Страница:
Before Zedd could answer her, a Mord-Sith appeared from between two red pillars at the opposite side of the room. Her blond hair was pulled back into a single braid like Cara's. She wasn't quite as tall as Cara, and not as lean, but she looked just as formidable in the way she carried herself, as if she feared nothing and lived for an excuse to prove it.
«What's going on? I heard.» She stared in sudden astonishment. «Cara? Is that you?»
«Rikka,» Cara said with a smile and a nod, «it's good to see your face again.»
Rikka bowed her head to Cara more deeply than Cara had before staring at Richard. She stepped forward into the room.
Her eyes widened. «Lord Rahl, I haven't seen you since.»
Richard nodded. «Since the People's Palace, in D'Hara. When I came to close the gateway to the underworld you were one of the Mord-Sith who helped get me up to the Garden of Life. You were the one who held my shirt at my left shoulder as all of you guided me safely through the palace. One of your sister Mord-Sith gave her life that night that I might complete my mission.»
Rikka smiled in astonishment. «You remember. We were all in our red leather. I can't believe you have that good a memory that you could remember me, much less that I was the one at your left shoulder.» She bowed her head. «And you honor us all to remember one who fell in battle.»
«I do have a good memory.» Richard cast a dark glare at Nicci and then Zedd. «That was just before I came back to Aydindril and the gravestone with Kahlan's name on it.» He turned back to Rikka. «Watch over the Keep, will you, Rikka? We all have to go down to the city for a while.»
«Of course, Lord Rahl,» Rikka said, bowing her head again, looking almost giddy to be in Richard's presence, and to be remembered.
Richard again swept his raptorlike glare across the rest of them. «Let's go.»
Richard vanished out the doorway. Zedd caught Nicci's sleeve on her way by.
«He was hurt, wasn't he?» When she hesitated, he went on. «You said he was suffering delusions from being injured.»
Nicci nodded. «He was shot with an arrow. He almost died.»
«Nicci healed him.» Cara leaned in as she spoke in a low voice. «She saved Lord Rahl's life.»
Zedd lifted an eyebrow. «A friend indeed.»
«I healed him,» Nicci confirmed, «but it was difficult beyond anything I've ever attempted before. I may have saved his life, but I now worry that I didn't do a good enough job of it.»
«What do you mean?» Zedd asked.
«I fear that I may have somehow done something to cause his delusions.»
«That isn't true,» Cara said.
«I wonder if it is,» Nicci said, «if I might have done more, or done things differently.»
She swallowed past the lump growing in her throat. She feared that it was true, that Richard's problem was her fault, that she hadn't acted quickly enough, or that she might have done something dreadfully wrong. She constantly fretted over her decision that terrible morning to get Richard to a safe place before working on him. She had feared an attack that would have fatally interrupted her efforts to heal him, but maybe if she would have simply started right then and there on the battlefield he might not now be chasing phantoms.
After all, an attack never had come, so she'd made the wrong judgment about needing to get him to the deserted farmhouse. She didn't know at the time that no attack was imminent, but maybe if she would have taken the time to have Victor's men scout the area she could have started healing Richard much sooner. She hadn't done that because she feared that if they scouted, and she was right about more of the enemy being nearby, then they would have had to move Richard anyway, and by then his time would have run out.
Even so, she was the one who had made the decisions and Richard was the one now suffering delusions. Something had gone wrong that terrible night.
There was no one in the world who mattered to her more than Richard. She feared that she was the one who had caused him the harm that was ruining his life.
«What exactly was wrong with him?» Zedd asked. «Where was he shot with the arrow?»
«In the left side of his chest-with a barbed bolt from a crossbow. That barbed head lodged in his chest without penetrating all the way through his back. He was able to partially deflect it, so it just missed his heart, but his lung and chest were rapidly filling with blood.»
Zedd lifted an eyebrow in astonishment. «And you were able to get the arrow out and heal him?»
«That's right,» Cara confirmed with forceful passion. «She saved Lord Rahl's life.»
«I don't know.» Nicci had difficulty putting it all into words. «I've been separated from him as I made my way here. Now that I see him again, see how he has latched so strongly onto his delusion and can't come to see the truth, I'm not so sure I did him any good. How can he live if he can't see the truth of the world around him? While his body may be healed, he's suffering a dreadful kind of slow death as his mind fails him.»
Zedd gave her shoulder a fatherly pat. Nicci recognized the light of life in his eyes. It was the same spark that Richard had. At least the same spark he used to have.
«We'll just have to help him see the truth.»
«And if it destroys his heart?» she asked.
Zedd smiled. It reminded her of Richard's smile, the smile she missed so much.
«Then we'll just have to heal his heart, now won't we?»
Nicci was unable to bring forth more than a whisper that bordered on tears. «And how are we to do that?»
Zedd smiled again and gave her shoulder a firm squeeze. «We'll have to see. First we have to let him see the truth, then we can worry about healing the wound it will bring his heart.»
Nicci could only nod. She dreaded seeing Richard hurt.
«And what is this beast you mentioned? The one Jagang created?»
