[Sword of Truth 9] - Chainfire

by Terry Goodkind

  Tovi seized a fistful of Nicci's dress. "Please, Sister, help me. It hurts so much."

  "Talk, 'Sister.'"

  She released her grip on Nicci's dress and let her face roll to face away. "It's the bond to Lord Rahl. We swore a bond."

  "Sister Tovi, if you think I'm that stupid, I'm going to make you suffer just to make you regret the thought until you die."

  She turned back to look at Nicci. "No, it's true."

  "How can you swear a bond to someone you want to eliminate?"

  Tovi grinned. "Sister Ulicia figured it out. We swore a bond to him, but made him let us go before he could hold us to a list of his commands."

  "This story just gets more preposterous all the time."

  Nicci withdrew her hand from Tovi's arm, and with it the trickle of relief. As Nicci stood, Tovi groaned in agony.

  "Please, Sister Nicci, it's true." She grasped Nicci's hand. "In exchange for letting us go, we traded for something he wanted."

  "What could Lord Rahl possibly want that would convince him to let a clutch of Sisters of the Dark loose? That's the craziest thing I've ever heard."

  "A woman."

  "What?"

  "He wanted a woman."

  "As the Lord Rahl, he can have any woman he wants. He has but to pick her and have her sent to his bed, unless she would choose the executioner's block instead, and none do. He hardly needs the Sisters of the Dark to cart women to his bed."

  "No, no, not that kind of woman. A woman he loved."

  "Right." Nicci huffed a sigh. "Good-bye, Sister Tovi. Be sure to give the Keeper of the dead my regards when you get there. Sorry, but I'm afraid that meeting won't be for a while. I think you look like you may linger for a number of days, yet. Pity."

  "Please!" Her arm rotated around, searching for the contact of the one person who could save her. "Sister Nicci, please. Please listen, and I will tell you everything."

  Nicci sat down and gripped Tovi's arm again. "All right, Sister, but just remember, the power can go both ways."

  Tovi's back arched as she cried out in agony. "No! Please!"

  Nicci had no compunction about what she was doing. She knew that there was no moral equivalence between her inflicting torture and the Imperial Order doing what might on the surface seem like the same thing. But her purpose in using it was solely to save innocent lives. The Imperial Order used torture as a means of subjugation and conquest, as a tool to strike fear into their enemies. And, at times, as something they relished because it made them feel powerful to hold sway over not just agony but life itself.

  The Imperial Order used torture because they had no regard at all for human life. Nicci was using it because she did. While at one time she would have seen no difference, since coming to embrace life she saw all the difference in the world.

  Nicci reversed the suffering she was trickling into the old woman and Tovi sank back in grateful, weeping relief.

  Tovi was covered in a sheen of sweat. "Please, Sister, give me some comfort instead and I will tell you everything."

  "Start with who stabbed you."

  "The Seeker."

  "Richard Rahl is the Seeker. Do you really think I will believe such a story? Richard Rahl would have taken your head off with one swing."

  Tovi's head rolled side to side. "No, no, you don't understand. This man had the Sword of Truth." She pointed at her gut. "I ought to know the Sword of Truth when it runs me through. He caught me by surprise and before I knew who he was or what he wanted, the bastard stabbed me."

  Nicci pressed her fingers to her brow in confusion. "I think you better go back to the beginning."

  Tovi was already sinking into a stupor. Nicci increased the magic flowing into her, giving her some healing relief without curing her of her injury. Nicci didn't want to cure her, she needed the woman unable to help herself. Tovi looked the kindly grandmother, but she was a viper.

  Nicci crossed one leg over the other. It was going to be a long night.

  The next time Tovi came around, Nicci sat up straighter. "So you swore a bond to Richard, as the Lord Rahl," Nicci said as if there had been no gap in the conversation, "and that protected all of you from the dream walker."

  "That's right."

  "And then what?"

  "We were able to escape. We kept track of Richard as we went about our work for our master. We needed to find a hook."

  Nicci knew very well who their master was.

