But by their reactions, Nicci realized that these men were highly trained and not prone to shooting arrows before they were sure of their target. Lucky for them, because she would have been faster.
“Commander General Trimack?” Richard asked an officer pushing his way through the ring of steel that had surrounded them.
The man stiffened and clapped a fist to his heart. “Lord Rahl!” He spotted the Mord-Sith. “Cara?”
Cara nodded in greeting.
Richard clasped arms with the man. “General, someone has gotten in here. They’ve taken the boxes in the Garden of Life.”
The general was momentarily struck speechless. “What? Lord Rahl, that’s not possible. You have to be mistaken. No one could get past us without our knowing it. It’s been peaceful as can be up here for ages. Why, we’ve only had one visitor.”
“Visitor? Who?”
“The Prelate. Verna. It was a while back. She was in the palace checking on something about books of magic, she said. She said that as long as she was here, she wanted to have a look to make sure the boxes were safe.”
“So you let her go in there?”
The general looked a bit indignant. A long scar stood out white when his face went red.
“No, Lord Rahl. I wouldn’t let her go in there. What we ended up doing was opening the doors so she could look in to see that everything was safe.”
“Look in?”
“That’s right. We surrounded her with men, all pointing these special arrows at her—arrows Nathan Rahl found for us that will stop even the gifted. We had her ringed in steel. The poor woman looked like a pincushion about to happen.”
Men all around nodded at the general’s words.
“She looked in the garden and said she was relieved to see that everything was fine. I took a look myself and saw the three black boxes sitting on the stone slab across the room. But I never let the woman set foot beyond the doors, I swear.”
Richard heaved a sigh. “And that’s it? No one else has opened those doors?”
“No, Lord Rahl. No one else has even been up here but my men. No one. We don’t let anyone even use these halls around the Garden of Life. As you may recall, you were rather insistent about it the last time you were here.”
Richard nodded, thinking. He looked up. “Well, let’s go have a look.”
The men, all jangling with weapons and armor, followed the the surprise visitors down the polished granite hall until they reached two huge, gold covered doors.
Without waiting for someone else to do it, Richard pulled one of the heavy doors open and started into the room. The soldiers paused at the doors. This was apparently sacred ground, a sanctuary for the master of the palace alone, and unless invited by the Lord Rahl, none of them would enter. Richard didn’t invite them as he rushed off on his own.
Despite how tired she was, Nicci hurried after him as he made his way down a path among beds of flowers. Overhead, through a glassed roof, she could see that the sky had turned to a darker purple, so she knew it was night, rather than dawn.
Just like Richard, Nicci paid little attention to the vine covered walls, or the trees, or all the other things growing all around. The garden was a magnificent place, to be sure, but her gaze was riveted on the stone altar she saw in the distance. She didn’t see any of the three boxes that were supposed to be there. There was something else standing on the slab of granite, but she couldn’t tell what it was.
By the way Richard’s chest was heaving, he did know what was standing there.
They crossed a ring of grass, and the open dirt. In the dirt, Richard stopped cold in mid-stride and stared down at the ground.
“Lord Rahl,” Cara asked, “what is it?”
“Her tracks,” he whispered. “I recognize them. These aren’t covered by magic. She was here alone.” He gestured to the dirt. “Two sets. She was in here twice.” He looked back at the grass, following what he could see that they couldn’t. “She was on her knees there, in the grass.”
He took off and ran the rest of the way to the stone altar. Nicci and Cara sprang into a run to keep up with him.
When they reached the slab of granite, Nicci knew at last what it was that stood there all alone.
It was the statue of the woman that had been carved in marble in Liberty Square in Altur’Rang. The original statue Richard had told them he had carved. The statue he said belonged to Kahlan. Nicci could see that there were bloody handprints all over it.
Richard picked up the carved wooden figure in trembling hands and drew it to his breast, gasping back a sob. Nicci thought that he might fall to the ground, but he didn’t.
When he had held it for a moment, he turned to them, tears running down his face. He held out to Cara and Nicci the statue of the proud figure, her head thrown back, her hands fisted at her sides.
