Nicci gazed up at the blood staining the stone wall. “Well, if the Keep is sick, and its magic is failing, how can you possibly do such a thing and expect it to work?”
“The ancient books that explained the defensive design of the Keep explained about the walls bleeding. A warning in blood, being as gruesome as it is, signifies how grave the trouble with the Keep itself really is. As far as I know such a thing has never happened before. This is the first time such a drastic warning has ever been necessary. It’s just one of the things about this place that I had to learn about when I became First Wizard.
“Those same sources also described emergency procedures in the event such a thing did happen. There is a way to lock down the Keep with an elevated state of power that is not yet degraded.”
Nicci found the very thought troubling. “Elevated state of power?”
“It was in storage—took me most of the day to find it.”
“What was?”
Zedd gestured to the nearby brass doors where the box of Orden had been until Six stole it. “A bone box. It’s waiting in there. It’s about the size of one of the boxes of Orden. While it’s bone, I don’t know what beast the bone came from. Ancient symbols are carved all over the outside.
“It contains a constructed spell said to be keyed to the Keep’s nature. It was constructed by the same wizards who invested the Keep with its many defenses. You might compare it to a small bit of starter dough you set aside so that you always have a bit of the original in order to continue to make the same kind of bread. This spell contains elements of the original magic of the Keep. Quite remarkable, when you think about it.”
“How long will such a constructed spell last, once activated, before the taint of the chimes begins to degrade it as well?”
Zedd made a face as he shook his head. “I have no idea. From the things I’ve read and the tests I’ve run, I believe that such a state will last quite a while, but there is no way to know for certain. All we can do is try.”
“What if it’s already been corrupted by the chimes?” Friedrich asked. “After all, if the Keep is infected, and this spell is part of the Keep’s original power, what’s to say it’s not corrupted as well?”
Friedrich, having been married to a sorceress most of his life, knew quite a bit about magic even though he was not himself gifted.
“I tried to run verification webs on some of the corrupted aspects of the Keep, such as the alarms. The corruption prevented the verification from functioning. The
verification on the spell in the bone box worked without any difficulty. From my tests it’s still viable.”
“Why can’t we stay here and put the Keep in this protective state?” Cara asked.
“It’s too dangerous,” Zedd told her. “The emergency procedure has never been employed before. I’m not sure of its precise nature or exactly how it works, but the information I reviewed said that such a state will prevent anyone from entering. I can only assume that such an emergency condition, by necessity, would deal harshly with any intruders. It appears that it’s a form of light spell. From the limited amount that I know about the conditions of the interior of the Keep in such a state, it would be very dangerous for anyone to be in the place.
“After all, how can we know that there aren’t intruders in the Keep right now?”
Cara straightened. “Now?”
“Yes. If the Keep’s defenses are failing, and the alarms aren’t working, how would we know if there were people wandering about who don’t belong in here? For all we know, Six could still be lurking about. Chase said he didn’t find any tracks of her leaving. Sisters of the Dark could have snuck in as well. There’s no longer a dependable way for us to know.
“Even more concerning is that enemies could enter through the sliph. Richard is the only one who could put the sliph back to sleep; we can’t. The sliph isn’t designed to deny her services to anyone who asks and has the proper power. Jagang could send Sisters of the Dark in through the sliph. There aren’t enough of us to guard the sliph all the time, at least not enough of us with enough power to have a chance to defend against an attack from Sisters of the Dark.
“Without the ability to put the sliph back to sleep, or to be able to depend on alarms and shields to protect the
Keep, it remains vulnerable to intrusion of all sorts. It must be assumed that such a spell, by its very nature, would eliminate anyone in the Keep. Since it’s a measure of last resort we have to assume that it could be as fatal for us to be in here as it would be for an intruder.
“Therefore, we have to leave and then ignite the protective state.”
“How will we get back in?” Cara asked.
“I will have to shut the thing down. I know the sequence necessary to inactivate the spell. Once I shut it down, though, I don’t believe it can be reactivated, so we dare not shut it down unless it’s absolutely necessary for some reason, or until the taint of the chimes can be eliminated from the world of life.”
