Chainfire (Sword of Truth 9)

“But she wasn’t buried there! She wasn’t! It says that—‘she is not here’—for a reason.”

“Then who is buried in her grave?” Zedd asked.

Richard went still for a moment.

“No one,” he finally said, his gaze wandering off as he thought. “Mistress Sanderholt—the cook at the palace—she was fooled by your death spell like everyone else. When I finally got here she told me that you stood there on the platform while Kahlan was beheaded—she was in mourning over it and terribly upset—but I realized that you wouldn’t do such a thing and so it had to be one of your tricks. You told me that—remember? Sometimes the best magic is just a trick.”

Zedd nodded. “That part is true enough.”

“Mistress Sanderholt told me that Kahlan’s body had been burned in a funeral pyre, the whole thing supervised by the First Wizard himself. She said that Kahlan’s ashes were then buried before that immense stone marker. Mistress Sanderholt even took me out to the secluded courtyard beside the palace where Confessors are buried. She showed me the grave. I was horrified. I thought it was her, that she was dead, until I figured out the message carved in the stone—the message the two of you left for me to find.”

Richard gripped his grandfather’s shoulders again. “Do you see? It was just a trick to throw our enemies off her trail. She wasn’t really dead. She wasn’t really buried there. Nothing is buried there, except maybe some ashes.”

Nicci thought that it was rather convenient that Richard imagined her being cremated in his story of the death-spell bluff so that all that remained were ashes that couldn’t be identified. He always came up with something that to his mind logically explained the lack of evidence. Nicci didn’t know if Confessors really were cremated, but if they were, that would only provide him with another useful pretext to prop up his story so that he could continue to deny that it was her. They would again have no way to prove otherwise.

Unless, of course, he was dreaming up the funeral pyre part of his story and Confessors weren’t ordinarily cremated.

“And so you say that you went there?” Zedd asked. “Down to where the gravestone stands?”

“Yes, and then Denna came—”

“Denna was dead,” Cara said, interrupting for the first time. “You killed her in order to escape from her at the People’s Palace. She couldn’t have been there…unless of course she appeared as a spirit.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Richard said, turning to Cara. “She did. She came as a spirit and took me to a place between worlds so that I could be with Kahlan there.”

Cara’s eyes briefly turned to the wizard. Her incredulity was impossible for her to mask so she looked away from Richard and occupied herself with scratching the back of her neck.

Nicci wanted to scream. His story grew more insanely convoluted by the moment. She remembered the Prelate once teaching Nicci as a novice how the seed of lies, once planted, only grew more tangled and out of control over time.

Zedd came up from behind and gently grasped Richard’s shoulders.

“Come on, my boy. I think you need to get some rest and then afterwards we can—”

“No!” Richard cried out as he twisted away. “I’m not imagining it! I’m not making it up!”

Nicci knew he was doing just that. In a certain sense, it was remarkable the way he was able, on the spot, to weave new events, based on his original delusion, to continually manage to escape the trap of the truth.

But he could not escape it forever. There was the matter of the true Mother Confessor buried in the grave and that was all too real—unless it turned out that the Midlands actually did cremate their Confessors, in which case Richard would be able to continue to hobble along, clinging to his dream for a little while longer, until the next problem cropped up. Sooner or later, though, something was going to shatter those dreams.

Zedd tried again. “Richard, you’re tired. You look like you’ve been living on a horse for—”

“I can prove it,” Richard said in calm defiance.

Everyone went quiet.

“You don’t believe me, I know. None of you do—but I can prove it.”

“What do you mean?” Zedd asked.

“Come on. Come with me down to the gravestone.”

“Richard, I told you, the gravestone very well could say what you said you remember, but that proves nothing. It’s a common enough sentiment to express on a gravestone.”

“Do they typically burn the bodies of the Mother Confessor on a funeral pyre? Or was that just part of your trick so that you wouldn’t have to produce her body at the funeral when she was supposedly buried.”

Zedd was beginning to look more than just a little indignant. “When I used to live here the bodies of Confessors were never desecrated. The Mother Confessor was placed in a silver-clad coffin in her white dress and the people were allowed to view her one last time, to say their farewells, before she was buried.”

Richard glared at his grandfather, at Cara, and finally at Nicci. “Good. If I have to dig up the grave and prove to all of you that there is nothing buried under the gravestone, then that’s what I will do. We need to get this settled so that we can move on to the solution to what’s happening. In order to do that, I need you all to believe me.”

Zedd spread his hands. “Richard, that isn’t necessary.”

“Yes it is! It is necessary! I want my life back!”

No one offered an argument.

“Zedd, have I ever told you a malicious lie?”

“No, my boy, you never have.”

“I’m not lying now.”

“Richard,” Nicci said, “no one is saying that you’re lying, only that you’re suffering the unfortunate effects of delirium induced by an injury. It’s not your fault. We all know you aren’t doing this deliberately.”

He turned to his grandfather. “Zedd, don’t you see? Think about it. Something is going wrong in the world. Something is terribly wrong. For some reason that I haven’t been able to figure out, I’m the only one who is aware of it. I’m the only one who remembers Kahlan. There has to be something behind this. Something wicked. Maybe Jagang is responsible.”

“Jagang had the beast created to come after you,” Nicci said. “He put everything into that effort. He wouldn’t need to do anything else. Besides, with the beast already stalking you, what purpose would it serve?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers, but I know the truth of part of it.”

“And how can it be that you alone know the truth and everyone else is wrong, that everyone’s memory but yours has failed them?” Zedd asked.

“I don’t know the answer to that, either, but I can prove what I’m telling you. I can show you the grave. Come on.”

“I told you, Richard, the marker says common words.”

Richard’s expression turned dangerous. “Then we will dig up the grave so that you can all see that it’s empty and that I’m not crazy.”

Zedd lifted a hand toward the still open door. “But it will be dark soon. What’s more, it’s going to rain.”

Richard turned back from the doorway. “We have an extra horse. We can still make it down there while we have daylight. If we need to, we can use lanterns. If I must, I will dig in the dark. This is more important than worrying about a little rain or the lack of light. I need to get this over—now—so that we can get on to solving the very real problem and so that I can find Kahlan before it’s too late. Let’s go.”

Zedd gestured heatedly. “Richard, this is—”

“Let him do as he asks,” Nicci said, interrupting, drawing all eyes. “We’ve all heard enough. This is important to him. We must allow him to do as he thinks he must. It’s the only chance we have to finally settle the matter.”

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…”