Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

"That's right," he said as he stepped through the jagged opening that once had been a doorway.

The room inside was round, perhaps sixty feet across, its walls were also scorched in ragged lines as if lightning had gone wild in the place. A circular stone wall about waist-high, forming what looked like a huge well, occupied the center of the room.

The domed ceiling was nearly as high as the room was wide. There were no windows or other doors. To the far side of the sliph's well was a table and a few shelves. That was where Richard had found the remains of the wizard who had in ancient times been sealed in the room when the barriers that had ended the great war had been brought to life. Thus trapped, the man had died in the sealed room. He had left behind a journal that the Mord-Sith Berdine now had. That journal had in the past, as Richard and Berdine had translated it, revealed valuable information.

Because of the importance of the information they'd gotten from the journal, they had called the man who wrote it Koloblicin, a High D'Haran word meaning "strong advisor." Berdine and Richard had eventually taken to simply referring to the mysterious wizard as Kolo.

Nicci held her glowing globe over the side and peered down the well. The smooth walls fell away seemingly forever, the light illuminating the stone for hundreds of feet down before fading away into blackness.

"And you say that you put the sliph to sleep?"

"Yes, with these." Richard tapped the insides of the leather padded silver wrist bands he wore against one another. "She told me that when she 'sleeps, as she put it, she goes to be with her soul. She says it's rapture for her to sleep."

"And you can call her back the same way? By using those bands?"

"Well, yes, but, just like putting her to sleep, I would need to use my gift to do it. Not something I'd be at all eager to do again. I especially wouldn't like to be inside this room, with only one door, calling the sliph, when the blood beast was also called by my gift."

Nicci nodded as she saw his point. "Do you think the beast could follow you through the sliph?"

Richard thought it over for a moment. "I can't say for sure, but I imagine it's possible. But even if it couldn't it still manages to appear wherever I am, so I'm not sure it would even need to bother with using the sliph. From what I've learned of its nature from you and Shota, as well as from experience, I suspect that the beast is able to travel the underworld."

"And other people?" Nicci asked. "Can any of them use this?"

"To travel in the sliph you need to have at least some element of both sides of the gift. That made it a problem in the great war and that's why they had a wizard always standing guard in this room and in the end why they had to seal it off-so the enemy couldn't come through right into the heart of the Keep.

"Now, because of the requirement for an element of both sides of magic, there are few who can use the sliph. Cara has captured gifted people who have Additive Magic, and she captured a man who Kahlan said wasn't entirely human and who happened to have an element of Subtractive Magic. It was enough so that Cara is able to travel in the sliph. A Confessor's power is ancient and has an element of Subtractive to it, so Kahlan can travel in the Sliph. Those are the only ones I know who could travel in the sliph-other than Sisters of the Dark. One of my former teachers, Merissa, went through the sliph after me. You could travel in the sliph as well. That's about it.

"Still, it remains a danger if awakened because Jagang could theoretically send any of his Sisters of the Dark through it."

"What happens if you don't have at least some element of both sides?" Nicci asked. "If, for example, someone like Zedd, a gifted person had only Additive Magic, tried to travel?"

Richard reached over to rest his hand on the pommel of his sword, but his sword wasn't there. It made him sick to expect it and then realize he'd given it to Shota-to Samuel, actually. He put the constant, haunting worry of it from his mind.

"Well, traveling takes you great distances, but it still takes some time —it isn't an instant procedure. I think the time varies according to distance, but I know that it takes a number of hours, at least. The sliph looks something like living quicksilver. To remain alive within her while she takes you to the place you wish to travel, you must breathe her in, breathe in that silvery liquid. You breathe the sliph, that liquid, and it somehow keeps you alive. If you don't have an element of both sides, it doesn't work and you die. Simple as that."