XVIII. GRACE

"Are you sure it wasn't a dream, Richard?" asked Kahlan, her boots clicking against the stone floor of the library. Light streamed in through the stained glass windows, creating patches of color all over the room. "The altitude can do strange things to your head. I had bizarre dreams myself last night."

"Well of course it was a dream," said Cara. "I would have known if anyone got up and left in the night."

Richard just shook his head. They had searched the whole library for any sign of the old woman, even going so far as to revisit the room full of dead scholars, but they had found no sign of her. Not even her broom. Now they were back in the room where he'd talked to her the night before, and he was beginning to feel foolish.

He stared up at the bookshelves, asking desperately, "Look at these shelves. Don't they look clean? I dusted them."

Cara trailed a finger along the nearest shelf and brought it away, her red leather glove tip blackened with grime. She smirked, "If you say so, Lord Rahl."

"Well I didn't have a bucket of water and soap to scrub them with! But there's less dust!"

"Richard," said Kahlan. She seemed to be struggling not to smile. "If you were one of the cleaning maids at Aydindril, I'm afraid I would have to replace you." Her hair looked nearly black against the white fur trim on her cloak, and her smile was more lighthearted than it had been in a long while. He gave in to her mood and grinned sheepishly.

"Kahlan's right," said Zedd as he entered the room. "You're a poor cleaning maid, and so is this supposed librarian. Half the building is covered in cobwebs!" He shook his head. "And how would an old woman survive alone in such a place? Why was she still here? Why didn't she take her own life along with the scholars, and what caused them to kill themselves in the first place? Was it really the Sisters of the Light?"

"I don't…I don't know." Richard tugged a hand back through his hair, staring at the empty room. "I didn't think to ask. It didn't seem important at the time." He couldn't understand why he hadn't though. Zedd's questions made sense; they were some of the first ones he'd ask if the librarian was here now.

"That's often how it is with dreams," offered Kahlan. "You do things that don't quite make sense once you're awake again."

"Like walk off in the middle of the night without telling anyone," interjected Cara in a stern voice. "You could have been killed."

Richard looked over at her with a bemused frown. "You think it was a dream, yet you're cross with me for going off alone? In my dream?"

The Mord-Sith shrugged. "It was foolish. You should have woken me up. Then I would have come with you to protect you."

"In my dream?" repeated Richard.

"Yes," said Cara in a tone that suggested she was completely serious. He was pretty sure he would have pulled his hair out in frustration at that if not for the amused grin Kahlan shot him from across the room.

Zedd cleared his throat, stepping between the two of them. "Well, perhaps there was some meaning to the dream. What did the old woman have to say?"

"I…" Richard hesitated. "I asked her about the Stone of Tears. She told me I couldn't find it – that the compass wouldn't lead me to it. The stone has to be earned."

"How do you earn it?" asked Kahlan, her blue eyes very bright in the morning light.

He held her gaze, "Sacrifice."

"That seems easy enough to interpret," said Zedd, settling into a high backed chair. His long robes flowed around him to the ground, and he smoothed them into place. Richard turned towards him as he went on, "You're worried about finding the stone in time, and that worry is seeping into your dreams. Of course you'd question the compass after it led us straight into a blizzard, but don't forget it also led us to shelter."

Richard started pacing back and forth before his grandfather's chair. "But what about having to earn the stone through sacrifice?"

"Everyone in this room knows how much you've sacrificed on this quest already," continued the old wizard. "There's no question in my mind that you've earned the right to find the Stone of Tears through all your struggles. Perhaps the woman in your dream was trying to help you have more faith in yourself."

Kahlan and Cara both nodded along as if they found Zedd's explanation to be the correct one, but Richard couldn't shake the feeling that the dream had meant more than that. If it had really been a dream. It had seemed so real. He could remember standing right where he was now, talking to the wrinkled old woman as she worked her broom across the floor. He opened his mouth to try and explain further, only to shut it without saying anything. He suddenly did not want to hear that he'd made it all up again.

"You're probably right," he said to Zedd. Kahlan looked over at him oddly, but said nothing. He swept his arm out towards the columns and rows and towers of books. "It's still snowing too much to think about leaving. We should split up and look through the books here. We might find something useful about the stone."

Richard hurried away from the others down one of the aisles he swore he'd dusted the night before. He trailed a hand along a shelf, finding it familiar. Footsteps echoed behind him, and he turned to discover Kahlan had followed him down the aisle.

