Verna frowned at the old sorceress. “You mean use the journey book?”
Adie gave a single, firm nod. “Yes. Ask her.”
Verna was skeptical. “Being here in the palace it’s hardly likely that she would look in her journey book for a message from me.”
“Maybe she not be in the palace,” Adie said. “Perhaps the two of them had to leave for some sudden, important reason and she already sent you a message in the journey book.”
“How in the world could the two of them leave the palace?” Verna asked. “We’re surrounded by the army of the Imperial Order.”
Adie shrugged. “It not be impossible. I can see with my gift, not my eyes. It be dark last night. Maybe in the dark they had to slip away for some reason. Maybe it be important and they didn’t have time to tell us.”
“You could do that?” Cara asked. “You could go out in the dark and make it through the enemy?”
“Of course.”
Verna was already thumbing through her journey book. As she had expected, it was completely blank. “There is no message.” She tucked the small book back behind her belt. “I’ll try your suggestion, though, and write Ann a message. Perhaps she will look in her journey book and reply.”
With a flourish of his cape, Nathan once again started away. “Before we go off to look elsewhere I want to check the tomb again.”
“Post a guard up here,” Cara called back to the soldiers. “The rest of you come with us.”
Already some distance off down the hall, Nathan turned down a stairway. The rest of them all followed behind, their footsteps echoing as they hurried to catch up. Nathan, Cara, Adie, Verna, and the soldiers bringing up the rear all descended down to the next level.
The walls of the lower level were stone block, rather than marble. In places they were stained by centuries of water seeping through. The seepage left behind yellowish formations that made the stone look as if it were melting.
They soon enough arrived at stone that really had melted.
Nathan came to a halt before the opening to Panis Rahl’s tomb. The tall prophet, his face grim and drawn, stared past melted stone into the tomb. It was the fourth time he had returned to look into the tomb and this time it looked no different than on previous visits.
Verna was worried about the man. While he was worried and wanted to find answers, there was a kind of rage simmering just below the surface. She had never seen him like this before. The only person she could think of who had the same quality of quiet, bottled fury that could make her heart race was Richard. Such focused anger had to be, she thought, a Rahl quality.
What ever doors had once guarded the crypt had been replaced with a kind of white stone intended to seal the large tomb. It appeared to have been hastily constructed, but it hadn’t succeeded in halting the strange conditions overcoming Panis Rahl’s tomb.
Inside, fifty-seven cold torches rested in ornate gold brackets. Nathan cast out a hand, using magic to light several of them. As they burst into flame the walls of the crypt came alive with flickering light that reflected off the polished pink granite of the vaulted room. Beneath each of the torches was a vase meant to hold flowers. By the fifty-seven torches and vases, Verna guessed that Panis Rahl must have been fifty-seven when he died.
A short pillar in the center of the cavernous room supported the coffin itself, making it look as if it floated above the floor of white marble. The gold-enshrouded coffin glowed softly in the wavering, warm light of the four torches. The way the walls were covered in polished crystalline granite that ran up and completely across the vaulting, Verna imagined that when all the torches around the room were lit the coffin must glow in golden glory as it floated all by itself in the center of the room.
Words carved in the ancient language of High D’Haran covered the sides of the coffin. Cut into the granite beneath the torches and gold vases, an endless ribbon of words in the same nearly forgotten language ringed the room. The deeply incised letters shimmered in the torchlight, almost making them look as if they were lit from within.
What ever was causing the white stone that had once blocked the entrance to the tomb to melt was beginning to affect the room itself, although not to the same extent. Verna suspected that the white stone used to wall over the entrance was a stopgap, a sacrificial substance deliberately selected to draw and absorb the invisible force responsible for the trouble. Now that the white stone was almost all melted away those forces were beginning to attack the tomb itself.
