A clover-leaf-shaped fountain stood centered in the tiled floor. Water spouted high into the air above the top bowl, from where it cascaded down each successive tier of ever wider, scalloped bowls, finally running from points around the bottom bowl in perfectly matched arcs into the surrounding pool contained by an outer wall of variegated white marble made wide enough to act as a bench.
All the way around the oval-shaped room, highly polished, deep red marble columns stood below arches supporting a continuous balcony. A hundred feet overhead a section of glassed roof let in some of the somber, late-day light to balance the glow of the lamps down in the heart of the room. At night, the glassed roof would probably also let in the soft cold light of the moon to give the darkened room a spectral feel, but with it being the new moon, to say nothing of the gathering clouds, there would be no moonlight this night. By the look of the sky through the glassed roof section, Nicci thought that Zedd was right; it did look like it might rain.
Belying first impressions of the Keep, the room was a beautiful, warm entrance to what seemed such a cold and austere exterior. It hinted at the life the place once held. Like the forsaken city down in the valley, Nicci was rather saddened by the emptiness.
“Welcome to the Wizard’s Keep. Perhaps we all should—”
“Zedd,” Richard growled, cutting his grandfather short, “I need to talk to you. Right now. It’s important.”
Beloved grandfather or not, Nicci could see that Richard was at the end of his patience. Tight, white knuckles stood out in stark contrast against his tanned skin and the prominent veins on the backs of his fists. Judging by the way he looked, he hadn’t gotten much sleep in recent days or had much to eat. She didn’t think that she had ever seen him looking this exhausted or this near his wits’ end. Cara, as well, looked well past the limits of her endurance, although she did a good job of covering it; Mord-Sith were trained to ignore physical discomfort. Despite being overjoyed at seeing his grandfather, Richard’s preoccupation with finding the woman from his imagination had cut the pleasantries of the reunion short.
The mad rush that had become life, since that day he had been shot with the arrow and had nearly died, seemed to have come down to this moment.
Zedd blinked in innocent surprise. “Well of course, Richard, of course.” He spread his arms as he spoke in a gentle voice. “You know that you can always talk to me. Whatever is on your mind, you know that—”
“What’s Chainfire?”
That was nearly the first thing he had asked of Nicci, too.
Zedd stood unmoving, a blank look on his face. “Chainfire,” he repeated in a flat tone.
“Yes, Chainfire.”
A serious expression weighing on his face, Zedd considered the question with care, turning toward the fountain as he thought it over. The waiting was almost painful. The fountain burbled and splashed and echoed in the otherwise silent room.
“Chainfire,” Zedd drawled to himself as he ran a sticklike finger along his smooth jawbone while staring into the tumbling, dancing water cascading down each successive tier of the fountain. Nicci stole a glance at Cara, but the Mord-Sith was unreadable. Her drawn face looked as tired and ill-fed as Richard’s, but, being Cara, she stood tall and straight, not allowing her exhaustion to get the better of her.
“That’s right. Chainfire,” Richard said impatiently through gritted teeth. “Do you know what it means?”
Zedd turned back to his grandson, lifting open his hands. He looked not only puzzled but apologetic.
“I’m sorry, Richard, but I’ve never heard the word Chainfire before.”
The fury leaving him, Richard looked like he might fall down. The disappointment was only too evident in his eyes. His shoulders slumped as he let out a breath. Cara carefully, but quietly, slipped a step closer, ready to help him if he collapsed. To Nicci, that looked like a real possibility.
“Richard,” Zedd said, his voice taking on an edge, “where is your sword?”
Richard erupted. “It’s just a piece of steel!”
“Just a piece—”
Richard’s face went crimson. “It’s just a stupid chunk of metal! Don’t you think that there might be more important things to worry about?”
Zedd cocked his head. “More important things? What are you talking about?”
“I want my life back!”
Zedd stared at him, but remained silent, and in doing so thereby almost commanded his grandson to say something more to fill in some of the blanks.
