“In case their services are needed by the palace?”
The man’s face brightened. “Yes, exactly.”
Richard frowned. “How many are there?”
Mr. Burkett scratched his scalp as he reviewed the list for a moment. “Actually, Lord Rahl, there are not many. At least not as many as one would expect, considering the size of the palace and the number of people living here.”
Richard knew that in the past the People’s Palace could have been a dangerous place for any gifted to live, but its power also drew them.
Mr. Burkett mumbled to himself as he tallied his list. He finally tapped his paper. “There are not quite two dozen gifted living here, Lord Rahl, and one gifted visitor. A gifted woman and her ungifted daughter.”
“Good. I need to speak with all of them right away. Could you see to it, please?”
“I have assistants”—the man gestured to the side—“in nearby offices. The palace is quite large, as you know. I can get them right now and we can divide up the task. That way it will help get it done without delay.”
“Good. Have them gather at the library here on the top floor.” Richard pointed out the doorway, past the Mord-Sith all leaning in watching and listening, to a spot across on the other side of the main corridor. “The one over there, down at the end of that passageway by the white marble column. It’s the library with the opaque glass on the doors and windows. There are rather ugly orange-striped chairs just outside, in the sitting area.”
Mr. Burkett cocked his head. “You mean the library that is also a containment field?”
Richard was a bit surprised that the man knew what the place was, but then again, he supposed it was his job to know such things.
“Yes, that’s the one. Considering the size of the palace I imagine some of the gifted will be quite a distance away, so tell them to meet me there following the afternoon devotion. That should give them time to get there. Tell them I said not to stop for the devotion, but instead get there by the time it’s over. It’s important that I talk with all of them as soon as possible.”
The man bowed, revealing the shiny, bald top of his head with a rather unfortunate liver spot the shape of a daisy.
“Of course, Lord Rahl. It will be done.” He hesitated, putting a finger to his lower lip. “Will you be sending soldiers with my men?”
“Soldiers?” Richard was a little puzzled. “No, why?”
“Well, it’s just that in the past …” the man hesitated for a moment, then cleared his throat, “… when the Lord Rahl wanted the gifted rounded up, it often meant bad things, so the soldiers were necessary to make sure they heeded the call.”
Richard nodded his understanding. Being brought to meet Darken Rahl in person was usually cause to be terrified. He knew that from personal experience.
Richard smiled. “Nothing sinister is going to happen to them.”
“And if they still don’t want to be collected to come meet with you?”
“Tell them that I need their help, that’s all.”
“And if they still won’t come along?”
Richard sighed that the terror Darken Rahl had struck into the gifted still lingered. “Well, I guess if they don’t come back here with your assistants, then you will need to have the First File escort them back.”
9
As they all emptied out of the cramped office, Mr. Burkett turned toward the offices of his assistants. Richard watched the man hurrying away. He had a hitch to his step that looked like his knees were getting old and ached.
As Richard turned back, he saw a red-faced soldier running along the balcony toward them. He was a big man, with a barrel chest and powerful-looking arms. Richard could see his rank marked on a leather shoulder pad. He came to a stop a little farther away than he had intended when the Mord-Sith closed ranks in front of Richard and Kahlan.
“Lord Rahl, I need to speak with you.”
“What’s your name, Sergeant?”
He clapped a fist to the leather armor over his heart as he panted, catching his breath. “Sorry. I’m Sergeant Barclay, Lord Rahl. I was in the devotion square when you spoke to the officers. There is trouble and I had wanted to talk to you back there, but then Lieutenant Dolan led you away and you looked like it was important, so I decided to wait until you were finished with Mr. Burkett. I was just checking on my men while you were busy, and then I came back here right away to see if you had finished so I could have a word with you. Lord Rahl, this is important, or I would never think to approach you like this.”
“I welcome men of the First File to always feel free come talk to me with important matters, so be at ease, Sergeant. What’s the problem?”
He licked his lips nervously. “Well, I’m afraid that we found something. Something you need to see.”
Richard frowned. “What did you find?”
“It’s down there, Lord Rahl,” the sergeant said as he turned and gestured vaguely down over the side of the balcony. He turned back. “I think it would be best if you came to see it for yourself, Lord Rahl.”
Richard had important things he needed to do, but this man was clearly quite agitated about something. “All right, but I hope it won’t take long.”
Sergeant Barclay dipped a quick bow and started leading them all to the grand staircase. Once they were down on the main floor, he took them to a nearby set of plain-looking closed metal double doors. Two soldiers stood to either side, each holding a pike with the butt end planted on the ground. They all wore swords as well. They saluted as one with a fist to their hearts before two of them pulled open the doors for Richard and his group.
Beyond the doors was a service area closed to the general public. Simple hallways led off in each direction, from there to branch off to specific areas. Not far inside the main area was a flight of stairs with a utilitarian iron railing. They all followed as the man hurried down the stairs, two at a time in places. The sound of all their boots in the stairwell reverberated with a hollow echo.
