Chainfire (Sword of Truth – 9)

Even though people proclaimed with complete confidence that such mysterious forces were fundamentally unknowable to mere mortals, they nonetheless passionately believed, without evidence, that they could be certain that the power of charms would soothe the savage temper of those menacing forces, insisting that faith was all that was necessary-as if faith were a mystical plaster with the power to patch over all the yawning holes in their convictions.

Believing in free will, Richard instead chose the second way of dealing with such fear, which was to be watchful, alert, and ready to take responsibility for his own survival and life. At its core, that battle of belief between the cruel fates and free will was his essential disagreement with prophecy and why he discounted it. To choose to believe in fate was at once an admission of free will and at the same time an abdication of one's responsibility to it.

As he and Cara passed through the crooked wood, Richard kept a watchful eye out but he saw no legendary beasts or vengeful ghosts. Only the wind-borne snow wandered the wood.

Having traveled at a breakneck pace for so long in the oppressive heat and humidity of summer, they found that the encounter with bitter cold high up in the mountain pass made the effort of the climb all the more difficult, especially after being drenched by the miserable rain. Despite being fatigued from the altitude, Richard knew that, as wet as they were, they had to keep moving at a brisk pace to keep warm or the cold could easily overcome them. He was well aware that the seductive song of the cold could entice people to stop and lie down for a rest, luring them to surrender to sleep and the death that waited under its inviting cloak. As Zedd had once told him, dead was dead. Richard knew that he would be no less dead from the cold than he would be from an arrow.

More than that, though, he and Cara were both eager to put distance between them and the trap that had nearly captured him back at their camp. His burns from the brief contact with his would-be death trap had blistered. He shuddered to think of what had nearly happened.

At the same time, he was leery about going to see Shota in her lair at Agaden Reach. The last time he had been in the Reach she had told him that if he ever came back there she would kill him. Richard didn't doubt her word or her ability to carry out the threat. Even so, he believed Shota would be his best chance of getting the kind of help necessary to find Kahlan.

He was desperate to find someone who could tell him something useful, and after going through a list of things he might do, people he might go to, and in the end he couldn't come up with anyone else who could be as potentially informative as Shota. Nicci hadn't been able to offer any solutions. Zedd, he knew, might be able to help him in some ways, and maybe there were others with the capacity to be able to add some piece to the puzzle, but to Richard's mind, when all was said and done, none of them were as likely as Shota to be able to point him in the right direction. That alone made the choice simple.

When he glanced up, Richard briefly saw the snowcap through gaps in the driving snow. Some distance off, over the open, broken ground of the steep slope, the trail over the pass would skirt the lower reaches of the mountain's year-round icy mantle. The clouds, laden with moisture, clung to the soaring gray rock. The low trailers of mist and fog dragging past left visibility limited in most places and nearly nonexistent in others. It was just as well; the precipitous drop-offs in spots along the infrequently used and increasingly slippery trail offered frightening glimpses down the towering mountainside.

When a fresh flight of icy gusts carried curtains of wet snow into their faces, Richard pulled his cloak tight against the buffeting onslaught. Out of the cover of the trees, making their way across the loose scree, they had to lean not only into the steep incline, but into the wind. Richard hunched a shoulder, trying to keep the icy wet sting off his face. Wind-driven snow built a brittle crust on one side of his cloak.

With wind howling through the mountain pass, talking was difficult at best. The altitude and the exertion left them both winded and in no condition to be able to easily carry on a conversation. Just getting the air they needed was effort enough and he could tell by the look on Cara's face that she felt just as nauseated by the altitude as he did.

Richard wasn't in the mood to talk, anyway. He'd been talking to Cara for days and it never got him anywhere. Cara, for her part, seemed just as frustrated by his questions as he was by her answers. He knew that she thought his questions were absurd; he thought her answers were. The inconsistencies and gaps in Cara's recollection were at first disappointing and confounding but eventually they became maddening. Several times he'd had to bite his tongue and remind himself that she was not doing it to be malicious. He knew that if Cara could have honestly said what he wanted to hear she would have eagerly done so. He knew, too, that if she lied it would be of no help in getting Kahlan back. He needed the truth; that, after all, was why he was going to see Shota.

