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Her nose wrinkled up. “What?”
“The sliph.”
Everyone looked back down the walkway as if the sliph might be standing there waiting for them to come and travel with her.
“Of course,” Cara said. “We could escape without them ever knowing where we’ve gone. There will be no tracks. More than that, though, it can put us a tremendous distance away from the danger. They will have no hope of ever following us.”
“Exactly.” Richard clapped her on the back of the shoulder. “Let’s go.”
They all followed him as he rushed down the walkway and through the blasted open doorway. Inside the sliph’s room, Nicci cast magic, igniting the torches in brackets on the walls as they all gathered around the well. Everyone peered down together.
“There’s only one problem,” Richard said out loud as the thought came to him while gazing down into the black abyss. He looked up at Nicci. “I have to use magic to call the sliph.”
Nicci took a deep breath and let it out with a discouraged look. “That is a problem.”
“Not necessarily,” Cara said. “Shota told us that using your magic had the potential to call the blood beast. But it acts randomly. When you use magic, it would be logical that it would thus find you, but the beast doesn’t act through logic. It might come when you use magic, Shota said, or it might not. There’s no way to tell or predict.”
“And we’re pretty certain that we’re not going to be able to walk out of this place without having to confront the others,” Nicci pointed out.
“Trying to run will present two problems,” Richard said, “getting past them and then keeping out of their grasp to prevent them from trying to ‘heal me.’ This makes more sense. The sliph would be a certain way to escape without Zedd, Ann, and Nathan having any way to either follow or know where I went—and it would also avoid confronting them, something I’d not like to have to do. I love my grandfather; I don’t want to have to defend myself against him.”
“I almost hate to say it,” Cara said, “but this makes more sense to me, too.”
“I agree,” Rikka said.
“Call the sliph.” Nicci held a handful of her hair back as she looked down to peer into the well again. “And hurry, before they come looking to see what’s taking me so long.”
Richard didn’t hesitate. He stretched his fists out over the well, He needed to call his own gift in order to call the sliph and calling his own ability was not something he was good at. He resolved that he had done it before; he would have to do it again.
He let his tension go. He knew that he had to do this or he very well might lose his chance to ever find the one woman he loved more than life itself. For a moment, the pain of how much he hurt every day without her nearly made him pull inward with the aching misery of it.
With his sincere and burning need to do whatever he must in order to help Kahlan, his need ignited deep within him. He felt it roaring up from the core of his being, taking his breath. He tightened his abdominal muscles against the power of the feeling within him.
Light ignited between his outstretched fists. He recognized the sensation from having done it before. He pressed the padded silver-leather wristbands he wore together. He had not had these the first time, but they were what the sliph had told him he should use to call her again. They brightened to such intensity that through his flesh and bone Richard could see the other side of the heavy silver bands.
He focused his intent. He wanted nothing else but for the sliph to come to him so that he could help Kahlan. He hungered for it. He demanded it be done.
Come to me!
The glow of light wailed as it ignited in a line down the center of the well, like a lightning bolt, but instead of the sound of thunder, the air crackled with the ripping roar of fire and light racing away at incredible speed into the depths of blackness.
Those around the stone wall gazed anxiously down inside the well lit by the flash of light. Nicci also glanced around, keeping an eye on the room around them, apparently worried about the appearance of the beast. The echo of the power Richard had sent down into the well was a long time in fading away, but at last all fell silent.
In the stillness of the Keep, in the quiet of the mountain of dead stone towering around and above them, came a distant, deep rumbling.
A rumbling of something coming to life.
The floor began to quake with growing force, until it began lifting dust from the joints and cracks. Small pebbles danced on the trembling stone floor.
Far down in the distant depths the well began filling with something rushing up the shaft at impossible speed, roaring with a howling shriek of velocity as it came. The howl grew as the sliph rushed upward to meet the call.
Nicci, Cara, and Rikka backed away from the well as shimmering silver shot upward, coming to an instantaneous stop that somehow seemed graceful.
Within the undulating silver pool, a lustrous metallic hump mounded up, rising above the edge of the stone wall surrounding the well. It drew up into a bulk, rising of its own accord, gathering into a recognizable shape. Its glossy surface, like a liquid mirror, reflected everything around the room, distorting the images reflected off its surface as it grew and transformed.
It looked like living quicksilver.
The rising shape continued to contort, bending into edges and planes, folds and curves, until it warped into a woman’s face.
A silver smile widened in what seemed to be recognition. “Master, you called me?”
The sliph’s eerie, feminine voice echoed around the room, but her lips hadn’t moved.
Richard stepped closer, ignoring Nicci and Rikka’s wide-eyed astonishment. “Yes. Sliph, thank you for coming. I need you.”
A silver smile was pleased. “You wish to travel, Master?”
“Yes, I wish to travel. We all do. We all need to travel.”
The smile widened. “Come, then. We will travel.”
Richard herded everyone close to the wall. Liquid metal formed into a hand that reached out to touch each of the three women in turn.
“You have traveled before,” the sliph said to Cara after only brief contact with her forehead. “You may travel.”
&n
bsp; The glistening hand gently brushed a palm across Nicci’s brow, lingering for a bit longer. “You have what is required. You may travel.
Rikka lifted her chin, ignoring her distaste for magic, and stood her ground as the sliph touched her forehead.
“You may not travel,” the sliph said.
Rikka looked indignant. “But, but, if Cara can—why can’t I?”
“You do not have both sides required,” said the voice.
Rikka folded her arms defiantly. “I must go with them. I’m going, too. That’s all there is to it.”
“It is your choice, but if you try to travel in me, you will die, and then you will not be with them either.”
Richard laid a hand on Rikka’s arm before she could say anything else. “Cara captured the power of someone who had an element of the required magic; that’s why she can travel. There is nothing to be done about it. You have to stay here.”
Rikka didn’t look at all happy, but she nodded. “The rest of you had better get going, then.”
“Come,” the sliph said to Richard, “and we will travel. To which place do you wish to travel?”
Richard almost said it aloud, but then stopped himself. He turned to Rikka.
“You can’t come with us. I think you had better leave now, so that you don’t even hear where I’m going. I don’t want to take the chance that if you know, then the others might somehow find out. My grandfather can be clever when he wants to be and pull tricks to get his way.”
“You don’t need to tell me.” Rikka sighed in resignation. “You’re probably right, Lord Rahl.” She smiled at Cara. “Protect him.”
Cara nodded. “I always do. He’s pretty helpless without me.”
Richard ignored Cara’s boast. “Rikka, I need you to tell Zedd something for me. I need you to give him a message.”
Rikka frowned as she listened intently.
“Tell him that four Sisters of the Dark have captured Kahlan, the real Mother Confessor, not the body buried down in Aydindril. Tell him that I intend to come back as soon as I can and I will bring him the proof. I ask that when I return, before he tries to cure me, he allow me to show him the evidence I will bring. And tell him that I love him and understand his concern for me, but that I’m doing as the Seeker must do, as he himself charged me to do when he gave me the Sword of Truth.”