She stopped right in front of him, "You were lying." He started to protest, but she silenced him with a raised eyebrow. "I'm the Mother Confessor. I know you don't believe a word Zedd said."

He sighed and leaned against the shelf. There were moments when he wished she couldn't tell every time someone lied. "It just seemed so real," he said quietly. "I don't know how I dreamt all of it. I remember this shelf. I remember dusting it." He walked further down the aisle, retracing his steps from the night before. From his dream.

Kahlan followed along behind him, not saying anything to dispute his claim. He would need a scroll several leagues long to list all the reasons he loved her, but this was one of them. He didn't feel foolish the way he would have in front of the others when he got down on his knees, pointing out a chink in the wall. "And look right here," he said. "She had her broom in there to sweep the dust out. Come and look at it," he beckoned. "Doesn't it look clean?"

"I believe you," said Kahlan, but she stayed where she was. He glanced up to find her with a hand on her round belly and a hesitant look on her face. "But don't make me go all the way down there just to look at a lack of cobwebs."

"Sorry," he said quickly. "I forgot. Stay standing." He sighed, resting his head on his arm as he stared at the crevice in the wall. "She was sweeping here, and I was crouched down dusting this shelf," he added, his gaze shifting towards the bottom bookshelf.

He heaved another sigh. The cold from the floor was seeping through his clothes, and he was about to stand up again when something dark caught his eye wedged between the bookshelf and the floor. "There's something stuck here," he said to Kahlan, wiggling his hand beneath the shelf. His knuckles scraped against the stone, but his fingers just managed to take hold of the corner of something hard. Holding his breath, he wiggled it backwards, working bit by bit until he'd pulled it out from beneath the shelf.

"It's a book," he announced as he sat up, smoothing a hand over the soft, weathered, black leather. He blew some of the dust from the book and turned it over, coming face to face with an eight pointed star centered inside the now familiar pattern of circle square circle. He traced it with his fingertips, feeling the grooves worked into the leather.

"Kahlan," he murmured as he got to his feet. "This symbol…It was in the entranceway, and tattooed on the forehead of the dead scholar. And now it's on this book. Do you know what it is?"

She stepped closer to him, peering down at the cover. "Of course. It's a Grace."

"A Grace?" The word sent shivers down his spine; somehow he knew this was what he'd been looking for.

"Mmm," she nodded. "It's common in Aydindril, especially by the Wizard's Keep. And the Sisters of Light had it everywhere in Thandor. They see it as the basis of everything." She stepped closer, her shoulder bumping against his, "Look, this is our world." She traced the inner circle. "The world of life. And this is the Underworld," she said as she moved to the outer circle. "The Veil, that's the square, it separates life from death. And the star shows the Creator's light, illuminating everything."

He knew he'd never heard that explanation before and yet, "I wonder why I find it so familiar. I must have seen it somewhere, but I just can't remember."

Kahlan looked up at him, her eyes searching his face. "You drew it once," she said softly. "When you were possessed by Kieran, to place Vivian's soul in my body."

His memories of being possessed in that crypt were a blur of feelings – magic and power and fierce, desperate love. "So the Grace is magic?"

She hummed a soft sound of agreement. "In the right hands. Zedd could tell you better than I."

"I think this is what we came for," he said, letting his fingers wander over the lines of the Grace as Kahlan's had, learning the feel of it. "We can head back to camp," he added as he started back down the aisle.

"Are you sure?" asked Kahlan. "The Grace really is quite common. It meant something to the scholars, but we have no idea if that book will have anything we need. At least look inside it first."

He stopped and did as she asked, gently lifting the cracked and dust streaked cover. The first page of the book held no words; only an illustration painstakingly filled in with a vibrant, crimson ink that Richard was sure must have cost a small fortune. It was a picture of a solitary tear.

"You're still reading?" Kahlan's voice pulled him from the book and he looked up. She crossed the room to the table he'd taken over before the fire. Strewn across it was a mug of tea, the compass, his cloak, the dacra, several candles and the book. It lay open to an illustration of a monstrous hound barring huge fangs, foaming and dripping spittle as he gave a silent snarl from the page. Unlike the teardrop on the first page, the hound had not been colored in, but that hardly lessened its impact. The stark lines against the faded and yellowed paper did plenty to convey the horror of the beast. "Did you find anything about the Stone of Tears yet?" asked Kahlan as she sat in the chair beside him and scooted it closer.

