Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Chapter 35

After lying on the ancient, cold stone floor in the depths of a lonely forest for what seemed like an eternity, staring down into the black abyss, not knowing what else to do, Richard finally sat back up. He had called to the sliph until he was nearly hoarse, but there was no answer. The sliph was gone.

Richard put his elbows on his knees. As his head sank, he clasped his hands behind his neck. He felt like he had lost his way and didn’t know what to do next. How many times, since he’d left his Hartland woods, had he felt just this way, had he thought that he was at the end of his rope? He’d always found a way. He didn’t know if, this time, he could.

As he was growing up, Richard had never known that he had been born with the gift. He’d never known anything at all about magic. Once he discovered that he’d been born with the gift, he didn’t want it. He wanted only to be rid of it, as if it was a sickness that had been passed down to him. He just wanted to be himself. But he had finally come to accept the value of his abilities and understand that they were part of who he was. They had on many occasions, after all, helped him save not only his own life, but Kahlan’s and many others along the way. His gift was a part of him, something that couldn’t be separated from him any more than his heart or lungs could be taken away.

Now, though, he’d somehow lost the gift.

At first, when the sliph had told him that he no longer had the magic required to travel, he’d had a hard time believing that such a thing was possible, that his gift could really be gone. He’d thought it must be a magical malfunction, an anomaly of some sort. Back when he’d wanted to be rid of it, he had inquired as to how he could shed his gift and had learned that such a thing simply wasn’t possible.

While it didn’t seem conceivable to him, Richard knew that it was true. He knew because along with his gift, he had lost his ability to remember The Book of Counted Shadows. He might as well have never memorized it, because, along with his gift, that memory was suddenly lost.

The Book of Counted Shadows had been a book of magic. The gift was required to be able to read it, and required to remember even so much as a single word of the text. Without the gift, Richard couldn’t read books of magic or, more accurately, recall the words long enough to know that there had been anything there to read. Without the gift, books of magic appeared blank. Now his memory of The Book of Counted Shadows had gone dark.

And now he had failed a test he hadn’t even known he was taking. He wasn’t even at all clear as to what the test had been. Somehow, though, he had failed it.

He felt as if he had failed Kahlan.

He couldn’t imagine how those words could have been a test from Baraccus. How could they possibly test him? Test him at what? He didn’t know what test the sliph could be talking about, so he had no way to figure out how he had failed it.

He wished he had Zedd to help him figure it out, or Nicci, or Nathan—someone, anyone. He stopped and asked himself how many times that night he had wished for answers, for help, for salvation to come save him. None of the wishes had been answered. Wishes, he knew, never were.

He reminded himself that he was wasting valuable time feeling sorry for himself. He had to think, not sit around hoping that someone else would come along and think for him.

He lay back on the stone and stared up at the canopy of limbs and leaves above and, beyond them, the stars. He smiled, mocking himself, thinking that maybe a falling star would answer his wishes. He pushed aside the thoughts of wishes and put his mind to the task at hand.

He’d run the whole thing through his mind a hundred times and it still made no sense. Baraccus said, through the message left with the sliph, that he didn’t have the answers that would save Richard. Baraccus believed, though, that Richard had within him what was needed to succeed. Baraccus told Richard to believe in himself, and wanted him to know that he believed in Richard, although he hadn’t used Richard’s name, specifically.

The message, Richard reasoned, had been meant for the one who would be born with the Subtractive side of the gift that Baraccus had seen to it was released from the Temple of the Winds, but Baraccus didn’t know that person’s name, didn’t know, specifically, who that person would be. At least, Richard didn’t think he did. It made more sense that Baraccus simply spoke directly, personally, without using names. The message had been clear enough without having to use the name of the person who would eventually hear it. That gave it the sound of a direct address.

How could that be a test? How could Richard fail it?

He sighed in frustration as he pulled a long stalk of grass growing from one of the missing mortar joints off to the side. As he considered the issue, he flattened the soft base of the stalk of grass with his front teeth.

Could it be that the sliph somehow had been given some power by Baraccus, like the power he’d given her to act in an emergency, so that she could see whether or not Richard had what it took to succeed? Could it be that this insight given the sliph told her that Richard fell short in some way?

The source. As he stared up at the stars, Richard mulled that over in his mind. He’d told the sliph that he had heard those words before from Shota and then, all of a sudden, the sliph had been done with him.

Could the sliph know Shota? Maybe, in Baraccus’s view, Richard should not be associating with a witch woman. Maybe that was the reason Richard had failed—because he hadn’t been doing things on his own, by himself. He made a face. He had difficulty imagining that Baraccus wouldn’t want him to work with people, to find answers, to solve problems.

