The elder, the one with the rabbit skin on his head, leaned toward Zedd and spoke. When Zedd frowned and shrugged that he didn’t understand, the man added sign language seemingly invented on the spot. He indicated chores to be done, and time, by showing the seasons: digging at the ground and pretending to plant, the heat of summer, and the freezing of winter. Zedd couldn’t understand a great deal of it, but he understood enough.
He turned to Ann. “I believe that these fellows here have purchased us out of our death sentence. We are to be in servitude to them for a period of about two years, to repay them for our cost, plus a profit for their trouble.”
“We’ve been sold into slavery?”
“It would appear so. But only for a couple of years. Quite generous of them, actually, considering that the Nangtong were going to kill us.”
“Maybe we could buy our way out.”
“To the Si Doak, this is a personal debt we owe them, and can only be repaid with personal servitude. To their way of looking at it, they have returned our lives to us, and so we must use part of those lives to show our gratitude. And to clean up after them.”
“Clean up? We’re to scrub floors to repay our debt?”
“I imagine they’ll want us to cook, carry things, sew, care for their animals, those sorts of things.”
As if to confirm what Zedd had told her, the Si Doak began pulling the thongs holding their waterskins off over their heads and passing them to Zedd and Ann.
“What do they want?” Ann asked him.
Zedd lifted an eyebrow. “They want us to carry their water.”
Three more of the Si Doak appeared with the remaining blankets, divided them, and handed them to their new bearers.
“Do you mean to tell me,” Ann growled, “that the First Wizard of the Midlands and the Prelate of the Sisters of the Light have been sold into slavery for the price of some blankets and two goats!”
With a shove from behind, Zedd staggered after the departing Si Doak.
“I know what you mean,” he said over his shoulder. “For the first time I know of, the Si Doak have overpaid.”
Zedd stumbled and dropped half his load of waterskins. As he regained his balance, he stepped on one that had snagged a thorny berry bush. Bending to retrieve the waterskins, his stack of blankets toppled into the mud puddle created by the burst waterskin. He put a knee to the ground to regain his balance as he gathered up the scattered waterskins. His knee squashed the berries under the blanket.
“Oops.” He waved an apology to the Si Doak. “Sorry.”
The Si Doak leaped about in agitation, demanding he pick everything up at once. The man whose waterskin Zedd had ripped open over a thorn bush pointed angrily at his damaged property while jabbering demands of recompense.
“I said I was sorry,” Zedd protested, even though they couldn’t understand him. He bent to gather up the wet blankets. He lifted one up high and held it out between his widespread arms, inspecting it.
“Oh dear. Look at that. We’ll never get that stain out.”
46
“Lord Rahl, you have had a hard ride,” Berdine said. “I think you should be resting. We should go back. So you can rest, I mean.”
The massive rampart, lit by the mellow light of the low sun, spread out before the three of them like a broad road. He wanted to be out of the Keep before dark. Not that the light of day would save him from dangerous magic, but somehow being in the Wizard’s Keep after dark seemed worse.
Raina leaned past him to speak. “It was your idea, Berdine.”
“My idea? I never suggested any such thing!”
“Quiet, both of you.” Richard murmured.
He was considering the feel of magic against his skin. They had advanced halfway across the long rampart toward the First Wizard’s private enclave before the distinct caress of magic began tingling against his flesh. Both Mord-Sith had balked at its feel.
Kahlan had told him about this place, about the First Wizard’s private enclave. She said that she used to come up to this rampart because it provided a beautiful view of Aydindril, and indeed there was that, but there was also the magic of powerful shields. Those shields kept everyone out of this small corner of the Wizard’s Keep.
Kahlan had told him that in her life there had never been a wizard with enough power to pass these shields. Wizards had tried, but failed. The wizards living and working in the Keep as Kahlan was growing up simply didn’t have the magic required to enter this part of it. Zedd was the First Wizard; no one had been in the First Wizard’s enclave since before Kahlan and Richard were born, when Zedd had left the Midlands.
