Warheart

CHAPTER 28

“Everything,” Kahlan repeated. “Such as?”

Richard leaned back, letting out a deep sigh as he drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, apparently considering where to begin.

“Do you know where prophecy comes from?” he began.

Kahlan thought it an odd question. “Real prophecy comes from prophets.”

“Dead prophets.”

Kahlan tilted her head forward. “What are you talking about?”

“When a prophet–a wizard gifted with prophecy–goes into a trance and prophecy comes to him, that prophecy is coming from dead prophets in the underworld. That is the source of prophecy.”

Kahlan gaped at him a moment. “You can’t be serious.”

Richard looked up from under his brow. “In the language of Creation, the symbol for prophecy can be translated in two different ways. One meaning of the symbol is ‘prophecy,’ the other translation is ‘the voice of the dead.’”

He turned to the desk and swept an arm over a scroll held open at each side with ledger books. “These scrolls are full of information about the nature of the world of life and the nature of the underworld. I never imagined that this much comprehensive information could be contained in one place. There is more information–important information–in these scrolls than all the libraries at the People’s Palace. It’s like everything we’ve ever found before, everything we’ve ever looked for, everything we’ve learned, only scratched the surface of what these scrolls contain.”

Kahlan didn’t like the sound of that. “Such as?”

Richard wearily rubbed the tips of his fingers against his temples. “Everything that has happened ever since I met you–for that matter everything since you and I were born–is in here. These scrolls tie all the loose ends together. They tie everything together.”

“Everything?” Kahlan couldn’t fathom what he was talking about. “Richard, I’m not following what you’re getting at. Everything … like what?”

He looked up at the ceiling. “Where do I even begin?”

“Pick a place and start,” she said in as calming a voice as she could muster.

His head came down and he fixed her in his gaze. “Everything from the boxes of Orden to Sulachan to Regula to Hannis Arc to me is tied up in all of this. I don’t even know where to start or really even how to begin to explain it to you.”

Kahlan folded her arms. “Take it one thing at a time, Richard. Start with Regula. What does it say about the omen machine?”

Richard peered up from under his brow. “Regula is part of the power of the underworld. In a way, it’s death itself in our world, in our midst, in the world of life.”

She held up a hand to stop him. “Back up. It’s buried under the People’s Palace. Where did it come from?” she asked, trying to be as patient as she could to get him to calm down. “How did it get there?”

Richard tapped the side of his thumb on the desk for a moment. “I’m not exactly sure, yet, of the whole explanation. There are a lot of Cerulean scrolls left to go through.”

“I understand, but you said that it was in a way death itself in our midst. You must have a reason for saying that. What does that mean?”

He leaned forward. “Regula–its power, what makes it alive in a sense–was banished to the world of life, banished from the underworld.”

Kahlan made a face. “Banished to the world of life? From the underworld? I’m sorry, Richard, but I don’t understand.”

“Well, remember how the wizards back in the great war banished the Temple of the Winds to the underworld to protect the dangerous magic it contained?”

Kahlan had some pretty unpleasant memories of the Temple of the Winds. “It would be impossible for me to forget that even if I tried.”

“Well,” Richard said, using his hands as he talked, “part of the bargain–the balance for that–was that the world of life had to take the power of Regula and keep it hidden here.”

Kahlan squinted at him. “Wait–what is it? What is Regula? What is the power that was banished here?”

“It’s the collective power of prophecy from the underworld. Having it in this world powers prophecy. It enables prophecy to come into this world. It propagates prophecy.”

Kahlan pressed her fingers to her forehead, pausing for a moment. She couldn’t begin to fathom what he was talking about.

“You’re saying that the reason we have prophecy is because Regula is here in this world.”

Richard gave her a single, firm nod. “Yes.”

Kahlan couldn’t believe he was serious. At the same time it was frightening that she could see he was. She flicked a hand toward the scroll.

“Richard, it sounds to me like what it says in those ancient scrolls is just myth–you know, a form of morality tale set down on ancient scrolls. You’ve heard such fables before from people in the wilds, remember?”