«A weapon created with the use of Sisters of the Dark,» Nicci said. «Something from the time of the great war.»
Zedd cursed under his breath at the news. Cara looked like she had something to say about the beast, but she thought better of it and instead started for the door. «Come on. I don't want Lord Rahl to get too far ahead of us.»
Zedd grumbled his agreement. «Looks like we're going to get wet.»
«At least if it rains,» the Mord-Sith said, «it will wash some of the horse off of me.»
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
«What's going on? I heard.» She stared in sudden astonishment. «Cara? Is that you?»
«Rikka,» Cara said with a smile and a nod, «it's good to see your face again.»
Rikka bowed her head to Cara more deeply than Cara had before staring at Richard. She stepped forward into the room.
Her eyes widened. «Lord Rahl, I haven't seen you since.»
Richard nodded. «Since the People's Palace, in D'Hara. When I came to close the gateway to the underworld you were one of the Mord-Sith who helped get me up to the Garden of Life. You were the one who held my shirt at my left shoulder as all of you guided me safely through the palace. One of your sister Mord-Sith gave her life that night that I might complete my mission.»
Rikka smiled in astonishment. «You remember. We were all in our red leather. I can't believe you have that good a memory that you could remember me, much less that I was the one at your left shoulder.» She bowed her head. «And you honor us all to remember one who fell in battle.»
«I do have a good memory.» Richard cast a dark glare at Nicci and then Zedd. «That was just before I came back to Aydindril and the gravestone with Kahlan's name on it.» He turned back to Rikka. «Watch over the Keep, will you, Rikka? We all have to go down to the city for a while.»
«Of course, Lord Rahl,» Rikka said, bowing her head again, looking almost giddy to be in Richard's presence, and to be remembered.
Richard again swept his raptorlike glare across the rest of them. «Let's go.»
Richard vanished out the doorway. Zedd caught Nicci's sleeve on her way by.
«He was hurt, wasn't he?» When she hesitated, he went on. «You said he was suffering delusions from being injured.»
Nicci nodded. «He was shot with an arrow. He almost died.»
«Nicci healed him.» Cara leaned in as she spoke in a low voice. «She saved Lord Rahl's life.»
Zedd lifted an eyebrow. «A friend indeed.»
«I healed him,» Nicci confirmed, «but it was difficult beyond anything I've ever attempted before. I may have saved his life, but I now worry that I didn't do a good enough job of it.»
«What do you mean?» Zedd asked.
«I fear that I may have somehow done something to cause his delusions.»
«That isn't true,» Cara said.
«I wonder if it is,» Nicci said, «if I might have done more, or done things differently.»
She swallowed past the lump growing in her throat. She feared that it was true, that Richard's problem was her fault, that she hadn't acted quickly enough, or that she might have done something dreadfully wrong. She constantly fretted over her decision that terrible morning to get Richard to a safe place before working on him. She had feared an attack that would have fatally interrupted her efforts to heal him, but maybe if she would have simply started right then and there on the battlefield he might not now be chasing phantoms.
After all, an attack never had come, so she'd made the wrong judgment about needing to get him to the deserted farmhouse. She didn't know at the time that no attack was imminent, but maybe if she would have taken the time to have Victor's men scout the area she could have started healing Richard much sooner. She hadn't done that because she feared that if they scouted, and she was right about more of the enemy being nearby, then they would have had to move Richard anyway, and by then his time would have run out.
Even so, she was the one who had made the decisions and Richard was the one now suffering delusions. Something had gone wrong that terrible night.
There was no one in the world who mattered to her more than Richard. She feared that she was the one who had caused him the harm that was ruining his life.
«What exactly was wrong with him?» Zedd asked. «Where was he shot with the arrow?»
«In the left side of his chest-with a barbed bolt from a crossbow. That barbed head lodged in his chest without penetrating all the way through his back. He was able to partially deflect it, so it just missed his heart, but his lung and chest were rapidly filling with blood.»
Zedd lifted an eyebrow in astonishment. «And you were able to get the arrow out and heal him?»
«That's right,» Cara confirmed with forceful passion. «She saved Lord Rahl's life.»
«I don't know.» Nicci had difficulty putting it all into words. «I've been separated from him as I made my way here. Now that I see him again, see how he has latched so strongly onto his delusion and can't come to see the truth, I'm not so sure I did him any good. How can he live if he can't see the truth of the world around him? While his body may be healed, he's suffering a dreadful kind of slow death as his mind fails him.»
Zedd gave her shoulder a fatherly pat. Nicci recognized the light of life in his eyes. It was the same spark that Richard had. At least the same spark he used to have.
«We'll just have to help him see the truth.»
«And if it destroys his heart?» she asked.
Zedd smiled. It reminded her of Richard's smile, the smile she missed so much.
«Then we'll just have to heal his heart, now won't we?»
Nicci was unable to bring forth more than a whisper that bordered on tears. «And how are we to do that?»
Zedd smiled again and gave her shoulder a firm squeeze. «We'll have to see. First we have to let him see the truth, then we can worry about healing the wound it will bring his heart.»