Torches were placed at intervals in iron brackets to the side, creating wavering shadows. At each landing there was a door, presumably to passageways in each of the lower levels. There were two guards posted at each door, at each level, as they descended. The sergeant didn’t pause to speak to them as he continued down stairs to ever lower hidden reaches of the palace interior.
Finally, at one of the small landings, the sergeant brought them to a stop. He motioned one of the men standing guard to open the door.
With a concerned look, the sergeant took in the anxious group watching him. “I just wanted you to see this first, so you can get your bearings and know where we are, and what we are near.”
Beyond the door they emerged onto a landing in a section of the great inner staircase up to the palace. This inner shaft was how visitors to the palace got up into the palace proper—through the great door at the bottom and then up the interior stairs. The stairs up that interior shaft weren’t continuous. The pathway with flights of stairs at intervals meandered along and around the contours and odd shapes of the near vertical walls. There were long flat walkways for stretches in areas. Some of those broad level areas had benches where people could stop and rest.
It was relatively dark in the area where they were standing, but Richard could see silhouettes of people not far off, going up on their way into the palace or going down on their way out. Since the audience in the great hall was over, a great many more people were leaving than arriving.
Much of the interior, being so vast and difficult to light, was dimly lit. There were torches and lamps along the climb to relieve some of the perpetual darkness of the interior underground, but there were also areas, such as the place they stood, where shadowed darkness prevailed. Many people carried simple, inexpensive candle lamps with them that they could buy from vendors along the way. Many did not, and simply skimmed a hand along the metal railing as they made their way across the dark areas.
It was such a long climb up from the Azrith Plain far
below that there were shops along the way, carved out of the rock of the plateau in the more expansive level spots. Those shops sold many of the same things as the shops above. Many visitors became discouraged by the arduous climb and would stop at these shops for something to eat, to take a rest, or to buy a souvenir and then go back down.
“How far up is this along the interior passageway?” Richard asked the sergeant.
The sergeant led them back to the service stairwell and motioned the guards to close the door. “Above halfway up. Before, I had a man stationed at each one of these doors on the way down, guarding them so that people couldn’t wander in here and have access to the restricted areas of the palace.”
“One man at each post?” Richard asked, since there were now two men at each door.
The sergeant wet his lips. “Yes. The doors are always bolted from this side so that people can’t wander in here, but we often had men guard the doors when a lot of people were visiting the palace, like now, just so that there wouldn’t be funny business. You know how people get curious about locked doors.”
Before Richard could question him, the man started out again.
“This way, please, Lord Rahl.”
The sergeant continued on down the stairs, hurrying the entire way. After what seemed like an endless series of flights of stairs, they finally approached the bottom. Half a dozen men with torches waited there for them. Even the torches couldn’t entirely banish the oppressive darkness. They hissed and sputtered, is if warding off the haunting silence. The smell of burning pitch helped mask the dank, musty odor.
Once Richard and his party had all joined the sergeant at the bottom, the sergeant signaled most of the men with torches to go on ahead. Then he tilted his head, indicating he wanted Richard and the rest of them to keep following as he led them all onward through a wider hall and then a dark passageway that reeked of stagnant water, mold, and dead rats. In places there were puddles of water they had to skirt or step over. Their footsteps echoed in whispers back from the darkness.
When the men with the torches stopped before a broad opening into pitch blackness beyond, Sergeant Barclay halted and turned back to all those following him.
“If it pleases you, Lord Rahl, I think the ladies should remain here while I take you on alone the rest of the way back in there to see it.”
“See what?” Shale asked.
“Please, trust me on this.” He paused to lick his lips nervously. “If you would, could you just wait here and let Lord Rahl come with me, alone?”
“Where Lord Rahl goes, I go,” Vika said with finality.
The other Mord-Sith all looked to be of the same mind.
“You wouldn’t have brought us down here if it wasn’t something important,” Shale said. “I’m going, too.”
“Show us what you brought us down here for, would you, please?” Kahlan commanded.
The sergeant was about to object, but at the look of resolve in her eyes, he simply let the breath out and turned to Richard as if to implore him to intervene.
“Just do as she asks, would you, Sergeant?”
The sergeant took one more look around at all the determined faces, then nodded. With a sweep of his arm, he ushered a few of the men with torches ahead into the darkness.
“Watch our backs,” he told the ones he left behind. They nodded and took up positions to each side of the entrance.
“What’s in here?” Richard asked, wondering what the men needed to watch their backs from. In some of the broader areas Richard saw the shapes of stone blocks stacked in random places. “What is the purpose of this place?”
Sergeant Barclay looked back over one of his broad shoulders as he hurried onward. “It’s an area where part of the foundation was constructed. The foundation is massive. I can’t say for sure, but I believe this area was used to store construction materials—stone and such—during the construction of the palace. After it was finished the room was left empty, possibly so that the foundation could be inspected from time to time, or possibly it was simply not seen as worth the effort to fill it in.”
