Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Chapter 62

“Richard?” It was Nicci’s voice.

Still startled to actually have found Chainfire, he walked to the steps and looked up. Both Nicci and Cara, silhouetted by dawn light, were peering down at him.

“I found it. I mean, Jillian found it.”

“How did you get down there?” Nicci asked as Richard and Jillian started up the steps. “We just looked in there and you weren’t there.”

“Jillian?” It was a man’s voice.

“Grandfather!” Jillian raced the rest of the way up the steps and flew into an old man’s arms.

Richard climbed the steps after her. Nicci was sitting on the top step. “What’s going on?”

“This is Jillian’s grandfather,” Nicci said, lifting out a hand in introduction. “He is the teller of these people, the keeper of the old knowledge.”

“Glad to meet you,” Richard said, embracing the old gentleman’s hand. “You have a wonderful granddaughter. She just helped me out immensely.”

“You would have found it if I hadn’t seen it first,” Jillian said, grinning.

Richard smiled back.

He turned to Nicci. “What happened to Jagang’s men?”

Nicci shrugged. “Night fog.”

As Jillian went with her grandfather to greet Lokey on a nearby wall, Richard spoke confidentially to Nicci and Cara.

“Fog?”

“Yes.” Nicci interlaced her fingers around a knee. “Some kind of strange smoky fog drifted past them and made them go blind.”

“Not just blind,” Cara said with obvious delight, “but burst their eyes right in their sockets. It was a bloody mess. I quite enjoyed it.”

Richard frowned at Nicci, wanting an explanation.

“They’re scouts,” she said. “I know these men and they know me. I didn’t want them seeing me. More than that, though, I wanted them to be useless to Jagang—the ones who live, anyway. From what Jillian’s grandfather tells me, he doubts that many of them will make it back to Jagang’s forces, but I made sure they were near enough to their horses so that their animals will carry them back. I want the ones who live through the ordeal to be able to report only the horror of the fog coming down from the hills—that they were blinded in a strange, forbidding, and haunted land. Such news will send a fright through his men.

“Raping, pillaging, and slaughtering the helpless is all perfectly entertaining for Jagang’s army, but they rather don’t like things like this. Dying for the Creator in a grand battle and going to their reward in the afterlife is one thing, being taken by something they can’t see coming out of the darkness and ending up helpless in this way is quite another matter.

“I expect that Jagang will decide to skirt this land rather than allow some unknown out here to give his men a fright that could change their minds about fighting for the glory of the Creator and the Imperial Order. That means they will have to continue on south for a good distance. It will add time to their journey before they can finally swing around and come up into D’Hara.”

Richard nodded thoughtfully. “Very good, Nicci. Very good.”

She beamed. “What do you have there?”

“Chainfire.” He moved up on the steps to sit between Nicci and Cara. “It’s a book.” He hesitated in opening the cover. “In case this is some kind of prophecy or something, I’d just as soon you looked at it first.”

Concern settled in her exquisite features. “Of course, Richard. Give it here.”

Richard handed her the book and stood. He didn’t want to risk glancing at it and too late discovering that he shouldn’t have, only to discover the beast about to tear into them. Especially not now, not when he was so close to getting answers.

Nicci was already scanning the book, Cara looking over her shoulder.

“It makes no sense,” Cara announced as she read from Chainfire.

Richard didn’t think that Nicci shared that opinion. Her face was draining of color. “Dear spirits . . .” she whispered to herself.

As she kept reading, not saying anything to them, Richard sat on a rise of ground to the side, under an olive tree. There was a vine growing around the trunk. He reached out to idly pluck a leaf from the vine.

He stopped, his hand inches from the dusky, variegated leaves.

Icy gooseflesh prickled up his arms.

He knew what that vine was.

From The Book of Counted Shadows, the book that his father had him commit to memory before they destroyed it, the words flooded into his mind: And when the three boxes of Orden are put into play, the snake vine shall grow.

“What’s the matter?” Jillian whispered to him as she leaned close. “You look like you’ve seen a spirit.”

“Have you ever seen this plant growing here, where your people live?”

