Richard smiled to himself as he began to unroll the letter. He knew all too well what Sabar meant.
“Did Nicci say anything about who could unwrap that thing?”
“No, Lord Rahl. She just said to give it to you, that the letter would explain it.”
“If it had a web around it, like the letter, she would have warned you.” Richard looked up. “Cara,” he said, gesturing at the bundled package sitting before the fire, “why don’t you unwrap it while Kahlan and I read the letter.”
As Cara sat cross-legged on the ground and started working on the knots in the leather thongs around the black quilted wrap, Richard held the letter sideways a bit so that Kahlan could read it silently along with him.
Dear Richard and Kahlan,
I am sorry that I cannot tell you everything right now that I would have you know, but there are urgent matters I must see to and I dare not delay. Jagang has initiated something I considered impossible. Through his ability as a dream walker, he has forced Sisters of the Dark he controls to attempt to create weapons out of people, as was done during the great war. This is dangerous enough in itself, but because Jagang does not have the gift, his understanding of such things is very crude. He is a blundering bull trying to use his horns to knit lace. They are using the lives of wizards as the fodder for his experiments. I don’t yet know the exact extent of their success, but I fear to discover the results. More of this in a moment.
First, the object I sent. When I picked up your trail and began tracking it to where we were to meet, I discovered this. I believe you have already come across it because it has been touched by a principal involved in the matter or involved with you.
The object is a warning beacon. It has been activated—not by this touch, but by events. I cannot overstate the danger it represents.
Such objects could only be made by the wizards of ancient times; the creation of such an object required both Additive and Subtractive Magic, and required the gift of both to be innate. Even then, they are so rare that I have never actually seen one.
I have, however, read about them down in the vaults at the Palace of the Prophets. Such warning beacons are kept viable by a link to the dead wizard who created them.
Richard sat back and let out a troubled breath.
“How can such a link be possible?” Kahlan asked.
He hardly had to read between the lines to be able to tell that Nicci was warning him in the gravest possible terms.
“It has to be linked somehow to the underworld,” Richard whispered back.
Little points of firelight danced in her green eyes as she stared at him.
Kahlan glanced again at Cara as she worked at the knots, pulling off one of the leather thongs around an object linked to a dead wizard in the underworld. Kahlan held up the edge of the letter as she urgently read along with him.
From what I know of such warning beacons, they monitor powerful and vital protective shields created to seal away something profoundly dangerous. They are paired. The first beacon is always amber. It is meant to be a warning to the one who caused the breach of the seal. The touch of a principal or one involved with a principal kindles it so it may be recognized for what it is and serve as it was intended—as a warning to those involved. Only after alerting the one it is meant to warn can it be destroyed. I send it to be absolutely certain you have seen it.
The precise nature of the second beacon is unknown to me, but that beacon is meant for the one able to replace the seal.
I don’t know the nature of the seal or what it was protecting. Without doubt, though, the seal has been breached.
The source of the breach, while not the specific cause activating this beacon, is self-evident.
“Oh, now wait a minute,” Cara said, standing, backing away as if she had released a deadly plague from the black quilting, “it isn’t my fault this time.” She pointed down at it. “You told me to, this time.”
The translucent statue Cara had touched before now stood in the center of its unfolded black quilted wrapping.
It was the same statue: a statue of Kahlan.
The statue’s left arm was pressed to its side, the right arm was raised, pointing. The statue, in an hourglass shape, looked as if it were made of transparent amber, allowing them to see inside.
Sand trickled out of the top half of the hourglass, through the narrowed waist, into the bottom of the full dress of the Mother Confessor.
The sand was still trickling down, just as it had been the last time Richard had seen the thing. At that time, the top half had been more full than the bottom half. Now, the top held less sand than the bottom.
Kahlan’s face had gone ashen.
When he’d first seen it, Richard wouldn’t have needed Nicci to tell him how dangerous such a thing was. He hadn’t wanted any of them to touch it. When they had first come across it, in a recess of rock beside the trail, looking almost like part of the rock itself, the thing was opaque, with a dull, dark surface, yet it was clearly recognizable as Kahlan. It was lying on its side.
Cara wasn’t pleased to find such a thing and didn’t want to leave a representation of Kahlan lying about for anyone to find and to pick up for who-knew-what. Cara snatched it up, then, even though Richard started to yell at her to leave such a thing be.
When she picked it up, it started turning translucent.
In a panic, Cara set it back down.
That was when the right arm had lifted and pointed east.
That was when they could begin to see through the thing, to see the sand inside trickling down.
The implied danger of the sand running out had them all upset. Cara wanted to pick it up again and turn it over, to stop the sand from falling. Richard, not knowing anything about such an object and doubting that so simple a solution would have any beneficial effect, hadn’t allowed Cara to touch it again. He had piled rocks and brush around it so no one else would know it was there. Obviously, that hadn’t worked.
He knew now that Cara’s touch had nothing to do with what was happening, except to initiate the warning, so he thought to confirm his original belief. “Cara, put it down.”
“Down?”
“On its side—like you wanted to do the last time—to see if that will stop the sand.”
Cara s
tared at him for a moment and then used the toe of her boot to tip the figure over on its side.
The sand continued to run as if it still stood upright.
“How can the sand do that?” Jennsen asked, sounding quite shaken. “How can the sand still fall—how can it fall sideways?”
“You can see it?” Kahlan asked. “You can see the sand falling?”
Jennsen nodded. “I sure can, and I have to tell you, it’s giving my goose bumps goose bumps.”
Richard could only stare at her staring at the statue of Kahlan lying on its side. If nothing else, the sand running sideways through the statue had to be magic. Jennsen was a pillar of Creation, a hole in the world, a pristinely ungifted offspring of Darken Rahl. She should not be able to see magic.
And yet, she was seeing it.
“I have to agree with the young lady,” Sabar said. “That’s even more frightening than those big black birds that I’ve seen circling for the last week.”
Kahlan straightened. “You been seeing—”
When he heard Tom’s urgent warning yell, Richard rose up in a rush, drawing his sword in one swift movement. The unique sound of ringing steel filled the night air.
The magic did not come out with the sword.
Chapter 14
Kahlan ducked to the side, out of harm’s way, as Richard pulled his sword free. The distinctive ring of steel being drawn in anger fused with Tom’s warning yell still echoing through the surrounding hills to send a flash of fright tingling across her flesh. As she stared out into the empty blackness of the surrounding night, her instinct was to reach for her own sword, but she had packed it in the wagon rather than wear it, so as not to raise suspicions about who they might be—women in the Old World did not carry weapons.
By the light of the fire, Kahlan could clearly see Richard’s face. She had seen him draw the Sword of Truth countless times and in a variety of situations, from that very first time when Zedd, after giving him the sword, commanded him to draw it and Richard tentatively pulled it from its scabbard, to times he pulled it free in the heat of battle, to times like this when he drew it suddenly in defense.