“And he says he doesn’t know how to use his magic,” Berdine mocked.
Richard checked the resolve in their eyes one last time. “Remember, don’t touch anything.” They nodded. He heaved a resigned sigh and turned toward the doorway, scratching the back of his neck.
“Didn’t the unguent I brought rid you of your rash?” Cara asked as they stepped through the doorway into the cheerless room beyond. It smelled of damp stone.
“No. Not yet, anyway.”
Inside the vast entry chamber their voices echoed off the beamed ceiling, which was some thirty feet high. Richard slowed as he peered around the near empty room and came to a halt.
“The woman I bought it from promised me it would cure your rash. She said it was made with the usual, common ingredients, like white rhubarb, juice of laurel, butter, and soft-boiled egg, but when I told her that it was most important, she added some special, costly elements. She said she put in betony, pig’s ulcer, a swallow’s heart, and because I am your protector, she had me bring her my moon blood. She stirred it in with a red hot nail. I stayed and watched, just to make sure.”
“I wish you had told me this before I’d used it,” Richard muttered as he started ahead into the gloomy chamber.
“What?” He waved off her question. “Well, I warned her that it had better work, for the amount I paid, and told her that if it didn’t, I would be back and she would rue the day she failed. She promised it would work. You did remember to put some on your left heel, like I told you, didn’t you?”
“No, I just put in on the rash.” Now he wished he hadn’t.
Cara threw her hands up. “Well, no wonder. I told you that you had to put it on your left heel, too. The woman said the rash was probably a disruption in the basing of your aura, and you had to put it on your heel, too, to complete the connection to the earth.”
Richard only half listened to her; he knew she was merely trying to find courage in the sound of her own voice, by keeping the subject mundane.
High overhead to their right, a row of small windows poured long slanting shafts of daylight across the room. Ornately carved wooden chairs stood watch to each side of an arched opening at the far end. Beneath the row of windows hung a tapestry, its image too faded to be discerned. The opposite wall held a row of candles in simple iron sconces. A heavy trestle table sat near the center of the room, bathed in a brilliant shaft of light. The room was otherwise bare.
They crossed the floor, accompanied by the echoes of the sounds of their boots on the tiles. Richard saw that there were books on the table. His hopes elevated; books were why he had come. It could be weeks yet before Kahlan and Zedd made it back, and he feared that he might need to take action to protect the Keep before then. He was becoming restive and worried while he waited.
With the D’Haran army holding Aydindril, his biggest threat right now was an assault to seize the Keep. He hoped to find books that might impart some knowledge, maybe even tell him how to use some of his magic, so that if someone with magic attacked, he might gain a key to warding them off. He feared the Order would try to snatch some of the magic preserved in the Keep. Mriswith, too, were in his thoughts.
There were nearly a dozen books on the table, all the same size. The words on the covers were not in a language he could understand. Ulic and Egan stood with their backs to the table while Richard slid some of the books aside with a finger to better see ones underneath. Something looked familiar about them.
“They look like the same book, but in different languages,” he remarked, half to himself.
He turned one around that caught his eye so he could look at the title, and suddenly realized that though he couldn’t read it, he had seen the language before, and he recognized two of the words. The first, fuer, and the third, ost, were words he knew only too well. The title was in High D’Haran.
A prophecy that Warren had shown him in the vaults at the Palace of the Prophets had referred to Richard, calling him fuer grissa ost drauka: the bringer of death. The first word in this title, fuer, meant “the,” and the third, ost, meant “of.”
“Fuer Ulbrecken ost Brennika Dieser.” Richard let out a frustrated sign. “I wish I knew what it meant.”
“The Adventures of Bonnie Day. I think.”
Richard turned to see Berdine looking past his shoulder at the table. She stepped back, her blue eyes glancing away as if she thought she had done something wrong.
“What did you say,” he whispered.
Berdine pointed at the book on the table. “Fuer Ulbrecken ost Brennika Dieser. You said you wished to know what it meant. It think it means The Adventures of Bonnie Day. It’s an old dialect.”
The Adventures of Bonnie Day was a book Richard had owned since his early youth. It had been his favorite book, and he had read it so often he practically knew it by heart.
Only after going to the Palace of the Prophets in the Old World had he discovered that the book had been written by Nathan Rahl, a prophet and Richard’s ancestor. Nathan had written the book as a primer on prophecy, he said, and had given it to boys who had potential. Nathan had told Richard that with the exception of Richard, all who had possessed the book had met with fatal accidents.
When Richard was born, the Prelate and Nathan had come to the New World and stolen the Book of Counted Shadows from the Keep in order to prevent it from falling into Darken Rahl’s hands. They gave it to Richard’s stepfather, George Cypher, and extracted his promise to make Richard memorize the entire book, word for word, and then destroy it. The Book of Counted Shadows was needed in order to open the Boxes of Orden, back in D’Hara. Richard still knew that book by heart—every word.
Richard remembered fondly the happy times of his youth, living at home with his father and brother. He had loved his older brother, and looked up to him. Who knew then the treacherous turns life would take? There was no going back to those innocent times.
