Chainfire (Sword of Truth 9)

“Lord Rahl, what is it?” Cara asked.

“You look like you just saw the ghost of your father,” Nicci said.

“No, this is worse,” Richard told her, finally looking up. “I understand. I know what’s going on.”

He ran to the steps down into his tomb. “Sliph! We need to travel!”

“But Richard, you have come to help me cast the dreams so that the evil people will not come here.”

“Look, I have to leave. Right now.”

“Lord Rahl has already helped us as much as he can for now,” her grandfather said as he put an arm around her slender shoulders. “If he can, he will return to us.”

“That’s right,” Richard said, “if I can I’ll return. Thank you, Jillian, for helping me. You can’t begin to imagine what you have done this day. Tell your people to stay away from that vine.”

“Richard,” Nicci said, “what’s gotten into you?”

He seized Nicci’s dress at her shoulder, and Cara’s arm.

“We have to get to the People’s Palace. Now.”

“Why? What’s happening? What did you find?”

Richard showed her the sprig of vine before stuffing it in a pocket and grabbing her arm again and forcing her down the steps.

“This is a snake vine. It only grows when the boxes of Orden have been put in play.”

“But the boxes of Orden are safe in the palace,” Cara protested.

“They’re not safe any longer. Those Sisters have put the magic of Orden in play. Sliph! We need to travel to the People’s Palace.”

“Come, we will travel.”

Nicci was still fighting him as he pulled her along. “Richard, I don’t see what this has to do with your dream of this woman.”

Richard slapped the metal plate, starting the ceiling of the tomb closing. “Good bye, Jillian. Thank you. I will return someday.”

As she waved, he snatched up his bow and quiver.

He turned to Nicci. “They need Kahlan. She’s the last living Confessor. They put the boxes of Orden in play. They need the book I have memorized. The first thing it says is ‘Verification of the truth of the words of the Book of Counted Shadows, if spoken by another, rather than read by the one who commands the boxes, can only be insured by the use of a Confessor….’”

The ceiling finished closing. In the distance, Richard could hear Jillian call, “Good-bye, Richard. Safe journey.”

“Richard, this is crazy. It’s just—”

“Now is not the time to argue with me.”

She knew by his tone of voice that he meant it.

He climbed up on the wall and hoisted both women up.

“Here, wait,” Nicci said as she opened the pack. “You had better keep this safe.” She stuffed Chainfire down inside and tied the flap down tight.

“Any idea what Chainfire is about?” he asked.

Her blue eyes gazed into his. “From what I was able to tell from the tiny bit I saw in the beginning, it’s a theoretical formula for conjuring things that have the potential to unravel existence.”

“Unravel existence?” Cara asked. “What does that mean?”

“I’m not exactly sure. But it seems to be a discussion of a theory of a specific magic that if ever initiated could potentially destroy the world of life.”

“Why in the world would they need that?” Richard asked. “They have the magic of Orden, now.”

Nicci didn’t answer. She didn’t believe his theory; it involved Kahlan.

“Sliph, now, please. Take us to the People’s Palace.”

The silver arm swept them up. “Come, we will travel.”

Just before they plunged into the silvery froth, Nicci and Cara each seized one of his hands.

Chapter 63

Nicci had hardly gotten her bearings, hardly recognized that they were in a marble room, hardly let the sliph out of her lungs and pulled in a desperate gasp of air, when Richard was already pulling her up over the wall by the hand.

Despite everything, she was still able, in some dim part of her mind, to thrill at holding his hand, for whatever reason.

She had thought that while in the sliph traveling to the People’s Palace, that she would be able to give thought to Richard’s strange new twist of finding a bit of a vine and leaping to the conclusion that the boxes of Orden were in play—all in an attempt to prove that Kahlan was real.

The room they were in was shielded. Richard pulled her and Cara through the powerful shield. They ran up a marble hall and out a double silver door with a lake embossed into the metal.

“I know this place,” Cara said. “I know where we are.”

“Good,” Richard said, “then you lead the way. And hurry.”

There were times when Nicci almost wished that she had gone along with Zedd, Ann, and Nathan’s plan to purge him of his memory of Kahlan.

Except for one thing. She had tried the theory on one of Jagang’s men back in Caska. She had tried to use Subtractive Magic to eliminate the man’s memory of the emperor. It sounded simple enough. She had done just as the three had wanted Nicci to do to Richard.

There had only been one problem.

It had killed the man. Killed him in a most horrifying fashion.

When she thought about how she had almost done that to Richard, how for a time she had let them talk her into it and had been committed to doing it, she had gotten so weak and dizzy that she had to sit down on the ground next to the dead soldier. Cara had thought Nicci had been about to pass out. The idea of what she had almost done left her shaking for an hour.

“Here,” Cara said as she led them up stairs that emptied into a broad corridor with parts of the roof glassed.

The light flooding in was reddish, so it was either almost sunset or just after dawn, Nicci didn’t know which. It was a disorienting feeling not to know if it was day or night.

The halls were filled with people. Many of them stopped to stare at the three people running along the corridor. Guards also noticed and came running, hands to weapons, until they saw Cara in her red leather outfit. Many of the people recognized Richard and dropped to a knee, bowing as he ran past. He didn’t slow to acknowledge them.

They went up a dizzying array of passages, over bridges, along balconies, between columns, and through rooms. Intermittently they ran up stairs. Occasionally Cara took them through servic

e halls, undoubtedly as shortcuts.

Nicci took note of how magnificent the palace was, how remarkably beautiful. The patterned stone floors were laid with rare precision. There were grand statues—none as remarkable as the statue Richard had carved, but grand nonetheless. She saw a tapestry that was larger than any she had seen in her life. It depicted a sprawling battle and must have had several hundred horses in it.

“This way,” Cara said, pointing down a hall as she rushed toward it.

As they came around the corner, Cara crossed over to the other side of the passageway as she ran down it. Nicci, pulled along by her hand, would have liked to have discussed a number of things, to have asked some important and pointed questions, but it was all she could do to get her breath as she ran. Running was not something she really ever did until she met Richard.

Cara slid to slow down as she came to a pair of carved mahogany doors. Nicci was revolted to see the snakes carved into them. Without pause, Richard seized one of the door handles, a bronze skull, and yanked the door open.

Inside the quiet, carpeted room, four guards immediately sprang to block Richard’s path. They saw Cara, and looked at Richard again, uncertain.

“Lord Rahl?” One asked.

“That’s right,” Cara snapped. “Now, get out of the way.”

The men immediately pulled back, each putting a fist to their hearts.

“Has anything happened recently?” Richard asked as he caught his breath.

“Happened?”

“Intruders? Has anyone slipped in this way?”

The man snorted a laugh. “Hardly, Lord Rahl. We’d know if that happened and we’d not allow it.”

Richard nodded his thanks and raced to the marble stairs, nearly pulling Nicci’s arm out of the socket in the process. As they ran up the steps, Nicci thought that her legs might simply quit. Her muscles were so exhausted from the long run up through the palace that she could hardly make them go on, but she had to, for Richard.

At the top of the stairs, soldiers were running toward them, crossbows loaded with red-fletched arrows at the ready. They didn’t know it was the Lord Rahl. They thought someone was trying to get into the restricted area. Nicci hoped that someone got hold of their senses before one of the men got careless.