Seeing the symbols he recognized reassured him, even though he didn’t know their meaning. He wore these things by obligation, duty, and right—he was born to them, that much he knew. Why, he didn’t know. Even if he wished it could be otherwise, it wasn’t; he was a war wizard.
Distracted by the uncomfortable pressure and tingling of the shields, he reached the door almost before he realized it. The door was at least twelve feet tall, and a good four feet wide, gold-clad and embellished in the same symbolic motifs.
Embossed in the center was the more prominent of the symbols he wore: two rough triangles, with a sinuous double line running around and through them. Richard rested his left hand on the hilt of his sword as he fingered the symbol with his other hand, tracing its oval, undulating outer margin.
With the act of touching it, tracing it, following its pattern, he understood. The spirits who had used the Sword of Truth before him passed their knowledge on to him as he used the sword, but they didn’t always convey that knowledge in words; in the heat of combat there wasn’t always time.
Sometimes it came to him in images, symbols: these symbols.
This one on the door, like the ones on his wristbands, was a kind of dance used for fighting when outnumbered. It conveyed a sense of the movements of the dance, movements without form.
The dance with death.
It made sense. He wore the outfit of a war wizard. Richard had learned from Kolo’s journal that in Kolo’s time the First Wizard, named Baraccus, had also been a war wizard, as was Richard. These symbols had meaning to a war wizard. Much as a tailor painted shears on his window, or a tavern sign had a mug on it, or a blacksmith nailed up horseshoes, or a weapons maker displayed knives, these symbols were signs of his craft: bringing death.
Richard realized that his fear had vanished. He stood in the Wizard’s Keep, which had always before set his nerves on edge and worse, stood now before the most restricted and protected place in the Keep, yet he felt calm.
He touched a starburst symbol on the door. This symbol was an admonition.
Keep your vision all-inclusive, never allowing it to lock on any one thing. That was the meaning of the starburst symbol: look everywhere at once, see nothing to the exclusion of all else—don’t allow the enemy to direct your vision, or you will see what he wishes you to see. He will then come at you as you become bewildered, looking for his attack, and you will lose.
Instead, your vision must open to all there is, never settling, even when cutting. Know your enemy’s moves by instinct, not by waiting to see them. To dance with death meant to know the enemy’s sword and its speed without waiting to see it. Dancing with death meant being one with the enemy, without looking fixedly, so that you could kill him. Dancing with death meant being committed to killing, committed with your heart and soul. Dancing with death meant that you were the incarnation of death, come to reap the living.
Berdine’s voice drifted across the rampart. “Lord Rahl?”
Richard looked over his shoulder. “What? What’s wrong?”
Berdine shifted her weight to her other foot. “Well, are you all right? You’ve been standing there for a long time, staring at the door. Are you all right?”
Richard wiped a hand across his face. “Yes. I’m fine. I was just… just looking at the things written on the door, that’s all.”
He turned, and without thinking, slapped his hand to the cold metal plate in the polished gray granite wall. Kahlan had told him it was said that to touch that metal plate was like touching the cold, dead heart of the Keeper himself.
The metal plate warmed. The gold door silently swung inward.
Dim light came from beyond. Richard took a careful step into the doorway. Like a wick on a lamp being slowly turned up, the dim light coming from inside brightened. He took another step, and the light brightened more.
He scanned the inside as he motioned the two waiting Mord-Sith forward. Whatever magic prevented people from approaching apparently was now withdrawn; Berdine and Raina walked to him without any difficulty.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Raina said. “I didn’t feel anything.”
“So far, so good,” Richard said.
Inside, there were glass spheres, about a hand-width in diameter, set atop green marble pedestals against the wall to his left and right. Richard had seen glass spheres similar to these before, down in the lower reaches of the Keep. Like those, these too provided light.
The inside of the First Wizard’s enclave was an immense cavern of ornate stonework. Four columns of polished black marble, at least ten feet in diameter, formed a square that supported arches just beyond the outer edges of a central dome dotted by a high ring of windows. Between each pair of columns a wing ran off from the vast central chamber. He noticed that much of the stonework repeated the palm-leaf pattern that adorned the gold capitals atop the black marble columns. The polishing of the marble was so high that it reflected images like glass.
