Chainfire (Sword of Truth 9)

“What is this place?” Ann asked.

Tom shrugged apologetically. “I’m afraid I have no idea. I didn’t even know this was here until just a little while ago when Nathan showed me where I could find him. He told me to send you down just as soon as you got here. He was pretty insistent about it. He doesn’t want anyone knowing this place is here. He wanted me to stand lookout and keep any people away from the graveyard, although I really don’t think anyone ever comes out here anymore, especially at night. The Bandakaran people aren’t the kind to go looking for an adventure.”

“Unlike Nathan,” Ann muttered. She patted Tom’s muscled arm. “Thank you, my boy. Best do as Nathan said and stand watch. I’ll go down and see what this is all about.”

“We’ll both go,” Jennsen said.

Chapter 11

Driven by worried curiosity, Ann immediately started down the dusty steps. Jennsen followed close on her heels. A landing turned them to the right and down another flight. At a third landing, a long run of stairs turned to the left. The dusty stone walls were uncomfortably close together. The ceiling hunkered low, even for Ann; Jennsen had to crouch. It felt to Ann like she was being swallowed down though a moldering gullet into the graveyard’s belly.

At the bottom of the steps she halted to stare in disbelief. Jennsen let out a low whistle. Beyond was not a dungeon, but a strange, twisting room unlike any Ann had ever seen. The stone walls zigged and zagged at odd angles, each of its own design and independently of the others. Plastering covered some of the stone walls. In a series of the convoluted angles, the whole room snaked off into the distance, disappearing around projections and pointed corners.

The place had a strange orderly disorder about it that Ann found somewhat unsettling. Dark niches here and there in the plastered walls were surrounded with faded blue symbols and decorations that had flaked off in places. There were words as well, but they were too old and dull to be legible without careful study. Bookshelves as well as ancient wooden tables, all layered in dirt, sat in several places up against the angled walls.

Dead-still cobwebs, heavy with dust, hung everywhere like drapes meant to decorate the room beneath the graves. Dozens of candles sat on tables and in some of the empty niches, giving the whole place a soft, otherworldly glow, as if all the dead above Ann’s head must periodically descend to this place to discuss matters important only to the deceased, and to welcome new members into their eternal order.

Beyond the diaphanous curtains of dust-choked cobwebs, amongst four massive tables that had been dragged together, stood Nathan. Disorderly stacks of books were piled high all around him on the tables.

“Ah, there you are,” Nathan called from his book fort.

Ann cast a sidelong glance at Jennsen.

“I had no idea that this place was down here,” the young woman said in answer to the question that remained unasked on Ann’s tongue. Points of candlelight danced in her blue eyes. “I didn’t even know this place existed.”

Ann looked around again. “I doubt anyone in the last few thousand years knew this place existed. I wonder how he found it.”

Nathan snapped a book shut and placed it on a pile behind him. His straight white hair brushed his broad shoulders as he turned back. His hooded, dark azure eyes fixed on Ann.

Ann caught the unspoken meaning in Nathan’s gaze. She turned to Jennsen. “Why don’t you go up and wait with Tom, my dear. It can be a lonely job standing watch in a graveyard.”

Jennsen looked disappointed, but seemed to understand their need to be left to their business. She flashed a smile. “Sure. I’ll be right up top if you need anything.”

As the sound of Jennsen’s footsteps on the stone stairs dwindled away into a distant, echoing whisper, Ann struck a weaving course through the vails of cobwebs.

“Nathan, what in the world is this place?”

“No need to whisper,” he said. “See how the walls turn at all those odd angles? It cuts the echo.”

Ann was a little surprised to hear that he was right. Usually, the echo in stone rooms was annoying, but this odd twisting room had the hush of the dead.

“There’s something strangely familiar about the shape of this place.”

“Concealment spell,” the prophet said, offhandedly.

Ann frowned. “What?”

“The configuration of the whole thing is in the form of a concealment spell.” He gestured to each side when he saw the puzzled look she gave him. “It’s not the layout of the entire place, the placement of rooms and the course of the various halls and passageways—like at the People’s Palace—that is the spell-form, but rather it’s the precise line of the walls themselves that make up the spell-form, as if someone drew the spell large on the ground and then simply built the walls touching right against that line before hollowing out the middle. Because the walls are a uniform thickness, that means that the outside of the walls are also the shape of the spell-form, so that tends to reinforce the whole thing. Quite clever, actually.”

For such a spell to work, it had probably been drawn in blood and with the aid of human bones. There would have been an ample supply of those at hand.

“Someone certainly went to a lot of trouble,” Ann said as she appraised the space again. This time she began to recognize some of the shapes and angles in opposition. “What exactly is this place used for?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted with a sigh. “I don’t know if these books were meant to be buried with the dead for all time, or they were being hidden, or there was some other purpose.” Nathan beckoned with his hand. “This way. Let me show you something.”

Ann followed him through several of the zigzags, around turns, and past

yet more shelves lined with dusty books, until they reached an area of niches three high to each side.

Nathan leaned an elbow against the wall. “Look there,” he said as he pointed a long finger downward, indicating one of the low, arched openings in the stone wall.

Ann stooped and peered inside. It contained a body.

All that was left were bones clothed in dusty tatters of robes. A leather belt circled the waist while a strap crossed over one shoulder. Skeletal arms were folded over the chest. Gold chains hung around the neck. Ann could see by the glint of light off the medallion on one of the chains that Nathan must have lifted it for a look, and in so doing his fingers had cleaned off the dust.

“Any idea who he is?” she asked as she straightened and folded her hands before herself.

Nathan leaned down close to her.

“I believe he was a prophet.”

“I thought there was no need to whisper.”

He arched an eyebrow as he straightened his frame to its considerable height. “There are a number of other people interred here.” He flicked a hand off toward the darkness. “Back that way.”

Ann wondered if they could all be prophets as well. “And the books?”

Nathan leaned down again, and whispered again. “Prophecy.”

She frowned and looked back the way they had come. “Prophecy? You mean all of them? Those are all books of prophecy?”

“Most of them.”

Excitement bubbled up through her. Books of prophecy were invaluable. They were the rarest of jewels. Such books could offer guidance, provide answers they needed, spare them futile endeavors, fill in gaps in their knowledge. Perhaps more than at any other time in history, they needed those answers. They needed to know more about the final battle in which Richard was supposed to lead them.

As of yet they had not discovered when this battle was to take place. With the frustrating vagary of prophecy, it could yet be many years off. For that matter, it was even possible that it was not to take place until Richard was an old man. With all the difficulties they had faced in the past several years, they could only hope that it was still many years off and they would have time to prepare. Prophecy could help with that.