Nicci could only nod. She dreaded seeing Richard hurt.
«And what is this beast you mentioned? The one Jagang created?»
«A weapon created with the use of Sisters of the Dark,» Nicci said. «Something from the time of the great war.»
Zedd cursed under his breath at the news. Cara looked like she had something to say about the beast, but she thought better of it and instead started for the door. «Come on. I don't want Lord Rahl to get too far ahead of us.»
Zedd grumbled his agreement. «Looks like we're going to get wet.»
«At least if it rains,» the Mord-Sith said, «it will wash some of the horse off of me.»
CHAPTER 48
The drizzle started before they were out of the paddock. Richard was already gone. There was no telling how far ahead of them he had gotten. Cara wanted to hurry and catch up with him, but Zedd told her that they knew where he was going and there was no point in risking breaking the leg of one of the tired horses because, if that happened, then they would only end up having to walk down the mountain after Richard and then, after visiting the graveyard of the Confessors, walk all the way back up.
«Besides,» Zedd told her, «you'll never be able to catch him.»
«Well, you might be right about that,» Cara said as she spurred her horse into a canter, «but I don't want him alone any longer than necessary. I'm his protection.»
«Especially since he's without his sword,» Zedd muttered sourly.
They had little choice but to hurry after Cara.
By the time they'd raced down the mountain and reached the city, the daylight was fading and the drizzle strengthening. Nicci knew they were going to be soaked before it was over, but there was no helping it. Fortunately, it was warm enough that at least they wouldn't be freezing in the wet weather.
Knowing where Richard would be, they made their way to the grounds of the Confessors' Palace where they quickly found his horse, tied to one of the rings holding chains strung between decorative granite stanchions. Since there was no opening in the chains, they were apparently meant to indicate a private area of the grounds. After the three of them tied their horses alongside Richard's, Cara and Nicci followed Zedd as he stepped over the chain.
This was clearly not a place where outsiders were welcome. The secluded courtyard was screened from public view by a row of tall elms and a dense wall of evergreen junipers. Through the thick branches of the grand trees Nicci saw glimpses of the white walls of the Confessors' Palace looming close by, enfolding and sheltering the wooded graveyard.
Because of the way it was hidden away, Nicci had expected it to be small, but the place where Confessors were buried was actually quite extensive. Trees were placed so as to cut the openness and give each section of the graveyard an intimate feel. By the manner in which it was laid out, with a path and a small vine-covered colonnade ushering people approaching from the palace, it was apparently intended to be accessed solely from the palace through elegant, double glassed doors. In the muted gray light the quiet place beneath the canopy of trees had a hallowed feel to it.
They found Richard up a slight rise in what would be the shady courtyard were it sunny, standing in the drizzle before a polished stone monument, running his fingers through the letters carved in the granite, through the letters of the name KAHLAN.
Somewhere on the grounds to the Confessors' Palace Richard had managed to find shovels and picks. They lay at the ready nearby. Scanning the area, Nicci saw that there were storage buildings for grounds keepers set back among hedges partly hidden around a corner of the palace and reasoned that Richard had found them there.
As she quietly approached him, Nicci knew that Richard was on the brink of something potentially very dangerous — to him. She stood behind him, hands folded, waiting, as he tenderly touched Kahlan's name in stone.
«Richard,» Nicci finally said in a soft voice, feeling the need for a reverent tone in such a place, «I hope that you will think about everything I've told you, and if things don't turn out the way at this moment you believe they will, know that we will all help you in any way we can.»
He turned away from her name in stone. «Don't be worried about me, Nicci. There is nothing under this ground. She isn't here. I'm going to show that to all of you and then you will have to believe me. I'm going to get my life back. When I do, then you're all going to understand that something is very wrong. Then we're going to have to work to find out what's going on and we're going to find Kahlan.»
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 reality 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 difficult 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.
«I can't Richard. You've taught me to embrace life.»
«Besides,» Zedd told her, «you'll never be able to catch him.»
«Well, you might be right about that,» Cara said as she spurred her horse into a canter, «but I don't want him alone any longer than necessary. I'm his protection.»
«Especially since he's without his sword,» Zedd muttered sourly.
They had little choice but to hurry after Cara.
By the time they'd raced down the mountain and reached the city, the daylight was fading and the drizzle strengthening. Nicci knew they were going to be soaked before it was over, but there was no helping it. Fortunately, it was warm enough that at least they wouldn't be freezing in the wet weather.
Knowing where Richard would be, they made their way to the grounds of the Confessors' Palace where they quickly found his horse, tied to one of the rings holding chains strung between decorative granite stanchions. Since there was no opening in the chains, they were apparently meant to indicate a private area of the grounds. After the three of them tied their horses alongside Richard's, Cara and Nicci followed Zedd as he stepped over the chain.
This was clearly not a place where outsiders were welcome. The secluded courtyard was screened from public view by a row of tall elms and a dense wall of evergreen junipers. Through the thick branches of the grand trees Nicci saw glimpses of the white walls of the Confessors' Palace looming close by, enfolding and sheltering the wooded graveyard.
