Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

Chapter 5

Nicci stood, her back stiff and straight, as Zedd, slumped in the chair before her, wept into his hands.

She had locked her knees for fear that her legs would give way beneath her. She told herself that she would not allow a single tear to escape her control.

She had almost succeeded.

When she had invoked the power of Orden, putting the box in play in Richard’s name, that power had done something to her. It had, to a degree, countered the damage of the Chainfire spell infecting her.

When Nicci named Richard the player, completing the links to the power she had invoked, Nicci had suddenly known Kahlan.

It was not a rebuilding of her lost memory of Kahlan—that was gone—but rather it was a simple reconnection to the awareness of the reality of Kahlan’s existence, to the here and now.

For ages, it seemed, Nicci had thought that Richard was deluded in his belief in the existence of a woman no one but he remembered. Even later, when Richard had found the Chainfire book and had proven to them what had really happened, Nicci had at last believed him, but she had based that belief only on her belief in Richard and the facts he had uncovered. It was an intellectual conviction based on indirect evidence alone.

That conviction had no basis in her own memories or perceptions. She had no personal recollection of Kahlan, only Richard’s memory to go on, his word, and the evidence at hand. In that secondhand manner she believed in the existence of this woman, Kahlan, because she believed Richard.

But now Nicci knew—really knew—that Kahlan was real.

Nicci still had no memory of anything about the woman, but she viscerally knew that Kahlan was real, that she existed. She no longer needed to rely on Richard’s word to know it. It was self-evident, almost as if she perceived it directly. It was somewhat like remembering meeting someone in the past but not being able to remember their face. While that person’s face would not be recalled, that person’s existence was not in doubt.

Nicci knew that, now, because of the connection to the power of Orden, because of what it had done within her, Kahlan would no longer seem to be invisible. Nicci would be able to see her just as she could see everyone else. The Chainfire spell still resided within Nicci, but Orden had at least partially countered the spell, halted the continuing damage, allowing her to be aware of the truth. Her memory of Kahlan was still not vital, but Kahlan was.

Nicci now knew, really knew, that Richard’s love was real. Nicci felt an aching joy for Richard’s heart, even as her own had broken.

Cara stepped up close beside her and did something Nicci could never have imagined a Mord-Sith doing: she put an arm gently around Nicci’s waist, drawing her close.

At least, it was something no Mord-Sith would ever have done until Richard had come along. Richard had changed everything. Cara, like Nicci, had been brought back from the brink of madness by Richard’s passion for life. The two of them shared a unique understanding of Richard, a special connection, a perspective that Nicci doubted anyone else, even Zedd, could truly appreciate.

More than that, no one but Cara could grasp all that Nicci had just given up.

“You did good, Nicci,” Cara whispered.

Zedd rose. “Yes, she did. I’m sorry, my dear, if I’ve been unfairly hard on you. I can see now that you did in fact think it through. You did what you thought was right. I must admit that, given the circumstances, you did the only thing that made sense.

“I apologize for jumping to foolish assumptions. I’ve had reason to know many of the profound dangers surrounding the ilse of the power of Orden—I probably know more about it than anyone alive today. I’ve even seen the magic of Orden called forth by Darken Rahl. Because of that, I have a somewhat different view than you’ve presented.

“While I don’t necessarily completely agree with you, what you did was an act of great intellect and courage, to say nothing of desperation. I’m familiar, too, with acts of desperation in the face of incredible odds and I can appreciate how they are sometimes necessary.

“I hope you are right in what you’ve done. Even if it means I am wrong, I would choose for you to be the one who was right.

“But it doesn’t matter, now. Done is done. You have put the boxes of Orden in play and named Richard the player. Despite what I may believe, we are all of a mind in our cause. Now that it is done, we must do our best to see to it that this works. We will all need to do our utmost to help Richard. If he fails, we all fail. All life fails.”

Nicci couldn’t help but feel a certain degree of relief. “Thank you, Zedd. With your help, we will make this work.”

He shook his head sadly. “My help? Perhaps I’m merely a hindrance. I just wish you had consulted me first.”

“I did,” Nicci said. “I asked you if you trusted Richard with your life, with all life. What more consultation could there be than that?”

Zedd smiled through the sadness lingering on his face. “I guess you’re right. It could just be that the combination of the Chainfire spell and the contamination of the chimes has already eroded my ability to think.”

