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She nodded. “All right.” She threw her arms around him and hugged him so hard she pressed the wind out of him. “But if I drown, I just want you to know how much I love you.”
Richard helped her up onto the stone wall around the sliph and then glanced around at the dark woods beyond the ruins. He didn’t know if there really were eyes watching or it was simply his apprehension. He didn’t sense a mriswith, though, and if one were watching him, he would. He decided that it must just be his past experiences in Hagen Woods that made him apprehensive.
“We’re ready, sliph. Do you know how long it will take?”
“I am long enough,” came the echoing reply.
Richard sighed and tightened his grip on Kahlan’s hand. “Do as we’ve told you.” She nodded, gasping her last breaths. “I’ll be with you. Don’t be afraid.”
The liquid silver arm lifted them, and the night went truly black. Richard gripped Kahlan’s hand tightly as they plunged downward, knowing how hard it had been for him to breathe in the sliph the first time. When she returned the squeeze, they were already in the weightless void.
The familiar sensation of rushing and drifting at the same time returned, and Richard knew they were on their way to Aydindril. As before, there was no heat, no cold, no sense of being soaked in the quicksilver wet of the sliph. His eyes beheld light and dark together in a single, spectral vision, while his lungs swelled with the sweet presence of the sliph as he inhaled her silken essence.
Richard was joyous, knowing that Kahlan could feel the same rapture he felt; he could sense it through the slow pressure on his hand. They let go, to take strokes through the still rush.
Richard swam on through the darkness and light. He felt Kahlan grip his ankle to be towed along after him.
Time meant nothing. It could have been a glimmer of a moment or the slow passing of a year as he soared ahead with Kahlan holding on to his ankle. As before, abruptly, it ended.
Sights of the room in the Keep exploded about him, but he knew what to expect, and this time there was no terror.
Breathe, the sliph said.
He let out the sweet breath, emptying his lungs of the rapture, and pulled in a breath of the alien air.
He felt Kahlan come up behind him, and in the silence of Kolo’s room, he heard her expel the sliph and inhale the air. Richard bobbed up, the sliph sloughing off him as he boosted himself up onto the wall and over. Once his feet hit the floor, he turned and bent to help Kahlan out.
Merissa smiled at him.
Richard went rigid. At last his mind worked. “Where’s Kahlan! You’re bonded to me! You gave an oath!”
“Kahlan?” came the melodious voice. “She’s right here.” Merissa reached down into the quicksilver. “But you won’t be needing her anymore. And I’m keeping my oath—an oath to myself.”
She lifted Kahlan’s limp form by the back of her collar. With the aid of her power, Merissa heaved Kahlan out of the sylph’s well. Kahlan hit the wall and slumped, unbreathing, to the floor.
Before Richard could rush to her, Merissa rapped the blades of a yabree against the stone. The sweet song gripped him, making his legs go weak and impotent as he stared, spellbound, at Merissa’s smiling face.
“The yabree sings for you, Richard. Its song calls you.”
She drifted closer, bringing the humming yabree closer. She held it up, turning the resplendent object of his hunger, displaying it, tantalizing him with it. Richard wet his lips as his bones resonated with the purring hum of the yabree. The vibrant sound transfixed him.
She floated closer, finally offering it to him. His fingers at last touched it, and the song coursed through every fiber of his body, charmed every corner of his soul. Merissa smiled as his fingers curled around the crossbar. He shuddered with the enchantment of having it in his grasp. His fingers tightened in painful pleasure.
She brought another yabree out from under the silvery pool. “That’s only the half of it, Richard. You need both.”
She laughed, a pleasant, lilting sound, as she tapped the second yabree against the stone. The song nearly blinded him with its longing for his touch. He struggled to keep his knees from buckling. He had to get to the second yabree. He leaned over the wall, stretching for it.
Merissa’s grin mocked him, but he didn’t care, he only wanted, needed, to have the twin to his yabree in his other hand.
