Smiling, Zedd scratched his temple. "I had a similar experience with her. Children are quick to learn such things. Chase encourages her to learn things, to know where she is so that she isn't so easily lost. I guess, since I grew up here, that's why I don't get lost in the place."

Rikka turned toward the hallway but then turned back when Zedd called her name.

"The wind noise?" He waggled a finger toward the ceiling. "You said it was up there?"

Rikka nodded.

"Do you mean the speckled hallway that runs past the row of libraries? The place with the sitting areas spaced along the hall outside the rooms?"

"That's the place. I was checking the libraries for Rachel. She likes to look through books. As you said, it must be the Keep breathing."

"The only problem is that that's one of several areas where the Keep doesn't tend to make any sound when it breathes. The dead ends off that hall divert the movement of air elsewhere, preventing enough air moving through that area fast enough to make much of a sound."

"It might have been coming from farther away and I only thought it was in those halls."

Zedd planted a fist on one bony hip as he considered. "And you say it sounded like a moaning sound?"

"Well, now that I think about it, it seemed more of a growl."

Zedd's brow creased. "A growl?" He crossed the thick carpet and poked his head out of the doorway, listening.

"Well, not a growl like an animal," Rikka said. "More of a rolling rumble. Like I mentioned-it reminded me of the sound the wind makes going through the crenellations. You know, a rumbling, fluttering kind of sound."

"I don't hear anything," Zedd muttered. Rikka made a face. "Well, you can't hear it way down here." Nicci met them at the doorway. "Then why do I feel something vibrating in the center of my chest?"

Zedd stared at Nicci for a moment. "Perhaps something to do with all the conjuring involving the box?"

Nicci shrugged. "Could be, I suppose. I've never dealt with some of those elements before. Much of it was new to me. There is no telling what some of the ancillary effects might be."

"Do you remember when Friedrich accidentally set off that alarm?" he asked, turning to Rikka. She nodded. "Did it sound anything like that?"

Rikka shook her head adamantly. "Not unless you put the alarm under water."

"The alarms are constructed magic." Zedd rubbed his chin in thought. "You can't put them under water."

Cara spun her Agiel up into her fist. "Enough talk." She pushed between them to make it through the doorway. "I say we go have a look." Zedd and Rikka followed after her. Nicci didn't. She gestured toward the box of Orden sitting on the table within the glowing web of light. "I'd better stay close."

Besides watching over the box, she needed to study The Book of Life, along with other volumes, further. There were still parts of Ordenic theory that she hadn't been able to fully understand. She was distracted by a number of unanswered questions. If she was eventually to be of any help to Richard she would need to know the answers to those questions.

What concerned her most was an issue at the center of Ordenic theory having to do with the connections between Orden and the subject of the Chainfire event-Kahlan. Nicci needed to better understand the nature of requirements for connections based on primary foundations. She needed to fully grasp how those foundations were established. She was troubled by the constraints on predetermined protocols-their need of a sterile field in order to re-create memory. She also needed to learn more about the precise conditions in which the forces needed to be applied.

At the center of it all, though, was that cautionary requirement of a sterile field. She needed to understand the precise nature of the sterile field Orden required and, more importantly, why Ordenic protocols needed it.

"I have all the shields up," Zedd told her. "The entrances to the Keep are sealed. If anyone had entered without permission alarms would be going off all over the place. We'd all be plugging our ears until we found the cause."

"There are gifted people who know about such things," Nicci reminded him.

Zedd didn't need to consider for long. "You have a point. Considering all that's going on, and all we don't yet know, we can't be too careful. It wouldn't be a bad idea for you to keep an eye on the box."

Nicci nodded as she followed them out of the doorway. "Let me know as soon as all is clear."

The towering hall outside, while not more than a dozen feet wide, rose nearly out of sight high overhead. The passageway formed a long, narrow rift deep within the mountain down in the lower part of the Keep. To the left side rose a natural rock wall that had been chiseled right out of the granite of the mountain itself. Even thousands of years later, the marks left by cutting tools could still be seen.

The wall on the side with the rooms was made up of tightly fit, enormous stone blocks. They formed the wall opposing the chiseled granite, rising up together sixty or more feet. That seemingly endless split through the mountain constituted part of the boundary of the containment field. The rooms within the containment area were all lined up along the very outer edge of the Keep that rose up out of the mountain itself.

Nicci followed the others only a short way through the seemingly endless hall, watching them until they reached the first intersection.

"This is no time to get sloppy or lenient," she called after them. "Too much is at risk."

Zedd accepted her warning with a nod. "We'll be back after I look into it."

Cara cast Nicci a look back over her shoulder. "Don't worry, I'll be there and I'm not in the mood to be lenient. In fact, I'm not going to be in a good mood again until I see Lord Rahl alive and safe."

"You have good moods?" Zedd asked as they hurried away.

Cara scowled at him. "I'm frequently cheerful and pleasant. Are you suggesting that I'm not?"

Zedd held up his hands in surrender. "No, no. Cheerful describes you perfectly."

"Good, then."

"In fact, cheerful would come even before bloodthirsty in my book."

"Come to think of it, I think I like bloodthirsty even better."

Nicci couldn't share the spirit of their banter. She wasn't good at making people laugh. She frequently found herself perplexed by the way Zedd and others could ease tension with such exchanges.

Nicci knew all too well the nature of the people who were trying to kill them. She had once been one of those people of the Order. She had been as merciless as she had been deadly.

She had never once seen Emperor Jagang being jovial or lighthearted. He was hardly a man given to repartee. She had spent a great deal of time with him, and he was never anything but consistently lethal. His cause was deadly serious to him and he was fanatically dedicated to it. Knowing the kind of people coming for them, people like she herself had once been, and understanding their heartless nature, Nicci didn't feel that she could be any less serious than they.

She watched Zedd, Cara, and Rikka hurry down the first hall to the right, heading for the stairway.

As they started up, Nicci suddenly understood the sound, the vibration she felt.

It was an alarm, of sorts.

She knew why Rikka didn't recognize it.

She opened her mouth to call out to the others just as the world seemed to come grinding to a halt.

A dark cloud poured down the stairwell. It was like a million-speckled suggestion of a snake in midair, rolling, turning, twisting, thinning, thickening as it came roaring down the stairwell. The rolling, fluttering rumble was deafening.

Thousands of bats poured around the corner, a fat snake of them in midair, a thing alive made up of untold numbers of the little creatures. The sight of so many thousands of them coalesced into a single moving shape was riveting. The racket reverberated off the walls, filling the split in the mountain with a riot of noise. The bats seemed to be flying in a panic, their fused form coiling around the corner in a rush as they bolted from something.