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He sat down on the side of a small hillock beneath an olive tree to consider what he might do.
"Do you know of any other place where there would be these passages that were mentioned in the tellings?"
Jillian's mouth twisted as she considered. "I'm sorry, but no. When it is safe, we can go down and talk to my grandfather. He knows many things-much more than me."
Richard didn't know how much time he had to devote to listening to her grandfather's stories, either. Lokey fluttered down to the ground nearby to feast on the newly emerging cicadas. After the seventeen years they'd lived underground, more of them were emerging-only to be pecked up by the raven.
Richard recalled the prophecy Nathan had read to him. It had mentioned the cicadas. He wondered why. It had said something about when the cicadas awakened, the final and deciding battle was upon them. The world, it said, was at the brink of darkness.
Brink of darkness. Richard glanced down at the cicadas as they emerged. He watched them coming up out of the ground.
As he watched, he realized that they were all coming up through a space in a gravestone laying facedown against the rise of ground. Lokey had noticed, too, and stood eating them.
"That's odd," he said to himself.
"What's odd?"
"Well, look there. The cicadas aren't coming up through the dirt, they're coming up from under that stone."
Richard knelt down and pushed his fingers down into the space. It seemed hollow underneath. Lokey cocked his head as he watched. Richard lifted, grunting with the effort. The stone began to lift. As it came up, he realized that it was hinged on the left. It finally gave way and opened.
Richard stared down into the darkness. It wasn't a grave marker. It had been a stone cap to a passageway. He immediately pulled the glass sphere out of his pack. As it began to glow, he held it down in the dark maw.
Jillian gasped. "It's a stairway!"
"Come on, but be careful."
The stairs were stone, irregular, and narrow. The leading edge of each was swaybacked and rounded from countless feet making the journey. The passage was lined with blocks of stone, making a clear path down deep into the ground. The steps came to a landing and turned right. After another long run, they turned left and went deeper.
When they finally reached the bottom, the passage opened into wider corridors that were carved from the solid but soft rock of the ground itself.
Richard held the glowing globe out in one hand and Jillian's hand in his other as he bent a little to clear the low ceiling as he led them deeper. It wasn't long before they encountered an intersection.
"Do your tellings say anything about finding our way down here?" She shook her head. "How about all those mazes you learned. Do you think they will do you any good down here?"
"I don't know. I never knew this place existed."
Richard let out a breath as he looked down each of the two passages. "All right, I'll just start going in deeper. If you think you recognize anything, or any of the routes, let me know."
After she agreed, they started down the left fork. To each side of the narrow passageway they began finding niches that had been carved into the walls. Inside each lay the remains of a body. In places the niches were stacked three or five high. Some had two bodies, probably a husband and wife.
Around some of the recesses, ancient painting still remained. The artwork was vines in some places, people with food in others, and in some places simple designs. From the different styles and the varying quality of the art, Richard guessed that it must have been done by loved ones for a member of their family who had died.
The narrow passageway opened up into a chamber with ten openings tu
They soon began encountering the bones.
There were rooms with stacks of similar bones in niches. Skulls had been carefully fit into one niche, leg bones all stacked end out in another, arm bones in another yet. Great stone bins carved in the side walls held smaller bones all laid in neatly. As Richard and Jillian moved through vault after vault, they saw walls of skulls that had to number in the tens of thousands. Knowing that he was seeing only one random passageway, Richard could not imagine how many people had to be interred in the catacombs. Even as startling, and even horrifying, as it was to see so many of the dead, each of their bones looked to have been placed reverently. None were simply cast into a hole or a corner. Each had been carefully placed as if each had been a valued life.
For what had to be well over an hour, they made their way through the maze of tu
And then they came to a section of the passage that had partially collapsed. A huge section of stone had toppled and rubble had fallen in around it.
Richard stopped and looked at the tangle of stone. "I guess this is as far as we go."
Jillian squatted down, peering under the stone block lying at an angle across the passageway. "I can see a way under here." She turned to Richard. Her copper-colored eyes looked frightening staring out from the black mask painted across her face. "I'm smaller. Do you want me to go have a quick look?"
Richard held the glowing sphere down in the opening to light it for her. "All right. But I don't want you to keep going if you think it looks dangerous. There are thousands of tu
"But this is the one the Lord Rahl found. It must be important."
"I'm just a man, Jillian. I'm not some wise spirit returned from the world of the dead."
"If you say so, Richard."
At least she smiled when she said it.
Jillian disappeared into the angular hole like a bird going through a thornbush.
"Lord Rahl!" came her echoing voice. "There are books in here."
"Books?" he called into the hole.
"Yes. A lot of books. It's dark, but it looks like a big room with books."
"I'm coming in," he said.
He had to take his pack off and push it out ahead as he crawled in. It turned out not to be as worrisome as he had feared, and he was soon through. When he stood on the other side, he realized that the huge stone block lying at an angle across the passage had once been a door. It looked like it had been designed to slide out of a slot cut into the side of the wall, but at some point the massive door had broken along a fault in the stone, and it had toppled over. As Richard inspected the mess, he brushed the dust away and saw one of the metal plates that activated a shield.
The idea that these books had been behind a shield made his heart race faster.
He turned back to the room. The warm light from the glowing sphere did indeed show a chamber full of books. The room ran at odd angles, seemingly without reason. Richard and Jillian walked along the passageway, looking at all the books. Most of the shelves were carved into the solid rock, the way the resting places for the dead had been cut out to make room.
Richard held the sphere up as he started sca
"Listen," he said to Jillian, "I'm looking for something specific: Chain-fire. It might be a book. You start on one side, and I'll take the other. Make sure you look at each book's title."
Jillian nodded. "If it's in here, we will find it."
The ancient library was discouragingly huge. As they inched along and rounded a corner, they encountered a chamber lined with aisles of shelves. The search was slow going. They had to work in the same area so that they could both see.