Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Chapter 16

Shota turned a hot look on Richard. “Jebra has shown you what will happen at the hands of these soldiers if you don’t stop them. Do you think those men entertain any rational notions of the meaning of their lives? Or that they might join in a revolt against the Order if given a chance? Hardly.

“I’m here to show you what has already happened to many so that you will understand what is is going to happen to everyone else if you don’t do something to stop it.

“A precise understanding of how the soldiers of the Order came to be, the choices they have made in their lives that brought them rampaging into the lives of innocent people, and the reasons behind those choices, are beyond being our concern. They are what they are. They are destroyers, killers. They are here. That is all that matters, now. They must be stopped. If they are dead, they will cease to be a threat. It’s as simple as that.”

Richard wondered how in the world she expected him to accomplish such a “simple” thing. She might as well be asking him to pull the moon down out of the sky and use it to crush the Imperial Order army.

As if reading his mind, Nicci spoke up again. “We may all agree with you, with everything you have come here to say—and in fact we didn’t need you to tell us what we already know, as if you think us children and only you are wise. But you don’t understand what you’re asking. The army that Jebra saw, the army that marched up into Galea and so easily crushed their defenses and killed so many people, is a minor and rather insignificant unit of the Imperial Order.”

“You can’t be serious,” Jebra said.

Nicci finally withdrew her glare from Shota and looked at Jebra. “Did you see any gifted?”

“Gifted? Why, no, I guess not,” she said after a moment’s thought.

“That’s because they didn’t warrant having their own gifted to command,” Nicci said. “If they had gifted, Shota would not have been able to so easily get in there and then take you right out of the place. But they had no gifted. They’re a relatively minor force and as such they’re considered expendable.

“That’s why the supplies took so long to reach them. All supplies first went north to Jagang’s main force. Once they had what they needed they then allowed supplies to go to other units, like the one up in Galea. They are only one of Jagang’s expeditionary forces.”

“But you don’t understand.” Jebra stood. “They were a huge army. I was there. I saw them with my own eyes.” She dry-washed her hands as she glanced around at everyone in the room. “I was there, working for them month after month. I saw how massive their numbers were. How could I not grasp the extent of their forces? I’ve told you about all they accomplished.”

Unimpressed, Nicci shook her head. “They were nothing.”

Jebra licked her lips, distress settling into her expression. “Perhaps I have not done an adequate job of describing it, of making clear just how many soldiers of the Order invaded Galea. I’m sorry that I’ve failed in making you understand how easily they crushed all those determined defenders.”

“You did a very good job of reporting accurately what you saw,” Nicci said in a gentler tone as she squeezed the woman’s shoulder in sympathetic reassurance. “But you only saw a part of the whole picture. The part you saw, frightening as it surely was, was insignificant compared to the rest of it. What you saw could not begin to prepare you for seeing the main force led by Emperor Jagang. I’ve spent a great deal of time in Jagang’s main encampments; I know what I’m talking about. Compared to their main force, the one you saw does not qualify as imposing.”

“She’s right,” Zedd said in a grim voice. “I hate to admit it, but she’s right. Jagang’s main army is vastly more powerful than the one that invaded Galea. I fought to slow their advance up through the Midlands as they steadily drove us back toward Aydindril, so I ought to know. Seeing them come is like watching the approach of uncountable minions of the underworld come to swallow the living.”

He looked stoic in his simple robes, standing at the top of the five steps, watching, listening to what others had to say. Richard knew, though, that his grandfather was anything but indifferent. Zedd’s way was often to listen to what others had to say before he had his say. In this instance there was no need for him to correct anything that he’d heard.

“If the Order troops in Galea have no gifted,” Jebra said, “then perhaps if some of those with the gift were to go there you could eliminate them. Perhaps you could save those poor people who are still alive, who have endured so much. It is not too late to at least save some of them.”

Richard thought that what she was really asking, but feared to speak aloud, was if this was only a minor force with no gifted among them, then why hadn’t some of those present done something to stop the slaughter she’d witnessed. Before Richard had ever left his woods of Hartland, he might very well have harbored the same vague sense of resentment and anger toward those who had not done anything to save them. Now he felt the torment of knowing how much more there was to it.

