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As they worked their way up, level by level, they passed hundreds of niches carved from the soft sandstone. All the holes were filled with bodies placed on crudely carved shelves. Above many of the hollowed-out resting places cou
ld still be seen a family name in faded paint, or a name and a title of the deceased. Some openings were embellished around the edges with crudely carved decorations. Because they were all different, he figured that they were probably done by family members. The paint and decoration had deteriorated almost to the point where it was nearly invisible and lost to the ages.
As they reached another level higher up, the niches had been connected and expanded to create small rooms for the dead. Those rooms were tightly stacked from the floors to the ceilings with bones. They had likely been long-dead people who had been gathered up to make room for the more recently deceased.
Rooms carved from the stone held massive numbers of bones. Under layers of dust, each room was filled to the ceiling with neatly stacked bones, sorted by type. Several of the chambers held only skulls, all carefully and respectfully stacked facing out. Richard was astonished to think of the vast numbers of people who must have lived at the Keep, or worked there. If, indeed, this place really was in the Keep.
They climbed stairs in tunnels so small and tight that Richard had to duck and pull his arms in as he ascended. Higher up they came to levels where the resting chambers carved into the tall corridor were half a dozen high. Some of the uppermost niches had a ladder leaning against them because they were so high up.
Most of the bodies laid to rest in the honeycombs of cavities were wrapped in shrouds that were so old and dirty that they looked to have been carved out of the same tan sandstone as the rooms themselves. Richard saw a few recesses holding coffins, all of them stone, most with carved decorations, all of them layered in dust and, like the shroud-wrapped bodies, almost completely encased within masses of cobwebs. In fact, the cobwebs were sometimes so thick that the shroud-wrapped corpses looked like big cocoons.
The soft yellow lantern light and the greenish glow from the light sphere Nicci had with her revealed a series of long corridors with niches carved into the stone on each side. In some it looked as if an entire family had been stuffed into the small hollow in the rock. To the sides, yet more dark corridors branched off in every direction. From what they could see, all of those corridors were lined with recesses holding the dead.
As they ascended long runs of steps carved directly from the stone itself, they had to be careful because the steps were uneven. Cassia was ahead of him, with Kahlan right behind, followed by Nicci and then Vale.
The light from Cassia’s lantern suddenly revealed an opening that looked more carefully constructed than the ones down below. Going through it, they emerged in a spacious cavern. The chamber had been carved out of the rock, much like the tunnels and rooms below, with tool marks and drill holes from the excavation still in evidence on the rough stone walls.
The difference was that the floor, barely visible under the thick dust, was tiled with light and dark stone in a circular pattern. A table sat alone in the center of the room. When Cassia wiped a hand across it, swiping away some of the dust, Richard saw that it was veneered in burl walnut. A simple, empty white vase sat in the center of the table.
At one time that vase must have held freshly cut flowers to make the place look less harsh for the people who came to visit relatives. At one time, it must have been a reverent room welcoming visitors.
At intervals around the room, there were openings cut into the stone, each leading off into darkness. None of the nine cavelike passageways were trimmed or decorated, except for symbols in the language of Creation carved into the stone above each opening.
It looked like this had been a central hub, where visitors then went down the appropriate passageway to where their ancestors were entombed.
The passageway they had come out of was the ninth of nine tunnels. The symbols above it were similar to the rest, naming each tunnel with an innocuous name such as River of Eternal Rest, or Garden of Lilies, or Peaceful Fields. The tunnel names were apparently meant to help people find loved ones. The one they had come from was named Hall of Souls. It reminded him of the name Sanctuary of Souls he had seen at the other end, back in the room with the well.
From the room with the nine tunnels, a staircase of marble stairs and polished marble balustrade, under a thick layer of dust, started up what was little more than a crude shaft cut through the rock. The meticulously constructed stairs and balustrades were a stark contrast to the roughly cut walls. The staircase was also wide enough that Richard and Kahlan could at last walk side by side–a luxury after the narrow corridors and tunneling stairs.
Each run of stairs ended at a square landing from which the next flight ascended, going ever upward in an exhausting spiral. There were no rooms, just landings and more stairs to climb. At least they were well made rather than the roughly hewn steps that were difficult to negotiate.
Still, they were all getting exhausted. Their energy was waning and they all needed food.
Panting with the effort of the long climb, they arrived at a landing where the marble handrail ended on each side in an ornately spiraled newel post. Before them stood a wall of stone blocking their way out.
