The man looked completely puzzled. “Made me general?” He squinted off into the haze of his memory. “I can’t recall . . .”
“It’s all wrapped up in the trouble that has developed with magic.”
The general and Verna shared a look.
“It was Lord Rahl’s wife, Kahlan,” Cara said. “She’s the one, Benjamin, who named you general.” His expression turned to astonishment. Cara shrugged. “It’s a long story for another time,” she added as she laid a hand on his shoulder. “None of us but Lord Rahl remembers her. It was a spell called Chainfire.”
“Chainfire?” Verna grew yet more suspicious. “What Sisters?”
“Sister Ulicia and her other teachers,” Nicci said. “They found an ancient spell called Chainfire and initiated it.”
Verna regarded Nicci rather coolly. “I guess you would know what kind of trouble those women are, since you were one of them.”
“Yes,” Nicci said, wearily, “and you captured Richard and took him to the Palace of the Prophets. Had you not, he would not have destroyed the great barrier and the Imperial Order would be back in the Old World right now, not the New. If you want to start assigning blame, the Sisters of the Dark would never have encountered Richard had you not captured him in the first place and taken him back across the barrier to the Old World.”
Verna pressed her lips tight. Richard knew the look, and what was coming.
“All right,” he said in a low voice before they could start going at it. “We all did what we had to at the time, what we thought best. I’ve made my share of mistakes as well. We can only shape the future, not the past.”
Verna’s mouth twisted with a look that said she would like nothing more than to continue the argument, but she knew better. “You’re right.”
“Of course he is,” Cara said. “He is the Lord Rahl.”
In spite of herself, Verna smiled. “I guess he is, Cara. He has come to fulfill prophecy even if he didn’t intend to.”
“No,” Richard said, “I have come to try to help us save ourselves. This isn’t over yet, and prophecy, in the case of what you’re talking about, has a different meaning.”
Verna’s suspicion returned in a flash. “What meaning?”
“I don’t have time to go into it right now. I need to get back and see if Zedd and the others have come up with anything.”
“You mean about finding your wife, Lord Rahl?”
“Yes, General, but it gets worse. Other things are happening. There is fundamental trouble with magic.”
“Such as?” Verna pressed.
Richard appraised her eyes. “You need to know that the chimes have contaminated the world of life. Magic itself has been corrupted. Parts of it have already failed. There is no telling when yet more of it will fail, or how soon. We have to get back and see what can be done—if anything. Ann is there, along with Nathan, and they are working with Zedd to find some answers.”
Before Verna could launch into a barrage of questions, Richard turned his attention to the general. “One last thing. With no army here to stand in their way, I’m sure that Jagang will try to take the People’s Palace.”
General Meiffert scratched his head of blond hair as he thought it over. “I suppose.” He looked up. “But the palace is high on a huge plateau. There are only two ways up: the small road with the drawbridge, or through the great inner doors. If the great doors were closed there’s not going to be any assault up that way, and the road is pretty useless for an armed attack.
“Still,” the general said, “just to be on the safe side, I would advise that we send some of our best men up to the palace as reinforcements. With all of us heading south, Commander General Trimack and the First File will be facing Jagang’s entire army all alone. But still, an assault on the palace?” He shook his head skeptically. “The palace is impenetrable.”
“Jagang has gifted with him,” Cara reminded him. “And don’t forget, Lord Rahl, those Sisters made it into the palace before, way back in the beginning. Remember?”
Before Richard could answer, Verna caught his arm and turned him back to her frown. “Why would those Sisters ignite this spell you mentioned, this Chainfire spell?”
“To make people forget that Kahlan exists.”
“But why would they want to do such a thing?”
Richard sighed. “Sister Ulicia wanted to get Kahlan into the People’s Palace to steal the boxes of Orden. The Chainfire spell was designed to make a person the same thing as invisible. With the Chainfire spell ignited on Kahlan, no one remembers her. No one remembers that she walked right in and took the boxes out of the garden of life.”
