Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2 tsot-10 Page 9

  These were all individuals who when confronted with the choice had willfully cast away the inherent nobility of life, and chose instead to be servants of death.

  Kahlan had been horrified at the butchery she’d seen back in the city, nauseated by the things she had seen. For a time she’d hardly been able to breathe, not just from the stench of death, but from her tearful despair at such mindless brutality, at such monumental and intentional depravity. She felt a sense of sickening dread for those helpless souls yet to face the horde and a crushing loss of any hope that life could ever be worth living, that it could ever be reasoned and secure, much less joyous.

  But now, at the sight of the source of the slaughter, the great force of men who had all willingly perpetrated such atrocities, all those desolate feelings melted away. In their place smoldering anger ignited, the kind of inner rage she didn’t think a person very often felt in their life. Remembering the old people who had been hacked apart, the infants dispatched by bashing in their brains, and the savage treatment of the women, Kahlan could think of little else but her burning desire for vengeance for the silent dead.

  That sense of rage seethed through her, a rage so terrible that it seemed to forever change something within her. In that moment, she felt a profound affinity with the small statue she’d had to leave in Richard Rahl’s peaceful garden, an understanding of its spirit that she hadn’t had before.

  “It’s Jagang, all right,” Sister Cecilia finally said in a bitter voice.

  Sister Armina nodded. “And we have to get past him if we’re to get to Caska.”

  Sister Ulicia gestured to the wall of mountains to the left. “Their army, with all their horses, wagons, and supplies, can’t cross the narrow passes between those peaks, but we can. As slow as Jagang moves, we can easily get over the passes and then to Caska long before they can travel south to get past the mountains and then move up into D’Hara.”

  Sister Cecilia stared off to the horizon. “The D’Haran army doesn’t stand a chance against that.”

  “That’s not our problem,” Sister Ulicia said.

  “But what about our bond to Richard Rahl?” Sister Armina asked.

  “We’re not the ones attacking Richard Rahl,” Sister Ulicia said. “Jagang is the one going after him, seeking to destroy him, not us. We are the ones who will wield the power of Orden and then we will grant Richard Rahl what only we will have the power to grant. That is enough to preserve our bond and protect us from the dream walker. Jagang and his army are not our problem and what they aim to do is not our responsibility.”

  Kahlan remembered being at the People’s Palace and wondering what the man was like. Even though she didn’t know him, she feared for him and his people having to face what was coming for them.

  “It will be our problem if they get to Caska before us,” Sister Cecilia said. “Besides catching up with Tovi, Caska is the only other central site we can get into for now.”

  Sister Ulicia dismissed the notion with a flick of her hand. “They’re a long way from Caska. We can easily cut the distance and outpace them by going over the mountains rather than down, around, and then back up as they will have to do.”

  “You don’t think they might quicken their pace?” Sister Armina asked. “After all, Jagang might be eager to finally finish off Lord Rahl and the D’Haran forces.”

  Sister Ulicia huffed at the very idea. “Jagang knows the D’Haran army has nowhere else to go—Richard Rahl has no choice now but to stand and fight. The matter is as good as decided. It’s only a matter of time.

  “The dream walker is in no hurry, nor could he be—not with an army that huge and unwieldy. And even if they could quicken their pace they have to travel a much greater distance so that still wouldn’t get him to Caska before we can get there. Besides, Jagang’s army is the same now as it has been since they first took over the Old World, decades ago, and as it has been throughout this entire war. They never hurry their pace. They are like the seasons—they move with great force, but very slowly.”

  She cast a meaningful look at the other two Sisters. “Besides, they’ve just stripped the city of women. Jagang’s men will be eager to enjoy their new spoils.”

  The blood drained from Sister Armina’s face. “Don’t we know the truth of that.”

  “Jagang and his men never tire of the use of captive women,” Sister Cecilia said, half to herself.

  Sister Armina’s color came back in a red rush. “I’d love to string Jagang up and have my way with him.”

  “We’d all enjoy a bit of dealing out lessons to those men,” Sister Ulicia said as she stared off into the distance, “but we have better things to do.” She smirked. “Someday, though . . .”

  The three Sisters were silent for a time as they gazed off at the vast horde spread across the horizon.

  “Someday,” Sister Cecilia said in a low, rancorous voice, “we will open the boxes of Orden and we will have the power to make that man twist in the wind.”

  Sister Ulicia turned and headed back toward the horses. “If we are ever going to open one of the three boxes, then we will first have to get to Tovi and the last box—and to what else is in Caska. Forget about Jagang and his army. This is the last we’ll have to see them—until the day comes when we’ve unleashed the power of Orden and we can have a bit of fun dealing out our own, personal retribution to the dream walker.”

  Chapter 9

  Nicci opened her eyes. She saw only vague shapes.

  “Zedd is angry with you.”

  Even though it sounded as if it had come from some hazy, faraway place, she knew that it was Richard’s voice. She was surprised to hear it. She was surprised to hear anything. She thought that by all rights she should be dead.

