Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Chapter 9

Nicci opened her eyes. She saw only vague shapes.

“Zedd is angry with you.”

Even though it sounded as if it had come from some hazy, faraway place, she knew that it was Richard’s voice. She was surprised to hear it. She was surprised to hear anything. She thought that by all rights she should be dead.

As her vision started coming into focus, Nicci rolled her head to the right and saw him sitting huddled close on a chair that had been pulled right up beside the bed. Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, his fingers folded neatly together, he was watching her.

“Why?” she asked.

Looking relieved to see her awake, he leaned back in the simple wooden chair and smiled that crooked smile of his that she so loved seeing.

“Because you broke the window back in that room where you were all doing the verification web.”

In the light of a lamp glowing softly beneath a milky white shade, she saw that she was covered up to her armpits in a luxuriously embroidered gold bedcover with lustrous sage green fringe. She had on a satiny nightdress that she didn’t recognize. The sleeves went all the way down to her wrists. It was pale pink. Not her color.

She wondered where the nightdress had come from and, more to the point, who had undressed her and put it on her. Back at the Palace of the Prophets, so long ago, Richard had been the first person she’d ever met who didn’t expect that he had a right to her body or some other aspect of her life. That forthright attitude had helped start the process of reasoning that eventually led to her casting off a lifetime of teachings of the Order. Through Richard, she had come to truly see that her life belonged to her alone. Along with that comprehension, she had since then discovered the dignity and self-worth in propriety.

Right then, though, she had concerns other than finding herself in a pink nightdress. Her throbbing head felt impossibly heavy against the cozy pillow.

“Technically,” she said, “the lightning broke the window. Not me.”

“Somehow,” Cara said from another chair tipped back against the wall beside the door, “I don’t think the distinction will much impress him.”

“I suppose not,” Nicci said with a sigh. “That room is in the hardened section of the Keep.”

Richard twitched a frown. “It’s where?”

She squinted slightly in an effort to bring his face more into focus. “That section of the Keep is a special place. It’s hardened against intentional interference as well as aberrational and errant events.”

Cara folded her arms. “Mind giving us the translation?”

The woman was in her red leather. Nicci wondered if that meant there was more trouble about or if she was just surly from the beast paying them a visit.

“It’s a containment field,” Nicci said. “We know very little about the ancient, bewilderingly intricate makeup of the Chainfire spell. It’s hazardous to even study such unstable components all tangled together the way that one is. That’s why we were using that particular place to run the verification web. That room is in the original core of the Keep—an important sanctuary used for tasks involving anomalous material. Various kinds of both constructed and free-formed conjuring are apt to contain innate tangential outflows that can convey domain breaches, so when working with them it’s best to confine such potentially hazardous components to a containment field.”

“Oh, well, thanks for the translation,” Cara said in a cutting tone. “It’s all so clear, now. It’s a field thing.”

Nicci nodded as best she could. “Yes—a containment field.” When Cara’s frown only darkened, Nicci added, “Doing magic in there is like keeping a wasp in a bottle.”

“Oh.” Cara let out a sigh, finally grasping the simplified concept. “I guess that explains why Zedd was so grumpy about it.”

“Maybe he can fix it back to the way it was,” Richard offered. “Surprisingly enough, the room isn’t too badly torn up. It’s mostly the broken windows that he’s riled about.”

Nicci lifted a hand in a weak gesture. “I don’t doubt it. The glass in there is unique. It has embedded properties designed to contain conjured magic from escaping—and to prevent gifted assaults. Its function is much the same as shields, except that it deters power rather than people.”

Richard considered a moment. “Well,” he finally said, “it didn’t prevent an attack from the beast.”

Nicci stared off at the bookshelves built into the wall opposite the bed. “Nothing can,” she said. “In this case the beast didn’t come through the windows or walls—it came through the veil, emerging out of the underworld right into the room; it didn’t need to come through any shields or containment field or refractory glass.”

Cara’s chair thumped down. “And it nearly tore your arm off.” She shook a finger at Richard. “You were using your gift. You drew it to you. If Zedd hadn’t been there to heal you, you would likely have bled to death.”

