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With everyone dead and the cave collapsed and buried, Richard didn’t think that breaking the statue was going to be much of a problem. He pulled his knife from its sheath at his belt. Holding it by the blade, he used the handle like a hammer to whack the statue.
The clay shattered in an unexpected manner and a piece fell off. Where the broken piece had been, Richard saw the gleam of metal under the clay. He struck the statue half a dozen times, breaking the clay away to reveal that there was the same metal statue underneath, only properly detailed. The whole thing had been covered with clay slurry to encase it; that was why it looked too bulky to him.
“Why in the world would they make a statue like that?” Kahlan asked as she frowned up at Richard.
“If I’m right, to hide the sliph.”
He used his knife handle to hammer the other sculpture and it, too, shattered to reveal metal under the covering of clay. He reached in and broke off the remaining pieces, exposing the two metal sculptures of shepherds with their flocks.
“My gift doesn’t work,” he said to Nicci. “You try it.”
Nicci reached in and grasped one of the statues. They all glanced around the hallway, expecting something to happen, but the hallway remained silent and still.
He gestured to the other. “Try holding both.”
Nicci reached in and wrapped her hand around the other shepherd, so that she was holding one in each hand. They all looked around the silent hallway.
Still, nothing happened.
With a disappointed sigh, she let her hands slip off the little statues. “I can’t explain why there is metal under the clay, but it apparently isn’t a trigger mechanism for a shield. It must simply be an ancient oddity.”
They all stared in frustration at the small statues of shepherds, trying to imagine their purpose. Nothing about what the original builders of the sentinel village of Stroyza did was random or pointless. Everything had been carefully planned not according to what was happening and what they feared, but according to the things they knew of the star shift and the Twilight Count. It all had a purpose.
He was at a loss to understand what that purpose was.
Cassia gestured with her lantern. “Lord Rahl, I don’t think you are listening to the real meaning of the writing.”
Richard’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“It said ‘Let the shepherd guide you.’”
Richard opened his hands in bewilderment. “I know. Nicci tried it. Nothing happened.”
Cassia gave him a crafty smile. “She isn’t our shepherd. You are our shepherd, Lord Rahl. You are the one who guides us.”
“But my gift doesn’t work.”
She tipped her head at him in a meaningful way. “Maybe it isn’t looking for the gift. Maybe it’s looking for the shepherd.”
Richard stared at her for a moment, and then turned and grabbed both smooth metal statues.
He felt them both warm under his touch. The shelves began to shudder. The stone floor trembled. All the way around the niche, the wall began to crack in straight lines. Bits of stone flaked away from the ever-widening cracks as a section of the wall with the niche broke free and started to move in away from the hallway. The stone cracked and popped until the section of wall with the niche jolted free and swung back into a dark room.
“I don’t understand,” Richard said. “My gift doesn’t work.”
Nicci looked over at him. “You read the Cerulean scrolls, Richard. We’re dealing with forces here that transcend the gift.”
CHAPTER
41
Nicci slipped in first to provide light from the sphere she’d brought with her. Richard followed, ducking under the short opening so he wouldn’t hit his head. Kahlan did the same, staying close behind him. When the sorceress stepped into the room, a dozen light spheres in iron brackets around the outside of the circular room all brightened at her presence, illuminating the entire room with the same green luminescence common to light spheres.
There, in the center of the room, capped with a domed ceiling, was a short, circular stone wall. It looked like most of the other wells for the sliph that Richard had seen.
Kahlan slipped a hand around his biceps as she stared at the well in amazement. “You were right, Richard. Dear spirits, you were right.”
“It’s hard to believe this has been here for thousands of years,” Nicci said as she, too, stared at the well. “The way the room was sealed, it’s pretty clear that no one has seen this since it was built in the time of the great war.”
“Richard was right,” Kahlan said. “They lost the link to the knowledge of the past and none of them even knew it was here, right by the quarters for the gifted.”
Kahlan beamed with a bright smile as she gazed up at him. She was relieved that they weren’t trapped in the caves after all.
