Warheart: Sword of Truth: The Conclusion (Sword of Truth 15)

He threw open the double doors and stumbled to a stop, Cassia right behind him, both out of breath.

The silver face rising above the silver pool in the well smiled pleasantly. “Master, you wish to travel?”

Richard swallowed, hands on his knees, catching his breath. He straightened.

“Yes, we both need to travel. It’s urgent. We need to travel.”

“Come,” the sliph said, “and we will travel. You will be pleased.”

Richard hopped up on the stone wall surrounding her well. “You must not tell anyone where we’re going,” he said as he helped pull Cassia up beside him. “No matter who asks, you must not let them know where you are taking us.”

“Master,” the sliph said with a coy smile, “you know I never reveal anything about my clients to anyone.”

CHAPTER

54

Kahlan paced down the length of the library, past rows of shelves holding books of prophecy, a thumbnail held tightly between her front teeth as her mind raced. She would look herself, if she knew where to look, but she wouldn’t even know where to start. She came to a halt and looked up when General Zimmer rushed into the room.

“Did you find him?”

He shook his head as he caught his breath. “I’m sorry, Mother Confessor, but no. I have men searching everywhere. No one has seen them.”

Nicci threw her arms up. “It doesn’t make any sense. He’s been missing most of the night. He said he was only going to be a few minutes. How could he simply vanish?”

Vale stepped forward hesitantly. “Could, well, could some of those half people have snuck in and snatched them?”

“There would at least have been blood from any such attack,” Nicci said in a quiet voice.

When she heard nothing, the sorceress glanced up from under her brow at the general.

The general’s face distorted with an uncomfortable expression. “All I can tell you is that none of the men has spotted so much as a drop of blood.”

“Have they spotted anything useful?”

“It’s an awfully big place, Mother Confessor,” the big D’Haran said, clearly uneasy that he had no good news. “There are a thousand places to look.”

Kahlan went back to pacing. “He said he was only going to be gone a few minutes. I felt like something wasn’t right. I had a feeling. I should have trusted that feeling and not have let him go.” She gestured with a hand, angry at herself, blaming herself. “It’s just that he rushed off so fast.”

Kahlan pressed her lips tight for a moment. “He needs to be healed. He doesn’t have much time left before that poison kills him.”

She was on the verge of panic, remembering what it was like seeing him when he was dead. Her whole world had ended. Now, he was near death again from that taint of death within him. Nicci could have removed it. But now he was gone.

Nicci, leaning against a heavy table, watched Kahlan pace. “This is making me start to wonder why he wanted to stop to check on Regula.”

“What do you mean?” Kahlan asked without looking over.

“Richard is so honest that I never suspected he might be lying.”

Kahlan paused in her pacing and looked up. “You think he was lying?”

“At least not telling us the whole truth.” Nicci’s arms came unfolded as she stood up away from the table. “Do you think he had to stop there to check on the machine, talk to Regula alone, and it didn’t tell him anything he could understand? Since when has Richard been so easily stymied? Kahlan, that’s not just a mysterious omen machine. That’s Regula, the controller of the eternal now. It’s an underworld force that has been brought to life in this world, banished here because it’s so dangerous. Spirits sent it here to hide it from Sulachan in the underworld, but Sulachan found it, here, in this world. Richard knows all that.”

Kahlan rubbed her arms against the chill of her fears. “What do you think it told him?”

Nicci let her arms flop down against her sides. “Who knows. Regula knows everything that could happen, everything that will happen.” She looked up with a sudden thought. “We could go ask Regula what it told him.”

Kahlan shook her head. “I don’t know how. It only seems to talk to Richard. Besides, Richard wouldn’t want to know prophecy from the machine. Wasn’t that the point made in the scrolls–that he is the counter to prophecy through free will? He wouldn’t ask what was going to happen. For Richard, action is better than reaction. He would act.”

“Then that brings us right back to not knowing where he is.” Nicci went to one of the long mahogany tables and rested the fingertips of one hand on the polished top as she stared off in thought.

“Did he give any indication–anything at all–that might suggest where he was going?” General Zimmer asked. “Some kind of hint? It might not have seemed important at the time, but maybe he said something to indicate where he was going.”

Kahlan looked up at the big D’Haran general. She remembered him so well from when they were fighting in the war. In the mornings, when Captain Zimmer returned from a night of hunting with his men, he would bring Kahlan a string of ears from the enemy they had killed that night.

“Hunt him, Captain,” she said, deliberately reminding him of those special missions he was so good at.

He smiled at the memory and caught her meaning. “The men will keep looking. Don’t you worry–if he is in the palace, we will find him.”

Kahlan nodded as the man left to continue the search. Kahlan looked up suddenly and turned to Nicci.

“If he is in the palace.”

“What?”

“If they can’t find him, maybe it’s because he isn’t here in the palace.”

Vale frowned at the notion. “Mother Confessor, the entire pal

ace is surrounded by half people. He couldn’t take three steps out of here without them seeing him and jumping all over him. There’s no way he could leave the palace.”

Kahlan stood stiffly, considering it. “Of course there is.”

Nicci folded her arms as she stepped closer. “You think he may have gone somewhere in the sliph?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Then let’s go ask her,” Nicci said.

“Rikka, Nyda, take us on the shortest route to the room where the sliph’s well is located.”

Clapping fists to their hearts, they turned and started away, eager to find their Lord Rahl, happy that they now had a real clue as to what happened to Richard and Cassia.

“We’re lucky the sliph’s well room is in this section of the palace,” Rikka said.

“It could take hours to get there if it were at some distant part of the palace,” Nyda agreed. “We’re not far away from there.”

“That’s how he vanished so fast,” Kahlan said as she followed the two Mord-Sith, angry at herself for not realizing it sooner. “That’s why no one has seen him, I know it.”

“Where would he have gone?” Nicci asked. “And why? It doesn’t make any sense. All of our problems are here. Sulachan, Hannis Arc, and the entire Shun-tuk nation are right outside, surrounding the palace. That’s what Richard needed to deal with. There is nowhere for him to go that would get him any help.”

Kahlan couldn’t argue with that logic, so she didn’t.

It had to be that Richard had already left the palace in the sliph. The more Kahlan thought about it, the more it explained how he had vanished so fast and so completely. She was sure of it, but only the sliph could confirm it. Her thoughts raced as she tried to figure out why he would have left.

“He wouldn’t abandon us here,” Vale said. “Lord Rahl would die before he would abandon us.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Kahlan said under her breath.