CHAPTER 65

A scream that made the fine hairs on the back of Richard's neck stand on end split the quiet night. Richard, in a bedroll in a simple tent, shot to his feet as the scream ripped the air with its terror. The unending shriek ran a shiver up through his shoulders and instantly brought a sheen of sweat to his brow.

His heart racing, Richard rushed out of his tent even as the haunting cry echoed through the encampment as if trying to reach every corner of darkness to express its horror.

Outside the tent, which was set apart from the others because it was an extra, Richard saw men standing in the darkness, their eyes wide. Up the row a ways, General Meiffert watched out on the night with the rest of them.

Richard saw that it was false dawn, like the morning Kahlan had vanished. The woman he loved, the woman who everyone else had forgotten and didn't care to remember. If she had screamed, no one had heard her.

And then, as the scream died, the world went blacker than black. It was like being plunged into the inky nothingness of the world of the dead, forlorn and forever lost. Richard shivered as his flesh felt like something alien touched the world of living with intimate promise.

As quickly as the darkness had come, it was gone. Men looked around at one another, none speaking.

The thought occurred to Richard that the viper now had only three heads.

«The Keeper took one of his own,» he explained to the questioning faces that had all turned to him. He saw the general watching, listening. «Be glad that one so evil is no longer among the living. May all such people find the death they champion.»

Men smiled and whispered agreement with the curse as they began crawling back into their tents to try to snatch what was left of their sleep.

General Meiffert met Richard's gaze as he clapped a fist to his heart before vanishing back into his own tent.

In the dim light of the camp that suddenly seemed to be populated only by tents and wagons, Richard spotted Nicci very deliberately heading straight for him. There was something profoundly disturbing about the way she looked. Perhaps it was that she had just vented a rage that he doubted anyone but he could truly understand or value.

Flags of blond hair flying, she reminded him of a raptor descending in on him from out of the night, all tight muscle and talons. When he saw the tears streaming down her face, her gritted teeth, her fury and hurt, her powerful menace and frail helplessness, her eyes filled with more than he could grasp, he stepped back into his tent, drawing her in out of the view of the camp.

She swept into the tent, right for him, like a storm breaking on a headland. He backed as far as he could, having no idea what was wrong or what she intended.

With a sob of such naked desolation that it nearly made him cry out in kind, she fell to the ground at his feet, throwing her arms around his legs. She was clutching something in one hand. Richard realized that it was Kahlan's white Mother Confessor dress.

«Oh, Richard, I'm so sorry,» she wailed between racking gasps. «I'm so sorry for what I've done to you. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry,» she kept mumbling over and over.

He reached down and touched her shoulder. «Nicci, what is it?»

«I'm so sorry,» she cried as she clutched at his legs as if she were the condemned begging a king for her life. «Oh, dear spirits, I'm so sorry for what I've done to you.»

He sank down, lifting her arms off his legs. «Nicci, what is it?»

Her shoulders heaved with her racking sobs. She looked up at him as he lifted her by her arms. She was as limp as the dead.

«Oh, Richard, I'm so sorry. I never believed you. I'm so sorry that I never believed you. I should have helped you and instead I fought you every step. I'm so sorry.»

He had rarely seen anyone in such profound misery. «Nicci.»

«Please,» she sobbed. «Please, Richard, end it now.»

«What?»

«I don't want to live anymore. It hurts too much. Please, use your knife and end it. Please. I'm so sorry. I've done worse than simply not believe you. I've been the one who stopped you at every turn.»

She hung like a rag doll from his hands under her arms. She wept in utter misery and defeat.

«I'm so sorry I didn't believe you. You were right about everything and so much more. I'm so sorry. It's all ended now and it's my fault. I'm so sorry. I should have believed you.»

She started to almost melt through his grip. Sitting on the floor in front of her, he gathered her up into his arms, much like he had gathered up Jillian.

«Nicci, you were the only one who made me go on when I was ready to give up. You were the only one who made me fight.»

Nicci's arms came up around his neck when he pulled her close. She felt hot from the fever of her anguish.

She sobbed and kept mumbling how sorry she was, how she should have believed in him about the rest of it, how it was all too late now, how she wanted to end the pain and die.

Richard held her head to his shoulder as he whispered to her that it would be all right, whispered his comfort, rocked her gently and quieted her without saying anything of consequence except in its empathy.

He remembered, then, when he had first met Kahlan and they had spent that first night in a wayward pine. She had nearly been pulled back into the underworld and he had drawn her back at the last moment. Kahlan had cried like this, in abject terror and misery, but more than that, with the release of having someone hold her.

