Chainfire (Sword of Truth – 9)

They at last came back out into the night. The crescent moon was rising above the ancient city of Caska. Lokey circled above and called down to his friend. She waved back. The graveyard spread out before him was good sized, but seemed inadequate for a city.

Richard walked with Jillian on the path through the crowded graves. Gnarled trees stood in places. In the moonlight it was a peaceful place, with wild flowers spread across the rising and falling contour of the land.

«Where are the passages you spoke of?» he asked her.

«I'm sorry, Richard, but I don't know. The tellings speak of them, but do not say how to find them.»

Richard searched the graveyard, Jillian at his side, as the moon rose higher in the sky, and he could not find any evidence of passages. It all looked like any graveyard he had ever seen. Some of the ground was mounded with a number of markers. The stones for each grave were crowded close. Some yet stood, while others had long since fallen to lie flat on the ground, or be grown over.

Richard was running out of time. He couldn't stay down in Caska, forever listening to the cicadas sing. This was getting him nowhere. He needed to look for answers where he was apt to find them. This ancient place did not appear to be the place.

At the People's Palace in D'Hara there would be valuable books that Jagang had not yet been able to loot. It was more likely that he would find useful information there than in an empty graveyard.

He sat down on the side of a small hillock beneath an olive tree to consider what he might do.

«Do you know of any other place where there would be these passages that were mentioned in the tellings?»

Jillian's mouth twisted as she considered. «I'm sorry, but no. When it is safe, we can go down and talk to my grandfather. He knows many things-much more than me.»

Richard didn't know how much time he had to devote to listening to her grandfather's stories, either. Lokey fluttered down to the ground nearby to feast on the newly emerging cicadas. After the seventeen years they'd lived underground, more of them were emerging-only to be pecked up by the raven.

Richard recalled the prophecy Nathan had read to him. It had mentioned the cicadas. He wondered why. It had said something about when the cicadas awakened, the final and deciding battle was upon them. The world, it said, was at the brink of darkness.

Brink of darkness. Richard glanced down at the cicadas as they emerged. He watched them coming up out of the ground.

As he watched, he realized that they were all coming up through a space in a gravestone laying facedown against the rise of ground. Lokey had noticed, too, and stood eating them.

«That's odd,» he said to himself.

«What's odd?»

«Well, look there. The cicadas aren't coming up through the dirt, they're coming up from under that stone.»

Richard knelt down and pushed his fingers down into the space. It seemed hollow underneath. Lokey cocked his head as he watched. Richard lifted, grunting with the effort. The stone began to lift. As it came up, he realized that it was hinged on the left. It finally gave way and opened.

Richard stared down into the darkness. It wasn't a grave marker. It had been a stone cap to a passageway. He immediately pulled the glass sphere out of his pack. As it began to glow, he held it down in the dark maw.

Jillian gasped. «It's a stairway!»

«Come on, but be careful.»

The stairs were stone, irregular, and narrow. The leading edge of each was swaybacked and rounded from countless feet making the journey. The passage was lined with blocks of stone, making a clear path down deep into the ground. The steps came to a landing and turned right. After another long run, they turned left and went deeper.

When they finally reached the bottom, the passage opened into wider corridors that were carved from the solid but soft rock of the ground itself.

Richard held the glowing globe out in one hand and Jillian's hand in his other as he bent a little to clear the low ceiling as he led them deeper. It wasn't long before they encountered an intersection.

«Do your tellings say anything about finding our way down here?» She shook her head. «How about all those mazes you learned. Do you think they will do you any good down here?»

«I don't know. I never knew this place existed.»

Richard let out a breath as he looked down each of the two passages. «All right, I'll just start going in deeper. If you think you recognize anything, or any of the routes, let me know.»

After she agreed, they started down the left fork. To each side of the narrow passageway they began finding niches that had been carved into the walls. Inside each lay the remains of a body. In places the niches were stacked three or five high. Some had two bodies, probably a husband and wife.

