Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

When Richard took a look, he saw that it had the same shimmering silver stone walls and another shield that looked just like the one they had come in through at the other end of the room, so that, unlike a number of places in the Keep that had shields, there was no way to go around and get into the room by way of another route without such powerful shields. It was through one of the two shields or not at all.

"With all the dust in here," Nicci said, "it doesn't look like anyone has cleaned in here for thousands of years."

She was right. The room was devoid of color other than the dirty gray color of the dust that coated everything. The hair at the nape of Richard's neck stood on end as he fully realized why.

"That's because no one has been in here for thousands of years."

"Really?"

He gestured to the far passage he'd just inspected. "The only two ways into here are protected with shields that require Subtractive Magic to cross. Not even Zedd, the First Wizard himself, has ever been in here. He can't pass Subtractive shields."

Nicci brushed her hands together. "Especially these shields. I've dealt with shields most of my life. From what I felt of these, they're deadly. I suspect that without your help even I might have had some difficulty getting through them the first time."

Richard tilted his head to be able to better read the titles as he perused the books along the shelves. Some had no titles on the spines. Some were in languages he couldn't read. Some looked like they might be journals. Several, though, looked curious. One small book, Gegendrauss, in High D'Haran meant Countermeasures. He pulled out another beside it of a similar small size titled Ordenic Theory. As he blew off a thick coating of dust, he realized then that it must have caught his attention because Ordenic reminded him of Orden, as in the boxes of Orden. He wondered if there was any connection.

"Richard, look at this," Nicci called to him from the far passage.

Richard tossed the book on the table as he made his way into the passageway, toward the shield. "What is it?"

"I don't know." Her voice echoed, and then he saw the crimson glow brighten and finally fade.

He realized that she must have gone beyond the shield. Alarmed at first, Richard was hugely relieved that there had been no horrific results. Nicci was an experienced sorceress. He suspected that after having gone through the last shield, she must have known what dangers to look for to tell her if she could pass this one as well. He reasoned that perhaps the first shield, when he had helped her through it, had keyed to her, allowing her to cross shields like it.

Pushing on through the plane of pressure and briefly searing heat, he entered a small room beyond with glass mosaics, like the one at the other end of the little reading room. Both rooms had to be a kind of entryway before the shield to provide warning to anyone coming near, or maybe they were somehow an aid to the shields themselves. Nicci was standing just beyond, at an open iron door, her back to him, her thick fall of blond hair down around her shoulders.

At the railing on the platform beside her, Richard looked out into a round tower room at least a hundred feet across. Stairs spiraled up around the inside of the curving outer wall. The tower rose above them for over two hundred feet. At irregular intervals, small landings like the one where they stood interrupted the steps wherever there was a doorway. In the gloomy expanse above, shafts of light pierced the darkness.

The place smelled of rot. At the bottom of the tower, not too far below the landing were they stood, he saw a walkway with an iron railing that ringed the inside of the tower wall. Rain that could come in the openings above, along with seepage from the mountain itself, collected down in the center of the tower. Insects swarmed above the stagnant, inky water. Others skittered on its surface.

"I know this place," Richard said as he peered around, getting his bearings.

"You do?"

He started down the steps. "Yes, come on."

At the bottom, he followed the iron railing around to a wide platform in the walkway before a spot where a door had once been. The doorway had been blasted apart and the opening was now perhaps twice its previous size. The jagged edges of the broken stone were blackened in places. In other places the stone itself had been melted as if it were no more than candle wax. Twisting streaks on the surface of the stone wall ran off in every direction away from the blasted hole, marking where a kind of lightning had flailed against the wall and burned it.

Nicci stared in amazement. "What in the world happened here?"

"This room was once sealed away, along with the Old World. When I destroyed the barrier to the Old World, it blew this seal open."

"Why? What's in here?"

"The sliph's well."

"The thing you told me about that those in ancient times used to travel great distances? The thing you've traveled in?"