“This will get us to the People’s Palace,” she said. “As soon as we get there, Nicci will finally be able to get the poisonous touch of death out of you.”
Richard only smiled back. For now, he couldn’t let her know that he could never allow that to happen.
Cassia bent over the edge, holding the lantern high to have a look down inside. “I’ve seen this kind of well before, at the People’s Palace.”
“That’s right,” Richard said. “We’ve used that one before.”
Nicci leaned over the short wall beside Cassia, holding out the light sphere to see better down inside.
“No sliph,” she announced.
Richard knew they wouldn’t see the sliph yet. He stepped up beside Nicci. “We’ll have to wake her.”
“How do we do that?” Vale asked.
“I have to call her,” Richard said back over his shoulder. “I’ve done it before.”
“When your gift worked,” Kahlan reminded him.
Richard let out a deep sigh. “You’re right.” He gestured to Nicci. “Put down that sphere so you can help me. Add your gift to what I do and maybe together we can wake her.”
Richard leaned over the well and crossed his wrists, placing the ancient symbols on the silver bands he wore over one another, pressing them tightly together. As he had done in the past, he envisioned the sliph coming to him. He had called her from her sleep before and brought her to him, but he didn’t know if it was actually his gift that powered that call.
He had traveled in the sliph a number of times before. Sometimes he had been reluctant. This time he was eager. Time was running out and he needed to get to the palace.
Nicci placed her hands over his fists, closing her fingers tightly over his. He could feel the tingling warmth of her magic flowing into the bands at his wrists, heating them with that power. It was a decidedly uncomfortable feeling, but not painful. He knew that sometimes magic, even magic being used for good, felt that way.
Richard closed his eyes. “Come to me,” he whispered. “I need you. Come to me.”
For the longest time, they stood leaning in over the sliph’s well, Richard pressing the wristbands together, Nicci’s hands closed over his. When he slitted his eyes to check down into the darkness to see if the sliph was coming yet, he could see that the stones lined the inside of the well to quite a depth, but they gradually faded away into the darkness.
He saw that his silver wristbands, covered in symbols made up of the language of Creation, were glowing with an intense yellowish light. That light at his wrists–whether from Nicci’s magic or her magic plus something she was pulling from him, he didn’t know–was so intense that he could see the bones of his wrists right through his flesh. He could also see the bones in both his hands and Nicci’s. That light lit the inside of the dome above them and shot down into the depths of the well, disappearing into the darkness far below as if headed on a mission to find the sliph.
For the longest time they all stood still, barely breathing, as they focused on their need for the sliph to come to them. For all that time there was only silence from below.
Richard felt the soles of his bo
ots tingling, and then the ground abruptly began to rumble. His heart beat faster as the trembling became stronger. Dust was shaken free from the walls.
As he listened, he could hear a rushing sound deep down in the well. Small pebbles and grit on the ground danced with the vibration. Dust rose from the stone floor.
A column of air, driven up from far below, suddenly blew Richard and Nicci’s hair upward as it blasted out of the well. They both quickly pulled back, fearing they might be hit by the sliph as she raced up from below.
Silvery liquid shot up to the top of the rim, threatening to explode out of the confines of the well, but it slopped along the sides of the stone enclosure as it abruptly stopped. The roaring sound stopped. The rumbling stopped. The room fell quiet again.
The liquid in the well drew up in the center, rising in a reflective column that looked like nothing so much as molten silver. The continually undulating surface drew into features as a face formed. The face, like a polished silver statue, had risen nearly to eye level with Richard. It looked around the room briefly but then the gaze finally settled on him.
“You summoned me?” the sliph announced. It didn’t exactly sound happy about it. The voice had a strange quality that seemed to echo around the room even though the rest of their voices didn’t.
“Yes!” Richard said as he urgently leaned toward the sliph. “We need to travel.”
“Very well,” the sliph said. “Will you be traveling alone?”
“No.” Richard swept an arm around the room. “All of us will be going. All of us need to travel.”
The silver face coolly appraised the four women before looking back at Richard. “As you wish. All of you will need to step forward to allow me to see who among you may travel.”