"No," he said, shoving the hair back from his eyes. The picture of the crimson tear had filled him with hope, but there'd been no words to go with it. "Not a mention of it yet."

She nodded and pursed her lips together. "Have you found anything else that could be helpful? We can go back to the library again if you want."

Richard shook his head. "The scholars would have burned everything else that dealt with the Underworld. I think this only survived because it was wedged beneath that shelf. They missed it when they rounded things up. And so did the Sisters of the Light when they came afterwards."

"You really believe it was the Sisters of the Light?" she asked in a tone that implied she did not. He turned to look at her. She'd been saying as much since he first brought back the dacra. But learning that the Grace was one of the sisters' most important symbols had done nothing to sway his thinking. It made it all the more likely that they had been the ones to leave the dacra embedded in the man's skull; such a gesture would have held meaning for them.

"It's not their way," continued Kahlan, and he realized he'd let his skepticism show on his face. "Richard, I can't imagine that they would go on a mission to kill these people. Even though they despised the scholars for studying the Keeper, they would not come here intent on murdering an entire community. They were kind women."

"I'm not saying they weren't kind women. Perhaps they came to Ashkari with more benevolent intentions. Like wanting to convert the scholars?" Kahlan nodded slowly and so he went on, "But the scholars feared them for some reason, perhaps wrongly, but you said they were sorceresses… And so they took drastic measures to keep their knowledge safe." He leaned forward on his elbows. "How do the Sisters of the Light feel about suicide?"

"They view it as an abhorrence in the eyes of the Creator," she said softly.

"Then perhaps that is what the dacra was meant to comment on." He looked down at the mysterious weapon, candlelight making the curved blades glow. "I wish I'd asked the librarian."

"But if it was a dream, how could she have had an answer?"

He shook his head again. "I've never had a dream that vivid before." And so much of what the woman had said made sense.

Kahlan was studying him intensely. "Richard," she murmured. "This is a strange place. I have never been to anywhere that felt quite like it in all the Midlands. It feels powerful, even with no one here but us. I know you were not raised as I was, on stories of the Creator and the Keeper, but maybe…" She picked up his hand, rolling it between her smaller ones. "If the words she spoke seem important to you, don't discount them just because everyone tells you it was a dream. Maybe they do hold meaning. And maybe it was more than a dream." She smiled and released his hand. "I trust your judgment."

He sighed and looked back down at the book. Of at least one thing he was now certain; the compass would not lead him to the Stone of Tears. He would have to find another way. He smoothed his hand over the book, flattening out the picture of the hound. "What is that?" asked Kahlan, leaning to look over his shoulder.

"The Keeper's hound," said Richard. "It says he guards the Underworld, stopping souls that attempt to enter before death."

"Before death? Is such a thing even possible?"

"Yes," he pointed at the page beside the picture of the hound. "The scholars made several attempts to travel to the Underworld and explore it in greater detail, but they were always stopped by this hound. They nicknamed him the Ripper. It says that most of them died upon encountering him."

"How do they know that, if they all died?" asked Kahlan.

"Some were able to turn around in time and claw their way back to the world of life, but they came back half mad, screaming incoherent tales about a fanged beast. So they started trying to contact the dead scholars," he continued, flipping to the next page, pointing out passages he'd already read. "They learned how to summon the dead and spoke to the scholars who'd failed to return. They told them of an enormous hound, twice the size of a man, with yellow eyes and teeth to rival your arm. He ripped their souls to shreds."

Kahlan shuddered and nodded her head. "What else?" she said in a thin whisper.

"This book seems to be an account of what they learned from talking to the ruined souls of the scholars. It's how they know so much about the Underworld." He started flipping back through earlier pages. "Look, screelings, banelings, before they ever appeared in the world of life, they were here in this book. The nursery rhyme you told me of, about the screelings…"

She paled as she recited the words, "The screelings are loose; the Keeper may win. His assassins have come to rip of your skin."

"That's the one. I think it came from Ashkari. It's one of the first pages in the book." Kahlan winced suddenly, turning his attention from the book. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she said. "It's nothing. Go on."

