Chainfire (Sword of Truth 9)

He supposed she had a point. He had never witnessed a scene so shaped by rage. He was well aware, though, that she knew far more about it.

Cara curled up to his left. “I’m telling you,” she said to Nicci, “I don’t think he knows.”

Richard cast a leery gaze at the Mord-Sith and then at the sorceress. “Knows what?”

Nicci ran her fingers back through her wet hair, pulling strands off her face. She looked a little puzzled. “You said that you got the letter I sent.”

“I did.” It had been quite a while back. He tried to remember through the daze of weariness and worry everything Nicci’s letter had said—something about Jagang creating weapons out of people. “Your letter was valuable in helping figure out what was happening at the time. And I did appreciate your warning about Jagang’s darker pursuits of creating weapons out of the gifted; Nicholas the Slide was as nasty a piece of work.”

“Nicholas.” Nicci spat the name before wrapping a blanket around her shoulders. “He is but a flea on the rump of the wolf.”

If Nicholas was the flea, Richard hoped never to run into the wolf. Nicholas the Slide had been a wizard whom the Sisters of the Dark had altered to have abilities that were well beyond any human traits. It had been thought that accomplishing such conjuring with people was not only a lost art but impossible because, among other things, such nefarious work required the use of not only Additive but Subtractive Magic. While a rare few had learned to manipulate it, until Richard’s birth there hadn’t been anyone born with the actual gift for Subtractive Magic in thousands of years.

But there had been those who, even though they had not been born with that side of the gift, still had managed to gain the use of Subtractive Magic. Darken Rahl had been one such person. It was said that he had traded the pure souls of children to the Keeper of the underworld in exchange for dark indulgences, including the ability to use Subtractive Magic.

Richard supposed that it could also have been through morbid promises to the Keeper that the first Sisters of the Dark had contrived to obtain the knowledge of how to use Subtractive Magic, thereafter passing it on in secret to their covert disciples.

When the Palace of the Prophets had fallen, Jagang had captured many of the Sisters, both Sisters of the Light and Sisters of the Dark, but their numbers were dwindling. From what Richard had learned, the dream walker’s ability enabled him to enter every part of a person’s mind and thereby control them. There was no private thought he did not know or intimate deed he could not witness. It was an inner violation so complete that no hidden corner of the mind was safe from the dream walker’s direct scrutiny. What was worse, the victim could not always tell if Jagang was lurking there, in their mind, witness to their most secret thoughts.

Nicci had said that the haunting possession by the dream walker had driven a few of the Sisters mad. Richard also knew that through that link Jagang could measure out excruciating pain and, if he wished it, death. With such control, the dream walker could make the Sisters do anything he wished.

Through an ancient magic created by one of Richard’s ancestors to protect his people from the dream walkers of that time, those who swore fidelity to the Lord Rahl were protected. Along with the rest of his gift, Richard had inherited that bond and, with a dream walker again born into the world, it now safeguarded those loyal to him from Jagang stealing into their minds and enslaving them. While a formal devotion was spoken by the people of D’Hara to their Lord Rahl, the protection that the bond provided was actually invoked through the conviction of the person bonded—through their doing what they thought was called for by their fidelity.

Both Ann, the Prelate of the Sisters of the Light, and Verna, the woman Ann had named as her successor, had stolen into the Imperial Order’s camp and tried to rescue their Sisters. The captive Sisters had been offered the protection of the bond—all they had to do was accept in their hearts their loyalty to Richard—but most were so terrified of Jagang that more than once they had refused their chance at freedom. Not everyone was willing to embrace liberty; liberty required not just effort, but risk. Some people chose to delude themselves and see their chains as protective armor.

Nicci had once been in servitude to the Fellowship of Order, the Sisters of the Light, and then the Sisters of the Dark, and finally to Jagang. She no longer was; she had instead embraced Richard’s love of life. Her steadfast loyalty to him and what he believed in had freed her from the clutches of the dream walker, but far more than that, it had freed her from the yoke of servitude she had worn her whole life. Her life was now hers alone. He thought that maybe that might have something to do with the resolute nobility of her bearing.

“I didn’t read the whole letter,” Richard admitted. “Before I was able to finish it, we were attacked by men that Nicholas had sent to capture us. I told you about it before—that was when Sabar was killed. During that fight the letter fell into the fire.”

Nicci slouched back. “Dear spirits,” she murmured. “I thought you knew.”

Richard was tired and at the end of his patience. “Knew what?”

Nicci let her arms slip to her sides. She looked up at him in the dim light and let out a frazzled sigh.

“Jagang found a way for the Sisters of the Dark he holds captive to use their ability to begin creating weapons out of people, as had been done during the great war. In many ways, he is a brilliant man. He makes it his business to learn. He collects books from the places he sacks. I’ve seen some of those books. Among all sorts of tomes, he has ancient handbooks of magic from around the time of the great war.

