Phantom (48 page)

To the right, though, on a stone pedestal against a blank stone wall, sat a book all by itself. Richard lifted it off the stand and blew the sand and dust off of it.

On the cover it said
Secrets of a War Wizard’s Power
.

His fingers gently glided over the gilt letters on the cover as he again read the words meant for him.

It was an awe-inspiring feeling to realize that a war wizard, First Wizard Baraccus himself, had made this very book for the person who would be born with the power that he saw to it would be released from the Temple of the Winds. Richard had at last found the treasure that Baraccus had left for him.

A night wisp hovered over each shoulder, watching him as he reverently stared at the book that would finally answer his questions, that would finally help him master his gift.

Finally, his heart pounding, Richard opened the cover to see what Baraccus wanted him to know.

The first page was blank.

Richard turned over more pages, but they were all blank. He thumbed through the entire book and, other than the words on the cover, he found that the entire book was completely blank.

Richard squeezed his temples between the fingers and thumb of one hand. He thought he might be sick.

“Can either of you see anything on the pages?”

“No,” Jass said. “Sorry.”

“I see no marks of writing at all,” Tam added.

Richard realized, then, what the problem was. His heart sank.

Secrets of a War Wizard’s Power
was an instruction book on the use of a specific form of the gift. The book involved magic. For some reason, Richard had been cut off from his gift. Without that gift to assist him, whatever was written on the pages would not stay in his mind. He would forget the words before he could remember reading them.

Just as he no longer remembered a single word of
The Book of Counted Shadows
, he could not remember the words of
Secrets of a War Wizard’s Power
long enough to remember having seen any words. Without the gift, it would appear blank to him.

Until he could figure out what was wrong with his gift, he wouldn’t be able to read this book.

“I’ll have to take this with me,” Richard told the wisps.

“Just as Baraccus said you would, Richard Cypher,” Tam said.

Richard wondered if Baraccus somehow knew this, as well. Whether he did or not, Richard didn’t have time to ponder it. He climbed back out of the hole and up the rock face of the cliff.

He noticed that the rock jutted out over the opening into the library, probably so that water wouldn’t eat away at the plug over time or work its way inside. The sand had to be dry not only so that the books inside wouldn’t be ruined, but so that it would pour out. Richard decided that for the time being the library was relatively safe from rain.

At the top of the cliff, he stored the valuable blank book away in his pack. He saw that inside the stone rim, where there had been sand before, there was now a spiral stairway down into the darkness below. To make sure that no one discovered the library, he struggled mightily against the boulder until he managed to pivot it into place.

Panting from the exertion, he swung his pack up onto his back. His
mind was racing with a thousand different thoughts. On the way back through the dark wood, Richard spoke little to the wisps, other than to thank them for their help.

Once they had reached the meadow again, he gazed out over the sight of all the night wisps gliding through the grass and wildflowers, some spinning in an intricate dance as they moved together in pairs. He wondered how many more wisps there had been when Kahlan had been here.

Richard missed Kahlan so much that it brought a lump to his throat. She was his world. The whole world, in so many ways, seemed to be slipping away.

“I have to go,” he told Tam and Jass. “I hope to use what I found here to help stop the suffering of the wisps, and others.”

“You will come back?” Jass asked.

Thinking briefly about the hidden library, Richard nodded. “Yes. And I hope to bring Kahlan with me, and that by then you will remember her. I know she will be overjoyed to see you all again.”

“When we remember her,” Jass said, “then we will be filled with joy, too.”

Unwilling to test his voice again, Richard nodded and then started out.

Tam escorted him through the ancient forest, helping him find the way. At the edge of the ancient trees, the wisp came to a halt.

“Baraccus was wise to choose you, Richard Cypher. I believe that you have it in you to succeed. I wish you well.”

Richard smiled sadly. He wished he was as sure. He no longer had access to the gift within him—if it was still even there—and he had no idea how he would succeed. Maybe Zedd could help.

“Thank you, Tam. You and the wisps have been good protectors of those things Baraccus left with you. I will do my best to protect you, and the other innocents who are in so much danger.”

“If you fail, Richard Cypher, I know that it will not be from lack of effort on your part. If you ever need our help again, as Shar told you, say one of our names and we will try to help you.”

Richard nodded and started away, turning once to wave. The wisp spun a rose color for a moment and then vanished back into the trees. He suddenly felt awfully forlorn by the light of the moon alone.

