“What is it?” Vale asked.
“It’s the symbol for a shepherd. It’s meant for me. They marked the way for us. Look for that symbol at every intersection.”
Without delay they all hurried down the passageway with the shepherd symbol above it. As they went down the hallway and at every intersection they all scanned the walls, looking around for the mark of the shepherd. When they didn’t see one at an intersection, they kept going in the same direction and ignored the hallways to the sides. They passed a number of rooms, but didn’t bother to search them. As they rushed past doorways and the light shined in, Richard could see that the rooms were empty. Except, perhaps, they were not empty of souls.
Cassia pointed up with her hand holding the lantern. “Lord Rahl, look. There is one of the shepherd symbols.”
“Good for you,” he said as he put a hand to their backs and ushered the others into the side passageway with the symbol, “you’re learning the language of Creation.”
As they rushed down the passageways the sound of their footsteps echoed back to them from the distance. The whole way Richard could feel eyes on him. They were everywhere. He could hear them whisper “Fuer grissa ost drauka” as if telling others who was coming. The joined whispers seemed to fill the hallways as it was spoken thousands of times.
“Do you hear them?” Richard finally asked. “Do any of you hear them?”
Nicci frowned at him. “Hear what?”
“I don’t hear anything but our footsteps,” Kahlan said.
“That’s all I hear,” Cassia added.
Richard let out an irritated sigh. He wished he weren’t the only one hearing them. It made him feel as if he were crazy.
Kahlan glanced back into the darkness. “What do you hear?”
Richard didn’t see any point in alarming them any more than they already were. “I don’t know. It kind of sounds like whispering.”
“Whispering?” Nicci, too, looked back over her shoulder. “Can you make out what they are saying?”
“I’m not sure,” he lied. “Let’s just keep moving.”
“Maybe it’s the echo of our footsteps against the stone,” Cassia suggested.
“Maybe.” He pointed with the sword. “Look. Up there. Another shepherd symbol. Take that hallway.”
They followed the corridor with the symbol and then raced past yet more intersections with hanging cloth covered with symbols meant for the dead, and past empty rooms that were packed with lonely, filmy faces watching him go by.
Richard noticed that some of the symbols painted on the hanging textiles were warnings to stay out. Yet more were the wards he had learned to recognize. Some were welcoming motifs offering peace, while yet others were simple geometric patterns, the purpose of which was a mystery to him.
Another one of the shepherd symbols then led them into a long corridor without any rooms or intersections. They came to a halt at the far end when they reached a cloth hung across the hallway. Long-faded colors had been painted in vertical geometric designs infused with wards.
Looking behind the textile, Richard saw an arched opening. Such an opening was different from anything they had so far encountered. They all followed Richard around the hanging cloth into a passageway that made the little hairs on the back of his neck stiffen.
The long corridor was noticeably different from any that had come before. It was wider than the others, with carefully carved straight walls and a precisely flat ceiling. It was also completely deserted and silent in a way that was oppressive.
They finally reached a dark opening at the end of the corridor. Beyond it they discovered tunnels that were not so carefully carved out of the soft stone. The edges between walls and ceiling were irregularly rounded, rather than squared. It was as if the broad corridor they emerged from had been a special place for the dead, and these new passageways were common areas used by the living. The separation was marked by the tingle of magic that set his fine hairs on end.
For the first time they encountered rooms with heavy wooden doors. Vale grabbed his arm.
“Lord Rahl, look.”
Richard was stunned when she held the light into the room and he saw that it was lined with shelves from floor to ceiling. The shelves held hundreds of books. Nicci slipped past the two of them to go have a look for herself. She set her light sphere on a shelf and pulled a few books down, inspecting them briefly before replacing them. The more books she looked at, the more her search quickened. She finally turned back to him.
“These books are all rare and valuable. Some are profoundly dangerous books of magic that would be kept away from public areas.”
Richard turned to Kahlan. “Do you recognize this place? Are we in the Keep?”
Kahlan shook her head with a look of disappointment. “I’ve never seen this place before in my life.”
“Let’s keep going,” he said.
The passageway, so small they had to walk in single file, was lined with rooms. Some were small and empty, with simple openings roughly hewn out of the rock. Some were more elaborate, with metal doors hung on rollers. Those looked to be workrooms of some sort. There were more libraries and rooms with tables, as if for taking meals. Many of the rooms had workbenches, stools, shelves, and a variety of tools. Other rooms had books left lying open on tables, as if people had once been studying them and for some reason not returned. One of the larger rooms had a crude kind of forge. A block and tackle for lifting heavy objects hung from an overhead beam.
They soon arrived at stairs carved into the stone and had to head upward through the caverns. As soon as they reached the higher level they came across niches carved back into the rock. All of the carved-out spaces held bodies wrapped in shrouds. Like everything else, they were all covered in layer upon layer of dust.
The twisting cavern forced them ever upward in a series of crudely cut stairs into continually higher warrens of the dead.
“Did you know the Keep had catacombs like this?” he asked Kahlan as they passed hundreds of hollowed-out spaces holding countless bodies.
