Chainfire

by Terry Goodkind

  Kahlan was inextricably tied to his life in so many ways. He had, in a manner of speaking, known her as a Confessor ever since he had been a boy, long before he met the woman herself that day in the Hartland woods.

  When he had been a boy, George Cypher, the man who had raised him and who Richard had at the time thought was his father, had told him that he had rescued a secret book from great peril by bringing it to Westland. His father had told him that there was grave danger to everyone as long as the book existed, but he couldn’t bring himself to destroy the knowledge in it. The only way to eliminate the danger of the book falling into the wrong hands and yet save the knowledge was to commit the book to memory and then burn the book itself. He chose Richard for the prodigious task of memorizing the entire book.

  Richard’s father took him to a secret place deep in the woods and, day after day, week after week, watched Richard sit reading the book over countless times as he worked to memorize it. His father never once looked in the book; that was Richard’s responsibility.

  After a long period of reading and memorizing, Richard began to write down what he’d memorized. He would then check it against the book. At first he made a lot of mistakes, but he continually improved. Each time, his father burned the papers. Richard repeated the task untold times. His father often apologized for the burden he was placing on Richard, but Richard never resented it; he considered it an honor to be entrusted by his father with such a great responsibility. Even though he was young and didn’t understand all of what he read, he was able to grasp what a profoundly important work it was. He also realized that the book involved complex procedures having to do with magic. Real magic.

  In time, Richard eventually wrote the book out from beginning to end a hundred times without error before he was satisfied that he could never forget a single word. He knew not only by the text of the book, but by its idiosyncratic syntax, that any word left out would spell disaster to the knowledge itself.

  When he assured his father that the entirety of the work was committed to memory, they put the book back in the hiding place in the rocks and left it for three years. After that time, when Richard was beyond his middle teens, they returned one fall day and uncovered the ancient book. His father said that if Richard could write the whole book, without a single mistake, they could both be satisfied that it had been learned perfectly and they would together burn the book. Richard wrote without hesitation from the beginning to the final word. When he checked his work against the book, it confirmed what he already knew: He had not made a single mistake.

  Together he and his father built a fire, stacking on more than enough wood, until the heat drove them back. His father handed him the book and told him that, if he was sure, he should throw the book into the fire. Richard held The Book of Counted Shadows in the crook of his arm, running his fingers over the thick leather cover. He held in his arms not just his father’s trust, but the trust of everyone. Feeling the full weight of that responsibility, Richard cast the book into the fire. In that moment, he was no longer a child.

  When the book burned it gave off not only heat but cold, and it released streamers of colored light and phantom forms. Richard knew that for the first time he had actually seen magic—not sleight of hand or the stuff of mysticism, but real magic that existed, real magic with its own laws of how it functioned just like everything else that existed. And some of those laws had been in the book he had memorized.

  But in the beginning, that day in the woods, when he had been a boy and for the first time lifted open the cover, Richard had, in a way, met Kahlan. The Book of Counted Shadows began with the words 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….

  Kahlan was the last Confessor.

  The day he met her, Richard had been looking for clues to his father’s murder. Darken Rahl had put the boxes of Orden in play and in order to open them he needed the information in The Book of Counted Shadows. He didn’t know that by that time the information existed only in Richard’s mind, and that to verify it he would need a Confessor: Kahlan.

  In a way, Richard and Kahlan had been bound together by that book, and the events surrounding it, from the time Richard had first opened the cover and encountered the strange word “Confessor.”

  When he met Kahlan in the woods that day, it seemed to him that he had always known her. In a way, he had. In a way, she had played a part in his life, been a part of his thoughts, ever since he had been a boy.

  The day he first saw her standing on a path in the Hartland woods, his life suddenly became whole, even though at the time he had not known that she was the last living Confessor. His choice to help her that day had been an act of free will carried out before prophecy had a chance to have its say.

  Kahlan was so much a part of him, so much a part of what was the world to him, what was life to him, that he could not imagine going on without her. He had to find her. The time had come to go beyond the problem and seek the solution.

  A gust of icy wind made him squint and brought him out of his memories.

  “There,” he said, pointing.

  Cara paused behind him and peered over his shoulder into the swirling snow until she was able to make out the narrow pathway along the edge of the mountainside. When he glanced back she nodded, letting him know that she saw the path skirting the lower fringe of the snowcap.

  With the blowing snow starting to pile up, the path had begun to drift over. Richard was eager to get through it and to lower ground. As they went farther, conditions deteriorated and the only way he could make out the path was by the lay of the land. The snow had a gentle curve to it as the mountainside rose up from below on the left. It leveled out with a slight dip where the path was, and then to the right humped up where the year-round snow rose higher up.

  As they trudged through the ankle-deep snow, Richard glanced back over his shoulder. “This is the highest point. It will start going downhill soon and then it will get warmer.”

  “You mean we’ll be back in the rain before we even have a chance to get down to lower altitudes and get warm,” she grumbled. “That’s what you’re telling me.”

  Richard understood all too well her discomfort, but could offer no prospect of relief anytime soon.

  “I guess so,” he said.