“Oh, Cara, every time you tell the story I seem to bleed more. No doubt the next time I hear it told I’ll have been torn in two and stitched back together with magic thread.”

She folded her arms as she tipped her chair back against the wall. “You could have been torn in two.”

“I wasn’t as badly hurt as you make it out. I’m fine.” Richard leaned in a little and squeezed Nicci’s hand. “At least you stopped it.”

She met his gaze.

“For now,” she said. “That’s all.”

“For now is enough for now.” He smiled in quiet satisfaction. “You did good, Nicci.”

His gray eyes mirrored his inner sincerity. Somehow the world always seemed better when Richard was pleased that someone had accomplished something difficult. He always seemed to value what people achieved—always seemed to delight in their triumphs. It invariably lifted her heart when he was pleased with something she had done.

Her gaze strayed from his face. She noticed the small statue standing on the table just behind him. The lamplight highlighted the flowing hair and robes that Richard had once so carefully carved into the figure of his impression of Kahlan’s spirit. The lustrous statue, sculpted from walnut, stood as if in silent defiance of some invisible force attempting to suppress that spirit.

“I’m in your room,” Nicci said, half to herself.

A curious frown twitched across his brow. “How did you know?”

Nicci looked away from the statue to gaze out the small, round-topped window through the thick stone wall to the left. A delicate, pale blush of color was just visible in the lower reaches of a black, star-filled sky as dawn gradually approached.

“Lucky guess,” she lied.

“It was closer,” Richard explained. “Zedd and Nathan wanted to get you in a bed, get you comfortable, so they could evaluate what they needed to do to help you.”

Nicci knew by the lingering, icy feeling coursing through her veins that they had done something more than mere evaluation.

“Rikka and I undressed you and put you in a nightdress Zedd found for us,” Cara explained to the unspoken question she must have seen in Nicci’s eyes.

“Thanks.” Nicci lifted a hand in a vague gesture. “How long have I been unconscious? What happened?”

“Well,” Richard said, “after you jumped back up into that spell-form the night before last and called the lightning to stop the beast, the verification web nearly took you for good. After I got you out, Zedd thought you needed to rest more than anything so he did a little something so that you would sleep. You were a bit delirious from the pain you were in. He said that he helped you drift off so you wouldn’t have to suffer it. He told us that you would sleep all of yesterday and last night, and then awake around dawn today. I guess he had it right.”

Cara rose to stand behind Richard and peer down at Nicci. “No one thought that Lord Rahl would be able to get you out the second time. They thought your spirit was too far gone into the underworld to ever get you back—but he did it. He got you back.”

Nicci looked from Cara’s smug smile to Richard’s gray eyes. They didn’t reflect anything of the difficulty of the task. She had trouble imagining how he could have accomplished such a thing.

“You did good, Richard,” she said, making him smile.

He and Cara turned toward a soft knock at the door. Zedd quietly eased the door open to peek in. When he saw that Nicci was awake, he shed his care and strolled in.

“Ah,” he observed, “back from the dead, it would appear.”

Nicci smiled. “Wretched excursion. I don’t advise a visit to the place. Sorry about the windows, but it was either—”

“Better the windows than what might have happened to Richard.”

Nicci was cheered to hear him say as much. “That was my thought.”

“Sometime you will have to explain to me exactly what you did and how you did it. I wasn’t aware that any form of conjured power could breach those windows.”

“It can’t. I simply . . . invited a confluence of natural power to come in through the windows.”

Zedd regarded her with an unreadable look. “About the windows,” he finally said in a measured tone, “we might be able to use your ability with both sides of the gift to restore them.”

“I’d be glad to help.”

Cara took a step forward. “When Tom and Friedrich eventually get back from patrolling the surrounding countryside I’m sure that they’d be able to help with the window’s woodwork. Friedrich, especially, knows about working with wood.”

Zedd nodded as he smiled briefly at the suggestion before turning to his grandson. “Where have you been? I went looking for you this morning and couldn’t find you. I’ve been looking for you all day.”

