Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2 tsot-10 Page 13

  “I don’t know,” Shota said. “And that’s the problem. As I’ve said, the events surrounding all of this are blocked to me, but blocked in a way that I didn’t recognize, so I was unaware that anything was being hidden. It’s obvious that there is a hand directing Samuel. That hand could only be another witch woman’s.”

  “Do you know her?” Richard asked. “Do you know who it is, or who she might be?”

  Shota regarded him with as forbidding a look as he had ever seen grace such feminine features. “She is a complete mystery to me.”

  “Where did she come from? Do you have any idea about that much of it?”

  Shota’s scowl only darkened. “Oh, I think I do. I believe she came up from the Old World. When you destroyed the great barrier several years back she no doubt saw an opportunity and moved into my territory—in much the same way that the Imperial Order saw an opportunity to invade and conquer the New World. By bewitching Samuel she is sending a message that she is taking my place, taking what is mine—including my territory—as her own.”

  Richard turned toward Ann, off at the side of the anteroom. “Do you know of a witch woman in the Old World?”

  “I ran the Palace of the Prophets, guiding young wizards and a whole palace full of Sisters toward the way of the Light. I paid great heed to prophecy in that task but, other than prophecy, I didn’t really involve myself in the goings-on in the rest the Old World. From time to time I heard vague rumors of witch women, but nothing more than rumors. If she was real, she never stuck her head up for me to know of her.”

  “I never knew anything of a witch woman, either,” Nathan added with a sigh. “I never even heard the rumors of such a woman.”

  Shota folded her arms. “We’re a rather secretive lot.”

  Richard wished he knew more about such things—although knowing one witch woman had proven on more than one occasion to be trouble enough. It seemed that there might now be twice the trouble.

  “Her name is Six,” Nicci said into the quiet anteroom.

  Everyone turned to stare at her.

  Shota’s brow drew down. “What did you say?”

  “The witch woman down in the Old World. Her name is Six, like the number.” Nicci’s expression had that cool absence of emotion again, her features as still as a woodland pond at dawn after the first hard freeze of the season. “I never met her, but the Sisters of the Dark spoke of her in hushed tones.”

  “It would be those Sisters,” Ann grumbled.

  Shota’s arms slowly dropped to her sides as she took a step away from the fountain, toward where Nicci stood on the expanse of marble floor at the top of the steps. “What do you know of her?”

  “Nothing much. I’ve only heard her name, Six. I only remember it because it was unusual. Some of my superiors at the time—my Sisters of the Dark superiors—apparently did know her. I heard her name mentioned several times.”

  Shota’s countenance had turned as dark and dangerous as that of a viper with its fangs bared. “What were Sisters of the Dark doing with a witch woman?”

  “I don’t really know,” Nicci said. “They may have had dealings with her, but if they did I never knew about it. I wasn’t always included in their schemes. It may be that they only knew of her. It’s possible they never even met her.”

  “Or it’s possible that they knew her well.”

  Nicci shrugged. “Maybe. You’d have to ask them. I suggest you hurry—Samuel has already killed one of them.”

  Shota ignored the taunt and turned away to stare into the still waters of the fountain. “You must have heard them say something about her.”

  “Nothing very specific,” Nicci said.

  “Well,” Shota said with exaggerated patience as she turned back around, “what was the general nature of what they were saying about her?”

  “I only got a sense of two things. I heard that the witch, Six, lived far to the south. The Sisters mentioned that she lived much deeper down in the Old World, in some of the trackless forests and swampland.” Nicci gazed resolutely into Shota’s eyes. “And they were afraid of her.”

  Shota folded her arms across her breasts again. “Afraid of her,” she repeated in a flat tone.

  “Terrified.”

  Shota appraised Nicci’s eyes for a time before finally yet again turning to stare into the fountain, as if hoping to see some secret revealed in the placid waters.

  “There’s nothing to say that it’s the same woman,” Richard said. “There’s no evidence to say that it’s this witch woman, Six, from the Old World.”

