XVI. FROZEN
Winter came cold and swift. Richard pulled his hood further forward as he hiked along the rugged footpath nearly lost in a swirl of white. He'd known that the higher up into the Rang'Shada Mountains they climbed, the sooner winter would dig its bitter teeth into their bones. Still, he'd hoped they might make it safely through the mountain passes without meeting a snowstorm of such magnitude.
He could barely see Cara walking beside him, and that was with her dark red leather standing out as bold as blood against the snow. It felt as if they stopped moving for a moment, they'd be buried alive.
Peering back over his shoulder, he squinted against the constant snowflakes to check on Kahlan. She trudged beside Zedd with her shoulders bowed against the wind, her exhaustion drawn in dark marks beneath her eyes. She would never ask for a break – she seemed to expect them to accuse her of slowing them down, though she was several months with child and still keeping pace – but it was obvious she needed one soon. He looked around in desperation; the side of a mountain in a blizzard was no place to stop.
The sky above was the color of parched bones, and he could not tell the hour. At a guess, he would say late afternoon. Late enough that they would not make it back to the cave they'd sheltered in the previous night before the light died. If they could even find the cave now with the added snow. Richard cursed himself for leading them this way. It had been his decision to press on when the snow first started to pick up, and the others had deferred to him, trusting as Seeker he would lead the way.
He should have known better, but he had thought only of how perhaps even the delay of an afternoon could be too much in the end. Every day they walked further without the slightest rumor of the Stone of Tears made it harder not to remember Shota's prophecy. But he should have thought of Kahlan instead.
Cara touched his shoulder, jerking his attention back to the blizzard and the biting cold. She spoke, but he could not make out her words over the howl of the wind. When he frowned, she leaned closer, shouting in his ear.
"They'll need to stop soon!"
Richard nodded, scanning the endless world of white for any sign of a cave. He wondered if they would survive if they tunneled into the snow.
"Just a little further!" he yelled back, his mouth to Cara's ear. His words were meant to reassure himself as much as the Mord-Sith, and Cara looked unconvinced.
He cast another anxious glance Kahlan's way, and she gave him a small, tired smile. He forced his mouth to lift up at the corners in response, but he had no emotion to put behind it. His fingers and toes were numb with the cold. He could no longer feel his face. He tried to guess how far they'd make it if it got to the point where he had to carry her. Dear spirits, he thought, let us find a cave.
The sky had begun to turn a dingy shade of gray when Richard saw the impossible, an archway of stone looming suddenly overhead in the blinding snow. He almost fell to his knees in relief, but instead staggered closer. It had been carved, there was no question of that, by human hands. All four of them stopped and gaped up at it, craning their necks back and squinting to see through the blizzard. The archway looked like it had once held a gate. Hinges stood without their door, rusted over and caked with snow.
Richard pressed a numb hand to the stone. An ornate sun was carved at the apex of the arch, its long rays of light twisting around the stone pillars, winding towards the ground. Halfway down, they gave way to a collection of carved figures emerging from the rock as naked as a child from the womb. They were piled over and around each other, those near the top wearing looks of rapture, their faces straining towards the light. Those below stared downward, their mouths gaping open in silent screams, their bodies twisted into a mirror of all that was grotesque.
"What place is this?" he asked, but he forgot to shout, and the howling wind left him with no answer. He took another glance at the tormented faces at the bottom of the archway and stepped through – the storm allowed for no other option.
They huddled close together as they continued forward, and a city began to emerge through the veil of white. It nestled in the rocky fist of the mountain like it belonged. The buildings had all been carved right into the cliffs, their rooftops rejoining with the mountainside. Not a single window glowed with light from within. No smoke from hearths rose to join the cold air. Here and there, doors hung open or bashed in with drifts of snow like silent houseguests, inviting themselves in. Snowflakes drifted through a shattered window into the darkness beyond. At the far end of the empty row sat a building at least twice the size of the others, built of glorious domes that leapt up and up to challenge the snow. Its windows were of a strange, many colored glass he'd never seen before, as if a rainbow had somehow been made into a solid sheet of glass. He felt a sudden, strong desire to go to the building.