Nicci realized that the windows were hardly his primary concern.

Richard glanced briefly at the statue. “I read a lot last night. When it got light I went for a walk to think about what to do next.”

Zedd sighed at the answer. “Well, as I told you after you broke the first spell-form holding Nicci, we need to talk about some of the things you said.”

It was clear that it was not a matter of casual curiosity but a pointed demand.

Richard stood to help stuff pillows behind Nicci when he saw her start to sit up. The pain was becoming no more than a fading memory. Zedd had obviously done something more than help her sleep. Her head was starting to clear. She realized that she was hungry.

“So talk,” Richard said as he sat back down.

“I need you to explain precisely how you were able to know how to shut down a verification web—especially one as complex as the Chainfire event matrix.”

Richard looked more than a little weary. “I told you before, I understand the jargon of emblems.”

Zedd clasped his hands behind his back as he started to pace. Concern was clearly etched in the lines of his face. “Yes, about that, you mentioned that you know a lot about ‘representational designs involving lethality.’ I need to know what you meant by that.”

Richard took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he leaned back in his chair. Having grown up around Zedd, he obviously knew quite well that when Zedd wanted to know something it was easiest to just answer the questions.

Richard turned his wrists over across his knees. Strange symbols girded the leather-padded silver wristbands he wore. On the center of each band, at the insides of his wrists, there was a small Grace. That alone was alarming enough, since Nicci had seen Richard use them to call the sliph so that they could travel. She couldn’t begin to imagine what the other symbols meant.

“These things all around the bands—the emblems, designs, and devices—are pictures representing things. Like I said before, they’re a jargon, a language of sorts.”

Zedd waggled a finger at the designs on the wristbands. “And you can make out meaning in them? Like you did with the spell-form?”

“Yes. Most are ways of fighting with the sword—that’s how I was first able to recognize them and how I began to learn to understand them.”

Richard’s fingers idly sought reassurance in the touch of the weapon’s hilt, but it was no longer there at his hip. He caught himself and went on.

“Many of these are the same as the designs outside the First Wizard’s enclave. You know—on those brass plaques on the entablature above the variegated, red stone columns, on the round metal disks all along the frieze, and also carved into the stone of the cornice.”

He glanced over his shoulder at his grandfather. “Most of these emblems overtly involve combat with a sword.”

Nicci blinked in surprise as she listened. Richard had never told her about the symbols on the wristbands. As First Wizard, Zedd had been the keeper of the Sword of Truth, and it was his duty to name a new Seeker when needed, but given his reaction, she didn’t think that even he had known about this. She supposed that was understandable. The sword, after all, had been made thousands of years before by wizards with prodigious power.

“That one.” Zedd thrust a bony finger at an emblem on one of Richard’s wristbands. “That one is on the door to the First Wizard’s enclave.”

Richard turned his other wrist and tapped a starburst pattern on the top of the silver band. “As is this one here.”

Zedd pulled Richard’s arms closer, inspecting the wristbands in the lamplight. “Yes . . . those are both on the door.” He squinted a frown at Richard. “And you honestly believe that they mean something, and that you’ve learned to read them?”

“Yes, of course.”

Zedd, his wiry brows drawing low, was still clearly dubious. “What do you think they mean?”

Richard touched a symbol on the wristbands and one like it on his boot pins. He pointed out the same design within the gold band around his black tunic. Until he pointed it out, Nicci hadn’t realized that it was hidden there, among the rest of what seemed to be nothing more than an elaborate decorative strip. The pattern looked like two rough triangles with a sinuous, undulating double line running around and through them.

“This one is a kind of rhythm used for fighting when outnumbered. It conveys a sense of the cadence of the dance, movements without iron form.”

Zedd cocked an eyebrow. “Movement without iron form?”

“Yes, you know, movement that’s not rigid, not prescribed and inflexible, yet is still deliberate, with specific intent as well as precise objectives; This emblem describes an integral part of the dance.”

“The dance?”

