Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind [308]
“Don’t you dare do anything stupid, Richard Cypher. Promise me.”
“I promise.” He didn’t tell her that he thought letting harm reach her was what he considered stupid above all else. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back with you just as soon as I get rid of this spell. Protect the box. Rahl must not get it. That’s what matters. Now, get going.”
He stood holding the reins of his horse, watching her gallop across the bridge and disappear into the distance.
“I love you, Kahlan Amnell,” he whispered.
With an encouraging pat to the splotch of gray on the roan’s neck, Richard headed the big horse off the road after crossing the small bridge, and spurred it along the bank of the stream. The horse ran with ease, splashing its hooves in the shallow water when the brush blocked the way along the bank. Sunlit hills, mostly barren of trees, rose up around the stream. As the banks became steeper, he led the horse up along the higher ground, where it could make easier progress. Richard kept a watch for anyone following, or observing, but saw no one. The hills seemed deserted.
Chalk white cliffs rose up to either side of the stream, cleft faces on identical hills straddling the water. Richard was off the horse before it stopped. Looking about, he tethered it to a sumac whose red fruit were already dried and shriveled.
His boots slid on the loose ground as he descended the steep bank. There was a narrow foot trail through the slide of rock and dirt. Following it brought him to the tall mouth of a cave.
With a hand on the hilt of the sword, he peeked around the opening, checking for the artist, or anyone else. There was no one. Immediately inside the cave were drawings on the walls. They covered every surface, and continued back into the darkness.
Richard was overwhelmed. There were hundreds of drawings, maybe thousands. Some were little, no bigger than his hand; some were larger, tall as he. Each depicted a different scene. Most had only one person in them, but a few had many people. It was obvious that they had been drawn by different hands. Some were delicately rendered, rich in detail, with shading and highlights, depicting people with broken limbs, or drinking from cups with skulls and crossed bones on them, or standing next to fields of withered crops. Others were done by someone with little talent for the task: their figures were drawings of people made of simple lines. But the scenes in these were similarly gruesome. Richard guessed that the talent of the artist was of little importance; it was the message that counted.
Richard found drawings done by different hands but of the same subject. These people might have a map of some sort around them, but around each was a line drawn in a circle, the circle having a skull and crossed bones on it somewhere.
Keeper spells.
But how was he to find his? There were drawings everywhere. He didn’t know what the drawing of his spell looked like. He searched the walls with growing panic, moving deeper into the darkness. He ran his hands over the pictures as he moved, trying to look at each, so as not to miss his. His eyes darted everywhere, overwhelmed by the number of spells, searching for something familiar, not knowing exactly what to look for, or where.
Richard worked his way back into the darkness, reasoning that maybe there was an end to the drawings, and maybe the latest were at the end. It was too dark to see. He went toward the mouth of the cave to retrieve reed cane torches he had seen there.
Before he had gone far, he ran smack into the invisible wall. With rising panic, he realized that he was trapped in the cave. He was running out of time. The torches were out of reach.
He ran back into the darkness, searching. He had trouble seeing the spells, and still there was no end to them. A thought he definitely didn’t like came to him.
If there be need enough. The night stone.
With no time to lose, he pulled the leather pouch from his pack. He looked at it in his hand, trying to decide