Chainfire (57 page)

“Dear spirits,” Zedd whispered. “
Fuer grissa ost drauka
is a cardinal link to a prophecy founding a principal fork. Conjoining it with this prophecy establishes a conjugate bifurcation.”

Nathan arched an eyebrow. “Exactly.”

Richard didn’t fully understand what Zedd had said, but he caught the drift. And he didn’t need them to tell him who
fuer grissa ost drauka
, the bringer of death, was; it was him.

“Jagang has split his forces,” Ann said with quiet power as she fixed Richard in her steady gaze. “He brought his army up near to Aydindril, hoping to finish it, but the D’Haran forces, along with the people of the city, made use of winter to escape over the passes to D’Hara and out of Jagang’s clutches.”

“I know,” Richard said. “That escape over the passes in winter was by Kahlan’s orders. She’s the one who told me about it.”

Cara looked up in surprise, apparently intending to dispute his account, but after a glance at Nicci she decided to remain silent…at least for the moment.

“At any rate,” Ann said, sounding annoyed by the interruption, “Jagang, unable to effectively use his vastly superior numbers to break through those heavily defended, very narrow passes, has finally decided to split his forces. Leaving an army to watch the passes, the emperor himself took the
main element of his army south, headed all the way back down through the Midlands to skirt around the barrier of mountains and then hook around and make his way up into D’Hara.

“Our forces are headed south, down through D’Hara, to meet them. That was why when we were able to get a message from Verna about the condition of the books of prophecy at the People’s Palace in D’Hara; she was able to ride south ahead of our army and go look them over herself.”

“This is the year that the cicadas are returning,” Nicci said, sounding alarmed. “I’ve seen them.”

“That’s right,” Nathan said, still leaning forward on both hands. “That means the chronology is now fixed. The prophecies have all made their connections and have tumbled into place. Events are marked.” In turn, he met the gaze of everyone in the room. “The end is upon us.”

Zedd let out a low whistle.

“More importantly,” Ann said in an authoritative tone, “it means that it is time for Lord Rahl to join the D’Haran forces and lead them in the final battle. Without you there, Richard, prophecy is quite clear; all will be lost. We have come to escort you to your forces, to help insure that you make it. We dare not risk delay; we must leave at once.”

For the first time since they started talking about prophecy, Richard’s knees felt weak.

“But I can’t,” he said. “I have to find Kahlan.”

It sounded to him like a plea into a gale.

Ann took a deep breath, as if to bite her tongue while she searched for some urgently needed patience, or maybe words that would persuade him and finally settle the matter once and for all. The two Mord-Sith shared a look. Zedd pressed his thin lips tight while he considered. In frustration Nathan tossed the book he was holding on the table and wiped his hand across his face as he planted his left fist on a hip.

Richard didn’t know what he could say to them all that would have any chance of making them understand that something profoundly serious was wrong in the world and Kahlan was only a piece of the puzzle—by far the most important piece, but still a part of something much larger. Ever since the morning when she had disappeared, he had argued himself sick about the urgent need to find her and it never seemed to do any good at convincing anyone that he knew what he was talking about. He had no interest in yet again wasting his energy on the same fruitless explanations.

“You what?” Ann said, her displeasure bubbling up to the surface like dross in a cauldron. At that moment, she was very much again the Prelate, a squat woman who somehow managed to seem towering.

“I have to find Kahlan,” Richard repeated.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We simply don’t have time for any of this nonsense.” Ann had dismissed his wants, interests, and needs out of hand, to say nothing of what he believed were his rational and important reasons. “We have come to see to it that you get to the D’Haran army immediately. Everyone is waiting on you. Everyone is depending on you. The time has come when you must lead our forces in the final battle that is now rapidly descending upon us.”

“I can’t,” Richard said in a quiet but firm voice.

“Prophecy demands it!” Ann shouted.

Richard realized that Ann had changed. Everyone had changed in little ways since Kahlan had disappeared, but Ann had changed in more overt ways. The last time she had come, with the very same purpose, to demand that Richard go with her to lead the war, Kahlan had thrown Ann’s journey book in a fire, telling the former Prelate that prophecy was not driving events, but rather Ann was by trying to make people follow prophecy in an effort to make it come true, that she was acting as prophecy’s enforcer. Kahlan had shown Ann how she herself, as the Prelate, by being prophecy’s handmaiden, might very well have actually been the one who’d brought the world to the brink of cataclysm. Because of Kahlan’s words, Ann had done some deep soul-searching that had eventually helped make her more rational, and more understanding of how Richard was the one who had to choose to do what was right.

Now, with the memory of Kahlan gone, everything that had happened with Kahlan was also wiped away. Ann, like everyone else, had reverted to the disposition she’d shown before Kahlan’s influence. It made Richard’s head hurt, sometimes, just trying to recall exactly what Kahlan had done with everyone that they wouldn’t now remember so that he could take that into account when he dealt with them. With some people, like Shota, it had actually in some ways helped him. Shota, for instance, because of losing her memory of Kahlan, hadn’t recalled that she told Richard that if he ever returned to Agaden Reach she would kill him. With other people, like Ann, it was proving to make matters much more difficult.

“Kahlan threw your journey book in a fire,” he told her. “She was fed up with you trying to control my life, as am I.”

Ann frowned. “I accidentally dropped my journey book in the fire myself.”

Richard sighed. “I see.” He didn’t want to argue because he knew it would do no good. No one in the room believed him. Cara would do whatever he wanted her to do, but she didn’t believe him. Nicci didn’t believe him, but wanted him to act as he believed he must. Nicci was the one who had actually given him the most encouragement he had gotten since Kahlan had disappeared.

