Phantom (24 page)

“But why would Lothain, the head prosecutor, do such a thing? After all, he had seen to it that the Temple team was executed for the damage they had done.”

“Lothain had probably come to believe, as did the enemy in the Old World, that magic should be eliminated from the race of man. I guess his zealotry found a new fixation: he imagined himself as savior of mankind. To that end he insured the return of a dream walker to the world of life, to purge the world of magic.

“For some reason, Baraccus was unable to seal the breach created by Lothain, unable to undo the treason. He did the next best thing. He saw to it that there would be a balance, a counter, to the damage done, someone to fight against those forces bent on destroying those with the gift, someone with the required ability.

“That would be you, Richard. Baraccus saw to it that you would be born to counter what had been done by Lothain. That is why you, Richard Rahl, are the only one who can stop the Order.”

Richard thought he might be sick. It all made him feel as if he were but a cosmic pawn being used for a hidden purposes, a dupe doing nothing more than playing out the plan for his life contrived by others, performing his predetermined part in a battle across the sweep of millennia.

As if reading his mind, Shota, still looking and sounding for all the world like his mother, laid a compassionate hand on his shoulder. “Baraccus saw to it that there was a balance to counter this damage. He did not preordain how that balance would function or how it would act. He did not take your free will out of the equation, Richard.”

“You think not? It seems to me that I’m merely the final piece of this game being put into play at long last. I don’t see my free will, my own life, my choice, in any of it. It would seem others have determined my path.”

“I don’t think that is true, Richard. You might say that what they have done is not unlike training a soldier to fight. That training creates the possibility of accomplishing the goal of winning the battle should a battle come to pass. It doesn’t mean that when the battle does comes the soldier won’t run away, that he will instead stand and fight, or even that if he does fight to the best of his ability and training that he will win. Baraccus saw to it that you have the potential, Richard, the armor, the weapons, the ability, to fight for your own life and your own world should the need arise, nothing more. He was just giving you a helping hand.”

A helping hand sent across the gulf of time. Richard felt drained and confused. He almost felt as if he no longer knew himself, knew who he really was, or how much of his own life was of his own making.

It felt to him as if Baraccus had suddenly materialized out of the dust of ancient bones, a phantom come to haunt Richard’s life.

There was one thing that still nagged at him, one other bit that still didn’t make sense. How could the head prosecutor, Lothain, turn on his beliefs, turn on everyone in the New World? It struck Richard as too convenient an explanation that he fell under the power, the allure, of the beliefs of the Old World.

And then it came to him—realization welling up through him in a rush with the power of floodwaters. The substance of it nearly took his breath. Something about the ancient accounts had always bothered him. Shota had stirred his memory of the things that had happened and in so doing all the existing pieces suddenly fell into place. Now he understood what was wrong with the story, what had always bothered him about it. Once he understood, he didn’t know why he hadn’t realized it long before.

“Lothain was a zealous prosecutor,” Richard said, half to himself. It all came out in a rush as he spoke, his eyes wide and unblinking. “He didn’t find a new fixation for his zealotry. He didn’t turn on them.

“He wasn’t a traitor. He was a spy.

“He had always been a spy. He was like a mole, tunneling ever closer to his objective. Over a long period of time he worked himself into a position of power. He also had accomplices covertly working under him.

“Lothain was a wizard who had become not just widely respected but powerful. With his political power he had access to the highest places. When the opportunity finally presented itself, an opportunity that he had helped engineer, he acted. He saw to it that his co-conspirators were assigned to the Temple team. Just like the Order today, Lothain and his men had a strong faith in their cause. They were the ones who corrupted the mission. It wasn’t a change of heart, a misguided act of conscience. It had been planned all along. It was deliberate.

“They were all willing to sacrifice themselves, to die for what they believed was a higher cause. I don’t know how many of the team were
actually spies, or if all of them were, but the fact is that enough were that they accomplished their goal. It could even be that they convinced the others to go along with them out of a confused sense of moral obligation.

“It was inevitable, of course, that the other wizards at the Keep would soon enough realize that the Temple of the Winds project had been compromised. When they did, Lothain was only too ready to prosecute the entire Temple team, and saw to it that they were all executed. He didn’t want anyone left alive who could betray the extent of what they had actually done.

“Lothain had intended all along for their precise actions to be kept secret so that successful countermeasures could not be undertaken. Those spies whom Lothain had assigned to the Temple team went to their graves willingly, taking their secrets with them. By prosecuting and sentencing the entire Temple team, Lothain was able to bury the entire conspiracy that he had devised. He eliminated everyone who had any knowledge of the true damage that had been done. He was confident in the knowledge that one day his cause would sweep aside all opposition and they would rule the world. When that happened, he would be the greatest hero of the war.

