Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Chapter 40

Richard scanned the surrounding hills, watching for any sign of danger, as he and Cara entered a place where the magnificent beech and maple trees had grown clustered together at the top of a rise. The straight, tall trunks forked ever wider in gentle, ascending arcs, giving Richard the sense of massive columns holding up the vaulted ceiling of a great, green cathedral. The fragrance of wildflowers drifted in on a gentle breeze. Through the canopy of rustling leaves he could get tantalizing glimpses of the soaring spires of Shota’s palace.

Streamers of golden sunlight flickered through the leaves and cavorted around on the low grass. Water from a spring burbled up through an opening in a low boulder and ran down its smooth sides into a shallow, meandering stream. Spread through the stream were rocks covered with a coat of fuzzy green moss.

A woman with a thick mane of blond hair and wearing a long black dress sat in the dappled sunlight on a rock beside the stream, leaning on one graceful arm as she ran her fingers through the clear water. She seemed to glow. The very air around her seemed to glow.

Even with her back to him, she looked all too familiar.

Cara leaned toward Richard and spoke in a confidential tone. “Is that Nicci?”

“In a way I wish it were, but it isn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

Richard nodded. “I’ve seen Shota do this before. The first time I ever saw her, in that exact same place, she appeared to me as my deceased mother.”

Cara glanced over at him. “That’s a rather cruel deception.”

“She said that it was a gift, a kindness, meant only to briefly bring a cherished memory to life.”

Cara huffed skeptically. “So why would she be trying to make you remember Nicci?”

Richard looked over at Cara, but didn’t have an answer for her.

When they finally reached the rock, the woman gracefully rose and turned to him. Blue eyes he knew met his gaze.

“Richard,” the woman who looked like Nicci said. Her voice had the exact same silken quality as Nicci’s. The low neckline of the laced bodice seemed to Richard to be cut even lower than he recalled. “I’m so pleased to see you again.” She rested her wrists on his shoulders, casually locking her fingers together behind his head. The air around her seemed filmy, giving her a soft, blurred, surreal appearance. “So very pleased,” she added with breathless affection.

She could not have looked or sounded any more like Nicci if it had been Nicci herself. The illusion was so convincing that Cara stood with her jaw hanging. Richard almost felt a sense of relief at seeing Nicci again.

Almost.

“Shota, I’ve come to talk with you.”

“Talk is for lovers,” she said, a coy smile seeping through her exquisite features.

She slipped her fingers into the hair at the back of his head as her soft smile warmed affectionately. Her eyes, joining in her smile, reflected her delight at seeing him. She seemed at that moment more pleased, more quietly satisfied, more at peace than he had ever seen Nicci look. She also looked so much like Nicci that he was having trouble convincing himself to keep in mind that it was Shota. If nothing else, she acted far more in character with Shota than with Nicci. Nicci would never be so forward. It had to be Shota.

She gently pulled him closer. At that moment, Richard had trouble trying to think of a reason to resist. None came presently to mind. He couldn’t stop gazing into her alluring eyes. He felt himself being swept away with the simple pleasure of gazing at Nicci’s entrancing face.

“And if that is your offer, Richard, then I accept.”

She had drifted so close to him that he could feel the sweet breath of her words on his face. Her eyes closed. Her soft lips met his in a slow, luxurious kiss that he did not return. Nonetheless, he didn’t force her away, either.

As her arms drew him tighter into the embrace, into the kiss, it seemed to scramble his thinking and completely immobilize him. Even more than the kiss, that embrace awakened a terrible longing for the comfort of steadfast support, sheltering devotion, and tender acceptance. More than anything, the promise of that long-absent solace was what disarmed him.

He could feel every inch, every curve, every rise and fall of her firm body pressing against his. He knew that he was trying to think of something other than that kiss, that embrace, that body, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was. In fact, he was having a great deal of difficulty making himself think at all.

It was because of that kiss. It was a kiss that made him forget who he was, or why he was there, even though, oddly enough, it didn’t seem to be a kiss that necessarily promised love, or even lust. He wasn’t sure what it promised. It almost seemed to be conditional.

