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CHAPTER 60
With an arrow's speed, Richard flew through the silken silence of the sliph, yet at the same time he glided with the slow grace of a raven riding the stilled currents above towering trees on a moonlit night. There was no heat, no cold. In the silence, sweet sounds filled his mind. His eyes beheld light and dark together in a single, spectral vision, while his lungs swelled with the sweet presence of the sliph as he breathed her into his soul.
It was rapture.
Abruptly, it ended.
Grainy darkness exploded in his sudden vision. There seemed to be blocky shapes all around as he broke the surface. Nicci's hand gripped his in terror.
Breathe, the sliph told him.
Richard let out the sweet breath, emptying his lungs of the rapture. With a needful gasp, he sucked in the alien air. Cara, too, gasped in the hot, dusty air.
Nicci floated face down, rocking gently in the silver fluid.
Richard threw an arm over the stone wall at the side of the sliph, pulling Nicci with him. He took his bow off his back to get it out of his way and quickly set it against the outside of the wall. With the sliph's help, he hopped up on the wall, and then with the sliph lifting her, pulled the dead weight of Nicci up enough to get her shoulders and head up into the warm, dark air.
Richard slapped her on the back. "Breathe, Nicci. Breathe. Come on, you have to let go of the sliph and breathe. Do it for me."
At last she did. She gasped in the air, her arms flailing in terror at being confused and lost in such strange surroundings. Richard pulled her close as he helped her get her arms over the side and, panting, climb up on the wall.
Brackets on the walls nearby held glass spheres, like back at the Keep, that glowed brighter as he climbed out of the well.
"What do you think this place is?" Cara asked as she peered around in the dim light.
"That was — rapture," Nicci said, still under the sway of the experience.
"I told you," Richard said as he helped her climb out.
"It looks like we're in a stone room of some kind," Cara said as she walked around the perimeter of the room.
Richard made his way toward the darkness at one end and two larger spheres in tall iron brackets brightened with an eerie green glow. He saw that they flanked steps. The steps, though, marched up to the ceiling.
"That's pretty strange," Cara said as she stood on the second step, inspecting the dark ceiling.
"Here," Nicci said. She was leaning over to the side of the steps. "There's a metal plate."
It was the kind of metal plate Richard had seen in other places. They were trigger plates for shields. Nicci tapped her palm against it but nothing happened.
Richard pressed his hand to the icy cold plate and stone started grating as it moved. Dust came down in streamers.
The three of them ducked back as they all peered around in the gloomy light, trying to figure out what, exactly, was moving. The ground trembled. It felt like the whole room might be shifting and somehow changing shape. Richard then realized that it was actually the ceiling that was pulling aside.
A growing patch of moonlight fell across the steps.
Richard had no idea where they were, other than down in a stone room that appeared to be buried. He didn't know where Caska was, other than the sliph said that it was in the Deep Nothing, and he didn't know where that was, so he didn't really know what to expect. He felt decidedly uneasy.
He reached for his sword.
The sword wasn't there. For what felt like the thousandth time, he felt the sinking regret of realizing why and where it now was.
He drew his long knife instead as he started up the steps in a crouch, ducking low not only so as not to hit his head on the ceiling before it had moved out of the way, but out of caution for who might be outside and have heard stone sliding aside. Cara, seeing him draw his knife, spun her Agiel up into her fist. She tried to get out ahead of him, but he held his arm out, keeping her behind to the left. Nicci was close behind to his right.
As he came up out of the ground, he saw the shadowed shapes of three people standing not far ahead. He knew that from being in the sliph, until he fully recovered, his vision was more acute than ordinary. He could probably see them better than they could see him.
With that sharp vision, Richard saw that the big man in the middle was holding a slender girl back against him. He had one hand over her mouth. He could see the girl squirming. Moonlight gleamed off the blade he held to her throat.
"Drop your weapons," the man holding the girl growled, "and surrender to the Imperial Order, or you will die."
Richard flipped the knife into the air, let it make a half turn, and caught it by the tip. An inky shape suddenly swooped atop the man's head. The bird let out a piercing caw. The man flinched. Richard didn't take the time to wonder at such an unexpected assault. He heaved the knife.
On broad wings, the bird lifted into the air. The blade hit the man in the center of his face with a solid thunk. Richard knew that the blade was long enough to have penetrated all the way through the man's brain and that the tip would have pierced the back of the skull. The man dropped straight down behind the trembling girl-dead before he could think to do her harm.
Before the men to either side of the girl could take a half a step, Nicci unleashed a scything whisper of power that took the heads off the other two men. The only noise it made was the sound of the heads hitting the ground with twin, dull thuds. The bodies toppled to either side of the girl.
The night was still but for the drone of cicadas.
The girl hesitantly stepped closer and dropped to her knees. She bent forward before the steps until her forehead touched the stone at his feet.
"Lord Rahl, I am your humble servant. Thank you for coming and protecting me. I live only to serve. My life is yours. Command me as you will."
Even as the girl was still speaking in a quavering voice, Cara and Nicci were spreading out to the sides, searching for other threats. Richard crossed his lips with a finger to let them know to be quiet about it so as not to alert any other troops that might be near. Both saw his signal and nodded.
Richard waited, listening for any threat. Since the girl was on the ground, he let her stay there, out of harm's way. He heard the whisper of feathers against air as the raven landed on a nearby limb and then the soft rustle as it folded in its wings.
"It's clear," Nicci a
Relieved, Richard let the tension go out of his muscles. When he heard the girl weeping in quiet terror, he sat down on the top step right near her. He suspected her terror was fear that she might be killed just as the three men had been. Richard wanted to assure her that she was not going to die.
"It's all right," he told her as he gently grasped her shoulders and urged her up. "I'm not going to hurt you. You're safe, now."
As she came up he gathered the frightened girl into his arms, embracing her protectively, holding her head to his shoulder when she glanced to the three dead men as if they still might jump up and snatch her away. She was a slender lithesome creature, the kind of girl on the brink of being a woman, yet looking as frail as a bird about to leave the nest. Her slender arms came gratefully around Richard as she wept with relief.
"The bird a friend of yours?" he asked.
"Lokey," she confirmed with a nod. "He watches over me."
"Well, he did a good job tonight."
"I thought you weren't going to come, Master Rahl. I thought it was my fault, that I wasn't a good enough priestess for you."