Phantom (65 page)

“
Master Rahl guide us,
” the crowd began chanting in one voice, “
Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.
”

Nicci added her voice to the others, and together they lifted to reverberate through the halls. The words “Master Rahl” and Richard seemed indistinguishable to her. They were one in the same.

Almost against her will, Nicci’s turbulent thoughts quieted as she softly chanted the words along with everyone else.

“
Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.
”

She lost herself in the words. The sunlight was warm on her back. The next day was the first day of winter, but inside Lord Rahl’s palace the sun was warm, much like up in the Garden of Life. It seemed odd in that Darken Rahl, and his father, Panis, were the Lord Rahl before, making this place the seat of evil.

She realized, though, that the place was only that—a place. The man was what mattered. The man made the defining difference. The man set the tone that others followed, either rightly or wrongly. In a way, the devotion was the formal statement of that concept.

“
Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.
”

Those words reverberated in Nicci’s mind. She missed Richard so much. Even though his heart belonged to someone else, she just missed seeing him, seeing his smile, talking to him. If that was all she could ever have, that was enough to sustain her. Just his friendship, his value in her life, and hers in his.

Just Richard being happy, being alive, being…Richard.

Our lives are yours.

Nicci abruptly rose up on her knees.

She understood.

Puzzled, Cara frowned up at her as everyone else chanted. “What’s wrong?”

Our lives are yours.

She knew what she had to do.

Nicci stood in a rush. “Come on. I have to get back to the Keep.”

As they ran together through the halls, Nicci could hear the whispering sound of voices rising up together to echo reverently through the vast corridors.

“
Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.
”

Nicci felt herself lost in words that suddenly had meaning for her that they had never had before.

She understood how it all fit together, at last, and knew what she had to do.

Zedd rose from his chair at the desk in the little room when he saw Nicci standing in the doorway. The lamplight softened his familiar face.

“Nicci, you’re back. How are things at the People’s Palace?”

Nicci hardly heard the question. Answering it was beyond her.

Zedd stepped closer, concern settling in his hazel eyes.

“Nicci, what’s wrong. You look like a phantom come to haunt the halls.”

She had to force herself to speak. “Do you trust Richard?”

Zedd’s brow drew down. “What kind of question is that?”

“Do you trust Richard with your life?”

Zedd gestured with one arm. “Of course. What’s this about?”

“Do you trust Richard with everyone’s life?”

Zedd gently gripped her arm. “Nicci, I love that boy.”

“Please, Zedd, do you trust Richard with everyone’s life?”

The concern in his eyes overspread his face, deepening the creases. He finally nodded. “Of course I do. If there was ever anyone I would trust with my life, or the life of anyone, it would be Richard. After all, I’m the one who named him to be Seeker.”

Nicci nodded as she turned.

“Thank you, Zedd.”

He lifted his robes a little as he hurried after her. “Do you need some help with something, Nicci?”

“No,” she said. “Thank you. I’m fine.”

Zedd at last nodded, taking her word for it, and returned to the book he was studying.

Nicci walked through the halls of the Keep without seeing them. She moved as if following an invisible glowing line to her destination, the way Richard said he could follow the glowing lines of a spell-form.

“Where are we going?” Cara asked, rushing to follow behind.

“Do you trust Richard? Trust him with your life?”

“Of course,” Cara said without an instant of hesitation.

Nicci nodded as she continued on.

She passed corridors, intersections, rooms, and stairs without really seeing them. In a daze of purpose, she finally reached the hardened area of the Keep and the grand room where the verification web had nearly taken her life. She would have died had it not been for Richard. He insisted on finding a way to save her when no one else believed it could be done.

She trusted Richard with her life, and her life was very precious to her, thanks to him.

At the double doors, Nicci turned to Cara. “I need to be alone.”

“But I—”

“This involves magic.”

“Oh,” Cara said. “Well, all right, then. I’ll just wait out here in the hall in case you need anything.”

“Thank you, Cara. You’re a good friend.”

“I never had any real friends—friends really worth having—until Lord Rahl came along.”

Nicci smiled a little. “I never had anything worth living for until Richard came along.”

Nicci closed the double doors. Behind her, the two-story windows flickered with lightning. Nicci didn’t know if she had ever been in that room when there wasn’t a storm.

Now the whole world was caught in a storm.

When the lightning flashed the room lit with the harsh glare. There was one thing in the room, however, that did not register the touch of even such intense light. It waited like death itself.