Kahlan had said that these shields exerted more magic as you got closer, that they made your hair stand on end and made it difficult to breathe. She had also said that if a person didn’t have enough magic of their own, just getting too close to the shields could be deadly. Richard didn’t discount in the slightest what she had said, but he had need to go in there.
Kahlan had also said that to enter required placing your hand on the cold metal plate beside the door, something no wizard she knew had ever been able to do. Richard had encountered shields like this one at the Palace of the Prophets, ones passed by touching a metal plate, but as far as he knew none of those were potentially deadly. He had been able to pass those shields, and he had been able to pass others in the Keep that required magic only he possessed, so he reasoned that he might be able to pass this one. He needed to get in there.
Berdine rubbed her arms, distressed by the tingle of the magic. “Are you sure you aren’t tired? You rode all that way.”
“It wasn’t that hard a ride,” Richard said. “I’m not tired.”
He was too worried to rest. He had thought Kahlan would be back by now. He had been sure he would find her back home when he returned from Mount Kymermosst. She should have been back by now.
But she wasn’t.
He would wait only until morning.
“I still don’t think we should be doing this,” Berdine muttered. “How is your foot? I don’t think you should be on it.”
Richard finally looked down at her. She was pressed up against his left side. Raina was pressed to his right. Each held her Agiel in her fist.
“My foot is just fine, thank you.” He shifted his body to force them away a bit to give himself breathing room. “I only need one of you. No loss of face if you wish to remain here. Raina can go, if you don’t want to.”
Berdine scowled up at him. “I didn’t say I wasn’t going. I said you shouldn’t be doing it.”
“I have to. It wasn’t anywhere else. It has to be here. I was told that important things, things not meant to be seen by just anyone, were kept in the First Wizard’s enclave.”
Berdine rolled her shoulders, easing the tension in her muscles. “If you insist on going, then I’m going, too. I’ll not let you walk in there without me.”
“Raina?” he asked. “I don’t need both of you. Do you want to wait here?”
Raina gave him a dark, Mord-Sith glare in answer.
“All right, then. Now, listen to me. I know that the shields here are dangerous, but that’s all I know about them. They may not be like the others I’ve taken you through.
“I have to touch that metal plate down there on the wall. I want you two to wait here while I go see if I have the proper magic to open the door. If it opens, then you both can come the rest of the way.”
“This isn’t a trick, is it?” Raina asked. “You tricked us one other time to keep us out, to keep us from going where there was danger. Mord-Sith are not afraid of danger.”
The wind lifted his gold cloak. “No, Raina, it’s not a trick. This is important, but I don’t want either of you risking your lives needlessly. If I can open the door, then I promise to take you both with me. Satisfied?”
Both women nodded. Richard gave them each an appreciative squeeze on the shoulder. He absently adjusted the metal bands on his wrists as he gazed at the towering bastion waiting
at the end of the rampart.
A cold wind buffeted him as he started across. He could feel the pressure of the shield, like the weight of water when you swam toward the bottom of a pond. The fine hairs at the back of his neck stiffened as he progressed. The pressure made it difficult but not impossible to draw a breath, as Kahlan had said she had experienced.
Six immense columns of variegated red stone stood to each side of the gold-clad door, holding up a protruding entablature of dark stone. The architrave was decorated with brass plaques. As Richard approached it, he recognized some of their symbols as the same ones on his wristbands, belt, and boot pins. The frieze held round metal disks with other of the more circular symbols. The more linear of symbols he wore were also carved into the stone of the cornice.
Seeing the symbols he recognized reassured him, even though he didn’t know their meaning. He wore these things by obligation, duty, and right—he was born to them, that much he knew. Why, he didn’t know. Even if he wished it could be otherwise, it wasn’t; he was a war wizard.