  "What do you mean, a hook?"

  "In order to do what we need to do to satisfy the Keeper, we needed a way to make sure Richard Rahl could not interfere. We found it."

  "Found what?"

  "Something that keeps us bonded to him no matter what we do. It was brilliant."

  "So what is it?"

  "Life."

  Nicci frowned, not knowing if she had heard right. She laid a hand on Tovi's wound and gave some focused comfort.

  After Tovi had calmed from the wave of pain, Nicci asked in a quiet voice, "What do you mean?"

  "Life," Tovi said at last. "It is his highest value."

  "So?"

  "Sister, think. In order to stay out of the dream walker's grasp, we must be bonded to Richard Rahl all the time. We dare not waver for a moment. And yet, who is our ultimate master?"

  "The Keeper of the dead. We have sworn oaths."

  "That's right. And if we were to do something that would harm Richard's life, such as loose the Keeper into the world of life, then we would be going against our bond to Richard. That would mean that before we could free the Keeper from his bounds in the world of the dead, Jagang, in this world, would be able to pounce on us."

  "Sister Tovi, you had better start making sense, or I will lose my patience, and I assure you, you would not like that. You would not like it one bit. I want to know what's going on so that I can be let in. I want my place back."

  "Of course. Of course. You see, Richard's highest value is life. In fact, he created a statue to it. We were in the Old World. We saw his statue dedicated to life."

  "I got that much out of what you said."

  Her head rolled back so she could again look at Nicci. "Well, my dear, what is it we are pledged to do in the Oaths we have given?"

  "Free the Keeper."

  "And what is our reward for performing our task?"

  Nicci stared at the woman's cold eyes. "Immortality."

  Tovi grinned. "Exactly."

  "Richard's highest value is life. You are saying that you plan to grant him immortality?"

  "We are. We are working toward his most noble ideal: life."

  "But he may not want immortality."

  Tovi managed a shrug. "Maybe. But we don't intend to ask him. Don't you see the brilliance of Sister Ulicia's plan? We know that his highest value is life. No matter what else we may do against his wishes, those things do not rise to the level of his most important value. Thus, we are honoring our bond to the Lord Rahl in the most grand way possible, while maintaining the bond—keeping the dream walker out of our minds—and at the same time working to bring the Keeper into the world. See how it goes round and round. Each element locks the others in tighter."

  "But it is the Keeper who promises you immortality. You cannot grant it."

  "No, not if we seek it through the Keeper."

  "Then how can you possibly grant immortality? You don't have any such power."

  "Oh, but we will, we will."

  "How?"

  Tovi fell to coughing and Nicci had to do some swift work on the wound just to keep the woman alive. It was nearly two hours before she again had her conscious and calm.

  "Sister Tovi," she said once the woman had opened her eyes and looked like she was seeing again. "I've had to repair some of your injury. Now, before I can repair the rest of your wound and fully heal you—so that you can have your reward of life—I need to know the rest of it. How can you think that you can grant immortality? You don't have that power."

  "We stole the boxes of Orden. We intend to use
them to destroy all life… except that which we wish to have around, of course. With the power of Orden, we will hold sway over life and death. We will have the power to grant Richard Rahl immortality. See? Bond fulfilled."

  Nicci's head was spinning. "Tovi, your story is too impossible. It's more complicated than you make it."

  "Well, there are other parts to the plan. We found catacombs under the Palace of the Prophets."

  Nicci had had no idea that such catacombs existed, but she wanted the woman to go on with her story, so she just let her talk.

  "That's when it all started. When we got the idea. You see, we had been wandering the lands, looking for ways to satisfy the Keeper—" She clutched Nicci's arm so hard it hurt. "He comes in our dreams. You know that. He comes to you as well. He comes and torments us, forcing us to do his bidding, to work to free him."

  Nicci pulled the clawlike hand off her arm. "Catacombs?"