“Breathe,” the sliph said.
Distracted, Richard glanced over. The sliph was looking at the woman slumped on the floor against the wall. He was about to speak, when Merissa tapped the second yabree against the stone again.
His legs went boneless. He held his left arm, with the yabree in his fist, over the wall to hold himself up.
“Breathe,” the sliph said again.
Through the enchanting, purring song singing through his bones, Richard struggled to make sense of who it was against the wall that the sliph was speaking to. It seemed important, but he couldn’t reason why. Who was it?
Merissa’s laugh echoed around the room as she tapped the yabree again.
Richard let out a helpless cry both of ecstasy and longing.
“Breathe,” the sliph said again, more insistent.
Through the numbing song of the yabree, it came to him. His inner need surged up, sluicing through the benumbing melody that encased him.
Kahlan.
He looked at her. She wasn’t breathing. An inner voice cried out for help.
When the yabree sang again, his neck muscles went flaccid. His swirling gaze focused on something in the stone under him.
Exigency stirred his muscles. His hand extended. His fingers touched it. His grip enveloped it, and a new need coursed through his bones. A need he knew well.
With an explosion of fury, Richard yanked the Sword of Truth from the stone floor, and the room rang with a new song.
Merissa fixed him with a murderous glare as she again rapped the yabree against the stone. “You will die, Richard Rahl. I have sworn to bathe in your blood, and I will.”
With the last of his strength, powered by the sword’s wrath, Richard heaved himself against the top of the stone wall and stretched down, plunging the blade into the quicksilver of the sliph.
Merissa shrieked.
Silver veins fluxed through her flesh. Her screams echoed around the stone room as her arms reached up in a frantic effort to escape the sliph, but it was too late. The metamorphosis coursed through her, and she waxed as glossy as the sliph, like a silver statue in a silver reflecting pool. The hard edges of her face softened, and what had been Merissa dissolved into the lapping waves of quicksilver.
“Breathe,” the sliph said to Kahlan.
Richard threw the yabree aside as he da
shed across the room. He scooped Kahlan up in his arms and carried her to the well. He draped her over the wall, wrapped his arms around her abdomen, and squeezed.
“Breathe! Kahlan, breathe!” He compressed again. “Do it for me! Breathe! Please, Kahlan, breathe.”
Her lungs expelled the quicksilver, and she gasped a sudden, desperate breath, and then another.
At last, she turned in his arms and fell against him. “Oh, Richard, you were right. It was so wonderful I forgot to breathe. You saved me.”
“But he killed the other,” the sliph observed. “I warned him about the object of magic he carries. It is not my fault.”
Kahlan blinked at the silver face. “What are you talking about?”
“The one that is part of me, now.”
“Merissa,” Richard explained. “It’s not your fault, sliph. I had to do it, or she would have killed both of us.”
“Then I am discharged of responsibility. Thank you, Master.”
Kahlan spun back to him, glancing down at the sword. “What happened? What do you mean, Merissa?”
Richard untied the thong at his throat, reached over his shoulder, and pulled the mriswith cape off his back.
“She followed us through the sliph. She tried to kill you, and to… well, she wanted to take a bath with me.”
“What!”
“No,” the sliph corrected, “she said she wanted to bathe in your blood.”
Kahlan’s mouth dropped open. “But… what happened?”
“She is with me, now,” the sliph said. “For all time.”
“That means she’s dead,” Richard said. “I’ll explain when we have more time.” He turned to the sliph. “Thank you for your help, sliph, but I need you to sleep, now.”
“Of course, Master. I will sleep until I am needed again.”
The shiny silver face softened and melted back into the pool of quicksilver. Richard, without conscious direction, crossed his wrists. The lustrous pool took on a glow. The sliph stilled, and began sinking into the well, slowly at first, and then with gathering speed, until she was gone.
Kahlan stared up at him when he straightened. “I think there are a lot of things you are going to need to explain to me.”
