[Sword of Truth 9] - Chainfire Read online

  My dearest Ann, began the message from Verna written in the book, I hope this finds you and the prophet well. I know you said that Nathan was proving to be a valuable contribution to our cause, but I still worry about you being with that man. I hope his cooperation hasn't soured since last I heard from you. I admit to having difficulty imagining him being cooperative without a collar around his neck. I hope you are being cautious. I've never known the prophet to be entirely sincere—especially when he smiles!

  Ann had to smile herself. She understood all too well, but Verna didn't know Nathan the way Ann did. He could sometimes get them into trouble faster than ten boys bringing frogs to dinner, and yet, after all was said and done, after so many centuries knowing the prophet, there really wasn't anyone with whom she had more in common.

  Ann sighed and turned her attention back to the message in the journey book.

  We have been kept quite busy warding off Jagang's siege of the passes into D'Hara, Verna wrote, but at least we have been successful. Perhaps too successful. If you are there, Prelate, please answer.

  Ann frowned. How could one be too successful in keeping marauding hordes from overrunning your defenses, slaughtering your defenders, and enslaving a free people? She impatiently pulled the candle closer still. In truth she was quite jumpy over what Jagang was up to, now that winter had ended and the spring mud was past.

  The dream walker was a patient foe. His men were from far to the south, in the Old World, and weren't used to the winters up north in the New World. While many had fallen victim to the harsh conditions, vast numbers died of the diseases that swept through his winter encampment. Despite losing men in battles, to sickness, and by a variety of other causes, more of the invaders poured north all the time so that, despite everything, Jagang's army inexorably continued to grow. Even so, the man did not waste any of his vast numbers in pointless and futile winter campaigns. He didn't care about the lives of his soldiers, but he did care about conquering the New World, so he only moved when the weather was not a factor. Jagang did not take risks he didnt need to. He simply steadily, resolutely ground his enemies to dust. Bringing the world to heel was all that mattered to him, not how long it took. He viewed the world of life through the prism of the beliefs of the Fellowship of Order. Individual life, including his, was of no importance; only the contribution that a person's life could make to the Order was meaningful.

  With such a vast army in the New World, the forces of the D'Haran Empire were now at the mercy of what the dream walker did next. To be sure, the D'Haran forces were formidable, but they certainly weren't enough to withstand, much less turn back, the full weight of the seemingly endless numbers of Imperial Order troops. At least, not until Richard did whatever he could to effect some change in the tide of war.

  Prophecy said that Richard was the "pebble in the pond," meaning that he caused ripples that spread through everything, affected everything. Prophecy also said, in many different ways and in many different texts, that only if Richard led them in the final battle did they have a chance to triumph.

  If he didn't guide them in that final battle, prophecy was clear and unambiguous; it said that all would be lost.

  Ann pressed her fist against the queazy pain in the pit of her stomach and then pulled the stylus from the spine of the book that was the twin to the one Verna had.

  I am here, Verna, she wrote, but you are the Prelate now. The prophet and I are long dead and buried.

  It was a deception that had enabled the two of them to save a great many lives. There were times when Ann missed being Prelate and missed her flock of Sisters. She had dearly loved many of them, at least the ones who hadn't ended up being in truth Sisters of the Dark. The burning pain of that betrayal, not just of her but of the Creator, never eased.

  Still, being free of such towering responsibility left her better able to put her mind to other, more important work. While she hated having lost her old way of life, of being Prelate and running the Palace of the Prophets, her calling was to a higher purpose, not to stone walls and the administration of an entire palace of Sisters, novices, and young wizards in training. Her true calling was helping to preserve the world of life. In order for her to do that, it was better that the Sisters of the Light and everyone else believed her and Nathan dead.

  Ann sat up straighter when Verna's writing began appearing across the page.

  Ann, I am comforted to have you back with me, if only in the journey book. There are so few of us left. I confess that sometimes I long for the days of peace back at the palace, the times when everything seemed to he so much easier and to make so much more sense and I only thought it was all so difficult. The world certainly has changed since Richard was born.

  Ann couldn't argue with that. She popped a piece of cheese in her mouth and then leaned in and began writing.

  I pray every day that such order and peace can again settle over the world and we can go back to complaining about the weather.

  Verna, I am confused. What did you mean when you said that perhaps you were too successful in defending the passes? Please explain. I await your reply.

  Ann leaned back in her straight-backed chair and chewed a slice of pear as she waited. Since her journey book was twinned with the one Verna had, anything written in one appeared at the same time in the other. It was one of the few ancient items of magic left from the Palace of the Prophets.

  Verna's words again began moving across the blank page. Our scouts and trackers report that Jagang has begun his move. Because he has not been able to break through the passes, the emperor has split his forces and is taking an army south. General Meiffert had been fearing that he would do something like this.

  It's not hard to guess his strategy. Jagang undoubtedly plans to take a large force of his troops down through the Kern Valley and then south around the mountains. Once he finally is clear of all the barriers he will swing around into the southern reaches of D'Hara and then head north.

