The woman, middle-aged with her curls of brown hair just starting to carry a bit of gray, smiled. "I'm not all that far from home, myself, but I do so like to spend a night at the palace, now and then, just to lift my spirits."
Ann glanced around at the polished marble floors, the glossy red stone columns below arches, decorated with carved vines, that supported the upper balconies. She gazed up at the skylights that allowed the light to flood in the place during the day, and peered off at the grand statues that stood on pedestals around a fountain with life-sized stone horses galloping forever through a shimmering spray of water.
"Yes, I see what you mean," Ann murmured.
The place didn't lift her spirits. In fact, the place made her as nervous as a cat in a doghouse with the door closed. She could feel that her power was frighteningly diminished in this place.
The People's Palace was more than any mere palace. It was a city all joined together and under countless roofs atop a huge plateau. Tens of thousands of people lived in the magnificent structure, and thousands more visited it daily. There were different levels to the palace itself, some where people had shops and sold goods, others where officials worked, some that were living quarters. Many sections were off limits to those who visited.
Sprawled around the base of the plateau were informal markets where people gathered to buy, sell, and trade goods. On the climb all the way up through the interior of the plateau to reach the palace itself, Ann had passed many permanent shops. The palace was a center of trade, drawing people from all over D'Hara.
More than that, though, it was the ancestral home of the House of Rahl.
As such, it was grand for arcane reasons beyond the awareness or even understanding of most of the people who called it home or visited it. The People's Palace was a spell-not a place spelled, as had been the Palace of the Prophets where Ann had spent most of her life. The place itself was the spell.
The entire palace had been built to a careful and precise design: that of a spell drawn on the face of the ground. The outer fortified walls contained the actual spell form and the major congregations of rooms formed significant hubs, while the halls and corridors themselves were the drawn lines-the essence of the spell itself, the power.
Like a spell being drawn in the dirt with the point of a stick, the halls would have had to have been built in the sequence required by the specific magic the spell was intended to invoke. It would have been enormously expensive to build it in that manner, ignoring the typical requirements of construction and accepted methods of the trade of building, but only by doing so would the spell work, and work it did.
The spell was specific. It was a place of safety for any Rahl. It was meant to give a Rahl more power in the place, and to leach power away from anyone else who entered. Ann had never been in a place where she felt such a waning of her Han, the essence of life and the gift within. She doubted that in this place her Han would for long be vital enough to light a candle.
Ann's jaw dropped in astonishment as another element of the spell abruptly occurred to her. She looked out at the halls-part of the lines of the spell-filled with people.
Spells drawn with blood were always more effective and powerful. But when the blood soaked into the ground, decomposed, and dissipated, the power of the spell would often fade as well. But this spell, the drawn lines of the spell itself-the corridors-were filled with the vital living blood of all the people moving through them. Ann was struck dumb with awe at such a brilliant concept.
"So, you're renting a room, then."
Ann had forgotten the woman beside her, still staring at her, still holding the smile on her painted lips. Ann forced herself to close her mouth.
"Well. ." Ann finally admitted, "I haven't actually made arrangements yet as to where I will sleep."
The woman's smile persisted, but it looked as if it was taking more and more effort all the time. "You can't curl up on a bench, you know. The guards won't allow it. You have to rent a room, or be put out at night."
Ann understood, then, what the woman was driving at. To these people, most dressed in their finest clothes for their visit to the palace, Ann must look like a beggar in their midst. After all the gossip about what people were wearing, this woman must have been disconcerted to find herself beside Ann.
"I have the price of a room," Ann assured her. "I just haven't found where they are, yet, that's all. After such a long journey, I meant to go there right away and get myself cleaned up, but I just needed to rest my weary feet for a bit, first. Could you tell me where to find the rooms to rent?"
The smile looked a little easier. "I'm off to my own room and I could take you. It isn't far."
"That would be kind of you," Ann said as she rose now that she saw the guards moving off down the corridor.
The woman stood, bidding her two benchmates a good night.
If Ann was tired, it was only from being caught up in the afternoon devotion to the Lord Rahl. A bell in an open square had tolled, and everyone had moved to gather there and bow down. Ann had noticed then that no one missed the devotion. Guards moved among the crowd watching people gather.
She felt like a mouse being watched by hawks so she joined with the other people moving toward the square.
She had spent nearly two hours on her knees, on a hard clay tile floor, bowed down with her forehead touching the ground like everyone else, repeating the devotion in concert with all the other somber voices.
Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.
Twice a day, those in the palace were expected to go to the devotion.
Ann didn't know how people endured such torture.
Then she remembered the bond between the Lord Rahl and his people that prevented the dream walker from entering their minds, and she knew how they could endure it. She, herself, had briefly been a prisoner of Emperor Jagang. He murdered a Sister right before her eyes, just to make a point.
In the face of brutality and torture, she guessed that she knew how people endured a mere devotion.
For her, though, such a spoken devotion to the Lord Rahl, to Richard, was hardly necessary. She had been devoted to him for nearly five hundred years before he had even been born.
Prophecy said that Richard was their only chance to avoid catastrophe.
Ann peered carefully around the halls. Now she just needed the prophet himself.
"This way," the woman said, tugging at Ann's sleeve.
The woman gestured for Ann to follow her down a hallway to the right.
Ann pulled her shawl forward, covering the pack she carried, and hugged her travel bag closer as she followed along the wide corridor. She wondered how many people sitting on benches and low marble walls around fountains were gossiping about her.
The floor had a dizzying pattern of dark brown, rust, and pale tan-colored stone running across the hall in zigzag lines meant to look three-dimensional. Ann had seen such traditional patterns before, down in the Old World, but none of this grand scale. It was a work of art, and it was but the floor. Everything about the palace was exquisite.
Shops were set back under a mezzanine to each side. Some of them looked to sell items travelers might want. There was a variety of small food and drink stands, everything from hot meat pies, to sweets, to ale, to warm milk. Some places sold nightclothes. Others sold hair ribbons. Even at this late hour, some of the shops were still open and doing brisk business. In a place such as this, there would be people who worked at night and would have need of such shops. The places that offered to do up a woman's hair, or paint her face, or promised to do wonders with her fingernails, were all closed until morning. Ann doubted they could pull off wonders with her.