Terry Goodkind - Chainfire - Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

They soon began encountering the bones.

There were rooms with stacks of similar bones in niches. Skulls had been carefully fit into one niche, leg bones all stacked end out in another, arm bones in another yet. Great stone bins carved in the side walls held smaller bones all laid in neatly. As Richard and Jillian moved through vault after vault, they saw walls of skulls that had to number in the tens of thousands. Knowing that he was seeing only one random passageway, Richard could not imagine how many people had to be interred in the catacombs. Even as startling, and even horrifying, as it was to see so many of the dead, each of their bones looked to have been placed reverently. None were simply cast into a hole or a corner. Each had been carefully placed as if each had been a valued life.

For what had to be well over an hour, they made their way through the maze of tunnels. Each section was different. Some were wide, some narrow, some with rooms to each side. After a time, Richard realized that each spot must have been carved out of the soft rock to make space for a family; that was why the niches seemed to fill every available space in such a haphazard fashion.

And then they came to a section of the passage that had partially collapsed. A huge section of stone had toppled and rubble had fallen in around it.

Richard stopped and looked at the tangle of stone. “I guess this is as far as we go.”

Jillian squatted down, peering under the stone block lying at an angle across the passageway. “I can see a way under here.” She turned to Richard. Her copper-colored eyes looked frightening staring out from the black mask painted across her face. “I’m smaller. Do you want me to go have a quick look?”

Richard held the glowing sphere down in the opening to light it for her. “All right. But I don’t want you to keep going if you think it looks dangerous. There are thousands of tunnels down here, so there are plenty others to look in.”

“But this is the one the Lord Rahl found. It must be important.”

“I’m just a man, Jillian. I’m not some wise spirit returned from the world of the dead.”

“If you say so, Richard.”

At least she smiled when she said it.

Jillian disappeared into the angular hole like a bird going through a thornbush.

“Lord Rahl!” came her echoing voice. “There are books in here.”

“Books?” he called into the hole.

“Yes. A lot of books. It’s dark, but it looks like a big room with books.”

“I’m coming in,” he said.

He had to take his pack off and push it out ahead as he crawled in. It turned out not to be as worrisome as he had feared, and he was soon through. When he stood on the other side, he realized that the huge stone block lying at an angle across the passage had once been a door. It looked like it had been designed to slide out of a slot cut into the side of the wall, but at some point the massive door had broken along a fault in the stone, and it had toppled over. As Richard inspected the mess, he brushed the dust away and saw one of the metal plates that activated a shield.

The idea that these books had been behind a shield made his heart race faster.

He turned back to the room. The warm light from the glowing sphere did indeed show a chamber full of books. The room ran at odd angles, seemingly without reason. Richard and Jillian walked along the passageway, looking at all the books. Most of the shelves were carved into the solid rock, the way the resting places for the dead had been cut out to make room.

Richard held the sphere up as he started scanning the shelves.

“Listen,” he said to Jillian, “I’m looking for something specific: Chainfire. It might be a book. You start on one side, and I’ll take the other. Make sure you look at each book’s title.”

Jillian nodded. “If it’s in here, we will find it.”

The ancient library was discouragingly huge. As they inched along and rounded a corner, they encountered a chamber lined with aisles of shelves. The search was slow going. They had to work in the same area so that they could both see.

For several hours, they painstakingly made their way through the room. Partway through, they encountered side chambers, smaller than the main room, but still full of books. From time to time they each had to blow dust off some of the spines.

Richard was tired and frustrated by the time they came to a spot where he saw another of the metal plates. He pressed the flat of his hand against it and the stone wall in front of them began to move. The door wasn’t big, and it quickly pivoted open into blackness. He hoped that the shields keyed off what they recognized of his gift, and didn’t actually work by making his power answer some silent, unfelt call. He’d not like to be down in the catacombs and have the beast materialize.

Richard stuck the light into the darkness and saw a small room with books. There was also a table that had long ago collapsed because some of the ceiling had come down on top of it.

Jillian, deep in concentration, ran a finger along the spines of the books as she read each while Richard took five strides across the room to the far wall. He saw another metal plate there and pressed his hand to it.

Slowly, another narrow door in the stone began pivoting away from him into the darkness. Richard crouched lower as he stepped into the doorway and held the light partway in.

“Master, you wish to travel?” a voice echoed.

He was staring at light reflecting back off the sliph’s silver face. It was the well room, where they had come in. The doorway was on the opposite side of the steps from where they had found the first metal plate that had opened the ceiling.

They had just spent most of the night going around in a circle, ending up right where they had started.

“Richard,” Jillian said, “look at this.”

Richard turned back around and came face-to-face with the red leather cover of a book she was holding up.

It said Chainfire .

Richard was so stunned that he couldn’t talk.

Jillian, grinning with discovery, came into the sliph’s room with him as he backed in, taking the book from her hands.

He felt as if he were somewhere else, watching himself hold the book named Chainfire .

“Richard?” It was Nicci’s voice.

Still startled to actually have found Chainfire, he walked to the steps and looked up. Both Nicci and Cara, silhouetted by dawn light, were peering down at him.

“I found it. I mean, Jillian found it.”

“How did you get down there?” Nicci asked as Richard and Jillian started up the steps. “We just looked in there and you weren’t there.”

“Jillian?” It was a man’s voice.

“Grandfather!” Jillian raced the rest of the way up the steps and flew into an old man’s arms.

Richard climbed the steps after her. Nicci was sitting on the top step. “What’s going on?”

“This is Jillian’s grandfather,” Nicci said, lifting out a hand in introduction. “He is the teller of these people, the keeper of the old knowledge.”

“Glad to meet you,” Richard said, embracing the old gentleman’s hand. “You have a wonderful granddaughter. She just helped me out immensely.”

“You would have found it if I hadn’t seen it first,” Jillian said, grinning.

Richard smiled back.

He turned to Nicci. “What happened to Jagang’s men?”

Nicci shrugged. “Night fog.”

As Jillian went with her grandfather to greet Lokey on a nearby wall, Richard spoke confidentially to Nicci and Cara.

“Fog?”

“Yes.” Nicci interlaced her fingers around a knee. “Some kind of strange smoky fog drifted past them and made them go blind.”