Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Chapter 58

Nicci marched through the vast hall of the People’s Palace trailing Cara, Nathan, and a gaggle of guards. Every time someone called Nathan “Lord Rahl,” it set her nerves on edge. She knew it was necessary, but in her heart the only Lord Rahl was Richard.

She would have given just about anything to see his gray eyes again. Being in the palace made it seem she could almost feel his presence all around her. It was the spell the palace was built around, she supposed. The palace was built in the form of a spell for the Lord Rahl. Richard was the Lord Rahl. At least in her mind.

To be fair, she knew there were others—Cara, for one—who felt the same. When she was alone with Cara, which was often, the two of them seemed to share understanding without words being needed. Both shared the same anguish. Both of them wanted Richard back.

Cara stepped forward, leading them through a network of small service hallways to an iron stairway up a dark well. Reaching the top, she threw open the door. They were greeted with cold light as they stepped out onto the observation deck. Being right out at the edge of the outer wall, at the edge of the plateau, felt like standing on the edge of the world.

Down below, spread like a black taint almost to the distant horizon, was the army of the Imperial Order.

“See what I mean?” Nathan said as he stepped up beside her, pointing out the construction in the distance. It was hard to see at first, but it quickly began to make sense.

“You’re right,” she said. “It does look like a ramp. Do you think they can actually build a ramp all the way up here?”

Nathan gazed out at the site, studying it for a moment. “I don’t know, but I would have to say that if Jagang is going to all the trouble of doing such a thing, it can only be because he has reason to believe that he can accomplish it.”

“If they make it up here with a ramp that broad,” Cara said, “we’re in trouble.”

“More like ‘dead,’ ” Nathan said.

Nicci studied what the men of the Order were doing, and the distance to the site of the work. “Nathan, you’re a Rahl. This place amplifies your power. You ought to be able to send some wizard’s fire down there and blow that thing apart.”

“My thought, too,” he said. “I suspect that they have Sisters down there with shields to prevent anyone up here from doing just that. I’ve not probed for such defenses, and I’ve not tried anything yet. I want to wait until they’ve been at it for quite a while longer—to make them feel complacent. Then, when they have some more done, and they’re closer, and when I finally do hit them, I’ll have a better chance of doing some real damage. If I’m able to destroy it now, they won’t have lost much. Better to wait until they’ve already put a great deal more time and work into it.”

Nicci frowned up at the tall prophet. “Nathan, you are a very devious man.”

He smiled a Rahl smile. “I prefer to think of myself as ingenious.”

Nicci went back to surveying the camp out beyond the site of the construction. It was just far enough away to provide their gifted with plenty of time to react to an attack. Nicci had spent enough time with Jagang’s army to know a great deal about the way they thought. She knew the layers of defenses that Jagang’s officers and gifted would place around the army. And some of those gifted were Sisters of the Dark.

“Look at that,” she said, pointing. “It looks like a supply train is just arriving.”

Nathan nodded. “Winter will be here shortly. The army looks like they’re not going anywhere, so they will need a lot of supplies to keep all those men alive over the winter.”

Nicci considered what could be done, finally deciding that, from where they stood, very little. “Well, Richard sent the army south to the Old World to attack their supply trains, among other things. Let’s hope they’re effective and can accomplish the task. If all those men starve to death that would solve our problem. In the meantime, I’ll devote some thought to what we might be able to do to help them die.”

She turned away from the depressing view of the encampment, and the supply train bringing all those men what they needed to stay and lay siege to the palace.

“Come on,” she said to Nathan. “I need to get back, but why don’t you show me before I leave.”

Nathan took them down through the palace by the smaller, staff areas, rather than the vast halls. It was a quick descent through the stone interior of the palace, taking them ever lower into the dark, inner regions beneath the palace that were what most people never saw. There were elegant if simple stone halls even in these unseen places. Without elaborate decoration, they were made of polished stone in places, and rich woods in others. These were the private corridors used by the Lord Rahl and his staff.

Nicci had come to the People’s Palace to pay a visit to the Garden of Life. After that, she had checked to see how Berdine was doing in her search for information, and how Nathan was getting on. They had wanted to tell her details of their difficulties; she hadn’t really wanted to take the time but she made herself listen patiently.

