Naked Empire (18 page)

Richard drew labored breaths, unable to speak as he held his breath against a wave of agony. Kahlan felt helpless not knowing what to do to help him.

“Lord Rahl,” Cara said, kneeling before him, “you have been taught to control pain. You must do that, now.” She seized a fistful of his hair and lifted his head to be able to look into his eyes. “Think,” she commanded. “Remember. Put the pain in its place. Do it!”

Richard clutched her forearm as if to thank her for her words. “Can’t,” he finally managed to say to Kahlan through his obvious suffering. “We can’t go in the sliph.”

“We must,” she insisted. “The sliph is the fastest way.”

“And if I step down into the sliph, breathe in that quicksilver creature—and my magic fails?”

Kahlan was frantic. “But we must go in the sliph to get there in a hurry.” She feared to say “in time.”

“And if anything is wrong, I’ll die.” He panted, trying to catch his breath against the pain. “Without magic, breathing the sliph is death. The sword is failing me.” He swallowed, coughed, gasped for breath. “If my gift is causing the headaches, and that’s making magic falter in me, and I enter the sliph, I will be dead after I take the first breath. There’s no way to test it.”

An icy wave of terror shot through her veins. Getting to Zedd was Richard’s only hope. That had been her plan. Without help, the headaches of the gift would kill him.

She feared, though, that she knew why the magic of his sword was failing, and it wasn’t the headaches. She feared that it was in fact the same thing that had caused the seal to be broken. The warning beacon testified that she was the cause of that. If it was true, then she was the cause of that and much more.

If she was right, she realized, if it was true, then Richard was right about the sliph—going into the sliph would indeed be death. If she was right, then he wouldn’t even be able to call the sliph, much less travel by it.

“Richard Rahl, if you’re going to throw mud on my best ideas then you had better have an idea of your own to offer in its place.”

He was gasping, now, in the clutch of violent pain. And then Kahlan saw blood when he coughed.

“Richard!”

Tom, looking alarmed, raced up beside them. When he saw the blood running down Richard’s chin, he turned ashen.

“Help him to the wagon,” Kahlan said, trying to keep her voice steady.

Cara put her shoulder under his arm. Tom circled an arm around Richard and helped Kahlan and Cara lift him to his feet.

“Nicci,” Richard said.

“What?” Kahlan asked.

“You wanted to know if I had an idea. Nicci.” He gasped in pain and struggled to get his breath. Yet more blood came when he coughed. It was dripping off his chin.

Nicci was a sorceress, not a wizard. Richard needed a wizard. Even if they had to travel overland, they could race there. “But Zedd would be better able—”

“Zedd is too far,” he said. “We need to get to Nicci. She can use both sides of the gift.”

Kahlan hadn’t thought of that. Maybe she really could help.

Halfway to the wagon, Richard collapsed. It was all they could do to hold up his dead weight. With Tom gripping him under the backs of his shoulders and Cara and Kahlan each holding a leg, they ran the rest of the way to the wagon.

Tom, without the need of help from Cara and Kahlan, hoisted Richard into the back of the wagon. Jennsen hurriedly unfurled another bedroll. They laid Richard out as carefully as they could. Kahlan felt as if she were watching herself react, move, talk. She refused to allow herself to give in to panic.

Kahlan and Jennsen tried to lean in, to see how he was, but Cara shoved them back out of the way. She bent over Richard, putting her ear to his mouth, listening. Her fingers felt for a pulse at the side of his throat. Her other hand cupped the back of his neck, no doubt preparing to hold him to give him the breath of life if she had to. Mord-Sith were knowledgeable about such things; they knew how to keep people alive in order to extend their torture. Cara knew how to use that knowledge to help save lives, too.

“He’s breathing,” Cara said as she straightened. She laid a comforting hand on Kahlan’s arm. “He’s breathing easier now.”

Kahlan nodded her thanks, unwilling to test her voice. She moved in closer to Richard, on the other side, while Cara wiped the blood from his chin and mouth. Kahlan felt helpless. She didn’t know what to do.

“We’ll ride all night,” Tom said over his shoulder as he climbed up into the driver’s seat.

Kahlan forced herself to think. They had to get to Nicci.

“No,” she said. “It’s a long way to Altur’Rang. We’re not near any roads; picking our way cross country in the dark is foolhardy. If we’re reckless and push too hard we’ll just end up killing the horses—or they could break a leg, which would be just as bad. If we lose the horses, we can’t very well carry Richard all the way and expect to make it in time.