Richard had systematically gone through of long list of times when Cara had been with him and Kahlan. Cara, though, remembered events that should have been momentous to her in ways that were not consistent with what had really happened. In a number of cases, such as the time he had gone to the Temple of the Winds, Cara simply didn't recall key parts of the circumstances in which Kahlan had been involved. In other instances, Cara remembered events very differently from how they had actually happened.

Happened, at least, as Richard remembered them. There were depressing moments when he sank into a despondent fear that it was he who was for some reason the one with the problem. Cara thought that it was he who was remembering things that had never taken place. Although she didn't try to put too fine an edge to her convictions, the more things he brought up the more she thought his delusions about a fantasy wife were cropping up everywhere in his memory like weeds after a rain.

But Richard's clear memory of events and the way those events were knit tightly together always brought him back to the solid conviction that Kahlan was real.

Cara's memory about certain incidents was very clear and very different from his, while in regard to other things her memory was agonizingly fuzzy. That his story of situations was so different from her memory of those same situations only served, in Cara's mind, to further convince her that he was even more delusional than she had previously realized or feared. While that obviously saddened her, he'd continued to press her.

At his and Kahlan's wedding, Cara had been the only Mord-Sith in attendance. Richard knew that such an event had been significant to her in more ways than one, yet Cara remembered only that she'd gone with him to the Mud People's village. And why did they go there if not for the wedding? Cara said that she didn't know for certain why he'd gone there, but she was sure that he had his reasons; her duty was to go where he went and protect him, not to question his motive every time he turned around. Richard wanted to pull his hair out.

Cara didn't remember that she, Kahlan, and Richard had traveled together to the wedding site in the sliph. At the time Cara had been apprehensive about climbing down into the sliph's well and breathing in what appeared to be living quicksilver. Yet now she had no awareness that Kahlan had helped her overcome her anxiety about traveling within such a creature of magic. Cara remembered Zedd being there at the Mud people's village, and Shota making a brief appearance, but instead of the witch woman coming to offer Kahlan the necklace as a wedding gift and truce, Cara only recalled Shota being there to congratulate Richard on stopping the plague by going to the Temple of the Winds.

When Richard questioned Cara about Wizard Marlin, the assassin Jagang had sent, she clearly remembered him coming to kill Richard, but not any of the parts where Kahlan had been involved. When he asked how in the world she thought he could have even gotten to the Temple of the Winds in the first place, or how he had been cured of the plague, were it not for Kahlan's help, Cara only shrugged and said «Lord Rahl, you're a wizard, you know about such things-I don't. I'm sorry, but I can't tell you how you managed to accomplish astonishing things with your gift. I don't know how magic works. I only know that you did it. I only remember you doing what you had to do in order to make things work out-and they did, so I must be right. I could no more easily tell you how you healed me; I only know that you used your gift and you did it. You were the magic against magic, as is your duty to us. I simply don't recall this woman being any part of it. For your sake I wish I did, but I don't.»

For every single instance where Kahlan had been present, Cara remembered it either differently or not at all. For every one of those events, she had an answer to explain it away with an alternate version or, when that would have been impossible, simply didn't recall what he was talking about. To Richard, there were a thousand little inconsistencies in her version that just didn't add up or make sense; to Cara's mind, it seemed not only simple and clear, but straightforward.

To say that it was exasperating trying to convince Cara of the reality of Kahlan's existence would not begin to touch the depth of his frustration.

Because it was pointless to continue to remember significant events in an effort to try to help her remember, when it never did any good, Richard had lost interest in trying to bring Cara around to reality. She simply didn't recall Kahlan. It seemed that her mind had healed over missing chunks of what had really happened.

Richard realized that there had to be an actual, rational cause, possibly some kind of spell or something, that was altering her memory-altering everyone's memory. He was coming to accept the fact that if that was the case, and it had to be, that there simply was no single event, or body of events, that he was going to be able to question her about that would being back Cara's memory.

