Richard was sick and tired of being driven by events. He was at his wits end with not understanding what was going on, with always feeling like he was one step behind the rest of the world and two steps behind whatever had happened to Kahlan. He was getting angry that everyone was telling him what to do and no one was interested in what was of paramount importance to him. They didn’t even want to let him decide his own fate. They thought prophecy had already decided for him.
It had not.
He needed to find out the truth of what had happened to Kahlan. He needed to find Kahlan, period. He was fed up with wasting time on what prophecy, along with any number of people, thought he ought to be doing. Anyone who was not helping him was, in reality, holding him back from something vitally important.
“I have no responsibility to live up to what anyone else expects of me,” he said to Ann as he picked up the small book Nathan had brought with him.
Ann and Nathan stared in surprise.
He felt Nicci’s reassuring hand on the small of his back. She may not believe in his memory of Kahlan, but at least she had helped him see that he had to be true to his principles. She wouldn’t allow him to lose by default. She had been a valued friend when he needed one the most.
The only other person he knew who would stand by him in that way, stand up to him in that way, was Kahlan.
He thumbed past all the blank pages in the book Nathan had brought. Richard was curious to see if there was more that might change the picture, if they were only telling him what they wanted him to believe. He also would like to find something—anything—that would help him understand what was going on.
And something was going on. Zedd’s explanation of the prophecy worm sounded airtight, but something about it bothered Richard. It explained the missing text in the books of prophecy in a way that suited what these people wanted to believe. It was too convenient and, worse, it was too much of a coincidence.
Coincidence always made Richard suspicious.
Nicci had a good point as well; it seemed just a little too convenient that the body buried down at the Confessors’ Palace would have a ribbon with Kahlan’s name embroidered on it…. Just in case there was any doubt, should someone dig up the body?
After blank page upon blank page, Richard found the writing. It was exactly as Nathan had read it.
In the year of the cicadas, when the champion of sacrifice and suffering, under the banner of both mankind and the Light finally splits his swarm, 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. 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.
There were several things about the passage that puzzled Richard. For one thing, the reference to cicadas. It seemed a lowly creature to be worthy of prophetic mention, to say nothing of such a central role in the—purportedly—most important prophecy in three thousand years. He supposed that it could make sense that it was a key that helped set the chronology, but, from what others had told him, prophecy never went out of its way to set chronology, making it one of prophecy’s most difficult issues.
It also troubled him that this prophecy, so distant in so many ways from the other he had read at the Palace of the Prophets, would also refer to him in High D’Haran as fuer grissa ost drauka. He supposed that it could be, as Zedd had suggested, that such a linkage meant it was important.
But the link to the prophecy Richard had seen at the Palace of the Prophets with the reference to fuer grissa ost drauka was strongly connected to something else: the boxes of Orden.
In the old prophecy that named Richard the bringer of death, the word death meant three different things, depending on how it was used: the bringer of the underworld, the world of the dead; the bringer of spirits, spirits of the dead; and the bringer of death, meaning to kill. Each meaning was different, but all three were intended.
The second meaning had to do with how he used the Sword of Truth, and the third simply that he’d had to kill people. But the first meaning involved the boxes of Orden.
He supposed that in the context of the prophecy at hand, the third meaning seemed the obvious, that he had to lead the army and kill the enemy, so calling him fuer grissa ost drauka did make sense. Yet again, things seemed awfully convenient.
All the convenient explanations and coincidences were making Richard more than just a little suspicious. With Kahlan’s disappearance involved, he felt that there had to be more to what was going on.
He turned to the page ahead of the passage, and then the one preceding it, checking. They were blank.
“I have a problem with this,” he said, looking up at all the eyes watching him.
“And what would that be?” Ann asked as she folded her arms. She used the same tone of voice she would have if she’d been talking to an inexperienced, untrained, ignorant boy freshly brought to the Palace of the Prophets to be trained in the use of his gift.
“Well, there’s nothing around it,” he said. “It’s all blank.”
Nathan covered his face with a hand while Ann threw her arms in the air in a gesture of baffled outrage. “Of course not! They’ve vanished, along with a great deal more. That’s what we’ve just been talking about. That’s why this one is so important!”
“But without knowing the context, you can’t really say that this one is important, now, can you? To understand any information one must know the context.”
Contrary to Ann and Nathan’s agitation, Zedd smiled to himself at lessons taught long ago and remembered.
Nathan looked up. “What does that have to do with this prophecy?”
“Well, for all we know, there might have been mitigating text right before this, or something right after that went on to dismiss this. With the copy missing how are we to know? This prophecy could have been superseded by just about anything.”
Zedd smiled. “The boy has a point.”
“He’s not a boy,” Ann growled. “He’s a man, and the Lord Rahl, the head of the D’Haran Empire that he himself pulled together to fight the Imperial Order, and he’s supposed to lead those forces. All of our lives depend on him doing so.”
As Richard flipped back through the book, he saw writing that he hadn’t seen the first time. He paged back to it.