  Suddenly, something small and dark skittered down out of the white curtains of snow. Just as he saw it, and before he had a chance to react, it knocked Richard’s feet right out from under him.

  Chapter 38

  Richard saw the ground flash past his face as his legs flipped up in the air, then all he could see was white. For an instant he couldn’t tell up from down or where he was in relation to anything else.

  And then his full weight came crashing to the ground, the momentum pitching him down the slope. The snow offered little cushion. His breath was driven from his lungs. Rolling over and over he saw only brief glimpses of the ground. The world spun crazily. He couldn’t control or stop what he quickly realized was his tumbling descent down an increasingly steep slope.

  It had all happened so unexpectedly and so fast that Richard hadn’t had much time to brace for the fall. At that moment, inattention seemed a poor excuse and no comfort. He bounced over a knob of hard ground and landed on his chest. With the wind knocked out of him, he tried to gasp a breath as he slid face-first down the mountain, but instead of air he got only a mouthful of icy snow.

  With the force of the fall and the precipitous angle of the incline, there was nothing at hand to help stop him as he skidded with increasing speed down the steep incline. Heading downward face-first made it all the more difficult to take effective action. In a frantic attempt to stop or at least slow his fall, Richard spread his arms. He fought to dig his hands and feet into the snow and scree to slow his out of control plunge down the side of the mountain, but the snow and the scree only began to slide along with h
im.

  He saw a shadow flash by. Over the sound of the wind he could hear wild screams of rage. Something solid slammed into the back of his ribs. He dug his fingers and boots deeper into the scree beneath the snow, trying to slow his frightening slide. With the snow billowing up around him as he slid, he couldn’t seen anything but white.

  The dark shape again came flying out of the the swirling snow. Again something hammered into him, only this time it was much harder and it was a direct blow to his kidneys meant to help accelerate his plunging fall. Richard cried out with the shock of pain. As he twisted in distress onto his right side, he heard the unique ring of steel as the Sword of Truth was yanked from its scabbard.

  As he slid down the slope, Richard twisted and reached for the sword as it was torn away from him. He knew that if he were to grab the razor-sharp blade itself it could easily slice his hand in two, so he tried instead to seize the hilt or at least snag the crossguard, but he was too late. The assailant dug in his heels to stop himself as Richard sailed out of sight.

  Twisting awkwardly as he reached for his sword left Richard even more off balance. As he bounced over the uneven ground he was thrown into a headfirst roll.

  In the middle of pitching over, just as he started spreading his arms and legs to stop the tumbling, if nothing else, his back slammed into a jut of rock under the snow. Again the wind was violently driven from him, only this time more painfully.

  The force of the impact flipped him over the obstruction.

  Tingling dread surged through him as he found himself in midair. With frantic effort, Richard reached out and snatched the rock outcropping he had hit. He held fast as his legs whipped out and over a drop-off.

  Richard clutched the rock with frantic strength. For a moment, he clung to the rock, collecting his wits and gulping air. He had at least stopped falling. Snow and small flakes of scree still sliding down the steep slope bounced off the rock he was holding as well as his arms and head.

  Carefully, he swung his legs all around, trying to catch them up onto something, trying to find some support for his weight. There was nothing. He swung helplessly, a living pendulum clutching a knob of icy rock.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw blowing snow and dark clouds scudding by underneath him. Through a brief gap, he spotted bits of scree in the midst of a long fall through the air toward trees and rock far below.

  Above him, feet spread, stood a short, dark form with long arms, a pallid head, and gray skin. Bulging yellow eyes, like twin lanterns glowing out from the murky bluish light of the snowstorm, glared down at him. Bloodless lips curled back in a grin to expose sharp teeth.

  It was Shota’s companion, Samuel.

  He was gripping Richard’s sword in one hand and looked more than content with himself. Samuel wore a dark brown cloak that flapped like a flag of victory in the wind. He backed away a few paces, waiting to see Richard fall from the mountain.

  Richard’s fingers were slipping. He tried to get his arms around the rocks to climb up, or at least get a better hold. He wasn’t successful. He knew, though, that if he did manage to get a better hold, Samuel stood ready to use the sword to insure that Richard fell.

  With his feet dangling over a drop of at least a thousand feet, Richard was in a very precarious and vulnerable position. He could hardly believe that Samuel had gotten the better of him in such a way—and that he had managed to snatch Richard’s sword. He surveyed the gloomy gray trailers of fog carried along with the blowing snow but he didn’t see Cara.

  “Samuel!” Richard screamed into the wind. “Give me back my sword!”

  Even to himself, it seemed a pretty ridiculous demand.

  “My sword,” Samuel hissed.

  “And what do you think Shota would say?”

  The bloodless lips widened with his smile. “Mistress not here.”

  Like a wraith materializing out of the substance of the shadows themselves, a dark shape appeared behind Samuel. It was Cara, her dark cloak billowing in the wind, giving her the aspect of a vengeful spirit. Richard realized that she had probably followed his rolling trail down through the snow. What with the blustery wind in his ears and, more importantly, his gaze riveted on Richard’s predicament, Samuel didn’t notice Cara looming behind him.

