Chainfire (Sword of Truth 9)

ave him a familiar clap on the shoulder as he started away. “Well, my boy, when you arrived you weren’t much in the mood to listen to anything but what you were here about. Remember? You were rather insistent that you had trouble and you needed to talk to me about it. Since then you haven’t exactly been willing to talk. You’ve been rather…distracted.”

“I guess I was.” Richard caught his grandfather’s arm, halting him before he could get far. “Zedd, look, I need to tell you something about all of that, and about that night.”

“Like what, my boy?”

“I know that a contradiction cannot exist.”

“I never really thought you did, Richard.”

“But there was more to it that night. The rule most involved down there at the grave site was not the one you quoted. It may have seemed that way to you at the moment, but the rule I made a mistake about was another—the one that says in part that people can be made to believe a lie because they fear that it’s true. That’s what I was doing. I wasn’t believing a contradiction, I was believing a lie because I was so afraid it was true. The rule of noncontradiction is one of the ways I should have checked my assumptions. I didn’t, and in that I made a mistake.

“I understand what it must have looked like to you since you weren’t aware of everything that’s been happening, but that doesn’t mean I should have stopped looking for the truth out of a misplaced wish to make you happy, or out of fear of what you would think of me.”

He met Nicci’s gaze for a brief moment. “Nicci helped me see what I was doing wrong.”

He looked back at his grandfather. “I think you meant to show me that the rule you quoted is more, though. It also means you can’t hold contradictory values or goals. You can’t say, for instance, that honesty is a meaningful value, and at the same time lie to people. You can’t say that justice is your goal but refuse to hold the guilty responsible for their actions.

“At the heart of our struggle, the fact that contradictions can’t exist is why the Imperial Order’s regime is so ruinous. They hold up altruism as their highest purpose. Yet, out of their proclaimed selfless concern for one individual, they sacrifice another, soothing over the bloodletting by proclaiming that such a sacrifice is the moral duty of the sacrificial victim. It’s really nothing more than organized looting, a passion for the happiness of thieves and murderers without any concern for their victim. Attempts at goals that depend on such contradiction can only lead to widespread suffering and death. It’s the fraudulent advocacy of the right to life by embracing death as a means to achieve it.

“The rule you quoted means I can’t, like Jagang’s followers, say I want the truth and then, without checking my assumption, willingly believe a lie in its stead, even if out of fear. That’s the way I violated the rule you quoted. I should have sorted out what looked like contradictions and found the truth staring me in the face. That’s where I let myself down.”

“Are you saying that you now don’t believe that was Kahlan Amnell?” Zedd asked.

“Who says that corpse has to be the woman you think it is? There were no facts there to contradict my belief that it wasn’t her. I only believed there were out of fear that it was true. It wasn’t.”

Zedd took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “You’re stretching things mighty thin, Richard.”

“Am I? You wouldn’t be too pleased with my rationale if I said that there is no such thing as prophecy and held up the blank books as proof that your belief in the existence of prophecy is wrong. For you to believe that prophecy exists in the face of the fact that the supposed books of prophecy are blank is not a contradiction. It is a perplexing situation with insufficient information to as of yet explain the facts. You have no obligation to reach a conclusion or hold an opinion you don’t accept for other reasons without adequate information or before you have finished investigating.

“What kind of Seeker would I be if I did that? After all, it’s the mind of the man that makes him the Seeker, not the sword. The sword is merely a tool—you’re the one who told me that.

“In the case of Kahlan, there are still too many unanswered questions for me to be convinced that what we saw that rainy night is really the truth. Until it’s proved one way or another, I’m going to continue to look for the answers—for the truth—because I believe that what is going on is far more dangerous than anyone but me realizes, to say nothing of needing to find a person I love who needs my help.”

Zedd smiled in a grandfatherly way. “Fair enough, Richard, fair enough. But I expect you to prove it to me. I won’t take your word for it.”

Richard gave his grandfather a firm nod. “For starters, I think you have to admit it’s rather suspicious that prophecies revolving around Kahlan’s and my lives are missing. The memory of her is gone. Now the prophecies are gone that would have to contain reference to her. In both cases everyone’s memory of both real entities—the person and the prophecies referring to that real person—have been wiped away.

“Do you see what I’m getting at?”

