Confessor (Sword of Truth 11)

“I had to act. I did the very best I could before it was too late.”

Zedd smiled and then gripped Richard’s shoulder, giving it a jostle. “You did good, my boy. You did good.”

“Yes, he certainly did,” Nicci said.

They all turned to see her making her way down the path, a big smile on her face.

“I just checked. The army of the Imperial Order is gone from the Azrith Plain. There are a few men left, those like Bruce, who want the chance to live free to try to make something of their lives.”

A cheer went up from all those in the room at hearing confirmation that the vast army of the Imperial Order was gone.

As soon as Nicci was close, Kahlan immediately embraced her. She finally pushed back and smiled knowingly at Nicci.

“Only someone who truly loves him would do all you did to get me back. You are more than a friend to us.”

“Richard taught me that to love someone means that you sometimes are fulfilled the most by putting their deepest desires above your own. I won’t deny loving him, Kahlan, but I still couldn’t be happier for both of you. To see you both together, and so much in love, brings me profound joy.”

Nicci turned her attention to Richard. She was looking serious to the point of disquiet. “I want to know how you could create a distant world on the other side of nowhere and send everyone there.”

“Well,” he began, “I read in the books on Ordenic theory that the gateway that was created could bend magic around in a way to counter Chainfire. That gave me an idea.”

He pulled the folded white cloth from his pocket. “See here? A drop of ink fell here.”

Zedd leaned in. “So what?”

Richard unfolded the white cloth. “Look,” he said, pointing to the two spots on opposite sides of the cloth. “When the cloth is folded, these two spots are touching. When you unfold it, they are on opposite ends of the cloth.

“The power of Orden is able to bend existence—in effect Orden is the bend in existence that is able to undo Chainfire and restore memory. So in effect, I used Orden’s power to create an impression of this world. Orden sent those people through the gateway to that other world that was actually right here in the same place, and then when I pulled the sword back out of the box and closed off the gateway, that other world is now on the other side of existence—just like this spot that was once touching the original is now on the other side of the cloth.”

“You mean,” Zedd said, deep in thought as he rubbed his chin, “Orden created a gateway that momentarily joined the two places in order to allow those who wished a world without magic to step across, and then it separated the worlds forever.”

“You’re a quick study,” Richard said, teasingly.

Zedd swatted Richard’s shoulder.

Richard took a few steps to lay a hand on Verna’s shoulder. “It was Warren who gave me the spark of the idea. It was he who first told me that the boxes of Orden were a gateway, a conduit through the underworld. I couldn’t have done it without Warren. He helped us all with his knowledge.”

Verna, her eyes brimming with tears, rubbed Richard’s back affectionately in appreciation.

Richard lifted the amulet he wore around his neck, the one once worn by wizard Baraccus.

“This amulet illustrates the dance with death. It’s about more than just fighting with the sword, or even about living life. This emblem also contains what I needed to go to the underworld, the world of the dead. This is part of what Baraccus intended for me to understand.

“But this amulet also represents that final movement of the dance with death, the killing thrust, that was needed to use the boxes of Orden.”

Kahlan circled her arm around his waist. “You have done wizard Baraccus proud, Richard.”

“You have done us all proud,” Zedd said.

Nicci’s blue eyes sparkled with her smile. “He certainly has.”

Zedd smiled in a manner Richard had not seen in a very long time. It was the old Zedd, Richard’s grandfather, advisor, and friend. Zedd spoke with quiet pride.

“What all those ancient wizards tried to do with the great barrier to the south, and what I, as First Wizard, tried to do with the boundaries, you actually did, Richard.

“You eliminated the threat to prevent them from ever harming us again, but you left life for the future. All those children of those people will have a chance to learn from the mistakes of their parents and, possibly, they will learn and grow and rise above hatred of others as a way of life. You have given them a world to live out their hatred of life, a world to take into a thousand years of darkness, but you have also given future generations the chance for a rebirth of mankind there, who hopefully will embrace life and the nobility of the human spirit.

“You have given both worlds the gift of life, and you did it through strength without hate.”

