Chainfire (Sword of Truth – 9)

After he'd vanished with Cara through the junipers and into the fog, Nicci crouched down beside Richard and laid a hand on his back between his slumped shoulders.

«It will be all right, Richard.»

«I wonder if anything will ever be all right again.»

«It may not seem that way right now, but it will. Zedd will get over his anger of the moment and come to understand that you were doing your best to act responsibly. I know that he loves you and that he didn't intend what he said to hurt you so.»

Richard nodded without looking up as he knelt in the mud beside the open coffin holding the corpse of the long dead Kahlan Amnell, the woman he had imagined had been his love.

«Nicci,» he finally asked so softly she could hardly hear him over the soft sound of the gentle rain, «will you do something for me?»

«Anything, Richard.»

«One last time — be Death's Mistress for me.»

She rubbed his back and then stood, tears mixing with the rain on her face. By sheer force of will, past the sob struggling to escape, she made her voice steady.

«I can't Richard. You've taught me to embrace life.»

CHAPTER 49

The heavy paneled door opened partway. Rikka stuck her head into the silent room. «Someone is coming.»

Nicci pushed her padded chair away from the polished library table. «Coming?»

«Up toward the Keep.»

«Do you know who?» she asked as she stood.

Rikka shook her head. «Zedd just told me that the shields warned him that someone was on their way up the road. He thought you ought to know. I tell you, all the magic flying around in this place makes my skin crawl.»

«I'll go find Richard.»

Rikka nodded before vanishing out of the doorway. Nicci quickly returned the book she had been studying to its slot in the vast expanse of mahogany shelves that filled the quiet library. The book was a tedious report on activities in the Keep during the great war. Nicci found it rather strange, reading about all the people who had once lived in the Wizard's Keep thousands of years ago. It seemed a disconnected history except when she intermittently reminded herself that they were talking about the very place where she was. She considered how, in contrast, the Palace of the Prophets had been so full of life and activity for so long. Nicci couldn't imagine the Palace of the Prophets empty of all but a few souls, and the Keep was vastly larger. Of course, now the palace was no more while the Keep still stood.

Nicci hadn't really been interested in the book she'd been reading. It was boring but she didn't really care. It was merely something to occupy her time. She couldn't force herself to concentrate on anything that would be absorbing or that would require her to put any great effort into thinking. She was too distracted.

The new moon at the time they had dug up the grave of the Mother Confessor had grown to a full moon and was now approaching its last quarter again, and yet nothing much had changed. A few days after digging up the body, Zedd had told Richard that he loved him and was sorry to have been so hard on him when maybe he should have found out a little more before saying the things he'd said. Zedd promised that they would figure out a way to get Richard's sword back and everything would be all right.

It might have been sincere, and it might have been true, but for Richard the hurt of such a personal failure was hard to put back into the bottle. He had not just disappointed and angered his grandfather; he had failed to prove his dream was in fact the truth. He had put everything he had into the effort. He had been certain and in the end he had only proved himself wrong.

Richard had only nodded to Zedd's words. Nicci didn't think it mattered much to him either way if Zedd had softened his viewpoint. He had reached the end of his ideas, his hopes, and his efforts. Nothing had helped him. After that night, the life had gone out of him.

Zedd had interrogated Cara and Nicci for hours that first night. Nicci had been stunned to hear from Cara what Shota had said about the beast becoming a blood beast because Nicci had inadvertently given it the measure of Richard's ancestral blood. She was horrified to learn that she had been responsible for intensifying the danger to Richard.

While astonished at how Nicci had accomplished saving Richard's life, Zedd had quietly assured her that had she not acted, Richard would most certainly have died right then and there. He said that she had given Richard a chance at life, and now they could work to solve the problem of the beast Jagang's Sisters had created, as well as Richard's strange delusions and the matter of recovering his sword. From what Shota had revealed about the beast, on top of what Nicci already knew, it didn't look to Nicci that they had much of a chance of success. She had no idea at all of how to even begin to destroy such a beast spawned of dark powers.