“Took the boxes . . .” Verna blinked in astonishment. “What in the world for?”
“Sister Ulicia put them in play,” Nicci said.
“Dear Creator,” Verna said as she pressed a hand to her forehead. “I will leave some Sisters there with a stern warning.”
“Maybe you ought to be one of them,” Richard said as he glanced out and saw the wind come up to carry the rain sideways at times. “We can’t allow the palace to fall. Causing havoc down in the Old World is relatively simple conjuring for the Sisters. Defending the palace from Jagang’s horde and his gifted may be a much greater challenge.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” she admitted as she pulled a lock of wind-borne, wavy hair back off her face.
“Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can do to stop Ulicia and her Sisters of the Dark.” Richard glanced around at Nicci and Cara, then out at all the men rushing about through the rain to carry out their new mission. “I need to get back.”
General Meiffert clapped his fist over his heart. “We will be the steel against steel, Lord Rahl, so that you can be the magic against magic.”
Verna touched Richard’s cheek, her brown eyes welling up. “Take care, Richard. We all need you.”
He nodded and gave her a warm smile, putting more than words could say into it.
General Meiffert slipped an arm around Cara’s waist. “Could I escort you to your horses?”
Cara smiled up at him in a very feminine way. “I think we would like that.”
Nicci pulled the hood of her cloak up as they ducked out into the downpour. She looked over at Richard and frowned suspiciously.
“Where did you get such an idea as the ‘phantom legion’?”
He put a hand on the small of her back and guided her into the downpour. “Shota gave me the thought when she said I needed to stop chasing phantoms. She implied that a phantom can’t be found, can’t be caught. I want these men to be phantoms.”
She gently circled an arm around his shoulders as they sprinted for their horses. “You did the right thing, Richard.”
She must have read the sorrow in his eyes.
Chapter 26
Rachel yawned. Seemingly out of nowhere, Violet spun around and clouted her hard enough to knock her off the rock she’d been sitting on.
Stunned, Rachel pushed herself up on an arm. She cradled her cheek in one hand, waiting for the stupefying pain to loosen its grip, waiting for everything around her to come back into focus. Satisfied, Violet turned back to her work.
Rachel had been so groggy from not sleeping that she hadn’t been paying attention, allowing Violet’s blow to take her completely by surprise. Rachel’s eyes watered with the tingling hurt but she knew better than to say anything or to make a show of the pain.
“Yawning is impolite, at best, disrespectful at worst,” Violet’s plump face peered back over her shoulder. “If you don’t behave, then the next time I’ll use the whip.”
“Yes, Queen Violet,” Rachel answered in a meek voice. She knew all too well that Violet wasn’t making an empty threat.
Rachel was so tired she could hardly keep her eyes open. She had once been Violet’s “playmate” but now she seemed to be nothing more than an object of abuse.
Violet had become preoccupied with extracting revenge. At night she had an iron device fastened in Rachel’s mouth
. It was a terrifying process. Rachel was made to stick her tongue into a beaklike clamp made of two flat, scored pieces of iron. The jaws were then tightened down hard enough to grip her tongue.
Resisting, Rachel had learned, earned her a whipping followed by guards prying her mouth open and then using painful tongs on her tender tongue to help accomplish the task of getting it placed in the clamp. They always won in the end; her tongue had nowhere to hide. Once the clamp was on her tongue, then the iron mask that was a part of it was locked around her head to kept her tongue immobile.
Once it was on, Rachel couldn’t speak. It was hard even to swallow.
After that, Violet locked her in her old iron box for the night. She said she wanted Rachel to know what it was like to be mute and in pain.
And it was painful. Being locked in her iron cage all night with that terrible device clamped down on her tongue had nearly driven her crazy. At first, terrified out of her mind by the feeling of being trapped and alone, unable to get out, unable to get that painful thing off, she had screamed and screamed. Chuckling, Violet merely threw a heavy rug over the box to mute Rachel’s cries. Crying and screaming, though, only made the iron jaws pinching her tongue hurt all the more and leave her bloody.
