Chainfire

by Terry Goodkind

  After holding her gaze for a moment, waiting to see if she would dare to challenge him, Richard, without another word, snatched up a shovel and with a forceful push of his foot, sank the blade into the slightly mounded grassy ground in front of the stone marker to the dead Mother Confessor.

  Zedd stood nearby, silent, unmoving, as he watched. He’d brought two lanterns with him. They sat on a stone bench nearby, giving off a weak but steady glow in the still dampness. The drizzle was giving rise to ground fog. Although the sky was completely covered over with iron gray clouds, by the failing light Nicci thought that it must be just after sunset. With it being the darkest night of the new moon, and with thick clouds to hide even the stars, it was going to be a blackest of nights.

  Even without the drizzle and approaching darkness, it was a miserable time to be digging up dead people.

  As Richard worked with a kind of controlled but focused anger, Cara finally picked up another shovel. “The sooner we get this over with, the better.”

  She plunged her shovel into the damp ground and started helping Richard dig. Zedd stood nearby, silent and grim as he watched. Nicci would have helped get it over with, but she doubted that more than two people would have room to dig without getting in the way of each other. She might have used magic to accomplish the deed of opening the ground, but she had a strong sense that Zedd would not have approved, that he wanted this to be Richard’s effort, his muscle, his sweat. His doing.

  As the light gradually dimmed, Richard and Cara worked themselves ever deeper into the ground. They had to resort to the pick to get through thick roots crisscrossing the gravesite. Such good-sized roots told Nicci that the grave had to be older than Richard believed. If he realized as much, he didn’t mention it as he worked. Nicci supposed that he could somehow be right that this was no real grave, which would explain why the roots had grown as thick as they were. If Richard was right, only a small hole would have had to have been dug among them, just big enough for a ceremonial vessel containing ashes to have been buried, but she didn’t for a moment believe it. Shovelful by shovelful, the pile of black dirt to the side of the hole grew ever larger.

  Although Zedd said nothing as he watched, Nicci could read in the deep lines of his face that, moment by moment, he was becoming ever more incensed at exhuming the Mother Confessor, even if it would settle the matter. He looked like he had a thousand things to say, all bottled up inside him. Nicci thought that he would wait until after Richard found the buried truth, but by the grim set of the wizard’s jaw, she didn’t think that when he finally had his say that it was going to be at all pleasant or understanding. This was behavior that crossed a line with him.

  When Richard’s and Cara’s heads, dripping sweat and rainwater, were even with the surface of the ground, Richard’s shovel abruptly thunked against something that sounded solid.

  He and Cara paused. Richard looked stunned and confused; according to his story, there ought not to be anything in the grave, except maybe a small container holding ashes, and it was hard to believe that such a container would be buried this deep.

  “It has to be a container for the ashes,” he finally said as he looked up at Zedd. “That has to be it. You wouldn’t have simply dumped ashes in the hole in ground. At the funeral they would have used a receptacle of some kind for the ashes you tricked them into thinking were Kahlan’s.”

  Zedd said nothing.

  Cara watched Richard for a moment and then plunged her shovel in the ground. It also made a resounding thunk. With the back of her wrist she swiped a strand of blond hair off her face as she looked up at Nicci.

  “Well it would appear you’ve found something.” Zedd’s ominous voice seemed to carry through the low fog that had gathered along the ground in the private graveyard. “I guess we ought to see what it is.”

  Richard stared up at his grandfather a moment, and then went back to digging. It wasn’t long before he and Cara had exposed a flat surface. It was too dark to see it clearly, but Nicci knew what it was.

  It was the truth about to be uncovered.

  It was the end of Richard’s delusion.

  “I don’t understand,” Richard murmured, confused by the size of what they were uncovering.

  “Dig the top clear,” Zedd ordered with barely restrained displeasure.

  Richard and Cara worked to carefully but quickly clean the wet dirt away from what was becoming all too clear was a coffin. When they had it fully exposed, Zedd ordered them out of the hole they’d dug.