What was worse, he was realizing, was that such attempts to make her-or anyone else-remember were actually a dangerous distraction from the effort of finding Kahlan.

Richard glanced back to make sure that Cara was staying close to him on the steep mountainside. One didn't have to go far up in the jagged mountains ringing Agaden Reach to find a cliff to fall off of. With loose scree lurking beneath the coating of fresh snow it would be easy to lose their footing and tumble down the slope.

He didn't want to chance losing contact with Cara in the poor visibility. With the howl of the wind it would be hard to hear voices calling out if they became separated, and their tracks would be covered over in mere moments by the blowing, drifting snow. When he saw that Cara was within an arm's length, he pushed on ahead into the teeth of the wind.

As he went over it all in his mind, it occurred to him that by constantly trying to think of some incident that Cara, or those closest to him, would surely have to remember, he was falling into the trap of devoting his thoughts and efforts to the problem rather than the solution. Ever since he had been young, Zedd had cautioned him to keep his sights on the goal —to think of the solution-and not the problem.

Richard vowed to himself that he would keep his focus exclusively on the problem and disregard the distractions created by Kahlan's disappearance. Cara, Nicci, and Victor all had answers to explain away the inconsistencies. None of them remembered the things that Richard knew had happened. By dwelling on the specifics of what he had done with Kahlan, and going round and round with people over how it was impossible for them to have forgotten such important events, he was only letting the solution slip farther and farther away from him-letting Kahlan's life slip farther and farther away from him.

He needed to get a grip on his feelings, stop agonizing over the problem, and concentrate exclusively on the solution.

But setting his feelings aside was so difficult. It was almost like telling himself to forget Kahlan even as he looked for her. Memory had played a central part in his life with her. Going to see Shota only served to bring much of it back to him. He had met Shota for the first time when Kahlan had taken him to see the witch woman in order to ask for her help in finding the last missing box of Orden after Darken Rahl had put them in play.

Kahlan was inextricably tied to his life in so many ways. He had, in a manner of speaking, known her as a Confessor ever since he had been a boy, long before he met the woman herself that day in the Hartland woods.

When he had been a boy, George Cypher, the man who had raised him and who Richard had at the time thought was his father, had told him that he had rescued a secret book from great peril by bringing it to Westland. His father had told him that there was grave danger to everyone as long as the book existed, but he couldn't bring himself to destroy the knowledge in it. The only way to eliminate the danger of the book falling into the wrong hands and yet save the knowledge was to commit the book to memory and then burn the book itself. He chose Richard for the prodigious task of memorizing the entire book.

Richard's father took him to a secret place deep in the woods and, day after day, week after week, watched Richard sit reading the book over countless times as he worked to memorize it. His father never once looked in the book; that was Richard's responsibility.

After a long period of reading and memorizing, Richard began to write down what he'd memorized. He would then check it against the book. At first he made a lot of mistakes, but he continually improved. Each time, his father burned the papers. Richard repeated the task untold times. His father often apologized for the burden he was placing on Richard, but Richard never resented it; he considered it an honor to be entrusted by his father with such a great responsibility. Even though he was young and didn't understand all of what he read, he was able to grasp what a profoundly important work it was. He also realized that the book involved complex procedures having to do with magic. Real magic.

In time, Richard eventually wrote the book out from beginning to end a hundred times without error before he was satisfied that he could never forget a single word. He knew not only by the text of the book, but by its idiosyncratic syntax, that any word left out would spell disaster to the knowledge itself.

When he assured his father that the entirety of the work was committed to memory, they put the book back in the hiding place in the rocks and left it for three years. After that time, when Richard was beyond his middle teens, they returned one fall day and uncovered the ancient book. His father said that if Richard could write the whole book, without a single mistake, they could both be satisfied that it had been learned perfectly and they would together bum the book. Richard wrote without hesitation from the beginning to the final word. When he checked his work against the book, it confirmed what he already knew: He had not made a single mistake.

