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“She can hear me,” Richard said.
She had to hear him. She had to live. Richard needed her help. He didn’t know how to open the right box of Orden. He didn’t know anyone who could be more help to him than Nicci.
More important than that, though, Nicci was his friend. He cared deeply for her. He could always find other solutions if it came to that, but he couldn’t bear to lose her.
Nicci had often been the only person he could turn to, the person who had helped keep him focused, who had reminded him to trust in himself. In many ways she had been his only confidant since Kahlan had been taken.
He couldn’t stand the thought of losing her.
CHAPTER 41
On the northeast bank above the stream, Rachel slipped down off the horse, clutching the reins as she peered all around, watching for any movement. In the early dawn light the dark humps of the barren hills made it look like she was in the midst of a pack of slumbering monsters.
She knew better, though. They were just hills. But there were real things that weren’t harmless figments of her imagination.
The ghostie gobblies were real, they were close, and they were coming for her.
White cliffs of twin hills rose up, facing each other across the banks of the stream. Sumac, their leaves already lost to the season, lined the narrow foot trail where she stood, trembling in the cold. The tall mouth of the cave stood close, waiting, like the open mouth of some great monster waiting to swallow her.
Rachel tied the reins of the horse to a sumac and scrambled along the loose dirt and gravel of the trail toward that waiting, dark maw. She peeked inside, looking to see if Queen Violet or Six was hiding there. She expected that Violet might leap out and slap her, then laugh in that haughty way of hers.
The cave was dark and empty.
Rachel twisted her fingers together as she again scanned the round hills. Her heart beat wildly as she looked for any movement. The ghostie gobblies were getting closer. They were coming for her. They were going to get her.
Inside the cave she saw the familiar drawings that she had seen so many times before. There were thousands of sketches covering every inch of the walls. Between large drawings, small ones were squeezed into the available space. Each one was different. Most looked like they had been drawn by different people. Some were so simple that they almost looked like they’d been drawn by children. Some were detailed and remarkably realistic-looking.
Rachel didn’t know how to judge such things, but to her it seemed that the drawings had to represent many generations of people. Considering the many different styles and various levels of refinement, they could easily represent dozens and dozens of generations of artists, maybe hundreds.
All the drawings had people in them. All the people in the drawings were being hurt, or troubled, or starved, or poisoned, or stabbed, or lying broken at the bottom of cliffs, or grieved over graves. The drawings gave Rachel nightmares.
She squatted down and felt the oil lamps. They were cold. No one had been in the caves. She retrieved a flint and steel from a small niche cut into the wall of the cave and used it to strike a spark at the wick of a lamp.
She tried a number of times and was able to get a good spark, but not a flame in the wick. She glanced back over her shoulder between tries. She was running out of time. They were coming. They were getting close now.
Rachel shook the lamp to get more oil on the wick then frantically struck the flint and steel together. It took half a dozen tries but to her great relief she finally got a flame going.
She picked the lamp up by the loop handle and stood. She stared out of the mouth of the cave, looking for any movement, looking for the ghostie gobblies. She didn’t see them, but she knew they were coming. She thought she could hear them, out in the scrub brush. She was sure she could feel them looking at her.
With the lamp in hand she rushed back into the darkness, away from the ghostie gobblies, to safety…she hoped. She had to get away. They were coming. They could get her everywhere else. This was her only chance.
Knowing how close they were she was frantic with fright. Tears stung her eyes as she ran back into the cave, past all the drawings of people being hurt.
It was a long way back into the darkness. A long way to where she thought she might find the only place where she could be safe. The lamplight raced over the face of the rock all around, lighting the faces drawn on the walls.
Deep into the cave the light from the cave’s opening was only a distant soft glow. Crawling over a jutting outcrop-ping of rock, she could see her breath as she panted not only with effort but with gathering panic. She didn’t know how far she had to go to be safe. She only knew that the ghostie gobblies were coming for her and she had to keep going, had to get away.
She came to the drawing she remembered all too well. It was a drawing that Rachel had watched Queen Violet make with Six’s help. Although they had never mentioned his name, Rachel knew that it was a drawing of Richard. With all the things drawn around the central figure it was the biggest drawing in all of the cave. It was also the most complex.