After having again seen the place where the boxes of Orden had been, she had been too distracted to be able to really focus on what they were telling her. This time she saw the deserted Garden of Life differently, getting a feel for where Darken Rahl had opened the boxes, for where they had sat. She had studied the position of the room, the amount of light, the angles to various known star charts in addition to how the sun and moon transverse the place, and the area where the spells had been invoked.

Since translating The Book of Life, Nicci viewed the Garden of Life in a different way. She saw it through the context of the magic of Orden and how the room had been used. It had given her a valuable insight into the last place the boxes had been used. Such practical reference had answered some questions she’d had, and confirmed some of the conclusions she’d come to.

At last Nathan reached a set of double doors with guards standing before them. He gestured and the men opened the pair of white doors. Beyond was a wall of white stone that looked as if it had partly melted.

“Have you been in there?” she asked the prophet.

“No,” he admitted. “At my age I try to stay out of tombs as much as I can.”

Nicci stepped over the low ledge at the same time as she ducked through the low opening. “Wait here,” she said to Cara, who had been about to follow her in.

“Are you sure?”

“This involves magic.”

Cara wrinkled her nose as if she had gotten a whiff of sour milk, and waited outside along with the prophet.

Nicci sent a spark of Han into a torch to the side. After all this time it still lit. She saw then that the huge vaulted room was constructed of pink granite. The floor was white marble. On the walls all around were dozens and dozens of gold vases, each set in the wall beneath a torch. Nicci absently counted them. Fifty-seven. It appeared to her to be a number that had meaning. Probably the vases and torches represented the age of the man in the coffin in the center of the room.

The place was troubling, and not just because it was a crypt. She trailed her fingers along the symbols cut into the granite walls just beneath the vases. The words that ran around the entire room and around the golden coffin were High D’Haran. The inscriptions were instructions from a father to a son on the process of going to the underworld and returning. Quite the legacy.

Such spells contained Subtractive Magic. That was what was causing the walls to melt. Containing them by walling the place over with special stone had slowed the process greatly, but had not halted it entirely.

“Well?” Nathan asked, poking his head in through the melted hole. “Any ideas?”

Nicci stepped out, brushing off her hands. “I don’t know. I don’t think there’s any imminent danger, but this involves dark things so there’s a chance I’m wrong. I think it would be best to shield it behind an invocation of threes.”

Nathan nodded in thought. “You want to do it? Lace it with Subtractive?”

“It would be best if you did it. You’re a Rahl. That would be more effective. Even if I used Subtractive, this in here already has both mixed in, and it was created by a Rahl. Such power could breach any invocation I could create in here under the limitations of the protective spell of the palace.”

He considered only briefly. “I will see to it at once.” Nathan cast a look back at the crypt. “Any idea what’s causing this spell to burn through?”

“Off the top of my head I’d say it was activated by one of the boxes of Orden having been opened up in the Garden of Life. I suspect they created a sympathetic reaction of some sort. It’s not yet active enough lor me to tell the purpose of the Subtractive element, but the words inscribed on the coffin and walls indicate that the constituent composition in there was intended to be used to aid in the acquisition of the power of Orden, so they act in a harmonic response after having been in the vicinity of that specific power.”

Nathan nodded in thought. “All right. I’ll do an invocation of threes and keep my eye on it.”

“I have to get back. I will check back later, just to see if you’ve had any word from Richard and to see how the Order is getting along out there.”

“Tell Zedd that I have everything well in hand, and I have the enemy surrounded.”

Nicci smiled. “I’ll tell him.”

On her way through the vast halls of the palace, with Cara at her side, Nicci was lost in thought. She was unsure of what to do next. There were troubling problems descending from every direction. Most felt shadowy and ill defined. There was no one with whom she could really discuss all the things going through her mind. Zedd was a help in some of it, while Cara was good to talk to for other things.

But Richard was the only one who would be able to grasp the ways in which she was beginning to understand fundamental issues. Richard, in fact, was the one to introduce her to the concept of creative magic. She still clearly remembered that talk with him, one night at camp. It was one of the many defining moments with Richard.