Around some of the recesses, ancient painting still remained. The artwork was vines in some places, people with food in others, and in some places simple designs. From the different styles and the varying quality of the art, Richard guessed that it must have been done by loved ones for a member of their family who had died.

The narrow passageway opened up into a chamber with ten openings tunneling off in various directions. Richard picked one and started down it. It, too, opened into broader spaces, with a warren of branches. The elevation changed, from time to time going down deeper, and occasionally going up a bit.

They soon began encountering the bones.

There were rooms with stacks of similar bones in niches. Skulls had been carefully fit into one niche, leg bones all stacked end out in another, arm bones in another yet. Great stone bins carved in the side walls held smaller bones all laid in neatly. As Richard and Jillian moved through vault after vault, they saw walls of skulls that had to number in the tens of thousands. Knowing that he was seeing only one random passageway, Richard could not imagine how many people had to be interred in the catacombs. Even as startling, and even horrifying, as it was to see so many of the dead, each of their bones looked to have been placed reverently. None were simply cast into a hole or a corner. Each had been carefully placed as if each had been a valued life.

For what had to be well over an hour, they made their way through the maze of tunnels. Each section was different. Some were wide, some narrow, some with rooms to each side. After a time, Richard realized that each spot must have been carved out of the soft rock to make space for a family; that was why the niches seemed to fill every available space in such a haphazard fashion.

And then they came to a section of the passage that had partially collapsed. A huge section of stone had toppled and rubble had fallen in around it.

Richard stopped and looked at the tangle of stone. «I guess this is as far as we go.»

Jillian squatted down, peering under the stone block lying at an angle across the passageway. «I can see a way under here.» She turned to Richard. Her copper-colored eyes looked frightening staring out from the black mask painted across her face. «I'm smaller. Do you want me to go have a quick look?»

Richard held the glowing sphere down in the opening to light it for her. «All right. But I don't want you to keep going if you think it looks dangerous. There are thousands of tunnels down here, so there are plenty others to look in.»

«But this is the one the Lord Rahl found. It must be important.»

«I'm just a man, Jillian. I'm not some wise spirit returned from the world of the dead.»

«If you say so, Richard.»

At least she smiled when she said it.

Jillian disappeared into the angular hole like a bird going through a thornbush.

«Lord Rahl!» came her echoing voice. «There are books in here.»

«Books?» he called into the hole.

«Yes. A lot of books. It's dark, but it looks like a big room with books.»

«I'm coming in,» he said.

He had to take his pack off and push it out ahead as he crawled in. It turned out not to be as worrisome as he had feared, and he was soon through. When he stood on the other side, he realized that the huge stone block lying at an angle across the passage had once been a door. It looked like it had been designed to slide out of a slot cut into the side of the wall, but at some point the massive door had broken along a fault in the stone, and it had toppled over. As Richard inspected the mess, he brushed the dust away and saw one of the metal plates that activated a shield.

The idea that these books had been behind a shield made his heart race faster.

He turned back to the room. The warm light from the glowing sphere did indeed show a chamber full of books. The room ran at odd angles, seemingly without reason. Richard and Jillian walked along the passageway, looking at all the books. Most of the shelves were carved into the solid rock, the way the resting places for the dead had been cut out to make room.

Richard held the sphere up as he started scanning the shelves.

«Listen,» he said to Jillian, «I'm looking for something specific: Chain-fire. It might be a book. You start on one side, and I'll take the other. Make sure you look at each book's title.»

Jillian nodded. «If it's in here, we will find it.»

The ancient library was discouragingly huge. As they inched along and rounded a corner, they encountered a chamber lined with aisles of shelves. The search was slow going. They had to work in the same area so that they could both see.

For several hours, they painstakingly made their way through the room. Partway through, they encountered side chambers, smaller than the main room, but still full of books. From time to time they each had to blow dust off some of the spines.

Richard was tired and frustrated by the time they came to a spot where he saw another of the metal plates. He pressed the flat of his hand against it and the stone wall in front of them began to move. The door wasn't big, and it quickly pivoted open into blackness. He hoped that the shields keyed off what they recognized of his gift, and didn't actually work by making his power answer some silent, unfelt call. He'd not like to be down in the catacombs and have the beast materialize.