The dead oaks seemed to go on forever. He plodded along in a numb daze. He needed to get some food and rest, but he wanted to get out of the
strange wood and back down into the forest first. He saw bones among the roots of the oaks, as if the trees were trying to gather in the dead to hug them to their bosoms.

Somewhere in the dead wood, after walking endlessly, absorbed in his troubled thoughts, Richard felt a sudden chill to the air that made him shudder and gasp the sharp cold into his lungs.

It felt as if he had walked into the fangs of winter.

When he looked up, he spotted what at first looked like an upright shadow among the skulls. When he saw at last what it really was, another shudder shivered up his spine.

It was a tall woman with black, wiry hair. She wore inky black robes. Her skin was as pale as the moon, making her gaunt face seem to float in the darkness. Her desiccated flesh was stretched tight over her bony features, the way he imagined the dead would have looked for a time as they lay lifeless in this forsaken forest, waiting for the worms to do their work.

Her thin, menacing smile marked her unmistakably as the sort to leave the bones of used-up people to rot in just such a place, among the moldering dead.

Richard felt so cold he couldn’t move. He realized that he was shivering, but he couldn’t seem to make himself stop. He couldn’t feel his fingers or toes. He wanted to move, to run, but he couldn’t force his legs to move.

He had no gift to summon. He had no sword to draw.

He felt helpless in the beguiling gaze of her blanched blue eyes.

Richard wondered if his lifeless remains would end up discarded in this desolate place to rot, forgotten, along with all the other anonymous bones of those who had come with lofty dreams.

The woman’s arms swept up, like a raven’s wings lifting, and the night swallowed him.

Kahlan ever so gradually became aware of the bewildering drone of voices, both near and far. She was so dazed, though, that she wasn’t sure if it was real or if she was only imagining it. She knew that some of the thoughts streaming endlessly through her mind had to be her imagination, despite how real they seemed. She knew that she wasn’t one moment in a flowered field among the stars, the next moment in the middle of a pitched battle with desiccated corpses atop horseback, and the next instant flying through the clouds atop a red dragon’s back. It all seemed real, but she knew that it couldn’t be.

After all, there weren’t any such things as dragons. That was only myth.

But if it really was voices that she was hearing, she couldn’t understand the words. They came to her more as disembodied, raw sounds, each tonal pulse resonating painfully with something deep inside her.

What she was sure of was that her head throbbed in a slow rhythm and each time the agonizing beat squeezed, it felt as if her skull would split open from the pressure. As each intermittent cycle subsided, nausea oozed up inside her, only to be forced back into relative insignificance once again by the next, overwhelmingly torturous compression.

Try as she might to open her eyes, Kahlan couldn’t lift her heavy lids. It would have taken more strength than she could call forth right then. Besides, she feared that there might be light, and she was sure that light would hurt like long needles stabbing into her defenseless eyes.

It felt as if some unknown, thick pressure were suspending her, keeping her immobile, while a hidden force tortured her under the throbbing pressure. Trying desperately to escape the grip of it, she attempted to bend her arms, but they were too stiff. She tried to move her legs, or even to lift a knee, but her legs were tightly encased in the cocooning, dense darkness.

A sound, possibly a harsh word, startled her, bringing her closer to the brink of wakening awareness, lifting her up through the numb confusion
toward the world of life. This time she was sure that the sounds were voices. She began to be able to make out the occasional word.

She mentally seized those words like a lifeline and used them to help pull herself up out of the dark dregs of unconsciousness. She breathed evenly, concentrating on the words, forcing the throbbing to the background as she listened carefully for each word, trying to string them together into meaningful concepts. She recognized women’s voices, and a man’s voice. A surly man.

The pain of being awake, though, was even more debilitating than the dreamlike suffering she had felt while unconscious. Reality had a way of adding an agonizing dimension to the pain, an inescapable misery, a relentless torment throbbing through her body.

In an effort to get her mind off the pain she was in, Kahlan opened her eyes just enough to peek out and take a careful look around. She was inside some kind of structure. It looked something like a tent made of a pale tan canvas, but if it really was a tent it was much larger than any tent she remembered ever seeing before. Rich carpets hung to one side, looking to serve the purpose of double doors.

She was lying on thick furs that were atop something slightly elevated rather than being spread out on the floor. In the hot, muggy air the furs were making her sweat. At least she wasn’t covered with blankets. She thought that maybe she had been placed there to keep her out from underfoot. There was a chair, with a carved back, opposite where she lay, but no one sat in it.