Distracted by the uncomfortable pressure and tingling of the shields, he reached the door almost before he realized it. The door was at least twelve feet tall, and a good four feet wide, gold-clad and embellished in the same symbolic motifs.
Embossed in the center was the more prominent of the symbols he wore: two rough triangles, with a sinuous double line running around and through them. Richard rested his left hand on the hilt of his sword as he fingered the symbol with his other hand, tracing its oval, undulating outer margin.
With the act of touching it, tracing it, following its pattern, he understood. The spirits who had used the Sword of Truth before him passed their knowledge on to him as he used the sword, but they didn’t always convey that knowledge in words; in the heat of combat there wasn’t always time.
Sometimes it came to him in images, symbols: these symbols.
This one on the door, like the ones on his wristbands, was a kind of dance used for fighting when outnumbered. It conveyed a sense of the movements of the dance, movements without form.
The dance with death.
It made sense. He wore the outfit of a war wizard. Richard had learned from Kolo’s journal that in Kolo’s time the First Wizard, named Baraccus, had also been a war wizard, as was Richard. These symbols had meaning to a war wizard. Much as a tailor painted shears on his window, or a tavern sign had a mug on it, or a blacksmith nailed up horseshoes, or a weapons maker displayed knives, these symbols were signs of his craft: bringing death.
Richard realized that his fear had vanished. He stood in the Wizard’s Keep, which had always before set his nerves on edge and worse, stood now before the most restricted and protected place in the Keep, yet he felt calm.
He touched a starburst symbol on the door. This symbol was an admonition.
Keep your vision all-inclusive, never allowing it to lock on any one thing. That was the meaning of the starburst symbol: look everywhere at once, see nothing to the exclusion of all else—don’t allow the enemy to direct your vision, or you will see what he wishes you to see. He will then come at you as you become bewildered, looking for his attack, and you will lose.
Instead, your vision must open to all there is, never settling, even when cutting. Know your enemy’s moves by instinct, not by waiting to see them. To dance with death meant to know the enemy’s sword and its speed without waiting to see it. Dancing with death meant being one with the enemy, without looking fixedly, so that you could kill him. Dancing with death meant being committed to killing, committed with your heart and soul. Dancing with death meant that you were the incarnation of death, come to reap the living.
Berdine’s voice drifted across the rampart. “Lord Rahl?”
Richard looked over his shoulder. “What? What’s wrong?”
Berdine shifted her weight to her other foot. “Well, are you all right? You’ve been standing there for a long time, staring at the door. Are you all right?”
Richard wiped a hand across his face. “Yes. I’m fine. I was just… just looking at the things written on the door, that’s all.”
He turned, and without thinking, slapped his hand to the cold metal plate in the polished gray granite wall. Kahlan had told him it was said that to touch that metal plate was like touching the cold, dead heart of the Keeper himself.
The metal plate warmed. The gold door silently swung inward.
Dim light came from beyond. Richard took a careful step into the doorway. Like a wick on a lamp being slowly turned up, the dim light coming from inside brightened. He took another step, and the light brightened more.
He scanned the inside as he motioned the two waiting Mord-Sith forward. Whatever magic prevented people from approaching apparently was now withdrawn; Berdine and Raina walked to him without any difficulty.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Raina said. “I didn’t feel anything.”
“So far, so good,” Richard said.
Inside, there were glass spheres, about a hand-width in diameter, set atop green marble pedestals against the wall to his left and right. Richard had seen glass spheres similar to these before, down in the lower reaches of the Keep. Like those, these too provided light.
The inside of the First Wizard’s enclave was an immense cavern of ornate stonework. Four columns of polished black marble, at least ten feet in diameter, formed a square that supported arches just beyond the outer edges of a central dome dotted by a high ring of windows. Between each pair of columns a wing ran off from the vast central chamber. He noticed that much of the stonework repeated the palm-leaf pattern that adorned the gold capitals atop the black marble columns. The polishing of the marble was so high that it reflected images like glass.