Kahlan had never had anyone she valued hold her when she cried.

He knew, now, that Nicci never had either.

As he held her in his arms, giving her the unopposed comfort she so needed, she exhausted herself until, feeling safe as perhaps never before, she drifted into sleep. It was such a profound pleasure to be able to give her that rare refuge that he wept silently as he held her and she slept, safe, in his arms.

He must have fallen asleep for a brief time because when he opened his eyes there was pale light coming through the walls of the summer tent. When he lifted his head, Nicci stirred in his arms, like a child cuddling closer and never wanting to wake.

But she did, rather suddenly when she realized where she was.

She looked up into his eyes, her blue eyes weary. «Richard,» she whispered in what he knew would be the beginning of the same thing.

He pressed his fingertips to her lips, halting her words.

«We have a lot of things to deal with. Tell me what you learned so that we can get on with it.»

She put the white dress in his hands. «You were right about almost everything, even if you didn't know the mechanism. Sister Ulicia and her small band wanted to remain free from the dream walker, just as you said. They resolved, since you value life, to give you immortality. Anything else they did, no matter how destructive, they viewed as of secondary importance. This gave them the freedom to pursue freeing the Keeper.»

Richard's eyes went wider as he listened.

«They found Chainfire and used it to make everyone forget Kahlan so that they could steal the boxes of Orden. Your father, in the underworld, let the Keeper know that you have memorized the book they need. They know that they need a Confessor to obtain the truth. Kahlan accomplishes two tasks, stealing the boxes, and helping to get the truth of the book you know.

«Chainfire, not the prophecy worm, is also responsible for what is happening to prophecy.

«The Sisters have two of the boxes of Orden and they put them in play. They have launched that phase of their plan for two reasons: because they want to use Orden to call the Keeper into the world of life, and because the boxes of Orden were created as a counter to the power that can be engendered with Chainfire»

Richard blinked. «What do you mean, they only have two boxes? I thought they used Kahlan to steal all three. All three were in the Garden of Life.»

«Kahlan brought out one box. They gave it to Tovi and had her start out while they sent Kahlan back in for the other two.»

«Sent her back?» Richard frowned. «What are you leaving out?»

Nicci licked her lips, but she didn't break his gaze. «The reason for Tovi's scream.»

Richard felt his eyes watering. A lump rose in his throat.

Nicci laid a hand over his heart. «We'll get her back, Richard.»

He clenched his teeth and nodded. «So then what happened?»

«The new Seeker surprised Tovi, stabbed her, and stole the box of Orden she was spiriting away from the People's Palace.»

«We have to start a search. They can't have gone far.»

«They are long gone, Richard. Just like they covered their tracks when they took Kahlan, they will have done the same this time. That is not the way to find them.»

Richard looked up. «Samuel. The Sword of Truth was a counter. When I gave him the sword, he must have recognized the truth about Kahlan.» His gaze roved the inside of the tent as he tried to think. «We need to think this through. Collect all the information we can and get ahead of them, instead of always being behind them.»

«I'll help you, Richard. Anything you want, I will do. I will help you get her back. She belongs with you. I know that now.»

He nodded, thankful that her iron was back. «I think we had better set some things straight and then get some experienced help.»

She smiled a crooked smile. «That's the Seeker I know.»

Outside the tent, men had begun to gather, all wanting to see the Lord Rahl.

Out of the crowd came Verna. «Richard! Thank the Creator-our prayers have been answered!» She threw her arms around him. «Richard how are you?»

«Where have you been?»

«I was tending to some injured men. Scouts, who met a few of the enemy. General Meiffert sent word for me to return at once.»

«And the men?»

«Fine,» she said with a smile. «Now that you are finally with us for the final battle.»

He took up her hands. «Verna, you know you have had a hard time with me in the past.»

She grinned as she nodded that it was true. When she saw that he wasn't smiling, her smile faded. «This is going to be one of those times,» he told her. «You are going to have to believe in me and what I say, or we might as well give up to the Order right now.»

Richard let go of her hand and climbed up on a crate to be better heard. He realized that a sea of men surrounded him.

Cara and General Meiffert were right near the front. «Lord Rahl, will you be able to lead us?» he asked.

«No,» he called out into the still dawn air.

Worried whispers spread back through the men. Richard held up his arms.

«Listen to me!» They quieted. «I don't have much time. I don't have the time to explain things as I wish I could. That is the way it is. I will give you the facts, and I will let you decide.

