Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

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

"Listen," he said to Jillian, "I'm looking for something specific: Chain-fire. 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.

CHAPTER 62

"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."

"Not just blind," Cara said with obvious delight, "but burst their eyes right in their sockets. It was a bloody mess. I quite enjoyed it."

Richard frowned at Nicci, wanting an explanation.

"They're scouts," she said. "I know these men and they know me. I didn't want them seeing me. More than that, though, I wanted them to be useless to Jagang-the ones who live, anyway. From what Jillian's grandfather tells me, he doubts that many of them will make it back to Jagang's forces, but I made sure they were near enough to their horses so that their animals will carry them back. I want the ones who live through the ordeal to be able to report only the horror of the fog coming down from the hills-that they were blinded in a strange, forbidding, and haunted land. Such news will send a fright through his men.