Together he and his father built a fire, stacking on more than enough wood, until the heat drove them back. His father handed him the book and told him that, if he was sure, he should throw the book into the fire. Richard held The Book of Counted Shadows in the crook of his arm, running his fingers over the thick leather cover. He held in his arms not just his father's trust, but the trust of everyone. Feeling the full weight of that responsibility, Richard cast the book into the fire. In that moment, he was no longer a child.

When the book burned it gave off not only heat but cold, and it released streamers of colored light and phantom forms. Richard knew that for the first time he had actually seen magic-not sleight of hand or the stuff of mysticism, but real magic that existed, real magic with its own laws of how it functioned just like everything else that existed. And some of those laws had been in the book he had memorized.

But in the beginning, that day in the woods, when he had been a boy and for the first time lifted open the cover, Richard had, in a way, met Kahlan. The Book of Counted Shadows began with the words Verification of the truth of the words of The Book of Counted Shadows, if spoken by another, rather than read by the one who commands the boxes, can only be insured by the use of a Confessor— Kahlan was the last Confessor.

The day he met her, Richard had been looking for clues to his father's murder. Darken Rahl had put the boxes of Orden in play and in order to open them he needed the information in The Book of Counted Shadows. He didn't know that by that time the information existed only in Richard's mind, and that to verify it he would need a Confessor: Kahlan.

In a way, Richard and Kahlan had been bound together by that book, and the events surrounding it, from the time Richard had first opened the cover and encountered the strange word «Confessor.»

When he met Kahlan in the woods that day, it seemed to him that he had always known her. In a way, he had. In a way, she had played a part in his life, been a part of his thoughts, ever since he had been a boy.

The day he first saw her standing on a path in the Hartland woods, his life suddenly became whole, even though at the time he had not known that she was the last living Confessor. His choice to help her that day had been an act of free will carried out before prophecy had a chance to have its say.

Kahlan was so much a part of him, so much a part of what was the world to him, what was life to him, that he could not imagine going on without her. He had to find her. The time had come to go beyond the problem and seek the solution.

A gust of icy wind made him squint and brought him out of his memories.

«There,» he said, pointing.

Cara paused behind him and peered over his shoulder into the swirling snow until she was able to make out the narrow pathway along the edge of the mountainside. When he glanced back she nodded, letting him know that she saw the path skirting the lower fringe of the snowcap.

With the blowing snow starting to pile up, the path had begun to drift over. Richard was eager to get through it and to lower ground. As they went farther, conditions deteriorated and the only way he could make out the path was by the lay of the land. The snow had a gentle curve to it as the mountainside rose up from below on the left. It leveled out with a slight dip where the path was, and then to the right humped up where the year-round snow rose higher up.

As they trudged through the ankle-deep snow, Richard glanced back over his shoulder. «This is the highest point. It will start going downhill soon and then it will get warmer.»

«You mean we'll be back in the rain before we even have a chance to get down to lower altitudes and get warm,» she grumbled. «That's what you're telling me.»

Richard understood all too well her discomfort, but could offer no prospect of relief anytime soon.

«I guess so,» he said.

Suddenly, something small and dark skittered down out of the white curtains of snow. Just as he saw it, and before he had a chance to react, it knocked Richard's feet right out from under him.

CHAPTER 38

Richard saw the ground flash past his face as his legs flipped up in the air, then all he could see was white. For an instant he couldn't tell up from down or where he was in relation to anything else.

And then his full weight came crashing to the ground, the momentum pitching him down the slope. The snow offered little cushion. His breath was driven from his lungs. Rolling over and over he saw only brief glimpses of the ground. The world spun crazily. He couldn't control or stop what he quickly realized was his tumbling descent down an increasingly steep slope.

It had all happened so unexpectedly and so fast that Richard hadn't had much time to brace for the fall. At that moment, inattention seemed a poor excuse and no comfort. He bounced over a knob of hard ground and landed on his chest. With the wind knocked out of him, he tried to gasp a breath as he slid face-first down the mountain, but instead of air he got only a mouthful of icy snow.