“The problem is, while he may be a dream walker and brilliant in certain areas, he does not have the gift and so his understanding of it, of exactly what Han is and how this force of life functions, is crude at best. It’s not easy for one without magic to comprehend such things. You have the gift and yet even you don’t really understand it or know very much about how it works. But because Jagang doesn’t know how to work magic, he blunders around demanding that things be done simply because he has dreamed them up, because he is the great emperor and he wishes his visions to be brought to life.”

Richard rubbed his fingers back and forth on his brow, rolling off the dirt. “Don’t sell him short in that regard. It’s possible that he knows more about what he’s doing than you realize.”

“What do you mean?”

“I may not know a lot about the subject of magic, but one of the things I have learned is that magic can also be thought of much like an art form. Through artistic expression—for lack of a better term—magic that has never been before can be created.”

Nicci stared in astonished disbelief. “Richard, I don’t know where you could have heard such a thing, but it just doesn’t work that way.”

“I know, I know. Kahlan thinks I’m out on a limb with this, too. Having been raised around wizards, she knows a lot about magic and in the past she has flatly insisted that I’m wrong. But I’m not. I’ve done it before. Using the gift in such a way, in new and original ways, got me out of what would otherwise have been unbreakable traps.”

Nicci was peering at him in that analytical way of hers. He suddenly realized why. It wasn’t only what he’d said about magic. He was talking about Kahlan again. The woman who did not exist, the woman he had dreamed. Cara’s expression betrayed her mute concern.

“Anyway,” Richard said, getting back to the crux of the matter, “just because Jagang doesn’t have the gift, doesn’t mean he can’t still dream up things—dream up nightmares—like Nicholas. It is through such original conceptualization that the most deadly things, for which there may be no conventional counter, are created. I suspect that this may have been the method those wizards in ancient times used for creating weapons out of people in the first place.”

Nicci was beside herself with bottled agitation.

“Richard, magic just doesn’t work like that. You can’t dream up whatever you’d like to have, wish for what you want. Magic functio

ns by the laws of its nature, just like all other things in the world. Whim will not make boards out of trees; you must cut the tree to the desired form. If you want a house, you can’t wish up bricks and boards to stack themselves into a dwelling; you must use your hands to craft the structure.”

Richard leaned toward the sorceress. “Yes, but it’s the human imagination that makes those concrete actions not just possible, but effective. Most builders think in terms of houses or barns; they do what’s been done before simply because that was what was done before. Much of the time they don’t want to think, so they never envision anything more. They limit themselves to repetition and as an excuse they insist that it must be done that way because it has always been done that way. Most magic is like that—the gifted simply repeating what has already been done before, believing that it must be done that way with no more justification than that it has always been done that way.

“Before a grand palace can be built, it first has to be imagined by someone bold enough to have a vision of what could be. A palace will not spontaneously spring forth to the surprise of all while men are attempting to build a barn. Only the conscious act of conceptualization can bring about the reality.

“For that act of creative imagination to bring about the existence of a palace, it cannot violate any of the laws of the nature of the things that are used. On the contrary, the person who imagines a grand palace with the goal of seeing it built must be intimately aware of the nature of all the things he will use in the construction. If he isn’t, the palace will fall down. He must know the nature of the materials better than the man who uses them to build a simple barn. It’s not a matter of wishing for something that transcends the laws of nature, but a matter of original thinking based on those laws of nature.

“I grew up in the woods around Hartland, never having seen a palace.” Richard spread his arms, as if to show her the things he had seen since leaving his homeland. “Until I saw the castle at Tamarang, the Wizard’s Keep and the Confessors’ Palace in Aydindril, or the People’s Palace in D’Hara, I never imagined that such places existed—or even that they could exist. They were beyond the scope of my thinking at the time.

“And yet, even though I never imagined that such places could be built, other men thought them up, and they were built. I think that one of the important functions of grand creations is that they inspire people.”

Nicci appeared not only to be swept up in his explanation, but to be considering his words with serious interest. “Do you mean to say, then, that you think an art form can also shape such important things as the function of magic?”

Richard smiled. “Nicci, you could not grasp the importance of life until I carved the statue back in Altur’Rang. When you saw the concept in tangible form you were able at last to put together all the things you had learned throughout your life and finally grasp its meaning. An artistic creation touched your soul. That’s what I mean about an important function of great works is that they inspire people.

“Because it inspired you with the beauty of life, with the nobility of man, you acted to become free—something you had never thought was possible. Because the people of Altur’Rang as well could see in that statue what could and should be, they were stirred to stand up to the tyranny crushing their lives. It was not accomplished by copying other statues, by doing what was the accepted norm for statues in the Old World of showing man as weak and ineffective, but by an idea of beauty, a vision of nobility, that shaped what I carved.

“I didn’t violate the nature of the marble I used, but rather I used the nature of the stone to accomplish something different than what others routinely did with it. I studied the properties of stone, I learned how to work it, and I sought to understand what more I could do with it in order to bring about my objective. I had Victor make me the finest tools that would enable me to do the work in the way it needed to be done. In that way I brought to reality what I wanted to create, what had never been before.

