“If you get confused again,” Cara said to him, “I’ll straighten you out.”
Zedd scowled at the woman. “How reassuring.”
“Well, Nicci made a long story of it,” Cara said, “but it’s not really all that complicated. Anyone should be able to see it—even you, Zedd.”
Zedd frowned. “What do you mean?”
Cara shrugged one shoulder. “We are the steel against steel. Lord Rahl is the magic against magic.”
To Cara, it was no more complicated than that. Nicci wondered if the Mord-Sith didn’t really grasp that she was only scratching the surface, or if she understood the entire concept better than anyone. Perhaps she was right and it really wasn’t any more complicated than that.
Zedd laid a hand gently on Nicci’s shoulder. It reminded her of Richard’s gentle touch.
“Well, despite what Cara says, this may be the death of us all. If it is to have a chance to work, though, we have a lot of work to do. Richard is going to need our help. You and I know a great deal about magic. Richard knows next to nothing.”
Nicci smiled to herself. “He knows more about it than you think he does. It was Richard who deciphered the taint in the Chainfire spell. None of us understood all that business about the language of symbols, but Richard picked it up on his own. By himself he learned to understand ancient drawings, designs, and emblems.
“I could never teach him anything about his gift, but he often surprised me with how much he grasped that was beyond the conventional understanding of magic. He taught me things I could never have imagined.”
Zedd was nodding. “He drives me crazy, too.”
Rikka, the other Mord-Sith living at the Wizard’s Keep, stuck her head in the doorway. “Zedd, I just thought you ought to know about something.” She pointed a finger skyward. “I was a few levels up and there must be some kind of broken window or something. The wind is making a strange noise.”
Zedd frowned. “What kind of noise?”
Rikka put her hands on her hips and stared at the floor, thinking it over. “I don’t know.” She looked up again. “It’s hard to describe. It reminded me a little of wind blowing through a narrow passage.”
“A howling noise?” Zedd asked.
Rikka shook her head. “No. More like the way it sounds out on the ramparts when the wind blows through the crenellations.”
Nicci glanced toward the windows. “It’s just dawn. I’ve been casting webs. The wind hasn’t come up yet.”
Rikka shrugged. “I don’t know what it could have been, then.”
“The Keep sometimes makes noises when it breathes.”
Rikka wrinkled her nose. “Breathes?”
“Yes,” the wizard said. “When the temperature changes, like now when the nights are getting colder, the air down in the thousands of rooms will move around. Forced into the constrictions of the passageways it sometimes moans through the halls of the Keep when there is no wind outside.”
“Well, I haven’t been here long enough to have experienced such a thing, but that must be it, then. The Keep must be breathing.” Rikka started away.
“Rikka,” Zedd called, waiting for her to halt. “What were you doing up there in that section anyway?”
“Chase is looking for Rachel,” Rikka said back over her shoulder. “I was just helping out. You haven’t seen her, have you?”
Zedd shook his head. “Not this morning. I saw her last night before she went off to bed.”
“All right, I’ll tell Chase.” Rikka peered into the room a moment and then leaned a hand against the doorway. “What’s that thing on the table, anyway? What are you three up to?”
“Trouble,” Cara said.
Rikka nodded knowingly. “Magic.”
“You have that right,” Cara said.
Rikka tapped the palm of her hand against the doorframe. “Well, I’d better go find Rachel before Chase finds her first and gives her a talking-to for going off exploring in such a place.”
“That child is a born Keep rat.” Zedd sighed. “Sometimes I think she knows the Keep as well as I do.”
“I know,” Rikka said. “I’ve been on patrol and have come across her in places I couldn’t believe. Once I thought for certain that she had to be lost. She insisted she wasn’t. I made her lead me back to prove it. She marched back to her room without ever making a wrong turn, then grinned up at me and said ‘See?’”
Smiling, Zedd scratched his temple. “I had a similar experience with her. Children are quick to learn such things. Chase encourages her to learn things, to know where she is so that she isn’t so easily lost. I guess, since I grew up here, that’s why I don’t get lost in the place.”
Rikka turned toward the hallway but then turned back when Zedd called her name.
“The wind noise?” He waggled a finger toward the ceiling. “You said it was up there?”
Rikka nodded.
“Do you mean the speckled hallway that runs past the row of libraries? The place with the sitting areas spaced along the hall outside the rooms?”
“That’s the place. I was checking the libraries for Rachel. She likes to look through books. As you said, it must be the Keep breathing.”
“The only problem is that that’s one of several areas where the Keep doesn’t tend to make any sound when it breathes. The dead ends off that hall divert the movement of air elsewhere, preventin
g enough air moving through that area fast enough to make much of a sound.”
“It might have been coming from farther away and I only thought it was in those halls.”
Zedd planted a fist on one bony hip as he considered. “And you say it sounded like a moaning sound?”
“Well, now that I think about it, it seemed more of a growl.”
Zedd’s brow creased. “A growl?” He crossed the thick carpet and poked his head out of the doorway, listening.
“Well, not a growl like an animal,” Rikka said. “More of a rolling rumble. Like I mentioned—it reminded me of the sound the wind makes going through the crenellations. You know, a rumbling, fluttering kind of sound.”
“I don’t hear anything,” Zedd muttered.
Rikka made a face. “Well, you can’t hear it way down here.”
Nicci met them at the doorway. “Then why do I feel something vibrating in the center of my chest?”
Zedd stared at Nicci for a moment. “Perhaps something to do with all the conjuring involving the box?”
Nicci shrugged. “Could be, I suppose. I’ve never dealt with some of those elements before. Much of it was new to me. There is no telling what some of the ancillary effects might be.”
“Do you remember when Friedrich accidentally set off that alarm?” he asked, turning to Rikka. She nodded. “Did it sound anything like that?”
Rikka shook her head adamantly. “Not unless you put the alarm under water.”
“The alarms are constructed magic.” Zedd rubbed his chin in thought. “You can’t put them under water.”
Cara spun her Agiel up into her fist. “Enough talk.” She pushed between them to make it through the doorway. “I say we go have a look.”
Zedd and Rikka followed after her. Nicci didn’t.
She gestured toward the box of Orden sitting on the table within the glowing web of light. “I’d better stay close.”
Besides watching over the box, she needed to study The Book of Life, along with other volumes, further. There were still parts of Ordenic theory that she hadn’t been able to fully understand. She was distracted by a number of unanswered questions. If she was eventually to be of any help to Richard she would need to know the answers to those questions.