Finely worked wrought-iron sconces decorated with the same palm leaf pattern held candles. Fluidly worked iron formed railings at the edge of the expansive, sunken central floor.
This was not the sinister lair Richard expected. This was a place of grand splendor to match any he had seen. The place was so beautiful that it left him awestricken.
The wing in which the three of them stood, the entry hall, appeared to be by far the smallest of the four wings. Six-foot-tall white marble pedestals marched in a long double row beside the walkway laid with a long red carpet over a gold-flecked dark brown marble floor.
Richard wouldn’t have been able to touch fingers were he to put his arms around one of the pedestals. The ribbed, barrel ceiling thirty feet overhead made the fat pedestals look miniscule.
Sitting atop some of the pedestals were objects Richard recognized: ornate knives, gems set in brooches or at the ends of gold-worked chains, a silver chalice, filigree bowls, and delicately worked boxes. Some sat on squares of cloth trimmed with gold or silver embroidery, others on stands carved from burled wood.
Other pedestals held contorted objects that made no sense to him. He would have sworn that they changed shape when he looked at them. He decided it would be best not to look directly at such things of magic, and warned the other two.
The distant wing opposite them, across the central area under the huge dome, ended at a round-topped window that had to be thirty feet tall. Before the window was a huge table piled with a clutter of objects: glass jars, bowls, and coiled tubes; a massive but simple iron candelabrum covered with ages of wax; stacks of scrolls; several human skulls; and a chaos of smaller items Richard couldn’t make out from such a distance. The floor all around the table was similarly cluttered, along with things stacked up and leaning against the table.
The wing to the right was dark. Richard felt uncomfortable even looking in that direction. He heeded the warning, and looked to the left. In that wing, he saw books. Thousands of them.
“There,” Richard said, as he gestured to the left. “That’s what we’re here for. Remember what I told you. Don’t touch anything.” He glanced at them both as they looked about with wide eyes. “I mean it. I don’t know how to save you if you get in trouble touching something in here.”
/> Both pairs of eyes looked back at him.
“We remember,” Berdine said.
“We know better than to tempt magic,” Raina said. “We’re just looking around, that’s all. We wouldn’t touch anything.”
“Good. But I suggest that you don’t even look at anything, either, except what we need to look at. For all I know, simply looking at something in here could trigger its magic.”
“Do you think?” Raina asked in astonishment.
“What I think is that I’d rather not find out after it’s too late. Come on. Let’s get this over with so we can get out of here.”
Oddly, even though he had said the words, and knew they made sense, he didn’t really feel like leaving. As potentially dangerous as he knew the place to be, he found that he liked the First Wizard’s enclave.
Berdine smirked. “Lord Rahl fears magic as much as we do.”
“You’re wrong, Berdine. I know a little about magic.” He started down the red carpet. “I fear it more.”
Ten broad steps at the end led down into the central area. An expanse of cream-colored marble covered the floor. A border of darker brown marble ran around the floor near the edge. When Richard reached the bottom step and his foot touched the floor, it hummed and began to glow. He quickly retreated back up onto the red carpet. The glow extinguished.
“What now?” Raina asked.
He pried her fingers from his arm. “Did either of you put your foot to the floor?” They both shook their heads. “Try.”
As Richard waited on the step, Berdine gingerly tried to test the marble. She withdrew her foot.
“I can’t. Something stops my foot before I can get it on the floor.”
Richard stepped out onto the marble again. Again it glowed and hummed.
“It must be a shield, then. Here, take my hand and try again.”
Holding Richard’s hand, Berdine was able to step onto the marble with him. Raina took his other hand and followed.
“All right,” he said, “since it’s some kind of shield, don’t let go of my hand while we’re on this part. We don’t know what would happen. For all I know, if you let go of my hand you could fry like bacon on a griddle.”