One thing he did know was that it was very different from the kiss Nicci had given him back in the stable in Altur’Rang just before he’d left. That kiss had carried the extraordinary pleasure and serenity of magic, if not other things. The real Nicci had been behind that kiss. Despite the visual illusion, this was not Nicci. This was a kiss that seemed irresistible, as a great weight might be irresistible, but not really all that—erotic. Even so, it threatened to tangle him up in its cautious questions and silent promises.

“Nicci—or Shota—or whoever you are,” Cara growled through clenched teeth, fists at her sides, “just what do you think you’re doing?”

She pulled away, turning her head slightly, her cheek resting against Richard’s, to gaze curiously at Cara. Delicate fingers idly twined their way through the hair at the back of his head. Richard’s mind was reeling.

Cara backed away a bit as Shota-in-Nicci’s-skin, with her other hand, tenderly cupped the Mord-Sith’s chin.

“Why, nothing more than what you want.”

Cara backed another step so that her face would be out of range of the comforting hand. “What?”

“This is what you want, isn’t it? I would think that you would be grateful that I’m helping you with your grand plan.”

Cara planted her fists on her hips. “I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about.”

“Why so angry?” The smile turned sly. “I didn’t come up with this. You did. This is your plan—the one you hatched all by yourself. I’m simply helping you bring it to life.”

“What makes you think—?” Cara seemed to run out of words.

The blue-eyed gaze that looked so much like Nicci’s slid to Richard. The smile returned as she studied his features from only inches away.

“This young woman is such a dear friend and loyal protector. Has your dear friend and loyal protector told you what she has all planned out for you, Richard?” She touched his nose. “Such plans, they are, too. She has the rest of your life all thought out and arranged for you. You really should ask her sometime what she is plotting for you.”

Cara’s face suddenly went slack with understanding and then it went crimson.

Richard grasped Shota by the shoulders and eased her back, forcing her hand to slip off his shoulder. At the same time he renewed his efforts to regain control of himself.

“You’ve already said it—Cara is my friend. I do not fear what she may want for my life. You see, despite what friends and loved ones want for me, or hope I will achieve, it’s my life and I decide what I will try to make of it. People can plan or hope all they want for those they care about, but in the end it is each individual who must take responsibility for their own life and make the choice for themselves.”

Her wide smile showed her teeth. “How deliciously innocent you are to think such things.” Her fingers combed back his hair. “I would strongly advise you to ask her what she is plotting to do with your heart.”

Richard glanced to Cara. She looked at the same time on the verge of both exploding in rage and fleeing in panic. Instead of either she stood her ground and kept quiet. Richard didn’t know what Shota was talking about, but he did know that this was not the time or place to find out. He couldn’t allow Shota to lead him away from his purpose.

He also noticed that Cara had a white-knuckled fist around her Agiel.

“Shota, enough of this charade. Cara’s wishes and intentions are my concern, not yours.”

Nicci smiled sadly. “So you think, Richard. So you think.”

The hazy air around the woman shimmered and Nicci was no longer Nicci, but Shota. She was no longer a dreamy phantasm, but a clear vision. Her hair, instead of blond, was just as thick but a wavy auburn. Her black dress had changed into a wispy, variegated gray, layered affair, cut just as low, with loose points that lifted ever so slightly in the breeze. She was every bit as beautiful as the valley around her.

As Shota turned her attention to Cara, her expression tightened dangerously. “You hurt Samuel.”

“I’m sorry,” Cara said with a shrug. “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

Shota arched an eyebrow over her threatening glare, as if to say she didn’t believe a word of it.

“I meant to kill him,” Cara said.

Shota’s anger melted away. An incandescent smile accompanied a genuine, if brief, laugh. She regarded Richard with a sidelong glance, the smile still on her lips.

“I like her. You can keep her.”

Richard recalled that Cara had once made that very same pronouncement to him about Kahlan.

“Shota, I told you, I have to talk to you.”

Her bright, clear almond eyes took him in with a sense of wonder. “So you have come offering to be my lover?”

Richard noticed Samuel off through the trees, watching, his yellow eyes glowing with hatred.

