Chainfire (12 page)

Driven by worried curiosity, Ann immediately started down the dusty steps. Jennsen followed close on her heels. A landing turned them to the right and down another flight. At a third landing, a long run of stairs turned to the left. The dusty stone walls were uncomfortably close together. The ceiling hunkered low, even for Ann; Jennsen had to crouch. It felt to Ann like she was being swallowed down though a moldering gullet into the graveyard’s belly.

At the bottom of the steps she halted to stare in disbelief. Jennsen let out a low whistle. Beyond was not a dungeon, but a strange, twisting room unlike any Ann had ever seen. The stone walls zigged and zagged at odd angles, each of its own design and independently of the others. Plastering covered some of the stone walls. In a series of the convoluted angles, the whole room snaked off into the distance, disappearing around projections and pointed corners.

The place had a strange orderly disorder about it that Ann found somewhat unsettling. Dark niches here and there in the plastered walls were surrounded with faded blue symbols and decorations that had flaked off in places. There were words as well, but they were too old and dull to be legible without careful study. Bookshelves as well as ancient wooden tables, all layered in dirt, sat in several places up against the angled walls.

Dead-still cobwebs, heavy with dust, hung everywhere like drapes meant to decorate the room beneath the graves. Dozens of candles sat on tables and in some of the empty niches, giving the whole place a soft, otherworldly glow, as if all the dead above Ann’s head must periodically descend to this place to discuss matters important only to the deceased, and to welcome new members into their eternal order.

Beyond the diaphanous curtains of dust-choked cobwebs, amongst four massive tables that had been dragged together, stood Nathan. Disorderly stacks of books were piled high all around him on the tables.

“Ah, there you are,” Nathan called from his book fort.

Ann cast a sidelong glance at Jennsen.

“I had no idea that this place was down here,” the young woman said in answer to the question that remained unasked on Ann’s tongue. Points of candlelight danced in her blue eyes. “I didn’t even know this place existed.”

Ann looked around again. “I doubt anyone in the last few thousand years knew this place existed. I wonder how
he
found it.”

Nathan snapped a book shut and placed it on a pile behind him. His straight white hair brushed his broad shoulders as he turned back. His hooded, dark azure eyes fixed on Ann.

Ann caught the unspoken meaning in Nathan’s gaze. She turned to Jennsen. “Why don’t you go up and wait with Tom, my dear. It can be a lonely job standing watch in a graveyard.”

Jennsen looked disappointed, but seemed to understand their need to be left to their business. She flashed a smile. “Sure. I’ll be right up top if you need anything.”

As the sound of Jennsen’s footsteps on the stone stairs dwindled away into a distant, echoing whisper, Ann struck a weaving course through the vails of cobwebs.

“Nathan, what in the world is this place?”

“No need to whisper,” he said. “See how the walls turn at all those odd angles? It cuts the echo.”

Ann was a little surprised to hear that he was right. Usually, the echo in stone rooms was annoying, but this odd twisting room had the hush of the dead.

“There’s something strangely familiar about the shape of this place.”

“Concealment spell,” the prophet said, offhandedly.

Ann frowned. “What?”

“The configuration of the whole thing is in the form of a concealment spell.” He gestured to each side when he saw the puzzled look she gave him. “It’s not the layout of the entire place, the placement of rooms and the course of the various halls and passageways—like at the People’s Palace—that is the spell-form, but rather it’s the precise line of the walls themselves that make up the spell-form, as if someone drew the spell large on the ground and then simply built the walls touching right against that line before hollowing out the middle. Because the walls are a uniform thickness, that means that the outside of the walls are also the shape of the spell-form, so that tends to reinforce the whole thing. Quite clever, actually.”

For such a spell to work, it had probably been drawn in blood and with the aid of human bones. There would have been an ample supply of those at hand.