“The wisest thing to do is to go just as fast as we possibly can, but we also have to get rest along the way to be ready should we be attacked again. We have to use our heads or we’ll never make it.”

Jennsen held Richard’s hand in both of hers. “He has that headache, and he fought all those men—maybe if he can just get some sleep, he’ll be better, then.”

Kahlan was buoyed by that thought, even though she didn’t think it was that simple. She stood in the wagon bed, looking out at the man waiting for her to command him.

“Are there any more of you? Any more sent to attack us or capture us? Did this Nicholas send anyone else?”

“Not that I’m aware of, Mistress.”

Kahlan spoke softly to Tom. “If he even looks like he’s going to cause any trouble, don’t hesitate. Kill him.”

With a nod, Tom readily agreed. Kahlan dropped back down and felt Richard’s brow. His skin was cold and wet.

“We’d best go on until we find a place that will be easier to defend. I think Jennsen is right that he needs rest; I don’t think bouncing around in the back of this wagon is going to help him. We’ll all need to get some rest and then start out at first light.”

“We need to find a horse,” Cara said. “The wagon is too slow. If we can find a horse, I’ll ride like the wind, find Nicci, and start back with her. That way we don’t have to wait all the way until we get there in the wagon.”

“Good idea.” Kahlan looked up at Tom. “Let’s get going—find a place to stop for the night.”

Tom nodded as he threw off the brake. At his urging, the horses heaved their weight against the hames and the wagon lurched ahead.

Betty, puling softly, lay beside an unconscious Richard and put her head down on his shoulder. Jennsen stroked Betty’s head.

Kahlan saw tears running down Jennsen’s cheeks. “I’m sorry about Rusty.”

Betty’s head came up. She let out a pitiful bleat.

Jennsen nodded. “Richard will be all right,” she said, her voice choked with tears as she took Kahlan’s hand. “I know he will.”

Zedd thought he heard something.

The spoonful of stew he was about to put into his waiting mouth paused. He remained motionless, listening.

The Keep often had sounded alive to him, as if it were breathing. Once in a while it even sounded as if it were letting out a small sigh. Ever since he was a boy, Zedd had, on occasion, heard loud snaps that he never could trace. He suspected such sounds were most likely the massive stone blocks moving just a tad, popping as they yielded ground against a neighbor. There were stone blocks down in the foundations of the Keep that were the size of small palaces.

Once, when Zedd was no more than ten or twelve, a loud crack had rung through the entire Keep as if the place had been struck with a giant hammer. He ran out of the library, where he’d been studying, to see other people coming out of rooms all up and down the hall, looking about, whispering their worries to one another. Zedd’s father had later told him that it was found to be nothing more than one of the huge foundation blocks cracking suddenly, and while it posed no structural problem, the abrupt snap of such an enormous piece of granite had been heard throughout the Keep. Although such occurrences were rare, it was not the last time he heard such a harmless, but frightening, sound in the Keep.

And then there were the animals. Bats flew unrestricted through parts of the Keep. There were towers that soared to dizzying heights, some empty inside but for stone stairs curving up around the inside of the outer wall on their way up to a small room at the top, or an observation deck. In the dusty streamers of sunlight penetrating the dark interiors of those towers there could be seen myriad bugs flitting about. The bats loved the towers.

Rats, too, lived in parts of the Keep. They scurried and squeaked, sometimes causing a fright. Mice were common in places, making noise scratching and gnawing at things. And then there were the cats, offspring of former mousers and pets, but now all wild, that lived off the rats and the mice. The cats also hunted the birds that flew in and out of uncovered openings to feed on bugs, or to build nests up in high recesses.

There were sometimes awful sounds when a bat, a mouse, a bird, or even a cat went somewhere they weren’t permitted. The shields were meant to keep people away from dangerous or restricted areas, but they were also placed to prevent unauthorized access to many of the items stored and preserved in the Keep. The shields guarded against life; they made no distinction between human and nonhuman life.

Otherwise, after all, a pet dog that innocently wandered into a restricted area could theoretically retrieve a dangerous talisman and proudly take it to a child master who could be put in peril by it. Those who placed the shields were aware that it was also possible for unscrupulous people to train animals to go to restricted areas, snatch whatever they might be able to carry, and bring it to them. Not knowing what animal might potentially be trained for such a task, the shields were made to ward all life. If a bat flew into the wrong shield, it was incinerated.

There were shields in the Keep that even Zedd could not get through because they required both sides of the gift and he had only the Additive.