Nicci heaved a sigh. “I can’t think of any argument against the plan. It seems the only way to preserve the Keep for the time being.”
“Besides that,” Zedd said, “we can’t just continue to sit here.”
“No,” Nicci said, “I don’t suppose we can.”
She was already thinking of things that had to be done. There were any number of places she needed to go.
“It seems to me,” Zedd said as he looked around at those waiting for his pronouncement, “that the first thing to be done is to try to get Richard his power back. If he was reconnected with his gift perhaps it would help him.
“We have reason to believe that it was cut off by a spell drawn in the sacred caves in Tamarang. Unless anyone has a better idea, I say we go to Tamarang and help Richard by eliminating what ever is blocking him from his gift.”
Both Mord-Sith nodded. “If it would help Lord Rahl, I say let’s get going,” Cara said.
“I agree,” Tom said.
“I’m afraid that I’d slow you down,” Friedrich said. “I’m not as young as I used to be. Perhaps it would be best if I
stayed in the area in case Richard shows up. He’ll need to know what’s happening. I can stay close, watch the Keep from the outside.”
“That makes sense,” Zedd told the man.
“I think I had better go to the People’s Palace,” Nicci said.
Zedd frowned. “Why?”
“Well, I can use the sliph. From the People’s Palace I can take the sliph down to the area of Tamarang and meet you there. The sliph is much faster, so I will have time at the palace to check into some things.”
“Like what?” Zedd asked.
“Well, with Richard missing and cut off from his power, Nathan is acting in the capacity of Lord Rahl. That bond is all that stands between us and the dream walker being able to enter our minds. I want to see how he’s doing.”
Zedd nodded in thought.
“There are defenses at the palace that are powered by magic, much the same as here at the Keep,” Nicci said. “Ann and Nathan need to know that the chimes are corrupting that magic. They need to know what happened here so they will be prepared if it happens there as well, and not caught unaware as we were.
“But most of all we need to get the box of Orden back. Six was from the Old World. Ann and Nathan lived there a very long time. They said they didn’t know anything about Six but maybe they’ve thought of something by now or can offer a clue. Six was secretive when she lived down there in the Old World, but maybe someone knows something about her. Ann and Nathan may be able to point me in the direction of such a person. Right now we know next to nothing about the witch woman. We need information.
“I’m at a loss to know where to look for Six. This is at least a place to start asking questions.”
Zedd sighed. “That makes sense. But if you find anything out, you come to Tamarang first—come to me first before you think to go after her yourself. We may need your help to deal with what ever is going on down there in Tamarang, and you will definitely need my help to come up with a way to deal with Six. She has already proven how dangerous she is. You’re not going to be able to sneak up on her and take back the box. If we get a lead on where she might be, we’re going to have to put our heads together and come up with a plan.”
“Agreed,” Nicci said. “What about the sliph—after I’ve gone through, I mean? Will anyone be able to sneak back into the Keep?”
“The protective spell takes special precautions at the points of entry. The sliph will draw branches of the spell, hardening that entry point just like any other. Once you leave through the sliph I’ll activate the spell.”
“I’m going with you,” Cara said to Nicci. It wasn’t a request.
“I’ll go with Zedd, then,” Rikka said. “He’ll need one of us looking after him.”
Zedd shot her a sour glare but didn’t say anything.
Cara drew her blond braid through a loose fist. “Makes sense. It’s decided, then.”
It was as if the two of them were settling how the operation would be conducted. Nicci was beginning to appreciate Richard’s remarkable forbearance.
“Let’s get our things together,” Zedd said. “It will be light soon.”
Nicci took Rikka by the elbow and pulled her aside. “As soon as I change into my clothes, I’ll fix up the nightdress for you so that you can pack it with your things.”
Rikka smiled. “All right.”
Nicci thought that the woman looked quietly excited at
the prospect of having something pretty, something that had nothing to do with the outfit of a Mord-Sith.