“You know I haven’t.”

“Ah.” Her smile returned. “What you mean to say, then, is that you have come because you want something from me.” She caught one of the floating points of her dress. “Isn’t that right, Richard?”

Richard had to remind himself to stop staring into her ageless eyes. But it was so hard to make himself glance away. It was as if Shota controlled where his gaze rested and he was having trouble keeping it resting in proper places.

Kahlan had told him once that Shota had been bewitching him. Kahlan said that Shota couldn’t help it, it was just what witch women did. It came naturally to them.

Kahlan.

That thought of her again jolted his mind.

“Kahlan is missing.”

Shota’s brow wrinkled ever so slightly. “Who?”

Richard sighed. “Look, something terrible is going on. Kahlan, my wife . . .”

“Wife! Since when did you take a wife?”

Her expression curdled into a heated glare. By the sudden anger powering her features and the way her cleavage heaved at the brink of the low-cut dress, Richard knew that she was not feigning surprise. She truly didn’t remember Kahlan.

Richard ran his own fingers back through his hair as he gathered his thoughts and started again.

“Shota, you’ve met Kahlan several times. You know her quite well. Something has happened to erase everyone’s memory of her. No one remembers her, you included, and . . .”

“Except you?” she said with incredulity. “You alone remember her?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Length won’t make it true.”

“It is true,” Richard insisted. He gestured heatedly. “You were at our wedding.”

She folded her arms. “I don’t think so.”

“The first time I came here, you had captured Kahlan and had covered her in snakes . . .”

“Snakes.” Shota smiled. “You’re saying I liked this woman and are suggesting that I treated her indulgently?”

“Not exactly. You wanted her dead.”

The smile widened. She returned her wrists to his shoulders. “Now, Richard, that’s awfully harsh, don’t you think?”

Richard grasped her by the waist and gently moved her back. He knew that if he didn’t stop her she would soon hamper his ability to think.

“I certainly thought so,” he said. “Among other things, you didn’t want us to wed.”

Shota ran a red lacquered nail down his chest. She looked up at him from under her brow.

“Well, maybe I had my reasons.”

“Yes—you didn’t want us to bring a child into the world. You said we would be creating a monster because from me it would have the gift and from Kahlan it would be a Confessor.”

“Confessor!” Shota took a step back as if he had turned poisonous. “A Confessor? Are you out of your mind?”

“Shota . . .”

“There aren’t any more Confessors. They’re all dead.”

“That’s not quite accurate. All of them are dead except Kahlan.”

She turned to Cara. “Has he had a fever or something?”

“Well—he was shot with an arrow. He nearly died. Nicci healed him but he was still unconscious for days.”

Shota suspiciously held up a finger as if she had uncovered a devious plot. “Don’t tell me—she used Subtractive Magic.”

“Yes, she did,” Richard answered in Cara’s place. “And because she did she was able to save my life.”

Shota took back the step she had put between them when she had retreated. “Used Subtractive Magic . . .” Shota muttered to herself. She looked up at him again. “How did she use it—for what purpose?”

“She used it to eliminate the barbed arrow embedded in me.”

Shota rolled a hand, wanting him to continue. “She must have done something more.”

“She used Subtractive Magic to purge all the blood pooling in my chest. She said that there was no other way to get either the arrow or the blood out of me and either would kill me if left in.”

Shota turned her back to them and, one hand on a hip, walked off a few paces as she considered the brief account.

“That explains a great many things,” she said unhappily under her breath.

“You gave Kahlan a necklace,” Richard said.

Shota frowned back over her shoulder. “A necklace? What sort of necklace would I give her? And why, my dear boy, do you imagine I would ever do such a thing for your—lover?”

“Wife,” Richard corrected. “You and Kahlan had spent time together—by yourselves—and had come to an understanding of sorts. You gave the necklace to Kahlan as a gift so that she and I could—well, be together. It had some kind of power so that we wouldn’t conceive children. While I don’t agree with your view of future events, right now, what with the war and all, we decided to accept your gift and the truce that went with it.”