He ran over the words in his mind, as best as he could recall them, anyway.

I am sorry. I don’t know the answers that would save you. If I did, please believe that I would give them eagerly. But I know the good in you. I believe in you. I do know that you have within you what you must to succeed. There will be times when you doubt yourself. Do not give up. Remember then that I believe in you, that I know you can accomplish what you must. You are a rare person. Believe in yourself.

Know that I believe you are the one who can do it.

That was what the sliph had said was the message from Baraccus. Richard recalled, though, that those had been the same words Shota had told him not very long ago, the last time he had seen her, just before she left.

Richard didn’t really believe in coincidence. In this case, he certainly didn’t. Shota could not have said by chance the same words that Baraccus had told the sliph to say. The message was too long and too detailed, with characteristics that were far too idiosyncratic.

If that was the case, that it had not been coincidence, and Richard was sure it wasn’t, then why would Shota have used the exact same words that Baraccus had? Was it a message of some kind? Was she trying to tell him something? Warn him about something?

If the witch woman had wanted to help him, then why didn’t she warn him about the test, and tell him? If she could not tell him the answer, she could at least have told him what the test would be. Zedd had often said, though, that a witch woman never told you what you wanted to know without telling you something you didn’t. Could that be it? He doubted it, since she had told him a great many terrible things that day—things, it turned out, that had helped him finally grasp what he had to do with the army, rather than allowing them to fight Jagang in a final battle.

The thing that was itching at him, though, was that there were phrases in the message that were unique: answers that would save you; give them eagerly; know the good in you; you have within you what you must to succeed; know that I believe you are the one. Those were all slightly uncommon patterns in the way people spoke. They were not drastically different, but they were a bit eccentric, almost childlike, and yet rather formal in a simplistic way. Richard sighed. He couldn’t seem to put his finger on it, but there was something distinctly unconventional in the use of language within that message.

With an icy shock of realization, he remembered.

He remembered why those words had sounded unsettlingly familiar when Shota had said them. It was because he had heard those exact words before.

Those were the exact words that had been spoken by the night wisp the evening of the first day Richard had met Kahlan.

They had been in the wayward pine. Kahlan asked if he was afraid of magic and then, after approving of his answer, she brought out a little striped bottle that held the wisp. The night wisp, Shar, had guided Kahlan across the boundary, but by then it was dying. The wisp was unable to live away from its home place and those of its kind. It didn’t have enough strength to cross the boundary again.

Richard remembered Kahlan saying, “Shar has sacrificed her life to help me because if Darken Rahl succeeds, all her kind, among others, will perish.”

The wisp had been the one who told Richard for the first time that Darken Rahl was after him. Shar had warned that if Richard ran he would be caught and killed. Richard had thanked the wisp for helping Kahlan. He told Shar that his life had been made longer because she had saved him from doing something foolish that day. He told Shar that his life was better for knowing her, and thanked the wisp for helping bring her safely through the boundary.

Shar had then told him that she believed in him, and the rest of it, exactly as Baraccus had related through the sliph. At the time he had thought that the slightly odd speech characteristics were simply idiosyncratic of wisps—and perhaps they really were, but Baraccus had used those exact words for a reason.

Shota had used the same words, too—either deliberately or in innocent unawareness of their source—no doubt in order to help him by reminding him of those words from Shar. She probably didn’t realize the real reason for saying those exact words, but through her ability they were intended to make him think. To make him remember. It was probably only because of the terrible vision Richard had had of Kahlan witnessing his execution that he hadn’t connected Shota’s words with the same words he’d heard years before from the night wisp. That vision had simply overpowered everything else.

Richard listened to the night sounds off in the woods, of bugs chirping, the leaves rustling in the wind, and a distant mockingbird, as another memory began seeping back into his consciousness.

Shar, the wisp, had used his name without being introduced. He supposed that the wisp could simply have overheard it while in the little bottle in the pouch at Kahlan’s belt.

Or she might have already known his name.

Richard’s eyes were opened as wide as they would go as he recalled something else. He had asked the wisp why Darken Rahl was trying to kill him, if it was because he helped Kahlan or if there was another reason.

Shar had come close and asked, “Other reason? Secrets?”

Secrets.

Richard jumped to his feet and cried out aloud with the shock of understanding.

He pressed his wrists to the sides of his head, unable to suppress another shout.

“I understand! Dear spirits, I understand!”

Secrets.

Richard had thought at the time that the wisp knew about the tooth that Richard kept hidden under his shirt, but that wasn’t it at all. It had nothing to do with that tooth. Shar was asking him something entirely different. She was offering him his first chance at recovering the secret book Baraccus had left for him.

