Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Whatever Chainfire could be, Nicci had no idea, but she could sense in his voice, as well as his tense expression, how eager Richard was to discover its meaning. After having lived with him for so long, Nicci knew his feelings without him having to say a word. It was obvious he'd placed a lot of significance on the meaning behind Chainfire.

More than that, though, Nicci was worried as to what could have happened to his sword. She couldn't imagine why he didn't have it with him. Her concern had been heightened all the more by the way Cara had immediately cut off the question, to say nothing of the way Richard had not mentioned it. The Sword of Truth was not something Richard would have lightly forgotten all about.

Higher up on the mountain, as they rode up the switchbacks, the road emerged from a thick growth of towering spruce trees before a stone bridge spanning a chasm of immense depth. It looked to Nicci as if the mountain were split open to its core, with the closer side pulled away from the rest of the mountain. As they rode single-file across the bridge spanning the yawning abyss, she glanced over the edge and could see sheer rock walls to each side dropping down through cottony clouds drifting by below them. It was a dizzying sight that made her stomach feel queazy.

Nicci could tell by Sa'din's gait how tired he was. His ears lazily swiveled toward the drop to each side as they crossed the bridge. Richard and Cara's horses, though, were lathered and blowing hard. Nicci knew how well Richard treated animals, and yet he was showing these no mercy. He obviously thought there were higher values involved than the lives of animals. She knew what that value was: human life. One in particular.

The walls of the Keep, composed of intricately joined blocks of dark granite, rose up like a cliff before them. Coming off the bridge, riding between Richard in front and Cara at the rear, Nicci stared up at the Keep's complex maze of ramparts, bastions, towers, connecting passageways, and bridges. The place looked somehow alive, as if it were watching them approach the gaping entrance of arched stone where the road tunneled under the base of the outer wall.

Without hesitation, Richard trotted his horse in under the raised, massive portcullis. Given a choice, Nicci would have been a bit more cautious in her approach to such a place. Her skin crawled with the power emanating from within. She had never before felt such a strong sense of the force of magic from within a place. It was like standing alone on a plain as a vast, massive thunderstorm was about to envelope her.

The sensation gave her some measure of the shields that guarded the Keep. From what she had to conclude by what she could sense, the shields at the Palace of the Prophets had been child's play by comparison. Too, those were predominantly Additive and the palace had been built for an entirely different purpose. Here, Subtractive shields were employed in equal service. The lethality of their dominion was not concealed, but manifest to those whose business it was to know of such things.

Almost unnoticed, hazy clouds had closed in overhead, leaving the late-afternoon sky a flat, steel gray. The gloom that replaced the sunlight made the stone of the Keep look all the darker, all the more forbidding, almost as if the Keep itself had drawn a shroud of clouds tightly around itself as it watched the approach of a sorceress and a wizard able to command powers that yet haunted this place.

After coming out from under the arched opening in the thick outer wall, they emerged on a road that continued through the deep interior canyon of the Keep. Beyond, the road tunneled through another dark wall that provided a second barrier, should one ever be necessary. Without pause, Richard rode on into that long, dark passageway. The sounds of the horses' hooves echoed off the damp stone under the murky, arched passage.

Beyond the tunnel, they emerged beside an expansive paddock growing thick with lush grass. The gravel road ran along the side of a wall to the right with several doors. The first doors they'd encountered just inside the portcullis would have been where visitors entered. Nicci surmised that this, beyond the second wall, was probably the working entrance to the Keep. A fence along the other side of the road enclosed the paddock. Beyond, to the left, the back side of the paddock was walled off by the Keep itself. At the far end stood the stables.

Without a word, Richard dismounted and opened the gate to the paddock, letting his horse go in but leaving it saddled. Perplexed, Cara and Nicci nonetheless followed his example before following him across the grounds toward an entrance with a dozen wide granite steps worn smooth and swaybacked over time. They led up into a recessed entryway where simple but heavy double doors into the Keep proper began to creak open.