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They gasped. “What can we do to help?” the captain asked.
“What I’m doing involves magic—very dangerous magic. If I’m successful, I may be able to protect Richard from the plague. Protect all of us from the plague. But, like I said, it’s dangerous.
“I need to go away for a few days, with the aid of magic, to see if I might be able to help Lord Rahl stop the plague. You men know how he guards me. He would never let me go. He would rather die than let me be exposed to danger. He can’t be reasoned with when it comes to my being in danger.
“That’s why I tricked the Mord-Sith and my other guards. No one knows where I’m going. If anyone finds out, then Richard will come after me, and be in the same danger as me. What good will that do? If I’m killed, then he would be killed, too. If I’m successful, there’s no reason to expose him to the danger.
“I intended for no one to find out where I went tonight, but you men are better than I gave you credit for. Now, it’s up to you. I’m risking my life to protect Lord Rahl. If you want to protect him, too, then you must swear to secrecy. Even if he looks you in the eye, you must tell him that you haven’t seen me, that no one came up here.”
The men shuffled their feet, cleared their throats, and looked at one another.
The captain’s fingers fretted with his sword hilt. “Mother Confessor, if Lord Rahl looks us in the eye and asks us, we can’t lie to him.”
Kahlan leaned closer to the man. “Then you may as well slay him on the spot. That’s what you’ll be doing. Do you want to endanger your Lord Rahl’s life? Do you want to be responsible for his dying?”
“Of course not! We’d all lay down our lives for him!”
“I’m offering to lay down my life, too. If he finds out what I’m doing, where I went this night, then he will come after me. He can be of no help and he may die because of it.”
Kahlan pulled her arm out from under her cloak and passed a finger before each man’s face. “You will be responsible for endangering Lord Rahl’s life. You will be exposing him to harm’s view to no purpose. You may be killing him.”
The captain looked into the eyes of each of his men. He straightened and rubbed his face as he considered. At last he spoke.
“What is it you wish us to do? Swear on our lives?”
“No,” Kahlan said. “I want you to swear on Lord Rahl’s life.”
At the captain’s lead, the men all went to one knee.
“We give our oath on Lord Rahl’s life to tell no one that we saw you again tonight, and further to swear that no one went up to the Keep, except you and your two Mord-Sith earlier.” He looked about at his men. “Swear it.”
When they had all sworn, the men stood. The captain placed a fatherly hand on Kahlan’s shoulder.
“Mother Confessor, I don’t know anything about magic. That’s Lord Rahl’s business, and I don’t know what you’re up to tonight, but we don’t want to lose you, either. You’re good for Lord Rahl. Whatever you’re about to do, please be careful.”
“Thank you, captain. I think you men are the most danger I’ll see tonight. Tomorrow is another matter.”
“If you are killed, it ends our oath. If you die, we will have to tell Lord Rahl what we know. If that happens, we will be executed.”
“No, captain. Lord Rahl wouldn’t do something like that. That’s why we have to do what we must to protect him. We all need him, lest we be ruled by the Imperial Order. They have no respect for life—it is they who started this plague. They started it among children.”
Kahlan swallowed as she stared into the silver face of the sliph.
“Yes, I’m ready. What do you want me to do?”
A lustrous metallic hand rose up from the pool and touched the top of the wall. “Come to me,” the voice said, echoing around the room. “You do not do. I do.”
Kahlan climbed up onto the wall. “And you’re sure you can take me to Agaden Reach?”
“Yes. I have been there. You will be pleased.”
Kahlan didn’t know about being pleased. “How long will it take?”
The sliph seemed to frown. Kahlan could see herself reflected in the shiny surface of the sliph’s face.
“From here to there. That long. I am long enough. I have been there.”
Kahlan sighed. The sliph didn’t seem to understand that she had been asleep for three thousand years, either. What was a day, more or less, to her?
“You won’t tell Richard where you took me, will you. I don’t want him to know.”
The silver face distorted into a sly smile. “None who know me wish others to know. I never betray them. Be at ease; no one will know what we do together. No one will know of your pleasure.”
Kahlan’s face assumed a perplexed expression. The liquid silver arm came up and slipped around her. The warm, undulating grip held her tight.
“Do not forget: you must breathe me,” the sliph said. “Do not be afraid. I will keep you alive when you breathe me. When we reach the other place, you must then breathe me out and breathe in the air. You will be just as afraid to do that as you will be to breathe me, but you must do it or you will die.”
Kahlan nodded as she panted. She rocked from one foot to the other. “I remember.” She couldn’t help fearing to be without air. “All right, I’m ready.”
Without further word, the sliph’s arm lifted her gently from the wall and plunged with her down into the quicksilver froth.
Kahlan’s lungs burned. Her eyes were squeezed shut. She had done it before, and knew she must, but she was still terrified to breathe in this liquid silver. Richard had been with her the last time. Alone this time, panic snatched at her.
She thought about Shota sending Nadine to marry Richard.
Kahlan let the air go from her lungs. She pulled a deep breath, inhaling the sliph’s silken essence.
There was no heat, no cold. She opened her eyes and saw light and dark in a single, spectral vision. She felt movement in the weightless void, at once fast and slow, rushing and drifting. Her lungs swelled with the sweet presence of the sliph. It felt as if she were taking the sliph into her soul. Time meant nothing.
It was rapture.
38
Through the warm swirl of color, Zedd could hear Ann calling his name. It was a distant plea, even though she stood only a short distance away. In the flux of power atop his wizard’s rock, it might as well have come from another world.
In many ways, it did.
Her voice came again, irritating, insistent, urgent. Zedd all but ignored her as he lifted his arms into the rotating smoke of light. Shapes before him hinted at their spirit presence. He was almost through.
Abruptly, the wall of power began to collapse. The sleeves of his robes slipped down his arms as Zedd threw his contorted hands higher, trying to coerce more puissance into the field of magic, trying to stabilize it. He was madly hauling a bucket from the well, and finding it empty.
Sparkles of color fizzled. The twisting eddy of light degenerated into a muddy gloom of color. With gathering speed, it slumped, foundering impotently.
Zedd was dumbfounded.
With a thump that shook the ground, the whole elaborately forged warp in the world of existence extinguished.
Zedd’s arms windmilled as Ann snatched the back of his collar and yanked him from atop his wizard’s rock. He tumbled back, knocking them both to the ground.
Deprived of enlivening magic, the rock, too, collapsed. Zedd hadn’t done it; his wizard’s rock had reverted to its inert state of its own accord. Now he truly was baffled.
“Bags, woman! What’s the meaning of this!”
“Don’t you curse at me, you contrary old man. I don’t know why I bother trying to save your skinny hide.”
“Why did you interfere? I was almost through!”
“I didn’t interfere,” she growled.
“But if it wasn’t you”—Zedd shot a glance at the dark hills. “You mean… ?”
“I suddenly lost the link with
my Han. I was trying to warn you, not stop you.”
“Oh,” Zedd said in a thin voice. “That’s very different.” He stretched out and snatched up his wizard’s rock. “Why didn’t you say so?” He slipped the rock into an inner pocket.
Ann scanned the darkness. “Did you find out anything before you lost contact?”