“There was only one minor problem remaining. After the trial, those in charge insisted that someone must go to the Temple of the Winds to repair the damage. Lothain couldn’t allow anyone else to go, of course, because they would find out the true extent of the sabotage and might possibly be able to undo it, so he volunteered to go himself. That had been his plan all along—to follow up on the team himself, if need be, and cover up the truth.

“Because he was the head prosecutor, everyone believed that he had the absolute conviction to set matters right. When Lothain finally reached the Temple of the Winds, he not only saw to it that the damage could not be repaired, he used the knowledge he gained there to make it worse, to make sure that no one would find and fix the breach. He then covered up what he had done, intending to make it appear as if all had been set right.

“There was only one problem: the alterations he made, using the knowledge of the Temple itself, turned out to be enough to set off the Temple’s protective alarms. From the Temple, in that other world, Lothain was unaware of the red moons the Temple had awakened in this world, and when he returned he was caught. Even so, he didn’t care; he looked forward to
dying, to gaining eternal glory in the afterlife for all that he had accomplished, just as Nicci explained about the way the people of the Old World think.

“The wizards at the Keep needed to know the extent of the damage Lothain had caused. Even though he was tortured, Lothain did not reveal the extent of the plan. To discover the truth of what had happened, Magda Searus became a Confessor. But she was inexperienced at the task and still learning as she went. Even though she used her Confessor power, she didn’t realize, at the time, the importance of asking the right questions.”

Richard looked up at the face of his mother. “Kahlan told me once that just getting a confession was easy. The hard part was understanding how to ask the right questions to get the truth. Merritt had only just devised the powers of a Confessor. No one yet understood the way those powers functioned.

“Kahlan was trained her whole life to be able to do it properly, but back then, thousands of years ago, Magda Searus didn’t yet grasp how to ask all the right questions, in the right order. Even though she believed she had gotten Lothain to confess to what he had done, she failed to uncover the true extent of his treachery. He was a spy, and despite the use of the first Confessor, they failed to discover it. As a result, they never knew the full extent of the subversion carried out by Lothain’s men on the Temple team.”

His mother studied him from under a brow set in concentration. “Are you sure of this, Richard?”

He nodded. “It finally all makes sense to me. With what you’ve added to the story, all the pieces that I could never before fit in place now fit. Lothain was a spy and he went to his death never revealing who he really was, or that he had placed his own men on the Temple team. They all died without ever revealing the true extent of the damage they had done. No one, not even Baraccus, realized the full extent of it.”

His mother sighed as she stared off. “That certainly explains some of the missing gaps in what came to me.” She looked back at him as if in a new light. “Very good, Richard. Very good indeed.”

Richard wiped a hand across his weary eyes. He didn’t feel any great sense of pride in reaching down into the dark muck of history and pulling up such despicable deeds, deeds that were still slipping across time to haunt him.

“You said that Baraccus left a book for me?”

She nodded. “He sent it away with his wife for safekeeping. It was meant for you.”

Richard sighed. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” His mother carefully folded her fingers together. “While still at the Temple of the Winds, Baraccus wrote the book with the aid of knowledge that he gathered there. No eyes but his have ever read it. No living person has so much as opened the cover since Baraccus finished writing it and closed the cover himself. It has, since that time, been lying untouched in his secret library.”

The idea of such a thing gave Richard a chill. He had no idea where such a library could be, but even if he found the right library that would not tell him what he needed to know. He didn’t suppose that there was a chance, but he asked anyway.

“Do you have any idea what this book is called? Or maybe what it’s about?”

His mother nodded solemnly. “It is titled
Secrets of a War Wizard’s Power
.”

“Dear spirits,” Richard whispered as he looked up at her.

Elbows on his knees, his face sank into his hands. He was so overwhelmed that he couldn’t seem to take it all in. The last man who had visited the Temple of the Winds, three thousand years before Richard had, had somehow, while there, seen to it that the Temple would release Subtractive Magic, which Richard had been born with, in part, so that he could get into the Temple of the Winds to stop a plague started by a dream walker who had been born because a wizard, Lothain, had been there first and seen to it that a dream walker would be born in order to rule the world and destroy magic. And further, that same man who had seen to it that Richard would be born with Subtractive Magic had left Richard a book of instruction on the very magic it seemed he had bestowed on Richard in order to defeat the dream walker.

After Baraccus returned and committed suicide, the wizards had abandoned any further attempts to get into the Temple of the Winds to answer the call of the red moons, or for any other reason, as impossible. They were never able to get in to undo the damage the Temple team and then Lothain had done. Only Baraccus had been able to take action to counter the threat.

