Phantom

  "Well, where were the soldiers! What were they doing during all this!"

  "The skulls on stakes were the soldiers garrisoned there. Every last one of them, I'm afraid."

  Jagang cast a look at Kahlan, as if she were somehow responsible for the catastrophe. His glare told her that he somehow associated the trouble with her. He crushed the paper in his fist as he returned his attention to the messenger.

  "What about the Brothers of the Order? Did they say what happened and why they weren't able to stop it?"

  "There were six Brothers assigned to Taka-Mar, Excellency. They were impaled on posts placed in the middle of different roads into the city. Each had been skinned from the neck down. A cap of office was left on each man's head so that all could know who they were.

  "The masses of people who fled the city say that the attack came at night. As terrified as they were, we weren't able to get much useful information from them, other than that the men who attacked them were soldiers of the D'Haran Empire. They were all sure of that much. Every one of these people has lost their home.

  "The attackers made no move to slaughter the escaping refugees if they offered no armed resistance, but they made it quite clear to the fleeing people that they intended to lay waste to all of the Old World and anyone who supports the Imperial Order.

  "The soldiers told the people that it is the Order and their beliefs that has brought this strife upon them, and who will bring them and their land to ruin. The soldiers vowed that they would haunt the people of the Old World into their graves and then into the darkest corners of the underworld if they did not give up the teachings of the Order and their belligerent ways that flowed from those teachings."

  Kahlan only realized that she was smiling when Jagang rounded on her and backhanded her hard enough to knock her from her feet. She knew that he was going to beat her bloody that night.

  She didn't care. It was worth it to hear what she had just heard. She couldn't stop smiling.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 55

  Nicci pulled her cloak tighter around herself as she leaned one shoulder up against the great stone merlon. She peered down through the crenellation to the road far below, watching the four riders making their way up the mountain toward the Keep. They were still quite a distance, but she thought she had a good idea who they were.

  Nicci yawned as she looked out over the city of Aydindril below, and the vast carpet of forests all around. The vivid colors of autumn were beginning to fade. Looking at the trees spreading up onto the slopes of the surrounding mountains, and how they so boldly heralded the change of seasons, made her think about Richard. He loved the trees. Nicci had come to love them, too, because they reminded her of him.

  She saw the trees in a different light for other reasons as well. They marked the turn of time, the passing of seasons, the change of patterns that were part of her world now, too, because of their connection to all the things she had been studying in The Book of Life. It was all intricately interconnected—how the power of Orden worked, and how that power functioned through its connection to the world of life. The world, the seasons, the stars, the position of the moon, were parts of the equation, all parts of what contributed to and governed the power of Orden. The more she studied and the more she learned, the more she felt that pulse of time and life that was all around her.

  She had also come to recognize with complete clarity that Richard had memorized a false key.

  She never made the point to Zedd. It seemed unimportant for the present. It was also a difficult case to make. It wasn't so much what The Book of Life said, but how it said it. The book was in another language, and not just High D'Haran. While it was written in High D'Haran, the true language of the book was its interconnection to the power invoked through it. The formulas, spells, and procedures were only one aspect.

  In many ways it reminded her of how Richard spoke so convincingly of the language of symbols and emblems. She was coming to understand what he meant by seeing it for herself all laid out in The Book of Life. She was coming to see the lines and angles in certain formulas as a language all their own. She was beginning to truly grasp what Richard meant.

  The Book of Life carried meaning that had forced Nicci to look at the world of life in a new way—in a way that very much reminded her of the way Richard had always looked at the world, through a prism of excitement, wonder, and love of life. In a way it was a profound recognition of the precise nature of things, an appreciation of things for what they were, not for what people imagined of them.

  In part, that was because The Book of Life was not just Additive, but Subtractive Magic in the same way that death was part of the process of life. It dealt with the whole. For that reason, Nicci couldn't explain it to Zedd; he didn't possess the ability to use Subtractive Magic. Without that ability, a constituent part of what was needed to understand The Book of Life was missing. She could explain the formulas, lay out the procedures, show him the spells, but much of it he could only observe through the filter of his limited ability. While he could intellectually understand some of it, he couldn't actually perform what was involved.

  It was something like the difference between hearing about love, understanding the depth of such feelings, grasping how it affected people, but never having actually experienced it. Without that experience, it was only academic, sterile.

  Until you felt the magic, you didn't know it.

  It was in that sense that Nicci had come to know that Richard had memorized a false key. She had been right, before, in that if the person who put the boxes in play failed to use the key properly, the boxes would be destroyed along with the one who put them in play. But it was more than that simple statement. There was the whole complex nature of the processes involved in using the boxes that demonstrated that concept in ways that the words only presented in a simplified, condensed manner.

  Through the mechanisms in the book, she could glimpse how the power functioned. By understanding that function on a profound level, she could see how the magic, if invoked, needed and used the key for completion. Through grasping that process, she could see how if the key was used improperly the boxes themselves were inescapably destroyed along with the person making the fatal mistake. The magic simply would not allow such a breach to go uncompleted.