She had also been embarrassed to hear Cara telling about how Shota had revealed to Richard Cara's plan for Nicci to interest Richard romantically. Zedd, thankfully, had withheld any comments on that part of Cara's story.

That, among other things, had left Nicci feeling rather hopeless-and helpless. The Imperial Order was rampaging unchecked through the New World, the beast was stalking Richard, and he was not himself, to say the least.

In some ways, it reminded her of her dead attitude toward life, back before Richard. She had been taught that she had been born lucky in every way, and because she had ability it was her duty to devote herself to those in need. No matter how hard she worked, the needs always outpaced her ability to meet them, leaving her perpetually in debt to the ever worsening lives of others while her own life was not her own. Her feeling about what was happening now with the beast and Richard's delusions were different in almost every way, except they were the same in that they gave her that familiar feeling of hollow hopelessness.

Richard had spent the long days, since opening the grave and discovering the truth, off by himself-with the exception that Cara, after answering all of Zedd's tedious questions about everything she knew about what had happened with Shota, refused to leave Richard's side for any reason. Since Richard was in no mood to talk to anyone, Cara had become his silent shadow.

It was strange seeing the two of them together, totally at ease with each other even at such a time. It didn't seem to Nicci like the two of them even needed to speak, yet they managed, with a look, a slight shrug, or a nothing at all, to all the time understand each other.

Nicci felt like an unwelcome outsider to his misery and so she let him be. She remained as close as she could, so that she would be at hand should the beast attack, but she stayed out of his sight and left him to his solitude.

The first four or five days after arriving at the Keep Richard had spent in the Confessors' Palace-wandering the magnificent rooms and vast network of halls. Nicci stayed in a guest room in the palace, out of sight, while Richard roamed aimlessly about the empty place. After that, he'd gone out and wandered the city of Aydindril for a half-dozen days, walking the streets and alleys as if reliving the life that had once been there. It was a lot more difficult for Nicci to stay close to him when he walked all day long through the city. After that he had spent yet more days wandering the forests of the mountains around Aydindril, sometimes not even returning at night. Richard was at home in the woods, so Nicci had decided not to follow him, knowing how difficult it would have been for her to keep Richard from knowing she was there. She was comforted somewhat by her connection of magic with him that allowed her always to be aware of what direction he was and roughly how far way. When he didn't come back at night, though, Nicci paced, unable to sleep.

Zedd finally asked Richard to please remain at the Keep so that in case the beast were to attack, Zedd and Nicci could help stop it. Richard had done as he'd been asked without comment or objection. He'd spent recent days, instead of wandering the palace, or the city, or the woods, wandering the outer ramparts of the Keep, staring off into the distance.

Nicci desperately wanted to do something to help him, but Zedd had insisted that there was nothing to do but wait and see if time would begin to bring him around to the reality that he had only dreamed up his relationship with Kahlan during the time he had been unconscious. In this, Nicci didn't really think time would solve anything. She'd been with Richard long enough to realize that this was something bigger. She believed that he needed some kind of help, but she didn't know what that help could possibly be.

Nicci hurried down the wood-paneled hall outside the library, her feet swishing across thick carpets. She rushed up through the maze of stairwells and passageways, using her sense of her gifted connection with Richard to guide her, letting that thread of magic take her where it may, rather than trying to deliberately remember and find her way through the Keep.

As she made her way ever closer to him, she reminisced about the kiss she had given him to link them so that she could find him. She felt rather guilty about that kiss, even if it had been achingly wonderful to do it. It had been far more than she needed to do. She could have simply touched a finger to the back of his hand, or a shoulder, and established a link without him feeling a thing.

But Cara had just been telling her how maybe she needed to make him more aware of her and filled her mind with heady thoughts of the possibilities. That kiss would certainly have planted her firmly in his thoughts. In a way, though, she felt it was too forward, considering his mental state; he was in love with someone else, even if it was a dream, and Nicci hadn't respected that. She regretted, in a way, giving him that kiss. In another way, she wished she had planted it on his lips instead of his cheek.

