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“Master, you are dying.”
Kahlan stepped forward, grasping his arm. “Can you help him in any way? Is there anything you could do, since you are partly in that world of death, to help remove the sickness from him and take it back to the world of the dead with you to where it belongs?”
The sliph turned a sad look toward Kahlan. “No, I am sorry, but I can only travel in this world.”
“Can you at least tell from touching him how much time he has?”
“No, I am sorry. I can only tell that death already has him and his life force is leaving him.”
“I know that much,” Richard said. “So, since in a way I’m already dead the sword can’t really kill me, right?”
The sliph considered him for a time before speaking. “This is a bad business, Master. It is as you say–you could bring it, and you would not die because death already has you. The object is linked to you, focused on the death in you, so it would not harm the others as it ordinarily would.”
“Good,” Richard said, sighing with relief. “Then it would please me to take it with me.”
An arm rose from the churning quicksilver pool to hold up a hand forestalling him. “Master, it is not that simple.”
“Yes it is. I did it before.”
“Perhaps because this other did not care what happened to you.” The sliph drifted a little closer. “Did this other not tell you what would happen when you traveled with this object?”
“Well, yes,” Richard admitted. “She said it would take some of my remaining life.”
“And it did,” the sliph confirmed. “It took that which you have very little to give. The life is draining away from you as death replaces it. That object is created to bring death. When you traveled, having that object of magic with you took much of your remaining life. It took time from you, giving you over to death much sooner.”
Richard waved a hand, wanting to get on with it and get to the palace. “I know. So I can take it. That would please me.”
“It would not please me to do such a thing with you,” the sliph said in a scolding tone. “You may have done it once, but now you do not have much life left to give. Your life is draining away as it is. Traveling with that object would drain away even more of what little you have left. By the time you reach the People’s Palace, you would have almost no life left. Where life had been it would be replaced with death instead.
“Taking that object would not kill you, but it would cost most of your remaining time in the world of life.”
“That settles it,” Kahlan insisted. “You can’t take it, Richard. You have to leave it here.”
“We only have to get to the palace,” he said.
Kahlan leaned closer. He could see the anger in her green eyes, a deep anger she rarely directed at him. “And then you must stop Sulachan. You have to be alive to do that. How is having only a little time left going to help us all?”
“Sulachan?” the sliph asked in alarm. “You are fighting Emperor Sulachan?”
“Yes,” Richard said. “Do you know him?”
The glossy head floated back to the far side of the well. “I know him from the time when I was created. He is evil. He died and travels the world where my soul rests. He is evil. He belongs to the dead, now. How can he be here, in this world?”
“I’m afraid that he has crossed back over,” Richard said, not thinking it would be useful to tell her how. “He is on his way to capture the People’s Palace. If he does, he will tear the veil and destroy all of us–both those living and those souls in that world. I have to get to the palace to stop him. I need to send him back to the world of the dead where he belongs.”
“Come, we will travel,” she said with a sense of urgency as she floated closer. “You will be pleased.”
“I need to bring my sword.”
“No, you don’t need to bring your sword,” Kahlan said through gritted teeth. “It will do you no good if you are dead, or if you don’t have enough life left in you to fight. We haven’t come this far, gone through this much, to have you throw away your life–all of our lives–just to hold on to your sword. You have to leave it here. The sword isn’t what’s important right now.”
“It will be if Sulachan sends the dead against us. The sword can stop them. How am I supposed to fight his army of the dead without my sword?”
Kahlan leaned close, fire in her green eyes. “If you send Sulachan back to the underworld, then there will be no dead to worry about, now will there? We need to get going. You need to take the sword off and leave it here.”
“You should listen to her, Master. What the Mother Confessor is telling you is wise advice. She is one who pleases you, too. You should do as she says.”
“Thank you,” Kahlan told the sliph, but not in the kindest of tones.
Richard drew a deep breath, debating what to do.
“I suppose you’re both right.”
He reluctantly pulled the baldric off over his head. He set the point of the scabbard on the floor and leaned the hilt of the sword up against the stone wall of the well.
“No one will bother it, Richard,” Chase offered. “I will see to it. No one will come in here. You can rest easy, knowing the sword is safe for now.”
Rachel offered him a confident smile. “Once you fix everything, you can come back and get it. We’d really like to see you again and spend more time with all of you.”
Richard wished he shared her confidence. Even though he didn’t, he smiled to her as if he did.
He climbed up on the wall, then wasted no time in helping to pull the four women up with him.
Before he stepped off into the rolling quicksilver, Verna lifted a hand, catching his attention.
“Richard … if, if things don’t work out, the Grace carries us all into the eternal world of peace. We know you will do your best, but if things don’t work out, well, we will all be together again in that world.”
Richard slowly shook his head. “No, if things don’t work out, we won’t.”
She touched her fingers to her chin. “What do you mean?”
“Without victory, there is no survival,” Richard said. “Of anything.”
He looked back over his shoulder. “Sliph, we need to travel. Please take us to the People’s Palace.”
“Come into me, Master. You will be pleased.”
All of them holding hands, he looked to Nicci and Vale on his left, then Kahlan and Cassia on his right. “Like the last time, let your breath go and breathe her in. Try to keep hold of one another so we can stay together.”
Both Mord-Sith, even though they looked apprehensive, nodded.
With that, and the urgency of the situation displacing any second thoughts, he stepped off the edge with the rest of them into the silvery pool.
CHAPTER
50
Gliding through the sliph was an otherworldly sensation, unlike anything Richard had ever been able to relate it to. Each time it felt familiar, and yet completely unexpected. There was a sense of still peacefulness, of a velvety eternity around him, combined with a dim awareness of savage speed.
He tightly held Kahlan’s hand in his right, Nicci’s in his left. He hoped that the two Mord-Sith were holding on to each of them as well.
There was nothing to see, as such. With his eyes closed he saw colors flash by, but when he opened them there was only darkness. When he closed his eyes again, those colors, spinning and swirling as if carried on a fitful wind, filled his mind. The hues and tones spread through empty space like vivid dyes through crystal-clear water.
There was no way to judge time in the sliph, any more than there had been a way to judge the passage of time in the underworld. While in the underworld Richard couldn’t tell if he had been dead for mere moments, or a thousand years. It was all the same. In the past, whenever he had asked the sliph how long they had been traveling, she always said that she was long enough, as if that was somehow answer enough.
He used that stretch of time suspended
to consider what he needed to do. He analyzed it from every angle. As far as he could tell, the pieces he did have all fit. Try as he might to come up with another way, and as much as he might wish there were one, there wasn’t.
He was the bringer of death, and only he could do such a thing. He understood why every different source, from prophecy to the Cerulean scrolls, said as much.
Breathing the quicksilver fluid of the sliph was at once a giddy experience and a terrifying one. It tended to be giddy as long as he didn’t think about what he was actually doing. When he thought about how he was breathing in the silvery fluid instead of air, it switched to terrifying.
