Chainfire (19 page)

“I’m just telling you what I think would be the most beneficial thing for you to do in our struggle to eliminate the Order. I’m not telling you what to do.”

She looked away again. “But it would please you if I did as you suggest and stay to help these people.”

Richard shrugged. “I admit to that.”

Nicci sighed irritably. “Then I will stay, as you suggest, and help them defeat the threat looming a few days away. But if I do that—defeat the troops and eliminate the wizard—then you would allow me to join you?”

“I said I would.”

She finally, reluctantly, nodded. “I agree.”

Richard turned. “Ishaq?”

The man hurried close. “Yes?”

“I need six horses.”

“Six? You will be taking others with you?”

“No, just Cara and me. We’ll be needing fresh mounts along the way so we can rotate the horses we ride to keep them strong enough for the journey. We need fast horses, not the draft horses from your wagons. And tack,” Richard added.

“Fast horses…” Ishaq lifted his hat and with the same hand scratched his scalp. He looked up. “When?”

“I need to leave as soon as it’s light enough.”

Ishaq eyed Richard suspiciously. “I suppose this is to be in partial payment for what I owe you?”

“I wanted to ease your conscience about when you could begin to repay me.”

Ishaq succumbed to a brief laugh. “You will have what you need. I will see to it that you have supplies as well.”

Richard laid a hand on Ishaq’s shoulder. “Thank you, my friend. I appreciate it. I hope someday I can get back here and haul a load or two for you, just for old times’ sake.”

That brightened Ishaq’s expression. “After we are all free for good?”

Richard nodded. “Free for good.” He glanced at the stars beginning to dot the sky. “Do you know a handy place where we can get some food and a place to sleep for the night?”

Ishaq gestured off across the broad expanse of the old palace grounds to the hill where the work shacks used to be. “We have inns, now, since you were here last. People come to see Liberty Square and so they need rooms. I have built a place up there where I rent rooms. They are among the finest available.” He lifted a finger. “I have a reputation to uphold of offering the best of everything, whether it be wagons to haul goods, or rooms for weary travelers.”

“I have a feeling that what you owe me is going to be dwindling rapidly.”

Ishaq smiled as he shrugged. “Many people come to see this remarkable statue. Rooms are hard to come by, so they are not cheap.”

“I wouldn’t have expected them to be.”

“But they are reasonable,” Ishaq insisted. “A good value for the price. And I have a stable right next door, so I can bring your horses once I collect them. I will do it now.”

“All right.” Richard lifted his pack and swung it onto a shoulder. “At least it’s not far, even if it is expensive.”

Ishaq spread his hands expansively. “And the view at sunrise is worth the price.” He grinned. “But for you, Richard, Mistress Cara, and Mistress Nicci, no charge.”

“No, no.” Lifting a hand, Richard forestalled any argument. “It’s only fair that you should be able to earn a return on your investment. Deduct it from what you owe me. What with the interest, I’m sure the amount has grown handsomely.”

“Interest?”

“Of course,” Richard said as he started toward the distant buildings. “You have had the use of my money. It’s only fair that I be compensated for that use. The interest is not cheap, but it’s fair and a good value.”

As he walked into his room, Richard was pleased to see the washbasin. It wasn’t a bath, but at least he would be able to clean up before bed. He threw closed the bolt on the door, locking himself in, even though he felt perfectly safe in the small inn. Cara was in the room beside his. Nicci was in a room downstairs on the first floor close to the entrance and right beside the only stairs up to the second floor. Men stood guard both inside and outside the inn while yet more men patrolled the streets in the area around the building. Richard hadn’t thought so many men were necessary, but Victor and the men were insistent about providing the protection since enemy troops were in the area. In the end, appreciating the opportunity for a safe and peaceful night’s sleep, Richard hadn’t objected.

He was so weary that he could hardly stand any longer. His hip sockets ached from the long day of walking over rough terrain. On top of the journey, the emotional talk with the people at Liberty Square had taken what energy he had left.

Richard sloughed off his pack, letting it clunk down on the floor at the foot of the small bed, before stepping to the washstand and splashing water on his face. He didn’t know that water could feel so good.

Nicci, Cara, and Richard had had a quick meal of lamb stew down in the small dining room. Jamila, the woman who ran the place for Ishaq—another partner—had been instructed by Ishaq to treat them as royalty. The round-faced woman had offered to cook them anything they desired. Richard hadn’t wanted to make a fuss, and besides, the leftover lamb stew had meant there would be no waiting and they could get to sleep all that much sooner. Jamila had seemed a little disappointed not to have the chance to cook them up something special. With the kind of meals they’d had over recent days, though, the bowl of lamb stew and fresh, crusty bread with loads of butter had been about the best food Richard could recall having. Had it not been for so many troubling things on his mind he would have savored it more.