There were also things Richard needed to know. There were incidents involving him and the boxes of Orden that were troubling, to say the least. In a way, he had built a fire under ingredients that were not merely dangerous but were beginning to bubble and boil and could possibly combine on their own in the most insidious ways if action wasn’t taken.

There were prophecies involved that, not being a prophet, she didn’t trust herself to understand. There were other prophecies that she was beginning to think she understood all too well and could not avoid taking into consideration.

Primary among those was the prophecy that said, “In the year of the cicadas”—which this was—“when the champion of sacrifice and suffering, under the banner of both mankind and the Light, finally splits his swarm”—which Jagang had done—“thus shall be the sign that prophecy has been awakened and the final and deciding battle is upon us. Be cautioned, for all true forks and their derivatives are tangled in this mantic root. Only one trunk branches from this conjoined primal origin.” This was the time, succeed or fail, all or nothing, the watershed moment, that would forever set the course for the future. “If fuer grissa ost drauka does not lead this final battle, then the world, already standing at the brink of darkness, will fall under that terrible shadow.”

That prophecy, she was beginning to see, was tangled in the boxes of Orden, but she couldn’t quite grasp how. From time to time she felt on the brink of understanding, but she could never quite break through to it. There was something just beneath the surface of that prophecy that she knew was key.

At the same time, she felt that events were cascading, unrestrained, and she had to do something before those events tumbled out of control. With each passing day, she knew that options would continue to close for them. The Sisters of the Dark having put the boxes in play had already cut off their ability to use the power of Orden for its intended purpose: to counteract the ignition of the Chainfire event. With Chainfire contaminated by the chimes, they were rapidly losing the ability to use their gift to correct the damage.

There was no telling how much longer any of them would have sufficient control of their gift necessary to be of any use in overcoming any of the obstacles they faced.

At the same time, The Book of Life had come to have meaning for her that she could never have imagined. She had also studied several very obscure books Zedd had found for her on Ordenic theory. They, too, had added depth to her understanding, but all of that only seemed to open other areas to bigger questions.

Startled, Nicci halted and looked up. “What was that?”

“The bell for devotion,” Cara said, looking a little puzzled at Nicci’s reaction.

Nicci watched people begin to gather before a nearby square with a pool in the center. The pool, with a large, dark rock set off center, was opened to the sky.

“Perhaps we should go to devotion,” Cara said. “It sometimes helps when you’re troubled, and I can tell that you are definitely troubled.”

Nicci frowned at the Mord-Sith, wondering how she knew that something was troubling her. She supposed that it really wasn’t all that hard to tell.

“I don’t have time to go to devotion,” Nicci said. “I have to get back and figure this out.”

Cara didn’t look like she thought that was a good idea. She held a hand out toward the square.

“Thinking about Lord Rahl might help.”

“Thinking about Nathan is not going to do me any good. I don’t care if everyone thinks that Nathan is the Lord Rahl. Richard is Lord Rahl.”

Cara smiled. “I know. That’s what I meant.” She took Nicci by the arm, drawing her toward the pool. “Come on.”

Nicci stared at the woman as she was being dragged along, and then said, “I suppose it couldn’t hurt to stop for a short time to think about Richard.”

Cara nodded, looking somehow very wise at that moment. People respectfully made way for the Mord-Sith as she strode up to a spot near the pond. Nicci saw that there were fish gliding through the dark waters. Before she knew it, she was kneeling with Cara, putting her forehead to the floor.

“Master Rahl guide us,” the crowd began chanting in one voice, “Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

Nicci added her voice to the others, and together they lifted to reverberate through the halls. The words “Master Rahl” and Richard seemed indistinguishable to her. They were one in the same.

Almost against her will, Nicci’s turbulent thoughts quieted as she softly chanted the words along with everyone else.

“Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

She lost herself in the words. The sunlight was warm on her back. The next day was the first day of winter, but inside Lord Rahl’s palace the sun was warm, much like up in the Garden of Life. It seemed odd in that Darken Rahl, and his father, Panis, were the Lord Rahl before, making this place the seat of evil.