Finely worked wrought-iron sconces decorated with the same palm leaf pattern held candles. Fluidly worked iron formed railings at the edge of the expansive, sunken central floor.
This was not the sinister lair Richard expected. This was a place of grand splendor to match any he had seen. The place was so beautiful that it left him awestricken.
The wing in which the three of them stood, the entry hall, appeared to be by far the smallest of the four wings. Six-foot-tall white marble pedestals marched in a long double row beside the walkway laid with a long red carpet over a gold-flecked dark brown marble floor.
Richard wouldn’t have been able to touch fingers were he to put his arms around one of the pedestals. The ribbed, barrel ceiling thirty feet overhead made the fat pedestals look miniscule.
Sitting atop some of the pedestals were objects Richard recognized: ornate knives, gems set in brooches or at the ends of gold-worked chains, a silver chalice, filigree bowls, and delicately worked boxes. Some sat on squares of cloth trimmed with gold or silver embroidery, others on stands carved from burled wood.
Other pedestals held contorted objects that made no sense to him. He would have sworn that they changed shape when he looked at them. He decided it would be best not to look directly at such things of magic, and warned the other two.
The distant wing opposite them, across the central area under the huge dome, ended at a round-topped window that had to be thirty feet tall. Before the window was a huge table piled with a clutter of objects: glass jars, bowls, and coiled tubes; a massive but simple iron candelabrum covered with ages of wax; stacks of scrolls; several human skulls; and a chaos of smaller items Richard couldn’t make out from such a distance. The floor all around the table was similarly cluttered, along with things stacked up and leaning against the table.
The wing to the right was dark. Richard felt uncomfortable even looking in that direction. He heeded the warning, and looked to the left. In that wing, he saw books. Thousands of them.
“There,” Richard said, as he gestured to the left. “That’s what we’re here for. Remember what I told you. Don’t touch anything.” He glanced at them both as they looked about with wide eyes. “I mean it. I don’t know how to save you if you get in trouble touching something in here.”
/> Both pairs of eyes looked back at him.
“We remember,” Berdine said.
“We know better than to tempt magic,” Raina said. “We’re just looking around, that’s all. We wouldn’t touch anything.”
“Good. But I suggest that you don’t even look at anything, either, except what we need to look at. For all I know, simply looking at something in here could trigger its magic.”
“Do you think?” Raina asked in astonishment.
“What I think is that I’d rather not find out after it’s too late. Come on. Let’s get this over with so we can get out of here.”
Oddly, even though he had said the words, and knew they made sense, he didn’t really feel like leaving. As potentially dangerous as he knew the place to be, he found that he liked the First Wizard’s enclave.
Berdine smirked. “Lord Rahl fears magic as much as we do.”
“You’re wrong, Berdine. I know a little about magic.” He started down the red carpet. “I fear it more.”
Ten broad steps at the end led down into the central area. An expanse of cream-colored marble covered the floor. A border of darker brown marble ran around the floor near the edge. When Richard reached the bottom step and his foot touched the floor, it hummed and began to glow. He quickly retreated back up onto the red carpet. The glow extinguished.
“What now?” Raina asked.
He pried her fingers from his arm. “Did either of you put your foot to the floor?” They both shook their heads. “Try.”
As Richard waited on the step, Berdine gingerly tried to test the marble. She withdrew her foot.
“I can’t. Something stops my foot before I can get it on the floor.”
Richard stepped out onto the marble again. Again it glowed and hummed.
“It must be a shield, then. Here, take my hand and try again.”
Holding Richard’s hand, Berdine was able to step onto the marble with him. Raina took his other hand and followed.
“All right,” he said, “since it’s some kind of shield, don’t let go of my hand while we’re on this part. We don’t know what would happen. For all I know, if you let go of my hand you could fry like bacon on a griddle.”