AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I would have to agree that Richard, if not central, is at least deeply connected with the trouble in the books of prophecy.”
Rikka rose up from the bench. “Then this is no time for you to go all secretive on me. This is important. Lord Rahl is vital to all of us. This is not only about the safety of your grandson, but about the future of all of our lives.”
“And I’m seeing to—”
“It is not only important to you; he is important to all of us. If you alone discover something significant and anything happens to you, then we could all be left at a dead end. This is more important than you keeping your secrets.”
Zedd put his hands on his hips and turned away for a moment, considering. He finally turned back to her.
“Rikka, there are things down there that no one knows about. There are good reasons for that.”
“I’m not going to steal any treasure and if you fear me seeing some ‘secret of the ages,’ then I will be willing to swear on my life to keep it secret unless it is necessary for me to reveal it to Lord Rahl.”
“It’s more than that. Many of the things in the lower reaches of the Keep are incredibly dangerous to anyone who goes near them.”
“There are things of incredible danger outside the Keep as well. We no longer have the luxury of secrets.”
Zedd watched her eyes. She had a point. If anything happened to him, the information, too, was as good as dead. He had always planned on someday letting Richard know about this, but there had never been any time and, until the problem with the books of prophecy had cropped up, it hadn’t seemed critical. Still, this was not Richard who would see these things.
“What do you think, wizard? That I will go to town and gossip about what I’ve seen? Who is left to tell? The Order has overrun most of the New World and everyone has fled Aydindril for D’Hara. D’Hara hangs by a thread. Our future hangs by a thread.”
“There are reasons that some knowledge is kept hidden.”
“There are also reasons that wise men sometimes must share what they know. Life is what matters. If knowledge will help preserve and advance life, then that knowledge should not be hidden—especially when it may be lost right when it could be that it’s needed most.”
Zedd pressed his lips tight as he considered her words. He had discovered this secret when he had been a boy. His whole life he’d never told another person about it. No one had instructed him to keep it a secret—nor could they, no one but he knew about it. Still, he knew that there had to be a reason that this was not something that was meant to be widely known. This had been kept secret for a reason.
He just didn’t know what that reason was.
“Zedd, for Lord Rahl’s sake, for the sake of our cause, let me come with you.”
He appraised her determination for a moment. “You can never reveal this to anyone.”
“Except for Lord Rahl, I will never reveal it to another. Mord-Sith often go to their graves without revealing the things they know.”
Zedd nodded. “All right. It goes to your grave with you, unless something happens to me. If so, then you must tell Richard what I show you this night. You must swear to me that you will never tell anyone else about this, though, not even your sister Mord-Sith.”
Without hesitation Rikka held her hand out to him. “I swear.”
Zedd clasped her hand and in so doing struck the agreement, accepting her word.
When he had been First Wizard during the war with D’Hara, before he had put up the boundaries and killed Panis Rahl, Darken Rahl’s father, if anyone had told him that he would someday make such an agreement with a Mord-Sith over something so important, he would have thought they were crazy. He was grateful that such things had changed for the better.
Chapter 34
“It’s a complex route,” Zedd told her.
Rikka arched an eyebrow. “Have you ever had to come find me because I got lost patrolling the Keep?”
Zedd realized that he hadn’t. He knew very well how easy it was to become lost in the Keep. In fact, that was one of its defenses.
In several places when trying to travel through the Keep one came upon interconnected rooms numbering in the thousands. In those places there were no hallways except for the stairs going up or down. Passage through those three-dimensional mazes was necessary to get into several well-protected areas. It was deceptively easy to become forever lost in the morass of those interconnected rooms. Even people who had grown up in the Keep could easily become lost in there.
An invader, unfamiliar with the place and if they went too deep into the labyrinth, faced a formidable challenge just to find their way back out, much less to make a passage all the way through, and then to escape. Once you had been through a few rooms, through a few doorways, it was amazing how similar everything looked. There were no windows to help and direction soon became meaningless. There was virtually no way to tell if you recalled seeing a room or a doorway before. One looked much like the last dozen you’d seen. There had been spies and such in the past who had become lost in the maze of rooms. In ages past it had not been entirely unusual to find a body in there.
Of course, not all those who intended harm were strangers. In the past some had been traitors.
“No, I guess you never have become lost,” Zedd finally agreed. “Not yet, anyway. You’ve not been here long enough to begin to explore the majority of the place. There are dangers of every sort. Getting lost in the labyrinth that is the Keep is only one of the perils. Where we’re going is like that. It’s even easier to get lost down there. You will have to do your best to remember your way. I’ll help you where I can.”
Rikka nodded, seemingly unconcerned. “I’m good at remembering things like a series of turns. I memorize them when I patrol.”
“Don’t get overly confident. This is more complex than a series of turns. I myself have become lost in the Keep, and I grew up here. There is not only one right way to get where we’re going. Sometimes the route you took the last time won’t work this time because down in the lower reaches of the Keep the shields sometimes shift by themselves to different passageways. It’s part of their design to make it more difficult to get through—for instance if a spy were to draw a map for their cohorts.”
Unimpressed, Rikka shrugged. “I understand. The People’s Palace is like that in some of the sections where the public isn’t allowed—complex, with the open passages one can get through changing from time to time. Additionally, there is no direct route to anywhere, even if all the passages happen to be open, which they never are.”
“I remember; I was there before, although I was in the public sections, but that was confusing enough.” It had been after Darken Rahl had captured Richard. “I had the advantage, though, in that the People’s Palace is made in the form of a spell drawn on the face of the ground and I know how that particular spell is constructed, so I know where the primary arms and the connecting links are located.”
“Well,” Rikka said, “we had to be able to find different passages through the place so that we could get from area to area if it was ever invaded. Or, if we are chasing someone, we had to be able to think of a way to get ahead of them. We have to be able to do more than simply remember a series of turns. We must comprehend the whole of the place we pass through. In my head the turns I take make up parts of a picture of a place. Every turn adds to that picture. With that ever growing image in my mind I can find my way by taking a different way because I can see where the other parts are and how they lock together.”
Zedd blinked in astonishment. “That seems quite a remarkable talent.”
“I always could understand that kind of thing better than I can understand people.”
Zedd grunted a brief laugh. “I think you understand people more than you admit to.”
She only smiled.
“All right, now listen to me,” he said. “You will not only need to remember a great many turns this night. There is more. The only way to get where we are going is thro