Richard stuck the light into the darkness and saw a small room with books. There was also a table that had long ago collapsed because some of the ceiling had come down on top of it.

Jillian, deep in concentration, ran a finger along the spines of the books as she read each while Richard took five strides across the room to the far wall. He saw another metal plate there and pressed his hand to it.

Slowly, another narrow door in the stone began pivoting away from him into the darkness. Richard crouched lower as he stepped into the doorway and held the light partway in.

«Master, you wish to travel?» a voice echoed.

He was staring at light reflecting back off the sliph's silver face. It was the well room, where they had come in. The doorway was on the opposite side of the steps from where they had found the first metal plate that had opened the ceiling.

They had just spent most of the night going around in a circle, ending up right where they had started.

«Richard,» Jillian said, «look at this.»

Richard turned back around and came face-to-face with the red leather cover of a book she was holding up.

It said Chainfire.

Richard was so stunned that he couldn't talk.

Jillian, grinning with discovery, came into the sliph's room with him as he backed in, taking the book from her hands.

He felt as if he were somewhere else, watching himself hold the book named Chainfire.

CHAPTER 62

«Richard?» It was Nicci's voice.

Still startled to actually have found Chainfire, he walked to the steps and looked up. Both Nicci and Cara, silhouetted by dawn light, were peering down at him.

«I found it. I mean, Jillian found it.»

«How did you get down there?» Nicci asked as Richard and Jillian started up the steps. «We just looked in there and you weren't there.»

«Jillian?» It was a man's voice.

«Grandfather!» Jillian raced the rest of the way up the steps and flew into an old man's arms.

Richard climbed the steps after her. Nicci was sitting on the top step. «What's going on?»

«This is Jillian's grandfather,» Nicci said, lifting out a hand in introduction. «He is the teller of these people, the keeper of the old knowledge.»

«Glad to meet you,» Richard said, embracing the old gentleman's hand. «You have a wonderful granddaughter. She just helped me out immensely.»

«You would have found it if I hadn't seen it first,» Jillian said, grinning.

Richard smiled back.

He turned to Nicci. «What happened to Jagang's men?»

Nicci shrugged. «Night fog.»

As Jillian went with her grandfather to greet Lokey on a nearby wall, Richard spoke confidentially to Nicci and Cara.

«Fog?»

«Yes.» Nicci interlaced her fingers around a knee. «Some kind of strange smoky fog drifted past them and made them go blind.»

«Not just blind,» Cara said with obvious delight, «but burst their eyes right in their sockets. It was a bloody mess. I quite enjoyed it.»

Richard frowned at Nicci, wanting an explanation.

«They're scouts,» she said. «I know these men and they know me. I didn't want them seeing me. More than that, though, I wanted them to be useless to Jagang-the ones who live, anyway. From what Jillian's grandfather tells me, he doubts that many of them will make it back to Jagang's forces, but I made sure they were near enough to their horses so that their animals will carry them back. I want the ones who live through the ordeal to be able to report only the horror of the fog coming down from the hills-that they were blinded in a strange, forbidding, and haunted land. Such news will send a fright through his men.

«Raping, pillaging, and slaughtering the helpless is all perfectly entertaining for Jagang's army, but they rather don't like things like this. Dying for the Creator in a grand battle and going to their reward in the afterlife is one thing, being taken by something they can't see coming out of the darkness and ending up helpless in this way is quite another matter.

«I expect that Jagang will decide to skirt this land rather than allow some unknown out here to give his men a fright that could change their minds about fighting for the glory of the Creator and the Imperial Order. That means they will have to continue on south for a good distance. It will add time to their journey before they can finally swing around and come up into D'Hara.»

Richard nodded thoughtfully. «Very good, Nicci. Very good.»

She beamed. «What do you have there?»

«Chainfire.» He moved up on the steps to sit between Nicci and Cara. «It's a book.» He hesitated in opening the cover. «In case this is some kind of prophecy or something, I'd just as soon you looked at it first.»

