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“When we have time, I promise.”
“Where are we, anyway?”
“In the lower parts of the Keep, at the base of one of the towers.”
“Lower parts of the Keep?”
Richard nodded. “Down under the library.”
“Under the library! No one can go below the library level. There are shields that have kept every wizard from the lower Keep for as long as anyone knows.”
“Well, that’s where we are and that, too, we’ll have to talk about later. We have to get down to the city.”
They stepped out of Kolo’s room, and immediately they both flattened themselves against the wall. The red mriswith queen was in the pool beyond the railing. She spread her wings protectively over a clutch of hundreds of eggs the size of large melons as she trumpeted a warning that echoed around the inside of the huge tower.
From what little light that came in from the openings overheard, Richard could see that it was late afternoon. It had taken less than a day, at least he hoped just one day, to reach Aydindril. In the light, he could also see the vast extent of the clutch of splotchy gray and green eggs atop the rock.
“It’s the mriswith queen,” Richard hastily explained as he climbed the railing. “I have to destroy those eggs.”
Kahlan shouted his name, trying to call him back, as he vaulted the railing, into the dark, slimy water. Richard held out his sword as he waded through the waist-deep water toward the slick rocks in the center. The queen rose up on her claws, venting a clacking bellow.
Her head snaked close to him, her jaws snapping. In that moment, Richard swung the sword. The grotesque head recoiled. She huffed a cloud of acrid aroma at him that carried a clear message of warning. Relentlessly, Richard slogged ahead. Her jaws gaped, revealing long, sharp teeth.
Richard couldn’t let the mriswith have Aydindril. And if he didn’t destroy these eggs, then there would be even more mriswith to deal with.
“Richard! I tried to use the blue lightning, but it won’t work down here! Come back!”
The hissing queen snapped at him. Richard stabbed at the head when it came close, but she kept just out of reach and roared in anger. Richard was able to keep the head at bay while he groped for a handhold.
He found a crag to grasp, and scrambled up onto the dark, slimy rocks. He swung the sword, and when the menacing jaws pulled back, he hacked at the eggs. Stinking yolk oozed across the dark stone as he broke the thick, leathery shells.
The queen went wild. Her wings flapped, lifting her clear of the rock and out of the reach of Richard’s sword. Her tail lashed around, snapping like a huge whip. When the tail came close, Richard swung the sword to keep her at bay. He was more interested in destroying the eggs at the moment.
Her teeth snapped as she lunged at him. Richard thrust the sword, piercing her neck with a glancing strike, enough that the queen reeled back in pain and fury. Her frantically flapping wings knocked him sprawling across the rock. Richard rolled to the side to avoid the slashing claws. Her tail thrashed at him again, and her jaws snapped. Richard was forced to forget the eggs for the moment and defend himself. If he could kill her, it would simplify the task.
The queen squealed in anger. A moment later, Richard heard a crunching sound. He turned toward the noise and saw Kahlan smashing eggs with a board that had been part of the door to Kolo’s room. He scrambled across the slippery rock to put himself between Kahlan and the enraged queen. He slashed at the head when it tried to bite them, at the tail when it tried to sweep him from the rock, and at the claws when they tried to rip him apart.
“You just keep it way,” Kahlan said as she swung the board, smashing eggs and wading into the gooey, yellow muck, “and I’ll take care of these.”
Richard didn’t want Kahlan in danger, but he knew she was defending her city, too, and he couldn’t ask her to go hide. Besides, he needed her help. He had to get down to the city.
“Just hurry,” he said between dodging and attacking.
The huge red bulk flung itself at him, trying to crush him against the rock. Richard dove to the side, but the queen still came down on his leg. He cried out in pain and slashed with the sword as the beast gnashed at him.
The board suddenly whacked down on top of the fleshy slits atop the queen’s head. She staggered back in howling pain, her wings flapping wildly, and her claws raking the air. Kahlan hooked an arm through his and helped pull him away as the red body lifted. They both tumbled back into the stagnant water.
“I got them all,” Kahlan said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I have to get her,” Richard said, “or she’ll just lay more.”
But the mriswith queen, seeing all her eggs destroyed, switched from attack, to escape. Her wings beat madly, lifting her into the air. She lunged at the wall, fastened her claws to the stone, and began to climb toward a large opening high up on the tower.
Richard and Kahlan pulled themselves out of the reeking pool and onto the walkway. Richard started for the stairs that wound their way up around the inside of the tower, but when he put weight on his leg, he crashed to the floor.
Kahlan helped him stand. “You can’t get to her now. We broke all the eggs, we’ll just have to worry about her later. Is your leg broken?”
Richard leaned against the railing, rubbing the painful bruise as he watched the queen climb out the opening high up in the tower. “No, she just mashed it against the rock. We have to get down to the city.”
“But you can’t walk.”
“I’ll be all right. The pain is easing up. Let’s go.”
Richard took one of the glowing spheres to light the way and, with Kahlan giving him support, they started out of the belly of the Keep. She had never been in the rooms and halls he took her through. He had to hold her in his arms to help her get through the shields, and constantly caution her what she mustn’t touch, and where she must not step. She repeatedly questioned his warnings, but followed his insistent orders, muttering to herself that she had never known these peculiar places existed in the Keep.
By the time they had wound their way up through the rooms and halls to the top, his leg, though it still hurt, was working better. He could walk, if with a limp.
“At last, I know where we are,” Kahlan said when they came up to the long hall before the libraries. “I was worried we would never get out from down there.”
Richard headed toward the corridors he knew to be the way out. Kahlan protested that he couldn’t go that way, but he insisted that that was the way he always went, and she reluctantly followed. He held her to get her through the shield into the great hall at the entrance, and they were both glad for the excuse.
“How much farther?” she asked as she looked around the near barren room.
“Right here. This is the door out.”
When they went through the door to the outside, Kahlan turned around twice in astonishment. She snatched his shirt and gestured to the door. “There? You went in there! That’s the way you went into the Keep?”
Richard nodded. “That’s where the stone path led.”
She pointed angrily above the door. “Look what it says! And you went in there?”
Richard glanced up at the words carved in the stone lintel above the huge door. “I don’t know what those words mean.”
“Tavol de ator Mortado,” she said, reading the words aloud. “It means ‘Path of the Dead.’”
Richard glanced briefly at the other doors beyond the expanse of stone chips and gravel. He remembered the thing that had come for them under the gravel.
“Well, it seemed the biggest door, and the path led right to it, so I thought that was the way to go in. Kind of makes sense, when you think about it. I am named ‘the bringer of death.’”
Kahlan rubbed her arms in dismay. “We were frightened you would come up into the Keep. We were scared to death you would go in there and be killed. Dear spirits, I can’t believe you weren’t. Not even the wizards would go in this entrance. That s
hield just inside wouldn’t allow me to pass without your help; that alone means it’s perilous beyond. I can pass all the shields except those protecting the most dangerous places.”
Richard heard a crunching of rock, and saw movement in the gravel. He pulled Kahlan back onto the center of a stepping-stone as the thing took a snaking course toward them.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
Richard pointed. “Something’s coming.”
Kahlan cast him a frown over her shoulder and walked out onto the gravel. “You’re not afraid of this, are you?” She squatted and burrowed her hand into the gravel as the thing beneath came to her. She wiggled her hand around as if scratching a pet.
“What are you doing!”
