Zedd pressed his lips tight as he considered her words. He had discovered this secret when he had been a boy. His whole life he'd never told another person about it. No one had instructed him to keep it a secret-nor could they, no one but he knew about it. Still, he knew that there had to be a reason that this was not something that was meant to be widely known. This had been kept secret for a reason.

He just didn't know what that reason was.

"Zedd, for Lord Rahl's sake, for the sake of our cause, let me come with you."

He appraised her determination for a moment. "You can never reveal this to anyone."

"Except for Lord Rahl, I will never reveal it to another. Mord-Sith often go to their graves without revealing the things they know."

Zedd nodded. "All right. It goes to your grave with you, unless some thing happens to me. If so, then you must tell Richard what I show you this night. You must swear to me that you will never tell anyone else about this, though, not even your sister Mord-Sith."

Without hesitation Rikka held her hand out to him. "I swear."

Zedd clasped her hand and in so doing struck the agreement, accepting her word.

When he had been First Wizard during the war with D'Hara, before he had put up the boundaries and killed Panis Rahl, Darken Rahl's father, if anyone had told him that he would someday make such an agreement with a Mord-Sith over something so important, he would have thought they were crazy. He was grateful that such things had changed for the better.

"It's a complex route," Zedd told her.

Rikka arched an eyebrow. "Have you ever had to come find me because I got lost patrolling the Keep?"

Zedd realized that he hadn't. He knew very well how easy it was to become lost in the Keep. In fact, that was one of its defenses.

In several places when trying to travel through the Keep one came upon interconnected rooms numbering in the thousands. In those places there were no hallways except for the stairs going up or down. Passage through those three-dimensional mazes was necessary to get into several well protected areas. It was deceptively easy to become forever lost in the morass of those interconnected rooms. Even people who had grown up in the Keep could easily become lost in there.

An invader, unfamiliar with the place and if they went too deep into the labyrinth, faced a formidable challenge just to find their way back out, much less to make a passage all the way through, and then to escape. Once you had been through a few rooms, through a few doorways, it was amazing how similar everything looked. There were no windows to help and direction soon became meaningless. There was virtually no way to tell if you recalled seeing a room or a doorway before. One looked much like the last dozen you'd seen. There had been spies and such in the past who had become lost in the maze of rooms. In ages past it had not been entirely un usual to find a body in there.

Of course, not all those who intended harm were strangers. In the past some had been traitors.

"No, I guess you never have become lost," Zedd finally agreed. "Not yet, anyway. You've not been here long enough to begin to explore the majority of the place. There are dangers of every sort. Getting lost in the labyrinth that is the Keep is only one of the perils. Where we're going is like that. It's even easier to get lost down there. You will have to do your best to remember your way. I'll help you where I can."

Rikka nodded, seemingly unconcerned. "I'm good at remembering things like a series of turns. I memorize them when I patrol."

"Don't get overly confident. This is more complex than a series of turns. I myself have become lost in the Keep, and I grew up here. There is not only one right way to get where we're going. Sometimes the route you took the last time won't work this time because down in the lower reaches, of the Keep the shields sometimes shift by themselves to different passageways. It's part of their design to make it more difficult to go! through-for instance if a spy were to draw a map for their cohorts."

Unimpressed, Rikka shrugged. "I understand. The People's Palace is like that in some of the sections where the public isn't allowed-complex, with the open passages one can get through changing from time to time Additionally, there is no direct route to anywhere, even if all the passages happen to be open, which they never are."

"I remember; I was there before, although I was in the public sections, but that was confusing enough." It had been after Darken Rahl had captured Richard. "I had the advantage, though, in that the People's Palace is made in the form of a spell drawn on the face of the ground and I know how that particular spell is constructed, so I know where the primary arms and the connecting links are located."

"Well," Rikka said, "we had to be able to find different passages through the place so that we could get from area to area if it was ever invaded. Or, if we are chasing someone, we had to be able to think of a way to get ahead of them. We have to be able to do more than simply remember a series of turns. We must comprehend the whole of the place we pass through. In my head the turns I take make up parts of a picture of a place. Every turn adds to that picture. With that ever growing image in my mind I can find my way by taking a different way because I can see where the other parts are and how they lock together."

Zedd blinked in astonishment. "That seems quite a remarkable talent."

"I always could understand that kind of thing better than I can understand people."

Zedd grunted a brief laugh. "I think you understand people more than you admit to."

She only smiled.

"All right, now listen to me," he said. "You will not only need to remember a great many turns this night. There is more. The only way to get where we are going is through a number of shields. You are not gifted so the only way for you to pass through those shields is for a gifted person to help get you through. If it ever becomes necessary, Richard can take you through them, like I will take you through tonight. But no matter how well you know the place, or how the shields shift, there is no way to get through without having to pass the shields, so you won't be able to get through alone. That means you won't be able to practice the route by yourself."

He shook a finger before her face to make his point. "Don't even think lo try to force your way through the shields. To attempt to do so would be fatal."

Rikka nodded. "I understand. I would have no reason to need to get through without you or Lord Rahl."

Zedd leaned even closer to her. "On your word and your life."

"I have already given you my word and sworn it on my life. That is the way it will be."

Zedd closed the matter with a single nod. "Good. Let's go."

With Rikka close at his heels, Zedd rushed down the narrow stone hall to the left, their way lit by the globe he carried. Glass spheres in brackets in the distance glowed faintly once coming into sight. As they passed them, each brightened at his approach and dimmed as he moved on with the one he had taken. At the first stairway they came to, Zedd took it up, knowing that to descend to his destination he first needed to traverse several impassable areas of the lower Keep by going higher.

They made their way down broad corridors lined with elegant wood paneling and patterned stone floors and then through several rooms that served as study areas outside nearby libraries. The rooms had dozens of thick carpets scattered about at various angles among the comfortable chairs. There was ample table space, and there were a number of lamps to provide adequate light for reading. Zedd knew because he had spent a great deal of time reading books from the libraries.