CHAPTER 47

Gripping his grandfather's skinny shoulders, Richard shook the old man. «She's here? Kahlan is at the Confessors' Palace?»

Worry spreading across Zedd's wrinkled face, he cautiously nodded.

With the back of his hand, Richard wiped away the tears running down his cheek. «She's here,» he said, turning to Cara. He gripped her shoulders and gave her a firm shake. «She's in Aydindril. Did you hear? I wasn't imagining it. Zedd remembers her. He knows the truth.»

Cara looked as if she were doing her best to come to grips with her astonishment without letting it be mistaken for unhappiness at the startling news.

«Lord Rahl — I'm — happy for you-really I am-but I don't see how.»

Richard, not seeming to notice the Mord-Sith's halting uncertainty, turned back to the wizard. «What's she doing down there?» he asked, his voice bubbling over with excitement.

Zedd, looking gravely troubled, again glanced to both Cara and Nicci before tenderly laying a hand on Richard's shoulder.

«Richard, that's where she's buried.»

The world seemed to stop.

In a flash of understanding, Nicci realized the truth.

Suddenly, it all became clear. Zedd's behavior now made sense. The woman Zedd was talking about was not the Kahlan, the Mother Confessor, from Richard's imagination, the woman he imagined loved him and had married him.

It was the real Mother Confessor.

Nicci had warned Richard that in his dream he had done a dangerous thing by imagining a woman as his bride who was not simply some anonymous imaginary woman, but, instead, was a woman he had heard of before-a woman who, it so happened, was well known in the Midlands. This was the real Kahlan Amnell, the real Mother Confessor, who was buried down at the Confessors' Palace, not the one Richard had dreamed up to be his love. It had been this very reality that Nicci had feared would eventually come to shatter Richard's world.

She had warned him that this was bound to happen. She had warned him that he would one day come face-to-face with the truth. This was the moment, this was the very thing she had been trying to prevent.

Still, Nicci felt no joy at all in being right. She felt only crushing sadness at what Richard must be feeling. She couldn't even begin to imagine how confusing, how disorienting, it had to be for him. For someone as firmly grounded in reality as Richard always had been, this entire ordeal had to be devastating.

Richard could only stare.

«Richard,» Zedd finally said, giving him a gentle squeeze on his arms, «are you all right? What's going on?»

Richard slowly blinked. He looked in a state of shock.

«What do you mean she's buried down at the Confessors' Palace?» he asked in a shaky voice. «When did it happen?»

Zedd guardedly licked his lips. «I don't know when she died. When I was down there-when Jagang's army was marching on Aydindril-I saw the grave marker. I didn't know her. I just saw her grave, that's all. It's a pretty big marker. It would be hard to miss. The Confessors were all killed by the quads that Darken Rahl sent. She must have died back then.

«Richard, you couldn't possibly have known the woman; she had to have been dead and buried before we ever left our home in Westland —back before the boundary came down. Back when you were still a woods guide in the Hartland forest.»

Richard pressed his palms to his forehead. «No, no, you don't understand. You're having the same problem as everyone else. It's not her. You know Kahlan.»

Zedd lifted a sympathetic hand toward his grandson. «Richard, that's not possible. The quads killed the Confessors.»

«Yes, the other Confessors were killed by those assassins, but not her, not Kahlan.» Richard waved a hand as he dismissed the argument. «Zedd, she's the one who came to ask you to appoint the Seeker-that's why we left Westland. You know Kahlan.»

Zedd frowned. «What in the world are you talking about? We had to leave when Darken Rahl came hunting us. We had to run for our lives.»

«In part, but Kahlan came looking for you first. She's the one who told us that Darken Rahl had put the boxes of Orden in play. He was on the other side of the boundary; if not for Kahlan coming, how would we have even known?»

Zedd peered at Richard as if he suspected he might be quite ill. «Richard, when the boxes of Orden are put into play, the snake vine grows. It even says so in The Book of Counted Shadows. You, of all people, know that. You were in the Upper Ven and were bitten by a snake vine. It caused a fever and you came to me for help. That's how we knew the boxes of Orden were in play. Darken Rahl then came to Westland and attacked us.»

«Well, yes, that's all true, in a way, but Kahlan told us what was happening in the Midlands-she confirmed it.» Richard growled in frustration. «It's more than that, more than her coming to ask you to appoint a Seeker. You know her.»