Nathan had also left behind a copy of The Adventures of Bonnie Day for him. He must have also left these copies, in other languages, here at the Keep when he had been here right after Richard had been born.
“How do you know what it says?” Richard asked.
Berdine swallowed. “It’s in High D’Haran, but an old dialect of the tongue.”
Richard realized, by the way her eyes had gone wide, that he must have a frightening look on his face. He put in an effort to smooth his features.
“You meant to say that you understand High D’Haran?” She nodded. “I was told that it’s a dead language. A scholar I know who could understand High D’Haran told me that almost no one anymore knows it. How do you?”
“From my father,” she said. The emotion left her voice. “It was one of the reasons Darken Rahl chose me to be Mord-Sith.” Her face had gone emotionless, too. “Few people still understood High D’Haran. My father was one of them. Darken Rahl used High D’Haran to work some of his magic, and he didn’t like that there were others who knew the old tongue.”
Richard didn’t have to ask what had happened to her father.
“I’m sorry, Berdine.”
He knew that in their training, those forced into the bondage of becoming Mord-Sith were compelled to torture their fathers to death. It was called the third breaking, their final test.
She showed no reaction. She had retreated behind the iron mask of her training. “Darken Rahl knew that my father had taught me some of the old tongue, but being Mord-Sith, I was no threat to him. He consulted with me, on occasion, to hear my interpretation of various words. High D’Haran is a difficult language to translate. Many words, especially in the older dialects, have shades of meaning that can only be understood by their context. I am no expert, by any means, but I understand some. Darken Rahl was a master at High D’Haran.”
“And do you know the meaning of fuer grissa ost drauka?”
“A very ancient dialect. I’m not terribly well versed in versions that old.” She thought a moment. “I think the literal translation is ‘the brin
ger of death.’ Where did you hear this?”
He didn’t want to think of the complications of the other meanings at the moment. “An old prophecy. It gives me this name.”
Berdine clasped her hands behind her back. “Unfairly, Lord Rahl. Unless it is in reference to your skill at handling your enemies, not your friends.”
Richard smiled. “Thank you, Berdine.”
Her smile returned, like the sun from behind fading storm clouds.
“Let’s go see what else we can find of interest in here,” he said, heading for the arched opening at the far end of the chamber.
As he went through the doorway, Richard felt a tingling, tickling sensation pass across his flesh in a razor’s-edge line. Once beyond the opening, it was gone. He turned when he heard Raina call his name.
The rest of them, on the other side, pressed their hands up against the air as if it were a sheet of impenetrable glass. Ulic beat his fist against it, but to no avail.
“Lord Rahl!” Cara called out. “How do we pass through?”
Richard returned to the doorway. “I’m not sure. I have magic that allows me to pass shields. Here, Berdine, give me your hand. See if that will work.”
He stuck his hand back through the invisible barrier, and she gripped his wrist without hesitation. Slowly, he pulled her hand toward him until it penetrated the shield.
“Oh, that’s cold,” she complained.
“You all right? You want to try the rest of the way?”
When she nodded, he pulled her on. Once through, she shuddered and shook herself as if she were crawling with bugs.
Cara put her hand out toward the doorway. “Now me.”
Richard began to reach for her, but stopped. “No. The rest of you wait here until we come back.”
“What!” Cara shrieked. “You have to take us with you!”
“There are dangers I know nothing about. I can’t be watching out for all of you and at the same time pay attention to what I’m doing. Berdine is enough in case I need protection. The rest of you wait here. If anything happens, you know how to get out.”
“But you have to take us,” Cara pleaded. “We can’t leave you without protection.” She turned. “Tell him, Ulic.”
“She’s right, Lord Rahl. We should be with you.”
Richard shook his head. “One is enough. If something happened to me, then you wouldn’t be able to get back out through the shield. If anything happens, and we don’t return, I’m depending on you to carry on. If anything happens, you are in charge, Cara. If anything happens, get help for us, if you can. If you can’t, well, take care of things until my grandfather Zedd and Kahlan get here.”
“Don’t do this!” Cara looked more distraught than he had ever seen her. “Lord Rahl, we can’t afford to lose you.”
“Cara, it will be all right. We’ll be back, I promise. Wizards always keep their promises.”
Cara huffed in anger. “Why her?”
Berdine flipped her wavy brown braid back over her shoulder as she flashed Cara a self-satisfied smile. “Because Lord Rahl likes me best.”
“Cara,” Richard said as he scowled at Berdine, “it’s because you’re the leader. If anything happens to me, I want you to be in charge.”
Cara stood a moment, considering. A self-satisfied smile of her own finally spread on her lips. “All right. But you better never pull a trick like this again.”
Richard winked at her. “If you say so.” He looked up the gloomy corridor. “Come on, Berdine. Let’s go have a look around so we can finish and get out of this place.”
36
Passageways ran in every direction. Richard tried to keep to what he thought was the main one so that he could find his way out. As they passed rooms, he stuck his head in to see if there were any books or anything else that might be helpful. Most were simple, empty stone rooms. A few had tables and chairs, with chests or other plain furniture, but nothing of particular interest. One whole hall had rooms with beds. The wizards who stayed at the Keep must have lived unassuming lives, at least some of them. There were thousands of rooms and he had seen only a few.