“Someone certainly went to a lot of trouble,” Ann said as she appraised the space again. This time she began to recognize some of the shapes and angles in opposition. “What exactly is this place used for?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted with a sigh. “I don’t know if these books were meant to be buried with the dead for all time, or they were being hidden, or there was some other purpose.” Nathan beckoned with his hand. “This way. Let me show you something.”

Ann followed him through several of the zigzags, around turns, and past yet more shelves lined with dusty books, until they reached an area of niches three high to each side.

Nathan leaned an elbow against the wall. “Look there,” he said as he pointed a long finger downward, indicating one of the low, arched openings in the stone wall.

Ann stooped and peered inside. It contained a body.

All that was left were bones clothed in dusty tatters of robes. A leather belt circled the waist while a strap crossed over one shoulder. Skeletal arms were folded over the chest. Gold chains hung around the neck. Ann could see by the glint of light off the medallion on one of the chains that Nathan must have lifted it for a look, and in so doing his fingers had cleaned off the dust.

“Any idea who he is?” she asked as she straightened and folded her hands before herself.

Nathan leaned down close to her.

“I believe he was a prophet.”

“I thought there was no need to whisper.”

He arched an eyebrow as he straightened his frame to its considerable height. “There are a number of other people interred here.” He flicked a hand off toward the darkness. “Back that way.”

Ann wondered if they could all be prophets as well. “And the books?”

Nathan leaned down again, and whispered again. “Prophecy.”

She frowned and looked back the way they had come. “Prophecy? You mean all of them? Those are all books of prophecy?”

“Most of them.”

Excitement bubbled up through her. Books of prophecy were invalu
able. They were the rarest of jewels. Such books could offer guidance, provide answers they needed, spare them futile endeavors, fill in gaps in their knowledge. Perhaps more than at any other time in history, they needed those answers. They needed to know more about the final battle in which Richard was supposed to lead them.

As of yet they had not discovered when this battle was to take place. With the frustrating vagary of prophecy, it could yet be many years off. For that matter, it was even possible that it was not to take place until Richard was an old man. With all the difficulties they had faced in the past several years, they could only hope that it was still many years off and they would have time to prepare. Prophecy could help with that.

The vaults at the Palace of the Prophets had been filled with thousands of volumes of prophecy, but they had all been destroyed along with the palace to prevent it from falling into the hands of Emperor Jagang. Better to lose such works for all time than allow evil to look upon their pages.

But no one knew of this place. This place was hidden beneath a concealment spell. The dizzying possibilities spun through Ann’s mind.

“Nathan…this is wonderful.”

She turned and looked up at the man. He was watching her in a way that made her fidgety. She reached out and placed a hand on his arm.

“Nathan, this is more than we could ever have hoped.”

“This is something more than that,” he said cryptically as he started back. “There are books here that make me doubt my sanity,” he said with a sullen flourish of an arm.

“Ah,” Ann quipped as she followed along in his wake, “verification at last.”

He halted and turned a glare on her. “This is nothing to joke about.”

Ann felt goose flesh ripple up her arms. “Show me then,” she said in a serious tone. “What is it you’ve found?”

He shook his head, seeming to lose his momentary flash of ill humor. “I’m not even sure.” His usual flamboyance was nowhere in evidence as he moved in among the tables he’d dragged together. His dark mood turned guarded. “I’ve been sorting the books.”

Ann wanted to hurry him along and get to the meat of his discovery, but she knew that when he was troubled it was best to let Nathan explain things in his own way, especially when there was arcane speculation involved.

“Sorting them?”

He nodded. “These here in this pile don’t appear to be of any real use to us. Most are prophecy long since outdated, contain only irrelevant records, or are in unknown languages—things like that.”

He turned and slapped a hand to the top of another stack. Dust boiled up. “These here are all books that we had back at the palace.” He swept his hand back and forth in front of the stacks of books piled high on the table behind him. “All of them. This whole tableful.”

Her eyes wide, Ann glanced at the shelves and niches going back along the strange room. “There are a great many more books other than these you have here on the tables. This is only a fraction of them.”