With the force of the fall and the precipitous angle of the incline, there was nothing at hand to help stop him as he skidded with increasing speed down the steep incline. Heading downward face-first made it all the more difficult to take effective action. In a frantic attempt to stop or at least slow his fall, Richard spread his arms. He fought to dig his hands and feet into the snow and scree to slow his out of control plunge down the side of the mountain, but the snow and the scree only began to slide along with him.

He saw a shadow flash by. Over the sound of the wind he could hear wild screams of rage. Something solid slammed into the back of his ribs. He dug his fingers and boots deeper into the scree beneath the snow, trying to slow his frightening slide. With the snow billowing up around him as he slid, he couldn't seen anything but white.

The dark shape again came flying out of the swirling snow. Again something hammered into him, only this time it was much harder and it was a direct blow to his kidneys meant to help accelerate his plunging Call.

Richard cried out with the shock of pain. As he twisted in distress onto his right side, he heard the unique ring of steel as the Sword of Truth was yanked from its scabbard.

As he slid down the slope, Richard twisted and reached for the sword as it was torn away from him. He knew that if he were to grab the razor-sharp blade itself it could easily slice his hand in two, so he tried instead to seize the hilt or at least snag the crossguard, but he was too late. The assailant dug in his heels to stop himself as Richard sailed out of sight.

Twisting awkwardly as he reached for his sword left Richard even more off balance. As he bounced over the uneven ground he was thrown into a headfirst roll.

In the middle of pitching over, just as he started spreading his arms and legs to stop the tumbling, if nothing else, his back slammed into a jut of rock under the snow. Again the wind was violently driven from him, only this time more painfully.

The force of the impact flipped him over the obstruction.

Tingling dread surged through him as he found himself in midair. With frantic effort, Richard reached out and snatched the rock outcropping he had hit. He held fast as his legs whipped out and over a drop-off.

Richard clutched the rock with frantic strength. For a moment, he clung to the rock, collecting his wits and gulping air. He had at least stopped falling. Snow and small flakes of scree still sliding down the steep slope bounced off the rock he was holding as well as his arms and head.

Carefully, he swung his legs all around, trying to catch them up onto something, trying to find some support for his weight. There was nothing. He swung helplessly, a living pendulum clutching a knob of icy rock.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw blowing snow and dark clouds scudding by underneath him. Through a brief gap, he spotted bits of scree in the midst of a long fall through the air toward trees and rock far below.

Above him, feet spread, stood a short, dark form with long arms, a pallid head, and gray skin. Bulging yellow eyes, like twin lanterns glowing out from the murky bluish light of the snowstorm, glared down at him. Bloodless lips curled back in a grin to expose sharp teeth.

It was Shota's companion, Samuel.

He was gripping Richard's sword in one hand and looked more than content with himself. Samuel wore a dark brown cloak that flapped like a flag of victory in the wind. He backed away a few paces, waiting to sec Richard fall from the mountain.

Richard's fingers were slipping. He tried to get his arms around the rocks to climb up, or at least get a better hold. He wasn't successful. Ho knew, though, that if he did manage to get a better hold, Samuel stood ready to use the sword to insure that Richard fell.

With his feet dangling over a drop of at least a thousand feet, Richard was in a very precarious and vulnerable position. He could hardly believe that Samuel had gotten the better of him in such a way-and that he had managed to snatch Richard's sword. He surveyed the gloomy gray trailers of fog carried along with the blowing snow but he didn't see Cara.

«Samuel!» Richard screamed into the wind. «Give me back my sword!»

Even to himself, it seemed a pretty ridiculous demand.

«My sword,» Samuel hissed.

«And what do you think Shota would say?»

The bloodless lips widened with his smile. «Mistress not here.»