Because of the way it was hidden away, Nicci had expected it to be small, but the place where Confessors were buried was actually quite extensive. Trees were placed so as to cut the openness and give each section of the graveyard an intimate feel. By the manner in which it was laid out, with a path and a small vine-covered colonnade ushering people approaching from the palace, it was apparently intended to be accessed solely from the palace through elegant, double glassed doors. In the muted gray light the quiet place beneath the canopy of trees had a hallowed feel to it.
They found Richard up a slight rise in what would be the shady courtyard were it sunny, standing in the drizzle before a polished stone monument, running his fingers through the letters carved in the granite, through the letters of the name KAHLAN.
Somewhere on the grounds to the Confessors' Palace Richard had managed to find shovels and picks. They lay at the ready nearby. Scanning the area, Nicci saw that there were storage buildings for grounds keepers set back among hedges partly hidden around a corner of the palace and reasoned that Richard had found them there.
As she quietly approached him, Nicci knew that Richard was on the brink of something potentially very dangerous — to him. She stood behind him, hands folded, waiting, as he tenderly touched Kahlan's name in stone.
«Richard,» Nicci finally said in a soft voice, feeling the need for a reverent tone in such a place, «I hope that you will think about everything I've told you, and if things don't turn out the way at this moment you believe they will, know that we will all help you in any way we can.»
He turned away from her name in stone. «Don't be worried about me, Nicci. There is nothing under this ground. She isn't here. I'm going to show that to all of you and then you will have to believe me. I'm going to get my life back. When I do, then you're all going to understand that something is very wrong. Then we're going to have to work to find out what's going on and we're going to find Kahlan.»
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 reality 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 difficult 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.
«I can't Richard. You've taught me to embrace life.»
CHAPTER 49
The heavy paneled door opened partway. Rikka stuck her head into the silent room. «Someone is coming.»
Nicci pushed her padded chair away from the polished library table. «Coming?»
«Up toward the Keep.»
«Do you know who?» she asked as she stood.
Rikka shook her head. «Zedd just told me that the shields warned him that someone was on their way up the road. He thought you ought to know. I tell you, all the magic flying around in this place makes my skin crawl.»
«I'll go find Richard.»
Rikka nodded before vanishing out of the doorway. Nicci quickly returned the book she had been studying to its slot in the vast expanse of mahogany shelves that filled the quiet library. The book was a tedious report on activities in the Keep during the great war. Nicci found it rather strange, reading about all the people who had once lived in the Wizard's Keep thousands of years ago. It seemed a disconnected history except when she intermittently reminded herself that they were talking about the very place where she was. She considered how, in contrast, the Palace of the Prophets had been so full of life and activity for so long. Nicci couldn't imagine the Palace of the Prophets empty of all but a few souls, and the Keep was vastly larger. Of course, now the palace was no more while the Keep still stood.
Nicci hadn't really been interested in the book she'd been reading. It was boring but she didn't really care. It was merely something to occupy her time. She couldn't force herself to concentrate on anything that would be absorbing or that would require her to put any great effort into thinking. She was too distracted.
The new moon at the time they had dug up the grave of the Mother Confessor had grown to a full moon and was now approaching its last quarter again, and yet nothing much had changed. A few days after digging up the body, Zedd had told Richard that he loved him and was sorry to have been so hard on him when maybe he should have found out a little more before saying the things he'd said. Zedd promised that they would figure out a way to get Richard's sword back and everything would be all right.
It might have been sincere, and it might have been true, but for Richard the hurt of such a personal failure was hard to put back into the bottle. He had not just disappointed and angered his grandfather; he had failed to prove his dream was in fact the truth. He had put everything he had into the effort. He had been certain and in the end he had only proved himself wrong.
Richard had only nodded to Zedd's words. Nicci didn't think it mattered much to him either way if Zedd had softened his viewpoint. He had reached the end of his ideas, his hopes, and his efforts. Nothing had helped him. After that night, the life had gone out of him.
Zedd had interrogated Cara and Nicci for hours that first night. Nicci had been stunned to hear from Cara what Shota had said about the beast becoming a blood beast because Nicci had inadvertently given it the measure of Richard's ancestral blood. She was horrified to learn that she had been responsible for intensifying the danger to Richard.
While astonished at how Nicci had accomplished saving Richard's life, Zedd had quietly assured her that had she not acted, Richard would most certainly have died right then and there. He said that she had given Richard a chance at life, and now they could work to solve the problem of the beast Jagang's Sisters had created, as well as Richard's strange delusions and the matter of recovering his sword. From what Shota had revealed about the beast, on top of what Nicci already knew, it didn't look to Nicci that they had much of a chance of success. She had no idea at all of how to even begin to destroy such a beast spawned of dark powers.
She had also been embarrassed to hear Cara telling about how Shota had revealed to Richard Cara's plan for Nicci to interest Richard romantically. Zedd, thankfully, had withheld any comments on that part of Cara's story.
That, among other things, had left Nicci feeling rather hopeless-and helpless. The Imperial Order was rampaging unchecked through the New World, the beast was stalking Richard, and he was not himself, to say the least.
