Blood of the Fold

"That is why we must go," Cara explained with exaggerated patience. "You don't know how to protect yourself. We might be of help. Who's to say that an Agiel — " She lifted a thumb to Ulic and Egan. "—or muscles, aren't what will be needed? What if you fall down a simple hole with no ladder, and there is no one to hear you call for help? You could be hurt by something not magic, you know."

Richard sighed. "Well, all right. I guess you have a point." He shook a finger at her. "But if you get your foot bitten off by some stone fish or something, don't you complain to me about it."

The three women grinned in satisfaction. Even Ulic and Egan smiled. Richard let out a weary sigh.

"Come on, then."

He turned toward the twelve-foot-tall door set back in an alcove. The wood was gray and weathered, and spanned with simple but massive iron straps spiked on with cut nails as big as his fingers. Above the door, words were carved in the stone lintel, but they were in a language none of them could understand. As Richard reached for the lever, the door began to move inward on silent hinges.

"And he says he doesn't know how to use his magic," Berdine mocked.

Richard checked the resolve in their eyes one last time. "Remember, don't touch anything." They nodded. He heaved a resigned sigh and turned toward the doorway, scratching the back of his neck.

"Didn't the unguent I brought rid you of your rash? ' Cara asked as they stepped through the doorway into the cheerless room beyond. It smelled of damp stone.

"No. Not yet, anyway."

Inside the vast entry chamber their voices echoed off the beamed ceiling, which was some thirty feet high. Richard slowed as he peered around the near empty room and came to a halt.

"The woman I bought it from promised me it would cure your rash. She said it was made with the usual, common ingredients, like white rhubarb, juice of laurel, butter, and soft-boiled egg, but when I told her that it was most important, she added some special, costly elements. She said she put in betony, pig's ulcer, a swallow's heart, and because I am your protector, she had me bring her my moon blood. She stirred it in with a red hot nail. I stayed and watched, just to make sure."

"I wish you had told me this before I'd used it," Richard muttered as he started ahead into the gloomy chamber.

"What?" He waved off her question. "Well, I warned her that it had better work, for the amount I paid, and told her that if it didn't, I would be back and she would rue the day she failed. She promised it would work. You did remember to put some on your left heel, like I told you, didn't you?"

"No, I just put in on the rash." Now he wished he hadn't.

Cara threw her hands up. "Well, no wonder. I told you that you had to put it on your left heel, too. The woman said the rash was probably a disruption in the basing of your aura, and you had to put it on your heel, too, to complete the connection to the earth."

Richard only half listened to her; he knew she was merely trying to find courage in the sound of her own voice, by keeping the subject mundane.

High overhead to their right, a row of small windows poured long slanting shafts of daylight across the room. Ornately carved wooden chairs stood watch to each side of an arched opening at the far end. Beneath the row of windows hung a tapestry, its image too faded to be discerned. The opposite wall held a row of candles in simple iron sconces. A heavy trestle table sat near the center of the room, bathed in a brilliant shaft of light. The room was otherwise bare.

They crossed the floor, accompanied by the echoes of the sounds of their boots on the tiles. Richard saw that there were books on the table. His hopes elevated; books were why he had come. It could be weeks yet before Kahlan and Zedd made it back, and he feared that he might need to take action to protect the Keep before then. He was becoming restive and worried while he waited.

With the D'Haran army holding Aydindril, his biggest threat right now was an assault to seize the Keep. He hoped to find books that might impart some knowledge, maybe even tell him how to use some of his magic, so that if someone with magic attacked, he might gain a key to warding them off. He feared the Order would try to snatch some of the magic preserved in the Keep. Mriswith, too, were in his thoughts.

There were nearly a dozen books on the table, all the same size. The words on the covers were not in a language he could understand. Ulic and Egan stood with their backs to the table while Richard slid some of the books aside with a finger to better see ones underneath. Something looked familiar about them.

"They look like the same book, but in different languages," he remarked, half to himself.