“Here’s something else that didn’t vanish,” he said.
“What?” Nathan asked with incredulity as he twisted around to look. “There was nothing else. I’m sure of it.”
“Right here,” Richard said, tapping a finger on the words. “It says, ‘Here we come.’ What could that mean? And why did it not vanish?”
“‘Here we come’?” Nathan’s face distorted in a look of confusion. “I never saw that before.”
Richard turned back more pages. “Look. Here it is again. Same thing. ‘Here we come.’”
“I could have missed it once, perhaps,” Nathan said, “but there is no way I could have missed a second one. You must be wrong.”
“No, look,” Richard said, turning the book to show the prophet. He went backward through the book, turning blank pages until he came to writing. “Here it is again. A whole page of the same thing written over and over.”
Nathan’s jaw hung in speechless astonishment. Nicci peered over Richard’s shoulder. Zedd rushed around next to him to see the writing in the book. Even the two Mord-Sith came to have a look.
Richard turned a page forward, to what a moment before had been blank. There, down the page, was the same sentence written over and over and over.
Here we come.
“I watched you turning it back.” Nicci’s silken voice carried a clear undertone of disquiet. “I know that page was blank an instant ago.”
Goose bumps prickled up Richard’s arms. The hair at the nape of his neck lifted.
H
e looked up and saw something dark coalescing out of the deep shadows beneath the beam of sunlight coming from the high window at the end of the room.
Too late, he remembered Shota’s warning not to read prophecy, that if he did the blood beast would be able to find him.
He reached for his sword.
His sword wasn’t there.
Chapter 53
With a wail that sounded like the condemned souls of a thousand sinners, tumbling angles and swirls and streaks of darkness materialized out of the darkness itself, like shadows coming to life.
As the tables at the far end of the room were violently upended, the dark tangle exploded through them. Splinters of wood of every size flew through the air.
Tables shattered in succession as the beast born of a clutch of shadows came raging across the room toward Richard.
The sound of popping and splintering wood boomed through the dusty air of the library.
Cara and Rikka both sprang in front of Richard, each with her Agiel in her fist. He knew all too well what would happen should they encounter the beast. The thought of Cara being hurt like that again ignited his rage. Before they could charge toward the dark mass smashing through the heavy library tables, he snatched them both by their long blond braids and with a roar of anger tossed them back.
“Don’t get in its way!” he yelled at both Mord-Sith.
Ann and Nathan both cast their arms toward the thing, unleashing magic that made the room shimmer as if seen through the waves of heat over a roaring fire. Richard knew that they were compressing the very air itself in an attempt to drive back the attack. Their efforts had no effect on the knot of shadows that rolled and twisted through solid wood as it came across the room. They all backed away, trying to keep distance between them and the threat.
Richard ducked as a long board—the entire edge of one of the shattered tables—whipped past his head and smashed against a post. One of the lamps broke open, sending flaming oil splashing across the ancient carpets, setting them ablaze. Gray smoke billowed up behind them as they faced the beast charging for Richard.
Zedd unleashed a fiery bolt of lightning that passed right through the center of the dark mass of disorder as if it were not even there, only to hit the bookshelves against the far wall. Books and flaming paper flew up into the air. Great clouds of dust and smoke boiled up as the room filled with the sound of the cacophonous blast.
Terrible wails and keening, like the howls of the doomed through an open doorway down into the depths of the underworld, came from the beast as it came ever onward, crashing through the thick mahogany posts. Lamps spun through the air as they were flung aside, their silver reflectors casting flickering light around the room and creating shadows that gathered into the beast as it grew more dense, and darker yet.
Magic being hastily conjured by Ann and Nathan wasn’t visible to Richard, but it seemed to pass right through the beast, as if it were made of nothing more than it appeared, shadows all jumbled together, and yet the knot of darkness crashed through solid wooden tables and posts, splintering them as the thing advanced across the room. Twisting beams squealed and boards shrieked under the stress as another post snapped. The edge of the balcony sagged, then dropped several feet before hanging drunkenly. Another post exploded as it was pushed past its capacity to bend by the onward rush of the dark menace. The edge of the balcony dropped several more feet. Bookshelves teetered on the tilting floor and then toppled, sending an avalanche of books plunging down into the main room.
Amidst all the confusion, destruction, and noise, as he backed across the room, watching the approaching menace, trying to think of how to counter it, Richard found his shirt grabbed at the shoulder. With surprising strength, Nicci rammed him through the open doorway. Tom, standing guard in the hallway, snatched Richard’s other arm and helped pull him out of the library as Cara and Rikka followed, guarding his retreat.
In the room, the beast continued onward, smashing anything in its way as it turned toward the doorway, toward Richard.
Ann, Nathan, and Zedd all summoned forces Richard couldn’t even see, but he could sense them by the hum in the air and the radiating waves of a queazy feelings it gave him in the pit of his stomach. He could feel the air being buffeted as magic was conjured and cast.
None of it did any good. They might as well have been attacking shadows.