In some ways, it reminded her of her dead attitude toward life, back before Richard. She had been taught that she had been born lucky in every way, and because she had ability it was her duty to devote herself to those in need. No matter how hard she worked, the needs always outpaced her ability to meet them, leaving her perpetually in debt to the ever worsening lives of others while her own life was not her own. Her feeling about what was happening now with the beast and Richard's delusions were different in almost every way, except they were the same in that they gave her that familiar feeling of hollow hopelessness.
Richard had spent the long days, since opening the grave and discovering the truth, off by himself-with the exception that Cara, after answering all of Zedd's tedious questions about everything she knew about what had happened with Shota, refused to leave Richard's side for any reason. Since Richard was in no mood to talk to anyone, Cara had become his silent shadow.
It was strange seeing the two of them together, totally at ease with each other even at such a time. It didn't seem to Nicci like the two of them even needed to speak, yet they managed, with a look, a slight shrug, or a nothing at all, to all the time understand each other.
Nicci felt like an unwelcome outsider to his misery and so she let him be. She remained as close as she could, so that she would be at hand should the beast attack, but she stayed out of his sight and left him to his solitude.
The first four or five days after arriving at the Keep Richard had spent in the Confessors' Palace-wandering the magnificent rooms and vast network of halls. Nicci stayed in a guest room in the palace, out of sight, while Richard roamed aimlessly about the empty place. After that, he'd gone out and wandered the city of Aydindril for a half-dozen days, walking the streets and alleys as if reliving the life that had once been there. It was a lot more difficult for Nicci to stay close to him when he walked all day long through the city. After that he had spent yet more days wandering the forests of the mountains around Aydindril, sometimes not even returning at night. Richard was at home in the woods, so Nicci had decided not to follow him, knowing how difficult it would have been for her to keep Richard from knowing she was there. She was comforted somewhat by her connection of magic with him that allowed her always to be aware of what direction he was and roughly how far way. When he didn't come back at night, though, Nicci paced, unable to sleep.
Zedd finally asked Richard to please remain at the Keep so that in case the beast were to attack, Zedd and Nicci could help stop it. Richard had done as he'd been asked without comment or objection. He'd spent recent days, instead of wandering the palace, or the city, or the woods, wandering the outer ramparts of the Keep, staring off into the distance.
Nicci desperately wanted to do something to help him, but Zedd had insisted that there was nothing to do but wait and see if time would begin to bring him around to the reality that he had only dreamed up his relationship with Kahlan during the time he had been unconscious. In this, Nicci didn't really think time would solve anything. She'd been with Richard long enough to realize that this was something bigger. She believed that he needed some kind of help, but she didn't know what that help could possibly be.
Nicci hurried down the wood-paneled hall outside the library, her feet swishing across thick carpets. She rushed up through the maze of stairwells and passageways, using her sense of her gifted connection with Richard to guide her, letting that thread of magic take her where it may, rather than trying to deliberately remember and find her way through the Keep.
As she made her way ever closer to him, she reminisced about the kiss she had given him to link them so that she could find him. She felt rather guilty about that kiss, even if it had been achingly wonderful to do it. It had been far more than she needed to do. She could have simply touched a finger to the back of his hand, or a shoulder, and established a link without him feeling a thing.
But Cara had just been telling her how maybe she needed to make him more aware of her and filled her mind with heady thoughts of the possibilities. That kiss would certainly have planted her firmly in his thoughts. In a way, though, she felt it was too forward, considering his mental state; he was in love with someone else, even if it was a dream, and Nicci hadn't respected that. She regretted, in a way, giving him that kiss. In another way, she wished she had planted it on his lips instead of his cheek.
As Shota had done.
It burned her to hear Cara telling them how Shota had kissed him and tried to get him to stay with her. Nicci knew how the witch woman felt —but that didn't make her any happier about it.
Nicci would give anything to be able to hold him, now, to comfort him,
to tell him that it would be all right for no other reason than simply to try to make him feel just a little better, to reassure him that there were others around who cared about him.
But she knew that this was not the time or circumstances for such things.
At the same time, she knew that this could not continue. He simply could not go on like this. His life could not stay in this static state, drifting without his conscious direction. He had to come to his senses.
Nicci hurried onward, quickening her pace, down the endless maze of halls and through empty but grand rooms, suddenly feeling, for some reason, the urgent need to be with him.
Richard stood at the brink of the wall, an arm resting on a massive merlon to each side, as he stared out through the crenellation. It felt like standing at the edge of the world. Gray patches of shade drifted slowly over the hills and fields far below as their mothering clouds shepherded them along.
He seemed to have lost all track of time. Every day had become the same monotonous, pointless, empty existence. He didn't even know how long he had been standing at the gap in the wall, staring out at nothing in particular.
With Kahlan dead and gone, nothing mattered anymore. He had trouble imagining why it ever had. He couldn't even imagine for sure, now, that she had ever been real.
But whether or not she had been, it was over.