CHAPTER 64

A balmy breeze lifted Jennsen’s red hair as she stared at the ornate letter “R” engraved on the silver handle of her knife.

“Thinking about your brother?” Tom asked as he walked up to her, bringing her out of her memories.

She smiled up at her husband as she hugged him with one arm. “Yes, but only good thoughts.”

“I miss Lord Rahl, too.”

He pulled out his own knife to gaze at it. It was the twin of Jennsen’s. His had the same ornate letter “R” for the House of Rahl. Tom had spent the better portion of his young adult life as a member of the special forces that served covertly to protect the Lord Rahl. That was how he had earned the right to carry that knife.

Jennsen leaned a shoulder against the doorframe. “It seems you only just got a Lord Rahl worth serving when you gave it all up to come here with me.”

“You know,” he said, smiling as he slipped his knife back in its sheath, “I rather like my new life with my new wife.”

She hugged her arms around the bear of a man. “You do, do you?” she asked in a teasing way.

“I like my new name, too,” he added. “I’m finally used to it. You know, comfortable with it.”

When they married, Tom had taken her name, Rahl, so that they could carry it on in the new world. It seemed only fitting that the man who had given them their new life should be remembered in some fashion.

In every other way he was vanishing from memory.

It was surprising to Jennsen how so many people no longer even remembered the place they came from, their old world. It was just as Richard said: the Chainfire spell was taking their memory and those blank places were being rebuilt with new memories, new beliefs, about who they were. Since the Chainfire spell and the taint within it were both Subtractive Magic, it had affected even the pristinely ungifted, so even they were continuing to lose track of who and what they had been.

For the most part, magic had become no more than superstition. Wizards and sorceresses were even less important. They had become no more than tales told around campfires to scare people for a good laugh. Dragons were becoming only folklore. In this world there were no dragons.

Any who possessed magic were fading away. Their ability was dying out, smothered by the taint from the chimes. Day by day they became more powerless. Eventually they would merely be old hags living by themselves in swampy places and considered crazy by most folk.

Any trace of the gift that survived, if not withered away by the taint of the chimes they’d brought with them into their world, would eventually be completely eliminated by descendants of the pristinely ungifted. It would be only a matter of generations before there was no trace of the gift left in mankind—just the way the Order had once said they wanted it.

Everyone was concerned

with more important things now. Their lives now revolved around the hard work of survival when there was no one who accomplished anything worthwhile. People had forgotten how to do things, how to create things. Even what had once seemed the most common of things, such as construction methods, was being lost. The people here never knew how to create—they had depended on others to build and create. It would take future generations to discover them all over again.

Those from the old life, those who created, who invented, who made life easier for everyone, and who were the object of such hatred, were not in this world to help make life better. The people left, for the most part, were left to eke out an existence as best they could.

For most, living in such a dark age, sickness and death were their constant companion. As they had in the world they had been banished from, they turned to superstition and a grim, fatalistic acceptance of the misery of life and its accompanying devotion to their faith.

It seemed that everywhere Tom and Jennsen traveled to trade for supplies, they saw places of worship going up as the hope for mankind’s salvation from misery. Men of God traveled the countryside to spread the word, and demand devotion to Him.

Jennsen and her people kept mostly to themselves, enjoying the fruits of their own labor and the simple joy of being left alone by tyrants and brutes. Some of them, though, had started keeping the symbols of the religious beliefs pressed on them. It seemed easier for them to go along than to question, to accept prepackaged beliefs than to think for themselves.

Jennsen knew that their world was going to be one that sank into a very dark age, but she also knew that within that dark world, she and those with her could carve out their own small place of happiness, joy, and laughter. The rest of the world was too busy suffering to bother with the remote area of a few quiet people. Some of the pristinely ungifted, though, as their memories of the old world vanished, had left to go out among the cities and far-off places.

Unknowingly, they carried the pristinely ungifted trait. It would continue to spread to the far corners of the world.

“How is the garden coming?” she asked Tom as he knocked mud off his boots.