Richard nodded. “The dance with death.”

Zedd’s jaw worked a moment before his voice returned. “Dance. With death.” He stammered a moment more with the halting beginnings of a flurry of questions before finally pausing and then retreating to something simpler. “And how does this connect with the symbols at the First Wizard’s enclave?”

Richard burnished a thumb across the forms on the left wristband. “The symbols would have meaning to a war wizard—that, in part, is how I figured it out. Symbols have significance in many professions. Tailors paint shears on their window, a weapons maker might paint the outline of knives over his door, a tavern might have a sign with a mug on it, a blacksmith an anvil, and a farrier might nail up horseshoes. Some signs, a skull with crossed bones beneath it for instance, warn of something deadly. War wizards likewise put signs up on the First Wizard’s enclave.

“Even more importantly, each profession has its own jargon, a specialized vocabulary specific to that craft. It’s no different with a war wizard. The jargon of his profession has to do with lethality. These symbols here and outside the First Wizard’s enclave are in part the sign of his craft: bringing death.”

Zedd cleared his throat, then looked down and pointed at another symbol on Richard’s wristband. “This one, here. This one is on the door to my enclave. Do you know its meaning? Can you paraphrase its intent?”

Richard turned his wrist slightly as he glanced down at the starburst symbol. “It’s an admonition not to allow your vision to lock on any one thing. The starburst is a warning to look everywhere at once, to see nothing to the exclusion of everything else. It’s a reminder that you mustn’t allow the enemy to draw your attention in a way that directs your vision and makes it settle on one thing. If you do, you will see what he wishes you to see. Doing so will allow him to blind you, in a manner of speaking, and he will then come at you without you seeing him and you will most likely lose your life.

“Instead, like this starburst, your vision must open to all there is, never settling, even when cutting. To dance with death means to understand and become as one with your enemy, meaning with the way he thinks within the range of his knowledge, so that you know his sword as well as your own—its exact location, its speed, and its next move before it comes without having to wait to see it first. By opening your vision in this way, opening all your senses, you come to know your enemy’s mind and moves as if by instinct.”

Zedd scratched his temple. “You’re trying to tell me that these symbols, signs specific to war wizards, are all instructions for using a sword?”

Richard shook his head. “The word ‘sword’ is meant to represent all forms of struggle, not just combat or fighting with a weapon. It applies just as much to strategy and leadership, among other things in life.

“Dancing with death means being committed to the value of life, committed with your mind, heart, and soul, so that you are truly prepared to do what is necessary to preserve life. Dancing with death means that you are the incarnation of death, come to reap the living, in order to preserve life.”

Zedd looked thunderstruck.

Richard seemed somewhat surprised by Zedd’s reaction. “All of this is much in keeping with everything you’ve ever taught me, Zedd.”

The lamplight cast sharp shadows across Zedd’s angular face. “I suppose that in a way it is, Richard. But at the same time it’s so much more.”

Richard nodded as he rubbed a thumb across the softly glowing silver surface of a wristband. He seemed to search for words. “Zedd, I know that you would have wanted to be the one to teach me about all the things having to do with your enclave—like you wanted to be the one to teach me about the Grace. As First Wizard it was your place to do so. Perhaps I should have waited.”

He brought up a fist in conviction. “But there were lives at stake and things I had to do. I had to learn it without you.”

“Bags, Richard, how would I teach you about such things?” he said in resignation. “The meaning of those symbols has been lost for thousands of years. No wizard since, since . . . well, no wizard I know of has ever been able to decipher them. I have trouble imagining how you did.”

Richard shrugged one shoulder self-consciously. “Once I began to catch on, it all became pretty obvious.”

Zedd cast a troubled look at his grandson. “Richard, I grew up in this place. I’ve spent a great deal of my life here. I was First Wizard when there were actually wizards here to direct.” He shook his head. “All that time those designs were on the First Wizard’s enclave, and I never knew what they meant. It may seem simple and obvious to you, but it is not. For all I know, you’re just imagining that you understand the emblems—just making up meaning you want to be there.”