He knew that Cara and Nicci needed the rest as much as he did so he’d insisted that each take a room of their own. Both women had wanted to stay in the same room as Richard so that they could be close at hand and watch over him. He’d had visions of them both standing with their arms folded at the foot of his bed as he slept. He’d maintained that nothing was going to get to him on the second floor, and besides, there were plenty of men to stand guard. They had relented, but reluctantly and only after he reminded them that the two of them would be more help to him if they were well rested and alert. It was a luxury for all of them not to have to stand watch, for once, and be able to get the rest they needed.

Victor had promised to come see Richard and Cara off in the morning. Ishaq had promised to have the horses in the stable and waiting long before then. Both Victor and Ishaq were sorry that he was leaving, but they understood that he had his reasons. None of them had asked where he was going, probably because they felt ill-at-ease talking about the woman none of them believed existed. He had begun to sense the distance it created in people when he mentioned Kahlan.

From the tall window in his top floor room, Richard had a breathtaking view of
Spirit
off across the grounds below the rise where the inn stood. With the wick on the lamp in his room turned down low, he had no trouble seeing the statue in white marble lit by a ring of torches in tall iron stanchions. He idly recalled the many times he had been up on this same hillside looking down at Emperor Jagang’s palace under construction. It hardly seemed like the same world. He felt as if he’d been dropped into some other life he didn’t know and all the rules were different. Sometimes he wondered if he really was losing his mind.

Nicci, in a room on the bottom floor close to the front door, probably couldn’t see the statue, but Cara had the room next to his so she undoubtedly had the same view. He wondered if she was taking advantage of it, and, if she was, what she thought of the statue she saw. Richard couldn’t imagine how she could not clearly remember everything it meant to him—to Kahlan. He wondered if she, too, felt as if she were living someone else’s life…or if she thought he was losing his mind.

Richard couldn’t imagine what could possibly have happened to make everyone forget that Kahlan existed. He had held out some slim hope that the people in Altur’Rang would remember her, that it had only been those
immediately nearby when she had disappeared who were affected. That hope was now dashed. Whatever the cause, the problem was widespread.

Richard leaned against the cabinet with the washbasin and tilted his head back as he closed his eyes for a moment. His neck and shoulders were sore from days of carrying his heavy pack as they had trudged through dense and seemingly endless woods. Throughout the swift and difficult journey even conversation had, for the most part, required too much effort. It felt good not to have to walk for a while, even if when he closed his eyes it seemed that all he could see was a parade of endless forests. With his eyes closed, it felt as if his legs were still moving.

Richard yawned as he lifted the baldric over his head and stood the Sword of Truth against a chair beside the washstand. He pulled off his shirt and tossed it on the bed. It occurred to him that this would be a good time to wash some of his clothes, but he was too worn-out. He just wanted to clean up and then fall into bed and sleep.

He stepped over to the window again as he went about washing with a soapy cloth. The night was dead quiet but for the ceaseless drone of the cicadas. He couldn’t resist staring at the statue. There was so much of Kahlan in it that it made him heartsick. He had to force himself not to think about what horrors she might be facing, what pain she might be enduring. Anxiety constricted his breathing. In an effort to set his worry aside for a while, he did his best to recall Kahlan’s smile, her green eyes, her arms around him, the soft moan she sometimes made as she kissed him.

He had to find her.

He dipped the cloth in the water and wrung it out, watching dirty water run back into the basin, and saw that his hands were trembling.

He had to find her.

In another attempt to force his mind onto other things, he rested his gaze on the washbasin, deliberately taking in the vines painted all around the edge. The vines were blue, not green, probably so as to match the blue flowers stenciled on the walls and the blue flowers on the simple curtains and the decorative cover on the bed. Ishaq had done an admirable job of building a warm and inviting inn.

The water in the basin, still as a woodland pool, suddenly trembled for no apparent reason.

Richard stood stock-still, staring at it.

The slack surface abruptly bunched into perfectly symmetrical harmonic waves, almost like the hair on a cat’s back standing on end.

And then the whole building shuddered with a hard thump, as if struck by something huge. One of the panes of glass in the window cracked with a brittle pop. Almost instantly, from the far end of the building, came the muffled sound of splintering wood.

Richard crouched, frozen, eyes wide, unable to tell what had caused the incomprehensible sound.

His first thought was that a big tree had fallen on the place, but then he remembered that there were no large trees anywhere nearby.

A heartbeat after the first jolt, came a second thump—louder this time. Closer. The building swayed under the crash of splintering wood. He glanced up, fearing that the ceiling might collapse.

Half a heartbeat later came another thump that shook the building. Shattering, splintering wood let out a high-pitched screech as if crying out in agony as it was being ripped apart.

THUMP. Crash. Louder, closer.

Richard touched the fingers of one hand to the floor to keep his balance as the building quaked under the jolt of the heavy impact. What had started at the far end of the building was rapidly coming closer.

THUMP, CRASH. Closer yet.

Splintering shrieks howled through the night air as wood was rent violently apart. The building swayed. Water sloshed in the basin, slopping over the rolled metal edge with the painted blue vines. The sounds of ripping walls and splintering boards melted together into one continuous roar.

