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“That was…rapture,” Nicci said, still under the sway of the experience.
“I told you,” Richard said as he helped her climb out.
“It looks like we’re in a stone room of some kind,” Cara said as she walked around the perimeter of the room.
Richard made his way toward the darkness at one end and two larger spheres in tall iron brackets brightened with an eerie green glow. He saw that they flanked steps. The steps, though, marched up to the ceiling.
“That’s pretty strange,” Cara said as she stood on the second step, inspecting the dark ceiling.
“Here,” Nicci said. She was leaning over to the side of the steps. “There’s a metal plate.”
It was the kind of metal plate Richard had seen in other places. They were trigger plates for shields. Nicci tapped her palm against it but nothing happened.
Richard pressed his hand to the icy cold plate and stone started grating as it moved. Dust came down in streamers.
The three of them ducked back as they all peered around in the gloomy light, trying to figure out what, exactly, was moving. The ground trembled. It felt like the whole room might be shifting and somehow changing shape. Richard then realized that it was actually the ceiling that was pulling aside.
A growing patch of moonlight fell across the steps.
Richard had no idea where they were, other than down in a stone room that appeared to be buried. He didn’t know where Caska was, other than the sliph said that it was in the Deep Nothing, and he didn’t know where that was, so he didn’t really know what to expect. He felt decidedly uneasy.
He reached for his sword.
The sword wasn’t there. For what felt like the thousandth time, he felt the sinking regret of realizing why and where it now was.
He drew his long knife instead as he started up the steps in a crouch, ducking low not only so as not to hit his head on the ceiling before it had moved out of the way, but out of caution for who might be outside and have heard stone sliding aside. Cara, seeing him draw his knife, spun her Agiel up into her fist. She tried to get out ahead of him, but he held his arm out, keeping her behind to the left. Nicci was close behind to his right.
As he came up out of the ground, he saw the shadowed shapes of three people standing not far ahead. He knew that from being in the sliph, until he fully recovered, his vision was more acute than ordinary. He could probably see them better than they could see him.
With that sharp vision, Richard saw that the big man in the middle was holding a slender girl back against him. He had one hand over her mouth. He could see the girl squirming. Moonlight gleamed off the blade he held to her throat.
“Drop your weapons,” the man holding the girl growled, “and surrender to the Imperial Order, or you will die.”
Richard flipped the knife into the air, let it make a half turn, and caught it by the tip. An inky shape suddenly swooped atop the man’s head. The bird let out a piercing caw. The man flinched. Richard didn’t take the time to wonder at such an unexpected assault. He heaved the knife.
On broad wings, the bird lifted into the air. The blade hit the man in the center of his face with a solid thunk. Richard knew that the blade was long enough to have penetrated all the way through the man’s brain and that the tip would have pierced the back of the skull. The man dropped straight down behind the trembling girl—dead before he could think to do her harm.
Before the men to either side of the girl could take a half a step, Nicci unleashed a scything whisper of power that took the heads off the other two men. The only noise it made was the sound of the heads hitting the ground with twin, dull thuds. The bodies toppled to either side of the girl.
The night was still but for the drone of cicadas.
The girl hesitantly stepped closer and dropped to her knees. She bent forward before the steps until her forehead touched the stone at his feet.
“Lord Rahl, I am your humble servant. Thank you for coming and protecting me. I live only to serve. My life is yours. Command me as you will.”
Even as the girl was still speaking in a quavering voice, Cara and Nicci were spreading out to the sides, searching for other threats. Richard crossed his lips with a finger to let them know to be quiet about it so as not to alert any other troops that might be near. Both saw his signal and nodded.
Richard waited, listening for any threat. Since the girl was on the ground, he let her stay there, out of harm’s way. He heard the whisper of feathers against air as the raven landed on a nearby limb and then the soft rustle as it folded in its wings.
“It’s clear,” Nicci announced in a quiet voice as she returned from the shadows. “My Han tells me there are no others in the immediate vicinity.”
Relieved, Richard let the tension go out of his muscles. When he heard the girl weeping in quiet terror, he sat down on the top step right near her. He suspected her terror was fear that she might be killed just as the three men had been. Richard wanted to assure her that she was not going to die.