As they hurried down the roughly hewn passageway, Richard could begin to pick up the unmistakable stench of death. Before long it was bad enough to make his eyes water. Shale and Kahlan tried to cover their mouths, but it wasn’t much help.
“Wait,” Shale finally said, bringing them all to a halt. “Wait just a moment.”
She scooped up a handful of pebbles near the edge of the uneven floor. She spun her other hand around over the top of the hand with the pebbles. Finally, she held out her hand, palm up.
“Here. Each of you take one of these. I infused them with a powerful smell of mint oils. Hold it up to your nose to help keep from gagging.” She looked to Kahlan. “In case any of us might have unsettled stomachs to begin with, I don’t want any of us vomiting from the smell of death.”
The three soldiers, Richard, and Kahlan each gladly took a pebble.
Kahlan held it to her nose and took a deep breath. “I’ve smelled the stench of death often enough. It’s something you never get used to. This helps a little. Thanks.”
The sergeant looked grateful for the menthol-scented rock. Richard certainly was. The Mord-Sith seemed indifferent.
Vale took one, smelled it, then handed it back to Shale. “Thanks, but I don’t need it.”
Shale arched an eyebrow as she glanced at Richard.
Richard didn’t feel like taking the time to explain Mord-Sith to Shale. “Let’s go,” he said to the sergeant.
In a short distance, the smell of death became so overpowering that Richard was glad to have the salvation of the pebble that filled his nostrils with the strong aroma of menthol. It helped mask some of the sickening smell. Without it, it would have been difficult to continue. As it was, it was still hard to take.
The end of the crude passageway opened into a vast chamber. In the dim, flickering torchlight, Richard saw something ahead in the darkness.
“What is that?” He could hear buzzing, but he couldn’t see exactly what it was.
Sergeant Barclay held a hand up urging them to wait as he went forward a short distance with a torch to show them what was there. Richard blinked in stunned astonishment when the torchlight lit the scene. Shale leaned forward, her eyes wide.
“Dear spirits help us,” Kahlan whispered as her eyes welled up with tears.
10
What Richard was looking at was so incomprehensible that at first, he wasn’t sure he could believe that it really was what he thought it was.
There in front of them, up against a dark, towering, rough-hewn stone wall near one of the monolithic footings of the foundation, was a massive pile of remains. It took a moment for it to sink in that the mass of the irregular heap were indeed remains, and that they were all human. Blood and bodily fluids had drained out in great, thick pools across the floor. Clouds of flies buzzed all over the chaotic pile while others drank at the edges of the thick liquid on the floor. In the shadows, what at first looked like the pile moving proved to be rats burrowing through the remains.
The stench was overpowering, even with the menthol stones Shale had made for them. The smell was sickening enough, but the sight of it added another dimension to his revulsion.
White bones or pieces of bones stuck out everywhere from the tangled jumble of spinal columns, smaller bones, clothes, guts, and connective tissue putrefying in the humid darkness. Most of the bones had had small bits of tissue still attached. Bloodstains gave most of the bones a dark patina. Many had been shattered to get at the marrow. Some were gouged with claw marks that Richard recognized from those he had seen on Kahlan’s arm.
Here and there Richard spotted chest and shoulder plates from the leather armor of men of the First File. All of them he could see had been ripped apart by claws. That leather armor had afforded no protection from the power of the attackers. Tangled in among the remains were bloody sections of chain mail. Here and there weapons lay among the debris.
&
nbsp; There were oozing masses of the dirty ends of viscera that had been tossed on the pile. They almost looked alive as maggots wriggled all through them. Larger bones of legs and arms, and even sections of rib cages, protruded from the continually moving soft mass. Many of the skulls, with rows of white lines gouged down into the bone from teeth that had raked the scalps and faces off of them, had rolled off the pile to litter the floor.
The pile of remains was slightly taller than Richard, and at least a dozen and a half feet across. A quick calculation in his head from the numbers of leg and arm bones, as well as the skulls, told him that these were the remains of possibly several hundred people.
It quickly became clear to Richard what this was.
“They brought their kills down here—or even live captives—to feed off them,” he said to the sergeant. “They tossed the bones and things they didn’t want to eat on the pile.”
Sergeant Barclay nodded. “So it would appear, Lord Rahl.”
Kahlan gasped back a sob as she pointed. “Those smaller bones are from children. It’s not only adults. There are children among the remains.”
A watchful Shale reached a hand out to steady Kahlan.
Richard finally turned his gaze from the horror to look at the sergeant. “How did you find this?”
The man let out a troubled sigh. “A number of my men were approached by people looking for missing loved ones. They helped search and took down the names. I knew something was odd when none of the missing people could be found. Not a one. We often encounter frantic people looking for a lost child or a relative. We almost always find the missing loved ones. But now, we weren’t finding any of the missing people, not the missing husbands, not the missing wives, and not the missing children. It was like they all had simply vanished.
“That was strange enough, but then I realized that some of my men were missing as well.
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