“No, I don’t believe I have.”

“She’s right,” Jillian’s grandfather said in a puzzled voice. “I’ve lived in these parts all my life. I don’t recall seeing that vine before, except for a spell almost three years back, I believe it was. That’s right, three years this coming autumn. Then it died away. Haven’t seen it since.”

Richard didn’t see any pods on the newly sprouted vine. He reached out and carefully plucked a sprig.

“Richard, this is an incredibly dangerous book,” Nicci said in a gravely troubled voice. She was preoccupied, still reading, and not paying any attention to the rest of them talking. “This is beyond dangerous.” She was reading as she spoke. “I’m only in the beginning, but this is—I don’t even know how to begin . . .”

Richard rose to his feet, holding the sprig of the vine out, staring at it.

“We have to go,” he said. “Right now.”

Something in the tone of his voice made Cara and even Nicci look up.

“Lord Rahl, what is it?” Cara asked.

“You look like you just saw the ghost of your father,” Nicci said.

“No, this is worse,” Richard told her, finally looking up. “I understand. I know what’s going on.”

He ran to the steps down into his tomb. “Sliph! We need to travel!”

“But Richard, you have come to help me cast the dreams so that the evil people will not come here.”

“Look, I have to leave. Right now.”

“Lord Rahl has already helped us as much as he can for now,” her grandfather said as he put an arm around her slender shoulders. “If he can, he will return to us.”

“That’s right,” Richard said, “if I can I’ll return. Thank you, Jillian, for helping me. You can’t begin to imagine what you have done this day. Tell your people to stay away from that vine.”

“Richard,” Nicci said, “what’s gotten into you?”

He seized Nicci’s dress at her shoulder, and Cara’s arm.

“We have to get to the People’s Palace. Now.”

“Why? What’s happening? What did you find?”

Richard showed her the sprig of vine before stuffing it in a pocket and grabbing her arm again and forcing her down the steps.

“This is a snake vine. It only grows when the boxes of Orden have been put in play.”

“But the boxes of Orden are safe in the palace,” Cara protested.

“They’re not safe any longer. Those Sisters have put the magic of Orden in play. Sliph! We need to travel to the People’s Palace.”

“Come, we will travel.”

Nicci was still fighting him as he pulled her along. “Richard, I don’t see what this has to do with your dream of this woman.”

Richard slapped the metal plate, starting the ceiling of the tomb closing. “Good bye, Jillian. Thank you. I will return someday.”

As she waved, he snatched up his bow and quiver.

He turned to Nicci. “They need Kahlan. She’s the last living Confessor. They put the boxes of Orden in play. They need the book I have memorized. The first thing it says is ‘Verification of the truth of the words of the Book of Counted Shadows, if spoken by another, rather than read by the one who commands the boxes, can only be insured by the use of a Confessor. . . .’ ”

The ceiling finished closing. In the distance, Richard could hear Jillian call, “Good-bye, Richard. Safe journey.”

“Richard, this is crazy. It’s just . . .”

“Now is not the time to argue with me.”

She knew by his tone of voice that he meant it.

He climbed up on the wall and hoisted both women up.

“Here, wait,” Nicci said as she opened the pack. “You had better keep this safe.” She stuffed Chainfire down inside and tied the flap down tight.

“Any idea what Chainfire is about?” he asked.

Her blue eyes gazed into his. “From what I was able to tell from the tiny bit I saw in the beginning, it’s a theoretical formula for conjuring things that have the potential to unravel existence.”

“Unravel existence?” Cara asked. “What does that mean?”

“I’m not exactly sure. But it seems to be a discussion of a theory of a specific magic that if ever initiated could potentially destroy the world of life.”

“Why in the world would they need that?” Richard asked. “They have the magic of Orden, now.”

Nicci didn’t answer. She didn’t believe his theory; it involved Kahlan.

“Sliph, now, please. Take us to the People’s Palace.”

The silver arm swept them up. “Come, we will travel.”

Just before they plunged into the silvery froth, Nicci and Cara each seized one of his hands.