Temple of the Winds

"All right, then. Now, listen to me. I know that the shields here are dangerous, but that's all I know about them. They may not be like the others I've taken you through.

"I have to touch that metal plate down there on the wall. I want you two to wait here while I go see if I have the proper magic to open the door. If it opens, then you both can come the rest of the way."

"This isn't a trick, is it?" Raina asked. "You tricked us one other time to keep us out, to keep us from going where there was danger. Mord-Sith are not afraid of danger."

The wind lifted his gold cloak. "No, Raina, it's not a trick. This is important, but I don't want either of you risking your lives needlessly. If I can open the door, then I promise to take you both with me. Satisfied?"

Both women nodded. Richard gave them each an appreciative squeeze on the shoulder. He absently adjusted the metal bands on his wrists as he gazed at the towering bastion waiting at the end of the rampart.

A cold wind buffeted him as he started across. He could feel the pressure of the shield, like the weight of water when you swam toward the bottom of a pond. The fine hairs at the back of his neck stiffened as he progressed. The pressure made it difficult but not impossible to draw a breath, as Kahlan had said she had experienced.

Six immense columns of variegated red stone stood to each side of the gold-clad door, holding up a protruding entablature of dark stone. The architrave was decorated with brass plaques. As Richard approached it, he recognized some of their symbols as the same ones on his wristbands, belt, and boot pins. The frieze held round metal disks with other of the more circular symbols. The more linear of symbols he wore were also carved into the stone of the cornice.

Seeing the symbols he recognized reassured him, even though he didn't know their meaning. He wore these things by obligation, duty, and right-he was born to them, that much he knew. Why, he didn't know. Even if he wished it could be otherwise, it wasn't; he was a war wizard.

Distracted by the uncomfortable pressure and tingling of the shields, he reached the door almost before he realized it. The door was at least twelve feet tall, and a good four feet wide, gold-clad and embellished in the same symbolic motifs.

Embossed in the center was the more prominent of the symbols he wore: two rough triangles, with a sinuous double line running around and through them. Richard rested his left hand on the hilt of his sword as he fingered the symbol with his other hand, tracing its oval, undulating outer margin.

With the act of touching it, tracing it, following its pattern, he understood. The spirits who had used the Sword of Truth before him passed their knowledge on to him as he used the sword, but they didn't always convey that knowledge in words; in the heat of combat there wasn't always time. Sometimes it came to him in images, symbols: these symbols. This one on the door, like the ones on his wristbands, was a kind of dance used for fighting when outnumbered. It conveyed a sense of the movements of the dance, movements without form. The dance with death.

It made sense. He wore the outfit of a war wizard. Richard had learned from Kolo's journal that in Kolo's time the First Wizard, named Baraccus, had also been a war wizard, as was Richard. These symbols had meaning to a war wizard. Much as a tailor painted shears on his window, or a tavern sign had a mug on it, or a blacksmith nailed up horseshoes, or a weapons maker displayed knives, these symbols were signs of his craft: bringing death.

Richard realized that his fear had vanished. He stood in the Wizard's Keep, which had always before set his nerves on edge and worse, stood now before the most restricted and protected place in the Keep, yet he felt calm. He touched a starburst symbol on the door. This symbol was an admonition. Keep your vision all-inclusive, never allowing it to lock on any one thing. That was the meaning of the starburst symbol: look everywhere at once, see nothing to the exclusion of all else-don't allow the enemy to direct your vision, or you will see what he wishes you to see. He will then come at you as you become bewildered, looking for his attack, and you will lose.