  Shota glanced back over her shoulder. “You, of all people, suggest that it’s mere coincidence?” Her gaze again sought solace in the waters. “It doesn’t really matter if it is or not. It matters only that it is a witch woman and she is bent on causing me trouble.”

  Richard stepped closer to Shota. “I find it pretty hard to believe that this other witch woman would have bewitched Samuel away from you just to show you up and have what’s yours. There has to be more to it.”

  “Maybe it’s a challenge,” Cara said. “Maybe she is daring you to come out and fight.”

  “That would require her to make herself known,” Shota said. “She has done just the opposite. She is deliberate and calculating about remaining concealed so that I can’t fight her.”

  As he considered, Richard rested a boot on the marble bench surrounding the fountain. “I still say there has to be something more to this. Having Samuel steal one of the boxes of Orden has darker implications.”

  “The more likely answer points to none other than your own hand, Shota.” Zedd’s words drew everyone’s attention. “This sounds more like one of your grand deceptions.”

  “I can understand why you would think so, but if that were true then why would I come here to tell you of it?”

  Zedd’s glare didn’t falter. “To make yourself look innocent when you are really the one in the shadows directing events.”

  Shota rolled her eyes. “I don’t have time for such childish games, wizard. I have not been directing Samuel’s hand. My time has been spent on other, more important matters.”

  “Such as?”

  “I have been to Galea.”

  “Galea!” Zedd snorted his disbelief. “What business would you have in Galea?”

  Jebra laid a hand on Zedd’s shoulder. “She came to rescue me. I was in Ebinissia, caught up in the invasion and then enslaved. Shota pulled me out of the middle of it.”

  Zedd turned a suspicious look on Shota. “You went to the crown city of Galea to rescue Jebra?”

  Shota glanced briefly at Richard, a clouded look laden with meaning. “It was necessary.”

  “Why?” Zedd pressed. “I’m relieved to have Jebra at last rescued from that horror, of course, but what exactly do you mean when you say that it was necessary?”

  Shota caught a diaphanous point of the material making up her dress as it lifted ever so gently upward, like a cat arching its back, craving a gentle stroke from its mistress’s hand. “Events march onward toward a grim conclusion. If the course of those events does not change then we will be doomed to the rule of the invaders, bound to the mandate of people whose conviction, among other things, is that magic is an evil corruption that must be eradicated from the world. They believe that mankind is a sinful and corrupt being who should properly be unremarkable and helpless in the face of the almighty spectacle of nature. Those of us who possess magic, precisely because we are not unremarkable and helpless, will all be hunted down and destroyed.”

  Shota’s gaze passed among those watching her. “But that is merely our personal tragedy, not the true scourge of the Order.

  “If the course of events does not change, then the monstrous beliefs that the Order imposes will settle like a burial shroud over the entire world. There will be no safe place, no refuge. An iron mandate of conformity will be locked around the necks of all those left alive. For the delusion of the common welfare, in the form of lofty slogans and vacuou
s notions that incite the feckless rabble into nothing more than a mindless lust for the unearned, everything good and noble will be sacrificed, deadening civilized man into little more than an organized mob of looters.

  “But once everything of value is plundered, what will be left of their lives? By their contempt for the magnificent and disdain of all that is good, they embrace the petty and the crude. By their rabid hatred for any man who excels, the beliefs of the Order will doom all men to grubbing in the muck to survive.

  “The unwavering view of mankind’s inherent wickedness will be the collective faith. That belief, enforced through ruthless brutality and unspeakable hardship, will be their enduring high-water mark. Their legacy will be mankind’s descent into a dark age of suffering and misery from which it may never again emerge. That is the terror of the Order—not death, but life under their beliefs.” Shota’s words cast a pall over the room. “The dead, after all, can’t feel, can’t suffer. Only the living can.”

  Shota turned to the shadows, where Nathan stood. “And what say you, prophet? Does prophecy say it otherwise, or do I speak the truth?”