“I think that magic can work this way as well. I believe that such original ideas played a part in how weapons were once created out of people. After all, when such weapons were made, they were effective in large part because they were original, because they had never been thought of or seen before. In many instances, the other side in the war then had to work to create entirely new things out of magic that were able to counter those weapons. In many cases they were able to render the weapon obsolete by creating a countermagic, and then someone on the other side immediately went to work thinking up some new horror. If using magic creatively was not possible, then how did the wizards of old create weapons with it? You can’t say they simply got the knowledge from a book, or from past experience; where and how would the first such weapons have originated if not with an original idea? Someone had to have used magic creatively in the first place.

“I think that Jagang is again doing this very thing with magic. He has studied some of what was done in the great war, what weapons were created, and learned from that. He sometimes may direct that what was once created to be created again, such as with Nicholas, but in other instances I think he imagines what has never been, what goes beyond what has been done before, and has it brought to reality by those who know how to use magic to build what he wants.

“In these acts of creation it isn’t the work that is the most remarkable aspect, but the idea and vision that makes the labor effective, just as carpenters and bricklayers who built houses and barns can be employed to construct a palace. It wasn’t so much their labor that was remarkable in the creation of palaces, but the act of insight and creation that gave it direction.”

Nicci nodded ever so slightly in concentration as she weighed his words. “I can see that your notion isn’t at all the wild idea I thought it was at first. This is a line of reasoning that I’ve never encountered. I’ll have to think about the possibilities. You may be the first to really understand the mechanism behind Jagang’s scheme—or, for that matter, behind the creations of wizards in ancient times. This would explain a great many things that have nagged at me over the years.”

Nicci’s words were spoken with intellectual respect for a concept new to her, but a concept she fully grasped. No one who had ever spoken to Richard about magic had ever treated his ideas with such an insightful understanding. He felt as if this was the first time anyone had truly understood what he saw.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve had to deal with Jagang’s creations. Like I said, Nicholas was a great deal of trouble.”

In the dim light, Nicci studied his face for a moment.

“Richard, from what I was able to find out,” she said in a soft voice, “Nicholas was not Jagang’s actual goal. Nicholas was merely practice.”

“Practice!” Richard thumped his head back against the wall. “I don’t know, Nicci. I’m not so sure about that. Nicholas the Slide was a formidable creation and one nasty piece of work. You don’t know the trouble he caused us.”

Nicci shrugged. “You defeated him.”

Richard blinked in astonishment. “You make it sound like he was just a bump in the road. He wasn’t. I’m telling you, he was a frightening creation who nearly killed us.”

Nicci slowly shook her head. “And I’m telling you, as formidable as he may have been, Nicholas was not what Jagang was after. You told me not to sell the dream walker short—don’t you now do that same thing. He never thought Nicholas was fully your match.

“What you say about the process of imagination in creating new things actually makes sense, especially in this instance. It may even explain a few things. From the little I was able to learn, I believe that from the beginning Nicholas was only meant to expand the skills of the Sisters that Jagang had assigned to the task of creating weapons. Nicholas was not Jagang’s objective, but simply practice on the way to that objective.

“With his dwindling number of Sisters that practice has gained a new urgency. Even so, he apparently has enough Sisters for the work of creating his weapons.”

>

Richard felt goose bumps tingling up his arms as he began to realize the full implications of what Nicci was telling him.

“You mean to say that in creating Nicholas, it was like Jagang was just having his carpenters build a house as practice before he sends them on to build something vastly more complicated, like a palace?”

Nicci looked up at him and smiled. “Yes, that’s it exactly.”

“But he sent Nicholas with troops to govern a land as well as to capture us.”

“A mere matter of convenience. Jagang had instilled in Nicholas a need to hunt you, but only as part of the testing for his greater goals. He didn’t really expect the Slide to be able to accomplish his transcendent ambitions. The emperor may hate you for impeding his progress in conquering the New World, he may consider you unworthy as an opponent, and he may deem you an immoral heathen worthy only of death, but he’s smart enough to give you credit for your ability. It’s like when you said that you sent that captured soldier to assassinate Jagang. You didn’t really expect that lone soldier to succeed at the difficult task of assassinating a well-guarded emperor, but the soldier was of no other value to you and since you thought that there was at least a chance that he might accomplish something, you might as well send him on the mission while you worked on far better ideas that you expected to have a more reasonable chance of success. And if the soldier was killed, then that was fine by you because he only got what was coming to him anyway.

“Nicholas was like that. He was a conjured creation, practice along the path to something altogether superior. In the scheme of things, Nicholas wasn’t all that valuable to Jagang, so Jagang, instead of having him killed, used him. If Nicholas succeeded, then Jagang would be ahead of the game, and if you killed him, then you did him a service.”

Richard ran his hand back over his hair. He felt overwhelmed at the implications. He had criticized Nicci for not being open to seeing the larger picture, and here he had just been guilty of doing the same thing.