She realized, though, that the place was only that—a place. The man was what mattered. The man made the defining difference. The man set the tone that others followed, either rightly or wrongly. In a way, the devotion was the formal statement of that concept.

“Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

Those words reverberated in Nicci’s mind. She missed Richard so much. Even though his heart belonged to someone else, she just missed seeing him, seeing his smile, talking to him. If that was all she could ever have, that was enough to sustain her. Just his friendship, his value in her life, and hers in his.

Just Richard being happy, being alive, being . . . Richard.

Our lives are yours.

Nicci abruptly rose up on her knees.

She understood.

Puzzled, Cara frowned up at her as everyone else chanted. “What’s wrong?”

Our lives are yours.

She knew what she had to do.

Nicci stood in a rush. “Come on. I have to get back to the Keep.”

As they ran together through the halls, Nicci could hear the whispering sound of voices rising up together to echo reverently through the vast corridors.

“Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

Nicci felt herself lost in words that suddenly had meaning for her that they had never had before.

She understood how it all fit together, at last, and knew what she had to do.

Zedd rose from his chair at the desk in the little room when he saw Nicci standing in the doorway. The lamplight softened his familiar face. “Nicci, you’re back. How are things at the People’s Palace?”

Nicci hardly heard the question. Answering it was beyond her. Zedd stepped closer, concern settling in his hazel eyes.

“Nicci, what’s wrong. You look like a phantom come to haunt the halls.”

She had to force herself to speak. “Do you trust Richard?”

Zedd’s brow drew down. “What kind of question is that?”

“Do you trust Richard with your life?”

Zedd gestured with one arm. “Of course. What’s this about?”

“Do you trust Richard with everyone’s life?”

Zedd gently gripped her arm. “Nicci, I love that boy.”

“Please, Zedd, do you trust Richard with everyone’s life?”

The concern in his eyes overspread his face, deepening the creases. He finally nodded. “Of course I do. If there was ever anyone I would trust with my life, or the life of anyone, it would be Richard. After all, I’m the one who named him to be Seeker.”

Nicci nodded as she turned.

“Thank you, Zedd.”

He lifted his robes a little as he hurried after her. “Do you need some help with something, Nicci?”

“No,” she said. “Thank you. I’m fine.”

Zedd at last nodded, taking her word for it, and returned to the book he was studying.

Nicci walked through the halls of the Keep without seeing them. She moved as if following an invisible glowing line to her destination, the way Richard said he could follow the glowing lines of a spell-form.

“Where are we going?” Cara asked, rushing to follow behind.

“Do you trust Richard? Trust him with your life?”

“Of course,” Cara said without an instant of hesitation.

Nicci nodded as she continued on.

She passed corridors, intersections, rooms, and stairs without really seeing them. In a daze of purpose, she finally reached the hardened area of the Keep and the grand room where the verification web had nearly taken her life. She would have died had it not been for Richard. He insisted on finding a way to save her when no one else believed it could be done.

She trusted Richard with her life, and her life was very precious to her, thanks to him.

At the double doors, Nicci turned to Cara. “I need to be alone.”

“But I—”

“This involves magic.”

“Oh,” Cara said. “Well, all right, then. I’ll just wait out here in the hall in case you need anything.”

“Thank you, Cara. You’re a good friend.”

“I never had any real friends—friends really worth having—until Lord Rahl came along.”

Nicci smiled a little. “I never had anything worth living for until Richard came along.”

Nicci closed the double doors. Behind her, the two-story windows flickered with lightning. Nicci didn’t know if she had ever been in that room when there wasn’t a storm.

Now the whole world was caught in a storm.

When the lightning flashed the room lit with the harsh glare. There was one thing in the room, however, that did not register the touch of even such intense light. It waited like death itself.

Nicci laid The Book of Life open on the table before the inky black box of Orden sitting in the center of the table. It seemed that every time the lightning tried to ignite, that black box swallowed the light before it could really get started. Staring at it was like looking into forever.

