She seized his shirt in both fists as she squirmed. “Let me down, Richard! Let me run myself! I’m only slowing you down and it’s catching up with us! Hurry!”
Richard immediately spun her around in his right arm so that she would be facing the right way. As he dropped her to the ground he kept his arm around her waist until he was sure she had her balance and was up to speed with the rest of them.
With Nicci beside him and Tom, Cara, and Rikka right in front of him, they all raced down halls without knowing where they were going. They switched randomly from right turns to left, going past some intersections while taking others. He could hear the beast crashing after them. Sometimes it followed down the halls and corridors, sometimes, when they went around a corner, it clipped though the walls, trying to close the distance, trying to get to him. Stone, mortar, and wood seemed to make no difference to the thing as it broke through each with equal ease. He knew that a thing conjured by Sisters of the Dark and tied to the underworld would have abilities that no ordinary creature would possess, so he had no idea what the limits of it might be.
As he ran, he yelled to the two Mord-Sith and Tom. “You three go straight! Try to get the thing to follow you!”
They looked back as they ran and nodded to his orders.
“That thing isn’t going to follow them,” Nicci said in a low voice as she leaned toward him as best she could at a full run.
“I know. I have an idea. Stay with me—I’m going to take those stairs up ahead.”
At a stairwell, as the three in front shot past it, Richard hooked a hand on the black stone sphere atop the granite newel post, spinning himself around it and to the right. Nicci did the same and they both shot down the stairs at full speed. The beast cut the corner, crashing through the post, sending granite fragments riccocheting off the walls and the sphere bouncing down the hall. Cara, Rikka, and Tom, having already passed the stairs, slid to a stop on the polished marble floor. They were trapped above the beast. They immediately followed it down the stairs.
Richard and Nicci bounded down the steps three or four at a time. He could hear the otherworldly howl of the thing right behind him. It felt as if it were touching the hair at the back of his neck—it was that close.
At the bottom of the stairs, Richard cut to the right, following a stone passageway. The beast went wide, crashing into a tan, polished marble wall. The stone slab shattered with a loud bang but the beast rushed onward. At the first stairwell Richard came to he raced down it, then took the second and third flight down as well to the bottom.
The broad hallway running straight off from the stairs had carpets at regular intervals, making it more difficult to keep their footing. The walls had beaded wainscoting beneath smooth plaster. Brackets spaced down the passageway, centered above each carpet held what looked like glass globes that brightened as Richard raced toward each one in turn. He ran as fast as he could, Nicci at his side, the shadows tumbling onward like death itself right on their heels.
At spiral iron stairs, Richard jumped sidesaddle onto the railing and slid at breakneck speed in a corkscrew course down into the darkness. Right with him, Nicci threw one arm around his neck for balance and did the same. Together they plummeted downward, gaining some precious distance on their pursuer.
At the bottom the railing spilled them out onto a cold, tiled floor. They both tumbled across the smooth green tiles and slid to a sprawling stop. Richard scrambled to his feet and snatched one of the glowing spheres from a bracket.
“Come on, hurry,” he said as Nicci did the same.
They raced through endless rooms and passageways, taking as wild a route as he could in an effort to shake their hunter. Occasionally they gained a precious few paces. At other times, especially in the halls, the thing regained the distance and inched ever closer. Some of the rooms were cozy paneled suites. The beast seemed to suck the shadows right out of the cold, dark fireplaces as it passed them. The globes they carried cast a warm glow across intricately woven carpets and richly upholstered chairs. Bookcases held leather volumes. Richard accidentally knocked over a bookstand, but kept his balance and kept running.
After charging down yet more flights of stairs, some broad with landings and others nothing more than narrow shafts that seemed bottomless, the rooms began to become less grand. Some of the halls were tiled on all sides with odd patterns. One of the chambers was immense and empty, with fat round stone pillars spaced evenly throughout. The lights they carried were not enough to penetrate the farthest reaches. Occasionally, the passages were little more than shafts chiseled through solid rock.
Other rooms and halls were protected with shields that Richard deliberately charged through. He didn’t want Cara, Rikka, and Tom coming near the thing chasing him. He didn’t want them meeting the same fate as Victor’s men. He knew that Cara would be furious at him when she found herself blocked by shields. He hoped he lived to hear her lecture.
They emerged from what appeared as they’d run through it to be a storage room for construction material, with burlap bags and stone stacked to each side. Richard recognized the material from his time in Altur’Rang at forced labor working on Emperor Jagang’s palace. Now Jagang’s beast was hunting him down.
They emerged on the far side of the storage room into a long, corridor with a slate floor. The smooth, stone block walls rose uninterrupted to a lofty ceiling that had to be at least a hundred and fifty feet overhead, creating a narrow, towering vertical slash through the interior of the Keep. Down at the bottom of that soaring passageway, Richard felt like an ant.