“I don’t believe that for a moment, Zedd. I think it’s that you love Richard and are worried for him. I wouldn’t have sought your counsel had it not been important. You told me what I needed to know.”

“If you get confused again,” Cara said to him, “I’ll straighten you out.”

Zedd scowled at the woman. “How reassuring.”

“Well, Nicci made a long story of it,” Cara said, “but it’s not really all that complicated. Anyone should be able to see it—even you, Zedd.”

Zedd frowned. “What do you mean?”

Cara shrugged one shoulder. “We are the steel against steel. Lord Rahl is the magic against magic.”

To Cara, it was no more complicated than that. Nicci wondered if the Mord-Sith didn’t really grasp that she was only scratching the surface, or if she understood the entire concept better than anyone. Perhaps she was right and it really wasn’t any more complicated than that.

Zedd laid a hand gently on Nicci’s shoulder. It reminded her of Richard’s gentle touch.

“Well, despite what Cara says, this may be the death of us all. If it is to have a chance to work, though, we have a lot of work to do. Richard is going to need our help. You and I know a great deal about magic. Richard knows next to nothing.”

Nicci smiled to herself. “He knows more about it than you think he does. It was Richard who deciphered the taint in the Chainfire spell. None of us understood all that business about the language of symbols, but Richard picked it up on his own. By himself he learned to understand ancient drawings, designs, and emblems.

“I could never teach him anything about his gift, but he often surprised me with how much he grasped that was beyond the conventional understanding of magic. He taught me things I could never have imagined.”

Zedd was nodding. “He drives me crazy, too.”

Rikka, the other Mord-Sith living at the Wizard’s Keep, stuck her head in the doorway. “Zedd, I just thought you ought to know about something.” She pointed a finger skyward. “I was a few levels up and there must be some kind of broken window or something. The wind is making a strange noise.”

Zedd frowned. “What kind of noise?”

Rikka put her hands on her hips and stared at the floor, thinking it over. “I don’t know.” She looked up again. “It’s hard to describe. It reminded me a little of wind blowing through a narrow passage.”

“A howling noise?” Zedd asked.

Rikka shook her head. “No. More like the way it sounds out on the ramparts when the wind blows through the crenellations.”

Nicci glanced toward the windows. “It’s just dawn. I’ve been casting webs. The wind hasn’t come up yet.”

Rikka shrugged. “I don’t know what it could have been, then.”

“The Keep sometimes makes noises when it breathes.”

Rikka wrinkled her nose. “Breathes?”

“Yes,” the wizard said. “When the temperature changes, like now when the nights are getting colder, the air down in the thousands of rooms will move around. Forced into the constrictions of the passageways it sometimes moans through the halls of the Keep when there is no wind outside.”

“Well, I haven’t been here long enough to have experienced such a thing, but that must be it, then. The Keep must be breathing.” Rikka started away.

“Rikka,” Zedd called, waiting for her to halt. “What were you doing up there in that section anyway?”

“Chase is looking for Rachel,” Rikka said back over her shoulder. “I was just helping out. You haven’t seen her, have you?”

Zedd shook his head. “Not this morning. I saw her last night before she went off to bed.”

“All right, I’ll tell Chase.” Rikka peered into the room a moment and then leaned a hand against the doorway. “What’s that thing on the table, anyway? What are you three up to?”

“Trouble,” Cara said.

Rikka nodded knowingly. “Magic.”

“You have that right,” Cara said.

Rikka tapped the palm of her hand against the doorframe. “Well, I’d better go find Rachel before Chase finds her first and gives her a talking-to for going off exploring in such a place.”

“That child is a born Keep rat.” Zedd sighed. “Sometimes I think she knows the Keep as well as I do.”

“I know.” Rikka said. “I’ve been on patrol and have come across her in places I couldn’t believe. Once I thought for certain that she had to be lost. She insisted she wasn’t. I made her lead me back to prove it. She marched back to her room without ever making a wrong turn, then grinned up at me and said ‘See?’ ”

Smiling, Zedd scratched his temple. “I had a similar experience with her. Children are quick to learn such things. Chase encourages her to learn things, to know where she is so that she isn’t so easily lost. I guess, since I grew up here, that’s why I don’t get lost in the place.”

Rikka turned toward the hallway but then turned back when Zedd called her name.

“The wind noise?” He waggled a finger toward the ceiling. “You said it was up there?”

Rikka nodded.

“Do you mean the speckled hallway that runs past the row of libraries? The place with the sitting areas spaced along the hall outside the rooms?”

