Chainfire (Sword of Truth 9)

“No, it eats the words, not the paper.”

“Then it’s…what? Some kind of tiny little worm that eats ink?”

Annoyed at the interruption, Zedd halted his pacing to stare at her. “Eats…? No, no, not in that way. This is something of magic. A tricky little twist of something clever. If I recall correctly it was referred to as a prophetic worm because it could eat away at the branches of prophecy, much like wood bore worms eat away at a tree. It starts with related prophecy, either in subject or in chronology, like wood bores might infest a particular branch. Once established this kind of worm begins eating away the tree of prophecy. In this case, the branch is the one having to do with the time since Richard was born.”

Rikka looked genuinely fascinated and at the same time distraught. She straightened and tilted her head toward him. “Really? Magic can do such a thing?”

Zedd, holding his elbow in one hand and his chin in the fingertips of the other, made a low sound deep in his throat. “I think so. Maybe. I’m not sure.” He heaved an impatient, irritable sigh. “I’m trying to remember. I only saw the reference once. I can’t recall if it was a theory I read or if it was the spell itself, or if it was only a suggestion in a book of records, or if it…Wait—”

He stared up at the beamed ceiling as he squinted with the effort of recollection. “It was before Richard was born, I’m sure of that much. I remember that I was a young man. That would mean that it had to be when I was here. That much makes sense. And if I was here…”

Zedd’s head came back down. “Dear spirits.”

Rikka leaned in. “What? Dear spirits what?”

“I remember,” Zedd whispered, his eyes going wide. “I remember where I saw it.”

“Where?”

Shoving his sleeves higher up his bony arms, Zedd headed for the door. “Never mind. I will see to it. You just go about your patrolling, or something. I’ll be back later.”

Chapter 33

With the sun going down, the air was beginning to cool as Zedd raced down the broad rampart. The huge stones of the crenellated wall radiated heat they had stored from the hot sun beating down on them all day. The city far below the mountainside was melting into a sea of gloom, while pink rays of the departing sun caressed the tops of some of the tallest towers of the Keep high overhead. The dying light of dusk had brought a still quiet touched only by the distant whisper of the cicadas.

At an intersection of ramparts, Zedd ran around the corner to the right. Unlike the rampart at the edge of the Keep, which overlooked a drop-off of thousands of feet down the sheer face of the mountain, the narrower interior bastion wall had precipitous drop-offs to both sides, yet within the massive complex that gave a clear view of nearly windowless walls descending down into the darkness. Courtyards far below provided the refreshment of open air directly off some of the lower floors within the Keep. Zedd imagined that people who in the past had worked in the lower reaches of the Keep must have appreciated being able to step outside from time to time.

As he ran down the narrow bastion path, bridges to various towers crossed overhead. Soaring up before him at the end of the pathway was an immense, imposing wall with vertical rows of projecting keystones for interior floors. There was a grand, double entrance door at the base of that looming wall with designs above reliefs of columns carved in the wall beneath the arched stone lintel, but Zedd instead took to an opening in the side rail to take the steps down. The seemingly eternal flight of stairs descended down a long, sloping lip built into the side of the clifflike bastion wall.

He needed to go down into the lower reaches of the Keep, deep within the mountain, to places where no one ever went.

To places no one but he even knew existed.

The stone banister on the open, exposed side of the stairs wasn’t very high and as a consequence the descent down the straight run of hundreds of feet of stairs, with no landings, was a harrowing experience. To his left rose the carefully fit stone blocks of the imposing bastion wall, to his right was a drop-off that would make any self-respecting cliff proud. Going down that monumental run of stairs always made Zedd feel tiny. He could see little more at the bottom than the jagged formation of dark rock at the base of one of the round towers rising up from the small courtyard.

Partway down, Zedd realized that he heard footsteps racing to catch him. He stopped and turned. It was Rikka.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He called up to her.

The wind rising up the narrow canyon formed by the stone walls all around lifted his hair and his robes. It almost felt as if his bony frame might lift right off the stairs and be carried away like a dried leaf on an updraft.

Rikka came to a panting halt a few steps above him. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“It looks like you’re not doing what I told you to do.”

“Let’s go,” she said, swishing her hand to urge him on. “I’m coming with you.”