He immediately cut to the right down the immense corridor. The booming drumbeat of their boots echoed all around him as he ran with all his strength. He soon had to slow a bit for Nicci. They were both near the end of their endurance. The wail of a thousand dead souls tumbled ever onward, never seeming to tire.
As he ran, Richard couldn’t even see the end of the tall passageway disappearing into the distance. That this was just one corridor of many gave him a profound sense of the enormity of the Keep.
Arriving at an intersecting passage to the left, Richard turned and ran down it a short distance to where they encountered an iron stairwell. Trying to catch his breath, he glanced back and saw the knot of shadows round the corner. Pushing Nicci ahead of him, they bounded down the stairs together.
At the bottom they found themselves in a small, square room that was little more than an intersection of stone passageways going off in three directions. Richard held the glowing sphere out, taking a quick glance in each passageway. He could see nothing down two of them. In the one to the right he thought he saw something glimmering. He’d been down in the Keep before and had encountered strange places and one of those places was what he needed now.
Together he and Nicci raced down the passageway. As he’d thought, it wasn’t very long, just long enough to take them under the colossal corridor and then a little farther to where it opened into a kind of entry area with walls covered in small fragments of colored glass meticulously arranged into elaborate geometric designs. The light from the two glowing spheres glinted off the small glass pieces to send thousands of colored reflections sparkling and shimmering around the room. There was only one other opening, off against a far wall.
Richard staggered to a halt. The strange glittering room made his skin crawl with a sensation much like spiderwebs brushing against him. Nicci turned her head away, swiping at her face as if to get something off her. He knew that such a sensation was a part of a broader warning to stay away.
Small pillars made of polished, gold-flecked stone stood to each side of the distant opening holding up an entablature. The passageway beyond the pillars, not much taller than Richard, appeared to be roughly square and made of simple stone blocks that disappeared off into darkness. It seemed an elaborate and impressive entry for such a plain hallway down in the bowels of the place.
Richard hoped he was right about the reason.
As they crossed the entry room a
nd approached the opening, the area before the pillars began to give off a faint reddish glow. The air itself began to hum in a very troubling way.
Nicci, her hair lifting out from her head as if she were about to be struck by lightning, seized his arm, pulling him back. “That’s a shield.”
“I know,” Richard said as he dragged her by her grip on his arm.
“Richard, you can’t. It’s not just an ordinary shield—not just Additive. It’s laced with Subtractive Magic. Such shields are deadly, this one especially so.”
He looked back the way they’d come and saw the shadowy beast tumbling down the passageway toward them. “I know, I’ve been through places like this before.”
He hoped he was right that this particular shield was like the ones he’d been through. He needed the kind that he’d encountered before, the kind that guarded the most restricted areas. If it was anything less, or one that was actually more powerful or more restrictive than the ones he’d seen before, then they were going to be in a great deal of trouble.
The only way out of the room they were in was back through the passage with the beast that was coming for them, or onward through the shield.
“Let’s go. hurry.”
Nicci’s chest heaved as she struggled to catch her breath. “Richard, we can’t go through there. That shield will take the flesh right off our bones.”
“I’m telling you, I’ve done it before. You can command Subtractive Magic, so you can make it through as well.” He started running toward the passage. “Besides, if we don’t, we’re dead anyway. It’s our only chance.”
With a growl of surrender, she ran along with him through the shower of glittering reflections from the glass mosaics that covered the walls of the room. “You’d better be right about this.”
He grabbed her hand and held it tight, just in case being born with the Subtractive side was necessary. Nicci had not been born with it, but had acquired the use of it. He didn’t know a great deal about magic, but from what he’d learned, there was a great gulf between being born with it and simply being able to use it. He had helped others, without the gift, through shields before, so between her abilities, and his hold of her, he figured he could get her through—if, that was, he could make it through himself.
The air all around them turned as red as a crimson fog. Without pause, Richard charged right though the doorway, pulling Nicci along with him.
The sudden avalanche of pressure felt like it would crush them. Nicci gasped.
Richard had to force himself against that pressure in order to advance. At the razor edge of the plane along the opening surrounded by polished stone pillars, heat seared across his flesh. It was so intense that for an instant he thought he’d made a huge mistake, that Nicci had been right, and that the shield would burn the flesh right off his bones.
Even as he flinched in reaction to the unexpected burning sensation, his momentum carried him through the doorway. He was somewhat surprised not only to find himself alive and well and not at all harmed, but that the passageway was not at all what it appeared from the other side. When he’d looked through the opening before, it looked like a simple stone block passage. Once past the pillars, it was polished stone that seemed to shimmer with a rippling silver surface that made it appear three-dimensional.
A glance back showed the snarl of shadows streaking for the entrance to the opening. Still holding Nicci’s hand, Richard backed them farther into the sparkling passageway.
He was too exhausted to run anymore.
“Here we live or die,” he told her as he labored to catch his breath.
