[Sword of Truth 9] - Chainfire

by Terry Goodkind

  Men made way for him as he stepped to the fore. He deliberately took in Verna before turning his attention to Berdine. Verna thought she detected the slightest smile.

  "Welcome back, Mistress Berdine. I haven't seen you for quite a while."

  "Seems like forever. It's good to be home." She lifted an introductory hand to Verna. "This is Verna Sauventreen, the Prelate of the Sisters of the Light. She is a personal friend of Lord Rahl and in charge of the gifted with the D'Haran forces."

  The man bowed his head but kept his cautious gaze on her. "Prelate."

  "Verna, this is Commander General Trimack of the First File of the People's Palace in D'Hara."

  "First File?"

  "When he is at his palace, we are the ring of steel around Lord Rahl himself, Prelate. We fall to a man before harm gets a glance at him." His eyes shifted between the two of them. "Because of the great distance, we can only sense that Lord Rahl is somewhere far off to the west. Would you happen to know where Lord Rahl is, exactly? Any idea when he will be back with us?"

  "There are a number of people wanting to know the answer to that question, General Trimack," Verna said. "I'm afraid that you will have step to the rear of a very long line."

  The man looked genuinely disappointed. "What of the war? Do you have any news?"

  Verna nodded. "The Imperial Order has split their forces."

  The soldiers glanced knowingly at one another. Trimack's face hardened with worry as he waited for her to elaborate.

  "The Order left a sizable part of their force on the other side of the mountains, up near Aydindril in the Midlands. We had to leave men and some of the gifted on this side of the mountains to guard the passes so the enemy can't come over and get into D'Hara. A large contingent of the Order's best troops are presently heading back down through the Midlands. We believe that their plan is to take their main force down around the far side of the mountains and then eventually swing around and up to attack D'Hara from the south. We are taking our main army south to meet the enemy."

  None of the men said a word. They stood mute, showing no reaction to probably the most fateful news they had ever faced in their young lives. These were indeed men of steel.

  The general wiped a hand across his face, as if all their concern was distilled into him alone. "So our army coming south is close to the palace, then."

  "No. They are still some distance to the north. Armies don't move rapidly unless necessary. Since we don't have nearly as much distance to cover as the Order, and Jagang moves his troops at a slow pace, we fell it would be better to keep our men healthy and strong, rather than exhaust them on a long race south. Berdine and I rode on ahead because it was urgent that I examine some of the books here… on matters to do with magic. As long as I'm here, I thought I should check on things in the Garden of Life to make certain that everything is safe."

  The man took a breath as he drummed his fingers on his weapons bell. "I'd like to help you, Prelate, but I have orders from three wizards to keep everyone out of there. They were quite specific: no one, not even the gardening staff, is to be allowed to go in there."

  Verna's brow tightened. "What three wizards?"

  "First Wizard Zorander, then Lord Rahl himself, and lastly wizard Nathan Rahl."

  Nathan. She might have known he would be trying to make himself look important at the palace, no doubt dramatically playing up the part of being a gifted Rahl, an ancestor to Richard. Verna wondered what other trouble the man had been mucking about in while he was at the People's Palace.

  "Commander General, I am a Sister, and Prelate of the Sisters of the light. I'm fighting on the same side as you."

  "Sister," he said with an accusatorial, squint-eyed glare that only an army officer could conjure up. "We had a Sister visit us before. Couple years back. Remember, lads?" He glanced around at the grim faces before turning back to Verna. "Wavy, shoulder-length brown hair, about your size, Prelate. She was missing the little finger on her right hand. Maybe you remember her? One of your Sisters, I believe."

  "Odette," Verna confirmed with a nod. "Lord Rahl told me about the trouble you had with her. She was a fallen Sister, you might say."