But Kahlan stood shivering beside him, and so Richard turned his back on it and pushed open the nearest door, a cautious hand hovering over his sword. He stepped into a long, low room, quite abandoned, with drifts of snow here and there on the cold stone floor. The howl of the wind lessened dramatically, and he pushed back his hood, grateful for the reprieve from the storm.
He could see the relief in the eyes of his companions, and realized they had been just as afraid as him of finding no shelter from the storm. Cara recovered the quickest, knocking the snow from her boots with an irritated hiss as if it had offended her personally. Zedd rubbed his long hands together before brushing off his cloak. But Kahlan stood a little apart from the others, and as he turned towards her, Richard saw her sway on her feet, reaching a hand out to grasp at the wall.
He hurried to her side, putting an arm around her waist to steady her. "Kahlan?" he asked, unable to keep the fear from his voice. "Are you all right?"
"Fine," she said weakly. "I'm fine." But instead of pulling away as he expected her to do to prove her point, she sagged towards him, letting him hold up most of her weight. She leaned her head against his shoulder, sounding tired and dreamy, "It was just a long climb. That's all."
He tightened his grip on her as his gaze swept across the room. It was sparse and unadorned, what little furniture it held was all overturned and broken. A fireplace stood at the far end of the long room, snow and ashes mixed together in the hearth.
"Whoever lived here can have no need for the broken furniture," he said, his breath clouding the air in front of his face. "A bit of wizard's fire might get it to burn nicely in the hearth." He looked to Cara, hoping she would understand and gather up the table legs and splintered planks for him; he wasn't letting go of Kahlan for anything right now.
She took the hint, and a short while later, Zedd had the whole mess crackling merrily in the hearth. They drew near the heat, Richard still holding onto Kahlan. He sat down on the floor, and pulled her into his lap so she would be spared the touch of the icy stone. "I'm okay," she mumbled with a heartening hint of protest to her voice.
"I know you are," he said rubbing his hands up and down her arms to try and warm her. "I just think we should rest. We climbed all day."
She didn't argue with that and stretched her hands out towards the fire. Zedd shot her a worried look, but said nothing. Richard dusted some of the snow from Kahlan's cloak and pulled her closer, enjoying the excuse to have her so near. Though everything had changed between them after the night they spent in the village of Kinsley, the chances he had to hold her hand or – better yet – to have her in his arms were few and far between. And he still felt a little unsure with her, as if he didn't have the right, though she always promised him he did. But now she was cold, and he was sure he had the right, the duty even, to see her warm again.
He hugged her to his chest, and she leaned back against him. "Better?" he asked, his voice close to her ear. She made a little sound of affirmation, her head bumping against his shoulder as she nodded. "How's the…" he trailed off, but she understood the question.
"She's fine," she said, slipping a hand beneath her cloak to rest on her belly. "I can feel her moving around." Richard smiled into her hair and then looked up, considering the room.
"I wonder where we are?" he said.
"The hidden city of Ashkari," said Zedd simply, busy combing the snow from his scraggly hair.
Kahlan sat up a little, her voice hushed and full of awe, "I thought so from the gate. I never would have imagined we passed so close."
Their words did nothing to help his understanding. "Ashkari? What sort of place is it?" he asked. "And who would want to live so high in the mountains?" The cold air was so thin it brought on a strange feeling of lightheadedness.
"Scholars," said Zedd. "Students of the afterlife."
"The afterlife? So they were a religious order – like the monk from Ta'Thrane? Or the Sisters of the Light?"
"No," said Kahlan, twisting in his lap to look at him. Her swollen belly bumped against his chest. "The Sisters of the Light hated them. Most sisters refused to acknowledge their existence."
He curled a hand into a fist to warm it and asked, "Why?"
"Because the scholars of Ashkari possessed equal interest in studying the powers of the Creator and the Keeper," said Zedd, his voice solemn and low. "No order worshiping the Creator's light would ever align with them. I doubt they would have desired such a union either. They closely guarded their knowledge, claiming to fear the damage it could do in the wrong hands."