Cara was close. She was always close. In a way it was comforting, knowing that he could depend on her for anything. In some ways, though, it was wearing to have her always there, so that he was never able to have a moment's privacy.
He wondered if she believed she was close enough to snatch him if he jumped.
He knew that she wasn't.
He gazed at the tiny little roofs crowded together in the city of Aydindril far below. In a way, he felt an affinity for the city. It was empty. He was empty. Life was gone from both of them.
Since digging up the grave-he couldn't bring himself to call it Kahlan's grave, even in his own mind, much less out loud-he didn't think there was anything worth being alive for, anymore. If a person could die by sheer will alone, he would already be dead, but death, when invited, had suddenly grown shy. The days dragged endlessly on.
He had been so stunned by that grave that it seemed his mind had been scrambled on the spot. It felt like he had lost his ability to think. Nothing he knew made sense to him. The things he'd thought were true somehow no longer were. His whole world had been turned upside down. How could he function if he couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't?
He didn't know what else to do. For the first time in his life, he was baffled and defeated by the way things were. He always seemed to have a variety of options that he knew he could try. Now, he didn't. He had tried everything he could think of. None of it worked. He was at the end of his rope, and there was none left.
And all the time, in his mind, he kept seeing her body in the coffin.
He saw, he heard, he felt, but he could not think, could not put anything together in a meaningful way. It was a walking, living, imitation of death-a poor one, he believed. What good was living if it felt this way? He longed only for that dark, forever embrace of nothingness to take him.
He was so far beyond hurt, beyond sadness, beyond grief, that there was only an unthinking, empty, blind, confused agony that never for a second would release him enough to get a breath. He wanted desperately to escape the truth, to refuse to allow it to be real, but he couldn't and it was suffocating him.
The wind coming up the mountain ruffled his hair as he stared out over a precipitous drop of thousands of feet.
What good was he to anyone? He'd let Zedd down. He'd given Shota the Sword of Truth for nothing of value. Nicci thought he was out of his mind, that he was delusional. Not even Cara believed him, really believed him. He was the only one who believed him, and he had proved himself wrong by digging up her grave.
He guessed he must be crazy, that Nicci had to be right. Everyone was right. He could only be imagining things. He could see it in all their eyes the way they looked at him, that he had lost his mind.
Richard gazed down the sheer drop of the dark stones of the massive outer Keep wall. They fell away below him for thousands of feet toward the rock and forest below. Gusts of wind coming up the face of the wall buffeted him. It was a dizzying sight. A dizzying drop.
What good was he to anyone, most of all to himself?
He stole a sidelong glance at Cara. She was close, but not nearly close enough.
Richard didn't see any reason to continue the agony. He didn't have his mind, and his mind was life.
He didn't have Kahlan. She was his life.
From what everyone told him, from what he saw in the coffin that terrible night, he never had her. It was all just a mad delusion. A wish. A whim.
He glanced down again at the forever drop off the towering wall on the side of the keep, at the rocks and trees spread out below. It was a very, very long way down.
He recalled people saying that just before you died you relived your life.
If he were to relive his life, he would relive every precious moment he'd had with Kahlan.
Or thought he'd had.
It was a long way down.
A long time to relive such wonderful, romantic, loving times. A long time to relive every precious moment he'd spent with her.
Nicci pushed her padded chair away from the polished library table. «Coming?»
«Up toward the Keep.»
«Do you know who?» she asked as she stood.
Rikka shook her head. «Zedd just told me that the shields warned him that someone was on their way up the road. He thought you ought to know. I tell you, all the magic flying around in this place makes my skin crawl.»
«I'll go find Richard.»
Rikka nodded before vanishing out of the doorway. Nicci quickly returned the book she had been studying to its slot in the vast expanse of mahogany shelves that filled the quiet library. The book was a tedious report on activities in the Keep during the great war. Nicci found it rather strange, reading about all the people who had once lived in the Wizard's Keep thousands of years ago. It seemed a disconnected history except when she intermittently reminded herself that they were talking about the very place where she was. She considered how, in contrast, the Palace of the Prophets had been so full of life and activity for so long. Nicci couldn't imagine the Palace of the Prophets empty of all but a few souls, and the Keep was vastly larger. Of course, now the palace was no more while the Keep still stood.
Nicci hadn't really been interested in the book she'd been reading. It was boring but she didn't really care. It was merely something to occupy her time. She couldn't force herself to concentrate on anything that would be absorbing or that would require her to put any great effort into thinking. She was too distracted.
The new moon at the time they had dug up the grave of the Mother Confessor had grown to a full moon and was now approaching its last quarter again, and yet nothing much had changed. A few days after digging up the body, Zedd had told Richard that he loved him and was sorry to have been so hard on him when maybe he should have found out a little more before saying the things he'd said. Zedd promised that they would figure out a way to get Richard's sword back and everything would be all right.
It might have been sincere, and it might have been true, but for Richard the hurt of such a personal failure was hard to put back into the bottle. He had not just disappointed and angered his grandfather; he had failed to prove his dream was in fact the truth. He had put everything he had into the effort. He had been certain and in the end he had only proved himself wrong.