  "I don't really care what side of the Creator's grace she was on the day she visited us. I only know that she killed almost three hundred men getting into the Garden of Life. Three hundred! She killed nearly a hundred more getting back out. We were helpless against her." As his face reddened, his scars stood out all the more. "Do you know what it's like to see men dying and not be able to do a bloody thing about it? Do you know what it's like not only to be responsible for their lives but to know that your duty is to keep her out of there… and not be able to do anything to stop the threat'?"

  Verna's gaze fell away from the man's intent blue eyes. "I'm sorry, General. But she was fighting against Lord Rahl. I am not. I'm on your side. I'm fighting to stop those like her."

  "That may be true enough, but my orders from both Zedd and Lord Rahl himself—after he killed that vile woman—are that no one else is to be allowed in there. No one. If you were my own mother I'd not be able to let you go in there."

  Something didn't make sense to her.

  Verna cocked her head. "If Sister Odette was able to get in there, and you and your men couldn't stop her"—she lifted an eyebrow—"then what makes you think you can stop me?"

  "I'd not like it to come to that, but, if need be, this time we have the means at hand to carry out our orders. We are no longer helpless."

  Verna frowned. "What are you talking about?"

  Commander General Trimack plucked a black glove from his belt and pulled it on, flexing his fingers to draw the snug glove all the way onto his hand. With a thumb and first finger of his gloved hand, he carefully lifted a red-fletched arrow from the rack of six in a quiver at the belt of a soldier beside him. The soldier already had one of the bolts nocked in his crossbow, leaving four in the special quiver rack.

  Holding the bolt by the nock end, General Trimack lifted the razor-sharp steel point before Verna's face so that she could see it up close. "This is tipped with more than steel. It's tipped with the power to take down those with magic."

  "I still don't know what are you talking about."

  "It's tipped with magic that is said to be able to penetrate any shield the gifted can erect."

  Verna reached out and with a finger carefully touched the rear of the shaft. Pain shot up her hand and wrist before she was able to jerk her arm hack. Despite her gift being diminished in the palace, she had no trouble being able to detect the powerful aura given off by the web of magic that had been spun around the deadly point. This was indeed a potent weapon. Even with their full powers, the gifted would indeed be in trouble if they encountered one of these arrows coming toward them.

  "If you have these arrows, then why weren't you able to stop Sister Odette?"

  "We didn't have them back then."

  Verna's frown darkened. "Then where did you get them?"

  The general smiled with the satisfaction of a man who knew he would not again be defenseless against a gifted enemy. "When Wizard Rahl was here he asked me about our defenses. I told him about the attack by the sorceress and how we were helpless against her power. He searched the palace and found these weapons. Apparently they were in some safe place where only a wizard could retrieve them. He is the one who supplied my men with the arrows and the crossbows to fire them."

  "How good of Wizard Rahl."

  "Yes, it was."

  The general carefully replaced the bolt in the special quiver rack that kept the arrows separated. She understood, now, why that was necessary. There was no telling how ancient these weapons really were, but Verna suspected that they were relics from the great war.

  "Wizard Rahl instructed us on how to handle such dangerous weapons." He held up his hand and wiggled his gloved fingers. "Told us that we must always wear these special gloves to handle the arrows."

  He removed the glove and tucked it behind his belt
with its mate. Verna clasped her hands before herself, taking a deep breath and with it care in how she framed her words.

  "General, I have known Nathan Rahl since long before your grandmother was born. He is not always candid about the dangers involved in the things he does. Were I you, I would handle those weapons with the utmost care, and treat anything he told you about them, even casually, as a matter of life and death."

  "Are you suggesting he's reckless?"

  "No, not deliberately, but he often tends to downplay matters that he finds… inconvenient. Besides that, he is very old and very talented, so sometimes it's easy for him to forget just how much more he knows about some very arcane subjects than most other people, or that he can do things with his gift that they aren't able to do, much less comprehend. You might say he's like an old man who forgets to tell visitors that his dog bites."