“I’m not imagining their meaning. They’ve saved my life countless times. I learned a great deal about how to fight with a sword by understanding the language of these symbols.”

Zedd didn’t argue but instead gestured at the amulet Richard wore around his neck. In the center, surrounded by a complex of gold and silver lines, was a teardrop-shaped ruby as big as Nicci’s thumbnail. “You found that in my enclave. Do you also have an idea of what it means?”

“It was part of this outfit, part of the outfit worn by a war wizard, but unlike the rest of it, like you said, this was left in the protection of the First Wizard’s enclave.”

“And its meaning?”

Richard’s fingers reverently brushed the amulet. “The ruby is meant to represent a drop of blood. The emblems engraved in this talisman are the symbolic representation of the way of the primary edict.”

Zedd pressed his fingers to his forehead, as if confounded by yet another confusing conundrum. “The primary edict?”

Richard’s gaze seemed lost in the amulet. “It means only one thing, and everything: cut. Once committed to fight, cut. Everything else is secondary. Cut. That is your duty, your purpose, your hunger. There is no rule more important, no commitment that overrides that one: cut.”

Richard’s words came softly, with a kind of knowing, deadly seriousness that chilled Nicci to the bone.

He lifted the amulet out away from his chest, his gaze fixed on its ornate engravings.

“The engraved lines are a portrayal of the dance and as such they have a specific meaning.” He traced a finger along the swirling designs as he spoke, as if following a line of text in an ancient language. “Cut from the void, not from bewilderment. Cut the enemy as quickly and directly as possible. Cut with certainty. Cut decisively, resolutely. Cut into his strength. Flow through the gaps in his guard. Cut him. Cut him down utterly. Don’t allow him a breath. Crush him. Cut him without mercy to the depths of his spirit.”

Richard glanced up at his grandfather. “It is the balance to life: death. It is the dance with death or, more precisely, the mechanism of the dance with death—its essence reduced to form, its form prescribed by concepts.

“It is the law a war wizard lives by, or he dies.”

Zedd’s hazel eyes were unreadable. “So these marks, these emblems, ultimately regard a war wizard as a mere swordsman?”

“The same overriding principle I told you about before applies to this just as it does the other symbols. The primary edict is not meant to merely convey how a war wizard fights with a weapon, but, more importantly, with his mind. It’s a fundamental understanding of the nature of reality that must encompass everything he does. By being true to the primary edict, any weapon is an extension of his mind, an agent of his intent. In a way it’s what you once told me about being the Seeker. It’s not the weapon that matters so much as the man who wields the weapon.

“The man who last wore this amulet was once First Wizard. His name was Baraccus. He also happened to have been born a war wizard, as am I. He, too, went to the Temple of the Winds, but when he returned, he went into the First Wizard’s enclave, left this there, came out, and committed suicide by leaping off the side of the Keep.”

Richard’s gaze drifted into distant visions and memories. “For a time, I understood and ached to join him.” Nicci was relieved when the haunted look in his gray eyes was banished by the return of his easy smile. “But I came to my senses.”

The room rang with the silence, as if death itself had just silently glided through the room, paused for a moment, and then moved on.

Zedd at last smiled himself as he gripped Richard’s shoulder, giving his grandson an affectionate joggle. “I’m glad to know I made the right choice in naming you Seeker, my boy.”

Nicci wished that Richard still had the sword that belonged with the Seeker, but he had sacrificed it for information in an attempt to find Kahlan.

“So,” Zedd said at last, getting back to the matter at hand, “because you know about these symbols, you believe you understood symbols within the Chainfire spell-form.”

“I was able to shut it down, wasn’t I?”

Zedd clasped his hands behind his back again. “You have a point there. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you could read forms within the spell as emblems, much less know that the spell-form was corrupted by the chimes.”

“Not the chimes themselves,” Richard patiently explained, “but the contamination left behind as a result of the chimes having been in this world. That corruption is what infected the Chainfire spell. That’s the issue.”

