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Nicci and Kahlan both smiled, even though they hadn’t looked like they expected to.
He looked back over his shoulder at Lucy. “How long? How long did it take us to get here? How long have we been traveling?”
The silver face regarded him with a puzzled look. “How long? As long as from there to here. That is how long it is.”
“No, I mean time. How long has it taken us to get here from back in the caves? How much time?”
“You were in me,” she said as if that should explain it. “It was that long.”
Before he could question Lucy in more detail, Nicci touched his arm to stop him. “Her soul is in the world of the dead. She is partly a creature of that world.”
“Well I don’t–”
“A part of that timeless world,” Nicci said, lifting an eyebrow at him to prompt him.
He paused. “Oh. I see what you mean.”
“We never traveled this far in the sliph,” Kahlan said. “By how hungry I feel, I can tell you that it has to be a number of days.”
“I would have to agree,” Nicci said. “I wish I could say it was only a few days, but I think it was more. It was a long way from the Dark Lands all the way back to the Keep.”
Cassia tugged on some loose red leather at her waist. “Long enough for me to lose some weight.”
Richard nodded. “By the looks of your faces, I’d say we’ve all gone without food for close to a week.”
“That’s about the way my stomach feels,” Vale confirmed. “If there are any rats down here, I’d happily eat one.”
Richard looked around at the room he didn’t recognize, at the strange cloth hanging just beyond the doorway. “So, where in the Keep are we, exactly? We need to go find the sliph. As long as we’re here, we ought to let Verna and Chase know what’s going on.” He glanced at Vale, showing her a small smile. “And maybe grab a bite to eat.”
“Well, that’s a good question.” Kahlan glanced toward the doorway with the cloth hanging over it. “Lucy says that we’re in the Keep, but I don’t know where in the Keep. I’ve never seen this place.”
“If this really is the Keep,” Nicci said under her breath so that Lucy wouldn’t hear her. “It’s possible she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about. Maybe those who created her also deceived her and as a result she is only repeating what she was told. Maybe she is only telling us that this is the Keep because someone wants us to believe that.”
Richard frowned at both of them. “I don’t understand. Kahlan, you grew up here. If anyone knows the Keep it would be you. One look out there should tell you whether or not it’s the Keep.”
“You would think,” she said, cryptically in a confidential voice.
Richard stood up straighter, finally feeling steady on his feet. “Let’s go have a look, then. It shouldn’t take long to find out one way or another.”
He took a step away from the well, then stopped and turned back. The silver face was staring at him.
“Thank you, Lucy. Is there anything you were supposed to tell us when you brought us here? Any message?”
“Message? No. I was simply to bring travelers to the Keep. That is my purpose.”
He considered all he had learned in the scrolls and how the people in the great war, like Sulachan, had been using that knowledge as well as prophecy in moves that spanned millennia. He had a thought and rephrased the question.
“Did you know who you would be bringing here?”
The silver face twitched in recognition. “Before, when I first came to be as I am now and was given my purpose, I was told that I might bring the shepherd here.”
Richard glanced at Kahlan before again addressing the restless, undulating quicksilver face. “The shepherd. Anything else you were told? Anything at all?”
“No, just that.”
“All right,” Richard said as he straightened the baldric on his shoulder and the sword at his hip. “I’m the shepherd, I guess, so you’ve completed your task. You may go back into the long sleep. There should be no reason to return from where you brought us, so we will likely never have need of your services again, but if we do, I will call you.”
“Are you saying that you are the shepherd?”
Richard nodded. “That’s right.”
“There is one thing I was supposed to tell the shepherd about this place.”
“And what would that be?”
“I was told to tell you that when you enter the place out there beyond my room, you must be careful.”
Richard looked toward the doorway and the strange cloth hanging just beyond. “‘Be careful out there.’” That sounded like good advice, but it seemed strange that they would have wanted to pass that message on but nothing as to why or what the danger might be. “Anything else? Were you told why we were to be careful?”
“No, that was all. I don’t know what it means, but that is what I was to tell you.”
Richard took a deep breath as he glanced again to the doorway. “Thank you for your service, Lucy. You may go back to sleep and be with your soul. Rest in peace.”
“That would please me.”
It would please him as well, but he didn’t say so.
With that, the reflective silver face melted back down into the churning silver pool, and then the entire liquid mass began to sink with ever-increasing speed. Richard looked over the side and saw one last reflection and then it was gone. He could see only darkness down in the well.
He turned back to the others. “That was strange.”
“Not as strange as what is beyond that doorway,” Nicci said.
“Well, there was no other way out of the caves of Stroyza except to come here. It’s not like we had any choice.”
None of them could argue.
CHAPTER
44
Rather than asking Nicci to explain, Richard started for the doorway to have a look for himself. Nicci brought a light sphere, while the two Mord-Sith had lanterns taken from pegs in the far wall where another half-dozen lanterns still hung, covered in a layer of dust so thick it made them look like they were carved from dirt.
Richard came to a stop when he saw the small symbol in the language of Creation carved into the stone over the doorway.
He turned and looked back at the four women. “That says ‘Sanctuary of Souls.’”
“Yes”–Nicci tilted her head toward the hanging–“and it fits with all of this.”
The thin, silklike material hung dead still over the outside of the doorway. Nicci held the light sphere closer so he could see all of the symbols in the language of Creation covering the sheer material of the cloth. The symbols appeared backward because they had been painted onto the other side with a brush and ink.
Even with the symbols being backward, he could make out the meaning of a number of the more familiar symbols. He puzzled at othe
rs, though, trying to think if he had ever seen them before. While he recognized some of the compositional elements, he couldn’t make sense of what they meant when combined. In the language of Creation, the sub-elements worked together to construct the primary expression, so the meaning of those sub-elements was to an extent dependent on how all the parts of the symbol worked together. While he thought some of the symbols looked somehow familiar, he couldn’t recall where he had seen them.
“I don’t recognize some of these symbols”–he gestured to several of the more complex emblems–“like this grouping, here.”
“You probably wouldn’t,” the sorceress said. “These are ward spells.”
Richard frowned back at her. “Ward spells? What are they warding?”
Nicci’s blue eyes turned up to look at him. “The dead.”
“How do you know?”
Nicci admonished him with a look. “I was a Sister of the Dark. These are things I recognize. They are dangerous spells and only used for the most dangerous of places.”
Richard couldn’t help thinking about the words “Sanctuary of Souls” above the door.
“And they are meant to ward the dead?”
“In this case, yes. They are designed to stop the dead or any minions of the world of the dead. They act something like shields. But shields, like those rolling stones back in the caves in Stroyza, often have to be constructed. For that reason, shields are often difficult to create. Because these kinds of wards can even be painted on a piece of cloth, they are considerably easier to put up.”
Richard felt the thin cloth between his fingers and thumb. “Then why aren’t wards like this used more often? Why bother with building shields when you can simply paint a few of the appropriate ward spells?”
Nicci gave him a look as if he had asked a stupid question. “Pretty hard to steal a giant rolling stone. Don’t you think that for people without the ability to create them on their own, this kind of ward would be much easier to steal and use for their own purpose?”
