Bannon tried to intercede. “Stop! We’re just doing our tasks.”
“This one’s task is to die.” Atta pressed her face closer to Lila. “Grieve is my lover. I know you want him.”
“I want him dead,” Lila said, “but if I have to kill you first, that would be fine with me.”
Bannon whispered quickly, “If you kill Atta, the king will murder you himself.”
Lila disagreed, and loudly. “If I kill her, then the king will laugh because she is weak.” She challenged Atta directly. “Do you wish me to fight you? Give me a weapon and we’ll see who walks away.”
With a meaty hand Atta slammed her into the wall. “I will give you nothing, not even death. Not yet.” The Norukai woman stalked off, but Lila remained standing. She plucked at her loose woolen garment as if it offended her.
She and Bannon worked together whenever possible. Emmett helped them by giving them similar assignments, but when the Norukai realized the two were close companions, the workmasters forcibly separated them. Still, Lila managed to meet with Bannon often enough, and together they looked for any opportunity to escape the Bastion. But with so many armored and angry Norukai crowding the fortress, they found no possibilities.
“Old Emmett knows every corner of the Bastion,” Bannon said. “He could help us escape.”
Lila was skeptical. “After so much time here, he doesn’t even remember freedom. He only remembers to be afraid for his own life.” She shook her head. “I promised to rescue you, and I will find a way.”
“And I promised to fight at your side. You trained me to face combat bears and sand panthers. I can handle a few Norukai in a fair fight.”
Lila smiled. “You have potential after all, boy.”
*
The next day, while Lila was tending a cauldron of boiling fish stew, Atta barged into the kitchens, raising her nose to the air. “It is midday. King Grieve is hungry.” She stalked over to Lila at the large soup pot, sniffing loudly. “Something smells bad. I thought it was the cooking.” She sniffed again. “But it’s merely the stench of this vermin.”
She grabbed the iron ladle, pulled up a brimming scoop, and slurped it while Lila glared. Then Atta purposefully poured the scalding liquid on Lila’s shoulder where the bare skin showed from her garment’s ragged neck hole. The morazeth flinched, but let out no sound of pain as the hot soup dripped down her arm. She just glared defiantly, enduring the burn.
Emmett hustled forward with his lurching gait. “Please, Atta! Don’t kill my staff. King Grieve told you not to kill the staff.”
“I didn’t promise not to damage them.” Atta looked at the healing bruises on Lila’s face, the fresh red scald mark on her shoulder. Satisfied for the moment, she left the kitchens.
Bannon ran over to Lila with a washrag soaked in cool water and pressed it against her burned skin. Now that Atta was gone, she let herself wince.
Emmett shuffled his feet, and Bannon rounded on him. “This is why you must help us escape! We’ve got to find a way.”
CHAPTER 54
Nicci was devastated to hear the news from General Linden. She realized only then how much she had been counting on Richard and the D’Haran army. “What do you mean he’s not sending troops? Did I not convey the threat of the ancient army, of the Norukai fleet?”
“Yes, of course, Sorceress,” Linden said as he nervously shuffled the papers in front of him. “Lord Rahl says he can’t spare the army right now, and besides, such an army would never reach you in time.”
Nicci paced off a short distance as she struggled to control her worry over how serious the situation was. She knew Richard. She knew him perhaps better than anyone other than Kahlan. Richard would know that she would ask for that kind of help only if she was desperate. And, she also knew that Richard wouldn’t turn her down unless it was impossible for him to help her. Now, she had the added concern of what kind of problem Richard had on his hands, but she also realized that it was now her responsibility to defend Tanimura and the other cities in the south. Richard was putting his trust in her.
She turned back to Linden, her focus shifting. “Richard wouldn’t have left it at that. He must have said something else.”
Linden nodded as he pulled open one of the drawers in his desk. He gave her a shaky smile. From the desk drawer, he retrieved a leather-wrapped parcel. “He did. He sent this.” He placed the package on the desktop. “He said you would know what to do with it.”
Nicci cautiously unfolded the leather, worried about what message she would find. To her surprise, instead of a message, she found only a bone box in the leather pouch, a cube barely an inch on a side.
As she turned the cube in her fingers, studying it more thoroughly, she realized that, despite its size, this was an object of great importance.
“We were afraid to open the box, Sorceress.” Linden was intent and curious. “What is it?”
With her nail, she found a crack on the top edge and worked it open to reveal a cavity inside the box. The small cube held a floating, rotating orb of light no larger than a pea. The glowing sphere was lit from within by a network of faint lines and tiny sparks of light.
She recognized what it was, which only deepened her concentration. “It is a newly constructed spell.”
Probing with her gift, she was able to recognize that this compact nugget had the same type of power as the original magic from the design of the Wizard’s Keep, something that only Richard would understand. She realized that the spell was somehow ke
yed to the actual, ancient defensive nature of the Keep itself.
Linden looked on, his face full of questions.
“Whatever it is, Lord Rahl must mean for it to help defend us,” Nicci said. “To help me.” Still looking for answers, she felt inside the leather pouch again, but there was definitely no other message from Richard, no clue. She would have to figure this out for herself. The message must be on the bone box itself.
She closed the lid again, snapping it into place to hide the glowing pearl of the spell. The hard white sides of the cube bore fine etchings, lines, designs, and inscribed symbols. At first she couldn’t read them, but then she recognized the language of Creation—which Richard understood, and he knew that Nicci also understood. Here was her message!
She knew that if General Linden or the courier had opened the pouch and looked at it, and she assumed they had, they wouldn’t have known what those symbols were or what they could mean. Only those who could read the ancient language of Creation would be able to read those emblems and open such a box.
She also knew that only Richard could have made it, and Richard would know that no one but Nicci would be able to decipher those symbols. Until she could translate them, she could only wonder at the ancient power those symbols protected.
Richard would not have used spells in the language of Creation unless whatever was inside was both profoundly important and profoundly dangerous. This was personal, from Richard to no one else but Nicci. As she stared at the small bone box in her hand, she had to take a steadying breath at the connection to Richard she was holding. It was almost as if he was whispering a solution to her.
But what solution?
After long concentration and working through the symbols until she could read the markings, she still did not understand the answer. Life to the living. Death to the dead. How was she supposed to use that?