  Men up and down the hall exchanged looks. Some of them lifted an elbow or a hand away from the quivers at their belts.

  General Trimack hooked a thumb around the hilt of the short sword in its sheath at his left hip. "While I take seriously your warning, Prelate, I hope that you will understand that I also take seriously the lives of the hundreds of my men who died the last time a Sister showed up and we were defenseless against her magic. I take seriously the lives of these men here. I don't want any such thing to happen again."

  Verna wet her lips and reminded herself that the man was only doing his job. With the way the palace drained away her Han, she had an uncomfortable empathy with his feeling about being powerless.

  "I understand," General Trimack." She smoothed back a wave of hair. "I, too, know the heavy weight of responsibility for the lives of others. Of course the lives of your men are valuable and anything that will prevent the enemy from taking those lives is worthwhile. It is in that vein that I'm advising you to be careful with weapons that are wrought with magic. Such things are not typically intended for the unsupervised use of the ungifted."

  The man nodded once. "We take your warning seriously."

  "Good, then you should also know that what is in that room is dangerous in the extreme. It's a danger to all of us. It would be in all our interest if, while I'm here, I just make sure it's safe."

  "Prelate, I understand your concern, but you must understand that my orders gave me no discretion for exceptions. I simply can't allow you to go in there on your word that you are who you say you are, or that your intent is only to help us. What if you were a spy? A traitor? The Keeper himself in the flesh? A sincere looking woman though you may be, I didn't get to the rank of commander general by letting attractive women talk me into things."

  Verna was momentarily startled by being called an "attractive woman" in front of all these people.

  "But I can personally assure you that no one—no one at all has been in there since Lord Rahl himself was in there last. Not even Nathan Rahl went in there. Everything in the Garden of Life remains untouched."

  "I understand, General." It would be a long time before she ever made it back to the palace. There was no telling where Richard was or when he would return. She rubbed her fingers on her forehead as she considered the quandary. "Tell you what, how about if I don't go in and instead I just stand in the doorway—outside the Garden of Life—and look in to make sure the three boxes being held in there are safe. You can even have a dozen of your men point those deadly arrows at my back."

  He chewed his lip as he considered. "Men in front of you, men to the sides, and men to the back will have you under the points of their arrows and their fingers will be on the release levers. You can look past my men, through the doorway, and into the Garden of Life, but you may not cross the threshold under penalty of death."

  Verna didn't actually need to get close enough to touch the boxes. Truth be told, she didn't really even want to get close to them. All she really wanted to do was to make sure that they were untouched by anyone else. At the same time, she wasn't exactly comfortable with the idea of all those men being only a finger twitch away from releasing one of those deadly arrows at her. After all, the notion to check on the boxes of Orden had only been an afterthought, being as she was already at the palace. It wasn't why she had come to the palace. Still, she was so close.

  "Bargain struck, General. I only need to see that they are safe so that we all can sleep a little easier."

  "I'm all for sleeping easier."

  Berdine and Verna, with a knot of soldiers surrounding them, were led by Commander General Trimack down a broad passageway of polished granite. Columns spaced against the wall framed great slabs of stone as if they were artwork. To Verna, they were visual evidence of the Creator's hand, artwork from the garden he had cultivated that was the world of life. The sound of all the men moving along with them echoed up and down the great hallway as they passed a series of intersections that were arms of the spell-form all pulling back into the center that was the Garden of Life. They at last came to a pair of doors covered in carvings of rolling hills and forests and sheathed in gold.

  "Beyond is the Garden of Life," the general told her in a sober tone.

  As soldiers surrounded her, raising their crossbows, the general began drawing one of the great gold doors open. Some of the men lo the side and rear pointed their arrows at her head. The four men who moved in front of her leveled their crossbow bolts at her heart. She was at least relieved not to have the ones in front of her pointed at her face. She thought the whole thing was silly, but she knew that these men were dead serious, so she treated it as such.

