering look. “Don’t feel bad. He hasn’t told me, either. He said it isn’t good to know how you might die.”
“Ah,” the big man said. “At least he has a good reason.”
“I haven’t told either of you because in the first place I wouldn’t know how, and in the second place I’m not even sure I can do this.”
The slits at the top of the chamber revealed that it was night. How deep in the night Richard wasn’t sure, but since Chase had been asleep, it seemed pretty clear that it was the heart of darkness.
Richard spotted the alcove set back in shadows and headed for it. Without delay he pressed his palms to the metal statues, closing his fingers around the shepherds. He felt them warm as before, and as before the stone groaned as it began to swing open.
“Get some torches,” Richard said.
Chase grabbed one for himself and handed Cassia a lantern. He gave Richard a torch.
Richard started in. “There are lots of steps. It goes down really deep into the mountain. The first flights are constructed, but you need to be careful once we get lower because they are carved from the rock and they aren’t even.”
“What’s the rush?”
Richard turned and looked at Chase. “A lot of people back at the palace are going to be slaughtered by half people before I can get back. It could even be that everyone there will die. I’m hoping to make it back before that happens. But even if it does, everyone else is going to die after that. I need to try to stop what is going to happen. I think this is the only way. Kahlan’s life hangs in the balance. Everyone’s life hangs in the balance. I don’t know if I will live through what I am going to do, but I have to save everyone I can. That’s the rush.”
Chase grunted his understanding and followed Richard when he started down, taking two steps at a time, half descending stairs, half falling the entire way. They went past landing after landing, racing down.
The torches suddenly revealed the chamber with the round table and the various tunnel openings. Richard ducked under the opening and went into the ninth one on the right, plunging down the shaft cut through the stone, down rough-cut stairs, the torches flapping in the wind as they raced ever downward.
They began encountering the dead in their carved resting places. Richard paid attention to where he was going, ignoring the hundreds upon hundreds of corpses they hurried past. Chase, though, looked to each side with big eyes. He hadn’t known the catacombs were there, beneath the Keep all this time. For that matter, generations had lived at the Keep without ever being aware of what lay below.
The long, winding, descending journey finally brought them to the arched opening into the precisely cut, square, broad passageway.
“This place is making the hairs at the back of my neck stand on end,” Chase said.
“Me too,” Cassia added.
“I know,” Richard said. “Come on. This way.”
At the end of the broad corridor, Richard stopped before the cloth hanging at the end. On the other side it was painted with wards to keep spirits from crossing.
“What is this place?” Chase asked, looking around at the carefully carved straight walls and precisely cut, flat ceiling, and especially the strange piece of cloth hanging across their way ahead.
Richard turned back to Chase. “It’s called the Sanctuary of Souls.”
“You mean … there are spirits, ghosts, down here?”
“Yes.” Richard gestured to the cloth. “There are these things, these cloth panels, hanging all throughout the maze. Some, like this one, have ancient wards painted on them. Those wards are powerful spell-forms that keep the spirits from crossing. It keeps them on the other side. Yet other cloth panels have spell-forms meant to draw the spirits to this place.”
“Draw them here?” Cassia asked. “Why?”
“Back in the caves in Stroyza, Naja left a message about what happened back in the great war.”
“Who is Naja?” Chase asked.
Richard waved away the question. “A sorceress who lived back in the great war. Not important right now. But the message she left for us is. You see, the half people don’t have souls. Naja says that when the emperor and his makers created the half people, those spirits, once pulled from the victim, were not allowed to go to the spirit world. That was how Sulachan created the half people. If their souls went to the underworld, then their bodies here would die. Instead, their souls were ripped from them, but not allowed to cross over into the underworld.”
Cassia ran her hand down Cara’s Agiel. “What happened to them, then?”
“Naja said that those souls are unable to go through the veil into the underworld, so those lost spirits drift back in this direction and end up haunting this plane of existence, not knowing where to go. Some of them have come to me before, seeking my help, but I didn’t understand at the time.”
Cassia pointed. “So you think some of them might be in there?”