“This is the statue I carved for Kahlan. This is Spirit. This is the statue I told you could not be in Altur’Rang because she had it with her. If they copied this statue in stone down in Altur’Rang in the Old World, then how did it get here?”
Nicci stared at it, her eyes wide, trying to reconcile what she was seeing. She couldn’t comprehend the contradiction. She remembered Richard trying to understand what he had seen at the grave site where the Mother Confessor was buried. Now she knew how he had felt.
“Richard, I don’t understand how that could have gotten here.”
“Kahlan left it here! She left it here for me to find! She took the boxes of Orden for the Sisters! Don’t you get it? Don’t you at last see the truth standing before you?”
Unable to say more, he pulled the statue back to his chest as if it were the most precious treasure in the world.
In that moment, seeing the pain trembling through him, Nicci wondered what it would be like to have him love her that much.
At the same time, despite her confusion, despite sadness for what she was seeing, for the pain he was so obviously in, she felt joy, joy that Richard had someone who meant that much to him, someone who could make him feel that way…even if she was imaginary. Nicci was not yet convinced that she wasn’t.
“Do you understand now?” he asked. “Do you two get it, now?”
Cara, looking as stunned as Nicci felt, shook her head. “No, Lord Rahl, I don’t understand.”
He lifted the small statue. “No one remembers her. She probably walked right past those men and they forgot her, just like you forgot all the thousands of times you’ve seen her. She’s all alone, in the hands of those four Sisters, and they made her come in here and get the boxes. Do you see the blood all over it? Her blood? You should understand that. Can you imagine how she feels, all alone, forgotten by everyone? She left this, probably hoping someone would see it and know she exists.”
He thrust it at Cara, then at Nicci. “Look at it! It’s covered in blood! There’s blood on the altar. There’s blood on the floor. There are her footprints. How do you think the boxes are gone and this is here? She was here.”
The indoor garden was dead silent. Nicci was so confused she didn’t know what to believe. She knew what she was seeing, but it didn’t seem possible.
“Do you believe me, now?” Richard asked them both.
Cara swallowed. “Lord Rahl, I believe what you are saying, but I still don’t remember her.”
When his raptor gaze slid to Nicci, she, too, swallowed at the power of that look.
“Richard, I don’t know what is going on. What you say is certainly powerful evidence, but, like Cara says, I still don’t remember her. I’m sorry, but I can’t lie to you and tell you what you want to hear just to make you happy. I’m telling you the truth. I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you don’t,” he said with sudden, quiet, remarkable sympathy. “It’s what I’ve been telling you. Something terrible is happening. No one remembers her. Anything that could cause such an event is undoubtedly powerful and extremely dangerous conjuring, able to be engendered only by the most pow
erful people who have command of both sides of the gift. Magic so dangerous that it would be hidden in a book buried in a catacomb behind shields where the wizards who put it there hoped no one would ever find it.”
“Chainfire,” Nicci breathed. “But from the brief bit I saw of it, this somehow has the power to undo the world of life.”
“What do the Sisters care?” Richard asked in a bitter voice. “They’ve already put the boxes of Orden in play. It is their intent to end life on behalf of the Keeper of the dead. You should understand that better than anyone.”
Nicci put a hand to her forehead. “Dear spirits, I think you may be right.” She couldn’t feel her fingertips. She was tingling all over with dread. “From the little bit I read, Chainfire sounds like it might be something along the lines of what Zedd, Ann, and Nathan wanted me to do to you—use Subtractive Magic to make you forget Kahlan. If what you say is true, then in a way, that might be what the Sisters did—they made everyone else forget her.”
Nicci looked up into his gray eyes, eyes she could lose herself in. She felt tears of fright run down her cheeks.
“Richard, I tried that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I tried what they wanted me to do to you. I tried it on one of Jagang’s men, back at Caska. Tried to make him forget Jagang. It was fatal. What if that’s what Chainfire does to everyone?”
Richard heaved an angry breath. “Come on.”
He marched out of the garden to a general and his guards waiting out in the polished granite hallway, huddled around the entrance to the Garden of Life.
“Lord Rahl,” the general said, “I don’t see the boxes any more.”
“They’ve been stolen.”