«I'm afraid that I don't, Richard.»

«Dear spirits, Zedd, you spent last winter with her and the D'Haran army. When Nicci took me down to the Old World, Kahlan was there with Cara and you.» He pointed insistently at Cara, as if it would somehow prove the point and end the nightmare. «She and Cara fought with you all winter.»

Zedd glanced up at Cara. Cara, behind Richard's back, turned her palms up and shrugged at Zedd to let him know that she didn't know any more about it than Zedd did.

«As long as you brought up the business about you being the Seeker, where is your.»

Richard snapped his fingers, his face suddenly lighting up.

«That's not Kahlan's grave.»

«Of course it is. There's no mistaking this grave. It's prominent and I clearly recall that it has her name carved right in the stone.»

«Yes, it's her name, but not her grave. I realize what you're talking about, now.» Richard chuckled with relief. «I'm telling you, it's not her grave.»

Zedd didn't think it was funny. «Richard, I've seen her name on the stone. It's her, the Mother Confessor, Kahlan Amnell.»

Richard shook his head insistently. «No, that's not her. That was a trick.»

«A trick?» Zedd cocked his head, frowning. «What are you talking about? What sort of trick?»

«They were hunting her-the Order was after Kahlan when they occupied Aydindril. They had taken over the council, condemned her to death, and they were hunting her. To keep them from chasing her, you put a death spell on her.»

«What! A death spell! Richard, do you have any idea of the magnitude of what you're suggesting?»

«Of course I do. But it's true. You needed to feign her death so that the Order would think they had succeeded and wouldn't come after her-so that she could get away. Don't you remember? You made that headstone, or at least you had it made. I came here to find her-it was a few years back. Your spell even fooled me. I thought she was dead. But she wasn't.»

His confusion had receded and now Zedd was looking seriously worried. «Richard, I can't imagine what is wrong with you, but this is simply.»

«You two escaped to safety but you left me a message on her headstone,» Richard said, jabbing a finger at Zedd's chest, «so that I would know that she was really still alive. So that I wouldn't despair. So that I wouldn't give up. I almost did, but then I figured it out.»

Zedd was nearly boiling over with frustration, impatience, and concern. Nicci knew the feeling.

«Bags, my boy, what message are you talking about?»

«The words on the headstone. The inscription. It was a message to me.»

Zedd planted his fists on his hips. «What are you talking about? What message? What was this message?»

Richard started pacing, pressing his fingertips to his temples as he mumbled to himself, apparently trying to recall the exact wording.

Or, Nicci thought, trying to dream it up the way he always dreamed up answers to talk his way out of facing the truth. She knew that this time he was making a mistake that would catch him up. Reality was closing in around him, even if he didn't yet recognize it. He soon would.

Nicci dreaded that unequivocal juncture of delusion and truth. Despite wanting Richard to get better, to get over the false memories he had been suffering, she dreaded the pain she knew it would bring him when he eventually came face-to-face with the unambiguous truth. Even more, she dreaded what would happen to him if he couldn't see the truth, or refused to see it, if he sank forever deeper into a world of illusion.

«Not here,» he muttered. «Something about not being here. And something about my heart.»

Zedd pushed his cheek out with his tongue, apparently in an effort to keep still while he watched his grandson pacing back and forth and at the same time probably tried to imagine what could be happening to him.

«No,» Richard said abruptly as he halted. «No, not my heart. That's not what it said. It's a big monument. I remember now. It said, 'Kahlan Amnell. Mother Confessor. She is not here, but in the hearts of those who love her.'

«It was a message for me not to give up hope because she wasn't really dead-she wasn't really there, in that grave.»

«Richard,» Zedd said in soft consolation, «it's a common enough thing to say on a grave marker, that someone isn't dead but rather lives on in the hearts of those who love her. Gravediggers probably have stacks of grave markers made up with that sentiment, carved with those very words.»

«But she wasn't buried there! She wasn't! It says that-'she is not here'-for a reason.»

«Then who is buried in her grave?» Zedd asked.

Richard went still for a moment.

«No one,» he finally said, his gaze wandering off as he thought. «Mistress Sanderholt-the cook at the palace-she was fooled by your death spell like everyone else. When I finally got here she told me that you stood there on the platform while Kahlan was beheaded-she was in mourning over it and terribly upset-but I realized that you wouldn't do such a thing and so it had to be one of your tricks. You told me that-remember? Sometimes the best magic is just a trick.»