Some of the shields took the form of a barrier of magic that physically prevented passage in some way, either by restricting movement or by inducing a sensation so unpleasant that one couldn’t force oneself beyond. Those shields were meant to prevent ungifted people or children from entering certain areas, not to prevent entrance to the gifted, so it was not necessary for those shields to kill.

But such shields only worked for those who were ungifted.

In other places, entrance was strictly forbidden to anyone but those with not only the appropriate ability, but proper authority. Without both the appropriate ability and authority granted by spells keyed to the particular defenses in that area, such as metal plates that had to be touched by an authorized wizard, the shields killed whatever entered them. The shields killed animals as infallibly, as effectively, as they would kill any intruder.

Such dangerous shields gave warnings of heat, light, or tingling as a warning so as to prevent people from unintentionally going near them—after all, with the size of the place, it was easy enough to become lost. Such warnings worked for the animals, too, but occasionally a cat chased a panicked mouse into a lethal shield, and sometimes the cat, racing after, would run right into it as well.

As Zedd waited, listening, the silence stretched on, unbroken. If he really had heard something, it could have been the Keep moving, or an animal squeaking when it approached a shield, or even a gust of wind coming through one of the hundreds of openings. Whatever it was, it was silent, now. The wooden spoonful of stew finally completed its journey.

“Umm…” Zedd declared to no one in particular. “Good!”

To his great disappointment when he’d first tasted it, he had found that the stew wasn’t done. Rather than hurry the process with a bit of magic, and possibly incur Adie’s wrath for meddling with her cooking, Zedd had sat down on the couch and resigned himself to doing a bit of reading.

There was no end to the reading. Books offered the potential of valuable information that could aid them in ways they couldn’t foretell. From time to time, as he read, he checked the progress of the stew, rather patiently, he thought.

Now, as he tasted it, it finally seemed to be done. The chunks of ham were so tender they would fall apart when his tongue pressed them to the roof of his mouth. The whole delightfully bubbling pot had taken on the heady melding of onions and oils, carrots and turnips, a hint of garlic and a dizzying swirl of complementary spices, all crowded with nuggets of ham, some still with crisp fat along one edge.

To his great annoyance, Zedd had long ago noticed that Adie hadn’t made any biscuits. Stew went well with biscuits. There should be biscuits. He decided that a bowl of stew would hold him until she returned and made some. There should be biscuits. It was only right.

He didn’t know where Adie had gone. Since he had been down in Aydindril most of the day, he reasoned that she had probably gone off to one of the libraries to search through books for anything that might be of help. She was a great help ferreting potentially relevant books out of the libraries. Being from Nicobarese, Adie sought out books in that language. There were books all over the Keep, so there was no telling where she was.

There were also storerooms filled with racks and racks of bones. Other rooms contained rows of tall cabinets, each with hundreds of drawers. Zedd had seen bones of creatures there that he had never seen in life. Adie was an expert of sorts on bones. She had lived for a good portion of her life in seclusion in the shadow of the boundary. People living in the area had been afraid of her; they called her the bone woman because she collected bones. They had been everywhere in her house. Some of those bones protected her from the beasts that came out of the boundary.

Zedd sighed. Books or bones, there was no telling where she was. Besides that, there were any number of other things in the Wizard’s Keep that would be of great interest to a sorceress. She might even have simply wanted to go for a walk, or up on a rampart to gaze at the stars and think.

It was much easier to wait for her to come back to her stew than for him to go looking for her. Maybe he should have put one of the bells around her neck.

Zedd hummed a merry tune to himself as he spooned stew into a wooden bowl. No use waiting on an empty stomach, he always said; that only made a person grouchy. It was really better to have a snack and be in good humor than to wait and be miserable. He would only be bad company if he was miserable.

On the eighth spoon of stew into the bowl, he heard a sound.

His hand froze above the bubbling pot.

Zedd thought he’d heard a bell tinkle.

Zedd wasn’t given to flights of imagination or to being unreasonably jumpy, but a cold shiver tingled across his flesh as if he’d been touched by the icy fingers of a spirit reaching out from another world. He stood motionless, partly bent toward the pot in the fire, partly turned toward the hall, listening.

It could be a cat. Maybe he hadn’t tied the thin cord high enough and as a cat went under the line its tail had swished up and rung the bell. Maybe a cat was being mischievous and as it sat on its haunches, tail swishing back and forth, it had batted a bell. It could be a cat.

Or maybe a bird had landed on the line to roost for the night. A person couldn’t get past the shields in order to trip a belled cord. Zedd had placed extra shields. It had to be an animal—a cat, or a bird.

