“Get the lamps lit and get the place set up,” he said, gesturing into the room. “Hurry.”
Before Nicci could take his arm, he stepped away and seized Cassia’s instead. “I’ll take Cassia with me. All right? Will that ease your mind?”
He started moving down the hall, still holding Cassia’s arm, ushering her along with him. He waved assurance back at the confused faces of Kahlan and Nicci, and the scowls of the other three Mord-Sith.
Kahlan lifted her hand in confusion. “Richard–”
“Go in and wait for me.” He gestured for her to go into the library. “I’ll be right back.”
As soon as he turned a corner in the hall so that he was out of their sight, he started running.
Cassia ran at his side. “Lord Rahl, what’s going on? Where are we going?”
Richard pointedly didn’t answer her. He caught the round cap of a newel post in one hand to help swing himself around as he caught Cassia’s arm with his other hand to pull her along with him and down the stairs.
His mind raced as fast as his feet as he oriented himself in a mental map of the palace, making sure of each intersection and turn he made so that he wouldn’t get stuck in a dead end with a shield and have to waste time backtracking. He took several unconventional routes simply to skirt one place that he knew was shielded, and a public corridor so that he wouldn’t be seen by anyone.
“Lord Rahl, what are we doing? Where are you going?”
Richard slid to a stop as a shield he hadn’t realized would be in that particular hallway lit the air red right across the hallway. He would have to go back and take a different route.
“Lord Rahl–”
He turned to face Cassia, still holding her by the arm. “I’m going someplace dangerous. I have to do something crazy. I need help. Are you with me? Are you willing to risk your life helping me?”
Cassia blinked at the question, then lifted Cara’s Agiel from where it hung on the chain at her neck, showing it to him. “Of course, Lord Rahl. Like Cara, I would lay down my life for you.”
“I’m trying to save all of our lives. I have to do this. It’s the only way–our only chance.”
Cassia’s face screwed up with a puzzled frown. “Do what?”
Richard turned her and gave her a shove, starting her running back up the hall with him. He took the next intersection, flinging open the door into the Lord Rahl’s private corridor off the service area. There would be less chance of being spotted in there. He was relieved to see which corridor it was. He remembered the small painting of a statue on a hillside of wildflowers. It was a corridor that would take them where they needed to go.
“Stay with me,” he said as he hurried down the hallway. “There is no time to lose.”
“Lord Rahl, what’s wrong?”
“Sulachan and the half people are going to break in soon and start killing people. We have to get back in time to stop them before it’s too late and everyone is slaughtered.”
“Lord Rahl,” she protested as she ran behind him. “What are you going to do? Why couldn’t you tell the others? Why would you leave the Mother Confessor without telling her?”
He stopped and turned back a moment, catching his breath.
“That horde of half people spread out across the Azrith Plain are going to get in here at any moment. If I don’t do this they will kill everyone in here. The Twilight Count is nearly done. Time is running out. If I don’t do this everyone is going to die.”
“So why couldn’t you tell her that and tell her what you intend to do? And what is it you intend–”
“Even if I succeed in saving the world of life, I will likely die doing it. I couldn’t tell her that. If by some chance I live, then I’ll have to apologize to her, but I couldn’t tell her I’m running off to do something that is likely to get me killed no matter if I succeed or not. This is about everyone, not just the people here.”
Cassia smiled a crooked grin. “Lord Rahl, she knows your heart. Whatever it is you have to do, she would understand.”
“Not this,” he said as he started down the corridor again, heading for the stairs.
At the bottom of the solemn black marble stairs, he raced along the final corridor that would get him to where he needed to go.
“Sliph!” he called out as he ran. “Sliph–I need you!”
He threw open the double doors and stumbled to a stop, Cassia right behind him, both out of breath.
The silver face rising above the silver pool in the well smiled pleasantly. “Master, you wish to travel?”
Richard swallowed, hands on his knees, catching his breath. He straightened.
“Yes, we both need to travel. It’s urgent. We need to travel.”
“Come,” the sliph said, “and we will travel. You will be pleased.”
Richard hopped up on the stone wall surrounding her well. “You must not tell anyone where we’re going,” he said as he helped pull Cassia up beside him. “No matter who asks, you must not let them know where you are taking us.”
“Master,” the sliph said with a coy smile, “you know I never reveal anything about my clients to anyone.”
CHAPTER 54
Kahlan paced down the length of the library, past rows of shelves holding books of prophecy, a thumbnail held tightly between her front teeth as her mind raced. She would look herself, if she knew where to look, but she wouldn’t even know where to start. She came to a halt and looked up when General Zimmer rushed into the room.
“Did you find him?”
He shook his head as he caught his breath. “I’m sorry, Mother Confessor, but no. I have men searching everywhere. No one has seen them.”
Nicci threw her arms up. “It doesn’t make any sense. He’s been missing most of the night. He said he was only going to be a few minutes. How could he simply vanish?”
Vale stepped forward hesitantly. “Could, well, could some of those half people have snuck in and snatched them?”
“There would at least have been blood from any such attack,” Nicci said in a quiet voice.
When she heard nothing, the sorceress glanced up from under her brow at the general.
The general’s face distorted with an uncomfortable expression. “All I can tell you is that none of the men has spotted so much as a drop of blood.”
“Have they spotted anything useful?”
“It’s an awfully big place, Mother Confessor,” the big D’Haran said, clearly uneasy that he had no good news. “There are a thousand places to look.”
Kahlan went back to pacing. “He said he was only going to be gone a few minutes. I felt like something wasn’t right. I had a feeling. I should have trusted that feeling and not have let him go.” She gestured with a hand, angry at herself, blaming herself. “It’s just that he rushed off so fast.”
Kahlan pressed her lips tight for a moment. “He needs to be healed. He doesn’t have much time left before that poison kills him.”
She was on the verge of panic, remembering what it was like seeing him when he was dead. Her whole world had ended. Now, he was near death again from that taint of death within him. Nicci could have removed it. But now he was gone.
Nicci, leaning against a heavy table, watched Kahlan pace. “This is making me start to wonder why he wanted to stop to check on Regula.”
“What do you mean?” Kahlan asked without looking over.
“Richard is so honest that I never suspected he might be lying.”
Kahlan paused in her pacing and looked up. “You think he was lying?”
“At least not telling us the whole truth.” Nicci’s arms came unfolded as she stood up away from the table. “Do you think he had to stop there to check on the machine, talk to Regula alone, and it didn’t tell him anything he could understand? Since when has Richard been so easily stymied? Kahlan, that’s not just a mysterious omen machine. That’s Regula, the controller of the eternal now. It’s an underworld force that has been brought to life in this world, banished here because it’s so dangerous. Spirits sent it here to hide it from Sulachan in the underworld, but Sulachan found it, here, in this world. Richard knows all that.”