“Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”
Richard put his feelings about the devotion out of his mind. He felt like he was juggling a thousand thoughts all at once. He didn’t know what to do. There were so many different questions overwhelming him all at once that he just couldn’t seem to organize the mountain of problems into meaningful order. He didn’t know where to start that arduous climb.
He felt inadequate to be the Master Rahl.
He did believe, though, that the seemingly endless problems were connected, that they were all pieces of the same puzzle, and that if he could just figure out what was at the core of what was bothering him, it would all begin to fit together.
He just needed a few years to figure it out. He would be lucky to have a few hours.
Once again he forced his mind back to the relevant issues. Baraccus had left him a message in a three-thousand-year-old book, a rule unwritten, and Richard didn’t know what it meant. Now that he once again had access to his gift, he did at least now recall all of The Book of Counted Shadows, but it was most likely a false copy. Jagang had the original. Jagang had the boxes.
Why was a Confessor central in it all? Was it because a Confessor was central to the boxes of Orden if one of the copies of The Book of Counted Shadows was used? Or was he just imagining it? Was he just thinking that a Confessor was central because Kahlan was a Confessor and she was central in his life?
Just the thought of Kahlan sent his mind off track and racked him with anguish. Having to keep from telling her all the things he so desperately wanted to tell her was crushing his heart. Having to keep from taking her in his arms and kissing her was killing him. He just wanted to hold her tight.
But he knew that if he destroyed the sterile field of her mind, then there was no chance for the power of Orden to restore her to who she was. He had to remain distant and vague.
What terrified him the most was the thought that it was too late, that Samuel had already tainted that sterile field.
He could feel Kahlan walking beside him. He recognized the sound of her footsteps, the scent of her, the presence of her. One instant he was overjoyed that he had her back, and the next he was panicked that he was going to lose her.
He had to stop letting his mind drift to the problem and focus instead on the solution. He had to find the answer.
If there really was an answer.
“Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”
All these people would die unless he helped them by finding that answer. But how in the world was he to do that?
He returned to what he thought had to be the heart of the solution. He would need to open the boxes of Orden if he was to reverse all the damage done—that was all there was to it. Unless he did that the world of life, damaged by the Chainfire event and its subsequent taint, would spiral out of control. Unless he opened the right box Jagang’s Sisters would. But he didn’t know how to open the boxes and besides he didn’t have control of them, Jagang did.
Richard reminded himself that at least he had accomplished a number of the steps he had to accomplish if he was to have a chance to open the right box. At least he had been successful in his journey through the veil. And he had been successful in returning what he had brought back in the manner required. That in itself had been a puzzle, but he had found the solution. Now Orden was needed to actually restore it.
Kahlan had accepted the carving he did of Spirit.
He reminded himself that he also had the Confessor that was needed.
Confessor. Something was wrong about that, but he couldn’t figure out what it could be.
But he did know that there was only one way to get close to the boxes of Orden. That was his only chance—if he could figure it out before Sister Ulicia opened one of them.
When he heard the whisper of hurried footsteps he looked up and saw Verna and Nathan rushing toward him. Cara and General Meiffert were close on their heels. Zedd, Tom, and Rikka were close on Richard’s.
At a bridge covered in beautifully veined green marble overlooking a devotion square and a conjunction of wide halls, Richard came to a halt as Verna and Nathan rushed up. The people below were all on their knees, bent forward with their foreheads to the tile as they chanted. They were unaware of what he was about to do.
“Richard!” Verna gasped, catching her breath.
“Glad to see you back,” Nathan said to Richard with an additional nod to Zedd.
“Six will no longer be a problem,” Zedd told the prophet.
Nathan let out a sigh. “One less hornet, but I’m afraid that there’s no shortage of them.”
Verna, ignoring the tall wizard beside her, waved her journey book urgently at Richard. “Jagang says that it’s the new moon. He demands your answer. He says that if he doesn’t get that answer then you know the consequences.”
Richard glanced at Nathan. The prophet looked more than grim. Cara and General Meiffert looked tense as well. They were the helpless guardians of a place with tens of thousands of people who were all on the verge of being slaughtered.
Soft chanting drifted up from below.
“Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”
Richard rubbed his fingertips on his forehead as he swallowed back the lump rising in his throat. He had no choice—for more reasons than the one.
He looked up at Verna with forbidding finality. “Tell Jagang that I agree to his terms.”
Verna’s face went scarlet. “You agree?”
“What are you talking about?” Kahlan, at his right, asked. Richard was distantly heartened to hear the tone of awakened authority in her voice. But he ignored her and directed himself to Verna.
With great effort, Richard controlled his voice. “Tell him that I have decided to give them what they want. I agree to his terms.”
“Are you serious?” Verna was bottled rage. “You want me to tell him that we surrender?”
“Yes.”
“What!” Kahlan said, seizing a fistful of his shirtsleeve to pull him around toward her. “You can’t surrender to him.”
“I have to. It’s the only way I have to keep all those people down there from being tortured and killed. If I surrender the palace he will allow them to live.”
“And you’re going to take Jagang’s word for that?” Kahlan demanded.
“I have no choice. This is the only way.”
“You brought me back here to turn me over to that monster?” Kahlan’s green eyes brimmed with tears born of anger and hurt. “Is that why you wanted to find me?”
Richard looked away. He would have given just about anything to tell her how much he really loved her. If he was to go to his death, he at least would want her to know his true feelings and not think that he had married her out of a duty to an arrangement and was now using her as treasure to be turned over in a surrender. It was crushing his heart that she thought that.
But he had no choice. If he
corrupted the sterile field then the Kahlan that he knew would be forever lost—if it hadn’t already been corrupted by Samuel, if she wasn’t already lost to him.
Richard turned his attention elsewhere. “Where’s Nicci?” he asked Nathan.
“Locked up like you told me to do until Jagang can collect her.”
Kahlan rounded on him. “And now you’re also giving the woman you love over to—”
Richard lifted a hand, commanding silence.
He unclenched his jaw as he turned to Verna. “Do as I say.” His tone of voice made it clear that it was an order not to be discussed, much less defied.
As everyone stood in stunned silence, Richard started away. “I will be in the Garden of Life, waiting.”
He needed to think.
Only Kahlan followed him.
Ever-waning daylight slanted in through the leaded glass overhead. This would be the night of the new moon—the darkest night of the month. Richard had heard it said that such darkness brought the world of life closer to the underworld.
In the hours waiting for Jagang to make it up the plateau and to the Garden of Life, Richard had paced the whole time, deep in thought, thinking about those two worlds—the world of life and the world of the dead.
There was something about the whole thing that didn’t make sense to him. He went through The Book of Counted Shadows that he had memorized, knowing that there was probably some flaw in it that would make it impossible to use it to open the power of Orden, but also knowing that the elements would still be largely true, if out of order. It would take nothing more than changing a single detail to have made it a false copy. He knew that there was a flaw in the copy he had memorized, but he didn’t know how to identify the specific deviation from the original.
Jagang had the original. He wouldn’t have to worry about there being errors in his book. Sister Ulicia, with Jagang in her mind the whole time, would be reading the original directly, so they would be using the actual, true version of the book. Therefore, they wouldn’t need a Confessor.