“I can’t imagine how you could possibly imagine that I would do any of those things.” Shota looked to Cara again. “Did he have a bad fever on top of the injury?”

Richard might have thought that Shota was being sarcastic, but he could see by the look on her face that she was asking a serious question.

“Not exactly a bad fever,” Cara said, hesitantly. “It was a slight fever. Nicci said, though, that his problem was partly with how close he came to death but mostly had to do with the extended time that he was unconscious.” Cara sounded rather reluctant to speak about it to a person she considered a potential threat, but she at last finished her answer. “She said that he was suffering from delirium.”

Shota folded her arms as she heaved a sigh while taking him in with her almond eyes. “What am I to do with you,” she murmured half to herself.

“The last time I was here,” Richard said, “you told me that if I ever came back into Agaden Reach you would kill me.”

She showed no reaction. “Did I, now. And why would I say such a thing?”

“I guess you were rather angry with me for refusing to kill Kahlan and for refusing to allow you to do it.” He pointed with his chin back up toward the mountain pass. “I thought you might have meant to keep your word and so you sent Samuel to fulfill your threat.”

Shota glanced to her companion off through the trees. He looked suddenly alarmed.

“What are you talking about?” She asked with a frown as she looked back at Richard.

“Are you now claiming you didn’t know?”

“Know what?”

Richard briefly considered the angry yellow eyes glaring at him.

“Samuel hid up in the pass and jumped me from out of the storm. He snatched my sword and kicked me over a cliff. I just managed to catch the edge. If Cara wouldn’t have been there, Samuel would have used the sword to see to it that I fell from the cliff. He very nearly killed me. That he didn’t wasn’t because he didn’t intend to or try his best.”

Shota’s glare glided to the dark figure crouched off in the trees. “Is that true?”

Samuel could not bear her scrutiny. Puling with self-pity, his gaze sank to the ground. That was answer enough.

“We will discuss this later,” she told him in a low voice that carried unequivocally through the trees and gave Richard goose bumps.

“That was not my intention, Richard, nor my orders, I can assure you. I told Samuel only to invite your devious little guardian to come along.”

“You know what, Shota? I’m getting pretty tired of Samuel trying to kill me and you then claiming that you never gave him any such instructions. Once might have been credible, but it’s growing too routine. Your innocent surprise every time it happens is beginning to strike me as rather convenient. It appears to me that you find deniability quite useful and so you stick to it.”

“That isn’t true, Richard,” Shota said in a measured tone. She unfolded her arms and clasped her hands as she looked at the ground at her feet. “You carry his sword. Samuel is a little touchy about that. Since it was taken from him, not given freely, that means it still belongs to him.”

Richard nearly objected, but then reminded himself that he wasn’t there to argue the point.

Shota’s gaze rose to meet his. It came up angry.

“And how dare you complain to me about what Samuel does without my knowledge when you knowingly bring a deadly menace into the peace of my home?”

Richard was taken aback. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play stupid, Richard, it doesn’t fit you. You are hunted by a wildly dangerous threat. How many people have already died because they were unfortunate enough to be near you when the beast came looking for you. What if it decides to come here to kill you? You come here and in so doing cavalierly risk my life, without my permission, simply because you happen to want something?

“Do you think it’s right that I’m put at risk of death because of your wants? Does the fact that you think I have something you need put my life at your disposal and therefore at great risk?”

“Of course not.” Richard swallowed. “I never looked at it that way.”

Shota threw her hands up. “Ah, so your excuse is that I am to be put in peril because you didn’t think.”

“I need your help.”

“You mean you have come as a helpless beggar, begging for help, without regard to the danger it puts me in, simply because you want something.”

Richard rubbed a fingertips across his forehead. “Look, I don’t have all the answers, but I can tell you that I have good reason to believe that I’m right, that Kahlan exists and she has disappeared.”

“Like I said, you want something and you don’t bother to consider the risk to anyone else.”

Richard took a step closer to her. “That isn’t true. Don’t you see? You don’t remember Kahlan. No one but me does. Think, Shota, think of what it means if I’m right.”

Her brow twitched as she puzzled at him. “What are you talking about?”