Kahlan nodded. "Every year, the previous Mother Confessor sent a messenger up into the mountains inviting them to Aydindril as guests of honor, so they might share what they knew with all the Midlands. And every year, a scholar met the messenger halfway down the mountainside to refuse the invitation. No one was ever able to follow his tracks back to Ashkari successfully – though I know some messengers tried." She tugged her cloak closer, staring up at the naked stone walls. "It seems someone finally found them."
"Darken Rahl," said Cara from where she crouched by the fire. "I heard him say the name of this place, Ashkari, more than once. I never knew what it meant. He must have sent soldiers."
Richard scowled, painfully aware of the mark on his chest. "I don't doubt it," he muttered. "Even when Rahl was looking for the magic of Orden, he was serving the Keeper. He would have been eager for the knowledge here."
"At least he was good enough to leave the walls still standing," said Zedd. "He's spared us a very difficult night."
Richard looked down at Kahlan in his arms, trying not to dwell on just how true his grandfather's words were. Kahlan was warm now and resting. She reached over and gave his hand a squeeze, and he squeezed back.
"We should take a look around," said Cara, getting to her feet. "Just because it seems abandoned doesn't mean it is." Richard nodded. It couldn't hurt to be too cautious.
"I think you should stay indoors, dear one," said Zedd, wrinkles running rampant around his eyes as he narrowed them at Kahlan.
"I'm all right," she said and stood as if that would prove it.
"You don't look it," said Cara bluntly.
Richard straightened up as well, his backside numb from sitting on the cold stone. "They're right," he said to her in a quiet voice. "There's no need for you to go back out in that storm." He looked around the long, low room – another door hung open, leading deeper into the mountainside. "This building has no broken windows, and the doors still shut. It might make as good a place as any to spend the night. You and Zedd stay together and explore it for us. Cara and I will be back."
"Richard, I want to go with—"
"Please stay," he interrupted. "If there's anyone about, it will draw less attention if just two of us go," he added, trying to give her as many reasons to stay indoors as he could, so she wouldn't have to feel that it was because she'd become the weakest one.
Kahlan pursed her lips together, but then relented with a muttered, "Fine."
Leaving them to investigate the rest of the building, he and Cara ventured out into the cold again. The blizzard hadn't abated in the slightest, and the sky was darkening, making it even harder to see. Yanking his hood back up, Richard kept a hand to the stone wall, using it to guide him to the next of the buildings. Instead of following behind him in the path he created, Cara trudged alongside him, though she was a good deal shorter and the snow drifts were deeper for her. Of the four of them, she'd purchased the lightest cloak when the weather started to turn. She claimed her leather kept her warm. It seemed to him that the Mord-Sith just never got cold. He was already shivering again by the time they stepped inside the next building, but Cara merely glared at the snow on her leather and brushed it off with a sharp, scolding hand.
The room held more overturned furniture and broken chairs – all of it sparse, simple and plain. The walls were bare stone and a solitary window held shards of thick, plain glass. It made the colored windows of the great, domed building seem all the more remarkable.
"This must have been a home for some of the scholars," he said as he led the way through an archway to another room beyond. It contained only a bed, a small table beside it holding a candle and washbasin, and a ransacked cupboard that spilled clothes across the stone floor. The room looked to have been shared by a man and a woman – the cupboard held simple tunics and trousers as well as dresses in solid shades of white and brown.
"I wonder where all the people are?" said Cara, picking up a shoe only to let it fall to the floor with a soft clunk.
"Maybe they escaped?" he suggested.
She raised a doubtful eyebrow. "Maybe they're dead."
The next few buildings offered more of the same. Empty dwelling after empty dwelling. All of the rooms were abandoned and most ransacked to some degree. Here and there some of the furniture survived. There were boxes of candles which would be of use, but beyond those and some other basics, they found little. Either much had been stolen, or the scholars of Ashkari had lived very simple lives. Judging by the austere style of the furnishings, Richard leaned towards the latter.
There was a barn which held the bodies of frozen animals - several goats, a solitary horse, and a small coop with chickens. They all looked to have starved in their stalls and later frozen. It was a sorrowful, desolate site, and Richard said nothing as he walked the length of the barn, searching out the shadowed corners. Again, they found no one.
