Chainfire (Sword of Truth 9)

“What are you talking about?”

“What if all of you are right and there really isn’t any Kahlan? What if I’m crazy? Even you think I am. I need to know what Shota can tell me. If I’m wrong about everything I believe, then what good is a sword going to do a crazy man? If all of you are right that I’m delusional, then what good can I do anyone else? What good am I to anyone if I’m crazy? What good am I at all?”

Her eyes looked liquid. “You’re not crazy.”

“No? Then you believe there really is a woman named Kahlan and I’m married to her?” When she didn’t answer, he pulled her other hand off his wrist. “I didn’t think so.”

Cara turned angrily to Shota, pointing with her Agiel. “You can’t take his sword! It isn’t fair and you know it! You’re taking advantage of his condition. You can’t take his sword!”

“The price I asked is but a trifling…. The sword isn’t even his. It never was.”

Shota beckoned with a finger. Samuel, watching from the shadows, scurried toward them through the trees.

Cara stepped between Richard and Shota. “It was given to Lord Rahl by the First Wizard. Lord Rahl was named to the post of Seeker and given the Sword of Truth. It’s his!”

“And where do you suppose the First Wizard got the sword in the first place?” Shota pointed a finger tipped with a long red-lacquered nail downward at the ground. “He got it here. He came here, into my home, and stole it. That’s where Zedd got the sword.

“Richard doesn’t carry it by right, but by theft. Giving it back to its rightful owner is a small penance to pay for what he wants to know.”

Cara had a dangerous look in her eyes as she lifted her Agiel. Richard gently grasped her wrist and lowered her arm before she started something that he knew could quickly turn ugly. He wasn’t sure of the results of such a confrontation, but he dared not risk losing what Shota could tell him…or risk losing Cara.

“I’m doing as I must,” he told Cara in a calm voice. “Don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”

Richard had seen Cara in every sort of mood imaginable. He’d seen her happy, sad, disheartened, resolved, determined, and enraged, but until that moment he had never seen her anger focused so intently, deliberately, so directly at him.

And then he had a sudden vision of her taken by cruel anger once before, a long time ago.

He couldn’t afford to suffer the distraction of any such memory right then and shoved it out of his mind. This was about Kahlan, and about the future, not about the past.

Richard pulled the baldric off over his head and gathered it together with the scabbard. Samuel, not far behind his mistress’s skirts, stood quietly watching, his greedy eyes riveted on the wire-wound hilt.

Holding the gleaming gold and silver scabbard in both hands, bundled together with the ancient, tooled leather baldric, Richard lifted it out to Shota.

She made a move to take it. “The sword belongs to Samuel, my loyal companion.” She smiled triumphantly. “Give it to him.”

Richard stood frozen. He couldn’t let Samuel have the Sword of Truth. He just couldn’t.

He wondered then just what he thought Shota would want with the sword if not to give it to Samuel. He guessed that he had been trying not to think of what it really meant to hand it over to Shota.

“But the sword made him like that. Zedd told me that the sword’s magic did that to him, turned him into what he is now.”

“And when he has back what belongs to him, he will be who he once was, before it was stolen from him by your grandfather.”

Richard knew Samuel’s character. As far as Richard was concerned, Samuel was capable of anything, including murder. Richard could hardly give something so dangerous as the Sword of Truth to someone like that.

Too many people like Samuel had carried the sword, had fought over it, stolen it from one another, sold it to the highest bidder, who then became a Seeker whose services were for sale to any loathsome cause that could pay the price. In the shadows it passed from hand to hand, used for vile and violent purposes. By the time Zedd had finally gotten the Sword of Truth back and eventually given it to Richard, the Seeker had become an object of scorn and contempt, seen as nothing more than a criminal, and a dangerous one at that.

If he gave the sword to Samuel, it would be that way again. It would start all over again.

But if he didn’t, then Richard had no chance of ever stopping the far greater threat very likely loose in the world, or of ever seeing Kahlan again. While Kahlan was of paramount importance to him, personally, he was convinced that her disappearance augured an ominous menace far more sinister, with potential harm on a scale he feared to contemplate.

His responsibility as the Seeker of Truth was to the truth, not to the Sword of Truth.

Samuel inched closer, his eyes on the sword, his arms reaching, his palms held up, waiting.

“Mine, gimme,” Samuel growled impatiently, his hateful eyes glaring.

Richard lifted his head to look at Shota. She folded her arms, as if to say that this was his last chance. This was the last chance Richard had of ever finding the truth.

If he had known of any other way to find a solution, no matter how remote that chance might be, he would have taken the sword back and taken that chance instead. But he couldn’t lose this chance, lose what information Shota had. There was nothing else to do.

With trembling hands, Richard lifted the sword out.

Samuel, unwilling to wait the final seconds until it reached him, lunged and snatched the sword away, finally clutching the coveted object to his breast.

The instant he had it, a strange look came over his face. He glanced up into Richard’s eyes, his own wide with wonder, his mouth hanging agape. Richard couldn’t imagine what Samuel was seeing as a result of having his hands on the Sword of Truth. Richard thought that perhaps he was simply awestruck to realize that he actually did have it again.

He suddenly skittered away, swiftly disappearing into the trees. The Sword of Truth was once again among the shadows.

Richard felt naked, and stunned. He stared off in the direction Samuel had gone. He wished now that he had killed Shota’s companion the first time Samuel had attacked him. Samuel had attacked Richard more than once. Richard had let those chances slip away.

He turned a harsh glare on Shota. “If he harms anyone, it will be on your head.”

“I am not the one who gave him the sword. You did so of your own free will. I did not twist your arm or use my powers to force you. Do not try to shed responsibility for your own choices and actions.”

“And I am not responsible for his actions. If he harms anyone, I will see to it that this time he pays for his crimes.”

Shota glanced off among the trees dotting the sweep of grass. “There is no one here for him to harm. He has his sword. He is happy, now.”

Richard seriously doubted that.

With quiet fury, he turned his attention to the matter at hand. He didn’t want to hear any of her excuses so he came right to the point.

“You have your payment.”

She stared at him a long time, her face unreadable. Finally, in a quiet voice, she spoke a single word.

“Chainfire.”

She turned and started toward the road.

Richard seized her arm and turned her back. “What?”

“You wanted what I know that can help you find the truth. I have given it to you: Chainfire.”

Richard was incredulous. “Chainfire? What does that mean?”

Shota shrugged. “I have no idea. I only know that it is what you need to know to find the truth of all this.”

“What do you mean, you have no idea? You can’t just tell me some word I never heard of and then leave. That’s not a fair trade for what I’ve given you.”

“Nonetheless, that is the agreement you made, and I have upheld my end of the bargain.”

“You have to tell me what it means.”