“That’s the place. I was checking the libraries for Rachel. She likes to look through books. As you said, it must be the Keep breathing.”

“The only problem is that that’s one of several areas where the Keep doesn’t tend to make any sound when it breathes. The dead ends off that hall divert the movement of air elsewhere, preventing enough air moving through that area fast enough to make much of a sound.”

“It might have been coming from farther away and I only thought it was in those halls.”

Zedd planted a fist on one bony hip as he considered. “And you say it sounded like a moaning sound?”

“Well, now that I think about it, it seemed more of a growl.”

Zedd’s brow creased. “A growl?” He crossed the thick carpet and poked his head out of the doorway, listening.

“Well, not a growl like an animal,” Rikka said. “More of a rolling rumble. Like I mentioned—it reminded me of the sound the wind makes going through the crenellations. You know, a rumbling, fluttering kind of sound.”

“I don’t hear anything,” Zedd muttered.

Rikka made a face. “Well, you can’t hear it way down here.”

Nicci met them at the doorway. “Then why do I feel something vibrating in the center of my chest?”

Zedd stared at Nicci for a moment. “Perhaps something to do with all the conjuring involving the box?”

Nicci shrugged. “Could be, I suppose. I’ve never dealt with some of those elements before. Much of it was new to me. There is no telling what some of the ancillary effects might be.”

“Do you remember when Friedrich accidentally set off that alarm?” he asked, turning to Rikka. She nodded. “Did it sound anything like that?”

Rikka shook her head adamantly. “Not unless you put the alarm under water.”

“The alarms are constructed magic.” Zedd rubbed his chin in thought. “You can’t put them under water.”

Cara spun her Agiel up into her fist. “Enough talk.” She pushed between them to make it through the doorway. “I say we go have a look.”

Zedd and Rikka followed after her. Nicci didn’t. She gestured toward the box of Orden sitting on the table within the glowing web of light. “I’d better stay close.”

Besides watching over the box, she needed to study The Book of Life, along with other volumes, further. There were still parts of Ordenic theory that she hadn’t been able to fully understand. She was distracted by a number of unanswered questions. If she was eventually to be of any help to Richard she would need to know the answers to those questions.

What concerned her most was an issue at the center of Ordenic theory having to do with the connections between Orden and the subject of the Chainfire event—Kahlan. Nicci needed to better understand the nature of requirements for connections based on primary foundations. She needed to fully grasp how those foundations were established. She was troubled by the constraints on predetermined protocols—their need of a sterile field in order to re-create memory. She also needed to learn more about the precise conditions in which the forces needed to be applied.

At the center of it all, though, was that cautionary requirement of a sterile field. She needed to understand the precise nature of the sterile field Orden required and, more importantly, why Ordenic protocols needed it.

“I have all the shields up,” Zedd told her. “The entrances to the Keep are sealed. If anyone had entered without permission alarms would be going off all over the place. We’d all be plugging our ears until we found the cause.”

“There are gifted people who know about such things,” Nicci reminded him.

Zedd didn’t need to consider for long. “You have a point. Considering all that’s going on, and all we don’t yet know, we can’t be too careful. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to keep an eye on the box.”

Nicci nodded as she followed them out of the doorway. “Let me know as soon as all is clear.”

The towering hall outside, while not more than a dozen feet wide, rose nearly out of sight high overhead. The passageway formed a long, narrow rift deep within the mountain down in the lower part of the Keep. To the left side rose a natural rock wall that had been chiseled right out of the granite of the mountain itself. Even thousands of years later, the marks left by cutting tools could still be seen.

The wall on the side with the rooms was made up of tightly fit, enormous stone blocks. They formed the wall opposing the chiseled granite, rising up together sixty or more feet. That seemingly endless split through the mountain constituted part of the boundary of the containment field. The rooms within the containment area were all lined up along the very outer edge of the Keep that rose up out of the mountain itself.

Nicci followed the others only a short way through the seemingly endless hall, watching them until they reached the first intersection.

“This is no time to get sloppy or lenient,” she called after them. “Too much is at risk.”

Zedd accepted her warning with a nod. “We’ll be back after I look into it.”

Cara cast Nicci a look back over her shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll be there and I’m not in the mood to be lenient. In fact, I’m not going to be in a good mood again until I see Lord Rahl alive and safe.”

“You have good moods?” Zedd asked as they hurried away.