When they stepped outside, they were close enough that the blizzard no longer obscured the domed structure looming like a small mountain at the far end of the snowy walk. Richard felt that same, inexplicable tug towards the place that he had when he first arrived, hurrying his search of the remaining buildings between it and the barn. Whatever secrets Ashkari held would not be in them, but in the giant, domed building that seemed to call to him as strongly as the compass or his sword.
The heavy oak door opened for him with a groan, and he and Cara stepped inside, along with a cold whistle of wind and snow. The Mord-Sith kicked the door shut, plunging them into sudden silence and near complete darkness. Whatever room they were in had none of the magnificent windows like rainbows he'd seen from the outside.
Richard started rummaging in the pockets on his belt, feeling with his fingers for a flint. "Open the door again, Cara," he said. "I can't see a thing." She opened it partway, letting in more snow and wind and scant light. It was nearly night, and what shabby light filtered in illuminated only the small area before the door. He searched the area desperately as his fingers closed around the flint – looking for a torch, a scrap of wood, anything he could light. He found an oil lamp mounted high on the wall, barely believing his luck when he managed to get the wick burning despite the wind. Cara closed the door before it could go out again, and when he turned the key to adjust the flame, there was a strange, rushing sound overhead like a swarm of bats taking wing.
Looking up, he saw a ring of fire come to life above his head. At least a hundred lamps mounted in alcoves high on the wall had lit at the key's command, and the sudden brilliance dazzled his eyes. "Is it some sort of temple?" asked Cara.
"I don't know," said Richard as he rubbed at his eyes, his vision still adjusting to the change in light.
They stood in a round entranceway with a vaulted ceiling so high he seemed to shrink down to nothing at all. The countless, dancing flames revealed a mural painted across the expanse of the dome. Following house after house of bare stone, the mural appeared every bit as exquisite and overwhelming as the rush of light. To his right, the eastern wall had been painted to resemble the rising sun, and that portion of the ceiling was a glory of color. From there the mural stretched in brighter and brighter shades of blue across the dome, until it reached the very center where the stone glimmered the purest, clearest blue he'd ever seen – the same shade as Kahlan's eyes. From there, the blue began to deepen and darken. Here and there it was dotted with stars, and at one point a sickle moon, before descending at the edge of the western side of the dome into a sweeping blackness that belonged to the darkest hour of the night. Surely the Underworld itself could be no darker.
He stood transfixed and gaping upward, forgetting to mind the cold. "Look at this," said Cara, pointing at the floor with a gloved hand. The smoothly polished stone had been engraved with some sort of symbol – a circle inside a square, ringed by another circle so large it nearly encompassed the entire entranceway. At the very center was an eight pointed star, its rays of light reaching out in all directions.
"That seems familiar," said Richard. He tried to recall where he'd seen such a symbol before, but nothing came to mind. "Do you know it?"
Cara just shook her head.
He stepped into the symbol, crossing the outer circle, the square and then the inner circle until he stood at the very center. Looking up, he was right beneath the brightest blue so like Kahlan's eyes he had to smile. "It's beautiful," he murmured, revolving slowly to take in the entire mural.
"I thought we came to search this place for survivors, not to look at paintings," said Cara from her spot by the door.
Richard wanted to stay and look longer, but Kahlan would get anxious if they were gone too long, so he walked back to Cara instead. The oil lamp beside the door lifted easily from its alcove, and he held it high as they made their way through the nearest door and down a corridor, casting flickering shadows as they went. Their footsteps echoed on the cold stone floor, and their breath hung in the air before them.
The room they entered was full of shelves that climbed like ivy up the walls. Countless books lined them, sometimes stacked in messy heaps, at other times in tidy rows. Some of the shelves had been ransacked, their books flung about, a few pages lying scattered on the floor. Richard stooped down and picked up the nearest one, finding a book on the geography of the Midlands. The next one he uncovered dealt with the craft of soap making in extensive detail. He set both books on a nearby shelf, saying to Cara, "I think Rahl and his men took everything of value already.