But what finally made her stop crying and screaming was that Violet came and put her face right up to the little window and said that if Rachel didn’t be quiet, she would have Six cut Rachel’s tongue out for real. Rachel knew that Six would do it if Violet asked.
After that she didn’t scream or carry on. She instead curled up in a ball in her little iron prison and tried to remember all the things Chase had taught her. That, in the end, was what had calmed her.
Chase would have told her not to think of her present predicament, but to keep watching for the time when she could get herself out of it. Chase had taught her how to watch for patterns in the way people behaved, and openings where they weren’t paying attention. So, that was what she did as she lay in the iron box every night, unable to sleep as she waited for morning to come, waited for the men who would pull her out of the box and remove the terrible device for the day.
Rachel could hardly eat because her tongue was so raw and scraped—not that they gave her much to eat anyway. Each morning her tongue throbbed painfully for hours after the clamp was removed. Her jaws hurt, too, from her mouth being held open all night by the device. Eating hurt. But then, when she did eat, everything tasted like dirty metal. Talking hurt, too, so she only spoke when Violet asked her something. Violet, seeing how Rachel would avoid speaking, would sometimes smile in a contemptuous manner and call Rachel her little mute.
Rachel was completely dispirited by once again being in the clutches of such a wicked person, and sad beyond anything she had ever known because Chase was gone. She couldn’t get the memory of him being so brutally hurt out of her mind. She grieved endlessly for him. Her heartache, misery, and utter loneliness seemed unendurable. When Violet wasn’t at her drawing lessons, or ordering people to do things, or eating, or trying on jewels, or being fitted for dresses, then she amused herself by hurting Rachel. Sometimes, reminding Rachel of how she had once threatened her with a fire stick, Violet would hold Rachel by the wrist and put a little white-hot ember from the fire on her arm. Still, Rachel’s sorrow for Chase hurt her worse than anything Violet could ever do to her. With Chase gone, it almost didn’t matter what happened to her.
Violet needed to “discipline” Rachel, as she’d put it, for all the terrible things Rachel had done. Violet had decided that losing her tongue had in large part somehow been Rachel’s fault. Violet had said that it was going to take a long time for Rachel to earn forgiveness for such a serious transgression, and also for showing disrespect by escaping the castle. Violet viewed Rachel’s escape as a shameful rejection of what she called their “generosity” to a worthless orphan. She often went on and on at great length about all the trouble she and her mother had gone to for Rachel only to have her turn out to be an ungrateful waif.
When Violet eventually tired of hurting her, Rachel suspected that she would be put to death. She’d heard Violet ordering the deaths of prisoners accused of “high crimes.” If someone displeased her enough, or if Six told her that the person was a threat to the crown, then Violet would order their execution. If the person had made the grave mistake of openly questioning Violet’s authority, or rule, then Violet would tell her guards to make it slow, and make it painful. She sometimes went to watch, just to make sure that it was.
Rachel remembered back when Queen Milena had ordered executions and Violet had first begun to go watch. As her playmate, Rachel had to go along with her. Rachel always averted her eyes from the ghastly sight; Violet never did.
Six had set up a whole system whereby people could secretly report the names of those people who said things against the queen. Six had told Violet that people who made such secret reports had to be rewarded for their loyalty. Violet paid handsomely for the names of traitors.
Since the time when Rachel had been with her before, Violet had acquired a new fondness for inflicting pain. Six often commented that pain was a good teacher. Violet had become exceedingly fond of the notion that she controlled the lives of others, that on her word other people could be made to suffer.
She had also become acutely suspicious of everyone. Everyone but Six, that was, who she’d come to rely on as the only person who could be trusted. Violet greatly distrusted most of her “loyal subjects,” frequently referring to them as nobodies. Rachel remembered that Violet used to call her a nobody.
