Verna stared for a moment at the impassive Mord-Sith, then half turned, holding out a hand. “Well, yes, of course. We will prepare a meal to celebrate–”
“We don’t have time for that sort of thing,” Kahlan said. “If we could get a quick bite to eat, maybe something we could take with us, that would be best. We need to get to the sliph.”
Richard recognized that she was focused on getting him back to the People’s Palace and the containment field so that Nicci could remove the poison of death from him. He had to get to the palace, but for other reasons.
Verna shared a worried look with Chase. “The sliph?” She leaned to the side, peering suspiciously behind Vale. “Is Zedd with you?” She caught the look on Richard’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“Verna, I don’t have the slightest idea where I could even begin to tell you everything that has happened and all that is wrong, but one thing you do need to know is that Zedd…”
Her eyes widened. “He’s dead?”
Richard pressed his lips tight and nodded.
“And everyone else is going to die if we don’t get to the People’s Palace,” Kahlan interrupted. “Richard will be the first to die, but he will soon be followed by the rest of us. You felt the poison in him. You know how serious it is. For now, you need to trust us. We will have to fill you in later.”
“Of course. But I thought you brought peace to the world. The war was ended. What could have happened?” Verna frowned with concern as she looked from Kahlan to Richard. “Can you at least tell me what this is all about? We might know something that would help.”
Richard started moving down the enormous, dimly lit chamber. “Do you know who Emperor Sulachan is?”
Verna hurried to keep up with them. She touched her fingertips to her forehead, looking down as she tried to think. “Sulachan, Sulachan.” Her scowl returned as her head came up. “If I’m not mistaken, wasn’t he the emperor back during the great war? He’s been dead for … what, nearly three thousand years or so?”
“Richard brought him back to life,” Nicci said.
Verna was struck speechless.
“Like I told you,” Richard said, “it’s a very long story, and right now there are more important things we need to worry about.”
“Like what?” Verna asked, not willing to let it go.
“Well, the important thing you need to know is that I have to stop Sulachan or he is going to destroy the veil and with it the world of life.”
Verna huffed in disapproval. “Richard, ever since I first met you, you have somehow been tied up in trouble with the veil. You have also been tangled in prophecy from the very first. Prophecy told us of your birth long before you were even conceived. Because of prophecy Prelate Ann was there when you were first born, helping to protect you. You were a child of prophecy.”
“Now I know why,” he said without explaining as he marched along at the head of the small crowd of people.
CHAPTER 48
Richard saw Sisters he knew among the small crowd accompanying them, along with a number of people he didn’t know. They were probably people from down in the city of Aydindril brought up to the Keep to help with bringing the place back to life. There used to be a lot of people from down in Aydindril working at the Keep.
Richard wasn’t keen on the idea of people he didn’t know hearing anything about what was going on. They might be trustworthy, but he didn’t know them. Even if they were, they could overhear something and start rumors or even a panic down in the city. Verna and Chase had no idea of the trouble they were all in, so they would have no reason to be careful of who was around. For all they knew, the world was at peace.
In the distance yet more people made their way through the room as they went about their errands and work. The enormous room was so long and poorly lit that he couldn’t make out the faces of those people at the far end.
Richard cast a sidelong glance at Chase, then deliberately looked at the people following along. Chase got the message.
He turned back to everyone. “Why don’t you all let everyone know that there is no problem and then check that all the alarms are reset. Verna and I can see to this.”
The Sisters and some of the others offered their services if needed and then started turning off to the corridors to the side. Soon only Verna, Chase, and Rachel remained with them.
“Thanks,” Richard said in a quiet voice to his old friend.
He remembered that the long, tall room was a central hub leading to a number of important areas of the lower Keep. Besides providing daylight, the slits along the top of one of the walls helped the chamber serve as a ventilation chimney, drawing air through the lower Keep and providing fresh air. He could see small birds sitting on those high sills. Now the slits were letting a little daylight flood into the chamber along with fresh mountain air.
To the right, stone stairs built against the wall led to a narrow balcony high up on the wall. Widely spaced openings dotted the wall at irregular intervals along the balcony. Some of them had doors, while most were simply open into passageways to different areas and levels of the Keep.
It felt rather disorienting, after the places they had been and especially after being in the Dark Lands for so long, to find himself back in the Keep. It was all a bit bewildering to be so suddenly back in civilization. He had thought that perhaps he would never see it again. The Wizard’s Keep reminded him of Zedd, and brought back the pain of missing his grandfather.
He would have liked to allow himself to feel safe and relaxed to finally be back at the Keep, with Kahlan very near to Aydindril and the Confessors’ Palace, where she had grown up, but there could be no safety anywhere in the world of life as long as Sulachan was still a fugitive from the world of the dead.
It was additionally frustrating not knowing how many days they had been traveling from Stroyza. Even if he saw the moon he wouldn’t know for sure how much time had passed in the journey to the Keep. The Dark Lands were heavily overcast all the time, so he couldn’t ever see the moon phase.
So much had happened, to say nothing of having been in the timeless, changeless underworld, that he wasn’t sure how much time had passed since Hannis Arc and Sulachan had taken their army of half people through the barrier to the third kingdom and headed to the southwest toward the People’s Palace. Richard had simply lost track of the days.
The one thing he knew for sure was that the People’s Palace was in great danger. He knew why Hannis Arc wanted to get to the People’s Palace–he wanted to rule the D’Haran Empire as Lord Arc. While the plan had been profoundly complex, his goal was actually pretty simple. He wanted to usurp the House of Rahl and rule in its place.
But Sulachan was generously obliging him even though he had larger plans of his own. The men were using one another for their own ends, and each needed the other, but it seemed to Richard that Sulachan was not one to be led so easily, like a bull with a ring through his nose. From what Richard could tell, Sulachan was just as eager as Hannis Arc to capture the People’s Palace.
He wondered if it could have something to do with Regula. Regula was an underworld power that was alien to the world of life. It was powering prophecy in the world of life. It was choking off life with prophecy.
In a way, it was like the touch of death Richard had in him. That touch was leaching the life out of him. Regula for millennia had been leaching life out of the world of life.
Regula, in a way, was a bridge through the veil, an open conduit between worlds. Sulachan needed that conduit. More than anything else, that was why he was intent on taking the palace. He was simply using Hannis Arc for his goals, much the same as Hannis Arc was using the spirit king.