Concern settled in her exquisite features. «Of course Richard. Give it here.»

Richard handed her the book and stood. He didn't want to risk glancing at it and too late discovering that he shouldn't have, only to discover the beast about to tear into them. Especially not now, not when he was so close to getting answers.

Nicci was already scanning the book, Cara looking over her shoulder.

«It makes no sense,» Cara announced as she read from Chainfire.

Richard didn't think that Nicci shared that opinion. Her face was draining of color. «Dear spirits.» she whispered to herself.

As she kept reading, not saying anything to them, Richard sat on a rise of ground to the side, under an olive tree. There was a vine growing around the trunk. He reached out to idly pluck a leaf from the vine.

He stopped, his hand inches from the dusky, variegated leaves.

Icy gooseflesh prickled up his arms.

He knew what that vine was.

From The Book of Counted Shadows, the book that his father had him commit to memory before they destroyed it, the words flooded into his mind: And when the three boxes of Orden are put into play, the snake vine shall grow.

«What's the matter?» Jillian whispered to him as she leaned close. «You look like you've seen a spirit.»

«Have you ever seen this plant growing here, where your people live?»

«No, I don't believe I have.»

«She's right,» Jillian's grandfather said in a puzzled voice. «I've lived in these parts all my life. I don't recall seeing that vine before, except for a spell almost three years back, I believe it was. That's right, three years this coming autumn. Then it died away. Haven't seen it since.»

Richard didn't see any pods on the newly sprouted vine. He reached out and carefully plucked a sprig.

«Richard, this is an incredibly dangerous book,» Nicci said in a gravely troubled voice. She was preoccupied, still reading, and not paying any attention to the rest of them talking. «This is beyond dangerous.» She was reading as she spoke. «I'm only in the beginning, but this is — I don't even know how to begin.»

Richard rose to his feet, holding the sprig of the vine out, staring at it.

«We have to go,» he said. «Right now.»

Something in the tone of his voice made Cara and even Nicci look up.

«Lord Rahl, what is it?» Cara asked.

«You look like you just saw the ghost of your father,» Nicci said.

«No, this is worse,» Richard told her, finally looking up. «I understand. I know what's going on.»

He ran to the steps down into his tomb. «Sliph! We need to travel!»

«But Richard, you have come to help me cast the dreams so that the evil people will not come here.»

«Look, I have to leave. Right now.»

«Lord Rahl has already helped us as much as he can for now,» her grandfather said as he put an arm around her slender shoulders. «If he can, he will return to us.»

«That's right,» Richard said, «if I can I'll return. Thank you, Jillian, for helping me. You can't begin to imagine what you have done this day. Tell your people to stay away from that vine.»

«Richard,» Nicci said, «what's gotten into you?»

He seized Nicci's dress at her shoulder, and Cara's arm.

«We have to get to the People's Palace. Now.»

«Why? What's happening? What did you find?»

Richard showed her the sprig of vine before stuffing it in a pocket and grabbing her arm again and forcing her down the steps.

«This is a snake vine. It only grows when the boxes of Orden have been put in play.»

«But the boxes of Orden are safe in the palace,» Cara protested.

«They're not safe any longer. Those Sisters have put the magic of Orden in play. Sliph! We need to travel to the People's Palace.»

«Come, we will travel.»

Nicci was still fighting him as he pulled her along. «Richard, I don't see what this has to do with your dream of this woman.»

Richard slapped the metal plate, starting the ceiling of the tomb closing. «Good bye, Jillian. Thank you. I will return someday.»

As she waved, he snatched up his bow and quiver.

He turned to Nicci. «They need Kahlan. She's the last living Confessor. They put the boxes of Orden in play. They need the book I have memorized. The first thing it says is '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. — ' «

The ceiling finished closing. In the distance, Richard could hear Jillian call, «Good-bye, Richard. Safe journey.»

«Richard, this is crazy. It's just.»

«Now is not the time to argue with me.»

She knew by his tone of voice that he meant it.

He climbed up on the wall and hoisted both women up.