“It looks like a capstone,” Richard said. “They must have used this to seal the catacombs off. It would be too big and heavy for even Sulachan’s awakened dead to have moved.”
“Then how are we supposed to open it?” Vale asked.
“Look!” Cassia shouted as she held her lantern out.
Two small statues sat to the side, back in a niche. They were the exact same little statues of shepherds that had been back in the hallway in the gifted’s quarters in Stroyza. Those statues, untouched since the time of the great barrier, had opened the doorway into the well room.
Cassia leaned in and with a big breath blew the dust off the statues. She waved her hand in front of her face and coughed at the cloud of dust it raised. She made a face as she waved her hand a moment, then leaned, eyes closed, and blew at the statues again.
Under the dust, Richard saw the glint of metal begin to emerge. He leaned in himself and blew at the statues, clearing off the layers of dust. Under the dust, both statues looked to be made of the same dull silver metal as the ones back in Stroyza.
“What are you waiting for?” Kahlan asked as she turned her face away and waved at the cloud of dust. “Do what you did before. Go on and see if it will get us out of here.”
Nicci frowned as she leaned toward what Richard believed was the capstone. “Do you hear that?”
“No, what?” Kahlan frowned as she stopped waving her hand and cocked her head. “Wait, I do hear it. It sounds like alarm bells.”
CHAPTER
47
Even though he was concerned about the distant sound of alarm bells from beyond the capstone, Richard slid his sword back into its scabbard. He needed to be able to use both hands, like before, if it was going to work. When he held a cool metal statue of the shepherd in each hand, they warmed under his touch. He felt the tingle of magic seeping through his palms, along his arms, and up his spine into the base of his skull. This magic was stronger than it had been in Stroyza.
As he felt the vibration of magic at the base of his skull, the stone before them began to tremble almost as if in sympathy. Small bits of dirt and rock fell from the walls and ceiling as the area around them quaked. Pebbles danced on the floor as dust rose around them.
Richard remembered the way Samantha brought the rock of the cave’s ceiling crashing down. He glanced up, worried that the rock overhead might come down on them the same way. Unlike the stone walls farther down in the catacombs, this rock higher up was granite, the same as the ceiling that had fallen in.
The capstone suddenly let out a loud crack as the seal broke all at once. Mortar that had sealed the stone shattered and popped out. Finally, the enormous slab of stone began to pivot back out of the opening, grating against the floor as it moved. As it did so, light flooded in, along with the racket of alarm bells.
Squinting in the sudden brightness of natural light, Richard peered around the stone door and out through the opening, trying to
see. Cassia pushed past him and shot out the opening to check for danger. When she didn’t call out a warning, Kahlan took Richard’s hand and ducked under the short opening along with him.
They found themselves in a sheltered entryway for the catacombs. Fluted limestone columns lined either side of the recessed alcove. The small pillars, not much taller than Richard, were topped with long entablatures that provided support for arches elaborately decorated with complex, carved stone moldings framing tiles laid out in dark, geometric patterns. Benches to each side had been intricately embellished to match the forbidding architectural details of the rest of the entry. After the filth and crudely cut stone they had been around for so long, the magnificent, polished stone seemed to gleam.
Larger-than-life stone figures in grim, distraught poses clearly conveyed a sense of grieving and sorrow for what lay beyond the pitch-black opening at the rear. This was, after all, a threshold to the place of the dead. The brooding figures surrounding the doorway were apparently meant to prepare visitors, letting them know that they would find the catacombs devoid of any joy.
Kahlan rushed past Richard to step out of the hidden alcove, looking all around as she stepped into the light. “Dear spirits, I know this place.” She turned back in a rush. “We’re in the Keep!”
Richard stepped out of the shadowed entry to the catacombs to stand beside Kahlan, looking up at the vast, narrow chamber rising up like an enormous split inside the mountain the Wizard’s Keep had been built into. Tightly fit, fine-grained granite blocks lined the soaring walls. The chamber was perhaps half a dozen stories high, yet hardly any wider than the public corridors up in the Keep proper.
Cassia and Vale stood shielding them from a small group of people crowding around, staring at them as if they were seeing some of the corpses from below come back to life. Covered in dust as they were, they probably looked the part.
“Richard?” a deep voice asked.
Richard squinted into the light shining into his eyes from the slits at the top of the lofty wall opposite him.