Nicci shook her head, dismissing the idea. “It’s not so feasible as it might seem. The gifted might be able to take out a large number of the enemy and for a time create havoc, but even this expeditionary force has sufficient numbers to withstand any attack by the gifted. Zedd, for example, could use wizard’s fire to mow down ranks of soldiers, but as he paused to conjure more the enemy would be sending wave upon wave of men at him. They might lose a lot of men, but they are not deterred by staggering casualties. They would keep coming. They would throw rank after rank of men into the conflagration. Despite how many would die, they would soon enough overwhelm even one as talented as the First Wizard. And then where would we be?

“Even something as simple as a band of archers could take down a gifted person.” She glanced at Richard. “All it takes is one arrow finding its mark, and a gifted person will die the same as any other.”

Zedd spread his hands in a gesture of frustration. “I’m afraid that Nicci is right. In the end, the Order would be in the same place with the same result, even if with fewer men. We, on the other hand, would be without those with the gift that we sent against them. They can replenish their troops with nearly endless reinforcements, but there will be no legions of gifted coming to our aid. As callous as it may seem, our only chance lies not with throwing our lives away in a futile battle that we know has no chance of success, but with being able to come up with something that has a real chance to work.”

Richard wished that he believed that there was some solution, some plan, that had a real chance to work. He didn’t think, though, that there was any chance that they could do anything other than prolong the end.

Jebra nodded, her glimmer of hope sparking out. The deep creases that lent a sagging look to her face along with the lasting web of wrinkles at the corners of her blue eyes made her look older than Richard suspected she really was. Her shoulders were slightly rounded, and her hands rough and callused from hard labor. Even though the men of the Order had not killed her, they had sapped the life out of her, leaving her forever scarred by what she had been through and what she’d been forced to witness. How many others were there, like her, alive but forever withered under the brutality of the occupying forces, hollow shells of their former selves, alive on the outside but lifeless inside?

Richard felt dizzy. He could hardly believe that Shota would bring Jebra all this way to convince him of how terrible the Order really was. He already knew the truth of their brutality, of the nature of their threat. He’d lived for nearly a year in the Old World under the repression of the Order. He had been there at the start of the revolt in Altur’Rang.

Jebra’s firsthand testimony, if anything, was only helping to convince him of what he already knew—that they didn’t stand a chance against Jagang and the Imperial Order forces. The entire D’Haran Empire would probably have been able to stop the unit that had descended upon Galea, but that was nothing compared with the main army of the Imperial Order.

Back when he’d first met Kahlan he’d fought hard to stop the threat to everyone brought by Darken Rahl. As difficult as it had been, Richard had been able to end that threat by eliminating Darken Rahl. He knew, though, that this threat was different. As much as he hated Jagang, Richard knew that he could not think of this in the same terms as the last battle. Even if he could somehow kill Jagang, that would not stop the menace of the Imperial Order. Their cause was monolithic, ideological, not driven by the ambitions of one individual. That was what made it all seem so hopeless.

Shota’s vision—what she foresaw in the flow of time as the world’s hopeless future if they failed to do something to stop the Imperial Order—certainly didn’t seem to Richard to have required any great talent or special sight. He didn’t need to be a prophet to see how dire a threat the Order was. If not stopped, they would rule the world. Jebra, in that sense, had told him nothing new, nothing that he didn’t already know.

Richard recognized all too well that, the way things stood, when the forces of the D’Haran Empire finally met Jagang’s army in the final battle, those brave men, who were all that stood in the Order’s way, were all going to die. After that, there would be no opposition to the Imperial Order. They would rampage unchecked and in the end they would rule the world.

Shota was far from stupid, so she obviously knew all that, and had to know that he would know it as well.

So, he wondered, why was she really there?

Despite his dark mood over Jebra’s frightening account of what she had seen, Richard had to think that Shota very likely had some other reason for her visit.

Still, Jebra’s story had been difficult to listen to without it stirring not only his anguish, but his anger. Richard turned away and stared into the stilled water of the fountain. He felt the weight of gloom settling around his shoulders. What could he do about any of it? It felt as if this and all the other troubles pressing in around them were pushing Kahlan away from his thoughts, away from him.

At times she hardly even seemed real to him. He hated it whenever he had such a thought. Sometimes, when he remembered her wit, or the way she smiled so easily when she rested her wrists on his shoulders and locked her fingers together behind his neck and gazed at him, or her beautiful green eyes, or her soft laugh, or her touch, or the tight smile she gave no one but him, she seemed more like a phantom who existed solely in his imagination.