  It would be like tossing a rock and without any outside influence or intervention having it float in midair rather than fall back to the ground. It simply would not happen. In the same way, the magic of Orden had laws of its identity. By the way it functioned, by those laws of its identity, it had to destroy the boxes if the key was not used properly. The rock has to fall.

  When Richard used his memory of what he believed was The Book of Counted Shadows, he changed it in order to trick Darken Rahl into opening the wrong box. But it had only been the wrong box named in a clever simulation that seemed as if it had meaning to The Book of Life. In fact, such a book was only a shrewd fake, a false key. Had it been real, and misused in such a way, the boxes would no longer exist.

  A false key, a clever fake, simply could not trigger the power of Orden to destroy the boxes, but the real key, if used in the fashion that Richard had used it, would have caused the entire structure of spell to collapse in on itself, taking the boxes with it.

  The boxes of Orden, after all, had been created for the purpose of countering the Chainfire spell. To misuse the key meant that someone without the proper intention and knowledge was trying to gain access to Orden's power, in essence tampering with the purpose for which it had been created. The Book of Life made it all too clear within the structure of the spell-forms that, as a safeguard, if everything was not done correctly, namely completed with the key in the exact, prescribed manner, the formulas and spells would self-destruct—not altogether unlike the way in which Richard had shut down the verification web, collapsing it, to save Nicci.

  Richard had memorized a false key, that was the truth of it.

  "What is it?" came Zedd's voice.

&n
bsp; Nicci looked back over her shoulder to see the old wizard marching across the vast rampart. She knew that she had to set aside the things she had been considering. Telling Zedd about the false key now would only cause him to want to argue. Arguing with Zedd would serve no purpose.

  Richard was the one who really needed to know that the key he possessed was false.

  "Four riders," Nicci told him.

  Zedd came to a halt at the wall. He peered down at the road and grunted to indicate that he saw them.

  "Looks like Tom and Friedrich to me," Cara said. "They must have found someone sneaking around."

  "I don't think so," Nicci said. "They hardly look like prisoners. I can see the glint of steel. The man is carrying weapons. Tom would have disarmed anyone he thought was a threat. Besides, the other one looks like a little girl."

  "Rachel?" Zedd asked, frowning as he leaned out farther, trying to see better between the trees far down the road. It would not be many more days until those golden-brown leaves were gone for the season. "Do you really think it could be her?"

  "That's my guess," Nicci said.

  He turned and appraised her critically. "You look terrible."

  "Thank you," she said. "Just what a woman likes to hear from a gentleman."

  He huffed a dismissal of his rude manners. "When's the last time you got any sleep?"

  Nicci yawned again. "I don't know. Last summer, when I came back from the People's Palace with that book?"

  He made a face at her rather poor attempt at humor. She didn't know why she tried to be funny with him. Zedd could make people laugh just by grunting. Whenever she said anything she thought was rather amusing, people just stared at her, the way Cara was doing.

  "How is it coming?" he asked.

  Nicci knew what he meant. She pulled some hair back off her face, holding it back from the grasp of the wind. "I could use your help with some star charts and angle calculations. It might speed things up if I didn't have to do those myself. I could go on to some of the other translations and problems."

  Zedd laid a hand tenderly on her back, giving her a gentle rub that conveyed a personal, comforting warmth. "On one condition."

  "What's that?" she asked as she yawned again.

  "You get some sleep."

  Nicci smiled as she nodded. "All right, Zedd." She gestured, pointing with her chin. "First I think we had better get down there to see who our guests are."

  They were just coming out the big door of the Keep at the side entrance with the paddock when the riders came under the arched opening in the wall.

  Tom and Friedrich were escorting Chase and Rachel. Rachel's hair was chopped short, rather than long the way it had been, and Chase looked to be in surprisingly good health for a man who had been stabbed with the Sword of Truth.

  "Chase!" Zedd shouted. "You're alive!"

  "Well, it's hard to ride a horse upright when you're dead."

  Cara chuckled. Nicci glanced at her, wondering where the woman's sudden appreciation for humor had come from.

  "Found them returning," Tom said. "First people we've seen out there in months."

  "It was good to see Rachel back," Friedrich said. The older man regarded the girl with a grin, showing how much he really meant it.

  Zedd caught Rachel as she slipped from the saddle while Cara took the reins of the horse.

  "My, but you're getting heavy," Zedd told her.

  "Chase rescued me," Rachel said. "He was so brave. You should have seen him. He killed a hundred men all by himself."

  "A hundred! My, my, what an accomplishment."

  "You stabbed one in the leg for me," Chase said as he swung down out of his saddle. "Otherwise I'd only have gotten ninety-nine."

  Rachel kicked her legs, eager to be put down. "Zedd, I brought something important with me."

  Once on the ground, she untied a leather bag hanging right behind her saddle. She brought it to the granite steps and set it down, then undid the drawstring.

