Chainfire (34 page)

The general gave her a grim nod. “May the good spirits be with you, Prelate.”

With Berdine at her side, Verna made her way back out of the restricted area and away from the Garden of Life. As they once again descended the stairs, she was relieved to be on her way back to the army, even if she was worried over their mission. She realized that since coming to the palace she felt more of a sense of commitment, and more of a sense of connection to what had became the D’Haran empire under Richard. Even more than that, she seemed to care more about life.

But if they didn’t find Richard and get him to lead their forces in the battle they would face when they finally met the Imperial Order, then the mission to stop Jagang’s army was suicide.

“Prelate?” Berdine said as she pushed closed the door with a snake carved on it.

Verna paused and waited as the woman tapped the palm of her hand on the top of the bronze skull door handle.

“What is it, Berdine?”

“I think I should stay here.”

“Stay?” Verna met the Mord-Sith’s gaze. “But why?”

“If Ann finds Lord Rahl and takes him to the army, he will have you and a number of other Mord-Sith who are there to protect him—and he will be where you say he needs to be. But maybe she won’t find him.”

“She must. Richard is also aware of the weight of prophecy and he knows that he must be there at the final battle. Even if Ann doesn’t find him, I have faith that he will come to join us.”

Berdine shrugged with the difficulty of trying to find the right words. “Maybe. But maybe not. Verna, I’ve spent a lot of time with him. He doesn’t think like that. Prophecy doesn’t mean as much to him as it does to you.”

Verna heaved a sigh. “You said a mouthful, Berdine.”

“This is Lord Rahl’s home, even if he never really lived here except as a captive. Even so, he has come to care about us as his people, and his friends. I’ve spent time with him; I know how much he cares about us and I know that he is aware of how much we all care about him. Maybe he will feel a need to come home.

“If he does, I think I should be here for him. He depends on me to help him with books, with translations—at least, I like to believe he does. He makes me feel important to him, anyway. I don’t know, I just think I should remain at the palace in case he comes here. If he does, he will need to know that you are desperately trying to find him. He will need to know of the impending final battle.”

“Does your bond tell you where he is?”

Berdine gestured west. “Somewhere in that direction, but very distant.”

“The general said the same thing. That can only mean that Richard is at least in the New World again.” Verna found reason to smile. “At long last. That much is good to know.”

“The closer those with the bond are to him, the better able they will be to help you find him.”

Verna considered it a moment. “Well, I will miss your company, Berdine, but I guess you must do as you see fit and I have to admit that what you say does make some sense. The more places we watch for him to show up, the better our chances of finding him in time.”

“I really think it’s right for me to stay here. Besides, I want to study
some of the books and try to match up some of what Kolo says. There are a few things bothering me. Maybe if I work it out, I can even help Lord Rahl to win that final battle.”

Verna nodded with a sad smile. “See me out?”

“Of course.”

Both turned to the sound of footsteps. It was another Mord-Sith, in red leather. She was blond, and taller than Berdine. Her piercing blue eyes took Verna in with the kind of measured calculation that betrayed utter, fearless confidence.

“Nyda!” Berdine called.

The woman smiled with one side of her mouth as she came to a halt. She placed a hand on Berdine’s shoulder, a gesture that Verna recognized as being as close to wild jubilation as it got among Mord-Sith, except perhaps for Berdine.

Nyda gazed down at Berdine, her eyes drinking her in. “Sister Berdine, it has been a while. D’Hara has been lonely without you. Welcome home.”

“It’s good to be home and see your face again.”

Nyda’s gaze slid to Verna. Berdine seemed to remember herself.

“Sister Nyda, this is Verna, the Prelate of the Sisters of the Light. She is a friend and advisor to Lord Rahl.”

“He is on his way here?”

“No, unfortunately,” Berdine said.

“Are you two sisters, then?” Verna asked.

“No,” Berdine said, waving a hand at the notion. “It’s more like you calling the other women of your kind ‘Sister.’ Nyda is an old friend.”

Nyda glanced around. “Where is Raina?”

Berdine’s face went white at the unexpected encounter with the name. Her voice fell to a whisper. “Raina died.”

Nyda’s face was unreadable. “I didn’t know, Berdine. Did she die well, with her Agiel in her hand?”

