“Thank you,” Nicci said. After a moment’s consideration she added, “It is a pretty nightdress, it’s just that it’s the wrong color for me, that’s all. How about if after I’m dressed I return the color to the nightdress and you can have it.”
Rikka’s expression turned suspicious. “Me? I don’t know if—”
“It would look beautiful on you. Honest. The pink color would go well with your skin tones.”
Rikka looked a bit flustered and uncertain. “Really?”
Nicci nodded. “It would be perfect for you. I’d like you to have it.”
Rikka hesitated a moment. “Well, I’ll think about it,” she finally said.
“I’ll clean it and make sure the color is just the right shade of pink for you.”
Rikka smiled. “Thanks.”
Nicci wished that Richard could have been there to see the small smile that was such a great risk for a Mord-Sith. He would have understood that such a seemingly tentative step was really a rather big shift for such a woman. Nicci realized, too, that it warmed her own heart to see such a positive, if tiny, step back toward the simple joys of life.
She comprehended at seeing Rikka’s smile how Richard must feel at such things.
As a yet larger realization dawned on her, she almost laughed out loud. Richard would not merely have appreciated Rikka’s growth, he would also have seen Nicci—Death’s Mistress—learning herself how to connect another person with the joy of life, if only in a small matter. She hadn’t even realized that she and Rikka had just taken a step together. Nicci couldn’t imagine how Richard must have felt to have brought her back from the dark existence she had lived for her whole life.
For just an instant, she had a glimpse, a vision, of life through Richard’s eyes. It was a staggeringly joyous perspective, a view of how each person’s choices could make their own life better. It was a vision of the possible, of how things could and should be.
How she missed him. She would have given anything at that moment just to see his smile, that smile that seemed to reflect all that was good and decent. She missed him so much that she thought she might burst into tears.
Rikka cast Nicci a sidelong glance. “Are you all right? The witch woman didn’t do you any lasting harm, did she? You look a little, I don’t know…distressed.”
Nicci dismissed the concern with a flick of a hand and changed the subject. “Did you find Rachel?”
As they emerged from a stone room lined with tapestries of country scenes and into a broad hall with wood-paneled walls, the Mord-Sith gave Nicci an unreadable look. “No. Early this morning Chase came back and told us that he found her tracks outside the Keep. He went off looking for her.”
Rachel was another of those connections back to the simple joys of life for Rikka. Nicci knew that Rikka was quite fond of the girl, even though she never came close to admitting it.
“I don’t know what in the world could have gotten into her,” Zedd said back over his shoulder as he led them around a corner and into a narrower hallway. “It’s just not like her to run off.”
“Do you think it could have anything to do with Six being here?” Nicci suggested. “Maybe she’s responsible.”
Rikka shook her head. “Chase said that Rachel’s tracks are all alone. He said that he didn’t see any of Six’s tracks.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Cara asked Nicci.
“You mean about the lesson Richard gave us one time about tracks?”
Cara nodded. “He talked about magic being able to hide tracks.”
“True enough,” Zedd put in. “But Rachel disappeared before Six showed up. If Six were trying to hide her tracks with some sort of magic, what would be the point of hiding her own tracks if she didn’t hide Rachel’s as well?”
Nicci halted abruptly. She turned back to the opening they had just passed through. A gilded pillar stood to each side of the small portal in the passageway. The pillars held up a stout beam with symbols carved in it.
She frowned at the pillars. “Wasn’t there a shield there, before?”
Zedd’s dark look told her that she was right. As he started away again they all rushed to catch up. At the end of the hall, he turned down a short passageway to the right that led to a spiral stairway.
Compared with some of the grand staircases in the Keep, the spiral stairs were small, but compared with typical spiral stairs, these were remarkable. They were wide enough for two people to walk side by side in the center of the tread, where its run was comfortable and a proper relation to the rise. The stairwell was so large, though, that the outer end of each wedge of tread would have required a person to take several steps before reaching each leading edge. The stairs also wandered with an odd twist, winding downward in an oblong corkscrew. The whole thing was disorienting and required her to pay attention lest she trip and fall on the unconventional configuration. As they descended she was able at last to see that the stairs were designed so as to make their way around and then under a formation of rock veined with sparkling minerals.
At the bottom of the stairs a short passageway spilled into the familiar split in the mountain that separated the rooms of the containment field from the bedrock of the mountain itself. This was very near the place where the witch woman had caught them unexpectedly. Nicci thought that the halls felt especially quiet after the violation of the witch woman roaming unfettered through them. Knowing as much as she did about shields, she didn’t think that such a thing should have been possible. The wizards who had created this place and its defenses would certainly have made provisions to protect against all forms of magic, including that of a witch woman.
“Here,” Zedd announced as he came to a halt. “This is where it first appeared.”
He gestured up at the precisely fit stone blocks of the wall opposite the raw, carved-out, natural granite wall of the mountain itself.
Nicci looked along the length of the wall and noticed dark stains that didn’t look natural. She scanned dozens of feet up along the rise of stone, picking out here and there the same dark patches. It seemed as if something might be weeping out of the stone itself.
“What is it?” she asked.
Zedd swiped a finger through one of the dark places. He held the finger up before her.
“Blood.”
Nicci blinked. She stared at the thick, wet, red substance on his finger. She looked back at the wizard’s eyes.
“Blood?”
He nodded solemnly. “Blood.”
“Real blood?”
“Real blood,” he confirmed.
“Blood from some kind of animals?” Nicci remembered all the bats that had fled through these very halls, driven before the witch woman. “Maybe the bats?”
“Human blood,” the wizard said.
Nicci was momentarily struck speechless. She looked at Cara.
“Yes, we’re sure,” the Mord-Sith said in answer to the unspoken question.
“I give up,” Nicci finally said. “What is human blood doing oozing out of the stone of this wall?”
“Not just this wall here in this hallway,” Zedd said. “It’s leaking out of stone in different places all over the Keep. There seems to be no pattern to where it appears.”
Nicci looked again at some of the thick drips of blood running down the wall. She didn’t want to touch it.
“Well,” she finally said, “this certainly qualifies as trouble. I just don’t know what kind of trouble.” She turned her attention back to Zedd. “Do you have any idea what it means?”
“It means that the Keep itself is bleeding, in a way. It means that it’s dying.”
Nicci could only blink at what she’d just heard. “Dying?”