Kahlan looked from side to side in wonder. “No. If this is the Keep, I never knew about this place.”
“Catacombs were sometimes abandoned for various reasons,” Nicci said. “Some would simply get full and people would move on to a new site.”
“But people would still want to visit them,” Kahlan said. “They would have wanted to pay their respect to ancestors. I grew up in the Keep. If these catacombs had been accessible I would have known about them.”
“Not only that,” Richard said as he gestured to a room with workbenches, tools, and yet more books, “but people apparently worked down here. The way tools and books are left around, it looks like the people abandoned the place in a hurry. It seems strange that they would have closed it all off.”
“Everything we’re seeing is thousands of years old,” Nicci said. “Everything down here, including the empty hallways, probably dates back to the time of the great war when Sulachan was still alive. The Wizard’s Keep was alive back then. It was a seat of power. The war would have been run from here.”
“That’s right. The gifted in Stroyza were supposed to come here to warn the wizards’ council when the barrier failed. That was because at the time, the Keep was the center of power.” With a sudden realization, Richard stopped and looked at Nicci and Kahlan. “Sulachan and his wizards could reanimate the dead.”
Kahlan lifted a finger as she caught his meaning. “Sulachan’s forces could have attacked the Keep–this center of power–by using the dead.”
Richard nodded. “It’s starting to make sense that they would have abandoned the catacombs.”
What didn’t yet make sense to him was why there would be a sanctuary for souls down below the catacombs.
As they worked their way up, level by level, they passed hundreds of niches carved from the soft sandstone. All the holes were filled with bodies placed on crudely carved shelves. Above many of the hollowed-out resting places cou
ld still be seen a family name in faded paint, or a name and a title of the deceased. Some openings were embellished around the edges with crudely carved decorations. Because they were all different, he figured that they were probably done by family members. The paint and decoration had deteriorated almost to the point where it was nearly invisible and lost to the ages.
As they reached another level higher up, the niches had been connected and expanded to create small rooms for the dead. Those rooms were tightly stacked from the floors to the ceilings with bones. They had likely been long-dead people who had been gathered up to make room for the more recently deceased.
Rooms carved from the stone held massive numbers of bones. Under layers of dust, each room was filled to the ceiling with neatly stacked bones, sorted by type. Several of the chambers held only skulls, all carefully and respectfully stacked facing out. Richard was astonished to think of the vast numbers of people who must have lived at the Keep, or worked there. If, indeed, this place really was in the Keep.
They climbed stairs in tunnels so small and tight that Richard had to duck and pull his arms in as he ascended. Higher up they came to levels where the resting chambers carved into the tall corridor were half a dozen high. Some of the uppermost niches had a ladder leaning against them because they were so high up.
Most of the bodies laid to rest in the honeycombs of cavities were wrapped in shrouds that were so old and dirty that they looked to have been carved out of the same tan sandstone as the rooms themselves. Richard saw a few recesses holding coffins, all of them stone, most with carved decorations, all of them layered in dust and, like the shroud-wrapped bodies, almost completely encased within masses of cobwebs. In fact, the cobwebs were sometimes so thick that the shroud-wrapped corpses looked like big cocoons.
The soft yellow lantern light and the greenish glow from the light sphere Nicci had with her revealed a series of long corridors with niches carved into the stone on each side. In some it looked as if an entire family had been stuffed into the small hollow in the rock. To the sides, yet more dark corridors branched off in every direction. From what they could see, all of those corridors were lined with recesses holding the dead.
As they ascended long runs of steps carved directly from the stone itself, they had to be careful because the steps were uneven. Cassia was ahead of him, with Kahlan right behind, followed by Nicci and then Vale.
The light from Cassia’s lantern suddenly revealed an opening that looked more carefully constructed than the ones down below. Going through it, they emerged in a spacious cavern. The chamber had been carved out of the rock, much like the tunnels and rooms below, with tool marks and drill holes from the excavation still in evidence on the rough stone walls.
The difference was that the floor, barely visible under the thick dust, was tiled with light and dark stone in a circular pattern. A table sat alone in the center of the room. When Cassia wiped a hand across it, swiping away some of the dust, Richard saw that it was veneered in burl walnut. A simple, empty white vase sat in the center of the table.
At one time that vase must have held freshly cut flowers to make the place look less harsh for the people who came to visit relatives. At one time, it must have been a reverent room welcoming visitors.
At intervals around the room, there were openings cut into the stone, each leading off into darkness. None of the nine cavelike passageways were trimmed or decorated, except for symbols in the language of Creation carved into the stone above each opening.
It looked like this had been a central hub, where visitors then went down the appropriate passageway to where their ancestors were entombed.
The passageway they had come out of was the ninth of nine tunnels. The symbols above it were similar to the rest, naming each tunnel with an innocuous name such as River of Eternal Rest, or Garden of Lilies, or Peaceful Fields. The tunnel names were apparently meant to help people find loved ones. The one they had come from was named Hall of Souls. It reminded him of the name Sanctuary of Souls he had seen at the other end, back in the room with the well.