Cara nodded and snorted, tossing a volume of hymns back onto the ground. The next room revealed a library just like the first. Though many of the shelves held odd gaps where it seemed books ought to be but weren't, nothing had been ransacked. Apparently a mere glance had been enough for the D'Harans to deem the books dull and irrelevant.
But the far wall held an enormous oval window filled with the odd, rainbow glass that had first caught his attention. Richard wandered towards it, bringing the lamp right next to the glass as he pressed a hand to the countless shards of color. He had no words for how lovely he found it; all he knew was he wanted to show it to Kahlan tomorrow.
Cara popped up at his elbow, wearing a puzzled frown, "Why are you petting the window?"
Richard pulled his hand back and said, "It's beautiful. I've never seen anything like it."
"It's stained glass. There's plenty of it at your palace," she said with a smirk.
"My palace?"
"Yes. The People's Palace. In D'Hara. Home of the Lord Rahl."
Richard frowned and led the way down another corridor. "That's not my palace. I have no palace."
"So you're not the Lord Rahl?" asked Cara sweetly.
He shot her a look. He'd never met anyone who enjoyed being meddlesome as much as Cara did. "Just help me look," he muttered.
"And what are we looking for, Lord Rahl?" she asked in that same tone of feigned ignorance.
Richard caught himself before he snapped at her. Even teasing that drove him out of his mind had to be counted as a step towards humanity for a Mord-Sith. He tilted his head towards the books, "Something to help me find the Stone of Tears. If these people studied the afterlife, they must have had knowledge of the stone." He still couldn't shake the feeling that the library held something important.
"It will take days to search through this mess!" said Cara, stomping along beside him like a petulant child. "Besides, the D'Harans would have made sure to take all the interesting books. And no one's here," she added. "We might as well go back to Zedd and Kahlan and have some supper. We can bring them back if you want and search tomorrow. We'll have an easier time of it with four of us."
Richard nodded but kept walking deeper into the building. "We should at least check all the rooms," he said. They found a room full of desks, quills and bottles of ink still waiting for the vanished scholars. Mostly though they found books. The entire building seemed to be a library, and the scholars of Ashkari had not merely kept books on the afterlife, but on every conceivable subject under the sun. He had never seen so many books before in his life.
Holding the oil lamp high, Richard led the way down yet another corridor into yet another round room. He stopped short at the sight before him, causing Cara to bump into him from behind. She peered around his shoulder, and then spoke in a bright voice, "Looks like we found the scholars."
Close to a hundred corpses lay frozen on the ground, the bitter cold masking and slowing their decay. In the center of that ring of death sat the charred remains of an enormous fire. Richard picked his way towards it, weaving a path through the tangled bodies to prod at the heaping mountains of ashes. He uncovered the charred remains of a book that disintegrated when he touched it, along with pieces of metal twisted and bent beyond all recognition.
"They must have burnt everything important," he said in a hushed voice as he straightened up. It felt wrong to use more than a whisper in the midst of so much death.
Cara was wandering among the bodies, stopping now and then to squat down and inspect one. "None of them have suffered any wounds. It's as if they all lay down and went to sleep."
"Poison?" wondered Richard, turning his back on the fire pit full of ashes.
"D'Harans would not have poisoned them," said Cara. "They would have used swords."
"No," he agreed. "This was planned. I think it was a mass suicide." He sifted further through the ashes; everything was destroyed. "They burnt all of their knowledge and then killed themselves. They must have had word that Rahl's men were coming."
"Why do something so foolish? They should have stood and fought."
"Maybe they knew they would lose, and this was the only way they could see to keep the knowledge from the wrong hands. If they were captured, it could have been tortured from them." Cara scoffed. "Even you broke once, Cara," he reminded her gently.
She scowled and said nothing, bending down to study another corpse. "There is a bottle here," she announced in a flat voice, holding it out to him. The bottle was large and made of dark, smoky glass, now empty and uncorked. It felt like ice in his bare hands, and as he rolled it over, he found words painted on it in gold.
"Beloved Mother, give us gently unto our Father," he read aloud before lifting it to his nose and sniffing. The bottle had a lingering, sweet scent. "Nightwreath," he muttered, sniffing it a second time to make sure. But there was no mistaking that cloyingly sweet aroma, even faint as it was now.