«Here, wait,» Nicci said as she opened the pack. «You had better keep this safe.» She stuffed Chainfire down inside and tied the flap down tight.

«Any idea what Chainfire is about?» he asked.

Her blue eyes gazed into his. «From what I was able to tell from the tiny bit I saw in the beginning, it's a theoretical formula for conjuring things that have the potential to unravel existence.»

«Unravel existence?» Cara asked. «What does that mean?»

«I'm not exactly sure. But it seems to be a discussion of a theory of a specific magic that if ever initiated could potentially destroy the world of life.»

«Why in the world would they need that?» Richard asked. «They have the magic of Orden, now.»

Nicci didn't answer. She didn't believe his theory; it involved Kahlan.

«Sliph, now, please. Take us to the People's Palace.»

The silver arm swept them up. «Come, we will travel.»

Just before they plunged into the silvery froth, Nicci and Cara each seized one of his hands.

CHAPTER 63

Nicci had hardly gotten her bearings, hardly recognized that they were in a marble room, hardly let the sliph out of her lungs and pulled in a desperate gasp of air, when Richard was already pulling her up over the wall by the hand.

Despite everything, she was still able, in some dim part of her mind, to thrill at holding his hand, for whatever reason.

She had thought that while in the sliph traveling to the People's Palace, that she would be able to give thought to Richard's strange new twist of finding a bit of a vine and leaping to the conclusion that the boxes of Orden were in play-all in an attempt to prove that Kahlan was real.

The room they were in was shielded. Richard pulled her and Cara through the powerful shield. They ran up a marble hall and out a double silver door with a lake embossed into the metal.

«I know this place,» Cara said. «I know where we are.»

«Good,» Richard said, «then you lead the way. And hurry.»

There were times when Nicci almost wished that she had gone along with Zedd, Ann, and Nathan's plan to purge him of his memory of Kahlan.

Except for one thing. She had tried the theory on one of Jagang's men back in Caska. She had tried to use Subtractive Magic to eliminate the man's memory of the emperor. It sounded simple enough. She had done just as the three had wanted Nicci to do to Richard.

There had only been one problem.

It had killed the man. Killed him in a most horrifying fashion.

When she thought about how she had almost done that to Richard, how for a time she had let them talk her into it and had been committed to doing it, she had gotten so weak and dizzy that she had to sit down on the ground next to the dead soldier. Cara had thought Nicci had been about to pass out. The idea of what she had almost done left her shaking for an hour.

«Here,» Cara said as she led them up stairs that emptied into a broad corridor with parts of the roof glassed.

The light flooding in was reddish, so it was either almost sunset or just after dawn, Nicci didn't know which. It was a disorienting feeling not to know if it was day or night.

The halls were filled with people. Many of them stopped to stare at the three people running along the corridor. Guards also noticed and came running, hands to weapons, until they saw Cara in her red leather outfit. Many of the people recognized Richard and dropped to a knee, bowing as he ran past. He didn't slow to acknowledge them.

They went up a dizzying array of passages, over bridges, along balconies, between columns, and through rooms. Intermittently they ran up stairs. Occasionally Cara took them through service halls, undoubtedly as shortcuts.

Nicci took note of how magnificent the palace was, how remarkably beautiful. The patterned stone floors were laid with rare precision. There were grand statues-none as remarkable as the statue Richard had carved, but grand nonetheless. She saw a tapestry that was larger than any she had seen in her life. It depicted a sprawling battle and must have had several hundred horses in it.

«This way,» Cara said, pointing down a hall as she rushed toward it.

As they came around the corner, Cara crossed over to the other side of the passageway as she ran down it. Nicci, pulled along by her hand, would have liked to have discussed a number of things, to have asked some important and pointed questions, but it was all she could do to get her breath as she ran. Running was not something she really ever did until she met Richard.

Cara slid to slow down as she came to a pair of carved mahogany doors. Nicci was revolted to see the snakes carved into them. Without pause, Richard seized one of the door handles, a bronze skull, and yanked the door open.

Inside the quiet, carpeted room, four guards immediately sprang to block Richard's path. They saw Cara, and looked at Richard again, uncertain.