But it had been too soon. Richard hadn’t yet been ready.

Richard had failed Baraccus’s test back then, too. Failed it for the first time that night with the wisp. Baraccus, though, probably had no way to know when Richard would be ready. He had to have a way to test him from time to time. Shota had said that just because Baraccus had seen to it that Richard had been born with the ability, that didn’t mean he would do the right things.

Baraccus hadn’t taken his free will—and so, from time to time, Baraccus needed to test the one born with that ability to see if he had learned to use it to accomplish those things along the way that needed to be accomplished. Richard wondered how many other things put in his path had been the doing of Baraccus. At the moment, he had no way to know the answer to that question.

He did know that when the sliph said he failed the test, that was at least the second time he had failed it. The sliph’s test was a reserve test, a repeat test, for after Richard had learned more. After he’d had a chance to know who he really was.

Secrets.

Richard felt as if his head might explode with the power of comprehension. Every emotion he had ever had seemed to collide together, twisting his insides with the excitement and anxiety of it all.

He threw himself down on the stone floor, hands gripping the edge until his knuckles were white.

“Sliph! Come back! I know what Baraccus meant! I understand! Sliph!”

Mere inches away, liquid metal rose up into the cold, silvery moonlight, forming into the flawless features of the sliph. It was an impossibly beautiful vision, reflecting the swaying trees and his own face in flowing distortions of reality.

The sliph slowly smiled. “Do you wish to change your answer, Master?”

Richard wanted to kiss the quicksilver face. “Yes.”

The sliph cocked her head to one side. “What is it you wish to confide in me, Master?”

“A night wisp told me that before. Not just Shota.” Richard gestured with the frustration of trying to get it all out at once before the sliph could say that he had not passed the test. “Shota was second. It was a night wisp who first told me those same words—the words Baraccus used. That’s where I heard it first. That’s what Baraccus wanted me to know—that it’s the night wisps.”

Richard half expected silver arms to slip around his neck and draw him closer. “Anything else, Master?” the sliph whispered intimately.

“Yes. With that message, Baraccus wanted me to realize that what he left—left for me alone—is hidden with the night wisps.”

The sliph came closer yet, still showing the gentle curve of a knowing smile. Her gaze drank him in. For the first time ever, her lips moved with her words, her voice coming in the breathy whisper of surrender. “You have passed the test, Master. I am pleased.”

“Now, there’s a first,” Richard said.

The sliph laughed, a sound as clear and pleasant as the moonlight.

“Do you know the place of the wisps, Master?”

Richard shook his head. “No, but Kahlan told me a little about them, about their homeplace. Kahlan is my wife. She has traveled in you before and was pleased, but you don’t remember her because she was captured by some very bad people who released a spell to make everyone forget her—something a little like what was done to you. I’m trying to find her before those same bad people can hurt everyone.

“That’s what this is all about. That’s why Baraccus left something for me—something to help me in my efforts.”

“I see. I am happy for you, Master.”

“Anyway, Kahlan told me about the place where the night wisps live. She said that it’s beautiful.”

“So Baraccus told me, too.”

“Kahlan said that you can’t see the wisps in the daytime, only at night. I guess that’s why they’re called night wisps.

“Kahlan said they’re like stars, like stars fallen from the sky. She said that it’s like seeing stars among the grass.”

The sliph nodded at his excitement. “I am happy that you are pleased, Master.”

“Can you go there? To the place of the night wisps—this place of stars fallen to the ground?”

“Even if you could travel, I’m afraid not,” the sliph said. “Baraccus directed that this emergency portal be built here for a reason. He did not want me to be able to go to the home place of the night wisps because he did not want anyone to know that he went there. He did not want it to become a destination, either, but rather to remain a remote and secret place of stars fallen to the ground.

“Baraccus told me that this portal is not a great distance from the wisps, but it is the closest I can get to them. He did not want me to give any hint that this place existed, or to ever divulge anything involving my future masters. It was his way of protecting you. That is why I could not tell your friends where you were. That secrecy and security was also meant to be part of what would bring forth the right words, from the right person. That protection not only protected you, but denying you the help of your friends prompted you into thinking for yourself. Thinking is what Baraccus said would turn the key for you.”

Richard’s head spun with everything he was learning. He leaned closer, seeking to confirm what he already knew. “You brought Baraccus’s wife, Magda, here, didn’t you? And she was carrying something with her.”

“Yes. This is the place I brought Magda after the last time I saw master Baraccus. She repaired the stone, here, before going back. That was the last time I saw her. No one has been through to this place ever since then.

“You have passed the test, Master. This is the way to the secret library Baraccus left for you.”