As Shota had done.

It burned her to hear Cara telling them how Shota had kissed him and tried to get him to stay with her. Nicci knew how the witch woman felt —but that didn't make her any happier about it.

Nicci would give anything to be able to hold him, now, to comfort him,

to tell him that it would be all right for no other reason than simply to try to make him feel just a little better, to reassure him that there were others around who cared about him.

But she knew that this was not the time or circumstances for such things.

At the same time, she knew that this could not continue. He simply could not go on like this. His life could not stay in this static state, drifting without his conscious direction. He had to come to his senses.

Nicci hurried onward, quickening her pace, down the endless maze of halls and through empty but grand rooms, suddenly feeling, for some reason, the urgent need to be with him.

Richard stood at the brink of the wall, an arm resting on a massive merlon to each side, as he stared out through the crenellation. It felt like standing at the edge of the world. Gray patches of shade drifted slowly over the hills and fields far below as their mothering clouds shepherded them along.

He seemed to have lost all track of time. Every day had become the same monotonous, pointless, empty existence. He didn't even know how long he had been standing at the gap in the wall, staring out at nothing in particular.

With Kahlan dead and gone, nothing mattered anymore. He had trouble imagining why it ever had. He couldn't even imagine for sure, now, that she had ever been real.

But whether or not she had been, it was over.

Cara was close. She was always close. In a way it was comforting, knowing that he could depend on her for anything. In some ways, though, it was wearing to have her always there, so that he was never able to have a moment's privacy.

He wondered if she believed she was close enough to snatch him if he jumped.

He knew that she wasn't.

He gazed at the tiny little roofs crowded together in the city of Aydindril far below. In a way, he felt an affinity for the city. It was empty. He was empty. Life was gone from both of them.

Since digging up the grave-he couldn't bring himself to call it Kahlan's grave, even in his own mind, much less out loud-he didn't think there was anything worth being alive for, anymore. If a person could die by sheer will alone, he would already be dead, but death, when invited, had suddenly grown shy. The days dragged endlessly on.

He had been so stunned by that grave that it seemed his mind had been scrambled on the spot. It felt like he had lost his ability to think. Nothing he knew made sense to him. The things he'd thought were true somehow no longer were. His whole world had been turned upside down. How could he function if he couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't?

He didn't know what else to do. For the first time in his life, he was baffled and defeated by the way things were. He always seemed to have a variety of options that he knew he could try. Now, he didn't. He had tried everything he could think of. None of it worked. He was at the end of his rope, and there was none left.

And all the time, in his mind, he kept seeing her body in the coffin.

He saw, he heard, he felt, but he could not think, could not put anything together in a meaningful way. It was a walking, living, imitation of death-a poor one, he believed. What good was living if it felt this way? He longed only for that dark, forever embrace of nothingness to take him.

He was so far beyond hurt, beyond sadness, beyond grief, that there was only an unthinking, empty, blind, confused agony that never for a second would release him enough to get a breath. He wanted desperately to escape the truth, to refuse to allow it to be real, but he couldn't and it was suffocating him.

The wind coming up the mountain ruffled his hair as he stared out over a precipitous drop of thousands of feet.

What good was he to anyone? He'd let Zedd down. He'd given Shota the Sword of Truth for nothing of value. Nicci thought he was out of his mind, that he was delusional. Not even Cara believed him, really believed him. He was the only one who believed him, and he had proved himself wrong by digging up her grave.

He guessed he must be crazy, that Nicci had to be right. Everyone was right. He could only be imagining things. He could see it in all their eyes the way they looked at him, that he had lost his mind.

Richard gazed down the sheer drop of the dark stones of the massive outer Keep wall. They fell away below him for thousands of feet toward the rock and forest below. Gusts of wind coming up the face of the wall buffeted him. It was a dizzying sight. A dizzying drop.

What good was he to anyone, most of all to himself?

He stole a sidelong glance at Cara. She was close, but not nearly close enough.

Richard didn't see any reason to continue the agony. He didn't have his mind, and his mind was life.

