“The rooms aren’t close enough to share walls,” Kahlan noticed. “So what’s in the space between the rooms?”
Richard peered around in another of the empty rooms. “Good question. I have no idea, but since the empty space between the lines and nodes of the design doesn’t serve a function, I suspect those spaces are simply filled in with rubble or possibly stone blocks.”
When they finally came to a closed door on the left, Kahlan stopped and pointed in alarm. “Look. There are fingers sticking out from under that door.”
Richard turned the latch and pushed the door partway open against the weight of a desiccated corpse of a woman lying on the other side. The body looked like it might have been there for many decades, possibly centuries. Coils of long hair were still attached to the almost black, leathery skin of the skull. The full dress was so layered in dust that it was hard to tell what color it had been. The arms sticking out from the sleeves were bones covered in thin, leathery skin that was just as dark as that on the skull.
The delicate, dried-out fingers of one hand were extended under the door in a feeble, dying effort to somehow open the door. The woman, probably dying of thirst, had given up in that spot as the life went out of her.
“Why would she be doing that?” Kahlan asked. “Reaching under the door like that?”
Richard leaned in far enough to look at the other side of the heavy door to confirm what he suspected. “This branch of the spell-form, behind the door, flows in only one direction: in this way.”
Kahlan gave him a questioning frown. “So?”
“So, because it’s a one-way element, you can go into the room because that’s the direction of the flow. The door doesn’t have a handle on the other side, so once you go in and the door shuts, you can’t open it to come back out.”
“Why wouldn’t she break the door down?” Shale asked.
Richard arched an eyebrow. “It’s a one-way element of the spell-form. Besides having no handle on the other side, this is an awfully heavy door for a small woman to break down. But even if she had been strong enough, it would also likely be blocked by the spell’s magic to prevent anything flowing out.”
“Such a trap door is dangerous!” Shale objected. “Why in the world would the builders have put that in here?”
“They were building a complication, not a palace attraction for visitors,” Richard said. “No one is supposed to come in here. People aren’t safe anywhere in here.” He leaned in a little, giving her a look. “Not anywhere. That’s why there are four locked doors protecting the place. That alone should tell you something important.”
Shale’s mouth twisted a little in concession. “I guess you have a point.”
“Just keep that in mind,” Richard told them. “Everywhere in the complication is dangerous in ways that we often won’t even realize. So don’t wander off to look at anything. Stay close and keep a sharp lookout.”
17
After the heavy door pulled closed on its own, like the lid on a coffin, Richard, Kahlan, Shale, and the five Mord-Sith continued on in silence until they finally reached the end of the long, curved corridor. There was a passageway going off to the right and another to the left. The way straight ahead was blocked by a tall, flat metal door.
“How do we know where we need to go from here?” Kahlan asked.
“Since I don’t know where Michec would be, or where he has Vika, I don’t, actually,” Richard told her, “but since we haven’t come across any sign of either one, yet, we have no choice but to go farther in and keep looking.
“The hall to the left is essentially a dead end unless you correctly make a complicated series of choices necessary to get through the maze to an open element in the spell-form. If you make a wrong choice, you could wander around in there for a very long time before finding your way out, if ever. From knowing the complication and having studied the plan Harris showed us, I can tell you that this hallway here, to the right, if you make the correct turns, goes through a series of intersections until it eventually connects to the way ahead on the other side of the node behind this door and then deeper into the complication.”
“So both the hall to the right and this door eventually meet back up?” Kahlan asked.
Richard nodded.
“What’s behind the door?” Shale asked.
“If we’re where I think we are in the complication, it’s a node that should eventually link to a convergence of branches. In the spell-form as you would draw it, it’s made as a circle with a line through it. That hall to the right is a way to get around this constricting node, but it’s a lot longer way around. The quickest way into the heart of the spell-form is straight ahead through the doorway and across the node. Although it’s longer, I think the safer way would be the hallways to the right.”
“So if this isn’t a room, then why is there a doorway here?” Kahlan asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but I imagine it’s a way to physically complete the circle of the node to match the way the spell-form is drawn.”
Kahlan eyed the dark passageway to the right. “Well, I get a bad feeling about this hallway, here, to the right.”
Shale looked from Kahlan to Richard. “Pregnant women have good instincts. I suggest you pay attention to them.”
“I always trust Kahlan’s instincts.”
Richard opened the tall, heavy, flat metal door in front of them. As he did so, light spheres to either side beyond began to glow. They all stepped in and stood in a tight cluster on a small landing inside the doorway and stared out at the colossal octagonal room that came into view as the light spheres brightened.
The vast space stretched high up into darkness. There were no windows Richard could see. As soon as he realized that he was reflexively looking for windows even though windows would be pointless down here, he became newly aware of how deep underground they were, below even the tombs of his ancestors. That awareness brought back his old dread of being trapped in confined spaces underground.
A broad stone walkway built in the form of an arched bridge spanned across to another door on the opposite side of the octagonal room. The walkway was six or eight feet wide. Richard leaned out and looked down at the drop-off under the bridge. He couldn’t see a bottom in the darkness below.
There was no walkway around the perimeter of the room to the other side. If they wanted to proceed, they would have to cross the bridge over the ominous pit.
Kahlan pressed a hand over her nose. “The smell of death is awful in here.”
Richard took a light sphere from a bracket on the wall, held his breath, and leaned out, looking over the edge again. Even with the light sphere it was still too dark to see anything.
“The stench is too powerful to merely be some dead rats or small animals. It has to be the rotting corpses of people.”
“How do you lose your balance on a walkway that wide and fall off?” Shale asked. “There is no railing, but still …”
Richard gave her a worried look. “Well, if they were moving through here in darkness, they could have simply stepped off the edge without realizing it.”
Because of the smell of rotting flesh, and their need to get on with finding Michec, Richard didn’t want to spend any more time in the octagonal room than it would take to get across.
Even though the bridge was plenty wide enough, everyone stood pressed up against the door at their backs. The gagging stench of death was so oppressive it made them all hesitant to proceed.
“Maybe we should go around after all,” Kahlan said.
The landing they were on had a twin across on the other side of the bridge. There was a closed door at the other end of the bridge that looked the same as the one at their backs. On the walls all the way around the octagonal room were stacked stone moldings, as if at the base of the wall, as well as crown moldings, but there was no floor or ceiling. They were merely decorative. The unpleasant thought occurred to him that tombs were also decorated.