“It’s all right,” he told her as he gently grasped her shoulders and urged her up. “I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe, now.”
As she came up he gathered the frightened girl into his arms, embracing her protectively, holding her head to his shoulder when she glanced to the three dead men as if they still might jump up and snatch her away. She was a slender lithesome creature, the kind of girl on the brink of being a woman, yet looking as frail as a bird about to leave the nest. Her slender arms came gratefully around Richard as she wept with relief.
“The bird a friend of yours?” he asked.
“Lokey,” she confirmed with a nod. “He watches over me.”
“Well, he did a good job tonight.”
“I thought you weren’t going to come, Master Rahl. I thought it was my fault, that I wasn’t a good enough priestess for you.”
Richard ran a hand down the back of her head. “How did you know I was coming here?”
“The tellings say it is so. But I already waited so long that I thought they might be wrong. I was near to despairing that you would find us not worthy, and then I feared it was my failing”
He surmised that the “tellings” must mean prophecy of some sort. “You are a priestess, you say?”
She nodded as she pulled back to look up at his smile. Richard saw then that her big copper-colored eyes peered out from a dark mask painted in a band around her face. It was a disturbing visage.
“I am the priestess of the bones. You have returned to help me. I am your servant. I am the one meant to cast the dreams.”
“Returned?”
“To life. You have come back from the dead.”
Richard could only stare.
Nicci squatted down beside the girl. “What do you mean, he returned from the dead?”
The girl pointed behind them, at the structure from where they had emerged. “From the world of the dead…back to we the living. It says his name there, on his tomb.”
Richard turned and indeed did see his name carved in the monument. The thing that came immediately to mind was seeing Kahlan’s name carved in stone, too. Both of them were alive, despite their graves.
The girl glanced at Cara and then at Nicci. “The tellings say that you will come back to life, Lord Rahl, but they did not say that you would bring your spirit familiars.”
“I haven’t come back from the dead,” Richard told her. “I came through the sliph—down there, in that well.”
She nodded. “The well of the dead. The tellings mention such mysterious things, but I never knew their meaning.”
“Do I call you ‘priestess,’ or by your name?”
“You are Master Rahl; you can call me as it pleases you. My name is Jillian, though. I have had that name my whole life. I’m af
raid I have not been a priestess a long time, and so I’m not very good at it, I don’t think. My grandfather said that when it is time, it matters not how old I am, but that it is time.”
“How about if I call you Jillian, then?” he asked with a smile.
She appeared still too frightened to return the smile. “I would like that, Master Rahl.”
“My name is Richard. I’d like it if you called me Richard.”
She nodded, still with that look of awe filling her round eyes. Richard didn’t know if her awe was at the Master Rahl, or a dead man returned to life and walking up out of his grave.
“Now look, Jillian, I don’t know anything about your tellings, yet, but you need to understand that I haven’t returned from the dead. I traveled here because I have trouble and I’m looking for answers.”
“You have found the trouble, then. You killed three of them. The answer is for you to help me cast the dreams so that we might drive these evil men away. They have driven most of my people into hiding. The older ones are down there.” She pointed down the dark slope. “They tremble in fear that these men will kill them if they do not find what they seek.”
“What are they looking for?” Richard asked.
“I’m not sure. I have been hiding among the spirits of our ancestors. The men must have made someone down there tell them of me because they knew my name when they finally chased me down, today. I have been staying out of their grasp for a long time. Today they were hiding where I had cached some food. The men grabbed me and wanted me to show them where the books are.”
“These aren’t the regular Imperial Order troops,” Nicci explained to the frowning look on his face. “They’re advance scouts.”
Richard glanced at the bodies. “How do you know?”
“Because regular Imperial Order troops would never ask you to put down your weapons and surrender. Only the scouts, searching routes through strange lands and hunting for any information they can uncover would take prisoners. They question people. Those who won’t talk are sent back to be tortured. These scouts are the men who first find stashes of books that are then collected for the emperor to see. Scouts like this find not only the best routes for the troops, but they are meant to find something even more important for the emperor: knowledge, especially that in books.”