The stone slabs of the walls and floor hadn’t melted or cracked, but they were just beginning to distort, as if they were being subjected to great heat or pressure. Verna could see that the joints between the ceiling and walls out in the hall were splitting open under the pressure of the deformation from within the room itself. What ever was causing such an event, it was obvious that it was not a construction defect, but rather some kind of external force.
Nicci had said that she wanted to see the tomb because she thought she knew why it was melting. Unfortunately, she hadn’t revealed the nature of her suspicion. There was no sign that she and Ann had visited the tomb.
Verna was impatient to find both women so that the whole mystery could be solved. She couldn’t imagine what the trouble with the tomb of Richard’s grandfather could be, or how much worse it would get, but she didn’t think it would turn out to be anything good. Nor did she think that there was much time left to answer the riddle—any part of it.
“Lord Rahl,” a voice called.
They all turned back. A messenger came to a halt not far away. All the messengers wore white robes trimmed around the neck and down the front with a design of intertwined purple vines.
“What is it?” Nathan asked.
Verna thought that as long as she lived she would never get used to hearing people call Nathan “Lord Rahl.”
The man bowed briefly. “There is a delegation from the Imperial Order waiting on the other side of the drawbridge.”
Nathan blinked in surprise. “What do they want?”
“They want to speak to Lord Rahl.”
Nathan glanced to Cara and then Verna. Both were just as surprised as he.
“It could be a trick,” Adie said.
“Or a trap,” Cara added.
Nathan’s face bent into a sour expression. “What ever it is, I think I’d better go look into it.”
“I’m going, too,” Cara said.
“As am I,” Verna added.
“We’ll all go,” Nathan said as he started away.
Verna and the small clutch of people with her followed Nathan out of the grand entrance of People’s Palace and into the bright late-afternoon sunlight. Long shadows cast by the towering columns cascaded down the hillside of steps before them. In the distance, across the expanse of grounds, the great outer wall stood at the edge of the plateau. Men patrolled a walkway between crenellated battlements along the top of the massive wall.
It had been a long journey up from the tombs deep within the palace and they were all winded. Verna shaded her eyes with a hand as they descended the grand stairs in the wake of the long-legged prophet. Guards posted on each of the expansive landings saluted the Lord Rahl with a
fist to their hearts. There were greater numbers of soldiers in the distance patrolling the broad sweep of grounds leading to the outer wall.
The stairs ended in a broad area of bluestone that took them to a roadway winding up from around the side where stables and carriages would be. Tall cypress trees lined the short road as it led toward the outer walls.
Beyond the gates through the massive wall the road was less grand as it followed the sheer walls of the plateau down in a series of switchbacks. Each turn gave the silent company an unbroken view of the Imperial Order spread out far below.
The drawbridge was guarded by hundreds of troops of the First File. These were all well-trained, heavily armed soldiers committed to insuring that no one came up the road to assault the People’s Palace. There was little chance of that, though. The road was too narrow to mount any kind of meaningful attack. In such tight confines a few dozen good men could hold off an entire army. More than that, though, the drawbridge was up. The sheer drop was dizzying. It was too far across for assault ladders or ropes with grappling hooks. Without the bridge down no one could cross the chasm and approach the palace.
Beyond the drawbridge a small delegation waited. By their simple dress they looked to be messengers. Verna did see a few dozen lightly armed soldiers, but they remained well back from the messengers so as not to appear threatening.
Nathan, his cloak buttoned back on one shoulder even though it was a cold day, came to a halt at the edge of the chasm, feet spread, fists on his hips, looking imposing and commanding.
“I am Lord Rahl,” he announced to the party across the drop. “What do you want?”
One of the men, a slender fellow wearing a simple tunic of darkly dyed leather, shared a look with his comrades and then stepped a little closer to his side of the brink.
“His Excellency, Emperor Jagang, has sent me with a message for the D’Haran people.”
Nathan glanced around at the others behind him. “Well, I’m Lord Rahl, so I speak for the D’Haran people. What is the message?”