Richard sighed and resumed flipping through the pages. The horrors locked inside the book were being unleashed on the world of life because of his mistake. It reminded him of Rahl's promise – Kahlan would die because of him. He'd found nothing on the Keeper's daughters yet, but there were countless other horrors the Keeper could hunt her with.

It wasn't until Kahlan laid a gentle hand on his arm, and he jumped at her touch, that he realized the magic of the sword was pulsing beneath his skin like some out of control heartbeat. He took a deep breath, trying to force away the blistering anger, but it lurked there in the back of his mind, reminding him of what he'd done. To Kahlan and to the world of life.

"Richard," she said softly. "Maybe you should take a break. You've been reading all day, and I think-" She stopped abruptly, hissing in a sharp breath. Her hand dropped down to rub at her growing belly.

His heart leapt into his throat. "You're in pain."

"I'm fine," she started to say, but he had already twisted around and called for Zedd.

It felt like an eternity before the wizard appeared, wearing a heavy scowl on his brow and flour stains on his robes. "What is it?" he grumbled. "I'm trying to teach Cara how to make a simple mealcake." The look on his face was enough to know that the lesson was not going well.

"It's Kahlan," said Richard. "She's in pain."

"I'm not," her cheeks reddened, "I'm not in pain."

"Then why do you keep grabbing your stomach?"

"It's just a twinge," she muttered, but she kept rubbing at her belly.

Zedd's expression softened at once. "Let me see, dear one," he said, dusting his hands off on his robes as his crossed to where they sat. He bent towards her, holding out a hand just above her womb. Magic stirred through the room like a strong current of air, and the old wizard's expression grew thoughtful and intent.

After a moment, he straightened up. "The child is fine," he said gently.

Kahlan shot him a look as if she'd known all along, but Richard just frowned, "Then why were you wincing?" he asked.

"I don't know," she mumbled, looking away from the both of them. "It just happens sometimes, like a twinge in my side, but then it goes away."

"Why don't you lie down and take a nap, child," suggested Zedd. "We won't be going anywhere for awhile with the snow like this. There's no reason why you can't get some extra rest."

"I don't need a nap," said Kahlan in a stubborn voice. Richard looked at her pleadingly, but she ignored him.

"I remember Taralynn used to get those twinges too," said Zedd. "When she was carrying Richard. Nothing helped her as much as a nice long nap."

She scowled, but then nodded her head. "Fine. I will nap. If it will make both of you men feel better, I will go take a nap," she said as she pushed herself to her feet. Richard tried not to smile; he knew Zedd had brought him and his mother into it because it held the greatest chance of getting Kahlan to go along with the idea. She looked beautiful even when was cross though, and he failed to hide his smile.

"Wipe that grin off your face, Richard Cypher," she snapped as she started for the door and the bedrolls spread out in the next room. "This is all your fault."

His smile fell abruptly, and he stared down at the table as her footsteps faded away. He remembered the look on her face when he'd pinned her arms to the ground and started forcing her skirt up as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. He wondered if he would ever be able to forget that day. Zedd's hand came to rest on his shoulder and he tensed.

"Come now, Richard, you know that is not how she meant it," he said quietly. "She was only teasing you."

Richard nodded, shrugging away from his touch. He knew quite well that Kahlan did not blame him. That made it no easier to forget what had been done to her that day. "The Grace," he said, changing the subject. "It can be used to summon spirits from the Underworld, right?"

"Yes," said Zedd, frowning down at the book on the table. "It can be used that way. The Grace contains a representation of the Underworld, the Veil and our world, and so it can be used to draw a spirit up through the Veil into our world for a short time." Richard only half listened to Zedd's explanation – it said as much in the book. The scholars had used the Grace as a means to talk to those who had been destroyed and imprisoned for eternity by the Ripper.

"Could it also work in reverse?" he pressed. "To send a soul from our world into the Underworld for a short time?"

"I suppose it could be possible," said Zedd after a moment. "I can't imagine why anyone would want to do that though. The Underworld is no place for the living. There would be tremendous risk involved, if not certain death." Richard nodded; that too he'd learned from the book. The scholars had made countless attempts to visit the Underworld in their search for knowledge.

He closed the book, tracing the outline of the Grace on the cover. "Richard, what are you thinking?" asked Zedd in a worried voice.

Richard took a determined breath and then looked up into his grandfather's eyes. "I want you to use the Grace to send me to the Underworld."