Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind [124]
Staff positions were filled from the surrounding D’Haran countryside. Being a member of the crypt staff was an honor, by law. The honor brought with it the promise of a quick death if an execution was in order. A slow death in D’Hara was greatly feared, and common. New recruits, for fear they would speak ill of the dead king while in the crypt, had their tongues cut out.
The Master, on the evenings when he was at home in the People’s Palace, would visit the tomb. No staff or tomb guards were allowed to be present during these visits. The staff had spent a busy afternoon replacing the torches with freshly burning ones and tested each of the hundreds of white roses by gently shaking them to make sure none of the petals were loose, since any torch going out during the royal visit, or any rose petal falling to the floor, would result in an execution.
A short pillar in the center of the immense room supported the coffin itself, giving it the effect of floating in the air. The gold-enshrouded coffin glowed in the torchlight. Carved symbols covered its sides, and continued in a ring around the room, cut into the granite beneath the torches and gold vases: instructions in an ancient language from a father to a son on the process of going to the underworld, and returning. Instructions in an ancient language understood by only a handful other than the son; none but the son lived in D’Hara. All the others in D’Hara who understood had long ago been put to death. Someday, the rest would be.
The crypt staff and guards had been sent away. The Master was visiting his father’s tomb. Two of his personal guards stood watch over him, one to each side of the massive, elaborately carved and polished door. Their sleeveless leather-and-mail uniforms helped display their bulky forms, the sharp contours of their heavy muscles, and the bands they wore around their arms just above their elbows, bands with raised projections sharpened to deadly edges, used in close combat to tear apart an adversary.
Darken Rahl ran his delicate fingers over the carved symbols on his father’s tomb. An immaculate white robe, its only decoration gold embroidery in a narrow band around the neck and down the front, covered his lean frame to within an inch of the floor. He wore no jewelry, other than a curved knife in a gold scabbard embossed with symbols warning the spirits to give way. The belt that held it was woven of gold wire. Fine, straight, blond hair hung almost to his shoulders. His eyes were a painfully handsome shade of blue. His features set off his eyes perfectly.
Many women had been taken to his bed. Because of his striking looks, and his power, some went eagerly. The others went despite his looks, but because of his power. Whether or not they were eager did not concern him. Were they unwise enough to be repulsed when they saw the scars, they entertained him in ways they could not have foreseen.
Darken Rahl, as had his father before him, considered women merely vessels for the man’s seed, the dirt it grew in, unworthy of higher recognition. Darken Rahl, as his father before him, would have no wife. His own mother had been nothing more than the first to sprout his father’s wondrous seed, and then she had been discarded, as was only fitting. If he had siblings, he didn’t know, nor did it matter; he was firstborn, all glory fell to him. He was the one born with the gift, and the one to whom his father passed the knowledge. If he had half brothers or sisters, they were merely weeds, to be expunged if discovered.
Darken Rahl spoke the words silently in his mind as his fingers traced the symbols. Although it was of the utmost importance that the directives were followed exactly, he had no fear of making an error; the instructions were burned into his memory. But he enjoyed reliving the thrill of the passage, of hanging