Richard had them all wait in the hallway as he quickly changed into the things from his pack. When he emerged, Kahlan’s breath was taken by what she saw.
Over a black shirt he wore a black, open-sided tunic decorated with strange symbols snaking along a wide gold band running all the way around its squared edges. A wide, multilayered leather belt bearing more of the emblems cinched the magnificent tunic at his waist. The ancient, tooled-leather baldric holding the gold-and silver-wrought scabbard for the Sword of Truth crossed over his right shoulder. At each wrist was a wide, leather-padded silver band bearing linked rings encompassing more of the strange symbols. Black boots over his black trousers also had pins with yet more of the rounded designs. His broad shoulders bore a cape that appeared to be made of spun gold.
He looked like Kahlan’s idea of what a war wizard should look like. He looked like a commander of kings. He looked like Lord Rahl.
Kahlan had no trouble at all understanding why Nicci was in love with him. She was just about the luckiest woman in the world. She was also a woman worthy of this man.
“Let’s hurry,” he said to Shota.
Shota, strolling at a steady pace down the center of the halls, her filmy gray dress flowing out behind, led them through secondary, unadorned passageways in the castle as if it were deserted. From time to time she waved a hand toward a door or a passageway, as if to ward off anyone from bothering them. That must have been exactly what she was doing, because no one intercepted the small company of people hurrying through the hallways.
They all paused behind the witch woman when she finally stopped at a heavy oak door. She gave them all a look as if to ask if they were ready, then threw open the heavy oak door. When they went through the doorway into the overcast day, Richard’s cape billowed out behind. Out on the rampart they were confronted by a huge beast with glossy red scales and a forest of black-tipped spikes on its back.
Flame roared across the rampart, kicking dirt and gravel in every direction. They all shrank back.
“That’s not Scarlet,” Richard said. “I thought it might be Scarlet.”
“You know a dragon?” Kahlan asked.
“Yes, so do you, but not this one. This one is bigger, and a whole lot meaner-looking.”
The heat from rolling flames again drove them back. Shota, unconcerned, singing a soft song, casually walked forward. The flames stopped. The dragon brought its head floating downward toward her, tilting it to the side, as if curious. As Shota whispered things Kahlan couldn’t hear, the dragon snorted softly in a contented manner.
Shota, stroking her fingers under the dragon’s chin, turned back to them. “Richard, come speak with this handsome fellow.”
The dragon almost sounded like it was purring at her words.
Richard hurried forward. “I have a dragon friend,” he said up to the beast. “Maybe you know her. Her name is Scarlet.”
The massive creature threw its head back and fired a column of flame skyward. Its spiked tail swished across the rampart, knocking large blocks off the stone wall over the side.
The red head swung back down. The lips drew back in a snarl to reveal wicked-looking fangs.
“Scarlet is my mother,” the dragon growled.
Richard looked pleasantly surprised. “Scarlet is your mother? Are you Gregory?”
The dragon drew closer yet, sniffing at Richard as it frowned. Richard’s cape billowed up with each puff of air.
“Who are you, little man?”
“I’m Richard Rahl. The last time I saw you, you were an egg.” Richard, as if talking to an old friend, made a half circle with his arms. “You were this big.”
“Richard Rahl.” Gregory grinned, its hostility evaporating. “My mother has told me of you.”
Richard laid a hand on Gregory’s snout. His voice turned gentle with concern. “Is she all right? Magic is failing. I’ve been worried how it might harm her.”
Gregory snorted a puff of smoke. “She is very sick. She grows weaker by the day. I am stronger and still able to fly. I bring her food, but the witch woman kept me from being able to do so. I don’t know how to help her. I worry that she will be lost to me.”
Richard nodded sadly. “It’s the taint caused by the chimes having been in this world. That taint is destroying all magic.”
Gregory nodded his huge head. “Then the red dragons are doomed.”
“As are we all. Unless I can stop that taint.”
The big head cocked to the side so that Gregory could peer at Richard with one yellow eye. “You can do that?”
“Possibly, but I’m not sure how, yet. I do know that I need to get to the People’s Palace if I am to try.”
“The People’s Palace? Where the dark army waits?”
Richard nodded. “That’s right. I may be the only one who can stop that taint. Will you take us there?”
“I am free, now. A free dragon does not serve man.”
“I’m not asking you to be my servant, only to fly us to D’Hara so that I can try to save all of us who want to live free, including you and your mother.”
Gregory’s head glided closer to Zedd, Tom, and Rikka. He thought it over briefly, looking back at Richard.
“All of you?”
“All of us,” Richard said. “I need the help of my friends, here. It’s our only chance to stop all the terrible things that are about to happen.”
Gregory’s head came down close until his snout nudged Richard’s chest, pushing him back a half step. “My mother told me the story of how you saved me when I was but an egg. If I do this, we will be even.”
“Even,” Richard agreed.
Gregory lowered his body down onto the rampart as much as possible. “Let us be off, then.”
Richard told the rest of them how to get up and how to hold on to the spikes and projections. He went up first, settling himself astride the dragon’s back at the base of its long neck, then helped pull Zedd, Tom, and Rikka up behind him. Zedd muttered under his breath the whole time. Richard told him to stop cursing.
Kahlan was last. Richard leaned down, took her hand, and pulled her up behind him. As she adjusted herself on the dragon’s back behind him, she saw him pull a white cloth out of his pocket, looking at it.
Kahlan, her arms around him, whispered in his ear. “I’m afraid.”
He smiled over his shoulder. “You get dizzy flying on dragons, but you don’t get sick. Just hold on tight and close your eyes if you want.”
It struck her how easy it was being close to him, and how gentle and natural he was with her. He seemed to come alive when she was near him.
“What’s that you have?” she asked, tilting her head toward the white cloth. It had an ink spot on one side and another just like it on the opposite side.
“Something from before,” he said in a distracted sort of way. He was obviously not thinking about her question. He was thinking about the white cloth with the two ink spots.
He stuffed the cloth back in his pocket and looked down at the rampart. “Shota, are you coming?”
“No. I’m returning to Agaden Reach, to my home. I will wait there for the end, or for you to stop that end from coming.”
Richard nodded. Kahlan didn’t think that he looked at all confident. “Thank you for all you’ve done, Shota.”
“Make me proud, Richard.”
He smiled at her briefly. “I’ll do my best.”
“That’s all any of us can do,” she said.
Richard patted the dragon’s glossy red scales. “Gregory, let’s get going. We don’t have much time.”
Gregory let out a brief blast of flame. As it curled away into black smoke, the dragon’s immense wings lifted and then snapped down with tremendous yet graceful force. Kahlan felt them lift into the air. It felt like her stomach turned upside down.
CHAPTER 59
As they marched through the empty, magnificent marble halls of the People’s Palace, Richard knew where everyone had gone because he could hear th
e soft chanting echoing through the passageways.
“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.”
It was the devotion to the Lord Rahl. Even at a time like this, even when their world was about to end, everyone at the People’s Palace went to the devotion when they heard the call of the bell. He supposed that this was a time when these people needed him the most and the devotion was their way to acknowledge that bond. Or maybe it was meant to remind him of his part in that bond and his responsibilities to protect them.
“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.
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