Like a wraith materializing out of the substance of the shadows themselves, a dark shape appeared behind Samuel. It was Cara, her dark cloak billowing in the wind, giving her the aspect of a vengeful spirit. Richard realized that she had probably followed his rolling trail down through the snow. What with the blustery wind in his ears and, more importantly, his gaze riveted on Richard's predicament, Samuel didn't notice Cara looming behind him.

In a single glance she took in the ominous sight of Samuel gripping Richard's sword, standing above Richard as he clung to the edge of the cliff. Richard had learned in the past that Samuel's attention and actions were pretty firmly ruled by his rampant emotions; his feet just followed. With the gleeful distraction of having the object of his rabid hatred at the point of a sword he'd once carried and to this day coveted, Samuel was too busy gloating to watch for the Mord-Sith showing up behind him.

Without a word, Cara unceremoniously rammed her Agiel into the base of Samuel's neck at the back of his skull. With the slippery conditions, she couldn't maintain the contact.

Samuel shrieked in pain and sudden, confused terror as he dropped the sword and toppled back into the snow. Writhing in agony, not understanding what had happened, he pawed frantically at the back of his neck where Cara had pressed her Agiel. He squealed as he Hopped in the snow like a fish in sand. Richard knew that the horrifying shock of pain from an Agiel when applied in that spot fell like a lightning strike.

Richard recognized the look on Cara's face as she started to lean over the squirming figure. She intended to used her Agiel to finish Samuel.

Richard wouldn't really care if she killed the treacherous companion to the witch woman, but he had far more urgent problems right then.

«Cara! I'm hanging on the edge of a cliff. I can't hold on. I'm slipping.»

She immediately snatched up the sword from beside a thrashing Samuel so that he couldn't get at it as she ran to help Richard. Stabbing the blade in the ground beside herself, she dropped down, braced her boots against the rocks, and seized his arms. She had not been an instant too soon.

With her help, Richard was able to get a better grip on the rocks. With both of them struggling in the difficult conditions, he at last managed to hook his arm over the outcropping. Once he had a firm hold with an arm he was finally able to swing a leg up and hook it over the rocks. Cara grabbed his belt and helped haul him up. Straining with effort, he dragged himself up and over the slippery outcropping.

Richard sagged over onto his side, gasping, trying to get enough of the thin air. «Thanks,» he managed.

Cara glanced back over her shoulder, keeping an eye on Samuel. Richard quickly gathered his strength and staggered back to his feet. As soon as he had his footing at the brink of the cliff, he pulled up his sword from where Cara had stuck it in the ground.

He could hardly believe that Samuel had managed to catch him off guard that way. Ever since Richard and Cara had left their camp that morning, he'd been watching for Samuel to show up unexpectedly. He knew, though, that despite expecting such an attack, it was impossible to forestall it every moment-much as it had been impossible to stop every arrow that morning that Kahlan had disappeared.

Richard brushed some of the snow off his face. The tumbling fall, the sudden plunge, and hanging by his fingers over a cliff had left him shaken but, more than anything, angry.

Samuel, still lying crumpled in the snow, wriggling and squirming, pulled to himself, mumbling something Richard couldn't hear over the sound of the wind.

When Samuel saw Richard stalking toward him, he scrambled awkwardly to his feet, still suffering from the lingering pain. Despite that pain, though, he saw what he wanted.

«Mine! Gimme! Gimme my sword!»

Richard lifted the point toward the disgusting little fellow.

Seeing the point of the blade approaching, Samuel lost his courage and scuttled a few steps backward up the slope. «Please,» he whined, holding his hands out to ward Richard's wrath, «no kill me?»

«What are you doing here?»

«Mistress sends me.»

«Shota sent you to kill me, did she?» Richard mocked. He wanted Samuel to admit the truth.

Samuel vigorously shook his head. «No, not to kill you.»

«So then that was all your idea.»

Samuel didn't answer.

«Why, then?» Richard pressed. «Why did Shota send you?»

Samuel eyed Cara as she moved to the side, halfway hemming him in. Samuel hissed at her, showing his teeth. Cara, unimpressed, showed him her Agiel. His eyes grew big with fear.