“Indeed. I haven’t had a chance to even begin to look at them all yet. I finally decided that I’d better send Tom off to find you. I wanted you to see what I’ve discovered. That, and there is a lot of reading to do. I’ve been pulling out one book at a time, checking through it, and placing it in one of the piles on these tables.”

Ann wondered how many books could still be viable, could still be usable, after thousands of years underground. She had found books before that had been ruined by the effects of time and the elements, especially mildew and water. She peered around, inspecting the walls and ceiling, but she saw no evidence of water leaking through.

“At first glance, none of these books look to be damaged by water. How can this place underground be so dry? It would seem that water would seep in through the joints in the stone and make everything down here wet and moldy. I can hardly believe that the books appear to be in such good condition.”

“
Appear
being the operative word,” Nathan said under his breath.

She turned back to scowl at him. “What do you mean?”

He waved a hand irritably. “In a moment. In a moment. The interesting thing is, the ceiling and walls are sheathed in lead to help keep out the water. The place also has a shield of magic around it for even more protection. The entrance, too, was shielded.”

“But the Bandakar people have no magic and their land was sealed off. There was no one with magic to shield against.”

“That seal to their banished land finally failed, though,” Nathan reminded her.

“Yes, that’s right, it did.” Ann tapped a finger against her chin. “I wonder how that happened.”

Nathan shrugged. “How isn’t so important for now, although I am concerned about it.”

He flipped a hand, as if setting aside the issue. “For the moment, that it did is what’s meaningful. Whoever put these books here wanted them hidden and protected—and they went to a great deal of trouble to insure that they remained that way. The ungifted people here wouldn’t be hindered by shields, the weight of the stone monument would be an obstacle in and of itself, but they would have no reason to want to move it in the first place unless they had a good reason to believe something was under it. What would cause them to suspect such a thing? The fact that this place has remained undisturbed for thousands of years proves that they never realized that this place was down here. I believe that the shields were placed to ward any invaders who might eventually make it into Bandakar, like Jagang’s men did.”

“That makes sense, I suppose,” she murmured as she considered it. “Not really expecting that the seal to Bandakar would ever be breached, the shields were a simple act of precaution.”

“Or prophecy,” Nathan added.

Ann look up. “There is that.” It would take a wizard of Nathan’s ability to breach such shields. Even Ann didn’t have the ability necessary for some shields. She knew, too, that there were shields placed in ancient times that could only be passed with the aid of Subtractive Magic.

“It’s also possible that these books were simply placed here as a way of safekeeping such valuable works—in case anything happened to others of their kind.”

“You really think they would go to this much trouble to do such a thing?” she asked.

“Well, all the books at the Palace of the Prophets were lost, now, weren’t they? Books of prophecy are always at risk. Some have been destroyed, some have fallen into enemy hands, and some have simply disappeared. Places like this provide a backup for those other works—especially if prophecy foretells the need of such a contingency.”

“I guess you could be right. I have heard about rare finds of prophecy that had been secreted away to preserve them, or to keep innocent eyes from viewing them.” She shook her head as her gaze scanned the room. “Still, I’ve never heard of any find to approach the likes of this one.”

Nathan handed her a book. Its ancient red leather cover was faded
nearly to brown. Even so, there was something familiar-looking about it, about the faded gilded ribs on the spine. She lifted the cover and the first blank page.

“My, my, my,” Ann softly mused as she saw the title.
“The Glendhill Book of Deviation Theory.
How very wonderful to hold this in my hands again.” She closed the cover and clasped the book to her breast. “It’s like an old friend come back from the dead.”

The book had been one of her favorite volumes on forked prophecy. Because it was a pivotal volume that held valuable information about Richard, she had studied it and referred to it so often over the centuries as she waited for him to be born that she practically knew it by memory. She had been heartbroken that it had to be destroyed along with all the rest of the books in the vaults at the Palace of the Prophets. There was still a great deal of information in it about the possibilities of what was yet to come.