  The old wizard held his hands over the open grave and turned his palms up. As Richard, Cara, and Nicci watched, the heavy coffin began to rise. Dirt fell away as the long object rose up out of the dark void. Stepping back away from the open breach in the sacred ground, Zedd gently used his gift to set the coffin on the grass beside the open grave.

  The exterior was elaborately carved with designs of enfolding fern fronds overlaid with silver. It was reverently, sorrowfully beautiful. Richard could only stare in terror at what the coffin might contain.

  “Open it,” Zedd commanded.

  Richard looked up at him for a moment.

  “Open it,” Zedd repeated.

  Richard finally knelt close to the silver-clad coffin and used the tip of his shovel to carefully pry the top loose. Cara retrieved the two lanterns, handing one to Zedd. She held the other lantern up over Richard’s shoulder to help him see.

  When the it finally came loose, Richard lifted the heavy lid enough to slide the top portion aside.

  The glow from Cara’s lamp fell across a decomposed corpse, now almost entirely skeletal. The careful workmanship of the coffin appeared to have so far kept the body dry on its long journey toward dust. The bones were mottled with stains from long burial and the inescapable process of deterioration. A fall of long hair, most still attached to the skull, draped over the shoulders. Little tissue was left, mostly connective tissue, especially that holding the bones of the fingers together. Even this long after death, those fingers still clutched a long-ago-crumbled bouquet of flowers.

  The body of the Mother Confessor was wearing an exquisite, simply styled, satiny white dress, cut square at the neckline, that now revealed bare ribs.

  The bouquet clutched in her hands had been enfolded in a wrapping of pearled lace with a broad golden ribbon attached to it. On the gold ribbon, in stitched letters of silver thread, it said, “Beloved Mother Confessor, Kahlan Amnell. She will always be in our hearts.”

  There could hardly be any doubt anymore as to the true fate of the Mother Confessor, or to the reality that what Richard had so strongly believed was his memories was nothing more than sweet delusions now turned to dust.

  Richard, his chest heaving, his breath catching, could only stare into the open coffin at the skeletal remains, at the white dress, at the golden ribbon around the black fragments of what had once been a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

  Nicci felt sick.

  “Are you satisfied now?” Zedd asked in a measured tone of smoldering anger.

  “I don’t understand,” Richard whispered, unable to take his eyes from the ghastly sight.

  “You don’t? I think it seems pretty clear,” Zedd told him.

  “But I know she isn’t buried here. I can’t explain this. I don’t understand the contradiction to what I know is true.”

  Zedd clasped his hand. “There is no contradiction to understand. Contradictions don’t exist.”

  “Yes, but I know—”

  “Wizard’s Ninth Rule: A contradiction cannot exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole. To believe in a contradiction is to abdicate your belief in the existence of the world around you and the nature of the things in it, to instead embrace any random impulse that strikes your fancy—to imagine something is real simply because you wish it were.

  “A thing is what it is, it is itself. There can be no contradictions.”

  “But Zedd, I have to believe—”

  “Ah, you believe. You mean that the realit
y of this coffin and the Mother Confessor’s long buried body has shown you something you did not expect and don’t want to accept and so you wish to instead take refuge in the blind fog of faith. Is that what you mean to say?”

  “Well, in this case…”

  “Faith is a device of self-delusion, a sleight of hand done with words and emotions founded on any irrational notion that can be dreamed up. Faith is the attempt to coerce truth to surrender to whim. In simple terms, it is trying to breathe life into a lie by trying to outshine reality with the beauty of wishes. Faith is the refuge of fools, the ignorant, and the deluded, not of thinking, rational men.

  “In reality, contradictions cannot exist. To believe in them you must abandon the most important thing you possess: your rational mind. The wager for such a bargain is your life. In such an exchange, you always lose what you have at stake.”

  Richard ran his fingers back into his wet hair. “But Zedd, something is wrong here. I don’t know what, but I know it is. You have to help me.”

