He squinted at the statue of the man shielding his eyes. More than one thing about it seemed odd.
“It’s sitting at a funny angle on the shelf, don’t you think?” he asked, looking at the four faces watching him. “And I don’t think that it’s attached to the shelf so that it can’t be knocked off and broken. After all, how would it get knocked off a shelf set back in a niche like this?”
“What are you getting at?” Kahlan asked.
He looked over his shoulder in the direction the statue was looking with its hand shielding its eyes.
He frowned as he glanced over at Kahlan. “Do you see the direction he is looking?”
“I’m all turned around in here,” she admitted. “I’m not sure.”
Nicci was staring at the statue. “It’s looking to the southwest,” she said, half to herself.
Richard nodded. “Toward the Wizard’s Keep.”
He and Nicci shared a look of understanding.
The other thing he thought odd about the statue was that all the details looked thick. Richard had sculpted statues and he understood the process quite well. It wasn’t that these two were poorly made, but rather that the details looked too bulky to his eye.
With everyone dead and the cave collapsed and buried, Richard didn’t think that breaking the statue was going to be much of a problem. He pulled his knife from its sheath at his belt. Holding it by the blade, he used the handle like a hammer to whack the statue.
The clay shattered in an unexpected manner and a piece fell off. Where the broken piece had been, Richard saw the gleam of metal under the clay. He struck the statue half a dozen times, breaking the clay away to reveal that there was the same metal statue underneath, only properly detailed. The whole thing had been covered with clay slurry to encase it; that was why it looked too bulky to him.
“Why in the world would they make a statue like that?” Kahlan asked as she frowned up at Richard.
“If I’m right, to hide the sliph.”
He used his knife handle to hammer the other sculpture and it, too, shattered to reveal metal under the covering of clay. He reached in and broke off the remaining pieces, exposing the two metal sculptures of shepherds with their flocks.
“My gift doesn’t work,” he said to Nicci. “You try it.”
Nicci reached in and grasped one of the statues. They all glanced around the hallway, expecting something to happen, but the hallway remained silent and still.
He gestured to the other. “Try holding both.”
Nicci reached in and wrapped her hand around the other shepherd, so that she was holding one in each hand. They all looked around the silent hallway.
Still, nothing happened.
With a disappointed sigh, she let her hands slip off the little statues. “I can’t explain why there is metal under the clay, but it apparently isn’t a trigger mechanism for a shield. It must simply be an ancient oddity.”
They all stared in frustration at the small statues of shepherds, trying to imagine their purpose. Nothing about what the original builders of the sentinel village of Stroyza did was random or pointless. Everything had been carefully planned not according to what was happening and what they feared, but according to the things they knew of the star shift and the Twilight Count. It all had a purpose.
He was at a loss to understand what that purpose was.
Cassia gestured with her lantern. “Lord Rahl, I don’t think you are listening to the real meaning of the writing.”
Richard’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“It said ‘Let the shepherd guide you.’”
Richard opened his hands in bewilderment. “I know. Nicci tried it. Nothing happened.”
Cassia gave him a crafty smile. “She isn’t our shepherd. You are our shepherd, Lord Rahl. You are the one who guides us.”
“But my gift doesn’t work.”
She tipped her head at him in a meaningful way. “Maybe it isn’t looking for the gift. Maybe it’s looking for the shepherd.”
Richard stared at her for a moment, and then turned and grabbed both smooth metal statues.
He felt them both warm under his touch. The shelves began to shudder. The stone floor trembled. All the way around the niche, the wall began to crack in straight lines. Bits of stone flaked away from the ever-widening cracks as a section of the wall with the niche broke free and started to move in away from the hallway. The stone cracked and popped until the section of wall with the niche jolted free and swung back into a dark room.
“I don’t understand,” Richard said. “My gift doesn’t work.”
Nicci looked over at him. “You read the Cerulean scrolls, Richard. We’re dealing with forces here that transcend the gift.”
CHAPTER 41
Nicci slipped in first to provide light from the sphere she’d brought with her. Richard followed, ducking under the short opening so he wouldn’t hit his head. Kahlan did the same, staying close behind him. When the sorceress stepped into the room, a dozen light spheres in iron brackets around the outside of the circular room all brightened at her presence, illuminating the entire room with the same green luminescence common to light spheres.
There, in the center of the room, capped with a domed ceiling, was a short, circular stone wall. It looked like most of the other wells for the sliph that Richard had seen.
Kahlan slipped a hand around his biceps as she stared at the well in amazement. “You were right, Richard. Dear spirits, you were right.”
“It’s hard to believe this has been here for thousands of years,” Nicci said as she, too, stared at the well. “The way the room was sealed, it’s pretty clear that no one has seen this since it was built in the time of the great war.”
“Richard was right,” Kahlan said. “They lost the link to the knowledge of the past and none of them even knew it was here, right by the quarters for the gifted.”
Kahlan beamed with a bright smile as she gazed up at him. She was relieved that they weren’t trapped in the caves after all.
“This will get us to the People’s Palace,” she said. “As soon as we get there, Nicci will finally be able to get the poisonous touch of death out of you.”
Richard only smiled back. For now, he couldn’t let her know that he could never allow that to happen.
Cassia bent over the edge, holding the lantern high to have a look down inside. “I’ve seen this kind of well before, at the People’s Palace.”
“That’s right,” Richard said. “We’ve used that one before.”
Nicci leaned over the short wall beside Cassia, holding out the light sphere to see better down inside.
“No sliph,” she announced.
Richard knew they wouldn’t see the sliph yet. He stepped up beside Nicci. “We’ll have to wake her.”
“How do we do that?” Vale asked.
“I have to call her,” Richard said back over his shoulder. “I’ve done it before.”
“When your gift worked,” Kahlan reminded him.
Richard let out a deep sigh. “You’re right.” He gestured to Nicci. “Put down that sphere so you can help me. Add your gift to what I do and maybe together we can wake her.”
Richard leaned over the well and crossed his wrists, placing the ancient symbols on the silver bands he wore over one another, pressing them tightly together. As he had done in the past, he envisioned the sliph coming to him. He had called her from her sleep before and brought her to him, but he didn’t know if it was actually his gift that powered that call.
He had traveled in the sliph a number of times before. Sometimes he had been reluctant. This time he was eager. Time was running out and he needed to get to the palace.
Nicci placed her hands over his fists, closing her fingers tightly over his. He could feel the tingling warmth of her magic flowing into the bands at his wrists, heating them with that power. It was a decidedly uncomfortable feeling, but not painful. He knew that sometimes magic, even magic being used for good, felt that way.