Several lamps were set around the room on chests while others hung from chains. They did little to chase away the gloomy atmosphere inside the tent, but at least the smell of the burning oil helped cover the heavy stench of sweat, animals, and manure. Kahlan was relieved that the light didn’t hurt her eyes as she’d feared it would.

One of the Sisters paced in the dim light, like a phantom who couldn’t find her grave.

Jumbled, muffled noises from outside drifted through the heavy canvas and carpeted walls of the tent. It sounded like a whole city surrounded the muted sanctuary. Kahlan could hear the murmured drone of men in the thousands along with the clop of hooves, the rattle of wagons, the braying of mules, and the metallic jangle of weapons and armor. Men in the distance shouted orders, or laughed, or cursed, while those closer told stories she couldn’t quite make out.

Kahlan knew what this army was like. She had seen glimpses of it from afar, been through places where they had been, and had seen those that they’d tortured, raped, and murdered. She didn’t want to ever have to go out there, among such savages as she knew these men were.

When she noticed Jagang glance her way, she pretended to still be unconscious, breathing evenly, lying perfectly still, and keeping her eyes almost closed. Apparently thinking she wasn’t yet awake, he let his gaze drift back to the pacing Sister Ulicia.

“It can’t be that simple,” Sister Armina insisted from where she stood beside a table. She lifted her nose in a haughty manner.

Kahlan could just make out the edge of a book on that table. Sister Armina’s extended fingers rested on the book’s leather cover.

“Armina,” Jagang asked in a calm, almost pleasant voice, “can you even begin to imagine how entertaining it is for me to be in the mind of a troublesome Sister that I send out to the tents to be passed around among my men?”

The woman paled as she backed up a step until her back met the tent wall. “No, Excellency.”

“To be there, witnessing their dread? To be in their mind, seeing how completely helpless they are as powerful hands rip their clothes off and grope their bodies, as they are pushed to the bare ground, their legs forced open, and they are mounted by men who consider them of no value except as a bit of lustful entertainment? Men who have absolutely no sympathy for them at all, who don’t care in the least what suffering they inflict in their heedless pursuit of what they want? Can you imagine how satisfying it is for me to be there, in the minds of such vexatious Sisters, to be an eyewitness, so to speak, of their well-deserved punishment?”

Her eyes wide in panic, Sister Armina spoke in a barely audible voice. “No, Excellency.”

“Then I suggest that you stop protesting based not on what you think, but on what you think I want to hear. I’m not interested in your bootlicking. In my bed you may flatter me if you think it will gain you favor, which it won’t, but in this I’m only interested in the truth. Your obsequious arguments will not make us successful. Only the truth will. If you have something worthwhile to say, then say it, but stop interrupting Ulicia to criticize her opinion with what you think I want to hear, or you will again be sent out to the tents sooner rather than later. Do you understand?”

Sister Armina’s gaze dropped away. “Yes, Excellency.”

Sister Ulicia took a settling breath as Jagang turned his attention on her. Her pacing came to a halt. She lifted an arm toward the book on the table.

“The problem is, Excellency, there is no way for us to confirm if the copy inside is true or not. I know that’s what you want us to do, and believe me we’ve tried, but the truth is we can’t find anything that could settle the matter.”

“Why not?”

“Well, if it says ‘position the boxes facing north,’ how are we supposed to be able to detect if that is a true or false instruction just from reading it? For all we know, facing them north could be an accurate copy of the original manuscript, in which case not doing as it says would prove fatal—or it could be a corruption of the true direction and doing as it says would be fatal. How are we to know? You may wish us to be able to come to a conclusion as to the book’s validity just from reading it, but we have no way of doing that. I know you don’t want me to lie to satisfy your request. I’m serving you best by being truthful.”

Jagang eyed her suspiciously. “Be careful, Ulicia, not to cross the line into fawning. I’m not in the mood.”

Sister Ulicia bowed her head. “Of course, Excellency.”

Jagang folded his husky arms across his massive chest and returned to the matter at hand. “So you think that for this reason the ones who made the copies left us this other way to tell the false from true?”

“Yes, Excellency,” Sister Ulicia said, despite looking anxious to be taking a stand that she knew would not please him. Since the emperor could read her thoughts, he would know the truth of what she honestly believed. Kahlan imagined that Sister Ulicia reasoned that her best chance of not incurring his wrath was to be true to her belief. Sister Ulicia was nothing if not smart.

“You believe that this is the real explanation, then, that it isn’t a mistake, but that it was calculated and deliberate.”