Zedd turned away, his face hidden in shadows. “But still, Richard, even if you actually do understand something of the emblems having to do with war wizards, how can you be sure that you accurately understand this, this”—he gestured in the vague direction of the room where it had all happened—“this other business with the Chainfire spell and the chimes?”

“I know,” Richard insisted in a quiet voice. “I saw the mark of the nature of the corruption. It was caused by the chimes.”

He sounded tired. Nicci wondered how long he’d been up. Because of the arid timbre to his voice and the slightest unsteadiness in his movements, she suspected that it had probably been days since he’d slept. Despite how weary he might have been, he sounded resolute in his conviction. She knew that it was his worry for Kahlan driving him on.

Nicci, having been pulled out of the spell-form by him twice, wasn’t one to want to so easily discount his theory. More than that, though, she had come to understand that Richard had an insight into magic that was very different from the conventional wisdom. At first she had thought that his perception of how magic functioned in part through artistic concepts was a product of his having been raised without having been taught about magic, without having any exposure to it, but she had since come to see that that unique insight, along with his singular intellect, had enabled him to grasp an essential nature of magic that was fundamentally different from the orthodox teachings.

Nicci had come to believe that Richard might actually understand magic in a way not envisioned by anyone since ancient times.

Zedd turned back, his face illuminated by the warm glow of lamplight on one side and, on the other, the faint, cold light of dawn. “Richard, let’s say you’re right about the meaning of the symbols on those wristbands and the ones like them on the First Wizard’s enclave. Understanding those things does not mean that you can understand the lines within a verification web. It’s a completely different, and unique, context. I’m not doubting your ability, my boy, I’m really not, but dealing with spell-forms is a vastly complex matter. You can’t leap to the conclusion—”

“Have you seen a dragon in the last couple of years?”

Everyone in the room fell to stunned silence at Richard’s sudden change of topic—and not just to any subject, but one that could only be described as strange at best.

“A dragon?” Zedd ventured, at last, like a man inching out onto a newly frozen lake.

“Yes, a dragon. Do you recall seeing a dragon since we left our home in Westland and came to the Midlands?”

Zedd smoothed back some of the wavy tufts of his white hair. He glanced briefly to both Cara and Nicci before answering. “Well, no, I can’t really say that I recall having seen any dragons, but what does that have to do—”

“Where are they? Why haven’t you seen any? Why are they gone?”

Zedd looked at his wits’ end. He spread his hands. “Richard, dragons are very rare creatures.”

Richard leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg over his other knee. “Red dragons are. But Kahlan told me that other types are relatively common, with some of the smaller ones kept for hunting and such.”

Zedd’s expression turned suspicious. “What are you getting at?”

Richard gestured with a sweep of a hand. “Where are the dragons? Why haven’t we seen any? That’s what I’m getting at.”

Zedd folded his arms across his chest. “I give up. What are you talking about?”

“Well, for one thing, you don’t remember—that’s what I’m talking about. The Chainfire spell has affected more than just your memory of Kahlan.”

“Don’t remember what?” Zedd sputtered. “What do you mean?”

Instead of answering his grandfather, Richard looked back over his shoulder. “Have you seen a dragon?” he asked Cara.

“I don’t recall any.” Her gaze remained fixed on him. “Are you suggesting that I should?”

“Darken Rahl kept a dragon. Since he was the Lord Rahl at the time, you would have been at hand so you would probably have seen it.”

Zedd and Cara shared a troubled look.

Richard turned his raptor gaze on Nicci. “You?”

Nicci cleared her throat. “I always thought they were mythical creatures. There aren’t any in the Old World. If there ever were, they haven’t existed for ages. No records since the great war have any mention of them.”

“What about since you came to the New World.”

Nicci hesitated at recounting the memory. She realized, though, by the way he patiently and silently waited for her answer, that he wasn’t going to let the subject go. She knew that whatever obscure equation he was working to solve wouldn’t involve anything trivial. Under his silent scrutiny, Nicci felt not only a compulsion to answer, but a rising sense of foreboding.