She circled a hand in the air, gesturing toward the sky, weaving the story the way people in the wilds always did. “Stories about how the sun and the moon were once lovers, and they created the grasslands as a secret, sacred place where they could be together. They say that is how the world came to be–it was a place created where the sun and the moon could lie down alone together, away from the stars.

“That’s why the people there, like the Mud People, have such reverence for those plains, believing that the grasslands are sacred because they have been kissed by the sun and the moon. Their story about the sun and the moon and the grasslands beneath them is a fable meant to teach innocent children to respect the land. It’s a morality tale. They don’t believe it literally happened.”

Kahlan swept a hand toward the scroll. “That’s what this sounds like to me, like a cautionary tale, a fable. A caution to beware of prophecy and not let it rule your life. I bet that’s all the scrolls really are, Richard–fables.”

He stared at her for a moment. “The scrolls talk about the ancient power of Orden.”

“Probably in fable form as well–”

“No, not in fable form, but explicitly,” he said, cutting her off. “It explains what happened–what I did. It explains how Orden works, what I was going to do, and why I did it. The power of Orden apparently predates the scrolls, and yet they talk about it, about the events that would surround it into the future, and they talk about me.”

Kahlan leaned toward him, her eyes widening. “These ancient scrolls speak of you?”

“Well,” he said with an offhanded gesture, “not specifically, but yes. They don’t mention me by name, exactly, but they are talking about me. Remember the prophecies that spoke of me as the bringer of death?”

“Of course.”

“It’s like that. They use names like that for me, names we’ve seen before like the pebble in the pond, names that can only refer to me. For example they say that the bringer of death will use the power of Orden to initiate a phase change–”

“A what? What’s a phase change?”

Richard paused to gather his thoughts. “The power of Orden predates these scrolls, but the people who wrote the scrolls knew a great deal about the subject. Among other tools, they used prophecy, extracted from the underworld, to help them in the understanding of the structure of Orden and all it touches.

“They explain that the power of Orden can bend the nature of existence. Remember the book on Ordenic theory that I found? Remember that it mentioned the power of Orden held in those boxes had the power to distort the nature of existence?”

Kahlan cocked her head. “You mean, the way you bent existence to bring worlds together into the same time and place in order to banish the followers of the beliefs of the Imperial Order to their own world without magic?”

“Yes, exactly.” Richard flattened one side of the scroll on the desk and tapped a place on it near the far end. “It calls that event a spectral fold.” He looked up at her. “The power of Orden initiates a spectral fold, meaning it distorts the nature of existence. That’s how I was able to bring places together in the same place at the same time. It’s called a spectral fold.”

Kahlan shrugged. “Well, that was a good thing, right? It ended the war.”

Richard shook his head. “It bought us time in one phase of events. It ended that war–and that was a good thing, a necessary thing–but in so doing it started a greater war. Through the series of events caused by the initiation of that spectral fold, the great war from back in Magda and Merritt’s time was fully reignited. That war was not merely a war between the New World and the Old World, but more importantly a war between the world of life and the world of death.

“Those were the battlefields, those were the factions involved. The war we fought and won was with the remnants of that conflict. We were only fighting at the fringes of the greater war between the worlds of life and death.

“I used the power of Orden to end that particular war with the Imperial Order in that particular manner, but a spectral fold touches all of existence, not only what I did to banish the followers of the Imperial Order. That spectral fold that I initiated may have been absolutely necessary, but it is still in force.

“The Cerulean scrolls call this spectral fold a star shift, because it shifts the nature of everything, the very nature of existence, of the world of existence–which encompasses the whole world of life. I used the power contained in those boxes, releasing it to end the war. In so doing, I initiated a spectral fold, a star shift.

“That was what the creator of the sword knew had to be done, despite the cost. That was why he made the key. They knew it would initiate a star shift, and they knew the cost would be the spectral fold that would bring about the final battle that I would also have to fight. It was, in a way, a prophecy that had been pulled from the underworld in order to create the situation needed to force the event.”

“They created a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

“In a way, but only as a tool for the power of Orden so it could do what it was meant to do.”