Cara scowled at him. “I’m frequently cheerful and pleasant. Are you suggesting that I’m not?”

Zedd held up his hands in surrender. “No, no. Cheerful describes you perfectly.”

“Good, then.”

“In fact, cheerful would come even before bloodthirsty in my book.”

“Come to think of it, I think I like bloodthirsty even better.”

Nicci couldn’t share the spirit of their banter. She wasn’t good at making people laugh. She frequently found herself perplexed by the way Zedd and others could ease tension with such exchanges.

Nicci knew all too well the nature of the people who were trying to kill them. She had once been one of those people of the Order. She had been as merciless as she had been deadly.

She had never once seen Emperor Jagang being jovial or lighthearted. He was hardly a man given to repartee. She had spent a great deal of time with him, and he was never anything but consistently lethal. His cause was deadly serious to him and he was fanatically dedicated to it. Knowing the kind of people coming for them, people like she herself had once been, and understanding their heartless nature, Nicci didn’t feel that she could be any less serious than they.

She watched Zedd, Cara, and Rikka hurry down the first hall to the right, heading for the stairway.

As they started up, Nicci suddenly understood the sound, the vibration she felt.

It was an alarm, of sorts.

She knew why Rikka didn’t recognize it.

She opened her mouth to call out to the others just as the world seemed to come grinding to a halt.

A dark cloud poured down the stairwell. It was like a million-speckled suggestion of a snake in midair, rolling, turning, twisting, thinning, thickening as it came roaring down the stairwell. The rolling, fluttering rumble was deafening.

Thousands of bats poured around the corner, a fat snake of them in midair, a thing alive made up of untold numbers of the little creatures. The sight of so many thousands of them coalesced into a single moving shape was riveting. The racket reverberated off the walls, filling the split in the mountain with a riot of noise. The bats seemed to be flying in a panic, their fused form coiling around the corner in a rush as they bolted from something.

Zedd, Cara, and Rikka seemed frozen where they had begun to climb the stairs.

And then the fleeing bats were gone, driven before some terror coming through the Keep behind them. The soft, fluttering sound they left in their wake echoed its muted alarm through the hall as the bats fled into deeper darkness.

That distant sound was what Rikka had heard but not understood.

Staring at the stairs from where the bats had come, Nicci felt as if she were frozen and immobile in an expectant, silent moment in time, waiting to breathe, waiting for something unimaginable. With a rising sense of panic, she realized that in fact she really couldn’t move.

And then a dark shape came sweeping down the stairs like an ill wind. Yet, at the same time, it inexplicably appeared to hang motionless. It seemed composed of swirling black shapes and flowing shadows, creating an inky eddy of obscurity. The dizzying shape of it, the entwining currents of darkness, implied movement that it didn’t have.

Nicci blinked, and it was gone.

She urgently renewed her effort to move, but she felt as if she was suspended in warm wax. She could breathe to a small extent, and make headway, but only in the most impossibly slow fashion. Every inch took monumental effort and seemed to take an eternity. The world had become impossibly thick as everything slowed toward a halt.

In the passageway, just behind the others in the hall at the bottom of the stairs, the shape appeared again, suspended in midair above the stone floor. It looked like a woman in a flowing black dress floating underwater.

Even in the midst of growing terror, Nicci found the exotic sight strangely fascinating. The others, with the intruder already past them, were in mid-stride ascending the stairs, as still as if caught in a painting.

The woman’s wiry black hair lifted lazily out all around her bloodless face. The loose fabric of the black dress swirled as if in whirls of water. Within the slow turbulence of black cloth and hair, the woman herself seemed nearly unmoving.

It looked like nothing so much as if she were floating under murky water.

Then the figure was gone again.

No, not underwater, Nicci realized.

In the sliph.

That’s how Nicci felt, too. It was that kind of strange, otherworldly, suspended sensation of drifting. It was impossibly slow and at the same time blindingly fast.

The figure suddenly appeared again, closer this time.

Nicci tried to call out, but she couldn’t. She tried to lift her arms to cast a web, but she drifted too slowly. She thought it might take an entire day just to lift her arm.

Sparkling shards of light glimmered and flashed in the air between Nicci and the others. Magic, she knew, cast by the wizard. It fell far short of the intruder. Even though the brief spate of power sputtered out without having any effect, Nicci was astounded that Zedd had managed to ignite it at all. She had tried much the same thing without any result.