  As her vision started coming into focus, Nicci rolled her head to the right and saw him sitting huddled close on a chair that had been pulled right up beside the bed. Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, his fingers folded neatly together, he was watching her.

  “Why?” she asked.

  Looking relieved to see her awake, he leaned back in the simple wooden chair and smiled that crooked smile of his that she so loved seeing.

  “Because you broke the window back in that room where you were all doing the verification web.”

  In the light of a lamp glowing softly beneath a milky white shade, she saw that she was covered up to her armpits in a luxuriously embroidered gold bedcover with lustrous sage green fringe. She had on a satiny nightdress that she didn’t recognize. The sleeves went all the way down to her wrists. It was pale pink. Not her color.

  She wondered where the nightdress had come from and, more to the point, who had undressed her and put it on her. Back at the Palace of the Prophets, so long ago, Richard had been the first person she’d ever met who didn’t expect that he had a right to her body or some other aspect of her life. That forthright attitude had helped start the process of reasoning that eventually led to her casting off a lifetime of teachings of the Order. Through Richard, she had come to truly see that her life belonged to her alone. Along with that comprehension, she had since then discovered the dignity and self-worth in propriety.

  Right then, though, she had concerns other than finding herself in a pink nightdress. Her throbbing head felt impossibly heavy against the cozy pillow.

  “Technically,” she said, “the lightning broke the window. Not me.”

  “Somehow,” Cara said from another chair tipped back against the wall beside the door, “I don’t think the distinction will much impress him.”

  “I suppose not,” Nicci said with a sigh. “That room is in the hardened section of the Keep.”

  Richard twitched a frown. “It’s where?”

  She squinted slightly in an effort to bring his face more into focus. “That section of the Keep is a special place. It’s hardened against intentional interference as well as aberrational and errant events.”

  Cara folded her arms. “Mind giving us the translation?”

  Th
e woman was in her red leather. Nicci wondered if that meant there was more trouble about or if she was just surly from the beast paying them a visit.

  “It’s a containment field,” Nicci said. “We know very little about the ancient, bewilderingly intricate makeup of the Chainfire spell. It’s hazardous to even study such unstable components all tangled together the way that one is. That’s why we were using that particular place to run the verification web. That room is in the original core of the Keep—an important sanctuary used for tasks involving anomalous material. Various kinds of both constructed and free-formed conjuring are apt to contain innate tangential outflows that can convey domain breaches, so when working with them it’s best to confine such potentially hazardous components to a containment field.”

  “Oh, well, thanks for the translation,” Cara said in a cutting tone. “It’s all so clear, now. It’s a field thing.”

  Nicci nodded as best she could. “Yes—a containment field.” When Cara’s frown only darkened, Nicci added, “Doing magic in there is like keeping a wasp in a bottle.”

  “Oh.” Cara let out a sigh, finally grasping the simplified concept. “I guess that explains why Zedd was so grumpy about it.”

  “Maybe he can fix it back to the way it was,” Richard offered. “Surprisingly enough, the room isn’t too badly torn up. It’s mostly the broken windows that he’s riled about.”

  Nicci lifted a hand in a weak gesture. “I don’t doubt it. The glass in there is unique. It has embedded properties designed to contain conjured magic from escaping—and to prevent gifted assaults. Its function is much the same as shields, except that it deters power rather than people.”

  Richard considered a moment. “Well,” he finally said, “it didn’t prevent an attack from the beast.”

  Nicci stared off at the bookshelves built into the wall opposite the bed. “Nothing can,” she said. “In this case the beast didn’t come through the windows or walls—it came through the veil, emerging out of the underworld right into the room; it didn’t need to come through any shields or containment field or refractory glass.”

  Cara’s chair thumped down. “And it nearly tore your arm off.” She shook a finger at Richard. “You were using your gift. You drew it to you. If Zedd hadn’t been there to heal you, you would likely have bled to death.”

  “Oh, Cara, every time you tell the story I seem to bleed more. No doubt the next time I hear it told I’ll have been torn in two and stitched back together with magic thread.”

  She folded her arms as she tipped her chair back against the wall. “You could have been torn in two.”

  “I wasn’t as badly hurt as you make it out. I’m fine.” Richard leaned in a little and squeezed Nicci’s hand. “At least you stopped it.”

  She met his gaze.

  “For now,” she said. “That’s all.”

  “For now is enough for now.” He smiled in quiet satisfaction. “You did good, Nicci.”

  His gray eyes mirrored his inner sincerity. Somehow the world always seemed better when Richard was pleased that someone had accomplished something difficult. He always seemed to value what people achieved—always seemed to delight in their triumphs. It invariably lifted her heart when he was pleased with something she had done.

  Her gaze strayed from his face. She noticed the small statue standing on the table just behind him. The lamplight highlighted the flowing hair and robes that Richard had once so carefully carved into the figure of his impression of Kahlan’s spirit. The lustrous statue, sculpted from walnut, stood as if in silent defiance of some invisible force attempting to suppress that spirit.

  “I’m in your room,” Nicci said, half to herself.

  A curious frown twitched across his brow. “How did you know?”

