Chainfire (Sword of Truth 9)

When Rikka had gone, Cara asked, “What evidence?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet.” Richard turned to Nicci. “Don’t forget what I told you before. You have to breathe in the sliph once we go under. At first you’ll want to hold your breath, but that just isn’t possible. Once we arrive and come up out of the sliph, you must let her out of your lungs and again breathe in the air.”

Nicci was looking more than a little nervous. Richard took her hand. “I’ll be with you, as will Cara. We’ve both done this before. I won’t let go of you. It’s hard to make yourself breathe in the sliph for the first time, but once you do, you will see that it’s quite a remarkable experience. It’s rapture to breathe the sliph.”

“Rapture,” Nicci repeated with more than just a little incredulity.

“Lord Rahl is right,” Cara said. “You’ll see.”

“Just remember,” Richard added, “when it ends you will not want to let go of the sliph and breathe air again—but you must. If you don’t, you’ll die. Do you understand?”

“Of course,” Nicci said with a nod.

“Come on then.” Richard started to climb up on the wall, pulling Nicci up with him.

“Where will we travel, Master?”

“I think we should go to the People’s Palace, in D’Hara. Do you know the place?”

“Of course. The People’s Palace is a central site.”

“A central site?”

If living quicksilver could be said to look puzzled by a question, the sliph looked puzzled. “Yes, a central site. Like this place here is a central site.”

Richard didn’t understand, but didn’t think it was relevant and so didn’t press the issue. “I see.”

“Why the People’s Palace,” Nicci asked.

Richard shrugged. “We have to go somewhere. We’ll be safe at the Palace. But more importantly, they have libraries there with rare ancient books. I’m hoping that maybe we can find something about Chainfire. Since the Sisters have Kahlan, I’m thinking that Chainfire might have something to do with some kind of magic.

“From what we’ve heard, the D’Haran army is somewhere in the vicinity on their way south. What’s more, the last time I saw Berdine, another Mord-Sith, was when I left her here in Aydindril, so she will probably be either close to our troops or the palace. I need her to help me translate some of the material from the books I’m bringing along. Besides that, she has Kolo’s journal and she may already know something helpful.”

He glanced at Cara. “Maybe we can see General Meiffert and see how things are going with the troops.”

Cara’s face lit with surprise and a broad grin.

Nicci nodded thoughtfully. “I guess all that makes sense, and I guess it’s as good a place as any. It gets you out of immediate danger and that’s what matters most right now.”

“All right, sliph,” Richard said, “we wish to travel to the People’s Palace in D’Hara.”

A liquid silver arm came up and slipped around all three of them. Richard felt the warm, undulating grip compressing to get a firm grasp on him. Nicci had his hand in a death grip.

“Lord Rahl?” Cara asked.

Richard held up the hand that wasn’t holding Nicci’s to halt the sliph before she could lift them into the well. “What?”

Cara bit her lip before finally speaking. “You’re holding Nicci’s hand. Will you hold my hand, too? I mean, I wouldn’t want the three of us to get separated.”

Richard tried not to smile at the worry on her face. Cara feared magic, even if she had already done this before.

“Sure,” Richard said as he took her hand. “I wouldn’t want us to get separated.”

A sudden thought struck him.

“Wait!” he said, stopping the sliph before she could start.

“Yes, Master?”

“Do you know a person named Kahlan? Kahlan Amnell, the Mother Confessor?”

“This name means nothing to me.”

Richard sighed in disappointment. He hadn’t really expected the sliph to know Kahlan. No one else did, either.

“Would you happen to know a place called the Deep Nothing?”

“I know several places in the Deep Nothing. Some have been destroyed, but some still exist. I can travel to them if you wish.”

Richard’s heart quickened in surprise. “Are any of these places in the Deep Nothing also a central site?”

“Yes, one of them,” the sliph said. “Caska, in the Deep Nothing, is a central site. Would you like to travel there?”

Richard glanced to both Nicci and Cara. “Do either of you know this place, Caska?”

Nicci shook her head.

Cara was frowning. “I think I remember hearing something about it when I was little. I’m sorry Lord Rahl, but I don’t remember exactly what—just that the name sounds familiar from old legends.”

“What do you mean, legends?”

Cara shrugged. “Old D’Haran legends…something about dream casters. Stories people told. Something about the history of D’Hara. It seems like Caska is a name from olden times.”

Olden times. Dream casters. Richard remembered that when he’d skimmed through some of the book Gegendrauss that he’d found back in the shielded room, he had seen something about casting dreams, but he hadn’t translated the passage. Even though Richard was the leader of the D’Haran Empire, he knew very little about the mysterious D’Hara.

Even if Cara didn’t know more, Richard still felt as if he had just taken a step closer to finding Kahlan.

“We wish to travel,” he said to the sliph. “We wish to travel to Caska, in the Deep Nothing.”

It had been a long time since Richard had traveled in the sliph and he felt a bit apprehensive. But his excitement that he was finally making connections to find the answers that had for so long eluded him swept away any concern.

“We travel to Caska, then,” the sliph said, her voice echoing around the stone room where once Kolo had died standing guard over her as the great war had come to an end. At least, everyone thought it had come to an end, but those ancient conflicts had not ended so easily and now they had again flared to life.

The arm lifted all three of them off the wall and plunged them down into the silver froth. Nicci’s grip on his hand tightened and she gasped in a breath before going under.

Chapter 60

With an arrow’s speed, Richard flew through the silken silence of the sliph, yet at the same time he glided with the slow grace of a raven riding the stilled currents above towering trees on a moonlit night. There was no heat, no cold. In the silence, sweet sounds filled his mind. His eyes beheld light and dark together in a single, spectral vision, while his lungs swelled with the sweet presence of the sliph as he breathed her into his soul.

It was rapture.

Abruptly, it ended.

Grainy darkness exploded in his sudden vision. There seemed to be blocky shapes all around as he broke the surface. Nicci’s hand gripped his in terror.

Breathe, the sliph told him.

Richard let out the sweet breath, emptying his lungs of the rapture. With a needful gasp, he sucked in the alien air. Cara, too, gasped in the hot, dusty air.

Nicci floated face down, rocking gently in the silver fluid.

Richard threw an arm over the stone wall at the side of the sliph, pulling Nicci with him. He took his bow off his back to get it out of his way and quickly set it against the outside of the wall. With the sliph’s help, he hopped up on the wall, and then with the sliph lifting her, pulled the dead weight of Nicci up enough to get her shoulders and head up into the warm, dark air.

Richard slapped her on the back. “Breathe, Nicci. Breathe. Come on, you have to let go of the sliph and breathe. Do it for me.”

At last she did. She gasped in the air, her arms flailing in terror at being confused and lost in such strange surroundings. Richard pulled her close as he helped her get her arms over the side and, panting, climb up on the wall.

&n

bsp; Brackets on the walls nearby held glass spheres, like back at the Keep, that glowed brighter as he climbed out of the well.

“What do you think this place is?” Cara asked as she peered around in the dim light.