Dark trailers of cloth drifted, fluidly flapping through the hallway. Snaking shapes and shadows curled around as they moved ever so slow. The figure wasn’t walking, or running. It glided, floated, flowed, almost unmoving within the swirling cloth of the dress.

Then it was gone again.

In a blink, it reappeared, much closer yet. The ghostlike skin stretched tight over a bony face looking as if it had never been touched by sunlight. Snarls of weightless black hair rose up with wisps of the flowing black dress.

It was as disorienting a sight as Nicci had ever seen. She felt as if she were drowning. Panic welled up in her at the feeling of not being able to breathe fast enough, of trying to get the air she needed. Her burning lungs were unable to work any faster than the rest of her.

When Nicci focused her gaze, the figure of the woman was gone. It occurred to her that her eyes, too, were too slow. The hallway was empty again. It seemed that her focus could not keep up with the movement.

Nicci thought that maybe she was having some kind of hallucination brought on by the spells she had cast, by the power of Orden she had tapped into. She wondered if it could be some kind of aftereffect of the spells. Maybe it was Orden itself come to claim her for tampering with such forbidden powers.

That had to be it—something to do with all the dangerous things she had conjured.

The woman appeared again, as if floating up through the murky deep, emerging suddenly into view out of the dark abyss.

This time Nicci could clearly see the woman’s austere, angular features.

Blanched blue eyes fixed on Nicci as if there was nothing else in her world. That scrutiny touched Nicci’s very soul with icy dread. The woman’s eyes were so pale that they seemed as if they had to be sightless, but Nicci knew that this woman could see just fine, not only in the light, but also in the blackest cave, or under a rock where the light of day never touched her.

The woman smiled as wicked a grin as Nicci had ever seen. It was the smile of someone who had no fear but enjoyed causing it, a woman who knew she had everything under her mastery. It was a smile that sent a slow shiver through Nicci.

And then the woman was gone.

In the distance more of Zedd’s magic sparked and sputtered briefly before it died out.

Nicci struggled to move, but the world was too thick, the way it sometimes felt in those terrible dreams she had, dreams where she struggled to move but simply couldn’t despite how hard she tried. It was the dream where she was trying to run from Jagang. He was always close, coming for her, reaching for her. He was like death itself, intent on the most unimaginable cruelty, as he came toward her. She always wanted desperately to run in those dreams but, despite extraordinary effort, her legs wouldn’t move nearly fast enough.

Those dreams always put her in a state of trembling panic. It was a dream that made death so real she could taste its terror.

She’d had that dream one time in camp. Richard had been there. He woke her, asking what was wrong. She gasped back tears as she told him. He cupped her face and told her that it was only a dream and she was all right. She would have given anything to have had him hold her in his arms and tell her that she was safe, but he didn’t. Still, his hand on her face, covered with both of hers, and his gentle words, his empathy, had been a comfort that calmed her terror.

This, though, was no dream.

Nicci tried to gasp a breath, to call out to Zedd, but could do neither. She tried to call her Han, her gift, but couldn’t seem to connect to it. It was as if her gift was impossibly fast and she was impossibly slow. The two wouldn’t mesh.

The woman, her flesh the pallid color of the freshly dead, her hair and dress as black as the underworld, was suddenly right there, right beside Nicci.

The woman’s arm floated out, reaching through the swirling black cloth. Parched flesh stretched tightly over her knuckles served to emphasize the skeleton beneath. Her bony fingers brushed along the underside of Nicci’s jaw. It was a haughty touch, an arrogant act of triumph.

At the touch, the vibration in Nicci’s chest felt as if it might tear her apart.

The woman laughed a hollow, slow, burbling underwater laugh that echoed painfully through the stone halls of the Keep.

Nicci knew without doubt what the woman wanted, what she had come for. Nicci tried desperately to ignite her power, to grab the woman, lunge, to do anything to stop her, but she could do nothing. Her power seemed impossibly distant, crackling so far away that it would take forever to reach it.

As the finger brushed along the length of Nicci’s jaw, the woman was gone again, vanishing gently back into the dark depths.

The next time she appeared, she was back at the brass-clad doors leading open to the room with the box. The woman drifted through the doorway, her feet never touching the ground, her dress washing lightly around her.

Again she vanished out of Nicci’s focus.

The next time she appeared, she was between the room and Nicci.

She had the box of Orden under an arm.

As that terrible laughter echoed through Nicci’s mind, the world melted into blackness.