“I told you that I would see to this. I told you to go patrol or something.”

“This is trouble that concerns Lord Rahl.”

“It’s just some information in old books that I need to check into.”

“Chase and Rachel are leaving early in the morning. You would be in with Rachel, telling her a story and tucking her in, unless there was something going on that has you really worried. This is about Lord Rahl. If it has you worried, then it has me worried. I’m going with you.”

Zedd didn’t want to stand out on the open steps arguing with her, so he didn’t. He turned and raced downward, holding up his robes in both fists so that he wouldn’t trip and fall. Besides going on seemingly forever, the steps were frighteningly steep. A fall so high up on the steps could easily be fatal.

Finally reaching the bottom, Zedd stopped on the first stepping stone and turned back. “Stay on the stones.”

Rikka glanced around at the expanse of viny groundcover. Beyond were walls on two sides that rose up for hundreds of feet without interruption. Behind was the stairs and bastion wall. To the right was a jutting mass of bedrock from which the tower rose.

“Why?” She asked as she followed Zedd across the stepping stones.

“Because I said so.”

He didn’t feel like spending time explaining traps of magic. Were she to step off the stones, the shields would not just warn her, but prevent her from going where she shouldn’t be. Still, for those not possessing the proper power, it was always best to stay completely away from shields whenever possible.

If the shields failed to stop intruders from crossing this secluded courtyard, the vines would snare them. While the victim struggled to escape, these particular vines would tangle around the ankles. Stimulated by struggling, the vines rapidly sprouted wicked thorns that penetrated into bone where they then anchored themselves. Freeing anyone trapped in the vines was a painful, bloody affair and, more often than not, fatal. Defenses at the Wizard’s Keep were not hesitant in their purpose.

“Those vines are moving.” Rikka snatched his sleeve. “Those vines are moving like a nest of snakes.”

Zedd scowled back over his shoulder. “Why do you think I told you to stay on the stepping stones?”

He lifted a lever and pulled open the second round-topped door he came to and ducked inside. He could feel Rikka practically breathing down his neck. Reaching blindly in the darkness his bony fingers found a smooth sphere in the bracket to the right. As he passed his hand over the glossy surface it began to glow with a greenish light. The entry room was small, made of simple, undecorated stone block walls. Overhead was a beam and plank ceiling. Against the wall to the right was a single, short slab of slate built in to provide a bench in case the stairs had left any visitor in need of a brief rest

. In both of the other two walls were two dark passageways going off in separate directions.

Along the wall above the slab bench were dozens of brackets, over half of them holding spheres that glowed faintly with the same color of greenish light as the one he had first touched. Zedd lifted one of the spheres from a bracket. It was heavy, made from solid glass, but there were other elements fused into this glass and those elements responded to the stimulus of the gift. In his hand the greenish cast changed to a warmer yellow glow. He let a spark of his gift lift through the sphere and it brightened, throwing harsh shadows down the two halls ahead of them.

With a sharp jab of a bony finger, he sat Rikka on the bench. “This is as far as you go.”

Grim determination was etched on her face as her blue eyes watched him. “Something strange is happening with the books of prophecy. You’ve been fretting over those books for days, now. You haven’t eaten or slept. But worse by far is that the prophecies that are vanishing are about Lord Rahl.”

It was an observation, not a question. He’d thought that his turmoil had been all internal. She had been quietly paying more attention than he’d given her credit for. Or maybe he had just been too distracted to notice her paying attention. In either case, it was not a good sign that he had been so preoccupied that he hadn’t even been aware of her marking how absorbed and unsettled he’d been.

“Near as I can tell, you are right in that a great many of those vanished prophecies are about Richard, but I don’t think they all are. From what I have been able to determine, however, they all have to do with prophecy pertaining to a time after he was born. That doesn’t mean that they are all about him, though. The blank places in the books are extensive. Since I can’t remember what those blank places said, there obviously is no way to tell what they were about, making it impossible to know the subject individual of the missing prophecies.”

“But from what you can piece together they mostly have something to do with Lord Rahl.”

This, too, had not been a question, but a statement of observation, or, at least, reasoned speculation. This was a Mord-Sith asking questions that revolved around the issue of the safety of her Lord Rahl. Zedd could see that she was in no mood for any evasive explanations.