“If I’m right, then there is something gravely wrong in the world that’s making everyone—including you—forget her. She has been wiped from your mind. But it’s more serious than that. It’s not just Kahlan that is missing from everyone’s mind. Everything that you or anyone else ever did with her is also missing. Some of those missing bits may be trivial, but other parts of it very well could be vital.

“You don’t remember that you said you would kill me if I ever came back here. That means that when you said that, in your mind that threat had to be somehow connected to Kahlan. She contributed to your choice to make that threat. Now, since you don’t remember Kahlan, you also don’t recall saying that to me.

“What if there’s something vastly important that you’ve likewise forgotten. Because you’ve forgotten Kahlan, you’ve lost part of what you’ve done in your own life—lost some of the decisions you’ve made. How many ways do you have a connection with Kahlan that you are completely unaware of that are now wiped away? How important are those missing bits? How much of your life has been altered because you now don’t recall the changes in your thinking that you made because of her influence?

“Shota, don’t you see the magnitude of the problem? Can’t you fathom how this has the potential to change everyone’s perception? If everyone forgets how Kahlan changed their individual lives, they will act without the benefit of the shifts they made in their thinking.”

Richard paced, one hand on a hip, gesturing with the other. “Think of someone you know.” He turned back to her, meeting her gaze. “Think of your mother. Now, just try to imagine all that you would lose if you lost every memory of her and everything she taught you, every one of your decisions in which she had an influence, both directly and indirectly.

“Now, imagine everyone forgetting someone important like your mother was to you—but imagine them being central to events important to everyone. Imagine for a moment how your life—your thinking—would be altered if you forgot that I exist and you no longer recalled the things you’ve done with me, the things you’ve done because of me. Can you begin to see the significance?

“You gave Kahlan that necklace as a wedding gift to both of us to prevent her from conceiving—at least for now. It was a gift that was more than that, though. It was a truce. It was peace between you and me as much as between you and Kahlan. What other truces, alliances, and oaths have been made because of Kahlan that, like the necklace, are now forgotten? How many important missions will be abandoned?

“Don’t you see? This holds the potential to throw the world into turmoil. I have no idea of the possible effects of such a wide-ranging event, but for all I know it could alter the complexion of the fight for freedom. It could usher in the dawn of the Imperial Order. For all I know, it could usher in the end of life itself.”

Shota looked astonished. “Life itself?”

“Something this significant does not happen randomly. It’s not an unfortunate accident or some casual mistake. There has to be a cause, and anything that could cause a universal event of this enormity carries sinister implications.”

For a time, Shota regarded him with an unreadable expression. She finally caught a floating corner of the layered material that made up her dress and turned away as she thought about his words. Finally she turned back.

“And what if you are simply suffering from a delusion? Since that is the simplest explanation, that makes it most likely the true answer.”

“While the simplest explanation is usually the true answer, it is not infallibly so.”

“This is no ordinary choice as you paint it, Richard. What you describe is extravagantly complicated. I’m having trouble even beginning to envision the complexities and consequences that would be involved in such an event. It would have to cause so many things to come undone, with such compounding disorder, that it would soon become all too obvious to everyone that something was terribly wrong in the world—even if they didn’t know what. That just isn’t happening.”

Shota swept her arm out in grand fashion. “Meanwhile, what damage to the world will you cause because of this mad mission you have undertaken to find a woman who does not exist?

“You came to me the first time to get help in stopping Darken Rahl. I helped you, and in so doing I helped you become the Lord Rahl.

“The war rages on, the D’Haran Empire fights desperately on, and now you are not there to be a part of it, as is your place as the Lord Rahl. You have been effectively removed from your position of authority by your own delusions and unthinking actions. A void is left where there should be leadership. All the help you would be able to provide is no longer available to those who fight for the cause you have championed.”

“I believe that I’m right,” Richard said. “If I am, then that means there is a grave danger that no one but me is even aware of. Therefore, no one but me can fight it. Only I stand opposed to some unknown but impending ruin. I can’t in good conscience ignore what I believe to be the truth of a hidden threat more monstrous than anyone realizes.”

“That makes a convenient excuse, Richard.”