Richard paced from the fountain to a broad band of triple steps that led up between two of the red marble pillars. A long red and gold carpet bordered with simple, black geometric designs ran between the pillars off under a balcony and into the darkness.
Richard raked the fingers of both hands back through his hair. “What difference does it make? No one believes me. No one will help me find her.”
Nicci felt a deep sense of sorrow for him. At that moment she regretted every harsh thing she had ever said trying to convince him that he had only dreamed up Kahlan. He needed to be helped over his delusions, but, at that moment, she would have been happy to let him hold on to them if it would have brought the light of life back into his eyes.
She longed to hold him and tell him that it would be all right, but she couldn’t, for more reasons than one.
Cara, arms hanging straight at her sides, looked just as saddened to see Richard agonizing so. There seemed no end in sight. Nicci suspected that the Mord-Sith would have agreed with Nicci to let Richard have his beautiful dream of the woman he loved. But a lie would not soothe such real pain.
“Richard, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but what does it have to do with the Sword of Truth?” Zedd asked, the edge returning to his voice.
Richard closed his eyes a moment against the torment of saying aloud what he had said so many times, so many times when no one ever believed him.
“I have to find Kahlan.”
Nicci could see him draw tighter, bracing for the usual disconcerting questions as to who he was talking about and where he could ever have gotten such a notion. Nicci could see that it was almost too much for him to bear another person telling him he was imagining things, questioning his sanity. She could see him dreading it even more coming from his grandfather.
Zedd tilted his head a little. “Kahlan?”
“Yes,” Richard said with a sigh and without looking up, “Kahlan. But you wouldn’t know who I’m talking about.”
Ordinarily, Richard would have launched into a ready explanation, but now he looked too dejected to want to bother to explain yet again, to be greeted with incredulity and disbelieving questions.
“Kahlan.” Zedd’s brow drew down in cautious query. “Kahlan Amnell? Is that the Kahlan you’re talking about?”
Nicci froze.
Richard looked up, his eyes wide. “What did you say?” he whispered.
“Kahlan Amnell? That Kahlan?”
Nicci’s heart skipped a beat. Cara’s jaw had dropped.
In a blink, Richard had the front of Zedd’s robes in his fists and had lifted the old man clear of the floor. Richard’s sweat-slicked muscles glistened in the lamplight.
“You said her whole name, Kahlan Amnell. I didn’t tell you her whole name. You said it on your own.”
Zedd was looking more confused by the moment. “But, that’s because the only Kahlan I know of is Kahlan Amnell.”
“You know Kahlan—you know who I’m talking about?”
“The Mother Confessor?”
“Yes, the Mother Confessor!”
“Well, of course. Most people know her, I expect. Richard, what’s gotten into you? Let me down.”
Nicci felt dizzy. She couldn’t believe her own ears. How was such a thing possible? It wasn’t. It was so overwhelmingly, inconceivably impossible that she thought she might faint.
His hands trembling, Richard set his grandfather down. “What do you mean, everyone knows her?”
Zedd pulled on each sleeve in turn, pulling them back down his skinny arms. He rearranged his disheveled robes at his hips, all the time watching his grandson. He looked truly bewildered by Richard’s behavior.
“Richard, what’s the matter with you? How could they not know her? She’s the Mother Confessor, for crying out loud.”
Richard swallowed. “Where is she?”
Zedd shot a brief, confused glance at Cara and then Nicci before looking back at Richard.
“Why, down at the Confessors’ Palace.”
Richard let out a cry of joy and threw his arms around his grandfather.
Chapter 47
Gripping his grandfather’s skinny shoulders, Richard shook the old man. “She’s here? Kahlan is at the Confessors’ Palace?”
Worry spreading across Zedd’s wrinkled face, he cautiously nodded.
With the back of his hand, Richard wiped away the tears running down his cheek. “She’s here,” he said, turning to Cara. He gripped her shoulders and gave her a firm shake. “She’s in Aydindril. Did you hear? I wasn’t imagining it. Zedd remembers her. He knows the truth.”