  Nathan, tall and grim, answered quietly. “As far as the Imperial Order goes, I’m afraid that prophecy can offer no testimony to the contrary. You have aptly and succinctly described several thousand years of forewarning.”

  “Such ancient works are not easily understood,” Ann cut in. “The written word can be quite ambiguous. Prophecy is not a subject for the inexperienced. To the untrained it can seem—”

  “I sincerely hope that is a judgment based on a shallow opinion of my looks, Prelate, and not my talent.”

  “I was only . . .” Ann began.

  Shota dismissively flicked a hand as she turned away. Her gaze settled on Richard, as if he were the only one in the room. She spoke as if addressing him alone.

  “Our lives may be the last lives lived free. This may very well be the end for all time of the best of what can be, of striving for values, of the potential for each of us to rise up and achieve something better. If the course of events does not change, then we are now witnessing the dawn of the worst of what can be, of an age where, lest anyone dare live better through their own effort and for their own ends, mankind will be reduced to living the Order’s idealized lives of ignorant savages.”

  “We all know that,” Richard said, hands fisted at his sides. “Don’t you understand how hard we’ve been fighting to prevent that very thing? Don’t you have any idea of the struggle we’ve all endured? Just what do you think I’ve been fighting for?”

  “I don’t know, Richard. You claim to be committed, and yet you have failed to change the course of events, failed to stem the tide of the Imperial Order. You say that you understand, yet still the invaders come, subjugating more and more people with every passing day.

  “But even that is not what this is about. It is about the future. And in the future, you are failing us.”

  Richard could hardly believe what he was hearing. He wasn’t just angry but appalled that Shota would say such a thing. It was as if everything he had done, every sacrifice he had made, every effort, was meaningless to her—not only now, but in the future.

  “You have come to tell me your prophecy that I will fail?”

  “No. I have come to tell you that the way it now stands, unless you change things, we will all fail in this fight.”

  Shota turned from Richard and lifted an arm up toward Nicci. “You have shown him the dull, numb death that is all that can result from the beliefs held by the Order. You have shown him the bleak existence that is all there is under their dogma, that life’s only value is in how much of it you sacrifice, that your life’s only purpose is a means to an otherworldly end: a lifeless eternity in the next world.

  “In that, you have done us all a great service and you have our gratitude. You have truly fulfilled your role as Richard’s teacher, even if it was not in the way you had expected. But that, too, is only a part of it.”

  Richard didn’t see how his captivity—being made to live a harsh life down in the Old World—could be regarded as a service. He hadn’t needed to live through it to understand the hopeless futility of life under the rule of the Imperial Order. He didn’t dispute one word Shota had said about what would befall them if they didn’t prevail, but he was angered that she seemed to think that he needed to hear it again, as if he did not grasp what they were fighting for and as a result was failing to be fully committed to their cause.

  Richard didn’t know how it happened, because he had not seen her move, but Shota was suddenly right before him, her face mere inches from his.

  “And yet, you are still not cognizant of the totality of it, still not resolved in a way that is essential.”

  Richard glared at her. “Not resolved? What are you talking about?”

  “I needed to find a way to make you understand, Seeker, to make you see the reality of it. I needed to find a way to make you see what is in store for the people of not just the New World, but the Old World as well—what is in store for all of mankind.”

  “How could you possibly think that I—”

  “You are the one, Richard Rahl. You are the one who leads the last of the forces that resist the ideas that fuel the conflagration that is the Imperial Order. For whatever reasons, you are the one who leads us in this struggle. You may believe in what you fight for, but you are not doing what is necessary to change the course of the war or else what I see in the flow of events forward in time would not be as it is.

  “As it now stands, we are doomed.

  “You need to hear what is going to be the fate of your people, the fate of all people. So I went to Galea to find Jebra so that she could tell you what she has seen. So that a Seer can help you to see.”

