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Nicci stood. "Richard, no one is arguing that the Chainfire spell isn't terribly dangerous. We all know that. We all know that our memories have been damaged by the ignition of a Chainfire event. Do you have any idea how disturbing it is to be intellectually aware that we all did things, knew things, and knew people that we now can't remember? Don't you realize how haunting is to be in constant dread of what memories are lost, and what others might be lost? That your very mind is eroding? What are you getting at, anyway?"
"Just that—what else is being lost. I think that the destruction is expanding through everyone's memory—that their minds are eroding, as you put it. I don't think that Chainfire was a single event of merely forgetting Kahlan. I think that the spell, once activated, is an ongoing, dynamic process. I think that everyone's memory loss is continuing to spread."
Zedd, Cara, and Nicci all looked away from Richard's unwavering gaze. Nicci wondered how they could expect to help him if none of them were consciously capable of using their own minds, much less keeping what they still had from day to day.
How could Richard trust any of them?
"I'm afraid that as bad as that much of it is, it gets more involved and far worse," Richard said, the heat having left his voice. "Dragons, like many creatures in the Midlands, need and use magic to live. What if the corruption caused by the chimes extinguished the magic that they need in order to live? What if no one has seen any dragons for the last couple of years because they no longer exist and with Chainfire are now forgotten? What other creatures with magic might have also vanished from existence?"
Richard tapped a thumb against his own chest. "We are creatures of magic. We have the gift. How long until that taint left by the chimes begins to destroy us?"
"But perhaps…" Zedd's voice trailed off when he could think of no argument.
"The Chainfire spell itself is contaminated. You all saw what it was doing to Nicci. She was in the spell and she knows the terrible truth of it." Richard began pacing as he spoke. "There is no telling how the contamination within the spell might change the way it works. It might even be that the contamination is the reason that everyone's memory loss is spreading beyond what would have otherwise happened.
"But worse yet, it appears that the corruption has worked in conjunction with the Chainfire event in a symbiotic fashion."
Zedd looked up. "What are you talking about?"
"What is the mindless purpose of the chimes? Why were they created in the first place? For one single function," Richard said in answer to his own question, "to destroy magic."
Richard paused his pacing to face the rest of them as he went on. "The contamination left by the chimes is destroying magic. The creatures that need magic to live—dragons, for example—would likely be the first to be affected. That cascade of events will continue. But no one is aware of it because the Chainfire event is simultaneously destroying everyone's memory. I think this may be happening because the Chainfire spell is contaminated, causing everyone to forget the very things being lost.
"In much the way a leech numbs its victim so that they won't feel their blood being drained away, the Chainfire spell is making everyone forget what is being lost because of the corruption of the chimes.
"The world is changing dramatically and no one is even aware of it. It's as if everyone is forgetting that this is a world that is influenced by, and in many ways functions through, the existence of magic. That magic is dying out… and so is everyone's memory of it."
Richard again leaned on the sill and stared out the window. "A new day is dawning, a day in which magic continues to die out, and no one is even aware that it is fading away. When it passes entirely, I doubt that anyone will even remember it, remember what once was.
"It's as if all that was this world is passing into a realm of mere legend."
Zedd pressed his fingers to the table as he stared into the distance. The light of the lamp accentuated the deep creases of his drawn features. His face had gone ashen. At that moment, Nicci thought that he looked very old.
"Dear spirits," Zedd said without looking up. "What if you're right?"
They all turned to the sound of a polite knock. Cara pulled the door open. Nathan and Ann stood beyond the doorway, peering in.
"We ran the standard verification web," Nathan said as he entered behind Ann, glancing around at the somber expressions.
Zedd looked up expectantly. "And?"
"And it reveals no flaws," Ann said. "It's perfectly intact in every way."
"How can that be?" Cara asked. "We all saw the trouble with the other one. It nearly killed Nicci—and would have if Lord Rahl hadn't gotten her out."
"Our point, exactly," Nathan said.
Zedd's gaze fell away. "An interior perspective is said to be able to reveal more than the standard verification process," he explained to Cara. "This is not a good sign. Not a good sign at all. The contamination apparently buried itself as deeply as possible in order to conceal its presence. That's why it wasn't seen in the standard verification web."
"Or else," Ann offered as she slipped her hands into opposite sleeves of her simple gray dress, "there is nothing really wrong with the spell. After all, none of us has ever run an interior perspective before. Such a thing hasn't been done in thousands of years. It's possible we did something wrong."
Zedd shook his head. "I wish it were so, but I now believe it to be otherwise."
Nathan's brow drew down with a suspicious look, but Ann spoke before he had a chance.
"Even if the Sisters who unleashed the spell ran a verification web," she said, "they likely would not have run an interior perspective, so they wouldn't have suspected that it was contaminated."
Richard rubbed his fingertips back and forth across his brow. "Even if they knew that it was contaminated, I don't think they cared. They wouldn't be concerned about what damage such contamination might cause the world. Their goal, after all, was to get the boxes and unleash the power of Orden."
Nathan looked from one grim face to another. "What's going on? What's happened?"
"I'm afraid that we've just learned that memory may only be the beginning of our loss." Nicci felt rather odd standing before them in a pink nightdress as she pronounced the end of the world as they knew it. "We are losing who we are, what we are. We are losing not just our world, but ourselves."
Richard no longer seemed to be paying attention to the conversation. He was standing stock-still, staring out the window.
"Someone is coming up the road to the Keep."
"Maybe it's Tom and Friedrich," Nathan said.
Zedd shook his head as he made for the window. "They wouldn't be back from a patrol of the surrounding countryside this soon."
"Well, it could be that they—"
"It's not Tom and Friedrich," Richard said as he started for the door. "It's two women."
* * *
CHAPTER 10
"What is it?" Rikka called out as Richard, Nicci, and Cara ran toward her. Nathan and Ann had already fallen far behind. Zedd was somewhere in the middle.
"Come on," Richard shouted to her as he ran past.
"Someone is coming up the Keep road," Cara called back over her shoulder as Rikka joined in the charge through the halls.
Richard veered around a long stone table set against the wall beneath a huge painting of a lake. Sheltered trails could be seen burrowed through the deeply shadowed pine groves. In the distance, through a bluish haze, majestic mountains rose up to catch brushstrokes of golden sunlight. It was a scene that made Richard long to be back in his Hartland woods on the trails he knew so well. More than anything, though, the painting always reminded him of the magical summer he'd spent with Kahlan in the home he had built for her far back in the mountains.
The summer of Kahlan's recovery from her terrible injuries, as he showed her the natural beauty of his forested world and she once again blossomed back to health, had been one of the happiest times of his life. It had ended all too suddenly when Nicci had
arrived without warning and taken him away. He knew, though, that if Nicci had not interrupted it, something else would have. It had been a dream time that had to end; until the looming threat from the Imperial Order was halted, no one could live their dreams. They would all, instead, be swept up in the same nightmare.
They turned a corner around a green marble pillar with a gold capital and base and all plunged down a spiral run of granite steps, Richard and Nicci in the lead with the two Mord-Sith following close on their heels. The stairwell was small for the Keep, but would have dwarfed anything Richard had ever seen growing up back in Westland.
