Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

Cara stopped, hands on hips, and looked back down the marble hallway. Behind them a few hundred men of the First File slowed to a halt so that they wouldn't overrun those in the lead. The echo of boots on stone slowly dwindled to a whisper. Several of the soldiers had crossbows with red fletched arrows at the ready. Those arrows made Verna sweat. She almost wished that Nathan had never found them. Almost.

The seemingly endless maze of halls behind the heavily armed soldiers was empty and silent but for the hissing torches. Cara frowned in thought for a moment, then started out once again. This was the fourth time since Ann and Nicci had disappeared the night before that they had been down in the halls that led to the tombs. Verna couldn't begin to imagine what the Mord-Sith could be trying to figure out. Empty passageways were empty passageways. The two missing women were hardly likely to pop out of the marble walls.

"They had to have gone somewhere else," Verna finally said, even though no one had seen them.

Cara turned back. "Like where?"

Verna lifted her arms and finally let them flop back down to her sides. "I don't know."

"It be a big palace," Adie said. The torchlight lent the sorceress's completely white eyes a disturbing, translucent quality.

Verna gestured down the silent passageway. "Cara, we've spent hours going up and down these halls and it's just as obvious now as it was the last time we were down here-or the first time for that matter-that they are empty. Nicci and Ann have to be somewhere up in the palace. We're wasting our time down here. I agree that we need to find them, but we need to look elsewhere."

Cara's eyes looked like blue fire. "They were down here."

"Yes, I'm sure you're right. But were is the word in what you said that matters. Do you see any trace of them? I don't. You're no doubt correct that they were down here. It's obvious, though, that they've since gone elsewhere." Verna sighed impatiently. "We're wasting valuable time marching up and down empty halls."

As everyone waited where they stood, Cara paced up the hallway a short distance. When she returned she again planted her fists on her hips.

"There's something wrong down here."

Nathan, out by himself in the lead and keeping his own counsel, stared back at them, for the first time curious. "Wrong? What do you mean . .. wrong?"

"I don't know," Cara admitted. "I can't put my finger on it but there's something down here that doesn't feel right to me."

Verna spread her hands, searching for understanding. "You mean some kind of ... essence of magic, or something?"

"No," Cara said, waving off the very notion. "I don't mean anything like that." She returned the hand to her red leather-clad hip. "It's just that it seems like something is wrong-I don't know what, but something."

Verna glanced about. "Do you think something is missing?" She gestured ahead, up the empty passageway. "Decorations, furnishings, something of that nature?"

"No. As I recall there never was any decorations down in most of these halls. But I haven't been down here to the tombs much-no one has.

"Darken Rahl would visit his father's tomb from time to time, but as far as I know he didn't have any interest in visiting the others. The area down here with the tombs is private and he made it off-limits. When he went to his father's tomb he usually took his bodyguards, not Mord-Sith, so I'm just not all that familiar with the place."

"Maybe that's all it is," Verna suggested, "an uneasy feeling brought on by unfamiliarity."

"I suppose that could be it," Cara said, her mouth twisting with annoyance at having to admit it was a possibility.

Everyone stood silently, considering what they should do next, if anything. It was always possible, after all, that the two missing women could show up at any moment and wonder what all the fuss was about.

"You said Ann and Nicci had wanted to be alone to have a private conversation," Adie said. "Perhaps they went off somewhere private."

"All night?" Verna asked. "I can't imagine that. The two of them didn't have much in common. They weren't friends. Dear Creator, I don't think they even liked each other all that much. I can't imagine them chatting the night away."

"Me neither," Cara said.

Verna looked up at the prophet. "Do you have any idea what Ann might have wanted to talk to Nicci about?"

Nathan's long white hair brushed his shoulders when he shook his head. "Ann naturally took a dim view of Nicci, considering that she turned to the Sisters of the Dark. I know that always bothered her-and not without sound reason. It was more than a betrayal of the cause of the Light; it was a personal betrayal and a betrayal of the palace. Ann might have wanted to get Nicci alone so she could counsel her about coming back to the Creator."

"That would have been a brief conversation," Cara said.

"I suppose so," Nathan admitted. He scratched the bridge of his nose as he considered. "Well, knowing Ann, it very well might be something about Richard."