“Yes, Excellency. There has to be some way to tell. Otherwise, the successful use of the book would only be the result of chance. The boxes of Orden were made as a counter…”

She paused as she glanced briefly Kahlan’s way. Kahlan kept her eyes almost closed into the narrowest of slits so that the woman wouldn’t know she was awake. Sister Ulicia turned her attention back to Jagang.

“They would have reasoned that if it ever became necessary to use that counter it could only be because the situation was desperate, so they would need very badly to know that the book was true or else they risked losing everything they believed in. They would, after all, be using the book to save everything they believed in. If the ones using the counter of the boxes were wrong about the copy they were referring to, then they stood to lose more than just their lives—they risked losing the world of life itself.”

“Unless those who made the copies wanted the false copies to foil a greedy thief,” Jagang said.

“But Excellency,” Sister Ulicia said, “to stop any treacherous plans, those in charge of the boxes would need to have a way to know the true copies from the false. If they didn’t leave such a method to those who would come after them, then they would have abandoned their descendants to survival by chance. Their whole reason for making the copies in the first place was because they were worried about the risks that might develop in the future with having only the original text. After all, the only book in existence would be subject to any number of threats, from fire, to water, to worms, and that isn’t even including the array of deliberate threats. They were trying to make sure that there would be an accurate copy if it ever came to be necessary to use the boxes and the original book was unavailable for reasons they might not even be able to imagine. Risking that future on chance would be counter to their purpose for making the copies in the first place.

“Do you see what I mean? Since they made only one true copy, and the rest false, they were attempting to discourage the wrongful use of the boxes—putting another obstacle in the path of them being used—but at the same time, if the boxes were ever truly needed, they most certainly would not have wanted that call to have been answered by chance. They would have left those coming after them a way to confirm the truth.

“Since the text inside the book is not contradictory in and of itself, it seems to me that those who made the copies would unquestionably have devised another means to determine the true from the false.”

Jagang turned to the other Sister. “Ah, Armina has had a thought. Do speak up, darlin.”

Sister Armina cleared her throat. “We are being asked to believe that a singular rather than a plural word served as their only indication of validity?” Sister Armina shook her head. “While I grant the general point, I
believe that this is just too simple an answer, if not far too opaque a message. This means of telling true from false in and of itself becomes chance, too, unless they gave us a way to confirm it.”

“And they have, now, haven’t they?” Sister Ulicia arched an eyebrow as she leaned a little toward the woman. “It’s right there, right in the beginning, where it tells us precisely how to detect if the book is true or not. It says that
she
must verify it. She has.”

Armina folded her arms. “Like I said, I think that’s just too simple to be the answer.”

“If it’s so simple, Armina, then why didn’t you see it?” Sister Ulicia asked.

Kahlan closed her eyes a little more when Sister Ulicia pointed at her. “She found the flaw. Why did none of us see it? Only she saw it. Without her we probably would not have noticed it or, if we had, we probably would have thought that it couldn’t be important and we would have ignored it. She has done what the book said she must. She found it. She said that it means the copy is a false copy. That is precisely the purpose for which the book itself said she must be used.

“Some of us may not consider that flaw complex enough to be the determining element, but that’s irrelevant. The fact remains that she must verify the veracity of this book and, because of a flaw that only she noticed, she claims it is a false copy. That’s what matters. We have to take that pronouncement as valid.”

Considering the words of each woman, Jagang rubbed a meaty hand back over his bull neck as he paced before the table. He stared down at the book for a time, then spoke.

“There is one way to be sure.” He glared at each Sister in turn. “We find the other copies and compare them. If they all, or only a few, have this exact same flaw in the title, then it would point to it being meaningless. On the other hand, if all but one has this same flaw, then the one that doesn’t would likely be the true copy. We can then compare all the versions of the text and if the one without the flawed title is different from all the others, we will have confirmed that it’s the one true copy.”

“Excellency,” Sister Armina said with a deferential bow of her head, “that is an excellent idea. If we can locate the others, and this is the only one with this flaw, then it would prove my point that it is nothing but a simple, isolated mistake by an ignorant bookbinder.”

Jagang stared at her for a moment before finally breaking eye contact and going to a chest to the side. He opened the top and pulled out a book. He tossed it on the table so that it slid across the top toward the two Sisters.

Sister Armina picked it up and read the cover. Even in the dim light of the oil lamps, Kahlan could see the woman’s face going a deep shade of red.