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“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.”
Ann waved a hand over the book, the vine, and the statue. “But this, this, this is all still conjecture, Richard. Who in the world could even have dreamed up such a plot?”
“Sister Ulicia hatched the plan,” Nicci said. “She had Sisters Cecilia, Armina, and Tovi with her.”
Ann frowned. “How do you know this?”