  When she pushed back the leather covering, darkness came out into the crisp late-autumn daylight. To Nicci, it felt like looking into the inky obscurity of Jagang's eyes.

  "Rachel," Zedd said in astonishment, "where did you get this?"

  "A man, Samuel, who had Richard's sword had it. He stabbed Chase and took me with him. Then he gave it to a witch woman named Six, and to Violet, the queen of Tamarang, though I don't think she's queen anymore.

  "You can't believe how evil Six is."

  "I think I can imagine," Zedd told her.

  Having a little trouble following the story, he lifted the leather back a little for a better look inside.

  Staring at one of the boxes of Orden sitting on the steps before her, Nicci felt as if her heart were in her throat. After the weeks and weeks of study of the book that went with the boxes, to actually see one was startling. Theory was one thing, but to see the reality of what this object represented was altogether something else.

  "I couldn't let them have it," Rachel told Zedd. "So when I got a chance to escape I stole it and took it with me."

  Zedd ruffled her chopped-off blond hair. "You did good, little one. I always knew you were special."

  Rachel hugged the wizard around the neck. "Six made Violet draw pictures of Richard. It scared me to see what they were doing."

  "In a cave?" Zedd asked. When Rachel nodded, he glanced up at Nicci. "That explains a lot."

  Nicci took a step closer. "Was Richard there? Did you see him?"

  Rachel shook her head. "No. Six left one day. When she finally came back she told Violet that she had been bringing him back, but the Imperial Order captured him."

  "The Imperial Order…" Zedd said.

  Nicci tried to imagine what was worse, the witch woman having Richard in her clutches, or the Imperial Order capturing him.

  She guessed that what was the worst was Richard stripped of his gift, his sword, and being in the hands of the Order.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 56

  Kahlan pulled her cloak tighter around herself as she walked beside the emperor, his constant, compliant companion. It was not by choice, of course, but by force, whether applied or implied. At night she slept on the carpet beside his bed, a constant reminder of where she would end up. During the day she remained always at his side, like his dog on a leash. Her leash, though, was an iron collar with which he could bring her to heel at any time.

  She could not imagine what could engender such hatred for her, what could have given rise to his burning need to bring punishment down on her for the sins he saw in all his enemies. Whatever she had done to earn his hatred, he deserved it.

  When a gust of bitter cold wind ripped through the encampment, Kahlan hid the side of her face behind her cloak. Men turned their faces away from the blast of grit carried in the wind. With autumn rapidly drawing to an end, winter would soon be upon them. Kahlan didn't think it was going to be at all pleasant out on the open plain around the plateau that held the People's Palace, but she also knew that with this bone in his teeth, Jagang wasn't going to let it go for anything. He was nothing if not tenacious.

  There was supposed to be another copy of The Book of Counted Shadows hidden somewhere within that plateau, and Jagang meant to have it.

  Out on the Azrith Plain, the construction ground onward. It had been going on throughout the autumn, and she knew it would go on into winter, all winter if necessary, until it was complete. If, that was, the ground beneath them didn't freeze solid. Kahlan suspected that he had plans if that were to happen—probably fires, if needed, to keep the dirt thawed. She supposed, too, that if it remained dry, the ground could still be dug even if it was freezing.

  There was no way to breach the great inner door into the plateau, and the road up the outside had quickly proven worthless for an attack by such vast numbers of men.

  Jagang had a solution to the predicament.

  He intended to construct a great, ramped road which would allow his army to march right up to the walls of t
he palace atop the plateau. He had told his officers that once they reached the walls, siege machines could be used to batter their way through the walls. First, though, they had to get up there.

  To that end, out beyond the vast encampment, closer to the plateau, the army was constructing the ramp. The width of the ramp was staggering. They needed it wide for two reasons, both equally important. They needed a ramp wide enough to eventually support an assault massive enough that it couldn't be turned back by the defenders. Just as important, the plateau towered above the Azrith Plain. For the ramp to reach that height, the base had to be monumental lest the whole thing collapse. They had to, in essence, build a small mountain up against the plateau in order to reach the top. Tenacious, indeed.

  The distance they had to their goal, from where they had started, was daunting. Because of the height, it required great length so that men and equipment could eventually be marched and rolled up the roadway they were building up to the very walls of the People's Palace.

  It seemed at first to be a crazy idea, an impossible project, but what could be accomplished with millions of men who had nothing else to do and a driven emperor who cared nothing about their well-being was nothing short of astonishing. Every moment there was light, and sometimes by torchlight, long, snaking files of men either carried containers of dirt and rock to the site of the ever-growing ramp or dug up great mounds of supplies. Rock was mixed with the finer soil to make it stable. Other men had simple, weighted tampers to pack the new dirt as it was dumped.

  Nearly all the men in the camp were engaged in the enterprise. Though the task was daunting, the progress made by so many men was continual. Inexorably, the ramp continued to grow. Of course, the higher it got, the longer it was going to take, because it would require so much more material.