The very thought of Kahlan not being real sent a spike of tingling dread surging up through his insides. He had lived with that numbing fear for a long, dark period. It had been terrifying to be alone in his belief that she existed, terrifying to doubt his own sanity, until he had at last found the truth of the Chainfire spell and convinced the others that she was indeed real. Now, at least, he had their help.

Richard mentally shook himself. Kahlan was no phantom. He had to find a way to get her out of the clutches of Sister Ulicia and the other two Sisters of the Dark. It didn’t help, though, that the thought of Kahlan being a captive of such ruthless women caused him such anguish that he sometimes couldn’t bear to think about it, to think of what terrible things they might do to the woman who was his world, the woman he loved more than life itself, and yet he could not make his mind focus on anything else.

Despite what Shota believed he should do, Richard had to remember that, besides Kahlan being lost in the vortex of the Chainfire spell, there were other ominous dangers, like the boxes of Orden being in play, and the damage left behind by the chimes. He couldn’t ignore everything else just because the witch woman came marching in to tell him what she thought he should do. It could even be that Shota’s true goal was some complex scheme, some hidden agenda, involving this other witch woman, Six. There was no telling what Shota was really up to.

Still, Richard had come to have great respect for her, as had Kahlan, even if he didn’t entirely trust her. While Shota often seemed to be an instigator of trouble it was not necessarily because she was deliberately trying to cause him grief; sometimes her intent was to help him and at other times she was simply the messenger of truth. And while she was always right in the things she revealed to him, those things almost always turned out to be true in ways Shota hadn’t predicted—or at least in ways she hadn’t revealed. As Zedd often said, a witch woman never told you something you wanted to know without also telling you something you didn’t want to know.

The first time he met her, Shota had said that Kahlan would touch him with her power and so he should kill her to prevent that from happening. As it turned out, Kahlan did use her Confessor’s touch on him, but that was how he had been able to trick Darken Rahl and defeat him. Shota had been right, but it had happened in a manner that turned out to be vastly different from the way she’d presented it. Even though she had been right, strictly speaking, if he had followed her advice Darken Rahl would have survived to unleash the power of Orden and rule them all, or the ones left alive.

In the back of his mind lurked the prediction Shota had made that if Richard married Kahlan she would bear a child that would be a monster. He and Kahlan had been wed. Surely that prediction would not turn out the way Shota had presented it either. Surely Kahlan would not give birth to a monster.

It was Zedd who finally spoke, bringing Richard out of his private thoughts. “What ever happened to Queen Cyrilla?”

The room was dead still for a time before Jebra answered. “It was as it had been in my vision. She was handed over to the lowest of the soldiers to use as they wished. They were eager to get at their prize. It went very badly for her. Her worst fears came to pass.”

Zedd cocked his head, apparently believing that there was more to the story. “So that was the last you saw of her?”

Jebra folded her hands before herself. “Not exactly. One day, as I was rushing to deliver a platter of freshly roasted beef, I came upon a raucous group of men playing a game that the Imperial Order troops were very fond of watching. There were two teams with the gathered men shouting and yelling them on. The men were all betting on which team would win. I don’t know what the game was—”

“Ja’La,” Nicci said. When Jebra turned to look at her, Nicci said, “The game is called Ja’La. In theory it’s a game of athletic ability, skill, and strategy; in practice, under the rules the Order plays it by, Ja’La is all of that and in addition it’s quite brutal. Ja’La is Jagang’s favorite sport. He has a team of his own. I remember once when they lost a game. The whole team was put to death. The emperor soon had a new team of the most skilled, toughest, most physically imposing players to be found. They did not lose. The full name of the game is Ja’La dh Jin. In Emperor Jagang’s native tongue it means ‘the game of life.’ ”

Jebra frowned in recollection. “Yes, I guess I do recall hearing it called Ja’La. I always saw it played with a heavy ball. A ball heavy enough to on occasion break the bones of the players.”

“The ball is called a broc,” Richard said without turning.

Nicci glanced over at him. “That’s right.”

