Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind [239]
She turned and went through the little door on the right. That was the servants’ passageway. It was a lot longer, but no one important would be in the servant halls or on the servant stairs. None of the servants would stop her; they all knew she was the Princess’s playmate, and they didn’t want the Princess mad at them. She would have to go down through the place where the servants stayed, down under the big rooms and under the kitchen.
The stairs were all stone, worn smooth on the front edges. One window at the top was uncovered and it let in rain, and the steps always had water leaking from the stone walls, running down them. Some places it was just a little, some places more, and there was green slime on some of the steps. She always had to step careful to keep from stepping in the slime. Torches in iron brackets made the stone and the steps look red and yellow.
There were some people in the halls on the bottom floor, servants carrying linens and blankets, washwomen with buckets of water and mops, and men carrying bundles of firewood for the fireplaces upstairs. Some of the people stopped and whispered to each other. They seemed excited. She heard Giller’s name and it made her get a lump in her throat.
When she went past the servants’ quarters, all the oil lamps were burning, hung from the big beams of the low ceilings, and there were bunches of people gathered around, telling each other what they had seen. Rachel saw one of the men talking loud, with mostly women, but some men, too, standing around him. It was Mr. Sanders, the man who wore the fancy coat and greeted the fine ladies and gentlemen when they came to dinner, and announced their names when they came in.
“Heard it myself, from those two that stand watch over the dining room. You know who I’m talking about, the young one, Frank and the other, with the limp, Jenkins. Said the D’Haran guards told them personal that there’s going to be a search of the castle, top to bottom.”
“What’re they lookin’ for?” a woman asked.
“Don’t know. Least they didn’t tell Frank and Jenkins. But I wouldn’t want to be the one that had whatever they’re after. Those men from D’Hara could give you nightmares when you were wide awake.”
“Wish they’d find whatever it is under Violet’s bed,” somebody else said. “It’d do her up right to get a nightmare for a change, ‘stead of givin’ ‘em.” Everyone laughed.
Rachel went on, through the big storeroom with all the columns. Barrels were on one side, all piled up in rows on top of one another; boxes and crates and sacks were stacked up on the other side. The room smelled damp and musty, and she could always hear mice scratching about. She went down the middle, past the lamps hung on the side of columns, to the heavy door at the other end. The iron strap hinges creaked when she strained and pulled on the iron ring and opened the door. Rust from the ring got on her hands, so she wiped them on the stone. Another big door to the right led to the dungeon. She went up the stairway. It was dark, with only one torch at the top, and she could hear water go plink, plink, plink and echo. Through the door at the top that stood open a crack, she went down the stone block halls like the wind that was always in them. She was too scared to cry. She wanted Sara to be safe, with her, and away from here.
On the top floor, at last, she peeked her head around the door, looking up and down the hall that ran past Princess Violet’s room. The hall was empty. Tiptoeing across the carpet with the pictures of the boats on it, she reached the entry way set back from the hall. She snuck into it, checking the hall again. Carefully, she opened the door a sliver. The room