She threw the bedcovers back and swung her feet down off the side of the bed. She didn’t want to be lying there any longer—especially when speaking about that time. Gripping the side rail, she met Richard’s gaze.

“When I was taking you away to the Old World, before we left the New World, we came across colossal bones. I never got down off my horse to look at them, but I remember watching you walk through those rib bones—rib bones that were well beyond twice your height. I had never seen anything like them. You said that you believed that it was the remains of a dragon.

“I thought that they must have been ancient bones. You said they were not, that they still had scraps of flesh on them. You pointed out all the flies buzzing around it as proof that it was what was left of a rotted carcass, not ancient remains.”

Richard nodded at the memory.

Zedd cleared his throat. “And have you ever seen a dragon, Richard? One that was alive, I mean.”

“Scarlet.”

“What?”

“That was her name: Scarlet.”

Zedd blinked with incredulity. “You have seen a dragon . . . and it has a name?”

Richard stood and went to the window. He rested his hands on the stone opening, leaning his weight on it as he gazed out.

“Yes,” he said at last. “Her name was Scarlet. She helped me, before. She was a noble beast.”

He turned back from the window. “But that’s not the point. The point is that you knew her, too.”

Zedd’s eyebrows lifted. “I knew this dragon?”

“Not as well as Kahlan or I, but you knew her. The Chainfire event has obviously corrupted your memory of it. Chainfire was meant to make everyone forget Kahlan, but everyone is forgetting other things as well, things that were connected with her.

“For all I know, you might once have known the meanings of the emblems outside the First Wizard’s enclave better than I do. If you did, that memory is lost to you. How many other things have been lost? I don’t know much about the various ways to use magic, but when we were fighting the beast the other night it seemed to me that in the past all of you used more inventive spells and powers than the simple things you tried against the threat—except maybe what Nicci did at the end.

“This is what the men who came up with the Chainfire spell feared most. This is why they didn’t ever want it ignited. This is why they never even dared test it. They feared that once such an event was initiated it might spread, destroying connections removed from the primary target of the spell—in this case Kahlan. Your memory of Kahlan is lost. Your memory of Scarlet is lost. Your memory of even having seen dragons is apparently lost as well.”

Nicci stood. “Richard, no one is arguing that the Chainfire spell isn’t terribly dangerous. We all know that. We all know that our memories have been damaged by the ignition of a Chainfire event. Do you have any idea how disturbing it is to be intellectually aware that we all did things, knew things, and knew people that we now can’t remember? Don’t you realize how haunting is to be in constant dread of what memories are lost, and what others might be lost? That your very mind is eroding? What are you getting at, anyway?”

“Just that—what else is being lost. I think that the destruction is expanding through everyone’s memory—that their minds are eroding, as you put it. I don’t think that Chainfire was a single event of merely forgetting Kahlan. I think that the spell, once activated, is an ongoing, dynamic process. I think that everyone’s memory loss is continuing to spread.”

Zedd, Cara, and Nicci all looked away from Richard’s unwavering gaze. Nicci wondered how they could expect to help him if none of them were consciously capable of using their own minds, much less keeping what they still had from day to day.

How could Richard trust any of them?

“I’m afraid that as bad as that much of it is, it gets more involved and far worse,” Richard said, the heat having left his voice. “Dragons, like many creatures in the Midlands, need and use magic to live. What if the corruption caused by the chimes extinguished the magic that they need in order to live? What if no one has seen any dragons for the last couple of years because they no longer exist and with Chainfire are now forgotten? What other creatures with magic might have also vanished from existence?”

Richard tapped a thumb against his own chest. “We are creatures of magic. We have the gift. How long until that taint left by the chimes begins to destroy us?”

“But perhaps . . .” Zedd’s voice trailed off when he could think of no argument.

“The Chainfire spell itself is contaminated. You all saw what it was doing to Nicci. She was in the spell and she knows the terrible truth of it.” Richard began pacing as he spoke. “There is no telling how the contamination within the spell might change the way it works. It might even be that the contamination is the reason that everyone’s memory loss is spreading beyond what would have otherwise happened.