  This is the worst possible news for us. We can't abandon the protection of the passes, not while part of his army lies in wait on the other side. And yet, we cannot allow Jagang's forces to sweep up on us from the south. General Meiffert says we will have to leave sufficient forces here to guard the passes while the bulk of our army heads south to meet the invaders.

  We have no choice. With half of Jagang's force to the north, on the other side of the passes, and half heading down to go around the mountains and come up from the south, that leaves the People's Palace right in the middle. Jagang is no doubt licking his chops over such a prospect.

  Ann, I'm afraid I don't have much time. The entire camp is in an uproar,

  We only just learned the news that Jagang has split his army and we are rushing to strike camp and start south.

  I must also divide up the Sisters. So many have been lost that there are not many left to divide. At times I feel as if we are in a contest with Jagang to see who will be the last one with a Sister left. I fear what will happen to all these good people if none of us survive. If not for that, I would be satisfied to leave this world behind and join Warren in the spirit world.

  General Meiffert says that we can't spare a moment and must be on our way at first light. I will be up the entire night with the arrangements, seeing to it that we have sufficient men and Sisters here to defend each of the Passes, and inspecting the shields to make sure they are sound. If the Order's northern army were to break through up here, it would be a much quicker death for us.

  Unless you have something important that must be discussed right now, I'm afraid that I must go.

  Ann covered her mouth with a hand as she read. The news certainly was disheartening. She wrote an immediate reply, so as not to inconvenience Verna.

  No, my dear, nothing important just now. You know that you are in my heart always.

  A message came back almost immediately.

  The passes are narrow so we have been successful at defending them. The Imperial Order can't use their overwhelming po
wer in such narrow places. I feel confident the passes will hold. Since Jagang is stymied by not having been able to cross the mountains, this buys us time while he is [??h >ived??] to take an army all the way south and then back up into D'Hara, now that he has the weather to his advantage. Since this is the greatest danger and threat, I will be heading south with the army.

  Pray for us. We will eventually be forced to meet Jagang's horde in the open plains where he has the room to throw the full weight of his forces against us. I am afraid that, unless something changes, we will have no chance to survive such a battle.

  I can only hope that Richard fulfills prophecy before we are all dead.

  Ann swallowed before answering. Verna, you have my word that I will do what I must to see to it. Know that Nathan and I will be dedicated to the risk of seeing prophecy fulfilled. Perhaps no one but you would truly understand that this is what I have devoted myself to for over half a millennium. I will not abandon my cause; I will do whatever I can to see that Richard does what only he can. May the Creator be with you and all our brave defenders. You will all be in my prayers every day. Have faith in the Creator, Verna. You are prelate, now. Give that faith to all of those with you.

  In a moment, a message began appearing. Thank you, Ann. I will check my journey book every night as we travel to see if you have any news of Richard. I miss you. I hope we can be together again in this life.

  Ann carefully wrote her last reply.

  Me too, child. Fair journey.

  Ann leaned on her elbows and rubbed her temples. This was not good news, but it was not all bad. Jagang had wanted to break through the passes and end it swiftly, but the passes held and he had finally been forced to split his army and begin a long, grueling march. She tried to look at the bright side. They still had time. There were any number of things they could still try. They would think of something. Richard would think of something. Prophecy had promised that he held within him the chance for their salvation.

  She couldn't allow herself to believe that evil would darken the world.

  A knock on the door made her jump. She pressed her hand over her racing heart. Her Han hadn't warned her that someone was about.

  "Yes?"

  "Ann, it's me, Jennsen," came the muffled voice from the other side of the door.

  Ann replaced the stylus and tucked the journey book in her belt as she slid her chair back. She smoothed her skirts and took a deep breath to try to slow her heart back to normal.

  "Come in, dear," she said as she opened the door, smiling at Richard's sister. "Thank you for the plate of food." She held an arm back toward the table. "Would you like to share it with me?"

  Jennsen shook her head. "No, thank you." Her face, framed by red ringlets, was a picture of concern. "Ann, Nathan sent me. He wants you. He was quite urgent about it. You know how Nathan gets. You know how his eyes get all big and round when he's excited about something."

  "Yes," Ann drawled, "he does tend to get that way when he's digging up mischief."

  Jennsen blinked, looking a little startled. "I fear you may be right, he told me in no uncertain terms to come get you and bring you there straightaway."

  "Nathan always expects people to squeak when he pinches." Ann gestured for the young woman to lead the way. "I guess I'd best see to it. Where is the prophet, then?"

  Jennsen held her lantern up to light her way as she started out of the little room. "He's at a graveyard."

  Ann caught the sleeve of Jennsen's dress. "A graveyard? And he wants me to come to this graveyard?" Jennsen looked back over her shoulder and nodded. "What is he doing in a graveyard?"

  Jennsen swallowed. "When I asked him that, he said he was digging up the dead."

  CHAPTER 10

  In a broad weeping willow growing on the grassy slope leading down to the graveyard, a mockingbird was spending its night repeating a variety of strident calls meant to defend its territory against interlopers. Ordinarily, a mockingbird's calls, although intended as threats to others of its kind, to Ann's ear could be quite lovely, but in the dead-still quiet of night, such piercing whistles, chatters, and whoops were jarring to her nerves. She could hear another mockingbird in the distance making similar threats. Even the birds couldn't achieve peace.