  "Yes. The catacombs. We discovered ancient catacombs and in them books. We found a book called Chainfire"

  Goose bumps ran up Nicci's arms. "Chainfire, what does that mean? Is it a spell?"

  "Oh, it is much more than anything so simple as a spell. It was from ancient times. The wizards of the time had come up with a new theory of how to alter memory—in other words, real events altered with Subtractive power, with all the disconnected parts spontaneously reconstructed independently of one another. Namely, how to make an individual disappear to everyone else by making people forget this person, even as soon as they've just seen them.

  "But the wizards who came up with this theory were timid men, fearful of unleashing such things not only because they realized that such a linked event would cause irreparable damage to the subject, but because there was no way for them to control it once it was initiated, it would be self-actuating and self-sustaining."

  "What do you mean? What does it do?"

  "It unravels people's memory of the subject, but that ignition starts a cascade event that can't be predicted or controlled. It then burns through links they have with others, and then others those people know, and so on. It eventually unravels connections so that it corrupts everything. For our purposes, though, it doesn't really matter, since our aim is to undo life anyway. For fear that it would be discovered what we were doing, we destroyed the book, and the catacombs."

  "But why did you need to destroy the memory of someone?"

  "Not just someone, but the memory of the woman who bought us the bond in the first place, Kahlan Amnell, Richard Rahl's love. By creating a Chainfire event, we ended up with a woman no one remembers."

  "But what can that possibly gain you?"

  "The boxes of Orden. We used her to get the boxes, so that we can free I the Keeper. With the boxes, we can grant Richard immortal life at the same time we also free the Keeper.

  "The Keeper whispered to us in our dreams that Richard has the secret to opening the boxes, he has a necessary knowledge memorized. It exists nowhere else. Darken Rahl revealed it to the Keeper. Richard knows the way to unlock the secrets of Orden, only this time, we know the trick that defeated Darken Rahl.

  "The book he knows says that we need a Confessor to open the boxes. And now we have a Confessor who no one remembers—so no one can bother us about her."

  "What about prophecy disappearing? Was that caused by Chainfire?"

  "It's part of Chainfire. They called it the Chainfire corollary. Part of the initiation phase of Chainfire requires that prophecy also be ignited with a Chainfire event, much the same as people's memories are cast into the conflagration. The Chainfire event feeds on those memories to sustain the event, therefore prophecy must be involved as well. A blank is found in the proper fork—a place where a prophet left a space, should a future prophet wish to complete the work. We then fill in that void in prophecy with a completing prophecy which has the Chainfire formula invested in it. A Chainfire event thus infects and consumes all the associated prophecy on the branch, starting with related prophecy, either in subject or in chronology—in this case both: Kahlan, the woman we wiped away in life, is thus also wiped away in prophecy by the Chainfire corollary."

  "You seem to have it all worked out," Nicci said.

  Tovi grinned through the pain. "It gets better."

  "Better? How could it possibly get more delicious than this?"

  "There is a counter to Chainfire." Tovi giggled with the glee of it.

  "A counter? You mean you risk Richard finding a counter to what you have done, a counter that could bring the entire plan crashing down?"

  Tovi tried to stifle the giggle, but it bubbled up again. Despite the obvious pain, she was enjoying herself too much to stop. "This is the best pail of all. The ancient wizards who came up with the Chainfire theory realized the potential for the total destruction of life. So they created a counter, should a Chainfire event ever somehow come to pass."

  Nicci gritted her teeth. "What counter?"

  "The boxes of Orden."

  Nicci's eyes widened. "The boxes of Orden were created to be the counter to the Chainfire event you've initiated'?"

  "That's right. Isn't that delicious? What's more, we've put the boxes in play."

  Nicci let out a deep breath. "Well, like I said, you seem to have it all figured out."

  Tovi winced. "Well… almost. There is only one minor issue."

  "Like what?"

  "Well, you see, the stupid bitch only brought out one box the first time we sent her in. We couldn't allow the boxes to be seen, because, unlike Richard's love, people would remember seeing the boxes of Orden.