Cara looked as if she were doing her best to come to grips with her astonishment without letting it be mistaken for unhappiness at the startling news.
“Lord Rahl…I’m…happy for you—really I am—but I don’t see how…”
Richard, not seeming to notice the Mord-Sith’s halting uncertainty, turned back to the wizard. “What’s she doing down there?” he asked, his voice bubbling over with excitement.
Zedd, looking gravely troubled, again glanced to both Cara and Nicci before tenderly laying a hand on Richard’s shoulder.
“Richard, that’s where she’s buried.”
The world seemed to stop.
In a flash of understanding, Nicci realized the truth.
Suddenly, it all became clear. Zedd’s behavior now made sense. The woman Zedd was talking about was not the Kahlan, the Mother Confessor, from Richard’s imagination, the woman he imagined loved him and had married him.
It was the real Mother Confessor.
Nicci had warned Richard that in his dream he had done a dangerous thing by imagining a woman as his bride who was not simply some anonymous imaginary woman, but, instead, was a woman he had heard of before—a woman who, it so happened, was well known in the Midlands. This was the real Kahlan Amnell, the real Mother Confessor, who was buried down at the Confessors’ Palace, not the one Richard had dreamed up to be his love. It had been this very reality that Nicci had feared would eventually come to shatter Richard’s world.
She had warned him that this was bound to happen. She had warned him that he would one day come face-to-face with the truth. This was the moment, this was the very thing she had been trying to prevent.
Still, Nicci felt no joy at all in being right. She felt only crushing sadness at what Richard must be feeling. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how confusing, how disorienting, it had to be for him. For someone as firmly grounded in reality as Richard always had been, this entire ordeal had to be devastating.
Richard could only stare.
“Richard,” Zedd finally said, giving him a gentle squeeze on his arms, “are you all right? What’s going on?”
Richard slowly blinked. He looked in a state of shock.
“What do you mean she’s buried down at the Confessors’ Palace?” he asked in a shaky voice. “When did it happen?”
Zedd guardedly licked his lips. “I don’t know when she died. When I was down there—when Jagang’s army was marching on Aydindril—I saw the grave marker. I didn’t know her. I just saw her grave, that’s all. It’s a pretty big marker. It would be hard to miss. The Confessors were all killed by the quads that Darken Rahl sent. She must have died back then.
“Richard, you couldn’t possibly have known the woman; she had to have been dead and buried before we ever left our home in Westland—back before the boundary came down. Back when you were still a woods guide in the Hartland forest.”
Richard pressed his palms to his forehead. “No, no, you don’t understand. You’re having the same problem as everyone else. It’s not her. You know Kahlan.”
Zedd lifted a sympathetic hand toward his grandson. “Richard, that’s not possible. The quads killed the Confessors.”
“Yes, the other Confessors were killed by those assassins, but not her, not Kahlan.” Richard waved a hand as he dismissed the argument. “Zedd, she’s the one who came to ask you to appoint the Seeker—that’s why we left Westland. You know Kahlan.”
Zedd frowned. “What in the world are you talking about? We had to leave when Darken Rahl came hunting us. We had to run for our lives.”
“In part, but Kahlan came looking for you first. She’s the one who told us that Darken Rahl had put the boxes of Orden in play. He was on the other side of the boundary; if not for Kahlan coming, how would we have even known?”
Zedd peered at Richard as if he suspected he might be quite ill. “Richard, when the boxes of Orden are put into play, the snake vine grows. It even says so in The Book of Counted Shadows. You, of all people, know that. You were in the Upper Ven and were bitten by a snake vine. It caused a fever and you came to me for help. That’s how we knew the boxes of Orden were in play. Darken Rahl then came to Westland and attacked us.”
“Well, yes, that’s all true, in a way, but Kahlan told us what was happening in the Midlands—she confirmed it.” Richard growled in frustration. “It’s more than that, more than her coming to ask you to appoint a Seeker. You know her.”
