Phantom (64 page)

Richard watched through the bars covering the small window in the side of his iron cage as the wagon bounced through the sprawling encampment.

“Ruben, would you take a look at that,” Johnrock said. Hands gripping the bars, he was grinning like a man on holiday at what he saw.

Richard glanced over at his cagemate. “Quite the sight,” he agreed.

“Think there’s anyone here who can beat us?”

“I expect we’ll find out sooner or later,” Richard said.

“I’ll tell you, Ruben, I’d like to get a crack at cracking some heads on the emperor’s team.” The man gave Richard a sidelong glance. “Think if we beat the emperor’s team they’ll let us go home?”

“Are you serious?”

The man huffed a laugh. “It was a joke, Ruben.”

“A poor one,” Richard said.

“I suppose,” Johnrock said with a sigh. “Still, they say the emperor’s team is the best. I’d not like to feel that whip again.”

“Once was enough for me, too.”

The two of them had shared the iron cage ever since Richard had been captured back in Tamarang. Johnrock had already been a captive, taken before Richard. He was a big man, a miller, from the southern reaches of the Midlands. Just before the supply train had moved through his little village, soldiers on lead patrol had arrived and thought that, because of his size, Johnrock might make a good addition to the team.

Richard didn’t know Johnrock’s real name. He’d said everyone just called him Johnrock because of his size and how hard his muscles were from carrying sacks of grain. He knew Richard as Ruben Rybnik. Even though Johnrock was a fellow captive, Richard didn’t think it would be safe to let anyone know his real name.

Johnrock had told Richard that he’d broken the arms of three of the
soldiers trying to capture him before they took him down. Richard said only that they had pointed arrows at him, and so he’d given up. Johnrock had appeared slightly embarrassed for what he saw as Richard’s lack of mettle.

Despite his rather goofy, lopsided grin, which he wore often and despite his circumstances, Johnrock had a quick wit and an analytical mind. He had come to like Richard because Richard was the only one who didn’t assume he was stupid and didn’t treat him as such. Johnrock was anything but stupid.

He had eventually decided that he’d been wrong about Richard’s lack of bravery and had asked to be his right wingman in the Ja’La games. Wingman was a rather thankless position that exposed him to charges and bruises from the opponents. Johnrock saw the value in such a position because it allowed him to break the heads of men from the Order and he was cheered for doing so. Even though he was a big man, Johnrock was quick—a combination that made him a perfect man for Richard’s right wing. He loved being close to Richard during play so he could see Richard vent his rage on the Ja’La field in a way that the other teams didn’t expect. Together, the two of them had become a formidable pair on the field. It was never spoken, but they both knew that the other valued the chance to extract a little bit of revenge on those who had captured them.

The camp beyond the iron bars seemed to go on endlessly. Richard was sickened to see where they were—out on the Azrith Plain around the People’s Palace. He didn’t want to look anymore, and sat back down, leaning up against the other side of the box, resting a wrist over his knee as the wagon swayed and bucked through the endless horde.

He was relieved that the D’Haran forces were long gone, or they would have by now been annihilated for nothing. Instead, those men would by now have had enough time to make it down to the Old World. They were probably already laying waste to the place.

Richard hoped they stuck to the plan—fast and fierce attacks, keep separated and hit everywhere in the Old World, sparing nothing. He didn’t want anyone in the Old World to feel safe. There needed to be consequences to the actions that flowed from their beliefs.

The men in the camp all watched the wagon train passing among
them. It looked to be welcome, probably for the food it brought. Richard hoped they got their fill. Knowing the orders he had given, it was likely to be one of the last supply trains to leave the Old World. Without supplies, out on the Azrith Plain, with winter about to descend upon them, Jagang’s army was going to find itself unexpectedly falling on hard times.

Nearly all the men they passed near to stared into Richard’s cage, trying to get a glimpse of him. He expected that there were already rumors spreading through the camp about him and his Ja’La team. He had learned when they stopped to play teams at army posts along the way that their reputation preceded them. These men were fans of the game and looked forward to the tournaments, especially since there would no doubt be heightened interest because of the arrival of Richard’s team—or Ruben’s team, as it was informally known. The team really belonged to the commander with the snake face. There was little else to entertain these soldiers, other than the women captives. Richard tried not to think about that, because it only made him angry, and there was nothing he could do about it in his cage.

One day, after a particularly violent game that they had won handily, Johnrock admitted to being confused as to why Richard would have allowed himself to so easily be captured. Richard finally told him the truth of what happened. Johnrock at first didn’t believe him. Richard told him to ask snake-face some time. He did and found that Richard was telling the truth. Johnrock greatly valued liberty and thought it was worth fighting for. That was when Johnrock asked to be Richard’s right wingman.

Where Richard had once channeled his rage through the Sword of Truth, he now channeled it through the broc and the play of the Ja’La game. Even his own team, as much as they liked him leading them, to a degree feared him. Except Johnrock. Johnrock didn’t fear Richard. He shared Richard’s way of playing—as if the game were life-or-death.

For some of their opponents made up of Imperial Order troops who thought too much of themselves, it had been. It was not at all unusual for players, especially opponents of Richard’s team, to be seriously hurt, or even die during a match. One of the men on Richard’s team had died
during a game. He’d been hit in the head with the heavy broc when he wasn’t looking. It snapped his neck.