When Rachel had lived at the castle before, people had been careful to watch themselves lest they cross the wrong people, but it was more a sense that they were just being on their toes. People had been afraid of Queen Milena, and with good reason, but they still would smile and laugh at times. The wash women would gossip, the cooks would now and then make funny faces in the food, the cleaning staff would whistle as they went about their chores, and the soldiers would sometimes tell jokes to one another as they walked the halls of the castle during guard duty.
Now there was quiet quaking whenever Queen Violet or Six were around. None of the cleaning staff, the washwomen, the seamstresses, the cooks, or the soldiers ever smiled or laughed. They all looked afraid all the time as they hurried to do their work. The atmosphere at the castle now was always charged with terror that, at any time, anyone might be pointed out. Everyone went out of their way to openly show respect for the queen, especially in front of her tall, grim advisor. People seemed to fear Six just as much as they feared Violet. When Six smiled with that strange, empty, snakelike smile she had, people would stand frozen in place, wide-eyed, sweat breaking out across their brows, and then swallow in relief after she had glided out of sight.
“Right here,” Six said.
“Right here, what?” Violet asked as she gnawed on a bread stick.
Rachel eased herself back up on the rock where she had been sitting. She reminded herself to pay more attention. The slap was her own fault for getting bored and not paying attention.
No, it wasn’t, she told herself. It was Violet’s fault. Chase had told her not to take on blame that belonged to others.
Chase. Her heart sank yet again thinking about him. She had to put her mind to other things lest she end up being so sad thinking about him that she start to weep. Violet was not at all tolerant of anything Rachel did without permission. That included crying.
“Right there,” Six said again with exaggerated patience. When Violet only stared at her, Six drew a long finger across the face of the torchlit rock wall. “What is missing?”
Violet leaned in, peering at the wall. “Umm . . .”
“Where is the sun?”
“Well,” Violet said in a snippy voice as she stood up straight again and waggled a finger at the yellow disc, “right there. Surely you can see that this is the sun.”
Six glared at her a moment. “Yes, of course I see that it’s the sun, my queen.” Her empty sm
ile returned. “But where is it in the sky?”
Violet tapped the chalk against her chin. “The sky?”
“Yes. Where is it in the sky? Straight up?” Six pointed her finger skyward. “Are we meant to understand that we are looking straight up at the sun in the sky? Is it high noon?”
“Well, no, of course it’s not high noon—you know it can’t be. It’s supposed to be late in the day. You know that, too.”
“Really? And how are we to know that? After all, it makes no difference what I know it must be. The drawing must say what is. It can’t elicit comment from me, now, can it?”
“I guess not,” Violet admitted.
Six again drew her finger across the wall beneath the sun. “What’s missing, then?”
“Missing, missing . . .” Violet muttered. “Oh!” She quickly drew a straight line right where Six had indicated with her finger. “The horizon. We need to fix the time of day with the horizon. You told me that before. I guess it slipped my mind.” She glared over at Six. “It’s a lot to remember, you know. All this stuff is hard to keep straight.”
Six held the cold smile frozen in place. “Yes, my queen, of course it is. I apologize for forgetting how hard it was for me to learn all these things way back when I was your age.”
The drawing that Violet was working on was complex beyond anything else in the cave, but Six was always there to remind Violet of the right thing to draw at the right time.
Violet shook the chalk at Six. “You would be well advised to keep that in mind.”
Six carefully knitted her fingers together. “Yes, my queen, of course.” She pursed her lips and finally drew her glare away from Violet as she turned back to the wall. “Now, at this point we need the star chart for this domain. I can give you the lesson in the specific reasons later, if you want, but for now why don’t I just show you what’s necessary?”
Violet glanced to where Six was pointing and shrugged. “Sure.” She went back to sucking on the bread stick as she waited.
Six opened a small book. Violet leaned in, squinting in the flickering light. Six tapped the page with a long nail as Violet finally bit through the crunchy bread stick.
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