  "Kahlan said she had no room in her pack. Sister Ulicia was furious. She beat the girl to a bloody mess—you would have loved it, Sister Nicci—and told her to leave something out to make room if she hail In, then sent her back in to get the other two boxes."

  Tovi winced under a pang of pain. "We feared to wait, though. Sister Ulicia sent me on with the first box and said she would catch up with us later." Tovi groaned under the agony of another stitch of pain. "I had the first box with me. The Seeker, the one with Sword of Truth, anyway, surprised me and ran me though. He snatched the box. Once Kahlan finally retrieved them, Sister Ulicia then had those two and thought that I had the third, so before she left the palace, she put the magic of Orden in play."

  Nicci staggered to her feet. She felt dizzy. She could hardly believe it. But she knew, now, that it was all true. Richard had been right all along. With almost nothing to go on, he had basically figured it all out. And all along no one in the world would listen to him… no one in a world that was unraveling around them in an uncontrolled Chainfire event.

  CHAPTER 65

  A scream that made the fine hairs on the back of Richard's neck stand on end split the quiet night. Richard, in a bedroll in a simple tent, shot to his feet as the scream ripped the air with its terror. The unending shriek ran a shiver up through his shoulders and instantly brought a sheen of sweat to his brow.

  His heart racing, Richard rushed out of his tent even as the haunting cry echoed through the encampment as if trying to reach every corner of darkness to express its horror.

  Outside the tent, which was set apart from the others because it was an extra, Richard saw men standing in the darkness, their eyes wide. Up the row a ways, General Meiffert watched out on the night with the rest of them.

  Richard saw that it was false dawn, like the morning Kahlan had vanished. The woman he loved, the woman who everyone else had forgotten and didn't care to remember. If she had screamed, no one had heard her.

  And then, as the scream died, the world went blacker than black. It was like being plunged into the inky nothingness of the world of the dead, forlorn and forever lost. Richard shivered as his flesh felt like something alien touched the world of living with intimate promise.

  As quickly as the darkness had come, it was gone. Men looked around at one another, none speaking.

  The thought occurred to Richard that the viper now had only three heads.

 
"The Keeper took one of his own," he explained to the questioning faces that had all turned to him. He saw the general watching, listening. "Be glad that one so evil is no longer among the living. May all such people find the death they champion."

  Men smiled and whispered agreement with the curse as they began crawling back into their tents to try to snatch what was left of their sleep.

  General Meiffert met Richard's gaze as he clapped a fist to his heart before vanishing back into his own tent.

  In the dim light of the camp that suddenly seemed to be populated only by tents and wagons, Richard spotted Nicci very deliberately heading straight for him. There was something profoundly disturbing about the way she looked. Perhaps it was that she had just vented a rage that he doubted anyone but he could truly understand or value.

  Flags of blond hair flying, she reminded him of a raptor descending in on him from out of the night, all tight muscle and talons. When he saw the tears streaming down her face, her gritted teeth, her fury and hurt, her powerful menace and frail helplessness, her eyes filled with more than he could grasp, he stepped back into his tent, drawing her in out of the view of the camp.

  She swept into the tent, right for him, like a storm breaking on a headland. He backed as far as he could, having no idea what was wrong or what she intended.

  With a sob of such naked desolation that it nearly made him cry out in kind, she fell to the ground at his feet, throwing her arms around his legs. She was clutching something in one hand. Richard realized that it was Kahlan's white Mother Confessor dress.

  "Oh, Richard, I'm so sorry," she wailed between racking gasps. "I'm so sorry for what I've done to you. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry," she kept mumbling over and over.

  He reached down and touched her shoulder. "Nicci, what is it?"

  "I'm so sorry," she cried as she clutched at his legs as if she were the condemned begging a king for her life. "Oh, dear spirits, I'm so sorry for what I've done to you."

  He sank down, lifting her arms off his legs. "Nicci, what is it?"

  Her shoulders heaved with her racking sobs. She looked up at him as he lifted her by her arms. She was as limp as the dead.