  Richard thought that maybe he should have been angry at the lecture, but he could no longer summon anger; it was slipping away. “I already know what will happen if we fail, Shota. I already know what the Imperial Order is like. I already know what awaits us if we lose in this struggle.”

  Shota shook her head. “You know what it is like after. You know what it is like to see the dead. But the dead can no longer feel. The dead can’t scream. The dead can’t cry in terror. The dead can’t beg for mercy.

  “You know what it is like to see the wreckage the morning after the storm. You need to hear from one who was there when the storm broke. You need to hear what it was like when the legions came. You need to hear the reality of what it will be like for everyone. You need to know what will happen to those alive if you fail to do what only you can do.”

  Richard glanced up at Jebra. Zedd’s comforting arm encircled her shoulders. Tears ran down her ashen face. She trembled from head to toe.

  “Dear spirits,” Richard whispered, “how can you be so cruel as to think for an instant that I don’t already know the truth of our fate should we lose?”

  “I see the flow of the future in this,” Shota said in a quiet voice meant for him alone. “And what I see is that you have not done enough to change what will be, or else it would not be as I see it. It is as simple as that. There is no cruelty involved, simply truth.”

  “Just what is it you expect me to do, Shota?”

  “I don’t know, Richard. But whatever it is, you are not doing it, now, are you? As we all slide into unimaginable horror, you are doing nothing to stop it. You are instead chasing phantoms.”

  Chapter 12

  Richard wanted to tell Shota a thousand things. He wanted to tell her that the Imperial Order was hardly the only threat bearing down on them. He wanted to tell her that with the boxes of Orden in play, if not stopped, the Sisters of the Dark would unleash power that would destroy the world of life and give everyone over to the Keeper of the Dead. He wanted to tell her that if they didn’t find a way to reverse the Chainfire spell it could very well reap the destruction of everyone’s memories and minds, robbing them of their means of survival. He wanted to tell her that if they didn’t find a way to purge the
world of the contamination left by the chimes, then all magic would be extinguished, and that contamination could very well have already engendered a cascade effect that, if not halted, had the potential, all by itself, to destroy all life.

  He wanted to tell her that she didn’t know the first thing about the woman he loved, the woman so dear to him. He wanted to tell her how much Kahlan meant to him, how afraid he was for her, how much he missed her, how his dread of what was being done to her kept him from being able to sleep.

  He wanted to tell her that right then the Imperial Order was only one of their dire problems. But, seeing Jebra standing there trembling under the comforting shelter of Zedd’s arm, he thought that there would be a better time to bring up all of those other matters.

  Richard held out a hand, beckoning Jebra to come forward. Her sky blue eyes brimmed with tears. She finally, hesitantly, descended the steps toward him. He didn’t know the specifics of the frightening things she had been through, but the strain of them was written all too clearly on her gaunt face. The lines there bore silent testimony to the hardships she had endured.

  When she took his hand he gently covered it with his other in a small gesture of reassurance. “You’ve traveled a great distance and we value your help in our efforts. Please tell us what you know.”

  Her short sandy hair fell forward around her tear-stained face as she nodded. “I will do my best, Lord Rahl.”

  Under Shota’s watchful eye, Richard led Jebra across the floor toward the fountain. He had her sit on the short marble wall containing the stilled water.

  “You went with Queen Cyrilla back to her home,” he prompted. “You were taking care of her because she was sick—driven insane by her time in the pit with all those terrible men. You were to help her to recover if she could and advise her if she did.”

  Jebra nodded.

  “So . . . when she returned to her home did she begin to get better?” Richard asked, even though he knew that much of it from Kahlan.

  “Yes. She was in a stupor for so long that we thought she would never get better, but after she was home for a while she finally did start to come round. At first she was only aware of those around her for brief periods. The more she recognized familiar surroundings, though, the longer those periods of clarity grew. Slowly, to everyone’s joy, she seemed to come back to life. She eventually emerged from her long lethargy—like an animal coming out of hibernation. She seemed to shake off her long sleep and return to normal. She was full of energy, full of excitement to be home again.”