If so, if no one could get past the regular shields and the extras he had placed, then why had he strung bells?

Despite the likely explanations, his hair was trying to stand on end. He didn’t like the way the bell had rung; there was something about the character of the sound that told him it wasn’t an animal. The sound had been too firm, too abrupt, too quick to stop.

He realized fully, now, that a bell had in fact rung. He wasn’t imagining it. He tried to re-create the sound in his mind so that he might be able to put shape to the form that had tripped the cord.

Zedd silently set the bowl down on the side of the granite hearth. He rose up, listening with an ear turned toward the passage from where he had heard the bell. His mind raced through a map of all the bells he’d placed.

He needed to be sure.

He slipped through the door and into the passageway, the back of his shoulder brushing the plastered wall as he moved down to the first intersection on his right, watching not just ahead but behind as well. Nothing moved in the hallway ahead. He paused, leaning ahead to take a quick glance down the hall to the right. When he found it clear, he took the turn.

Zedd moved quickly past closed doors, past a tapestry of vineyards that he had always thought was rather poorly executed, past an empty doorway to a room with a window that looked out over a deep shaft between towers on a high rampart, and past three more intersections until he reached the first stairway. He swept around the corner to the right, up the stairs that curved around to the left as they climbed up and crossed over the hall he’d just been in. In this way he could head back toward a network of halls where he’d placed a web of bells without using those same halls.

Zedd followed a mental map of a complex tangle of passages, halls, rooms, and dead ends that, over a lifetime, he had come to know intimately. Being First Wizard, he had access to every place in the Keep except those places that required Subtractive Magic. There were a few places where he could get confused, but this was not one of them.

He knew that unless someone was following in his footsteps, they would have to either go back or pass a place where he had set traps of elaborate magic as well as simple string. Then, if they didn’t see the cord, they would ring another bell. Then he would be sure.

Maybe it was Adie. Maybe she simply hadn’t seen the inky cord stretched across a doorway. Maybe she had been annoyed that he’d strung bells and maybe she’d rung one just to vex him.

No, Adie wasn’t like that. She might shake her finger at him and deliver a scathing lecture on why she didn’t agree with him that stringing bells was an effective thing to do, but she wouldn’t pull a trick about something she would recognize as intended to warn of danger. No, Adie might possibly have accidentally rung the bell, but she wouldn’t have rung it deliberately.

Another bell rang. Zedd spun to the sound and then froze.

The bell had come from the wrong direction—from where he’d set a bell on the other side of a conservatory. It was too far from the first for anyone to have made it this soon. They would have had to go up a tower stairway, across a bridge to a rampart, along a narrow walkway in the dark, past several intersections to the correct turn that would descend a spiral ramp and make it down through a snarl of passageways in order to break the cord.

Unless there was more than one person.

The bell had chimed with a quick jerk and then clattered as it skittered across stone. It had to be a person tripping over the cord and sending the bell skipping across the stone floor.

Zedd changed his plan. He turned and raced down a narrow passageway to the left, climbing the first stairwell, running up the oak treads three at a time. He took the right fork at the landing, raced to the second circular stairwell of cut stone and climbed as fast as his legs would carry him. His foot slipped on the narrow wedges of spiraling steps and he banged his shin. He paused to wince only for a second. He used the time to consult his mental map of the Keep, and then he was moving again.

At the top, he dashed down a short paneled hall, sliding to a stop on the polished maple floor. He shouldered open a small, round-topped oak door. A starry sky greeted him. He sucked deep draughts of cool night air as he raced along the narrow rampart. He paused twice along the way to peer down through the slots in the crenellated battlements. He didn’t see anyone. That was a good sign—he knew where they had to be if they weren’t moving by an outer route.

He ran on across the swaying span between towers, robes flying behind, crossing over the entire section of the Keep where both bells had rung far below, going over the top of the area in order to get behind whoever had tripped the cords. While they had tripped bells on opposite sides of the conservatory, they had to have come in through the same wing—he knew that much. He wanted to get behind them, bottle them in before they could get to an unprotected section where they would encounter a bewildering variety of passageways. If they were to make it there and hide in that area, he could have a time of rooting them out.

His mind raced as fast as his feet as he tried to think, tried to recall all the shields, tried to figure how someone could have gotten past the defenses to get to that specific wing where the bells that had rung were placed. There were shields that should have made it impossible. He had to consider thousands of corridors and passageways in the Keep, trying to come up with all the potential routes. It was like a complex multilevel puzzle, and despite how thorough he’d been, it was possible he’d missed something. He had to have missed something.