“It’s not an excuse.”

Shota nodded mockingly. “And if the newly founded free empire of D’Hara falls in the meantime? If the savages of the Imperial Order raise their bloody swords over the corpses of all those brave men who will perish defending the cause of freedom while their leader is off chasing phantoms? Will all those brave men be any less dead because you alone see some inscrutable danger? Will their cause—will your cause—be any less ended? Will the world then be able to slide merrily into a long dark age where millions upon millions will be born into miserable lives of oppression, starvation, suffering, and death?

“Will chasing off after the enigma in your mind alone make liberty’s grave acceptable to you, Richard? A mere consequence of what you stubbornly think is right in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?”

Richard had no answer. In fact, he feared to even attempt to give her one. After the way she’d put it, anything he said would sound hollow and selfish. He felt sure that he had sound reasons to stick to his convictions, but he also knew that to everyone else the proof had to seem pretty thin, so he thought that maybe it was best to just keep quiet.

More than that, though, lurking beneath the surface was the terrible shadow of fear that she could be right, that it was all some dreadful delusion in his mind alone and not some problem with everyone else.

What made him right and everyone else wrong? How could he alone be right? How could such a thing even be possible? How could he know himself that he was right? What proof, other than his own memory, did he have? There was not one concrete shred of evidence that he could hold, that he could point to.

The crack in his confidence terrified him. If that crack widened, if it ruptured, the weight of the world would crash in and crush him. He couldn’t bear that weight if she didn’t exist.

His word alone stood between Kahlan and oblivion.

He couldn’t go on without her. He didn’t want to go on in a world with out her. She was everything to him. Until that moment, he had been pushing her personal, private, intimate loving memory aside and instead dealing with details in order to endure the pain of missing her for yet an other day even as he worked toward finding her. But that pain was now tightening around his heart, threatening to take him to his knees.

With the pain of missing her came a flood of guilt. He was Kahlan’s only hope. He alone kept the flame of her alive above the torrent trying to drown out her existence. He alone worked to find her and bring her back. But he had not yet accomplished anything useful toward that end. The days marched past, but so far he hadn’t gained anything that would get him any closer to her.

To make matters all the worse, Richard knew that Shota was also right in one very important way. While he worked toward helping Kahlan, he was failing everyone else. He had been the one who, to a large extent, had made people believe in the idea, the very real possibility, of a free D’Hara, of a place where it was possible for people to live and work toward their own goals in their own lives.

He was only too aware that he was also largely responsible for the great barrier coming down, allowing Emperor Jagang to lead the Imperial Order into the New World to threaten the newfound freedom in the New World.

How many people would be at risk, or lose their lives, while he pursued this one person that he loved? What would Kahlan want him to do? He knew how much she cared for the people of the Midlands, the people she had once ruled. She would want him to forget her and to try to save them. She would say that there was too much at stake to come after her.

But if it was he who was missing, she would not abandon him for anything or anyone.

Despite what Kahlan might say, it was her life that was important to him, her life that meant the world to him.

He wondered if perhaps Shota was right, that he was merely using the concept of the danger Kahlan’s disappearance represented for the rest of the world, as an excuse.

He decided that the best thing to do for the moment, until he could think of a better way to get the help he needed, and to buy himself time to gather his courage, to harden his resolve, was to change the subject.

“What about this thing,” Richard asked, gesturing vaguely, “this beast, that’s chasing me.” The passion was gone from his voice. He realized how tired he was from the long trek over the pass, to say nothing of the blur of days riding up from the Old World. “Is there anything you can tell me about it?”

He felt on safer ground with this question because the beast could interfere not only with his search for Kahlan, but with the mission Shota was urging him to return to.

She watched him for a moment, her voice finally coming much softer, as had his, as if without realizing it they had reached a wordless truce to lower the level of antagonism. “The beast that hunts you is no longer the beast it once was, the beast it was as it was created. Events have caused it to mutate.”

“Mutate?” Cara asked, looking alarmed. “What do you mean? What has it become?”

Shota appraised them both, as if to make sure they were paying attention.

“It has become a blood beast.”