Chapter 54
The shadow hit the opening with such a resounding thud that Richard thought the passageway they were in would certainly be blown apart. What had been a somewhat cohesive, dark shape exploded apart like glass on granite, shattering into thousands of dark shards. Piercing wails of frightful anguish echoed through the passageway in terrible, heartbreaking finality as light ignited in a blinding crimson flash. At the shielded opening, black fragments of shadows tumbled back through the room that was filled with shimmering, sparkling reflections off the glass mosaics. With what looked like a year’s worth of meteor showers all compressed into a single instant, the shadowy fragments burst into bright flares that flew in every direction as they glimmered into nothingness.
It was suddenly quiet but for Richard and Nicci’s labored breathing.
The beast was gone. At least it was gone for the moment.
Richard let go of Nicci’s hand and they both flopped down heavily on the floor and slumped back against the iridescent silver wall as they panted in exhaustion.
“You were looking for one of those shields, weren’t you?” Nicci asked as she worked at recovering enough breath to talk.
Richard nodded. “Nothing Zedd or Nathan or Ann conjured did anything to stop the beast. What you did at least seemed to have had an effect, even if a small one. That made me think that there must be something that would be able to counter it, maybe not in totality, but at least in the form it presented this time.
“I knew that the wizards from the time back when this place was built needed to stop anything that didn’t belong in here—and the beast, after all, was something from back in those times, something that Jagang had found described in old books. So I figured that those who made the shields here must have had to take such eventualities into account.
“Since they’re made to stop such threats, it takes, at the least, an element of Subtractive Magic to get through the shields. But because the enemy would have had Subtractive powers as well, I think the shields must also somehow read the nature of who is trying to pass through them, perhaps thereby interpreting the potential level of threat. It could even be that as we were chased through the Keep and kept going through shields, they somehow gathered information on the nature not only of us, but of the beast as well so that when we reached these higher threshold shields, they had finally judged it a threat and stopped it.”
Nicci considered what he’d said as she pulled sweaty strands of blond hair back off her face. “No one really knows a great deal about the gifted back then, but it makes sense that such an ancient threat would be vincible to ancient defenses.” She frowned as if an idea had come to her. “Maybe such shields would even be a way to protect you if it reappears.”
“Sure,” he said, “if I want to live down here like a mole.”
She looked around. “Any idea where we are?”
“No,” he said, letting out an exhausted sigh, “but I guess we’d better try to find out.”
They struggled to their feet and made their way the rest of the distance down the short passageway. At the end they emerged into a simple room constructed of stone blocks once covered in plaster that was now crumbling. The room was no more than fifteen paces long and not nearly as wide, with books on shelves along most of the length of the wall to the left.
While it did have some books, it was not a library like so many others he had seen in the keep. For one thing, it was far too small. For another, it was not at all elegant, or even nice, but rather stark. At best, it could be called utilitarian. Besides the shelves, the room was only wide enough for a table at the far end beside a passageway leading out the other side. There was a fat candle on the table and a wooden stool under it. The far passageway looked very much like the one they had come in through.
When Richard took a look, he saw that it had the same shimmering silver stone walls and another shield that looked just like the one they had come in through at the other end of the room, so that, unlike a number of places in the Keep that had shields, there was no way to go around and get into the room by way of another route without such powerful shields. It was through one of the two shields or not at all.
“With all the dust in here,” Nicci said, “it doesn’t look like anyone has cleaned in here for thousands of years.”
She was right. The room was devoid of color other than the dirty gray color of the dust that coate
d everything. The hair at the nape of Richard’s neck stood on end as he fully realized why.
“That’s because no one has been in here for thousands of years.”
“Really?”
He gestured to the far passage he’d just inspected. “The only two ways into here are protected with shields that require Subtractive Magic to cross. Not even Zedd, the First Wizard himself, has ever been in here. He can’t pass Subtractive shields.”
Nicci brushed her hands together. “Especially these shields. I’ve dealt with shields most of my life. From what I felt of these, they’re deadly. I suspect that without your help even I might have had some difficulty getting through them the first time.”
Richard tilted his head to be able to better read the titles as he perused the books along the shelves. Some had no titles on the spines. Some were in languages he couldn’t read. Some looked like they might be journals. Several, though, looked curious. One small book, Gegendrauss, in High D’Haran meant Countermeasures. He pulled out another beside it of a similar small size titled Ordenic Theory. As he blew off a thick coating of dust, he realized then that it must have caught his attention because Ordenic reminded him of Orden, as in the boxes of Orden. He wondered if there was any connection.
“Richard, look at this,” Nicci called to him from the far passage.
Richard tossed the book on the table as he made his way into the passageway, toward the shield. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice echoed, and then he saw the crimson glow brighten and finally fade.
He realized that she must have gone beyond the shield. Alarmed at first, Richard was hugely relieved that there had been no horrific results. Nicci was an experienced sorceress. He suspected that after having gone through the last shield, she must have known what dangers to look for to tell her if she could pass this one as well. He reasoned that perhaps the first shield, when he had helped her through it, had keyed to her, allowing her to cross shields like it.