Berdine peeked past him whenever he looked into a room, to see what he was seeing. “Do you know where we are going?”
“Not exactly.” He glanced off down another side hall. The place was a labyrinth. “But I think we should find some stairs. Start at the bottom and work our way up.”
She pointed back over her shoulder. “I saw some down a hall to our left, just back there.”
The stairs were where she said they would be. He hadn’t noticed them because it was just a hole in the floor with spiral stone steps descending down into darkness, and he had been looking for a stairwell. Richard reprimanded himself for not thinking to bring a lamp, or candle. He had a flint and steel in his pocket, and guessed that if he could find some straw or old cloth, he could get a small flame going and light one of the candles he had seen in iron sconces.
As they descended into the darkness below, Richard felt, as well as heard, a low hum coming from below. The stone, which had been disappearing in darkness, began to reveal itself in a bluish green light, as if someone were turning up the wick on a lamp. By the time they reached the bottom of the steps, he could see clearly in the eerie light.
Just around the corner at the bottom of the steps, he found the source of the light. In a ringed iron bracket sat a globe, about as wide as his hand, and looking to be glass. It was the origin of the light.
Berdine looked up at him, her face outlined in the strange illumination. “What makes it glow?”
“Well, there’s no flame, so I would guess it has to be magic.”
Richard cautiously reached toward the light. It brightened. He touched a finger to it, and the bluish green cast changed to a warmer yellow color.
Since touching it seemed to cause no harm, Richard carefully lifted it from the bracket. It was heavier than he expected. Rather than being a hollow sphere of blown glass, it seemed to be solid. In his hand, it threw off a warm, useful light.
Richard could see that far off down the tunnel-like hall there were other such spheres in brackets. In the distance, the closest barely glowed with bluish green light. As they passed them, each brightened at his approach, and dimmed as he moved on with the one he had taken.
At an intersection, the hall joined a wider, more welcoming corridor. Light pink stone ran in a band down both sides, and at places the passageway opened into cavernous rooms with padded benches.
Opening the wide, double doorways in one of the corridor’s big rooms, he discovered a library. The library looked cozy and inviting with its polished wood floor, paneled walls, and whitewashed ceiling. There were tables beside the rows of shelves, and comfortable-looking chairs. Glassed windows at the far side overlooked the city of Aydindril and made the room bright and airy.
He moved on to the next cavernous chamber in the hall, and discovered that it, too, had a library off of it. It appeared that the corridor ran parallel to the the face of the Keep, and along a whole row of libraries. They found another two dozen of the huge library rooms by the time they reached the end of the corridor.
Richard had never imagined that this many books existed. Even the vaults at the Palace of the Prophets, with all the books it held, seemed sparse to him after seeing this many volumes. It would take a year just to read all the titles. He felt suddenly overwhelmed. Where was he to start?
“This must be what you were looking for,” she said.
Richard frowned. “No, it’s not. I don’t know why, but this isn’t it. This is too ordinary.”
Berdine walked beside him as they moved on through passageways and down several stories when they came to a stairwell, her Agiel swinging on the chain at her wrist, and ever at the ready. At the bottom of the stairs stood an ornate, gold-leafed doorframe before a chamber beyond that, rather than stonework, had been excavated from inky rock, perhaps once a cave that had been enlarged. In places where the rock had been broken away, i
t left behind glossy, sharp facets. Fat columns looked to have been left in places as the rock had been carved out in order to support a low, craggy ceiling.
At the gold doorway Richard encountered a shield for the fourth time since he had entered the Keep, but this was different than the first three. The first three all had the same feel; this was nothing like the others. As he put his hand through, the vertical plane between the doorframe glowed red from no visible source, and the sensation, instead of the tingling, was hot where the red light touched him. It was the most uncomfortable shield he had ever felt. He feared it might singe the hair off his arm, but it didn’t.
Richard pulled his arm back. “This one is different. If it’s more than you want to do, you stop me.” He put his arms around Berdine to better protect her. She tensed. “Don’t worry, I’ll stop if you want me to.”
She nodded, and he shuffled into the doorway. When the red light touched the red leather on her arm, she flinched. “It’s all right,” she said. “Keep going.” He pulled her through, and released her. Only after he took his arms from around her did she seem to relax.
The glow of the sphere Richard held out cast sharp shadows among the columns, and he could see that there were small recesses carved in the stone all around the room. At the wall around the edge of the room, there were perhaps sixty or seventy such niches. Though he couldn’t make out what was in them, he could tell that each held objects of different sizes and shapes.
Richard felt the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen as his gaze swept over the nooks from a distance. He didn’t know what the things were, but he instinctively knew that they were more than dangerous.
“Stay close to me,” he told her. “We want to stay away from the walls.” He pointed with his chin across the vast room. “Over there. That passageway is where we want to go.”
“How do you know?”
“Look at the floor.” The rough, natural stone was worn smooth in a winding track cutting across the center of the chamber. “We’d better stay on this path.”
Blood of the Fold Page 48