Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

As his mind raced as fast as his feet, Richard resolved that he had better go to Caska first.

The more he considered that idea, and as pieces of the puzzle started fitting together, he reconsidered the idea. With the sliph, he could travel swiftly back to Caska from the Keep.

It was more urgent that he get to Zedd.

As they ran through the labyrinth of halls, rooms, and passageways, Richard heard the distant toll of the bell, calling people to the devotion to the Lord Rahl.

He wondered if they would all soon be kneeling before the Keeper of the underworld, and saying their devotions to him.

CHAPTER 30

Six abruptly stood. Without a word she took three long strides to the wall of the cave that held Violet's expansive drawing. The woman carefully pressed her bony hands against the chalk symbols that Violet had drawn there days before. Those symbols had suddenly begun to glow, the yellow chalk glowing with yellow light, the red chalk with red light, and the blue with blue light. The eerie illumination from the flaring colors shimmered over the walls of the cave the way light reflected off rippling water.

Rachel glanced over at Violet, sitting on a squat, purple-tufted stool she'd had Rachel carry in for her days before. The bored queen picked with her fingernail at flaking stone on the wall behind her. Rachel had come to think of Violet as the queen of the cave, since that was where they spent more and more of their time.

Violet didn't like sitting on rock when she wasn't drawing. A filthy old rock, she'd said, was more than good enough for Rachel, but not for a queen. Six hadn't cared at all about the stool. She appeared to always have more consequential matters on her mind than cushions for sitting. Violet, though, got tired of waiting while Six thought about those consequential matters, and so she'd had Rachel lug the heavy stool to the cave.

Now, the queen of the cave, under the flickering light of torches and glowing symbols, sat upon her tufted purple throne waiting for her advisor to advise her as to what needed to be done next.

"He comes," Six hissed. "Again he comes through the void."

It was clear to Rachel that the woman wasn't really talking to Violet, but to herself. The queen might as well not have been there.

Violet glanced up. She didn't look inclined to bother to stand unless Six told her that it was necessary that she do more drawings, but it was clear that her interest had been roused. This was, after all what she wanted and the whole reason she bothered to go to all the work of making such complex drawings down in a dank and dingy cave when she could just as well be trying on dresses and jewels or attending grand feasts where guests fawned over the young queen.

Six seemed in a world of her own as her hands glided over the drawing. She put the side of her face against the stone and at the same time reached an arm back.

"Come, my child."

A scowl creased Violet's round features. "You mean, 'my queen. "

Six either didn't hear her, or didn't care to correct herself. "Hurry. It is time to begin the links."

Violet stood. "Now? It's long past dinnertime. I'm starving."

Six, stroking her cheek against the chalk drawing of Richard like a cat rubbing the side of its face against a person's legs, didn't seem at all interested in dinner.

She rolled her long fingers, beckoning Violet. "It must be now. Hurry. We must not waste such a rare opportunity. Such links as we need will take time and there is no telling how much time we may have."

"Well then why didn't we begin earlier, when there — "

"It must be started now, when he is in the void." Six clawed the air with one hand. "Easier to scratch his eyes out when he's blind," she said in her hissy voice.

"I don't see why — "

"The way is the way. Do you wish this or not?"

Violet's folded arms, along with her defiance, came undone. Her expression took on a dark set. "I do."

A sinuous smile slipped across Six's features. "Then let it begin. You must now complete the links."

Looking suddenly resolute, Violet plucked the sticks of colored chalk off a little ledge in the stone wall behind her royal stool. As she strode up beside Six, the woman tapped a long, thin finger to the stone.

"Begin at the sign of the dagger, as I've taught you, just as you've practiced, to insure that, at the initiation of the link, what you have wrought will be ready to slice swift and sure."

"I know, I know," Violet said as she boldly touched the tip of the yellow chalk to the point of one of the elaborate glowing symbols off to the side of Richard.

Six snatched Violet's wrist, pulling her hand back just enough to lift the chalk away from the wall. She moved Violet's hand over a few inches, then let the chalk again touch the symbol, but at the next apex in a design with a perimeter comprised of dozens of points.

"I told you," Six said with strained civility as she helped Violet begin the line, "a mistake here will last us for eternity."