«Lord Rahl?» One asked.

«That's right,» Cara snapped. «Now, get out of the way.»

The men immediately pulled back, each putting a fist to their hearts.

«Has anything happened recently?» Richard asked as he caught his breath.

«Happened?»

«Intruders? Has anyone slipped in this way?»

The man snorted a laugh. «Hardly, Lord Rahl. We'd know if that happened and we'd not allow it.»

Richard nodded his thanks and raced to the marble stairs, nearly pulling Nicci's arm out of the socket in the process. As they ran up the steps, Nicci thought that her legs might simply quit. Her muscles were so exhausted from the long run up through the palace that she could hardly make them go on, but she had to, for Richard.

At the top of the stairs, soldiers were running toward them, crossbows loaded with red-fletched arrows at the ready. They didn't know it was the Lord Rahl. They thought someone was trying to get into the restricted area. Nicci hoped that someone got hold of their senses before one of the men got careless.

But by their reactions, Nicci realized that these men were highly trained and not prone to shooting arrows before they were sure of their target. Lucky for them, because she would have been faster.

«Commander General Trimack?» Richard asked an officer pushing his way through the ring of steel that had surrounded them.

The man stiffened and clapped a fist to his heart. «Lord Rahl!» He spotted the Mord-Sith. «Cara?»

Cara nodded in greeting.

Richard clasped arms with the man. «General, someone has gotten in here. They've taken the boxes in the Garden of Life.»

The general was momentarily struck speechless. «What? Lord Rahl, that's not possible. You have to be mistaken. No one could get past us without our knowing it. It's been peaceful as can be up here for ages. Why, we've only had one visitor.»

«Visitor? Who?»

«The Prelate. Verna. It was a while back. She was in the palace checking on something about books of magic, she said. She said that as long as she was here, she wanted to have a look to make sure the boxes were safe.»

«So you let her go in there?»

The general looked a bit indignant. A long scar stood out white when his face went red.

«No, Lord Rahl. I wouldn't let her go in there. What we ended up doing was opening the doors so she could look in to see that everything was safe.»

«Look in?»

«That's right. We surrounded her with men, all pointing these special arrows at her-arrows Nathan Rahl found for us that will stop even the gifted. We had her ringed in steel. The poor woman looked like a pincushion about to happen.»

Men all around nodded at the general's words.

«She looked in the garden and said she was relieved to see that everything was fine. I took a look myself and saw the three black boxes sitting on the stone slab across the room. But I never let the woman set foot beyond the doors, I swear.»

Richard heaved a sigh. «And that's it? No one else has opened those doors?»

«No, Lord Rahl. No one else has even been up here but my men. No one. We don't let anyone even use these halls around the Garden of Life. As you may recall, you were rather insistent about it the last time you were here.»

Richard nodded, thinking. He looked up. «Well, let's go have a look.»

The men, all jangling with weapons and armor, followed the surprise visitors down the polished granite hall until they reached two huge, gold covered doors.

Without waiting for someone else to do it, Richard pulled one of the heavy doors open and started into the room. The soldiers paused at the doors. This was apparently sacred ground, a sanctuary for the master of the palace alone, and unless invited by the Lord Rahl, none of them would enter. Richard didn't invite them as he rushed off on his own.

Despite how tired she was, Nicci hurried after him as he made his way down a path among beds of flowers. Overhead, through a glassed roof, she could see that the sky had turned to a darker purple, so she knew it was night, rather than dawn.

Just like Richard, Nicci paid little attention to the vine covered walls, or the trees, or all the other things growing all around. The garden was a magnificent place, to be sure, but her gaze was riveted on the stone altar she saw in the distance. She didn't see any of the three boxes that were supposed to be there. There was something else standing on the slab of granite, but she couldn't tell what it was.

By the way Richard's chest was heaving, he did know what was standing there.

They crossed a ring of grass, and the open dirt. In the dirt, Richard stopped cold in mid-stride and stared down at the ground.

«Lord Rahl,» Cara asked, «what is it?»