Berdine swallowed as she stared at the floor. “She died of the plague. She fought it until her final breath…but in the end it took her. She died in Lord Rahl’s arms.”

Verna thought that she could detect that Nyda’s blue eyes were just a little more liquid as she gazed at her sister Mord-Sith.

“I’m so sorry, Berdine.”

Berdine looked up. “Lord Rahl wept as she died.”

By the silent but astonished look on Nyda’s face, Verna could see that it was unheard of for the Lord Rahl to care if a Mord-Sith lived or died. By the look of wonder that surfaced, such reverence for one of them was homage of profound proportions.

“I have heard such tales about this Lord Rahl. They are really true, then?”

Berdine smiled radiantly. “They are true.”

“What are you reading that’s so absorbing?” Rikka asked as she used a shoulder to push the thick door closed.

Zedd grunted with displeasure before glancing up from the book lying open before him. “Blank pages.”

Through the round window to his left, he could see the roofs of the city of Aydindril spread out far below. In the golden light of the setting sun the city looked beautiful, but that appearance was but an illusion. With all the people gone, fleeing for their lives before the hordes of invaders, the city was no more than an empty, lifeless husk, like the shed skin of the cicadas that had recently emerged.

Rikka leaned toward him over the magnificent, polished desk and tilted her head to see better as she peered down at the book. “It’s not all blank,” she announced. “You can’t read something that is blank. You therefore must be reading the writing, not the blank places. You should try to be more accurate in what you say, if not more honest.”

Zedd’s frown darkened as his gaze rose to meet hers. “Sometimes what isn’t said is more meaningful than what is said. Did you ever think about that?”

“Are you asking me to keep quiet?” She set down a large wooden bowl containing his dinner. The steam drifting up carried the aroma of onions, garlic, vegetables and succulent meat. It smelled distractingly delicious.

“No. Demanding it.”

Through the round window to his right, Zedd could see the dark walls of the Keep soaring high up overhead. Built into the side of the mountain that overlooked Aydindril, the Wizard’s Keep was nearly a mountain itself. Like the city, it too was empty—with the exception of Rikka, Chase, Rachel, and himself. It wouldn’t be long, though, before there would be more people in the Keep. At last the Keep would once again have a family living in it. The empty halls would again ring with laughter and love as they once had when countless people called the Keep home.

Rikka contented herself with gazing around at the shelves in the round turret room. They were filled with jars and jugs in a variety of shapes, and delicately colored glass vessels, some filled with ingredients for spells, and, in one case, polish for the desk, the ornately carved straight-backed oak chair, the low chest beside his chair, and the bookcases. Books in a variety of languages filled most of the space on the shelves. The corner cases with glassed doors held more of the tomes.

Rikka folded her arms as she leaned close and studied some of the gilded spines. “Have you actually read all these books?”

“Of course,” Zedd muttered. “Many times.”

“It must be boring being a wizard,” she said. “You have to do too much reading and thinking. It’s easier to get answers by making people bleed.”

Zedd harrumphed. “When a person is in agony they may be eager to talk, but they tend to tell you what they think you want to hear, whether it’s true or not.”

She pulled out a volume and thumbed through it before replacing it on the shelf. “That is why we are trained to question people by using the proper methods. We show them how very much more painful it is for them when they lie to us. If they understand the profoundly terrible consequences of lying, people will tell the truth.”

Zedd wasn’t really listening to her. He was concentrating on trying to figure out what the fragment of prophecy could mean. Every single possibility he came up with only served to further ruin his appetite. The steaming bowl sat waiting. He realized that she was probably hanging around, waiting for him to comment on dinner. Maybe she was waiting for a compliment.

“So, what’s to eat?”

“Stew.”

Zedd stretched his neck a bit to glance in the wooden bowl. “Where’s the biscuits?”

“No biscuits. Stew.”

“I know, stew. I can see that it’s stew. What I mean is where are the biscuits to go with the stew?”

Rikka shrugged. “I can get you some fresh bread if you’d like.”

“It’s stew,” he exclaimed with a scowl. “Stew calls for real biscuits, not bread.”

“If I had known you wanted biscuits for dinner I could have made you biscuits rather than the stew. You should have said something earlier.”

“I don’t want biscuits
instead
of stew,” Zedd growled.

“You change your mind a lot when you’re grumpy, don’t you?”

Zedd squinted at her with one eye. “You really are talented at torture.”