Richard remembered walking the streets of Aydindril with Kahlan, watching children play Ja’La. He had given out official balls if they would trade in their heavy brocs for the lighter ones Richard had had made up. He didn’t want them getting hurt just to play a game. Now all those children had fled Aydindril.

“This looks like a bad place for us to be, Ruben,” Johnrock said in a quiet voice as he watched the camp roll past their little window. He sounded uncharacteristically gloomy. “A very bad place for us to be slaves.”

“If you think you’re a slave, then you are a slave,” Richard said.

Johnrock stared back at Richard for a long moment. “Then I’m not a slave, either, Ruben.”

Richard nodded. “Good for you, Johnrock.”

The man went back to watching the endless camp pass before his eyes. He had probably never seen the likes of it in his life. Richard remembered his own wonder when he first left his Hartland woods to discover what was beyond.

“Would you look at that,” Johnrock said in a low voice, staring out through the bars.

Richard didn’t feel like looking. “What is it?”

“A lot of men—soldiers—but not like the rest of the soldiers. These all look the same. Better weapons, better organized. Bigger. They look fierce. Everyone is making way for them.”

Johnrock looked back over his shoulder at Richard. “I bet it’s the emperor come to watch us roll by—come to see the challengers to his team come to the tournaments. From the descriptions I’ve heard, I bet that fellow being guarded by all those big guards in chain mail is Jagang himself.”

Richard went back to the small opening to have a look. He gripped the bars as he put his face close to see better as they passed close to the guards and their charge.

“That looks like it’s probably Emperor Jagang, all right,” Richard told Johnrock.

The emperor was looking the other way, watching some of the other Ja’La teams made up of Imperial Order soldiers. They weren’t locked in
iron boxes in wagons, of course. Jagang was watching them marching proudly in ranks, carrying banners of their team.

And then he saw her.

“Kahlan!”

She turned toward his voice, not knowing where it was coming from. Richard was gripping the bars hard enough to nearly bend them. Even though she wasn’t far, he realized that she probably couldn’t hear him over all the noise. Men all around were cheering for the parade of marching teams.

Her long hair was tumbled down over her cloak. Richard thought his heart would explode it hammered so hard in his chest.

“Kahlan!”

She turned more toward him.

Their eyes met. He was staring right into her green eyes.

When Jagang started to turn around, she immediately turned away, looking off where he was watching. He turned back with her.

And then she was gone, hidden behind men and wagons and horses and tents, disappearing into the distance.

Richard fell back against the wall, gasping.

Johnrock sat down beside him. “Ruben—what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a phantom walking among all those men.”

Richard could only stare, his eyes wide, as he panted.

“It was my wife.”

Johnrock let out a hardy laugh. “You mean you saw the woman you want when we win? The commander says that if we beat the emperor’s team, we’d get to pick one. You see the one you want?”

“It was her….”

“Ruben, you look like a man who just fell in love.”

Richard realized that his smile felt like it might break his face.

“It was her. She’s alive. Johnrock—I wish you could see her. She’s alive. She looks exactly the same. Dear spirits, it was Kahlan. It was her.”

“I think you’d best slow down your breathing, Ruben, or you’re going to pass out before we have a chance to break some heads.”

“We’re going to play the emperor’s team, Johnrock.”

“We got to win a lot of games, first, to have that chance.”

Richard hardly heard the man. He laughed with glee, unable to stop
himself. “It was her. She’s alive.” Richard threw his arms around Johnrock, hugging him tightly. “She’s alive!”

“If you say so, Ruben.”

Kahlan carefully controlled her breathing, trying to get her galloping heart to slow down. She couldn’t understand why she was so shaken. She didn’t know the man in the cage. She had only seen his face briefly as the wagon rolled past, but for some reason it shook her down to her very soul.

The second time the man yelled her name, Jagang acted like he thought he’d heard something. Kahlan had turned back around so that he wouldn’t suspect anything. She didn’t know why that had seemed so desperately important.

That wasn’t true. She did know why. The man was in a cage. If he knew her, Jagang might have hurt him, even killed him.

There was more to it, though. That man knew her. He had to be connected to her past. The past she wanted to forget.

But when she had looked into his gray eyes, everything had changed in a heartbeat. Her numb acceptance had shattered. She no longer wanted her past to be buried. She suddenly wanted to know everything.

The look in that man’s eyes was so profoundly powerful—so filled with something important, something vital—that it drove home to her how important her life was.

Seeing the look in his gray eyes, Kahlan realized that she had to know who she was. Whatever the consequences, whatever the cost, she had to know the truth. She had to have her life back. The truth was the only way.

Jagang’s threats of what he would do to her might be a very real consequence, but she suddenly knew that the real danger was that he was intimidating her into abdicating her life, her will, her existence…into giving herself over to his control. By his threats of what he would do to her once she again knew who she was, he was dictating her life, enslaving her. If she went along with his will, then it was only because she surrendered hers.

She couldn’t allow herself to think that way. Her life meant more than that. She may be his captive, but she was not his slave. A slave was a state of mind. She was not a slave.

She would not surrender her will to him. She would have her life back.
Her life was hers alone and she would have it back. Nothing Jagang could do, nothing he could threaten her with, could take that away from her.

Kahlan felt a tear of joy roll down her cheek.

That man she didn’t even remember had just given her the will to take her life back, the fire to live. It felt like the first real breath she had taken since she had lost her memory.

She only wished she could thank him.

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 for 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.