  As the gold-clad door was swung wide, Verna, in lockstep with her cadre of personal assassins, shuffled closer to the opening so that she could see. She had to crane her neck and finally swish a hand to gently urge one of the men to move a little to the side so that she could have a clear view into the great room.

  From the rather dimly lit hallway, Verna peered inside and saw that overcast skies lit the place in all its glory through leaded windows high overhead. She was astonished to see that all the way up in the center of the People's Palace, the Garden of Life looked just like… a lush garden.

  From what she could see, around the outside of the room walkways wound their way through flower beds. The ground was littered with petals, a few still-colorful reds and yellows but most long since dried and shriveled. Beyond the flowers grew small trees and then beyond them were short, stone, vine-covered walls. Contained within the walls was a variety of shrubs and ornamental plants, although they were in sorry shape from lack of care. Many were gangly with long, new shoots and in need of a trimming. Others were infested with invasive vines. It looked as if General Trimack had been telling the truth that no one, not even the gardeners, had been allowed into the place.

  At the Palace of the Prophets they had had an indoor garden, although on a much smaller scale. There had been a system of pipes coming from collection barrels on the roof that kept the garden watered. Recognizing similar pipes in a corner, Verna realized that rainwater collected on the roof provided a constant supply of water in this place as well or everything in the garden, lit by such wonderful light, would be dried up and dead.

  In the center of the expansive room was an area of shaggy lawn that swept around almost into a circle, the grass ring interrupted by a wedge of white stone. On that stone sat two short, fluted pedestals that held a slab of smooth granite.

  Atop the granite altar sat three boxes, their surfaces such an inky black that it almost surprised her that they didn't suck the light entirely out of the room and pull the whole world with it into the eternal darkness of the underworld. Just the sight of such sinister things made her heart feel as if it were coming up in her throat.

  Verna knew the three boxes as the gateway, and they were exactly what the name implied. In this case, they were together a kind of gateway between the world of the living and the world of the dead. The gateway was constructed of the magic of both worlds. If that passage between worlds were ever to be undone, the veil would be breached and the seal w
ould be off the Nameless One… the Keeper of the Dead.

  Because the information had been in highly restricted books, only a few people at the Palace of the Prophets were even aware of the gateway by its ancient name, the boxes of Orden. The three boxes worked together, and together they constituted the gateway. As far as anyone at the Palace of the Prophets knew, the gateway had been lost for over three thousand years. Everyone thought that it was gone, vanished, disappeared for good. There had even been speculation for centuries as to whether or not such a gateway had ever really existed. If such a gateway could even exist had been the source of much heated theological debate.

  The gateway—the boxes of Orden—did exist, and Verna was having trouble taking her eyes off it.

  It made her heart race to see such vile things. Cold sweat dampened her dress.

  It was small wonder that three wizards had ordered the general to allow no one into the room. Verna reconsidered her opinion of Nathan for equipping the First File with such dangerous weapons.

  The jeweled covering had been removed, leaving the sinister black of the boxes themselves, because Darken Rahl had put the boxes in play and had planned to use the power of Orden to claim mastery over the world of the living. Fortunately, Richard had stopped him.

  Stealing the boxes now, though, wouldn't do a thief any good. Extensive information was required to understand how the magic of Orden worked and how the gateway functioned. Part of that information was contained in a book that no longer existed except in Richard's mind. That, in fact, had been part of how he had defeated Darken Rahl.

  In addition to vast knowledge and information, any thief would also would need to have both Additive and Subtractive Magic in order to use the gateway or to claim the power of Orden for himself.

  The real danger would probably be lo any person foolish enough to handle such treacherous things. I

  Verna sighed with relief at seeing the three boxes untouched, right where Richard had said he'd left them. For now, there was no safer place to keep such dangerous magic. Someday, maybe Verna could help find a way to destroy the gateway—if such a thing were even possible—but for now it was safe.