Free Confessor by Terry Goodkind Page A

table, anyway? What are you three up to?”
    “Trouble,” Cara said.
    Rikka nodded knowingly. “Magic.”
    “You have that right,” Cara said.
    Rikka tapped the palm of her hand against the doorframe. “Well, I’d better go find Rachel before Chase finds her first and gives her a talking-to for going off exploring in such a place.”
    “That child is a born Keep rat.” Zedd sighed. “Sometimes I think she knows the Keep as well as I do.”
    “I know,” Rikka said. “I’ve been on patrol and have come across her in places I couldn’t believe. Once I thought for certain that she had to be lost. She insisted she wasn’t. I made her lead me back to prove it. She marched back to her room without ever making a wrong turn, then grinned up at me and said ‘See?’”
    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 tome. 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