Kahlan felt like her head was spinning. “What else? What else does this power, this star shift, affect?”

“The veil.”

Kahlan felt goose bumps raise the hairs on her arms. “The veil.”

“Yes. The veil is the power–the force–that keeps the world of life and the world of the dead separate. It’s that line in the Grace that separates life and death. Those worlds can’t be allowed to mix. The veil prevents that from happening.

“That power is what Adie knew as the skrin. Remember her telling us about the skrin? The power of the skrin is the power contained in the veil that keeps the spirits on that side. It keeps the dead, dead.

“But the spectral fold, initiated through the power of Orden, not only weakened time and space in order to bring the two separate worlds together so I could banish the people of the Imperial Order to that other world, it also weakened the veil as well. In a way, what I did with the separate worlds coming together in time and space, is the same thing that is also happening with the world of life and the world of the dead.

“The only difference is that the veil is a much larger force because it separates existence from nonexistence, so it has taken it longer to begin to show the signs of this weakening. That, and also, since the underworld is involved, that time factor is distorted. Time is meaningless in the underworld.

“That weakening of the veil is what allowed Hannis Arc to bring Emperor Sulachan back from the dead. That weakening of the veil is also what enables Sulachan to reanimate the dead.” Richard tapped a finger against the scroll. “Hannis Arc learned what the results of the weakening would be from these scrolls. The creators of these scrolls learned what would take place from prophecy, which they extracted from the underworld. In turn, the scrolls predict what Hannis Arc and Sulachan would do as a result of what I did with the power of Orden.”

Kahlan was having trouble fitting it all together and even more trouble grasping all the implications. “Dear spirits” was all she could say.

“Yes, but all things work toward balance, and that is the important takeaway from what the scrolls are saying. Events can fall off toward one side of that balance or toward the other because the contrasting sides work toward balancing each other.”

“How?” was all she could ask.

“The balance to the harm that Hannis Arc has the potential to do is that the weakening of the power of the veil because of this spectral fold also allowed me to travel to the underworld in order to send your spirit back to the world of life. It allowed Nicci to come into the underworld to get help for me. It allowed Zedd and all the others already there to help find me and free me from Sulachan’s dark ones. And it allowed me to return to the world of life.

“It balanced out the things Hannis Arc does because I am the force meant to balance what he and Sulachan are doing. The balance to Sulachan coming back to the world of life is me being able to return as well to be here to fight him.

“And, in a larger sense, it’s all part of a greater balance. There is prophecy in the Cerulean scrolls–”

“Wait–I thought you said that prophecy came from the world of the dead. How can the scrolls contain prophecy if they predate Regula and thus prophecy being in this world?”

“Because they draw information directly from the world of the dead as well as the world of life. They are celestial scrolls, so, in a manner of speaking, they draw from the void of the night sky as well as the daytime sky. In other words, they draw from both sides, from all there is on both sides of the veil, from both worlds.

“Just as wizards of old had Additive Magic as well as Subtractive Magic, the gifted back then, the ones who wrote these scrolls, had abilities beyond what you or I can fathom. They had not only regular Additive and Subtractive Magic, but it was combined with the opposite of occult magic. They wielded power in both worlds. They drew from a world where time exists, and from where it doesn’t.

“Cerulean, meaning ‘celestial,’ also refers to the star shift, which is this spectral fold initiated by the use of the power of Orden. I’m the one who initiated its spark.”

“You mean it’s kind of like starting a campfire to keep you warm and cook your dinner, and that much is good, but then a big gust of wind comes up and blows sparks everywhere and catches the entire forest around you on fire, so what started off good turns into something very bad.”

Richard grimaced a little. “That’s one way to put it. But in this instance, the entire world is on fire.”

Kahlan pressed her hands to the sides of her head. “This is giving me a headache.”

Richard grunted a brief chuckle. “You don’t know the half of it. I’ve only scratched the surface. It’s a lot more complex than I’m making it sound, and so far I’ve only given you a few of the meaningful highlights.”

Kahlan lowered her hands and stared at him. “You mean to say that there’s more?”

“I’m afraid so,” Richard said. “And it gets worse.”