Nicci concentrated on that happy thought, rather than on how nervous she was about again traveling in the sliph. This time, Richard would not be with her to help her.
“What is it?” Jennsen whispered to the young woman ahead of her as they both crawled through the tall, dry grass.
“Shh” was Laurie’s only answer.
Laurie and her husband had been out in the desolate place picking a late crop of wild figs that grew among the low hills. In the course of their work, as they had picked farther and farther afield, they had separated. As the afternoon drew to a close Laurie had wanted to head back to town but she hadn’t been able to find her husband. He seemed to have vanished.
Increasingly distraught, she’d eventually run back to the town of Hawton seeking Jennsen’s help. Needing to rush, Jennsen had decided to leave her pet goat, Betty, in her pen. Betty hadn’t been happy about it, but Jennsen was more concerned about finding Laurie’s husband. By the time they had returned with a small search party the sun had long since gone down.
As Owen, his wife Marilee, Anson, and Jennsen had spread out searching in among the low hills for Laurie’s missing husband, Laurie had found something she hadn’t expected. It had clearly shaken her. She wouldn’t say what
it was; she wanted Jennsen to hurry to see it for herself, and she wanted Jennsen to be quiet about it.
Laurie cautiously lifted her head just enough to look off into the night.
She pointed and at the same time leaned back so that Jennsen could hear her whisper. “There.”
By now infected with Laurie’s obvious sense of alarm, Jennsen carefully stretched her neck up to peer into the darkness.
The tomb was open.
The great granite monument to Nathan Rahl had been slid to the side. Light shone up from under the ground, creating a softly glowing beacon in the dark heart of the starlit night.
Jennsen knew, of course, that it was not really Nathan Rahl’s tomb. Laurie wouldn’t know that, though.
Back when Nathan and Ann had been staying with them, Nathan had discovered the tomb with his name on it. He had also discovered that what appeared to be a rather extravagant tomb in the ancient graveyard was actually an entrance to secret underground rooms filled with books. He and Ann had told Jennsen that the stash was thousands of years old and had been protected all that time by magic.
Jennsen wouldn’t know; she had no magic. She was pristinely ungifted—a hole in the world, as it was sometimes called because those with magic were unable to use their gift to sense those like Jennsen. She was a rare creature—a pillar of Creation.
She and the people with her down in Bandakar were all pillars of Creation. In ancient times it had been learned that when the pristinely ungifted mingled with normal people, all of whom possessed at least a small spark of the gift, every child of such unions would be pristinely ungifted. Roaming free in the world they forever carried the latent potential to breed the gift itself out of mankind. In antiquity
the solution to the ever-growing numbers of the pristinely ungifted had been to gather them all together and banish them.
The pristinely ungifted trait originated in the offspring of the Lord Rahl. Pristinely ungifted births were exceedingly rare, but once those with the trait became adults, the anomaly was spread forth into the general population. After the ancestors of these people in Bandakar had been banished, every child of a Rahl was tested. If found to be born pristinely ungifted such a child would immediately be put to death to prevent the trait from ever again spreading into the general population.
Jennsen, the offspring of rape by Darken Rahl, had managed to defy the odds and escape detection. Since Richard was now the Lord Rahl, eliminating any such flaw in his lineage fell to him.
But Richard found the very thought abhorrent and would not do such a thing. He believed that Jennsen and those like her had the same right to life as did he. He had actually been happy to discover that he had a half sister—pristinely ungifted or not. He had greeted her with open arms rather than murderous intent, as she had once expected.
Richard had broken the banishment and freed these people to live their own lives. Since Richard had become the Lord Rahl, they were no longer banished but welcomed into the world, as was Jennsen. Despite what it would eventually mean for the existence of magic within mankind, he had destroyed the barrier barring these people from the rest of the world.
Since the barrier had come down, many of the people from Bandakar had been captured by the Imperial Order and taken away to be used for breeding stock to hasten the end of magic. After the Imperial Order had been driven from Bandakar, most of the rest of these people had chosen to remain in their ancestral homeland for the time being.
