Kahlan grabbed his sleeve. “Richard, you can’t afford to take that risk. You need to leave the sword here.”
He remembered the sliph telling him before that when he put her to sleep she went to be with her spirit. That meant that at least some part of her had been called from the underworld, and that concerned him. The sliph would have direct knowledge of that line between life and death.
He turned to Kahlan. “We don’t have a way to get back in here, except through her. I can’t come back for it, and I can’t leave the sword here.”
“Yes you can,” she insisted. “Richard, this is about your life.”
“No, it’s about everyone’s life.” He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “It’s the key to something. Something mentioned in the Cerulean scrolls.” He cocked his head to the side, expecting her to complete that concept without having to say it aloud.
Recognition suddenly appeared in her eyes. The sword was the key to the power of Orden. The power of Orden had to do with the Twilight Count, prophecy, and everything else that was happening. The key to that kind of power was far too valuable to abandon.
The sliph would know of the line and the balance between worlds. He had no doubt that she was correct about the cost of taking the sword with him.
But it was a cost that really didn’t matter.
“All right, then,” he said, turning from Kahlan back to the sliph. “Let’s get going. We need to hurry.” He put a foot up on the wall. “We need to get to the People’s Palace.”
The silvery face frowned. “Where?”
CHAPTER 42
Richard paused and looked up. “The People’s Palace. In D’Hara. We need to travel to the People’s Palace.”
The sliph stared without comprehension. “I don’t know of such a place. I can’t travel there.”
Richard let his foot slip off the wall and back down on the floor. “What are you talking about? Of course you can. I’ve traveled with you to and from the People’s Palace in the past.”
The sliph shook her head. Little silver droplets fell back into the well to join the rolling quicksilver.
“I have never seen you before,” the sliph insisted. “You have never traveled with me.”
Richard stared, trying to figure out why she would say such a thing. “Of course you have.” He swept an arm out, as if to indicate the places far away they had gone together. “I’ve traveled with you a number of times. You have pleased me.”
A frown of displeasure grew on the silver brow. “It is not my responsibility to please anyone, even you. If you want to travel, we will travel, but I am not required to please you as well. Now, do you still wish to travel?”
Richard and Kahlan shared a look. He cleared his throat and started over.
“We need to travel. We have to get out of here. You are our only way out of here. We must all travel. If you are no longer able to take us to the People’s Palace–”
“I told you, I have never been to such a place. I cannot take you there.”
Richard forced himself to be patient. “All right, then, where are you able to take us?”
The sliph looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “To the place I am supposed to take you.”
Richard wiped a hand back across the side of his face as he reminded himself to be patient. He dared not anger her and have her vanish. The sliph, after all, was their only way out of the caves.
“Where are you supposed to take us? Are you able to name the place?”
“Of course,” the sliph said with cool detachment as the head drew back a bit. “The Wizard’s Keep.”
“The Keep,” he repeated as he stared at her. “You can go to the Keep. And where else can you travel? What other places?”
The frown on her silver brow returned. “Other places? There are no other places. There is only here and the Keep. Those are the only two places. You summoned me. I am here to take you from here to the Keep.”
Before Richard could say anything else, Kahlan put a hand on his arm to get him to be quiet so she could speak.
“Sliph, are you saying that you were created for the sole purpose of traveling from here to the Keep?”
The sliph turned her puzzled look to Kahlan. “Of course. Where else would I go?” The displeased frown grew again. “And why do you call me by that name … sliph?”
“You mean that’s not your name?” Kahlan asked.
“No. My name is Lucy.”
Richard looked at Kahlan out of the corner of his eye. “That explains a lot.”
Kahlan leaned closer to Richard and lowered her voice. “We have to get out of here if we hope to get to the palace.”
Richard nodded. “If she can get us to the Keep we can take the sliph from there to the palace.”
Kahlan’s gaze stayed on his. “That will work.”
Richard turned back to the well. “Lucy, we would be pleased if you could take us all to the Keep.”
She shot him a silver scowl. “I told you, I am not here to please you. If you all wish to travel to the Keep, I can take you there. But that is all I am required to do for you.”
Richard glanced one last time at Nicci and Kahlan. He turned his tone more official and less friendly.
“Of course. I understand, Lucy. Now, we need to travel to the Keep on urgent business. We need you to get us all there as swiftly as possible, and then you may return to your soul in the other world.”
“I would like very much to again be with my soul.” She bowed her silver head in a single nod of agreement. “Climb up and I will take you all to the Keep.”
“Thank you,” Richard said as he climbed up on the wall. He turned and extended a hand down to Kahlan.
Before he could help the others up onto the wall, a silver arm swept out over the side of the well and pulled them all from their feet. He had time only to gasp a last breath before she plunged them down into the silvery liquid.
The world abruptly went dark and silent.
Breathe, Lucy said to them. Her voice was an urgent, oppressive command in his mind.
Richard remembered too late that he had not instructed Cassia and Vale on how traveling in the living quicksilver worked. He hoped they would heed the sliph’s instruction. If they didn’t, they would arrive at the Keep dead.
More concerned with everything that he had to do than the process of traveling in a sliph, and being familiar enough with how it worked, he ignored his trepidation and drew the liquid silver into his lungs.
His grip with his left hand around the hilt of his sword tightened as the sensation of drowning tightened his chest.
Mercifully, the sensation and the associated panic eased.
With a feeling something like falling through space and at the same time floating without moving, the long journey began.
Unlike the way it had always felt in the past, this time it was not at all pleasant. It was a rather rough and painful feeling of being dragged, rather than carried along effortlessly. His whole body felt as if unseen forces were trying to pull it apart. The silver liquid burned in his lungs. He could feel the magic from the sword burning into his soul.
He tried his best to keep his mind on where they were going and what they needed to do, rather than on how unpleasant it was traveling in Lucy.
He needed to bring the sword with him, but he could feel the life leaching out of him by the moment as the poison within grew stronger.
CHAPTER 43
Breathe, a stern voice in his head commanded.
He couldn’t bring himself to obey. He didn’t care to obey.
Greenish light felt like an apparition moving to and fro in his mind’s vision. Even though his eyes were closed, the light made his eyes hurt as if someone were gouging their thumbs against his eyeballs. He heard harsh, jarring sounds, but couldn’t make them out. He also heard echoing voices, as if they were coming to him through a long tube. He didn’t know what those voices were saying.