He didn't have Kahlan. She was his life.

From what everyone told him, from what he saw in the coffin that terrible night, he never had her. It was all just a mad delusion. A wish. A whim.

He glanced down again at the forever drop off the towering wall on the side of the keep, at the rocks and trees spread out below. It was a very, very long way down.

He recalled people saying that just before you died you relived your life.

If he were to relive his life, he would relive every precious moment he'd had with Kahlan.

Or thought he'd had.

It was a long way down.

A long time to relive such wonderful, romantic, loving times. A long time to relive every precious moment he'd spent with her.

CHAPTER 50

Nicci opened an iron-strapped oak door to bright daylight. Puffy white clouds skimmed by just overhead in a sparkling azure sky that on any other day would have lifted her spirits. A fresh breeze carried her hair across her face. She pulled it away as she gazed down the narrow bridge to a rampart in the distance. Richard stood beyond the end of the bridge, at the far wall of the rampart, in the gap of the crenellation, looking down the mountain. Cara, nearby, turned when she heard the door.

Nicci hurried across the bridge above courtyards far below. She could see several stone benches down among the rose garden at the bottom of a tower and juncture of several walls. When she finally reached Richard's side he glanced over, giving her a brief, small smile. It warmed her to see it even though she knew the smile was little more than a polite formality.

«Rikka came and told me that someone approaches the Keep. I thought I should come and get you.»

Cara, standing only three strides away, stepped a little closer. «Does Rikka know who it is?»

Nicci shook her head. «I'm afraid not, and I'm more than a little worried.»

Without moving or taking his eyes from the distant countryside, Richard said «It's Ann and Nathan.»

Nicci's eyebrows lifted in surprise. She looked over the edge. Richard pointed them out far below on the road that wound its way up the mountain toward the Keep.

«There are three riders,» Nicci said.

Richard nodded. «It looks like it might be Tom with them.»

Nicci leaned out a little farther past Richard and peered down the face of the stone wall. It was a frightening drop. The feeling came over her that she didn't at all like where he was standing.

With a hand on his shoulder to steady herself, Nicci looked out again at the three horses plodding their way up the sunlit road. They briefly disappeared under trees only to emerge a moment later as they continued steadily up toward the Keep.

A gust of wind suddenly threatened to unbalance her from her footing in the slot in the immense stone wall. Before it could, Richard's arm around her waist steadied her. She instinctively drew back from the edge. Once she was on safe footing, his protective arm released her.

«You can tell for sure, from here, that it's Ann and Nathan?» she asked.

«Yes.»

Nicci wasn't especially enthusiastic about seeing the Prelate again. As a Sister of the Light and having lived at the Palace of the Prophets for most of her life, Nicci had had just about all she wanted of the Sisters and their leader. In many ways the Prelate was a mother figure to her, as she had been to all the Sisters, someone who was there to remind them whenever they were a disappointment and lecture them that they had to redouble their efforts to help others in need.

When she had been young, should self-interest ever rear its ugly head, Nicci's mother had always been at the ready to bitterly slap it down. Later in Nicci's life the Prelate served in that same capacity, if with a kindly smile. Slap or smile, it was the same thing: servitude, even if under a nicer name.

Nathan Rahl was another matter. She didn't really know the prophet. There were Sisters, and novices especially, who trembled at the mere mention of his name. From what everyone always said, though, he was not simply dangerous but possibly deranged, which, if true, had disturbing implications for Richard's present condition.

The prophet had been held in secure quarters almost his entire life, the Sisters seeing not only to his needs but seeing to it that he never escaped. People in the city of Tanimura, where the palace had been, were both titillated and terrified of the prophet, of what he might tell them of the future. Whispers were, among the people of the city, that he was most surely wicked, since he could tell them things about their future. Ability tended to arouse the ire of a great many people, especially when that ability was not one that could easily be made to serve their wants.

Nicci wasn't much worried about what people said about Nathan, though. She'd had experience with truly dangerous people-with Jagang only the most recent to grace the top of her list of the wicked.