“Richard,” Nathan said in a gentler, more benevolent voice, “this is not some simple little thing. You have been born to prophecy. The world stands at the brink of a great dark age. You hold the key to preventing a slide into that long, terrible night. You are the one prophecy says can save our cause—the cause you yourself believe in. You must do your duty. You can’t let us down.”

Richard was sick and tired of being driven by events. He was at his wits end with not understanding what was going on, with always feeling like he was one step behind the rest of the world and two steps behind whatever had happened to Kahlan. He was getting angry that everyone was telling him what to do and no one was interested in what was of paramount importance to him. They didn’t even want to let him decide his own fate. They thought prophecy had already decided for him.

It had not.

He needed to find out the truth of what had happened to Kahlan. He needed to find Kahlan, period. He was fed up with wasting time on what prophecy, along with any number of people, thought he ought to be doing. Anyone who was not helping him was, in reality, holding him back from something vitally important.

“I have no responsibility to live up to what anyone else expects of me,” he said to Ann as he picked up the small book Nathan had brought with him.

Ann and Nathan stared in surprise.

He felt Nicci’s reassuring hand on the small of his back. She may not believe in his memory of Kahlan, but at least she had helped him see that he had to be true to his principles. She wouldn’t allow him to lose by default. She had been a valued friend when he needed one the most.

The only other person he knew who would stand by him in that way, stand up to him in that way, was Kahlan.

He thumbed past all the blank pages in the book Nathan had brought. Richard was curious to see if there was more that might change the picture, if they were only telling him what they wanted him to believe. He also would like to find something—anything—that would help him understand what was going on.

And something was going on. Zedd’s explanation of the prophecy worm sounded airtight, but something about it bothered Richard. It explained the missing text in the books of prophecy in a way that suited what these people wanted to believe. It was too convenient and, worse, it was too much of a coincidence.

Coincidence always made Richard suspicious.

Nicci had a good point as well; it seemed just a little too convenient that the body buried down at the Confessors’ Palace would have a ribbon with Kahlan’s name embroidered on it…. Just in case there was any doubt, should someone dig up the body?

After blank page upon blank page, Richard found the writing. It was exactly as Nathan had read it.

There were several things about the passage that puzzled Richard. For one thing, the reference to cicadas. It seemed a lowly creature to be worthy of prophetic mention, to say nothing of such a central role in the—purportedly—most important prophecy in three thousand years. He supposed that it could make sense that it was a key that helped set the chronology, but, from what others had told him, prophecy never went out of its way to set chronology, making it one of prophecy’s most difficult issues.

It also troubled him that this prophecy, so distant in so many ways from the other he had read at the Palace of the Prophets, would also refer to him in High D’Haran as
fuer grissa ost drauka
. He supposed that it could be, as Zedd had suggested, that such a linkage meant it was important.

But the link to the prophecy Richard had seen at the Palace of the Prophets with the reference to
fuer grissa ost drauka
was strongly connected to something else: the boxes of Orden.

In the old prophecy that named Richard the bringer of death, the word
death
meant three different things, depending on how it was used: the bringer of the underworld, the world of the dead; the bringer of spirits, spirits of the dead; and the bringer of death, meaning to kill. Each meaning was different, but all three were intended.

The second meaning had to do with how he used the Sword of Truth, and the third simply that he’d had to kill people. But the first meaning involved the boxes of Orden.

He supposed that in the context of the prophecy at hand, the third meaning seemed the obvious, that he had to lead the army and kill the enemy, so calling him
fuer grissa ost drauka
did make sense. Yet again, things seemed awfully convenient.

All the convenient explanations and coincidences were making Richard more than just a little suspicious. With Kahlan’s disappearance involved, he felt that there had to be more to what was going on.

He turned to the page ahead of the passage, and then the one preceding it, checking. They were blank.

“I have a problem with this,” he said, looking up at all the eyes watching him.

“And what would that be?” Ann asked as she folded her arms. She used the same tone of voice she would have if she’d been talking to an inexperienced, untrained, ignorant boy freshly brought to the Palace of the Prophets to be trained in the use of his gift.

“Well, there’s nothing around it,” he said. “It’s all blank.”

Nathan covered his face with a hand while Ann threw her arms in the air in a gesture of baffled outrage. “Of course not! They’ve vanished, along with a great deal more. That’s what we’ve just been talking about. That’s why this one is so important!”

“But without knowing the context, you can’t really say that this one is
important, now, can you? To understand any information one must know the context.”

Contrary to Ann and Nathan’s agitation, Zedd smiled to himself at lessons taught long ago and remembered.

Nathan looked up. “What does that have to do with this prophecy?”

“Well, for all we know, there might have been mitigating text right before this, or something right after that went on to dismiss this. With the copy missing how are we to know? This prophecy could have been superseded by just about anything.”

Zedd smiled. “The boy has a point.”

“He’s not a boy,” Ann growled. “He’s a man, and the Lord Rahl, the head of the D’Haran Empire that he himself pulled together to fight the Imperial Order, and he’s supposed to lead those forces. All of our lives depend on him doing so.”

As Richard flipped back through the book, he saw writing that he hadn’t seen the first time. He paged back to it.

“Here’s something else that didn’t vanish,” he said.

“What?” Nathan asked with incredulity as he twisted around to look. “There was nothing else. I’m sure of it.”

“Right here,” Richard said, tapping a finger on the words. “It says, ‘Here we come.’ What could that mean? And why did it not vanish?”

“‘Here we come’?” Nathan’s face distorted in a look of confusion. “I never saw that before.”

Richard turned back more pages. “Look. Here it is again. Same thing. ‘Here we come.’”

“I could have missed it once, perhaps,” Nathan said, “but there is no way I could have missed a second one. You must be wrong.”