She smiled, turned on a heel, and strode regally out of the small room. Zedd thought that Mord-Sith must strut even when they were alone.

He went back to the book, trying to come at the problem from a different angle. He had only had time to read the passage again a couple of times when the latch on the door lifted and Rachel shuffled into the room carrying something in both hands. She used her foot to push the door closed

“Zedd, you should put your book away, now, and have some supper.”

Zedd smiled at the child. She always made him smile. She was infectious that way.

“What have you got there, Rachel?”

She reached up and set the tin bowl on the desk, then stretched her arm out as she pushed it across the desk toward him.

“Biscuits.”

Flabbergasted, Zedd rose up a little from his chair to lean over and look in the tin bowl.

“What are you doing with biscuits?”

Rachel’s big eyes blinked at him as if it were the strangest question she had ever heard. “They’re for your supper. Rikka asked me to carry them for her. She had her hands full with a bowl of stew for you and one for Chase.”

“You shouldn’t help that woman,” Zedd said with a menacing scowl as he sat back down. “She’s evil.”

Rachel giggled. “You’re silly, Zedd. Rikka tells me stories about the stars. She makes pictures out of them and then tells a story about each picture.”

“Is that so. Well, sounds like a nice thing for her to do.”

With the light fading, it was getting hard to read. Zedd cast out a hand, sending a spark of his gift into the dozens of candles in the elaborate iron candelabrum. The warm light brightened the cozy little room, lighting the finely fit stone of the walls and the heavy oak beams across the ceiling.

Rachel grinned, her eyes glistening with both reflected points of candlelight and with wonder. She liked seeing him light candles. “You have the bestest magic, Zedd.”

Zedd sighed. “I wish you weren’t leaving me, little one. Rikka doesn’t appreciate my candle-lighting trick.”

“You will miss me?”

“No, not really. I just don’t want to be left alone with Rikka,” he said as he read the last bit again.

They will at first contest him before they plot to heal him.
What could that mean?

“Maybe you could get Rikka to tell you some stories about the stars.” Rachel began looking sad as she came around the desk. “I’ll miss you something awful, Zedd.”

Zedd looked up from the book. Rachel held her arms out, wanting a hug. A smile overcame him as he scooped her into his arms. There were few things in life that felt as good as a hug from Rachel. She was a devotee of the hug, never putting less than her full enthusiasm into it.

“You have good hugs, Zedd. Richard has good hugs, too.”

“Yes he does.”

Zedd remembered being in that very room, so long ago, when his own daughter was about the same age as Rachel. She, too, would come to see him and want a hug. Now, all that he had left was Richard. Zedd missed him terribly.

“I will miss you, little one, but before you know it you will be back here with the rest of your family and then you will have brothers and sisters to play with instead of just an old man.” Zedd sat her on his knee. “It will be good to have all of you at the Wizard’s Keep with me. The Keep will be a joyful place, what with life in it again.”

“Rikka said that she will never have to cook again once my mother comes here.”

Zedd took a sip of lukewarm tea from a pewter mug on the chest beside him. “Did she now.”

Rachel nodded. “And she said that my mother would probably make you brush your hair.” She held out her hands, wanting to share a drink from his mug. He let her gulp tea.

Zedd cocked his head. “Brush my hair?”

Rachel nodded with a serious look. “It sticks all out. But I like it.”

“Rachel,” Chase said as he ducked in through the round-topped doorway, “are you bothering Zedd, again?”

Rachel shook her head. “I brought him biscuits. Rikka said he likes biscuits with his stew and I should bring him a whole bowl full.”

Chase planted his fists on his hips. “And how is he supposed to eat his biscuits with ugly children sitting on his lap? You could scare his appetite right out of him.”

Rachel giggled as she hopped down.

Zedd glanced at the book again. “Are you all packed up?”

“Yes,” the big man said. “I want to get an early start. We’ll leave first thing in the morning, if that’s still all right with you.”

Zedd dismissed the concern with a wave of his hand as he studied the prophecy. “Yes, yes. The sooner you get your family back here, the better. We’ll all feel better having them here where we know they will be safe and you will all be together.”

Chase’s heavy brow drew lower over his intent brown eyes. “Zedd, what’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

Zedd looked up with a frown. “Wrong? Nothing. Nothing is wrong.”