“I’m afraid that I don’t, Richard.”
“Dear spirits, Zedd, you spent last winter with her and the D’Haran army. When Nicci took me down to the Old World, Kahlan was there with Cara and you.” He pointed insistently at Cara, as if it would somehow prove the point and end the nightmare. “She and Cara fought with you all winter.”
Zedd glanced up at Cara. Cara, behind Richard’s back, turned her palms up and shrugged at Zedd to let him know that she didn’t know any more about it than Zedd did.
“As long as you brought up the business about you being the Seeker, where is your—”
Richard snapped his fingers, his face suddenly lighting up.
“That’s not Kahlan’s grave.”
“Of course it is. There’s no mistaking this grave. It’s prominent and I clearly recall that it has her name carved right in the stone.”
“Yes, it’s her name, but not her grave. I realize what you’re talking about, now.” Richard chuckled with relief. “I’m telling you, it’s not her grave.”
Zedd didn’t think it was funny. “Richard, I’ve seen her name on the stone. It’s her, the Mother Confessor, Kahlan Amnell.”
Richard shook his head insistently. “No, that’s not her. That was a trick—”
“A trick?” Zedd cocked his head, frowning. “What are you talking about? What sort of trick?”
“They were hunting her—the Order was after Kahlan when they occupied Aydindril. They had taken over the council, condemned her to death, and they were hunting her. To keep them from chasing her, you put a death spell on her—”
“What! A death spell! Richard, do you have any idea of the magnitude of what you’re suggesting?”
“Of course I do. But it’s true. You needed to feign her death so that the Order would think they had succeeded and wouldn’t come after her—so that she could get away. Don’t you remember? You made that headstone, or at least you had it made. I came here to find her—it was a few years back. Your spell even fooled me. I thought she was dead. But she wasn’t.”
His confusion had receded and now Zedd was looking seriously worried. “Richard, I can’t imagine what is wrong with you, but this is simply—”
“You two escaped to safety but you left me a message on her headstone,” Richard said, jabbing a finger at Zedd’s chest, “so that I would know that she was really still alive. So that I wouldn’t despair. So that I wouldn’t give up. I almost did, but th
en I figured it out.”
Zedd was nearly boiling over with frustration, impatience, and concern. Nicci knew the feeling.
“Bags, my boy, what message are you talking about?”
“The words on the headstone. The inscription. It was a message to me.”
Zedd planted his fists on his hips. “What are you talking about? What message? What was this message?”
Richard started pacing, pressing his fingertips to his temples as he mumbled to himself, apparently trying to recall the exact wording.
Or, Nicci thought, trying to dream it up the way he always dreamed up answers to talk his way out of facing the truth. She knew that this time he was making a mistake that would catch him up. Reality was closing in around him, even if he didn’t yet recognize it. He soon would.
Nicci dreaded that unequivocal juncture of delusion and truth. Despite wanting Richard to get better, to get over the false memories he had been suffering, she dreaded the pain she knew it would bring him when he eventually came face-to-face with the unambiguous truth. Even more, she dreaded what would happen to him if he couldn’t see the truth, or refused to see it, if he sank forever deeper into a world of illusion.
“Not here,” he muttered. “Something about not being here. And something about my heart.”
Zedd pushed his cheek out with his tongue, apparently in an effort to keep still while he watched his grandson pacing back and forth and at the same time probably tried to imagine what could be happening to him.
“No,” Richard said abruptly as he halted. “No, not my heart. That’s not what it said. It’s a big monument. I remember now. It said, ‘Kahlan Amnell. Mother Confessor. She is not here, but in the hearts of those who love her.’
“It was a message for me not to give up hope because she wasn’t really dead—she wasn’t really there, in that grave.”
“Richard,” Zedd said in soft consolation, “it’s a common enough thing to say on a grave marker, that someone isn’t dead but rather lives on in the hearts of those who love her. Gravediggers probably have stacks of grave markers made up with that sentiment, carved with those very words.”
Chainfire Page 55