Richard had only nodded to Zedd's words. Nicci didn't think it mattered much to him either way if Zedd had softened his viewpoint. He had reached the end of his ideas, his hopes, and his efforts. Nothing had helped him. After that night, the life had gone out of him.
Zedd had interrogated Cara and Nicci for hours that first night. Nicci had been stunned to hear from Cara what Shota had said about the beast becoming a blood beast because Nicci had inadvertently given it the measure of Richard's ancestral blood. She was horrified to learn that she had been responsible for intensifying the danger to Richard.
While astonished at how Nicci had accomplished saving Richard's life, Zedd had quietly assured her that had she not acted, Richard would most certainly have died right then and there. He said that she had given Richard a chance at life, and now they could work to solve the problem of the beast Jagang's Sisters had created, as well as Richard's strange delusions and the matter of recovering his sword. From what Shota had revealed about the beast, on top of what Nicci already knew, it didn't look to Nicci that they had much of a chance of success. She had no idea at all of how to even begin to destroy such a beast spawned of dark powers.
She had also been embarrassed to hear Cara telling about how Shota had revealed to Richard Cara's plan for Nicci to interest Richard romantically. Zedd, thankfully, had withheld any comments on that part of Cara's story.
That, among other things, had left Nicci feeling rather hopeless-and helpless. The Imperial Order was rampaging unchecked through the New World, the beast was stalking Richard, and he was not himself, to say the least.
In some ways, it reminded her of her dead attitude toward life, back before Richard. She had been taught that she had been born lucky in every way, and because she had ability it was her duty to devote herself to those in need. No matter how hard she worked, the needs always outpaced her ability to meet them, leaving her perpetually in debt to the ever worsening lives of others while her own life was not her own. Her feeling about what was happening now with the beast and Richard's delusions were different in almost every way, except they were the same in that they gave her that familiar feeling of hollow hopelessness.
Richard had spent the long days, since opening the grave and discovering the truth, off by himself-with the exception that Cara, after answering all of Zedd's tedious questions about everything she knew about what had happened with Shota, refused to leave Richard's side for any reason. Since Richard was in no mood to talk to anyone, Cara had become his silent shadow.
It was strange seeing the two of them together, totally at ease with each other even at such a time. It didn't seem to Nicci like the two of them even needed to speak, yet they managed, with a look, a slight shrug, or a nothing at all, to all the time understand each other.
Nicci felt like an unwelcome outsider to his misery and so she let him be. She remained as close as she could, so that she would be at hand should the beast attack, but she stayed out of his sight and left him to his solitude.
The first four or five days after arriving at the Keep Richard had spent in the Confessors' Palace-wandering the magnificent rooms and vast network of halls. Nicci stayed in a guest room in the palace, out of sight, while Richard roamed aimlessly about the empty place. After that, he'd gone out and wandered the city of Aydindril for a half-dozen days, walking the streets and alleys as if reliving the life that had once been there. It was a lot more difficult for Nicci to stay close to him when he walked all day long through the city. After that he had spent yet more days wandering the forests of the mountains around Aydindril, sometimes not even returning at night. Richard was at home in the woods, so Nicci had decided not to follow him, knowing how difficult it would have been for her to keep Richard from knowing she was there. She was comforted somewhat by her connection of magic with him that allowed her always to be aware of what direction he was and roughly how far way. When he didn't come back at night, though, Nicci paced, unable to sleep.
Zedd finally asked Richard to please remain at the Keep so that in case the beast were to attack, Zedd and Nicci could help stop it. Richard had done as he'd been asked without comment or objection. He'd spent recent days, instead of wandering the palace, or the city, or the woods, wandering the outer ramparts of the Keep, staring off into the distance.
Nicci desperately wanted to do something to help him, but Zedd had insisted that there was nothing to do but wait and see if time would begin to bring him around to the reality that he had only dreamed up his relationship with Kahlan during the time he had been unconscious. In this, Nicci didn't really think time would solve anything. She'd been with Richard long enough to realize that this was something bigger. She believed that he needed some kind of help, but she didn't know what that help could possibly be.
Nicci hurried down the wood-paneled hall outside the library, her feet swishing across thick carpets. She rushed up through the maze of stairwells and passageways, using her sense of her gifted connection with Richard to guide her, letting that thread of magic take her where it may, rather than trying to deliberately remember and find her way through the Keep.
As she made her way ever closer to him, she reminisced about the kiss she had given him to link them so that she could find him. She felt rather guilty about that kiss, even if it had been achingly wonderful to do it. It had been far more than she needed to do. She could have simply touched a finger to the back of his hand, or a shoulder, and established a link without him feeling a thing.
But Cara had just been telling her how maybe she needed to make him more aware of her and filled her mind with heady thoughts of the possibilities. That kiss would certainly have planted her firmly in his thoughts. In a way, though, she felt it was too forward, considering his mental state; he was in love with someone else, even if it was a dream, and Nicci hadn't respected that. She regretted, in a way, giving him that kiss. In another way, she wished she had planted it on his lips instead of his cheek.