«We'd better get down there,» Nicci told Richard and Cara.

Richard stared out over the countryside. «You go on, if you want.»

He sounded like he couldn't have cared less that someone was coming, or who it was. It was obvious that his mind was elsewhere and he only wanted her to go away.

Nicci pulled a flag of hair back off her face. «Don't you think you ought to see what they want? After all, they must have traveled a long way to get here. I'm sure they didn't come bringing milk and cakes.»

Richard shrugged one shoulder, showing no reaction to her attempt at humor. «Zedd can see to it.»

Nicci so missed the light in Richard's eyes. She was at the end of her endurance of the situation.

She glanced over at the Mord-Sith and spoke in quiet but unmistakable command. «Cara, why don't you go for a little walk? Please?»

Cara, surprised by such an unusual but clear directive coming from Nicci, took in Richard standing at the opening in the wall, staring off into the distance, and then gave Nicci a conspiratorial nod. Nicci watched Cara walk off down the rampart before finally addressing Richard again, but this time in a boldly forthright manner.

«Richard, you have to stop this.»

As he gazed out at the vast scene below, he didn't answer.

Nicci knew that she couldn't allow herself to fail in what she had to say, what she had to accomplish. She would do almost anything to have Richard care about having her in his life, but she didn't want to win him this way. She didn't want to be second best to a corpse, or a substitute to a dream he couldn't make real. If she was ever to have him, she would only have him because he chose her, not because he was left with nothing else. There had been a time when she would have accepted on those grounds, but no more. She respected herself more than that, now, and all because of Richard.

But even more than that, this was not the Richard she knew and loved. Even if she could never have him, she still wouldn't allow him to sink to the terribly dark place he was in. If she could give him a needed push back up toward life, and that was all she could ever do for him, then she would.

Even if she had to play the role of antagonist to get him out of his downward spiral, and she could be no more than that to him, then she would.

She laid a hand on the stone merlon, making herself impossible to avoid, and took an even more confrontational tone.

«Aren't you going to fight for what you believe in?»

«They can fight if they want.» His voice didn't sound despondent; it sounded dead.

«That's not what I mean.» Nicci grasped his arm and gently but firmly pulled him around, turning him from the drop-off, forcing him to face her. «Aren't you going to fight for yourself?»

He met her gaze but didn't answer.

«This is because Zedd told you that he was disappointed in you.»

«I think the grave I dug up might have had a bit to do with it.»

«You may think so but I don't. Why should it? You have been devastated and sent reeling by things before. I captured you and took you away to the Old World, and what did you do? You stood up for yourself and acted like yourself and on your beliefs, within the limits of what I would allow you to do. By being who you are you exerted your love of life and that changed my life. You showed me the truth of the joy of life and all it means.

«This time you woke up from nearly dying to me and Cara and everyone else not believing in your memory of Kahlan, but that never stopped you. You kept arguing your convictions despite everything we said.»

«What was in that coffin is different, and I'd say a little more than a simple argument when someone doesn't believe you.»

«Is it? I don't think so. It was a skeleton. So what?»

«So what?» Annoyance crept into his features. «Are you out of your mind? What do you mean, so what?»

«Far be it from me to argue your case when I don't believe in it, but I don't seek to win you to what I believe is the truth by default. I would want to win you over with the true facts, not with this flimsy evidence.»

«What do you mean?»

«Well, was it Kahlan's face you saw to prove to you that it really was her? No, it couldn't be-there was no face left. Just a skull-no face, no eyes, no features. The skeleton was wearing the dress of the Mother Confessor. So what? I was in the Confessors' Palace and there were other dresses there like that.

«So was a name stitched on a gold ribbon enough to prove it to you? Enough to bring you to an end of your search, your beliefs? After all the things that Cara and I have said to you, have argued to you, have reasoned to you, you all of a sudden feel that this flimsy evidence proves you delusional? A skeleton in a coffin holding a ribbon with her name stitched on it is enough to suddenly convince you that you dreamed her up, just as we've been telling you all along and you've refused to believe? Don't you think that the ribbon is just a little too convenient?»