Zedd nodded. «That part is true enough.»

«Mistress Sanderholt told me that Kahlan's body had been burned in a funeral pyre, the whole thing supervised by the First Wizard himself. She said that Kahlan's ashes were then buried before that immense stone marker. Mistress Sanderholt even took me out to the secluded courtyard beside the palace where Confessors are buried. She showed me the grave. I was horrified. I thought it was her, that she was dead, until I figured out the message carved in the stone-the message the two of you left for me to find.»

Richard gripped his grandfather's shoulders again. «Do you see? It was just a trick to throw our enemies off her trail. She wasn't really dead. She wasn't really buried there. Nothing is buried there, except maybe some ashes.»

Nicci thought that it was rather convenient that Richard imagined her being cremated in his story of the death-spell bluff so that all that remained were ashes that couldn't be identified. He always came up with something that to his mind logically explained the lack of evidence. Nicci didn't know if Confessors really were cremated, but if they were, that would only provide him with another useful pretext to prop up his story so that he could continue to deny that it was her. They would again have no way to prove otherwise.

Unless, of course, he was dreaming up the funeral pyre part of his story and Confessors weren't ordinarily cremated.

«And so you say that you went there?» Zedd asked. «Down to where the gravestone stands?»

«Yes, and then Denna came.»

«Denna was dead,» Cara said, interrupting for the first time. «You killed her in order to escape from her at the People's Palace. She couldn't have been there — unless of course she appeared as a spirit.»

«Yes, that's right,» Richard said, turning to Cara. «She did. She came as a spirit and took me to a place between worlds so that I could be with Kahlan there.»

Cara's eyes briefly turned to the wizard. Her incredulity was impossible for her to mask so she looked away from Richard and occupied herself with scratching the back of her neck.

Nicci wanted to scream. His story grew more insanely convoluted by the moment. She remembered the Prelate once teaching Nicci as a novice how the seed of lies, once planted, only grew more tangled and out of control over time.

Zedd came up from behind and gently grasped Richard's shoulders.

«Come on, my boy. I think you need to get some rest and then afterwards we can.»

«No!» Richard cried out as he twisted away. «I'm not imagining it! I'm not making it up!»

Nicci knew he was doing just that. In a certain sense, it was remarkable the way he was able, on the spot, to weave new events, based on his original delusion, to continually manage to escape the trap of the truth.

But he could not escape it forever. There was the matter of the true Mother Confessor buried in the grave and that was all too real-unless it turned out that the Midlands actually did cremate their Confessors, in which case Richard would be able to continue to hobble along, clinging to his dream for a little while longer, until the next problem cropped up. Sooner or later, though, something was going to shatter those dreams.

Zedd tried again. «Richard, you're tired. You look like you've been living on a horse for.»

«I can prove it,» Richard said in calm defiance.

Everyone went quiet.

«You don't believe me, I know. None of you do-but I can prove it.»

«What do you mean?» Zedd asked.

«Come on. Come with me down to the gravestone.»

«Richard, I told you, the gravestone very well could say what you said you remember, but that proves nothing. It's a common enough sentiment to express on a gravestone.»

«Do they typically burn the bodies of the Mother Confessor on a funeral pyre? Or was that just part of your trick so that you wouldn't have to produce her body at the funeral when she was supposedly buried.»

Zedd was beginning to look more than just a little indignant. «When I used to live here the bodies of Confessors were never desecrated. The Mother Confessor was placed in a silver-clad coffin in her white dress and the people were allowed to view her one last time, to say their farewells, before she was buried.»

Richard glared at his grandfather, at Cara, and finally at Nicci. «Good. If I have to dig up the grave and prove to all of you that there is nothing buried under the gravestone, then that's what I will do. We need to get this settled so that we can move on to the solution to what's happening. In order to do that, I need you all to believe me.»

Zedd spread his hands. «Richard, that isn't necessary.»

«Yes it is! It is necessary! I want my life back!»

No one offered an argument.

«Zedd, have I ever told you a malicious lie?»

«No, my boy, you never have.»

«I'm not lying now.»

«Richard,» Nicci said, «no one is saying that you're lying, only that you're suffering the unfortunate effects of delirium induced by an injury. It's not your fault. We all know you aren't doing this deliberately.»