Nicci laid
The Book of Life
open on the table before the inky black box of Orden sitting in the center of the table. It seemed that every time the lightning tried to ignite, that black box swallowed the light before it could really get started. Staring at it was like looking into forever.

Nicci invoked the first spell, calling forth darkness to match the impossible blackness of the grim box sitting before her. She reminded herself that, like the People’s Palace, it was the person who defined it. With a thunderclap of power filling the room, the door was barred. No one could enter. The containment field of the windows no longer mattered. She had conjured something more powerful. The room was silent and pitch black. Nicci’s vision came from the powers she had called forth.

She spoke the words written on the next page, invoking the next spell that opened the pathway for the governing formulas. She used a sliver of Subtractive Magic to void a razor-thin piece of flesh at the tip of her finger, and used the blood that began to ooze to begin drawing the diagrams needed before the box of Orden. As more blood ran from the open wound, she drew a containment field around the box itself. It was something like the field of the room, but on a much more intense scale. Without being contained first, such power as was liberated from the box of Orden could unintentionally breach the veil, but in a way that would kill only the person attempting what Nicci was attempting.

Almost not needing to read the book that she had been studying for what seemed half her life, she went on to the equations involving the time of year: the first day of winter.

Once that was completed, she drew the two opposing symbols and the joint of the apex from the proper charts in blood.

It went on, one intense formula after another, for the next hour, with calculations bringing the resultant layer of magic forth to be folded into the next step. Each node in the book required that only the appropriate level of power be applied. At each spot, Nicci let it flow forth without reservation.

There was no other way.

As the night wore on, the lines of the spell built around the box—in some ways like the Chainfire verification web, with lines that glowed green. But others were a pure white, while yet others were constructed of Subtractive elements and they were blacker than black, looking like nothing so much as voids in the world where the lines belonged, like slits looking into the underworld.

When Nicci completed the last incantation, she finally heard the whisper of Orden itself, confirmation that she had done everything properly. Yet it was not so much a voice as a force that formed the concept in her mind.

The power is open
, it whispered through the darkness, in words that felt like ice cracking.

“I call upon this time, this place, this world to turn with this play of the boxes of Orden.”

Name the player
.

Nicci placed her hands on the dead black box before her.

“The player is Richard Rahl,” she said. “Heed his will. Do his bidding if he proves worthy, kill him if he does not, destroy us all if he fails us.”

It is done. From this moment forward the power of Orden is in play by Richard Rahl.

Prophecy said, “If
fuer grissa ost drauka
does not lead this final battle, then the world, already standing at the brink of darkness, will fall under that terrible shadow.”

Nicci had come to realize that if Richard was to win, he must be the one leading them in this final battle. The only way to lead was for him to have the boxes in play. In that way, he truly would be the fulfillment of prophecy:
fuer grissa ost drauka
—the bringer of death.

Prophecy said that they had to follow Richard, but it was more than
prophecy. Prophecy only expressed the formality of what Nicci knew, that Richard embodied the values that promoted life.

They weren’t really following prophecy; prophecy was following Richard.

This was the ultimate following of Richard, following him in what he did with the boxes of Orden, in what he did with life and death itself. This was the ultimate test of who he was, who he would be, who he would become.

Richard himself had named the terms of the engagement when he spoke to the D’Haran troops, telling them how the war would be fought from now on: all or nothing.

This could be no different.

It now truly was all or nothing.

Ulicia and her Sisters of the Dark had likewise opened the gateway to the power of Orden. The struggle was now truly in balance. If Nicci was right about Richard, and she knew she was, then two forces now properly were engaged in the struggle that would decide it all.

If
fuer grissa ost drauka
does not lead this final battle, then the world, already standing at the brink of darkness, will fall under that terrible shadow.

They had to trust in Richard in that struggle. For that reason Nicci had to put the boxes of Orden into play in Richard’s name. The Sisters of the Dark no longer were the exclusive arbiters of the power of Orden. In that sense, Nicci had just put Richard into play, giving him the ability to win this struggle.

Without what she had just done, he could not win, much less survive.

Nicci seemed to drift in a world apart. When she finally opened her eyes, the storm had ended.

The first rays of light were just touching the windows.

It was dawn, on the first day of winter.

Richard had one year to open the correct box.

Everyone’s life was now in his hands.

Nicci trusted Richard with her life. She had just entrusted everyone’s life to him.

If she couldn’t trust Richard, then life wasn’t worth living.

B
E SURE TO LOOK FOR THE NEXT AND CONCLUDING BOOK IN THE
S
WORD OF
T
RUTH SERIES
.