Unlike all the rest of the pictures, Violet’s had been done with colored chalk. Rachel remembered all the time Queen Violet had spent on it—back when she had been the queen—all the careful instruction Six had given her, all the careful sequences of lines and angles and elements. Rachel remembered having to stand there for hours at a time, listening as Six explained the why and how of everything Violet was to draw before she had been allowed to put chalk to the stone wall.
Rachel stared at the drawing of Richard for a moment, thinking that it had to be one of the most awful, sinister things she had ever seen.
But then, ever terrified of what was coming for her, she rushed onward, scrambling over rock and along ledges, going deeper back into the darkness.
Whenever Six had directed Violet in practice drawings, or when they had wanted to draw something new, they had always had to go deeper and deeper back into the cave to find fresh walls to draw on. Rachel remembered all too well that the picture of Richard was the last thing they had drawn, so she knew that beyond it the walls would be barren.
As she went past the colored network of lines and symbols radiating out all around Richard, Rachel was startled to see something she had never seen before. She came to a halt. There was a new drawing.
She stared in astonishment. It was a drawing of her.
All around the picture of her were swirling creatures. Rachel recognized the symbols that forced them in toward her. The awful beasts were like ghosts made of shadow and smoke. Except they had teeth. Sharp teeth. Teeth made to rip and tear.
Without any doubt whatsoever, Rachel knew what they were. They were the ghostie gobblies.
She stood frozen staring at the picture of the terrible deadly things that had been sicced on her by vicious spells drawn there on the cave wall.
She knew from the long hours spent listening to Six lecture Violet what many of the symbols represented. Six had called them “terminal elements.” They were designed to eliminate the principal agents of the spell after the end of the sequence of events the drawing was meant to start. She understood the nature of the picture, and what it all meant. It meant that after the ghostie gobblies got her, they would melt away out of existence.
In the drawing the things made out of nightmares were all around her, coming ever in toward her. She could see, now, that there was no escape. The safety she had thought she was running toward was merely the center where they had been chasing her toward, the center where she would be trapped, unable to ever escape.
She heard a sound and looked toward the dim glow of light from the cave’s entrance. For the first time she saw the shadows and swirls. They were in the cave. They were gathering, just like in the drawing on the wall. They were coming for her.
Rachel stood frozen in terror. She realized that she could no longer get out of the cave. She could only go deeper. But by looking at t
he drawing she could see that going deeper into the cave would not save her—there were ghostie gobblies back there, too. She was trapped, unable to go deeper, unable to get out. She was at the center of a spell that was designed to continually close in around her.
“Like it?” someone called out.
Rachel gasped and spun toward the voice echoing in the blackness.
“Queen Violet.”
The face, faintly lit in the light of the oil lamp, grinned out from the darkness. Violet was there to watch, to see the ghostie gobblies get her, to witness the results of her handiwork.
“I thought you might like to come and see where they came from before they rip you apart. I wanted you to know who was getting even with you.” She gestured to the wall. “So I drew it in a way that would make you have to come here in the end. I made this the place where they would finally have you trapped.” She leaned out a little from the darkness. “Where they would finally get you.”
Rachel didn’t bother to ask Violet why she would do such a thing. She knew why. Violet blamed her for everything bad that ever happened to her. She never blamed herself for the trouble she brought upon herself; she blamed others, blamed Rachel.
“Where is Six?”
Violet gestured dismissively. “Who knows. She doesn’t tell me her business.” Violet’s glare turned as dark as the cave itself. “She is queen now. No one listens to me anymore. They do what she says. They call her queen. Queen Six.”
“What about you?”
“She only keeps me around to draw for her.” Violet pointed a finger at Rachel. “It’s all your fault. It’s all because of you.”
Violet’s glare twisted into the smile that had always given Rachel chills. “But now you will pay for your disrespect, your evil ways. Now you will pay.” The smile widened with satisfaction. “I made them so that they will tear the flesh from your bones. Pick you clean.”
Rachel swallowed in terror.
She wondered if she could fight her way past the smirking Violet. But what good would that do? They would soon be coming out of the deeper darkness as well.