  “I just did. I’ve allowed you to show us the proof that you yourself named. Here it is, in this coffin. I admit that it isn’t as desirable as what you wish were true, but the reality of it can’t be evaded. This is what you seek. This is Kahlan Amnell, the Mother Confessor, just as it says on the gravestone.”

  Zedd arched an eyebrow as he leaned a little toward his grandson. “Unless you can show that this is some kind of trickery, that someone for some reason buried this here as part of an elaborate hoax just to make it look like you’re wrong and everyone else is right. That would seem a pretty thin contention, if you ask me. I am afraid that from the clear evidence right here this is the reality—the proof you sought—and there is no contradiction.”

  Richard stared down at the long dead body before him.

  “Something is wrong. This can’t be true. It just can’t be.”

  The muscles in Zedd’s jaw flexed. “Richard, I’ve allowed you this gruesome indulgence when by all rights I shouldn’t have, now tell me why you don’t have the sword. Where is the Sword of Truth?”

  Rain patted softly on the canopy of leaves above as Richard’s grandfather waited. Richard stared into the coffin.

  “I gave the sword to Shota in exchange for information I needed.”

  Zedd’s eyes went wide. “You did what!”

  “I had to,” Richard said without looking up at his grandfather.

  “You had to? You had to!”

  “Yes,” Richard answered in a meek voice.

  “In exchange for what information?”

  Richard put his elbows on the edge of the coffin as his face sank into his hands. “In exchange for what might help me find the truth of what’s going on. I need answers. I need to know how to find Kahlan.”

  In fury Zedd thrust his finger toward the coffin. “There is Kahlan Amnell! Right where the gravestone has always said she is buried. And what oh-so-valuable bit of information did Shota give you after she tricked you out of the sword?”

  Richard made no effort to contend the characterization of being tricked out of the sword.

  “Chainfire,” he said. “She told me the word Chainfire, but she didn’t know what it meant. She told me that I must find the place of the bones in the Deep Nothing.”

  “The Deep Nothing,” Zedd mocked. He gazed up at the black sky as he took a breath. “I don’t suppose Shota was able to tell you what this Deep Nothing is.”

  Richard shook his head but didn’t look up. “She also said to beware the viper with four heads.”

  Zedd let out another angry breath. “Don’t tell me, neither she nor you have any idea what that means, either.”

  Again, Richard shook his head without looking up at his grandfather.

  “Is that it? That’s the great prize of valuable information you got in exchange for the Sword of Truth?”

  Richard hesitated. “There was one other thing.” He spoke so softly that he could hardly be heard over the gentle whisper of rain. “Shota said that what I seek…is long buried.”

  Zedd’s smoldering rage threatened to explode. “There,” he said, thrusting out a finger to point, “there is what you seek: Kahlan Amnell, the Mother Confessor, long buried.”

  Richard, head down, said nothing.

  “For this you traded the Sword of Truth. A weapon of incalculable value. A weapon that can bring down not only the wicked but the good as well. A weapon handed down from the wizards of the ancient times, meant to be entrusted to only a select few. A weapon I entrusted to you.

  “And you gave it to a witch woman.

  “Do you have any idea at all what I had to go through to recover the Sword of Truth from Shota the last time she got her hands on it?”

  Richard shook his head as he stared at the ground beside the coffin, looking like he dared not test his voice.

  Nicci knew that Richard had a number of things to say in his own defense, had a number of things having to do with his reasoning behind his beliefs and actions, but he said none of them even when offered the chance. As his grandfather raged at him, he knelt in silence, hanging his head, beside the open coffin holding the end of his fantasy.

  “I trusted you with something of great value. I thought such a dangerous object was safe in your hands. Richard, you’ve let me down—you have let everyone down—so that you could chase a dream. Well, here it is, bones long buried. I hope you think the trade fair, but I certainly don’t.”