As Shota had done.
It burned her to hear Cara telling them how Shota had kissed him and tried to get him to stay with her. Nicci knew how the witch woman felt —but that didn't make her any happier about it.
Nicci would give anything to be able to hold him, now, to comfort him,
to tell him that it would be all right for no other reason than simply to try to make him feel just a little better, to reassure him that there were others around who cared about him.
But she knew that this was not the time or circumstances for such things.
At the same time, she knew that this could not continue. He simply could not go on like this. His life could not stay in this static state, drifting without his conscious direction. He had to come to his senses.
Nicci hurried onward, quickening her pace, down the endless maze of halls and through empty but grand rooms, suddenly feeling, for some reason, the urgent need to be with him.
Richard stood at the brink of the wall, an arm resting on a massive merlon to each side, as he stared out through the crenellation. It felt like standing at the edge of the world. Gray patches of shade drifted slowly over the hills and fields far below as their mothering clouds shepherded them along.
He seemed to have lost all track of time. Every day had become the same monotonous, pointless, empty existence. He didn't even know how long he had been standing at the gap in the wall, staring out at nothing in particular.
With Kahlan dead and gone, nothing mattered anymore. He had trouble imagining why it ever had. He couldn't even imagine for sure, now, that she had ever been real.
But whether or not she had been, it was over.
Cara was close. She was always close. In a way it was comforting, knowing that he could depend on her for anything. In some ways, though, it was wearing to have her always there, so that he was never able to have a moment's privacy.
He wondered if she believed she was close enough to snatch him if he jumped.
He knew that she wasn't.
He gazed at the tiny little roofs crowded together in the city of Aydindril far below. In a way, he felt an affinity for the city. It was empty. He was empty. Life was gone from both of them.
Since digging up the grave-he couldn't bring himself to call it Kahlan's grave, even in his own mind, much less out loud-he didn't think there was anything worth being alive for, anymore. If a person could die by sheer will alone, he would already be dead, but death, when invited, had suddenly grown shy. The days dragged endlessly on.
He had been so stunned by that grave that it seemed his mind had been scrambled on the spot. It felt like he had lost his ability to think. Nothing he knew made sense to him. The things he'd thought were true somehow no longer were. His whole world had been turned upside down. How could he function if he couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't?
He didn't know what else to do. For the first time in his life, he was baffled and defeated by the way things were. He always seemed to have a variety of options that he knew he could try. Now, he didn't. He had tried everything he could think of. None of it worked. He was at the end of his rope, and there was none left.
And all the time, in his mind, he kept seeing her body in the coffin.
He saw, he heard, he felt, but he could not think, could not put anything together in a meaningful way. It was a walking, living, imitation of death-a poor one, he believed. What good was living if it felt this way? He longed only for that dark, forever embrace of nothingness to take him.
He was so far beyond hurt, beyond sadness, beyond grief, that there was only an unthinking, empty, blind, confused agony that never for a second would release him enough to get a breath. He wanted desperately to escape the truth, to refuse to allow it to be real, but he couldn't and it was suffocating him.
The wind coming up the mountain ruffled his hair as he stared out over a precipitous drop of thousands of feet.
What good was he to anyone? He'd let Zedd down. He'd given Shota the Sword of Truth for nothing of value. Nicci thought he was out of his mind, that he was delusional. Not even Cara believed him, really believed him. He was the only one who believed him, and he had proved himself wrong by digging up her grave.
He guessed he must be crazy, that Nicci had to be right. Everyone was right. He could only be imagining things. He could see it in all their eyes the way they looked at him, that he had lost his mind.
Richard gazed down the sheer drop of the dark stones of the massive outer Keep wall. They fell away below him for thousands of feet toward the rock and forest below. Gusts of wind coming up the face of the wall buffeted him. It was a dizzying sight. A dizzying drop.
What good was he to anyone, most of all to himself?
He stole a sidelong glance at Cara. She was close, but not nearly close enough.
Richard didn't see any reason to continue the agony. He didn't have his mind, and his mind was life.
He didn't have Kahlan. She was his life.
From what everyone told him, from what he saw in the coffin that terrible night, he never had her. It was all just a mad delusion. A wish. A whim.
He glanced down again at the forever drop off the towering wall on the side of the keep, at the rocks and trees spread out below. It was a very, very long way down.
He recalled people saying that just before you died you relived your life.
If he were to relive his life, he would relive every precious moment he'd had with Kahlan.
Or thought he'd had.
It was a long way down.
A long time to relive such wonderful, romantic, loving times. A long time to relive every precious moment he'd spent with her.
CHAPTER 50
Nicci opened an iron-strapped oak door to bright daylight. Puffy white clouds skimmed by just overhead in a sparkling azure sky that on any other day would have lifted her spirits. A fresh breeze carried her hair across her face. She pulled it away as she gazed down the narrow bridge to a rampart in the distance. Richard stood beyond the end of the bridge, at the far wall of the rampart, in the gap of the crenellation, looking down the mountain. Cara, nearby, turned when she heard the door.