Nicci invoked the first spell, calling forth darkness to match the impossible blackness of the grim box sitting before her. She reminded herself that, like the People’s Palace, it was the person who denned it. With a thunderclap of power filling the room, the door was barred. No one could enter. The containment field of the windows no longer mattered. She had conjured something more powerful. The room was silent and pitch black. Nicci’s vision came from the powers she had called forth.

She spoke the words written on the next page, invoking the next spell that opened the pathway for the governing formulas. She used a sliver of Subtractive Magic to void a razor-thin piece of flesh at the tip of her finger, and used the blood that began to ooze to begin drawing the diagrams needed before the box of Orden. As more blood ran from the open wound, she drew a containment field around the box itself. It was something like the field of the room, but on a much more intense scale. Without being contained first, such power as was liberated from the box of Orden could unintentionally breach the veil, but in a way that would kill only the person attempting what Nicci was attempting.

Almost not needing to read the book that she had been studying for what seemed half her life, she went on to the equations involving the time of year: the first day of winter.

Once that was completed, she drew the two opposing symbols and the joint of the apex from the proper charts in blood.

It went on, one intense formula after another, for the next hour, with calculations bringing the resultant layer of magic forth to be folded into the next step. Each node in the book required that only the appropriate level of power be applied. At each spot, Nicci let it flow forth without reservation.

There was no other way.

As the night wore on, the lines of the spell built around the box—in some ways like the Chainfire verification web, with lines that glowed green. But others were a pure white, while yet others were constructed of Subtractive elements and they were blacker than black, looking like nothing so much as voids in the world where the lines belonged, like slits looking into the underworld.

When Nicci completed the last incantation, she finally heard the whisper of Orden itself, confirmation that she had done everything properly. Yet it was not so much a voice as a force that formed the concept in her mind.

The power is open, it whispered through the darkness, in words that felt like ice cracking.

“I call upon this time, this place, this world to turn with this play of the boxes of Orden.”

Name the player.

Nicci placed her hands on the dead black box before her.

“The player is Richard Rahl,” she said. “Heed his will. Do his bidding if he proves worthy, kill him if he does not, destroy us all if he fails us.”

It is done. From this moment forward the power of Orden is in play by Richard Rahl.

Prophecy said, “If fuer grissa ost drauka does not lead this final battle, then the world, already standing at the brink of darkness, will fall under that terrible shadow.”

Nicci had come to realize that if Richard was to win, he must be the one leading them in this final battle. The only way to lead was for him to have the boxes in play. In that way, he truly would be the fulfillment of prophecy: fuer grissa ost drauka—the bringer of death.

Prophecy said that they had to follow Richard, but it was more than prophecy. Prophecy only expressed the formality of what Nicci knew, that Richard embodied the values that promoted life.

They weren’t really following prophecy; prophecy was following Richard.

This was the ultimate following of Richard, following him in what he did with the boxes of Orden, in what he did with life and death itself. This was the ultimate test of who he was, who he would be, who he would become.

Richard himself had named the terms of the engagement when he spoke to the D’Haran troops, telling them how the war would be fought from now on: all or nothing.

This could be no different.

It now truly was all or nothing.

Ulicia and her Sisters of the Dark had likewise opened the gateway to the power of Orden. The struggle was now truly in balance. If Nicci was right about Richard, and she knew she was, then two forces now properly were engaged in the struggle that would decide it all.

If fuer grissa ost drauka does not lead this final battle, then the world, already standing at the brink of darkness, will fall under that terrible shadow.

They had to trust in Richard in that struggle. For that reason Nicci had to put the boxes of Orden into play in Richard’s name. The Sisters of the Dark no longer were the exclusive arbiters of the power of Orden. In that sense, Nicci had just put Richard into play, giving him the ability to win this struggle.

Without what she had just done, he could not win, much less survive.

Nicci seemed to drift in a world apart. When she finally opened her eyes, the storm had ended.

The first rays of light were just touching the windows.

It was dawn, on the first day of winter.

Richard had one year to open the correct box.

Everyone’s life was now in his hands.

Nicci trusted Richard with her life. She had just entrusted everyone’s life to him.

If she couldn’t trust Richard, then life wasn’t worth living.