“He’s just busy reading,” Rachel assured Chase as she hugged his leg and put her head against his hip.

“Zedd,” Chase said in a demanding drawl that said he didn’t believe a word of it.

“What makes you think something is wrong?”

“You haven’t eaten a thing.” Chase rested one hand on the wooden handle of a long knife at his belt and with the other caressed Rachel’s head of long, golden blond hair. The man probably had a dozen knives of various sizes strapped around his waist and to his legs. When he left in the morning he would add swords and axes to the knives. “That can only mean something is wrong.”

Zedd popped a biscuit in his mouth. “There,” he mumbled around the mouthful. “Satisfied?”

While Zedd chewed the warm biscuit, Chase leaned down and lifted the girl’s chin. “Rachel, go to your room and finish getting your things packed up. And I expect your knives to be cleaned and sharp as well.”

She nodded earnestly. “They will be, Chase.”

Rachel had had a hard life for one so young. For reasons that had al
ways made Zedd suspicious, she’d been at the center of a variety of consequential situations. When Chase had taken the orphaned girl in to raise as his own daughter, Zedd himself had admonished the man to teach her to protect herself, to teach her to be like him so that she could defend herself and stay safe. Rachel adored Chase and eagerly learned all the lessons he taught her. With one of the smaller knives she carried, she could pin a fly to a fence post at ten paces.

“And I want you in bed early so that you will be rested,” Chase told her. “I’m not carrying you if you’re tired.”

Rachel gave him a puzzled look. “You carry me when I tell you I’m not tired.”

Chase cast Zedd a pained look before giving her a clearly feigned scowl. “Well, tomorrow you’re just going to have to keep up on your own.”

Rachel nodded seriously, unruffled by the man towering over her. “I will.” She looked at Zedd. “Will you come and kiss me good night?”

“Of course,” Zedd said with a smile of his own. “I’ll be in after a bit to tuck you in.”

He wondered if Rikka would stop by her room to tell her a story. It was heartwarming to think of the Mord-Sith telling a child stories about pictures made by the stars in the sky. Rachel seemed to have that effect on everyone.

Chase watched through the doorway as his daughter raced off down the broad rampart. Zedd had been gratified at the way she had taken to the Wizard’s Keep. In short order she had made it hers and was happily skipping through halls that were thousands of years old. She minded well and never strayed from the areas Zedd had warned her about. She was a child who understood danger. Out on the rampart, she looked completely at ease as she paused momentarily to gaze through a crenellation down at the city below before racing off again. It seemed to Zedd a wonder that such spindly legs could carry the child so swiftly.

After Chase was sure that she was safely on her way, he closed the heavy oak door and stepped closer to the desk. His size made the cozy room, a room that Zedd had always thought quite comfortable, seem rather cramped.

“Now, what’s the problem?”

The man wasn’t going to be satisfied until he knew more. Zedd sighed and used a finger to spin the book around for the boundary warden to read.

“Take a look. You tell me.”

Chase glanced at the ancient book. He lifted a page to each side and briefly took a look before setting each page back down.

“Like I said, what’s the problem? It doesn’t look like there is much here to worry about.”

Zedd arched an eyebrow. “That’s the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a book of prophecy. It’s supposed to have writing in it—prophecy. You can’t have a book with no writing and have it still be a proper book, now can you? The writing is gone.”

“Gone?” Chase scratched a graying temple. “That doesn’t make any sense. How can writing be gone? It’s not like someone could steal the words right off the page.”

That was an interesting way to look at it—that someone had stolen the words right off the page. Having been a boundary warden most of his life—until the boundary came down a few years back—Chase was the kind of man who would suspect theft before anything else. Zedd hadn’t considered that possibility. His mind was already rushing down the unexplored dark alley of deliberation.

“I don’t know how the words could be gone,” he confided as he took a sip of tea.

“What is the prophecy about?” Chase asked.

“This happens to be a book of prophecy mostly about Richard.”

Chase looked completely calm, which of course meant that he was anything but. “Are you certain it used to have writing in it?” he asked. “If it’s old, maybe you just forgot that it had blank pages. After all, when you read a book you tend to recall the writing, not the blank pages.”

“True enough.” He set the pewter mug aside. “I can’t swear for certain that I remember it having writing in it, but I just don’t believe it was ever mostly blank. Now it is.”