Nicci turned back to the room from the doorway and lifted a fist toward the snarl of shadows tumbling toward her. The sudden explosion made everyone wince and duck as she unleased a bolt of power that was both blindingly bright and icy dark laced together into one terrible blast. The discharge of thundering power rocked the Keep, shaking the floor and rising dust from every crack and corner. The twisting rope of destruction exploded through the beast, spraying apart. Showers of sparks rained down as bookshelves flew asunder. Wood, debris, and hundreds of books along with sheafs of paper were blasted into the air, leaving fluttering pages to drift through the pandemonium. It looked like a blizzard of paper had been turned loose in the room.
The deafening discharge of power from Nicci that rocked the Keep also sliced right through the stone walls like flaming pitch through paper. Through the jagged slashes cut in solid stone, ribbons of dusty bluish sunlight suddenly penetrated into the room. The contrast of harsh light against the otherwise dark room made it all the harder to see the murky collection of shade and shadow as it moved through the confusion of destruction.
Everyone covered their ears as the terrible wail that sounded like lost souls increased to a terrifying pitch, as if the power Nicci had set upon it had reached down into the underworld to sear them in their dark sanctuary.
While it didn’t look to have done much to stop the shadowy beast, it did seem to get its attention. Nothing else had.
Nicci ran out through the door and shoved Richard, starting him moving down the hallway. He was reluctant to leave Zedd to such a threat, but Richard knew that the thing was after him and not his grandfather. Zedd would be safer if Richard ran. He didn’t think, though, that running was necessarily the solution to his safety.
“Stay out of its way,” Richard told Tom. “It will rip you to shreds. That goes for you two as well,” he said to Cara and Rikka as they shepherded him down the hall.
“We understand, Lord Rahl,” Cara said.
“How do we kill it?” Tom asked as they ran sideways down the hall, keeping a wary eye toward the library.
“You can’t,” Nicci answered. “It’s already dead.”
“Oh great,” he muttered as he turned back to help Nicci, Cara, and Rikka make sure that Richard kept moving. Richard didn’t really think that he needed any physical encouragement. The wails of the dead were enough to urge him to run.
Flashes of light along with angry shrieks came from the doorway as those in the room still fought to destroy, or at least contain, what looked like nothing so much as living shadows. Richard knew that they were wasting their time. It was made in part with Subtractive Magic and they had no weapon against that. The thing had already proven that much to them, but they were probably trying to distract it so as to give Richard time to get away. So far, it hadn’t proven itself susceptible to such tactics. Shota had told him as much.
At an intersection, Richard took the paneled hall to the right. The rest of them followed. At intervals they passed open areas with chairs and couches and dark lamps. Such spots must have once hosted warm conversation and companionship.
As they turned and ran down a wider corridor with tan, troweled plaster walls and golden oak floors, a wall ahead exploded. Dust and debris billowed toward them. Richard slid to a stop on the polished wood floor and reversed direction as the jumble of shadows emerged from the white cloud of dust. Everyone else had previously pushed him on ahead, so that now, having had to turn around, he was at the rear as the beast rapidly closed the distance.
The dark snarl looked like it had collected yet more random shadows along the way—small angled shadows, broad leafy
shade, inky dark corners, dark haze of dusk—and crumbled them all together like wadding up paper. The way the shadows folded back on themselves made swirling black shapes that constantly eddied over and under and through one another. It was dizzying to watch, even for the brief glimpses he took as he ran.
And yet, it was so insubstantial that when he glanced over his shoulder he could see light from windows far off down the hall right through the thing. Even so, as they raced around corners, the beast would sometimes go wide and graze the walls, and when it did, it ripped apart the wood, or plaster, or stone as easily as a bull going through bramble.
Richard had no idea how to fight a cluster of crumbled shadows that could tear through solid stone without even slowing.
He recalled Victor’s men in the woods, so violently ripped to shreds in mere moments. He wondered if this was the thing that had slashed through them, if this was the fate they faced that terrible morning when the blood beast came looking for Richard.
Two wizards and two sorceresses had now tried to stop Jagang’s conjured beast without any practical effect. And Nicci was more than a mere sorceress. She had been taught the sinister art of how to use Subtractive Magic in exchange for dark oaths that Richard feared to think about. Even that hadn’t stopped the beast, although it did seem to get a reaction.
Nicci stopped and turned to the dusky collection of shadows careening down the paneled oak halls behind them. She looked like she intended to make a stand. As he caught up with her, Richard, without slowing, planted his shoulder into her middle, knocking the wind from her as he lifted her clear of the floor, carrying her over his shoulder like a sack of grain as he ran.
The halls all around lit in a blinding flash of white light as Nicci—having quickly recovered her breath—cast magic behind even as she was being carted down the hall. The floor shook, nearly knocking Richard from his feet as he ran. Blackness, like the flash of light, caught them and swept past for an instant as Nicci unleashed terrible power at the thing chasing them. By the haunting keening that echoed through the halls, Richard thought that Nicci’s effort must have done something.