“This is the Sanctuary of Souls. Look at all the trouble the people back in Naja’s time obviously went to in order to create this place. I think that some of the spell-forms draw those spirits here, making it safe for them. I think this maze is a place they can haunt, a place where they can gather and feel safe. A temporary home, of sorts. Once drawn in, the wards keep them from coming out here.”
“Why?” Chase asked.
“Naja says that not all of them who drift back into the world of life are friendly.”
The big man frowned. “Why not?”
“They’d probably be pretty angry about what was done to them, don’t you suppose? Ripped from their body and not allowed to cross over to a place of eternal peace. Forced to wander between worlds, always torn from the Grace, kept out of reach.”
Chase reached back and scratched his neck. “It’s making my skin crawl just thinking about it.”
“Lord Rahl, that still doesn’t answer what we’re doing here.”
Richard gave Cassia a long look. “I am the bringer of death. I’ve been in the world of the dead. I’ve been dead. The dead recognize me as one of them.”
“Well…” she drawled, “all right, but I don’t see–”
Richard yanked down the cloth and handed it to her. “I need you to carry this. Fold the symbols inward. Come on.”
As they hurried into the warren of passageways, Richard kept track of the shepherd symbols up on the walls so that he wouldn’t get lost in the maze. Along the way, he pulled down cloth hangings and draped them over Cassia’s outstretched arm.
As they went farther into the maze of tunnels, he could sense the presence of the spirits gathering around him in great numbers. He could hear their whispered pleas.
When they reached a larger, central hallway, he motioned to Chase and Cassia. “Go back there, to the end, and wait.”
With the shadowy forms passing through the torchlight, they didn’t need to be told twice.
Richard stood at the far end of the hallway, looking down the length of it back toward Chase and Cassia. As he watched, he saw sparkles, like dust caught in sunlight, begin to gather in what looked like rippling sheets. As more and more of them came together, creating swirling shapes that formed and moved together the way great flocks of birds did, he could sense the thousands of spirits present, come to someone they recognized as one of their own, but different.
As they gathered, their great numbers created sheets of light, like the northern lights Richard had often seen in the night sky. It was a beautiful sight, an underground show of the northern lights, except these lights were made from the specks of souls, all gathering together, all moving with the same purpose, the same longing, the same need.
Richard drew his sword.
The sound rang through the halls. It sounded pure, almost divine.
In the torchlight he could see that the blade still had the dark metallic gleam to it, taken on from having touched the world of the dead. It looked more sinister than it had ever looked, and rightly so. It now was cloaked in death.
H
e could feel the power of its magic flooding through him, lifting his own soul with the calling of the storm, touching the death he carried within him.
Richard held the sword out in both hands, then, pointed back up the hallway.
“Come home with me,” Richard whispered out to the constellation of souls twisting together before him in great sheets of sparkling light, looking like they were moving on an otherworldly wind.
As he held the sword out, the sheets of light began twisting, turning, spiraling in on the sword. The dark, gleaming blade seemed to absorb fold after fold of those sheets of glimmering souls, until at last they had all gone as dark as the blade.
Richard slid the sword back in its scabbard.
“Let’s go.”
“Where?” Cassia asked.
“Back to the sliph.”
Chase led the way as they raced back through the halls, then the catacombs with the countless niches filled with the dead, their souls safely in the world of the dead, up flights of stairs, and then up long runs of steps tunneling ever upward. It seemed like they ran for half the night. Richard felt like he lost parts of that run in a dim haze.
The sickness was overwhelming him. It sapped his strength as they ran up flight after flight of steps. It threatened to take his legs from under him. It threatened to take consciousness from him.
When he thought he could go on no longer, he thought of Kahlan and everyone else back at the palace, and what they faced. Hannis Arc and Sulachan were determined to take the palace. They would unleash the unholy half-dead on the living. When they did, everyone there would be slaughtered. But that would be only the beginning of the dying. It would be the beginning of the end for the world of life.
With that terrible thought uppermost in his mind, he ignored his pain and kept running.
When they reached the top, Richard closed the capstone to the catacombs and then dropped onto the bench, panting, trying to gather his strength, finding it hard even to breathe.
“Cassia,” he said without looking up.
She put a worried hand on his shoulder. “Yes, Lord Rahl?”
“This is why I brought you. You have to help me make it back. You have to be my strength.”