  Cara stood nearby, holding the lantern, her hair plastered to her head by the slow but steady rain. She looked like she wanted to defend Richard, but couldn’t think of anything to say. Nicci, likewise, feared to say anything. She knew that at that moment anything they said would only make matters worse. Only the soft hiss of the rain against the leaves filled the otherwise silent, foggy night.

  “Zedd,” Richard said haltingly, “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry won’t get it back from Shota’s clutches. Sorry won’t save those people who Samuel will have beneath that sword. I love you like a son, Richard, and I always will, but I’ve never before been this disappointed in you. I would never have believed that you would do anything this unthinking and reckless.”

  Richard nodded, unwilling to justify his actions.

  Nicci’s heart was breaking for him.

  “I will leave you to bury the Mother Confessor while I go try to think of a way to get the sword away from a witch woman who was a lot smarter than my grandson. You should realize that you may very well be responsible for what comes of this.”

  Richard nodded.

  “Good. I’m glad you can at least understand that much of it.” He turned to Cara and Nicci, the look in his eyes every bit as intimidating as the look of a Rahl. “I want you two to come back to the Keep with me. I want to know all about this beast business. Everything about it.”

  “I must stay and watch over Lord Rahl,” Cara said.

  “No,” Zedd told her, “you will come with me and tell me in detail everything that happened with the witch woman. I want to know every word out of Shota’s mouth.”

  Cara looked torn. “Zedd, I can’t—”

  “Go with him, Cara,” Richard told her in quiet command. “Do as he asks. Please.”

  Nicci recognized how helpless Richard felt at defending his actions in the presence of his grandfather, regardless of how certain he might have been that he did what he thought was necessary. She understood because she had always been just as helpless in the presence of her mother when her mother told her, as she often did, that she had acted wrongly. Nicci had never been able to defend herself against what her mother thought she should have done. Her mother was always able to effortlessly make Nicci’s choices seem petty and selfish. No matter how old she was, she was still a child before those who raised her. Even when she had been at the Palace of the Prophets for years, her mother could still make her feel ten years old and foolish.

  Because Richard loved and respected his grandfather, that actually made it all that much more d
ifficult for him than it had been for Nicci. Despite everything Richard had accomplished, his strength, his knowledge, his ability, his mastery, he could not argue or reason his way out of the reality of having disappointed his grandfather, and, because he loved and respected him, it hurt all the more.

  “Go on,” Nicci told Cara as she gently put her hand on the small of the woman’s back. “Do as he says for now. I think Richard could use some time alone to think this through and get his bearings.”

  Cara, her gaze going back and forth between Nicci and Richard, looked like she thought this was something Nicci might be better able to handle and so nodded her agreement.

  “You, too,” Zedd told Nicci. “The Mother Confessor needs to be laid to rest; let Richard see to it. I need to know your part in this, every bit of it, so that I can try to figure out how to reverse all the trouble born not just of this, but of what Jagang has done.”

  “All right,” Nicci said. “Get the horses and I’ll be right there.”

  Zedd cast a brief last look at Richard still huddled on his knees beside the coffin before agreeing with a nod to Nicci.

  After he’d vanished with Cara through the junipers and into the fog, Nicci crouched down beside Richard and laid a hand on his back between his slumped shoulders.

  “It will be all right, Richard.”

  “I wonder if anything will ever be all right again.”

  “It may not seem that way right now, but it will. Zedd will get over his anger of the moment and come to understand that you were doing your best to act responsibly. I know that he loves you and that he didn’t intend what he said to hurt you so.”

  Richard nodded without looking up as he knelt in the mud beside the open coffin holding the corpse of the long dead Kahlan Amnell, the woman he had imagined had been his love.

  “Nicci,” he finally asked so softly she could hardly hear him over the soft sound of the gentle rain, “will you do something for me?”

  “Anything, Richard.”

  “One last time…be Death’s Mistress for me.”

  She rubbed his back and then stood, tears mixing with the rain on her face. By sheer force of will, past the sob struggling to escape, she made her voice steady.