From the room with the nine tunnels, a staircase of marble stairs and polished marble balustrade, under a thick layer of dust, started up what was little more than a crude shaft cut through the rock. The meticulously constructed stairs and balustrades were a stark contrast to the roughly cut walls. The staircase was also wide enough that Richard and Kahlan could at last walk side by side–a luxury after the narrow corridors and tunneling stairs.
Each run of stairs ended at a square landing from which the next flight ascended, going ever upward in an exhausting spiral. There were no rooms, just landings and more stairs to climb. At least they were well made rather than the roughly hewn steps that were difficult to negotiate.
Still, they were all getting exhausted. Their energy was waning and they all needed food.
Panting with the effort of the long climb, they arrived at a landing where the marble handrail ended on each side in an ornately spiraled newel post. Before them stood a wall of stone blocking their way out.
“It looks like a capstone,” Richard said. “They must have used this to seal the catacombs off. It would be too big and heavy for even Sulachan’s awakened dead to have moved.”
“Then how are we supposed to open it?” Vale asked.
“Look!” Cassia shouted as she held her lantern out.
Two small statues sat to the side, back in a niche. They were the exact same little statues of shepherds that had been back in the hallway in the gifted’s quarters in Stroyza. Those statues, untouched since the time of the great barrier, had opened the doorway into the well room.
Cassia leaned in and with a big breath blew the dust off the statues. She waved her hand in front of her face and coughed at the cloud of dust it raised. She made a face as she waved her hand a moment, then leaned, eyes closed, and blew at the statues again.
Under the dust, Richard saw the glint of metal begin to emerge. He leaned in himself and blew at the statues, clearing off the layers of dust. Under the dust, both statues looked to be made of the same dull silver metal as the ones back in Stroyza.
“What are you waiting for?” Kahlan asked as she turned her face away and waved at the cloud of dust. “Do what you did before. Go on and see if it will get us out of here.”
Nicci frowned as she leaned toward what Richard believed was the capstone. “Do you hear that?”
“No, what?” Kahlan frowned as she stopped waving her hand and cocked her head. “Wait, I do hear it. It sounds like alarm bells.”
CHAPTER
47
Even though he was concerned about the distant sound of alarm bells from beyond the capstone, Richard slid his sword back into its scabbard. He needed to be able to use both hands, like before, if it was going to work. When he held a cool metal statue of the shepherd in each hand, they warmed under his touch. He felt the tingle of magic seeping through his palms, along his arms, and up his spine into the base of his skull. This magic was stronger than it had been in Stroyza.
As he felt the vibration of magic at the base of his skull, the stone before them began to tremble almost as if in sympathy. Small bits of dirt and rock fell from the walls and ceiling as the area around them quaked. Pebbles danced on the floor as dust rose around them.
Richard remembered the way Samantha brought the rock of the cave’s ceiling crashing down. He glanced up, worried that the rock overhead might come down on them the same way. Unlike the stone walls farther down in the catacombs, this rock higher up was granite, the same as the ceiling that had fallen in.
The capstone suddenly let out a loud crack as the seal broke all at once. Mortar that had sealed the stone shattered and popped out. Finally, the enormous slab of stone began to pivot back out of the opening, grating against the floor as it moved. As it did so, light flooded in, along with the racket of alarm bells.
Squinting in the sudden brightness of natural light, Richard peered around the stone door and out through the opening, trying to
see. Cassia pushed past him and shot out the opening to check for danger. When she didn’t call out a warning, Kahlan took Richard’s hand and ducked under the short opening along with him.
They found themselves in a sheltered entryway for the catacombs. Fluted limestone columns lined either side of the recessed alcove. The small pillars, not much taller than Richard, were topped with long entablatures that provided support for arches elaborately decorated with complex, carved stone moldings framing tiles laid out in dark, geometric patterns. Benches to each side had been intricately embellished to match the forbidding architectural details of the rest of the entry. After the filth and crudely cut stone they had been around for so long, the magnificent, polished stone seemed to gleam.
Larger-than-life stone figures in grim, distraught poses clearly conveyed a sense of grieving and sorrow for what lay beyond the pitch-black opening at the rear. This was, after all, a threshold to the place of the dead. The brooding figures surrounding the doorway were apparently meant to prepare visitors, letting them know that they would find the catacombs devoid of any joy.
Kahlan rushed past Richard to step out of the hidden alcove, looking all around as she stepped into the light. “Dear spirits, I know this place.” She turned back in a rush. “We’re in the Keep!”
Richard stepped out of the shadowed entry to the catacombs to stand beside Kahlan, looking up at the vast, narrow chamber rising up like an enormous split inside the mountain the Wizard’s Keep had been built into. Tightly fit, fine-grained granite blocks lined the soaring walls. The chamber was perhaps half a dozen stories high, yet hardly any wider than the public corridors up in the Keep proper.
Cassia and Vale stood shielding them from a small group of people crowding around, staring at them as if they were seeing some of the corpses from below come back to life. Covered in dust as they were, they probably looked the part.
“Richard?” a deep voice asked.
Richard squinted into the light shining into his eyes from the slits at the top of the lofty wall opposite him.