Blood of the Fold

"Lord Rahl, mriswith kill people. You always kill them."

Richard lifted a hand toward the landing above. "It wasn't going to hurt us. I told you that. It didn't attack us, did it? There was no need to harm it."

Her brow furrowed with concern. "Lord Rahl, are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Now, come on. Maybe the mriswith gave us a good hint of what we might be looking for."

She shoved him back against the door when he tried to move. "Why did it call you 'skin brother'?"

"I don't know. I guess because it has scales, and I have skin. I think it called me that to let me know it meant no harm. It wanted to help."

"Help," she repeated incredulously.

"It didn't try to stop us, did it?"

She finally let go of his shirt, but it took longer for her blue eyes to release their hold on him.

At the bottom of the tower, a walkway with an iron railing ringed the outside wall of the tower. In the center lurked black water with rocks breaking the surface in several places. Salamanders clung to the stone below the walkway, and rested partially submerged at the rocks. Insects swam through the thick, inky water, skittering around bubbles that occasionally ascended to send out rings as they burst.

Halfway around the walkway, Richard knew he had found what he was looking for: something not ordinary, like the libraries, or even the strange rooms and corridors.

A wide platform in the walkway before where a door had been was littered with sooty stone fragments, chips, and dust. Chunks of wood from the door now floated in the dark water beyond the iron railing. The doorway itself had been blown away, and was now perhaps twice its previous size. The jagged edges were blackened, and in some places the stone itself was melted like candle wax. Twisting streaks on the stone wall ran off in every direction away from the blasted hole, as if lightning had flailed against the wall and burned it.

"This is not old," Richard said, running his finger through the black soot.

"How can you tell?" Berdine asked as she peered about.

"Look. See here? The mold and slime has been burned away, scoured right off the rock, and hasn't had time to grow back. This happened recently — sometime within the last few months."

The room inside was round, perhaps sixty feet across, its walls scorched in ragged lines as if lightning had gone wild in the place. A circular stone wall took up the center, like a huge well, nearly half the width of the room. Richard leaned over the waist-high wall, holding out the glowing globe. The smooth stone walls of the hole fell away forever. He could see the stone for hundreds of feet before the light failed to penetrate farther. It looked bottomless.

Above was a domed ceiling nearly as high as the room was wide. There were no windows or other doors. To the far side, Richard could see a table and a few shelves.

When they rounded the well, he saw the body, lying on the floor beside a chair. All that was left were bones inside a few scraps of cloth robes. Most of the robes had long ago rotted away, leaving the skeleton encircled by just a leather belt. Sandals remained, too. When he touched the bones, they crumbled like baked dirt.

"He has been here a very long time," Berdine said, "You're right about that."

"Lord Rahl, look."

Richard stood and looked to the table where she pointed. There was an inkwell, dry for perhaps centuries, a pen to the side, and an open book. Richard leaned over and blew a cloud of dust and stone chips from the book.

"It's in High D'Haran," he said is he held it up next to the glowing sphere.

"Let me see." Her eyes moved from side to side as she studied the strange characters. "You're right."

"What does it say?"

She carefully took the book in both hands. “This is very old. The dialect is older than any I have ever seen. Darken Rahl showed me an old dialect that he said was over two thousand years old." She looked up. "This is older,"

"Can you read it?"

"I could only understand a bit of the book we found when we came in the Keep." She considered the last page with writing on it. "I understand much less of this," she said as she turned some of the pages back.

Richard gestured impatiently. "Well, can you understand any of it?"

She stopped turning and scrutinized the writing. "I think it says something about finally having success, but that success means he would die here." She pointed. "See? drauka. That word is the same I think — 'death. " Berdine looked at the blank leather cover, then turned back through the book, scanning the pages.

Her blue eyes came up at last. “I think it1 s a journal. I think this is the journal of the man who died in here."

Richard felt goose bumps dance up his arms. "Berdine, this is what I was looking for. This is something not ordinary, not a book others have seen, like in the library. Can you translate it?"