They wanted to take some time to learn about the outside world before deciding what they would do.
Jennsen felt a kinship with these people. Having been in hiding her whole life for fear of being put to death for the crime of her birth, she had in a way suffered under her own form of banishment. She had wanted to remain with these people as they all learned to be a part of their new, wider world. That new beginning, that excitement of building a new life for themselves full of possibilities, was a passion shared by them all.
Laurie obviously felt a sense of dread that their world was again being threatened. But with the Imperial Order on the march everyone’s world was threatened. In that sense there was nothing especially unique about the pristinely ungifted.
Jennsen wasn’t sure who it was that was now down in the tomb. She reasoned that it might be Nathan and Ann returned to retrieve books they needed from the long-forgotten underground library. Those books, too, had been banished to their hiding place behind boundaries that none had been able to cross until Richard had come along.
Jennsen reasoned that it might also be Richard down in the tomb. Nathan and Ann had long ago set off with Tom to find him. If they had succeeded they would have told him about the underground library. Perhaps he’d returned to see the ancient library for himself, or maybe he’d returned looking for something specific. Jennsen would dearly love to see her brother again. The very idea of it gave her a flutter of excitement.
She realized, though, that it could be someone else—someone who could harm them all. It was that thought that kept her from rushing down into the tomb.
Despite how much she wanted to go and see if it was Richard, Jennsen’s life on the run with her mother had given her a finely honed sense of caution, so she crouched
motionless, watching for any sign of who it might be down in the tomb.
Mockingbirds in the distance repeated calls into the still darkness, trying to outdo one another in a kind of endless nightly argument. As she idly listened to the strident calls, Jennsen knew that it would be best to remain hidden and wait for whoever was down inside the tomb to appear, but she worried that the others might return from their search and inadvertently give them away, so she decided that as she kept an eye on the tomb it would be best to send Laurie to find the others and warn them about the unknown intruders.
Before Jennsen could crawl in close and whisper instructions to Laurie, the young woman abruptly started crawling forward. Apparently, she’d decided that it might be her husband down in the tomb. Jennsen lunged, snatching at the young woman’s ankle, but it was out of reach.
“Laurie!” Jennsen whispered. “Stop!”
Laurie ignored the command, instead skittering off through the dry grass. Jennsen immediately crawled after her, wending her way among ancient grave markers scattered about on the uneven ground. The dry grass made far too much noise for Jennsen’s liking. Laurie wasn’t being especially careful, or quiet. Jennsen had been schooled in evasion and escape by her mother. Laurie didn’t know much about such things.
Some distance ahead in the darkness, Laurie gasped in fright.
Jennsen lifted her head just enough to try to see if anyone was nearby, but in the darkness it was hard to see much of anything. For all Jennsen knew there could be a dozen men spread out around them. If they remained still it would be difficult, if not impossible, to see them.
Laurie suddenly rose up on her knees as she let out a wail of horror that sent a ripple of goose bumps up the
nape of Jennsen’s neck. The scream shattered the quiet of the night. The mockingbirds fell silent.
In the dead of night, such a scream would carry great distances. No longer having to worry about giving herself away, Jennsen scrambled to her feet and raced to cover the remaining distance to the woman. Overcome with abject misery, Laurie held her hair in her fists as she threw her head back and cried in desolation.
The body of a man lay sprawled in the grass before her. Even though it was too dark for Jennsen to make out the face, it was only too obvious who it had to be.
Jennsen pulled the silver-handled knife from the sheath at her waist.
Just as she did so, the dark shape of a big man, sword in hand, loomed up out of the darkness. He had probably been the one who had killed Laurie’s husband. After that he’d likely crouched somewhere nearby to be on watch for anyone else who might approach the open tomb.
Just as Jennsen reached Laurie, but before she could knock the young woman out of harm’s way, the man swung the sword. The dark blur of the blade slashed across Laurie’s throat, nearly decapitating her. Splatters of warm blood splashed across the side of Jennsen’s face.