«The army of the Imperial Order has been slowed a bit down south.» Richard held up his hands to stifle the cheers. «I don't have much time. Listen, now.

«You men are the steel against steel. I am the magic against magic. I now must pick one of those two for the coming battle.

«If I stay here and lead you, fight with you, then we are not going to have much of a chance. The enemy forces are huge. I don't need to tell any of you men that much. If I stay and help you fight them, most of us will die.»

«I can tell you right off,» General Meiffert said, «that I don't like that choice.»

Most of the men agreed that the grim picture he had just painted was not something they relished.

«What's the alternative?» a man nearby called out.

«The alternative is that I let you men do your job and present the steel to keep the Order from choosing instead to run rampant through our lands.

«Meanwhile, I pledge to do my job of being the magic against magic. I will do what only I can and work to find a way to defeat the enemy without any of you men having to lose your life in battle with them. I want to find a way, with my power, to banish or destroy them before we have to fight them.

«I can't guarantee that I will succeed. If I fail, I will die in the attempt and you men will have to face the enemy.»

«Do you think you can stop them with magic of some sort?» Another man asked?

Nicci jumped up beside him. «Lord Rahl has already set people in the Old World against Jagang's forces. We have fought battles in their own homeland in the hopes of taking away their support.

«If you insist on keeping Lord Rahl here, with you, then you are wasting his singular talent, and you might die as a result. I ask, as one who fights at his side, that you let him be the Lord Rahl, let him do as he must, while you do as you must.»

«I couldn't say it any better,» Richard told them. «There it is, then. That is the choice I give you.»

Unexpectedly, men began going to their knees. Far and wide dust rose as men shuffled to make space to kneel down.

In one voice, the chant began.

«Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.»

Richard watched out over the sea of men as the sun broke the horizon. The devotion was repeated a second time, and then a third time, as was customary in the field. Once it was done, men began to return to their feet.

«I guess that's your answer, Lord Rahl,» General Meiffert said. «Go get the bastards.»

The men cheered their agreement.

Richard hopped down and took Nicci's hand to help her down. She ignored the hand and jumped down of her own accord. Richard turned to Cara.

«Well, I have to go. We're in a hurry. Look, Cara, I want you to know that I would be fine with it if you would like to stay with — the army.»

A dark frown descended over Cara as she folded her arms. «Are you crazy?» She looked up over her shoulder at the general. «I told you, the man is crazy. See what I have to put up with?»

General Meiffert nodded seriously. «I don't know how you do it, Cara.»

«Training,» she confided. She trailed her fingertips across his cheek, smiling up at him in a way Richard had never seen her do before. «Take care of yourself, General.»

«Yes, ma'am.» He smiled at Nicci before bowing his head. «As per your orders, Mistress Nicci.»

Richard's mind was already elsewhere. «Come on. Let's get going.»

CHAPTER 66

Marching down the frame and panel hall, Rikka leading the way, Cara and Nicci in tow, Richard reached the intersection and turned down a stone passageway with a towering vaulted ceiling that soared up for nearly two hundred feet. Fluted columns to the sides rose up at evenly spaced intervals. Through large windows at the top the massive exterior buttresses that supported the lofty walls could be seen. Streamers of light angled in high overhead and from small round windows down lower. Their boot strikes echoed like hammers through the cold hall.

Richard's cape that looked like it was made from spun gold billowed behind him as if in a gathering storm. The gold symbols around the black tunic fairly glowed in the muted light. Passing each shaft of sunlight, the silver emblems in his boots, on his wide, multilayered leather belt, and on his leather-padded wristbands sent blades of light flashing around them, announcing the arrival of a war wizard.

The fury of any Mord-Sith was enough to cause most people's blood to pause in their veins, but cold anger on Cara's attractive features seemed capable of turning that stilled blood to ice. To his other side the former Death's Mistress in black looked no less formidable. From the first time he'd met her, Richard could almost hear the air around Nicci crackle with her power and it was doing that now.

Richard passed padded chairs and tables set in niches. Carpets at angles stuck partly into the hall in places, inviting people into quiet, cozy nooks. Richard skirted the carpets because the sounds of his boots on polished granite suited him. None of those with him walked across the carpets, either. With the reverberation coming back at them from the long hall, the sound built until it sounded almost like an invading army pouring through the Keep.

Rikka turned to him without slowing. She gestured to the right. «They're in here, Lord Rahl.»