Richard frowned at her. «What are you getting at?»

«I don't believe that's what is really going on with you. I think you're wrong about your memories but I don't believe that the Richard I know could be convinced by the dubious evidence in that grave. This isn't even because Zedd doesn't believe your memories any more than Cara and I do.»

«Then what's it about?»

«This is all because you believed a corpse in a coffin was her because you were afraid it was true after your grandfather said that he was disappointed in you and that you let him down.»

Richard started to turn away, but Nicci seized his shirt and pulled him back, forcing him to face her.

«That's what I think this is about,» she said with fierce resolve. «You're sulking because your grandfather said you were wrong, said that you disappointed him.»

«Maybe because I did.»

«So what?»

Richard's face screwed up in confusion. «What do you mean, 'so what'?»

«I mean, so what if he's disappointed in you. So what if he thinks you did a stupid thing. You're your own man. You did what you reasoned you had to do. You acted because you thought you had to act and do the things you did.»

«But I.»

«You what? You disappointed him? You made him angry at what you decided to do? He thought more of you and you let him down? You came up short in his eyes?»

Richard swallowed, not wanting to admit it aloud.

Nicci lifted his chin and made him look into her eyes.

«Richard, you have no responsibility to live up to anyone else's expectations.»

He blinked at her, looking speechless.

«It's your life,» she insisted. «You're the one who taught me that. You did what you thought you must. Did you turn down Shota's offer because Cara disagreed with you? No. Would you have turned down Shota's offer if you knew I thought you were wrong to give her your sword? Or would you have turned her down if both of us told you that you'd be a fool to accept? No, I don't think so.

«And why not? Because you were doing what you thought you must do and as much as you would hope we would agree with you, in the end it didn't matter what we thought. Your conviction was what you had to act upon. You didn't quail at the decision, you acted. You did what you felt you had to do. You were making the decision based on what you believed, for reasons only you can truly know, and that it was the right thing to do. Isn't that correct?»

«Well — yes.»

«Then what difference should it make if your grandfather thinks you're wrong. Was he there? Does he know everything you knew at the time? It would be nice if he believed in what you did, if he supported you and said 'good for you, Richard,' but he didn't. Does that suddenly make your decision wrong? Does it?»

«No.»

«Then you can't let it take over your mind. Sometimes the people who love us the most have the highest expectations for us, and sometimes those expectations are idealized. You did what you had to do, given what you believed and what you know, to find the answers you needed to solve the problem. If everyone else in the world thinks you're wrong, but you believe you're right, you have to act on what you have sound reason to believe. Numbers of those against you don't change the facts and you must act to find the facts, not satisfy the crowd or any particular individual.

«You have no responsibility to live up to anyone else's expectations. You have only to live up to your own expectations.»

Some of the light, the fire was back in his intent gray eyes. «Does this mean that you believe me, Nicci?»

She sadly shook her head. «No, Richard. I think your belief in Kahlan is a result of your injury. I think you dreamed her up.»

«And the grave?»

«The truth?» When he nodded, Nicci took a deep breath. «I think that is the real Mother Confessor, Kahlan Amnell.»

«I see.»

Nicci seized his jaw again and made him look back at her. «But that doesn't mean that I'm right. I'm basing my belief on other things-things I know. But I don't think that anything I saw in that coffin, as much as I believe it's her, really proves it. I've been wrong in my life before. You've thought I'm wrong all along in this. Are you going to do as someone says who you think is wrong? Why would you do that?»

«But it's so hard when no one believes me.»

«Sure it is, but so what? That doesn't make them right and you wrong.»

«But when everyone says you're wrong it starts to make you have doubts.»

«Yes, sometimes life is really hard. In the past doubts have always made you dig all the harder for the truth, to be sure you were right because knowing the truth can give you the strength to fight on. This time, your shock at seeing a body in the Mother Confessor's grave when you hadn't anticipated even the possibility of one being there, coupled with your grandfather's unexpectedly harsh comments right in that moment of horror, overwhelmed you.