  Nicci looked away from the statue to gaze out the small, round-topped window through the thick stone wall to the left. A delicate, pale blush of color was just visible in the lower reaches of a black, star-filled sky as dawn gradually approached.

  “Lucky guess,” she lied.

  “It was closer,” Richard explained. “Zedd and Nathan wanted to get you in a bed, get you comfortable, so they could evaluate what they needed to do to help you.”

  Nicci knew by the lingering, icy feeling coursing through her veins that they had done something more than mere evaluation.

  “Rikka and I undressed you and put you in a nightdress Zedd found for us,” Cara explained to the unspoken question she must have seen in Nicci’s eyes.

  “Thanks.” Nicci lifted a hand in a vague gesture. “How long have I been unconscious? What happened?”

  “Well,” Richard said, “after you jumped back up into that spell-form the night before last and called the lightning to stop the beast, the verification web nearly took you for good. After I got you out, Zedd thought you needed to rest more than anything so he did a little something so that you would sleep. You were a bit delirious from the pain you were in. He said that he helped you drift off so you wouldn’t have to suffer it. He told us that you would sleep all of yesterday and last night, and then awake around dawn today. I guess he had it right.”

  Cara rose to stand behind Richard and peer down at Nicci. “No one thought that Lord Rahl would be able to get you out the second time. They thought your spirit was too far gone into the underworld to ever get you back—but he did it. He got you back.”

  Nicci looked from Cara’s smug smile to Richard’s gray eyes. They didn’t reflect anything of the difficulty of the task. She had trouble imagining how he could have accomplished such a thing.

  “You did good, Richard,” she said, making him smile.

  He and Cara turned toward a soft knock at the door. Zedd quietly eased the door open to peek in. When he saw that Nicci was awake, he shed his care and strolled in.

  “Ah,” he observed, “back from the dead, it would appear.”

  Nicci smiled. “Wretched excursion. I don’t advise a visit to the place. Sorry about the windows, but it was either—”

  “Better the windows than what might have happened to Richard.”

  Nicci was cheered to hear him say as much. “That was my thought.”

  “Sometime you will have to explain to me exactly what you did and how you did it. I wasn’t aware that any form of conjured power could breach those windows.”

  “It can’t. I simply . . . invited a confluence of natural power to come in through the windows.”

  Zedd regarded her with an unreadable look. “About the windows,” he finally said in a measured tone, “we might be able to use your ability with both sides of the gift to restore them.”

  “I’d be glad to help.”

  Cara took a step forward. “When Tom and Friedrich eventually get back from patrolling the surrounding countryside I’m sure that they’d be able to help with the window’s woodwork. Friedrich, especially, knows about working with wood.”

  Zedd nodded as he smiled briefly at the suggestion before turning to his grandson. “Where have you been? I went looking for you this morning and couldn’t find you. I’ve been looking for you all day.”

  Nicci realized that the windows were hardly his primary concern.

  Richard glanced briefly at the statue. “I read a lot last night. When it got light I went for a walk to think about what to do next.”

  Zedd sighed at the answer. “Well, as I told you after you broke the first spell-form holding Nicci, we need to talk about some of the things you said.”

  It was clear that it was not a matter of casual curiosity but a pointed demand.

  Richard stood to help stuff pillows behind Nicci when he saw her start to sit up. The pain was becoming no more than a fading memory. Zedd had obviously done something more than help her sleep. Her head was starting to clear. She realized that she was hungry.

  “So talk,” Richard said as he sat back down.

  “I need you to explain precisely how you were able to know how to shut down a verification web—especially one as complex as the Chainfire
event matrix.”

  Richard looked more than a little weary. “I told you before, I understand the jargon of emblems.”

  Zedd clasped his hands behind his back as he started to pace. Concern was clearly etched in the lines of his face. “Yes, about that, you mentioned that you know a lot about ‘representational designs involving lethality.’ I need to know what you meant by that.”

  Richard took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he leaned back in his chair. Having grown up around Zedd, he obviously knew quite well that when Zedd wanted to know something it was easiest to just answer the questions.

  Richard turned his wrists over across his knees. Strange symbols girded the leather-padded silver wristbands he wore. On the center of each band, at the insides of his wrists, there was a small Grace. That alone was alarming enough, since Nicci had seen Richard use them to call the sliph so that they could travel. She couldn’t begin to imagine what the other symbols meant.

  “These things all around the bands—the emblems, designs, and devices—are pictures representing things. Like I said before, they’re a jargon, a language of sorts.”

  Zedd waggled a finger at the designs on the wristbands. “And you can make out meaning in them? Like you did with the spell-form?”

  “Yes. Most are ways of fighting with the sword—that’s how I was first able to recognize them and how I began to learn to understand them.”

  Richard’s fingers idly sought reassurance in the touch of the weapon’s hilt, but it was no longer there at his hip. He caught himself and went on.

  “Many of these are the same as the designs outside the First Wizard’s enclave. You know—on those brass plaques on the entablature above the variegated, red stone columns, on the round metal disks all along the frieze, and also carved into the stone of the cornice.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at his grandfather. “Most of these emblems overtly involve combat with a sword.”