“But worse yet, it appears that the corruption has worked in conjunction with the Chainfire event in a symbiotic fashion.”

Zedd looked up. “What are you talking about?”

“What is the mindless purpose of the chimes? Why were they created in the first place? For one single function,” Richard said in answer to his own question, “to destroy magic.”

Richard paused his pacing to face the rest of them as he went on. “The contamination left by the chimes is destroying magic. The creatures that need magic to live—dragons, for example—would likely be the first to be affected. That cascade of events will continue. But no one is aware of it because the Chainfire event is simultaneously destroying everyone’s memory. I think this may be happening because the Chainfire spell is contaminated, causing everyone to forget the very things being lost.

“In much the way a leech numbs its victim so that they won’t feel their blood being drained away, the Chainfire spell is making everyone forget what is being lost because of the corruption of the chimes.

“The world is changing dramatically and no one is even aware of it. It’s as if everyone is forgetting that this is a world that is influenced by, and in many ways functions through, the existence of magic. That magic is dying out . . . and so is everyone’s memory of it.”

Richard again leaned on the sill and stared out the window. “A new day is dawning, a day in which magic continues to die out, and no one is even aware that it is fading away. When it passes entirely, I doubt that anyone will even remember it, remember what once was.

“It’s as if all that was this world is passing into a realm of mere legend.”

Zedd pressed his fingers to the table as he stared into the distance. The light of the lamp accentuated the deep creases of his drawn features. His face had gone ashen. At that moment, Nicci thought that he looked very old.

“Dear spirits,” Zedd said without looking up. “What if you’re right?”

They all turned to the sound of a polite knock. Cara pulled the door open. Nathan and Ann stood beyond the doorway, peering in.

“We ran the standard verification web,” Nathan said as he entered behind Ann, glancing around at the somber expressions.

Zedd looked up expectantly. “And?”

“And it reveals no flaws,” Ann said. “It’s perfectly intact in every way.”

“How can that be?” Cara asked. “We all saw the trouble with the other one. It nearly killed Nicci—and would have if Lord Rahl hadn’t gotten her out.”

“Our point, exactly,” Nathan said.

Zedd’s gaze fell away. “An interior perspective is said to be able to reveal more than the standard verification process,” he explained to Cara. “This is not a good sign. Not a good sign at all. The contamination apparently buried itself as deeply as possible in order to conceal its presence. That’s why it wasn’t seen in the standard verification web.”

“Or else,” Ann offered as she slipped her hands into opposite sleeves of her simple gray dress, “there is nothing really wrong with the spell. After all, none of us has ever run an interior perspective before. Such a thing hasn’t been done in thousands of years. It’s possible we did something wrong.”

Zedd shook his head. “I wish it were so, but I now believe it to be otherwise.”

Nathan’s brow drew down with a suspicious look, but Ann spoke before he had a chance.

“Even if the Sisters who unleashed the spell ran a verification web,” she said, “they likely would not have run an interior perspective, so they wouldn’t have suspected that it was contaminated.”

Richard rubbed his fingertips back and forth across his brow. “Even if they knew that it was contaminated, I don’t think they cared. They wouldn’t be concerned about what damage such contamination might cause the world. Their goal, after all, was to get the boxes and unleash the power of Orden.”

Nathan looked from one grim face to another. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”

“I’m afraid that we’ve just learned that memory may only be the beginning of our loss.” Nicci felt rather odd standing before them in a pink nightdress as she pronounced the end of the world as they knew it. “We are losing who we are, what we are. We are losing not just our world, but ourselves.”

Richard no longer seemed to be paying attention to the conversation. He was standing stock-still, staring out the window.

“Someone is coming up the road to the Keep.”

“Maybe it’s Tom and Friedrich,” Nathan said.

Zedd shook his head as he made for the window. “They wouldn’t be back from a patrol of the surrounding countryside this soon.”

“Well, it could be that they—”

“It’s not Tom and Friedrich,” Richard said as he started for the door. “It’s two women.”