Richard cut the corner without slowing, aiming his march through the center of the huge double doors that stood open into the exquisite library. Heavy oak mullions crosshatched in the doors divided them into a dozen glass panes each. There were shelves to the ceiling on the thirty-foot back wall of the library, with ladders that rode on brass rails to provide access. Massive mahogany pillars stood gleaming in the streamers of sunlight coming in from high windows. But down low, the light was more gloomy and had to be cut with lamps.

An enormous mahogany table with turned legs that were each bigger around than Richard sat opposite the doors. To each side pillars rose to support vaults overhead. The ends of the room to the far left and right were left to the shadows.

Ann looked astonished. «Richard! What are you doing here? You are supposed to be with our troops.»

Richard ignored her as he grasped the red leather book he had tucked under an arm. He used the book like a broom to sweep aside the sprawl of books laid before them, creating a broad, polished, empty spot before the three gifted people.

Richard tossed the red, leather-bound book on table. It made a smacking sound that echoed almost like a clap of thunder.

The gold lettering, Chainfire, gleamed in the gloom.

«What's this?» Zedd asked in dismay.

«Proof,» Richard said. «Part of it anyway. I promised to bring back proof.»

«It's an ancient book,» Nicci told them. «A formula for creating what is called a Chainfire event.»

Zedd's hazel eyes turned up. «What is a Chainfire event?»

«The end of the world as we know it,» Richard said with grim finality. «What they were doing turned out to inadvertently involve an attempt to create a contradiction, violating the Ninth Rule. They finally realized that if anyone ever actually undertook to initiate a Chainfire event, it would have cataclysmic consequences.»

Nathan frowned at Nicci, apparently hoping for a little more wisdom and experience from a former Sister. «What is he talking about?»

«Wizards in ancient times came up with a new theory on how to alter memory with Subtractive power, with all the resulting disconnected parts spontaneously reconstructed independently of one another-the creation of erroneous memory to fill in the voids that had been destroyed. They were studying the theory of how to make an individual disappear to everyone else by making people forget this person, even as soon as they've just seen them. Even as they look at them.

«It unravels people's memory of the subject, but it was discovered that the ignition of such an event starts a cascade that can't be predicted or controlled. Much like a wildfire, it continues to burn through links with others whose memory has not been altered. It eventually unravels the world of life itself.»

«And the prophecy worm?» Richard asked. «It may be real, but the cause of the prophecy vanishing this time is Chainfire. As part of the process, the person who initiates the event also fills in a void in prophecy, a place left blank by a prophet for future work. This gap is filled in with a completing prophecy which has the Chainfire formula invested in it. A Chainfire event thus infects and consumes all the associated prophecy on the branch, starting with related prophecy, either in subject or in chronology-in this case both: Kahlan. Thus, she is also wiped out of prophecy by what is called the Chainfire corollary.»

Nathan sat down heavily. «Dear spirits.»

Ann, hands in her opposite sleeves, did not look pleased or impressed. «All well and good, and we will have to study this book and see if anything you've come up with even begins to make sense.

«But that book is not the immediate problem.

«You should have stayed with our men. You must lead our troops in the final battle. You must return at once. Prophecy is quite clear. Prophecy says that if you fail to do this, the world will fall under the shadow.»

Richard ignored Ann and met his grandfather's gaze. «Guess what the counter is to a Chainfire event.»

Zedd shrugged, looking puzzled by Richard's line of questioning. «How would I know?»

«There is only one. It was created specifically for this purpose.»

«What was?» Zedd asked.

«The boxes of Orden.»

Zedd's mouth fell open. «Richard, that just isn't.»

Richard reached into his pocket and pulled out what he had brought. He slammed it down on the table before the three of them.

Zedd's eyes went wide. «Bags, Richard, that's a snake vine.»

«You may recall from The Book of Counted Shadows: And when the three boxes of Orden are put into play, the snake vine shall grow.»

«But, but,» Zedd stammered, «the boxes of Orden are in the Garden of Life, in the People's Palace, under incredibly heavy guard.»

«Not only that,» Nathan put in, «but I personally equipped the men of the First File with weapons that are deadly even against the gifted. No one could get in there.»

«I agree,» Zedd insisted. «It's impossible.»

Richard turned and carefully took what Cara had been carrying. He gently set the statue of Spirit down so that the figure was facing the three on the other side of the table, as if she were holding her head high in opposition to their efforts to make her a delusion.

«This is Kahlan's. She left it there, in the Garden of Life, in place of the boxes, so that someone would know she exists. The Chainfire spell erased her from everyone's memory. Those who see her forget her before she even registers in their minds.»