  Plowing through the long, wild grasses, Jennsen pointed as she held the lantern up with her other hand so that Ann could see her way. "Tom said that we would find him down there."

  Sweating from the long hike, Ann peered down into the darkness. She couldn't imagine what the prophet was up to. In all the time that she had known the man he had never done such a strange thing. He had done any number of strange things, to be sure, but this just wasn't one of them. As old as he was, one would think that he would want to avoid spending time in a graveyard any sooner than he had to.

  Ann followed Richard's younger sister as she started down the hill, trying to keep up without running. It seemed like they had already walked half the night and she was winded. Ann hadn't known of this graveyard, all but forgotten out in a distant, uninhabited expanse of wilderness. She wished that she had thought to bring along some of the food sitting on the plate back in her room.

  "Are you sure Tom is still down here?"

  Jennsen looked back over her shoulder. "He should be. Nathan wanted him to stand guard."

  "For what? To fight off the other body snatchers?"

  "I don't know, maybe," Jennsen said without so much as a hint of a giggle.

  Ann wasn't very good at making people laugh. She was good at making their knees tremble, but she just wasn't all that good at jokes. She guessed that a graveyard on a dark night wasn't a good place for jokes. It certainly was a good place to make the knees tremble.

  "Maybe Nathan just wanted company," Ann suggested.

  "I don't think that was it." Jennsen found a fallen section in the split-rail fence that surrounded the place of the dead and stepped over it. "Nathan asked me to bring you out here and he wanted Tom to stay and stand guard over the graveyard, I think to make sure there was no one around that he didn't know about."

  Nathan liked being in charge; Ann guessed that being a gifted Rahl he could do no less. It was always possible that the whole thing was a pretense just to get Jennsen, Tom, and Ann to run around doing his bidding. The prophet was given to a sense of drama and a graveyard did tend to set a mood.

  Actually, right then, Ann would have been happy were it nothing more than some idiosyncratic diversion of Nathan's. Unfortunately, she had the queazy feeling that it was something not at all so simple, or so innocuous as a bit of theatrics.

  In all the centuries she had known him, Nathan had at times been secretive, deceptive, and occasionally dangerous, but never to evil ends—although that hadn't always been apparent at the time. During most of his captivity at the Palace of the Prophets he had tried the Sisters' patience until they were ready to scream and tear out their hair, yet he wasn't maliciously willful or contemptuous of good people. He had an abiding hatred of tyranny and an almost childlike glee about life. No matter how exasperating the man could be at times, and he could be exasperating in the extreme, Nathan had a good heart.

  Almost since the beginning, despite the circumstances, he had been Ann's confidant and ally against the Keeper getting a foothold in the world of life and against evil people having their way over the innocent. He had worked hard to help stop Jagang. He had, after all, been the one to first show her a prophecy about Richard, five hundred years before he would be born.

  Ann found herself wishing that it wasn't dark, and that they weren't in a graveyard. And that Jennsen didn't have such long legs.

  It suddenly occurred to Ann why Nathan would need Tom to stand guard and "make sure no one was around that they didn't know about," as Jennsen had put it. Just like Jennsen, the people in Bandakar were pristinely ungifted. They were devoid of that infinitesimal spark of the Creator's gift carried by everyone else in the world. That essential connection made everyone else subject to the reality and nature of
magic. But for these people magic did not exist.

  The absence of such an inherent, elemental nucleus of the gift not only made the pristinely ungifted immune to magic, but since they could not interact with what to them did not exist, it also made them invisible to the power of the gift.

  If even one parent possessed the pristinely ungifted trait, then it was always passed on to the offspring. These people had originally been banished to preserve the gift in mankind's nature. It had been a terrible solution, to be sure, but as a result the gift had survived in the human race. Had such a solution not been undertaken, magic would long ago have ceased to exist.

  Because prophecy was magic, it too was blind to these people. No book of prophecy had ever had anything at all to say about the pristinely ungifted, or about the future of mankind and magic now that Richard had discovered these people and ended the banishment. What would happen now was completely unknown.

  Ann supposed that Richard would have it no other way. He did not exactly enthusiastically embrace prophecy. Despite what prophecy had to say about him, Richard by and large discounted it. He believed in free will. He took a dim view of the notion that there were things about himself that were predestined.

  In all things in life, and in magic especially, there had to be balance. In a way, Richard's acts of free will were the balance to prophecy. He was the center of a vortex of forces. With Richard, prophecy was attempting to predict the unpredictable. And yet, it had to.

  Most troubling was that Richard's free will made him a wild card in prophecy, even those prophecies in which he was the subject. He was chaos among patterns, disorder among organization, and as capricious as lightning. And yet, he was guided by truth and driven by reason, not whim or chance, nor was he arbitrary. That he could be chaos among prophecy and at the same time be completely rational was an enigma to her.