“Well,” Jebra said, resuming her story, “on this particular day, as I was taking the platter to the commanders, I had to go to the place where the game was being played. There were thousands of troops gathered to watch. I was directed to a small stand for the commanders and had to make my way through the cheering throngs. It was a terrifying journey. The men saw the iron ring of a slave in my lip so none dared to pull me away to their tents, but that didn’t stop their hands on me.” Jebra’s gaze sought the floor. “It was something that I had to endure often enough.”

She finally looked up. “When I reached the commanders, down close to the playing field, I saw that the men starting up a new game weren’t using the ball that they usually used.” She cleared her throat. “They were using Queen Cyrilla’s head for the ball.”

Jebra sought to fill the uncomfortable silence. “Anyway, life in Galea had been changed forever. What was once a center of commerce is now little more than a vast army camp from where continuing campaigns against some of the free areas of the New World are launched. The farms out in the country, run by forced labor, don’t produce as they once did. Crops fail or are poor. The needs of the vast armed forces in Galea are huge. Food is always scarce but the supplies that regularly come up from the Old World keep the soldiers fed well enough to carry on.

“I worked day and night as a slave to the needs of the Imperial Order commanders. I never again had any visions after the one about Queen Cyrilla. It seemed odd to me to be without my visions. I’d had them my whole life, but after that terrible vision about Queen Cyrilla a couple of years back, no more came. My gift as a Seer seems to have vanished. My vision has gone dark.”

By the glance from Nicci, Richard knew that she suspected what he was thinking.

“Eventually,” Jebra said, “I was one day snatched away from the middle of all those troops. It was Shota who somehow got me out. I’m not entirely sure how it happened. I just recall that she was there with me. I started to ask something but she told me to keep my mouth shut and to start walking. I remember turning back once to look and there was the army spread out across the valley and up into the hills, but they were a great distance behind us. I don’t know how it had happened, really, that we were so far away.” She frowned into her dim memories. “We were just walking. And here I am. I’m afraid, though, that because my visions have gone dark I can no longer be of any help to you.”

Richard thought she should know the truth, so he told her. “Your vision probably went dark because several years back the chimes were in this world for a time. They were banished back to the underworld, but the damage was done. I think that the presence of the chimes in the world of life began the disintegration of magic. It must be that it disrupted your ability. Your gifted vision is probably lost, or, even if it returns in part or for a time, it will eventually be completely extinguished.”

Jebra looked dazed by the news. “My whole life I have frequently wished that I had never been born with the vision of a Seer. In many ways it made me an outcast. I often wept at night, wishing to be free of my visions, wishing they would leave me be.

“But now that you tell me that my wish has been granted, I don’t think that I ever really meant it.”

“That’s the problem with wishes,” Zedd said as he sighed. “They tend to be things that—”

“The chimes?” Shota interrupted. By her tone of voice as well as her frown, Richard knew that she wasn’t interested in hearing about wishes. “If such a thing were true, then why has there been no other evidence of it?”

“There has been,” Richard said with a shrug. “Creatures of magic, such as the dragons, have not been seen in the last couple of years.”

“Dragons?” Shota coiled a long wavy lock of hair around a finger as she appraised him silently for a moment. “Richard, people can go for a lifetime and never catch a glimpse of a dragon.”

“And what of Jebra’s visions going dark? After the chimes were in this world her visions ceased. Like other things of magic, her unique ability is flickering out. I’m sure that we aren’t even aware of most of them.”

“I would be aware of them.”

“Not necessarily.” Richard raked his hair back off his forehead. “The problem is, Chainfire—which I first heard about from you—is a spell that was ignited by four Sisters of the Dark to make everyone forget Kahlan. That spell is contaminated by the chimes, so besides Kahlan, people are forgetting other things as well, such as dragons.”

Shota looked anything but convinced. “I would still be aware of such things because of the way they flow forward in time.”

“And what about this other witch woman, Six? I thought that you said that she was masking your ability to see the flow of time.”

Shota ignored his question and pulled the finger free of the skein of auburn hair. As she folded her arms. Her almond-shaped eyes remained fixed on him.

“If the shadow of the Order darkens mankind, none of it will matter, now, will it? They will put an end to all magic, as well as all hope.”

Richard didn’t answer. Instead he turned to the still waters, to his brooding thoughts.

Shota tilted her head, gesturing toward the steps as she spoke quietly to Jebra. “Go up there and see Zedd. I need to talk to Richard.”