  In a single glance she took in the ominous sight of Samuel gripping Richard’s sword, standing above Richard as he clung to the edge of the cliff. Richard had learned in the past that Samuel’s attention and actions were pretty firmly ruled by his rampant emotions; his feet just followed. With the gleeful distraction of having the object of his rabid hatred at the point of a sword he’d once carried and to this day coveted, Samuel was too busy gloating to watch for the Mord-Sith showing up behind him.

  Without a word, Cara unceremoniously rammed her Agiel into the base of Samuel’s neck at the back of his skull. With the slippery conditions, she couldn’t maintain the contact.

  Samuel shrieked in pain and sudden, confused terror as he dropped the sword and toppled back into the snow. Writhing in agony, not understanding what had happened, he pawed frantically at the back of his neck where Cara had pressed her Agiel. He squealed as he flopped in the snow like a fish in sand. Richard knew that the horrifying shock of pain from an Agiel when applied in that spot felt like a lightning strike.

  Richard recognized the look on Cara’s face as she started to lean over the squirming figure. She intended to used her Agiel to finish Samuel.

  Richard wouldn’t really care if she killed the treacherous companion to the witch woman, but he had far more urgent problems right then.

  “Cara! I’m hanging on the edge of a cliff. I can’t hold on. I’m slipping.”

  She immediately snatched up the sword from beside a thrashing Samuel so that he couldn’t get at it as she ran to help Richard. Stabbing the blade in the ground beside herself, she dropped down, braced her boots against the rocks, and seized his arms. She had not been an instant too soon.

  With her help, Richard was able to get a better grip on the rocks. With both of them struggling in the difficult conditions, he at last managed to hook his arm over the outcropping. Once he had a firm hold with an arm he was finally able to swing a leg up and hook it over the rocks. Cara grabbed his belt and helped haul him up. Straining with effort, he dragged himself up and over the slippery outcropping.

  Richard sagged over onto his side, gasping, trying to get enough of the thin air. “Thanks,” he managed.

  Cara glanced back over her shoulder, keeping an eye on Samuel. Richard quickly gathered his strength and staggered back to his feet. As soon as he had his footing at the brink of the cliff, he pulled up his sword from where Cara had stuck it in the ground.

  He could hardly believe that Samuel had managed to catch him off guard that way. Ever since Richard and Cara had left their camp that morning, he’d been watching for Samuel to show up unexpectedly. He knew, though, that despite expecting such an attack, it was impossible to forestall it every moment—much as it had been impossible to stop every arrow that morning that Kahlan had disappeared.

  Richard brushed some of the snow off his face. The tumbling fall, the sudden plunge, and hanging by his fingers over a cliff had left him shaken but, more than anything, angry.

  Samuel, still lying crumpled in the snow, wriggling and squirming, puled to himself, mumbling something Richard couldn’t hear over the sound of the wind.

  When Samuel saw Richard stalking toward him, he scrambled awkwardly to his feet, still suffering from the lingering pain. Despite that pain, though, he saw what he wanted.

  “Mine! Gimme! Gimme my sword!”

  Richard lifted the point toward the disgusting little fellow.

  Seeing the point of the blade approaching, Samuel lost his courage and scuttled a few steps backward up the slope. “Please,” he whined, holding his hands out to ward Richard’s wrath, “no kill me?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Mistress sends me.”

  “Shota sen
t you to kill me, did she?” Richard mocked. He wanted Samuel to admit the truth.

  Samuel vigorously shook his head. “No, not to kill you.”

  “So then that was all your idea.”

  Samuel didn’t answer.

  “Why, then?” Richard pressed. “Why did Shota send you?”

  Samuel eyed Cara as she moved to the side, halfway hemming him in. Samuel hissed at her, showing his teeth. Cara, unimpressed, showed him her Agiel. His eyes grew big with fear.

  “Samuel!” Richard yelled.

  Samuel’s yellow eyes turned back to Richard and they again turned hateful.

  “Why did Shota send you?”

  “Mistress…” he whimpered as his anger flagged. He stared off longingly in the direction of Agaden Reach. “She sends companion.”

  “Why!”

  Samuel flinched when Richard yelled and took an aggressive stride forward.

  Samuel, trying to keep watch on both of them, pointed a long finger at Cara. “Mistress say for you to bring pretty lady.”

  This was a surprise—for two reasons. “Pretty lady” was what Samuel had always called Kahlan.

  Secondly, Richard would never have expected that Shota would want Cara to come down into Agaden Reach with him. He found that somehow troubling.

  “Why does she want the pretty lady to come with me?”

  “Don’t know.” Samuel’s bloodless lips pulled back in a grin. “Maybe to kill her.”

  Cara waggled her Agiel for him to see. “If she tries, maybe she will get a lot more than you got. Maybe I’ll kill her, instead.”

  Samuel squealed in horror, his bulging eyes going wide. “No! No kill mistress!”

  “We didn’t come to harm Shota,” Richard told him. “But we will defend ourselves.”

  Samuel pressed his knuckles to the ground as he leaned toward Richard. “We will see,” he growled with contempt, “what mistress does with you, Seeker.”