Very possibly, Baraccus himself had insured that no one else could get into the Temple of the Winds, probably so that there would be no chance that any other spy could ruin what Baraccus had done to insure that there would be a balance to the threat, namely, Richard’s birth.

Richard looked up. His mother was no longer there. In her place stood Shota, the loose points of her dress floating gently as if in a breeze. Richard was sad to see his mother gone but at the same time it was a relief since it was so disorienting to try to speak to Shota through the specter of his mother.

“This library where Baraccus sent his wife with the book
Secrets of a War Wizard’s Power
, where is it?”

Shota shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid that I don’t know. I don’t think that anyone but Baraccus and his wife, Magda Searus, knew.”

Richard wore the war wizard outfit last worn by Baraccus, wore the amulet worn by Baraccus, carried the gift for Subtractive Magic very likely because of Baraccus. And Baraccus had left him what sounded like an instruction book on how to use the power he had seen to it that Richard had been born with.

“There are so many libraries. Baraccus’s private library could be among any of them. Do you have idea at all which one it could be?”

“I know only that it is not among any other library, as you suggest. The library Baraccus created was his alone. Every book there is his alone. He hid them well. They remain undiscovered to this day.”

“And for some reason he saw fit not to leave those books in the safety of the First Wizard’s enclave?”

“Safety? Not long ago, Sisters of the Dark, sent by Jagang, violated this place. They took books, among other things, to the emperor. Jagang hunts books because they contain knowledge that helps him in his struggle to rule the world for the Order. Had the book Baraccus wrote for you been left here at the Keep, it very well might now be in Jagang’s hands. Baraccus was wise not to leave such power here, where anyone could find it, where every First Wizard to come after him might have discovered it and tampered with it, or even destroyed it lest it fall into the wrong hands.”

That was what had happened to
The Book of Counted Shadows
. Ann and Nathan, because of prophecy, had helped George Cypher bring it back to Westland with the intent that when he was old enough, Richard would
memorize that book and then destroy it lest it fall into the wrong hands. It turned out that Darken Rahl would eventually need to get his hands on that book in order to open the boxes of Orden—the same boxes that were now in play because of Ann’s former Sisters, who now had Kahlan, the last Confessor, who, because of what was written in that book, had helped him defeat Darken Rahl.

Richard lifted out the amulet he wore, which had once belonged to Baraccus. He stared at the symbols making up the dance with death. There was just too much for it all to be coincidence.

He peered up at Shota. “Are you saying that Baraccus foresaw what would happen and put the book in a place of greater safety?”

Shota shrugged. “I’m sorry, Richard, I don’t know. It may be that he was simply being cautious. Considering his reasons, and what is at stake, such caution certainly seems not only to have been warranted, but wise.

“I’ve told you everything I can. You know all the pieces of the puzzle, of the history, that I’m unaware of. That doesn’t mean that this is all there is to it, but from other sources you also know additional parts of the history, so you now know more of the story than I do. For that matter, you probably now know more of it than any person alive since war wizard Baraccus was the First Wizard.”

Out of all she had told him, nothing would do him any good unless he could find the book Baraccus had meant for him to have. Without that book, Richard’s war wizard powers were a mystery to him and next to useless. Without that book, it seemed that there was no hope of defeating the army that had come up from the Old World. The Order would rule the world and magic would be eradicated from the world of life, just as Lothain had planned. Without the book, Baraccus’s plan was a failure, and Jagang was going to win.

Richard gazed up at the glassed roof a hundred feet overhead, which let in some of the somber, late-day light to balance the glow of the lamps down in the heart of the room. He wondered when the lamps had been lit. He didn’t recall it happening.

“Shota, there could be no greater need for such knowledge. How am I supposed to succeed in stopping the Order if I can’t use my ability as a war wizard? Can’t you give me anything, any idea at all, of how to find this book? If I don’t find some answers, and soon, I’m dead. We all are.”

She cupped his chin as she looked down into his eyes. “I hope you know, Richard, that if I knew how to get that book for you, I would do it. You know how much I want to stop the Imperial Order.”

“Well, why do you get specific information. Where does it come from? Why is it that it comes to you at specific times, like now? Why not the first time I met you? Or when I was trying to get into the Temple of the Winds to stop the plague?”

“I suppose that it comes from the same place you get answers or inspiration when you mull over a problem. Why do you come up with answers to problems when you do? I think about a situation and sometimes the answers come to me. Fundamentally, it’s no different, I suppose, than how anyone comes up with ideas. It’s just that my ideas are unique to a witch woman’s mind and they involve events in the flow of time. I suppose that it’s much the same as how you suddenly came to know the truth about what Lothain had done. How did that come to you? I suppose that it works much the same for me.