Her horror was instantly banished by a flash of anger. She might have expected dread, fear, or even panic, but it was a rush of hot rage that erupted through her. It was an anger first ignited by others who had so long ago come out of nowhere and brutally murdered her mother.
Before the sword had even finished the murderous slash, Jennsen was already leaping toward the man.
She leaped out of the darkness, hitting him square in the chest with her knife. Before he could even flinch back in surprise, she pulled the knife back and, gripping it tightly in her fist, stabbed it into his neck three times in rapid succession. Atop him, she rode him to the ground, still furiously
stabbing him. Only when his breath gurgled to a halt did she stop.
In the sudden stillness, she panted, catching her breath. She struggled to not allow herself to become paralyzed by the shock of what had just happened. If there was one guard, there would likely be others. She knew for certain that there was someone down in the tomb. She had to get away from the place where Laurie had screamed.
Jennsen told herself to move. Moving was her best defense, now. Moving was life.
Crouching low, she started slipping away to the side, the whole time keeping an eye on the shaft of light rising up from the tomb, watching for anyone who might emerge to investigate the noise and discover the bodies.
A second man seemed suddenly to materialize out of the black night, rising up out of the grass right in front of her.
Jennsen flipped the knife in her hand, getting a fighting grip on it, rather than the stabbing grip she’d had when she’d taken the other man down. Her heart pounded wildly as she looked around for other threats.
She ignored the man’s command to stop and instead quickly feinted left. As he lunged in that direction, grabbing for her, Jennsen instead rolled to the right.
Another man appeared out of the darkness, responding to the yells of the first man, blocking any escape to that side. The light coming from the tomb glinted softly off links of the chain mail covering the man’s broad chest and the axe gripped in a meaty fist. Long greasy strings of hair hung down over his shoulders.
She reminded herself to remember his chain mail in case she had to fight him off. Her knife would be largely ineffective against such armor. She would need to find vulnerable spots. She realized that she had been lucky that the man she’d fought, the man who had killed Laurie, hadn’t been wearing chain mail.
Jennsen’s frantic urge was to turn and run in blind panic but she knew that running would be a mistake. Running aroused the instinct to chase. Once in a chase, that instinct took over and men like this wouldn’t stop until they had a kill.
Both men expected her to run in the direction that seemed open to her—away to her left. Instead, she bolted for them, intending to slip right between them and out of their snare before they could close in. The closest man, the one she knew to be wearing mail, had his axe at the ready. Before he could raise it and strike, she slashed the exposed inside of his arm. Her razor-sharp knife sliced across the meat of the underside of his forearm, just up from the wrist. She could hear the soft snap of tendons under tension parting as they were cut.
The man cried out. Unable to hold his axe, he dropped it to the ground. Jennsen snatched it up as she ducked under the second man diving for her. She spun and slammed the weapon into his back as he flew past.
Jennsen scrambled away as one of the men held his useless right arm and the other wheeled toward her with an axe handle jutting up at an angle from his back. He staggered a few steps, still coming for her, before he dropped to a knee gasping for breath. By the gurgling sound of his breathing, she knew that she had punctured his lung at the least. It was clear that he was in no condition to fight, so she turned her attention elsewhere.
If she was going to escape, this was her chance. Without hesitation, she took it.
Almost immediately a wall of men loomed up before her. Jennsen skidded to a stop. Men appeared all around her. From the corner of her eye she saw shadows twisting through the shaft of light as figures raced up from within the tomb.
“If you want,” the man in front of her said in a gruff
voice, “we’d be happy to cut you down. Otherwise, I’d suggest you just hand me that knife.”
Jennsen stood frozen, considering her options. Her mind didn’t seem to want to work.
In the distance she could see figures, silhouetted by the light, rushing toward her from the tomb.
The man held out a hand. “The knife,” he said with menace.
Jennsen wheeled her arm and stabbed him through the palm of his hand. As he flinched back at the same time Jennsen pulled, the blade parted his hand between his two middle fingers. The night air rang with a rage of profanity. Jennsen took the chance to dart through the biggest opening in the wall of men and into the darkness beyond.