Nicci was immeasurably relieved to see that Richard was thinking rationally again. She was also concerned that in a strange way, what he said actually did make some sense.

“Yes, my boy, I do see your point, but do you see that there is a problem with your theory?”

“What’s that?”

“We all remember you, now don’t we? And the prophecies about you are missing. As it turns out, in this case the problem with prophecy doesn’t have anything at all to do with what you are hoping will explain or prove the existence of Kahlan Amnell.”

“Why not?” Richard asked.

Zedd started up the steps. “It has to do with the nature of what I found out when I did my own investigation of the problem with the books of prophecy. I’m not without my own sense of curiosity, you know.”

“I know that, Zedd. But it could be connected,” Richard insisted as he walked along beside his grandfather.

Nicci hurried after him. Everyone else was forced to fall in behind.

“It might seem that way to you, my boy, but your speculation is flawed because all the facts just don’t fit your conclusion. You’re trying to wear boots that look good but are too small.” Zedd clapped Richard on the shoulder. “When we get to the library I’ll show you what I mean.”

“Who’s Kahlan?” Nathan asked.

“Someone who vanished and I haven’t found yet,” Richard said over his shoulder. “But I will.”

Richard paused and turned back to Ann and Nathan. “Do either of you know what Chainfire is?” They both shook their heads. “How about a viper with four heads, or the Deep Nothing?”

“I’m afraid not, Richard,” Ann said. “But as long as we’re on the subject of important matters, we do have other things we need to speak with you about.”

“After we see Zedd’s reference about prophecy,” Nathan said.

“Well, come on, then,” Zedd told them as he started off with a flourish of his simple robes.

Chapter 52

In the plush library, Richard stood behind Zedd, watching over his grandfather’s bony shoulder as he flipped open a thick book bound in tattered, tan leather. The room was rather dimly lit by a number of silver reflector lamps on all four sides of five thick mahogany posts standing in a line down the center of the room. They held up the leading edge of a balcony running the length of the room. Heavy, dark wooden tables with polished tops lined the center of the room down the line of posts. Wooden chairs were spaced around the outside of the tables. Opulent carpets with elaborately woven patterns felt soft and quiet underfoot. Perpendicular to the long walls on each side were aisles of shelves packed with books. Above, the balcony held closely spaced shelves filled with yet more volumes.

A gray-blue shaft of sunlight slanting in from the single window up high at the very end of the room lit the dust floating in the stuffy air. The freshly lit lamps added an oily smell. The room had a vaultlike quiet about it.

Cara and Rikka s

tood off by themselves in the darker area beneath the window at the end of the room, arms folded, heads together, talking in low voices. Nicci stood beside Zedd along one edge of a table lit in a glowing rectangle of sunlight while Ann and Nathan stood impatiently on the opposite side, waiting for Zedd’s explanation of how prophecy had vanished. Standing there, in the island of light, the rest of the room faded away into gloomy shadows around them.

“This book was compiled, I believe, sometime not long after the great war had ended,” Zedd told them as he tapped the open cover near the title: Continuum Ratios and Viability Predictions. “The gifted back then had discovered that, for whatever reason, fewer and fewer wizards were being born and the ones who were being born were not being born with both sides of the gift, as had almost always been the case before. What’s more, the ones who were being born with the gift were all being born with only the Additive side. Subtractive Magic was vanishing.”

Ann looked up from under her brow. “It is hardly a novice and a boy wizard standing before you, old man. We know all this. We have spent our lives devoted to this very problem. Get on with it.”

Zedd cleared his throat. “Yes, well, as you may know, this also meant that there were fewer and fewer prophets being born.”

“How remarkably fascinating,” Ann mocked. “I, for one, would never have guessed such a thing.”

Nathan irritably hushed her. “Go on, Zedd.”

Zedd pushed back his sleeves, briefly casting a scowl Ann’s way. “They realized that, with ever fewer wizards born to prophecy, the body of work of prophecy was of course going to cease to grow. In order to understand what the consequences of this might mean, they decided that they needed to do an intensive investigation of the entire subject of prophecy while they still could, while they still had prophets and other wizards with both sides of the gift.

“They approached the problem with the gravest of concern, realizing that with them, this might very well be mankind’s last opportunity to comprehend the future of prophecy itself, and to offer future generations an insight to understanding what these wizards were increasingly coming to believe would one day be seriously corrupted or even lost.”