Suddenly, the wall to his left, the wall between his and Cara’s room, exploded toward him. Clouds of dust billowed up. The noise was deafening.

Something huge and black, nearly the size of the room itself, drove through the wall, splintering lath, sending plaster and debris showering through the air.

The force of the concussion blew the door off its hinges and violently blasted the glass and the mullions out of the window.

Long ragged fragments of boards spun through the room. One smashed the chair that held his sword, another piercing the far wall. His sword tumbled out of reach. One piece whacked Richard’s leg hard enough to drop him to one knee.

Animate darkness drove debris before it, sending everything flying, enveloping the light and plunging the flying wreckage into a surreal, swirling gloom.

Icy fright shimmered through Richard’s veins.

He saw a cold cloud of his breath as he grunted with the effort of scrambling to his feet.

Darkness, like death itself, plunged toward him. Richard gasped a breath. Frigid air stabbed like icy needles into his lungs. Shock at the pain of the cutting cold clenched his throat shut.

Richard knew that life and death balanced on a razor’s edge only an instant wide.

With every ounce of his strength driving him, he dove through the window as if he were diving into a swimming hole. The side of his body brushed past the descending inky darkness. His flesh sizzled with a sharp sensation so cold that it burned.

In midair, plummeting through the window out into the night, fearing the long drop, Richard snatched for the window’s frame and only just managed to seize it with his left hand. He held on for dear life. His falling weight whipped him around so hard that his body slammed into the side of the building with enough force to knock the wind from him. He hung by his one hand, dazed by the wallop against the outside wall, trying to gasp in a breath.

The humid night air on top of the blow against the wall, coming right after the frigid gasp in the room just before he’d jumped out the window, seemed to conspire to do its best to suffocate him. From the corner of his eye he saw the statue in the fluttering torchlight. With her head thrown back, fists at her sides, and her back arched, the figure stood proud against the invisible power trying to subdue her. The sight of it, the strength of it, made Richard at last draw in an urgent breath. He coughed and drew another, gasping for air as his feet searched for any purchase. They found none. He glanced down and saw that the ground was awfully far below him.

It felt as if he might have ripped his shoulder from its socket. Hanging by one hand, he dared not let go. He feared that such a fall would at the least break his legs.

Above, from the window, came a wail so shrill that it made every hair on his body stand on end and every nerve scream in sharp pain. It was a
sound so black, so poisonous, so horrific that Richard thought that, surely, the veil to underworld had ripped apart and the Keeper of the Dead had been loosed among the living.

The savage wail in the room above him drew out into a twisting, seething shriek. It was a sound of pure hate brought to life.

Richard glanced up and almost let go. The fall, he thought, might be preferable to the thing in the room now suddenly streaming out through the window.

A dark, incorporeal stain poured out of the shattered window like the exhalation of utter evil.

Although it had no shape, no form, it was somehow crystal clear to Richard that this was something beyond mere wickedness. This was a scourge, like death itself, on the hunt.

As the inky shadow slipped through the window and out into the night, it suddenly began to disintegrate into a thousand fluttering shapes that darted off in every direction, the cold darkness decomposing, melting into the night, dissolving into the heart of the blackest shadows.

Richard hung by one arm, panting, unable to move, watching, waiting for the thing to coalesce suddenly before his face and rip him apart.

The hillside fell under the spell of a still hush. Death’s shadow had seemingly become part of the night. The cicadas, until then silent, started in again. As they began their shrill songs, the rising sound moved in a wave across the vast expanse of grounds off toward the distant statue.

“Lord Rahl!” a man below shouted. “Hold on!”

The man, wearing a small-brimmed hat similar to Ishaq’s, scrambled around the building, heading for the door. Richard didn’t think that he could hang on by his one arm until someone came to help him. He groaned in pain but managed to twist himself around enough to lunge and with his other hand grasp the windowsill, his legs swinging to and fro over a frightening drop. He was relieved to find that just taking some of the weight off his one arm helped ease the pain.

He had just pulled his upper body in through the shattered window when he heard people spilling into his room. The lantern was gone, probably buried, so it was hard to see. Men scrambled over the rubble littering the floor, their boots crunching shattered bits of the wall, snapping fragments of broken wooden furniture. Powerful hands seized him under his
arms while others grabbed his belt to help lift him back inside. In the nearly pitch black room it was difficult to get his bearings.

“Did you see it?” Richard asked the men as he still struggled to get his breath. “Did you see the thing that came out of the window?”

Some of the men coughed on the dust while others spoke up that they hadn’t seen anything.

“We heard the noise, the crashing, and the window breaking,” one of them said. “I thought the whole building was coming down.”

Someone appeared with a candle and lit a lantern. The orange glow illuminated a startling sight. A second man, and then a third, held a lantern out to be set alight. Amid the swirling dust, the room was a confusing jumble, what with the bed overturned, the washstand embedded halfway through the far wall, and a hill of rubble across the floor.