Temple of the Winds

She was confident that there were other routes down to Kolo's room. There were vast areas of the Keep that weren't protected by any shields at all. She had only to find a way without shields, or with shields that her magic would be able to pass. The areas that Richard had taken her, protected by dangerous shields, she didn't know at all, since she had never been beyond those before, but she was familiar with a myriad of ways to get around them.

Oftentimes the "hard shields," as the wizards used to call them, were meant to protect something just beyond, rather than specifically to prevent passage to another area. Many of the rooms Richard had taken her through were like that: places of menacing magic she had never seen before. They oftentimes provided a more direct route, but required special magic.

If she was correct, that Richard had traversed a maze through dangerous places, rather than going through hard shields specifically protecting the tower, then there would be a way around the dangerous areas and into the tower room. In her experience, that was the way the Keep worked: if the tower room was meant to be off-limits, then it would be protected by its own hard shields. If it wasn't forbidden, then there would be at least one way she could enter. She had but to find it.

Even though she had spent a great deal of time in the Keep. much of that time was spent in the libraries studying. She had explored, of course, but the Keep was almost inconceivably vast. Not only was the part that could be seen from the outside immense, but much more of the Keep was burrowed into the mountain. The outer walls were only the tip of the Keep, the visible part of the tooth, with much more of the root hidden beneath.

Kahlan went through an empty room, chiseled from bedrock, to one of the passages on the other side. There were numerous empty rooms in the Wizards' Keep. Some of them, like the one she had just passed through, seemed nothing more than junctions where various passages connected, possibly enlarged to provide reference points.

The square-sided passage through the rock ahead appeared carefully cut and smoothed. Her lamp illuminated bands of symbols incised in the granite, with round areas in the field of swirling carvings polished to a high luster. Each encircling band marked the location of a mild shield that tingled against her flesh as she passed through.

Ahead, she saw the hall split into three passageways. Before she reached the junction, the air about her suddenly hummed. It took two steps before she could halt her onward rush. Each of those two steps caused the hum to raise in pitch to an uncomfortable buzzing. Her long hair lifted from her shoulders and back to stand straight out in all directions. The band carved in the stone ahead immediately began to glow red.

Kahlan retreated several paces. The humming lowered in pitch. Her hair settled down.

She cursed under her breath. A humming shield was an urgent warning to stay away. The red glow displayed the region of the shield itself. The hum warned that you were entering the field of a dangerous shield.

Some of these hard shields would actually prevent a person without the required magic from getting too close, by making the very air get as thick as mud, and then stone. Some of the humming shields didn't prevent entry, but walking into one would sear the flesh and muscle right off a person's bones. The lesser shields were meant to keep people without magic, and thus knowledge, from getting close to the danger.

Kahlan turned and held up the lamp as she quickly retraced her steps to the room. She took a different passageway that ran in the general direction she wanted to go. It was a much more congenial-looking hall, with whitewashed walls and ceiling, making the lamp better able to brighten her way.

She encountered no shields at all in the white hall. A stairway took her lower into the Keep. Another stone hall at the bottom provided quick travel devoid of shields. In her mind, she was retracing the halls, rooms, stairs, and cramped tunnels, and was pretty sure that, by eliminating the false routes she had taken, there was a way to get to and from the tower without encountering any shields.

Kahlan threw open the door at the end of the stone hall and stepped out onto a walkway with an iron railing. She held the lamp up in front of her. She stood at the bottom level of the tower.

The walkway ringed the hall. Stairs wound their way up around the inside of the immense stone tower, with landings at other doors along the way. In the center, at the bottom of the tower, lurked a pool of black water. Rocks broke the surface of the water here and there. Bugs skittered across the inky surface of the pool. Salamanders rested on the rocks, their eyes rolling to watch her.