"Night what?" said Cara.
"It's a plant. The juice from its berries makes a powerful poison. It only takes a few drops – this bottle would have been plenty to kill them all."
"Not this man." She gestured to a nearby corpse. "He chose a different way," she added in a tone of admiration. Unlike the other, peaceful corpses, this one had a blade buried in his forehead. Richard bent down beside the dead man, lifting the oil lamp to cast its glow across the corpse. He looked to have been someone important to the community, for though he wore plain clothes like the other scholars, he alone had several strands of wooden beads hung around his neck. And more than that, on his forehead was tattooed the same symbol that marked the entranceway. A circle inside a square inside a circle, with a star caught in the very center. It was there that the blade had been embedded, its point aligned perfectly with the center of the star.
Richard closed a hand around the blade and yanked it free. "I'm not so sure he chose a different way," he said, turning the blade over in his hand. It was the strangest, most elegant weapon he'd ever seen. Instead of one blade, there were three shaped like interlocking leaves. They glinted silver in the lamp light, each curved sweep of steel sharpened to a slender, deadly point.
"Why do you say that?" asked Cara.
"Look at the beads he wears and the symbols on him," said Richard, gesturing with the blade. "He was their leader. I think he died from the poison too, and this was done later to make a point." Cara was still frowning so he went on, saying, "See how deliberately the blade was placed? I think it was done to dishonor him." He could see a glimmer of understanding in her eyes; the Mord-Sith understood death and honor nearly as intimately as she understood pain. "One of the D'Haran soldiers must have done this when they found him and his fellow scholars already dead."
But Cara shook her head at that. "There isn't a blade like this in all of D'Hara. I have no name for it. Neither would any of Darken Rahl's men."
A chill trickled down Richard's spine, and he had a sudden desire to be gone from the room. "Maybe they found the blade and decided to use it," he suggested, but he felt no surprise when Cara shook her head again.
"If the D'Harans were here and they wanted to dishonor him as you said, they would not have done it this way."
"What would they have done?" he asked.
"They would have beheaded him," she said in a blunt voice. "Or castrated him. Both is best." Richard felt the sword's magic leap through him though he did not touch the hilt. It coursed bitterly beneath his skin, reminding him that he was no better than such men. He was one of them. But Cara was still talking, and he forced the feeling away to concentrate on her words. "I'm starting to think D'Harans did not come here at all," she said.
"So am I," said Richard, though the thought did nothing to comfort him. Even if the D'Harans had not been to Ashkari, someone had. "I think we should head back," he said abruptly, starting through the tangled dead towards a door they hadn't opened yet. "Zedd and Kahlan will be wondering where we are."
When he opened the door, they found themselves back in the domed entranceway, this time standing on the left-hand side beneath the sweeping mural of an endless night.
They fought the blizzard and the bitter cold back to their companions, and Richard could not help but sigh with relief when he finally stepped into warmth again. Kahlan and Zedd had moved to a smaller, cozier room even deeper in the mountainside, and a fire burned brightly in the hearth. They had righted what furniture remained reasonably undamaged, setting up chairs around a wobbly table.
Kahlan smiled when she caught sight of him in the doorway. She looked much better than she had before, with color back in her cheeks and energy in her step again. "Here, have some tea," she said, pushing a steaming mug into his hands. "And come sit by the fire. You look half frozen – both of you."
"What did you find?" asked Zedd as they drew near, shedding their snow covered cloaks.
"The scholars are all dead," said Richard as he settled in a chair, breathing in the steam from his mug. A grim mood overtook the room as he recounted what they had found in the library. Reaching down, he pulled the odd, three pronged weapon free from where he'd stashed it in his boot and said, "The leader of their community had been stabbed with this, but neither Cara nor I recognized it."
Kahlan let out a soft gasp and leaned forward, plucking the blade from his hands. She turned it over, studying it as if she didn't believe her eyes.
"You recognize it?" asked Zedd.
"It's a dacra," she whispered. "The weapon of the Sisters of the Light."