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“No. They come, I write them down.”
“So then you don’t necessarily know what they mean.”
She considered a moment. “Well, if the prophecy is for rain, I admit I have no vision to go with that, but it seems pretty clear, don’t you think?” When Nathan nodded, she went on. “But when it says the sky is going to fall, I can’t begin to imagine what that could mean. The sky can’t very well fall in, now can it?”
“No, it can’t,” Nathan agreed.
“So,” she said, holding up a finger thoughtfully, “it has to have some hidden meaning.”
“So it would seem,” Nathan agreed. “And how does a prediction like that one come to you, if not in a vision?”
She frowned as she looked up while she tried to recollect. “Well, it comes to me as words, I guess. I don’t see a picture in my mind of a sky falling in or anything. It just comes to me that way, that the sky is going to fall in, like a voice in my head saying it, so I write it down just the way it comes.”
“And then you store it in here?”
Lauretta glanced around at all of her precious predictions. “I suppose that future generations of prophets will have to study all of this in order to make sense of it.”
Richard could hardly contain himself. He struggled to keep his mouth shut. The woman was harmless enough. She wasn’t trying to drive them crazy. She was the way she was and he wasn’t going to argue her out of her nature, or her lifelong obsession. It would be pointless and cruel to say something that would only end up making her feel bad.
“Oh,” she said, turning suddenly to shuffle to the back of the room, “I almost forgot. I have another that came to me just yesterday. Came to me quite unexpectedly. It was the last of the prophecies that came to me for you, Lord Rahl.”
Lauretta pulled at papers, reading them quickly and then shoving them back where she’d found them. Finally, she came across what she was looking for. Richard found the fact that she could find a single piece of paper she was looking for among all the thousands and thousands stacked everywhere to be more remarkable than anything she was writing down.
She hurried back, holding the paper out for Richard. He took it and read it aloud.
“‘Queen takes pawn.’” He looked up with a frown. “What does that mean?”
Lauretta shrugged. “I have no idea. My calling is to hear them and to write them down, not to interpret them. As I said, future prophets will have to do that work.”
Richard glanced over at Nathan and his grandfather. “Any clue what this means?”
Zedd made a face. “Sorry, it doesn’t mean anything to me.”
Nathan shook his head. “Me neither.”
Richard took yet another deep breath. “Thank you for passing these along, Lauretta. ‘People are going to die,’ ‘The sky is going to fall in,’ and”— he glanced down at the paper again to read the words—“‘Queen takes pawn.’ That’s it, then? Do you have any others you want me to see?”
“No, Lord Rahl, that’s all of them. When they came to me I didn’t know their meaning, but I did know for certain that they were meant for you.”
“Do you usually know who the prophecy is meant for?”
Her brow creased as she considered the question. “No, as a matter of fact, I don’t recall ever knowing who my prophecies are meant for, or about.” She looked up at him. “But you are said to be a very unusual man, a wizard of great power, so I suppose that had something to do with it.”
Richard glanced at the teapot with the candle under it. “You know, Lauretta, in appreciation for bringing your prophecy to my attention, maybe I can do something for you in return.”
She cocked her head. “For me?”
“Yes. I think that all of these prophecies should be in their proper place.”
Her brow creased. “Proper place?”
“That’s right. They don’t belong here, hidden away. They belong in a library with other prophecy. They should take their rightful place in a library.”
“A library…” Lauretta gasped. “Really, Lord Rahl?”
“Of course. These are prophecies. That’s what the libraries are for. We have a number of such libraries here at the palace. What would you say to us sending men by to collect all of these prophecies and placing them in a proper library?”
She looked around, hesitating. “I don’t know…”
“There is a large library not far from here. There’s plenty of room there. We could put your predictions there all together on shelves where someday prophets can study them. You could come visit them anytime you wished. And whenever you have new prophecies and write them down, they can be added to your special section in the library.”
Her eyes widened. “Special section? For my prophecies?”
“That’s right, a special section,” Zedd said, joining in, apparently catching on to Richard’s purpose. “There they could be properly looked after and protected.”
She put a finger to her lip, thinking.
“And I could go there anytime?”
“Anytime you wish,” Richard assured her. “And you can go there to add new ones when they come to you. You can even use the library tables to write down your new predictions.”
She brightened and then took Richard’s hand, holding it as if a king had just granted her part of his kingdom. “Lord Rahl, you are the kindest Lord Rahl we have ever had. Thank you. I accept your generous offer to protect my prophecies.”
Richard felt a twinge of guilt over his ruse, but the place was a fire waiting to happen. He didn’t want her to be hurt or die just because of prophecy. There was ample room in the library, along with all the other prophecy, to keep hers. Besides, he didn’t know that her prophecies were any less valuable than all the others.
“Thank you again Lord Rahl,” she said as she let them out.
Once they were on their way down the hall, Zedd said, “That was very kind of you, Richard.”
“Not as kind as it may seem. I was trying to prevent a needless fire.”
“You could have simply told her that you were sending people to take all that paper away so she wouldn’t start a fire.”
Richard frowned over at his grandfather. “She’s spent her whole life devoted to those pieces of paper. It would be cruel to confiscate them when there’s plenty of room in the library. I thought it made more sense to make her feel good about giving them up— make her part of the solution.”
“That’s what I mean, the trick worked like magic and it was a kind way to do it.”
Richard smiled. “Like you always said, sometimes a trick is magic.”
Nathan caught Richard’s sleeve.
“Yes, yes, very nice indeed. But you know the last prophecy she gave you, the one about a queen?”
Richard glanced back at the prophet. “Yes, ‘Queen takes pawn.’ I don’t know what it means, though.”
“Neither do I,” Nathan said as he waggled the book he still had with him, “but it’s in here. Just like she wrote it, word for word. ‘Queen takes pawn.’”
CHAPTER 13
Kahlan sat up with a start.
Somewhere in the dead-still room someone was watching her.
She had been lying down with her eyes closed, but she had only been resting. She hadn’t been asleep. At least, she was pretty sure she hadn’t been asleep.
She had been trying to put everything from her mind. She hadn’t wanted to think about the woman who had killed her children. She hadn’t wanted to think about the children and how they had died. All for fear of a prophecy.
She didn’t want to think about the woman’s deluded visions.
She had tried very hard to put it all from her mind.
The heavy drapes were drawn. There was only one lamp lit in the room and it was turned down low. Sitting on the table before the mirror on the dressing table, the lamp was too weak to chase the darkness from the farthest reaches of the room. Darkness occluded those far corners where the faint shadowy shapes of hulking wardro
bes lurked.
It couldn’t be Richard she sensed. He would have let her know it was him when she sat up. Cara would have as well. Whoever she sensed in the room wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t moving.
But she felt them watching her.
At least she thought she did. She knew how easy it was for anyone’s imagination, even hers, to get out of hand. Trying to be honest and coldly logical, she couldn’t say for sure that it wasn’t her imagination, especially after Cara had planted the notion in her mind earlier in the day.
But her heart raced as she stared into the dark recesses of the room, watching for any movement.
She realized that her fist had tightened around her knife.
She pulled the bed throw off and pushed it aside. She was lying on top of the bedspread. Her bare thighs prickled at the touch of chilly air.
Carefully, quietly, she slipped her legs over the side of the bed. Without making a sound she stood. She waited, listening, her whole body tense and ready.
