Wizard's First Rule

  “Giller, Princess Violet is coming here.”

  He turned back, his eyes big. “When?”

  “She said after she has the fitting for her new dress. She’s pretty fussy, so it may take a while, but maybe not. She likes to try jewelry on and look at herself in the mirror.”

  “Curse the spirits,” Giller whispered, “nothing is ever easy.” He turned around again and snatched the Queen’s box off the marble stand.

  “Giller! You mustn’t touch that! It’s the Queen’s!”

  He looked a little mad when he looked down at her. “No! It’s not! Just wait, and I will explain.”

  He set the box down on the stool next to the bread. His hand reached into his robes and pulled out another box. “How’s it look?” With a smile on one side of his mouth, he held the new box toward her.

  “It looks just the same!”

  “Good.” He put it on the stand where the real one had been, then sat down on the floor next to her and the footstool. “Now listen to me very carefully, Rachel. We don’t have much time, and it is very important that you understand.”

  She could tell by the way his face looked that he meant it. She nodded. “I will, Giller.”

  He laid his hand on the box. “This box has magic, and it does not belong to the Queen.”

  She frowned. “It doesn’t? Who does it belong to?”

  “I don’t have time to explain that right now. Maybe after we are away from here. The important thing is that the Queen is a bad person.” Rachel nodded; she knew that was true. “She chops off people’s heads just because she wants to. She doesn’t care about anyone but herself. She has power. Power means she can do whatever she wants. This box has magic and it helps give her power. That is why she took it.”

  “I understand. Like the way the Princess has power, so she can slap me, and chop my hair crooked, and laugh at me.”

  He nodded. “That’s right. Very good, Rachel. Now. There is a man who is even meaner than the Queen. His name is Darken Rahl.”

  “Father Rahl?” She was confused. “Everyone says he’s nice. The Princess says he is the nicest man in the world.”

  “The Princess also says she doesn’t spill gravy on her dresses.” He lifted an eyebrow.

  “That’s a lie.”

  Giller put his hands on her shoulders, real soft. “You listen very carefully. Darken Rahl, Father Rahl, is the meanest man that ever was. He hurts more people than the Queen could even think of. He is so mean that he even kills children. Do you know what that means, to kill someone?”

  She felt sad, and scared. “It means you chop off their head or something, and make them dead.”

  “Yes. And just as the Princess laughs when she slaps you. Darken Rahl laughs when he kills people. You know the way when the Princess is at dinner with all the lords and ladies, she is real nice, and polite? But when she is alone with you, she slaps you?”

  Rachel nodded; she had a lump in her throat. “She doesn’t like them to know she’s really mean.”

  Giller held his finger up. “That’s right! You’re a very bright girl! Well, Father Rahl is the same way. He doesn’t want people to know he is really mean, so he can be very polite, and make it seem like he is the nicest man in the world. Whatever you do, Rachel, you stay away from him, if you can.”

  “I will, for sure.”

  “But if he talks to you, just be polite right back, don’t let him know that you know. You must not let people know all the things you know. That keeps you safe.”

  She smiled. “Like Sara. I don’t let people know about her so they can’t take her away from me. It keeps her safe.”

  He put his arms around her and gave her a quick hug. “The spirits be praised, you are a smart child.” It made her feel really good that he said that. No one ever told her that she was smart. “Now, listen close. This is the important part.”

  She nodded again. “I will, Giller.”

  He put his hand back on the box. “This box has magic. When the Queen gives it to Father Rahl, he will be able to use the magic to hurt even more people. He will chop off a lot more people’s heads. The Queen is a mean person, and wants him to do it, so she is going to give him the box.”

  Her eyes got real big. “Giller! We mustn’t let her give him the box! Or all those people will get their heads chopped off!”

  A big smile spread under his hook nose. He held her chin in his hand. “Rachel, you are the smartest girl I have ever met. You truly are.”

  “We have to hide it, hide the box, like I hide Sara!”

  “And that’s just what we are going to do.” He pointed up at the box he had put on the stand. “That is a fake. That means it’s not the real thing, it’s just pretend, so they will be fooled for a while, and we can get away before they find out the real one is gone.”

  She looked up at the fake box. It looked just like the real one. “Giller, you’re the most clever man I ever did know.”

  His smile went away a little. “I’m afraid, child, that I am too clever for my own good.” His smile came back. “Here is what we are going to do.”

  Giller took the loaf of bread she had stolen from the kitchen and broke it in half. With his big hands, he scooped out some of the insides. Part of it he stuffed in his mouth; his cheeks puffed out, there was so much. He stuffed some in her mouth. She chewed as fast as she could. It was good, still warm. When they finished eating the middle, he took the real box and pushed it into the middle of the bread and put the two halves back together. He held it up for her to look at.

  “What do you think?”

  She made a face. “It’s all cracked. People will know it’s been broken.”

  He shook his head. “Smart. You are really smart. Well, since I’m a wizard, perhaps I could do something about that. What do you think?”

  She nodded. “Maybe.”

  He put the bread in his lap and made his hands go all around in the air over it. He took his hands away and held the bread up in front of her face again. The cracks were gone! It looked just like new!

  “No one will know now for sure.” She giggled.

  “Let’s hope you’re right, child. I have put a wizard’s web, a magic spell, in the bread, to be sure no one will be able to see the magic of the box inside it.”

  He spread the cloth out on top of the stool and put the bread on it, then pulled up all four corners and tied them in the middle on top. He lifted up the bundle by the knots and put it in the palm of his other hand, in front of her. He looked her in the eyes and he didn’t smile; he looked almost sad.

  “Now, here’s the hard part, Rachel. We have to get this box away from here. We can’t hide it in the castle, or it might be found. You remember where I hid your doll, in the garden?”

  She smiled proudly, she remembered. “Third urn on the right.”

  He nodded. “I will hide this there, just like I hid your doll. You must go and get it, just like you did with your doll, and then take it out of the castle.” He leaned a little closer. “You have to do it tonight.”

  She started twisting her finger in the hem of her dress. She started to get tears in her eyes. “Giller, I’m scared to touch the Queen’s box.”

  “I know you’re afraid, child. But remember? It’s not the Queen’s box. You do want to help keep all those people from getting their heads chopped off, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she whined. “But, couldn’t you take it away from the castle?”

  “If I could, I swear to you, Rachel, I would. But I can’t. There are some who watch me, and don’t want me to go out of the castle. If they found me with the box, then Father Rahl would get it, and we can’t have that, now, can we?”

  “No…” Then she got real scared. “Giller, you said you were going to run away with me. You promised.”

  “And I mean to keep that promise, believe me. But it may take a couple of days for me to sneak out of Tamarang. It’s very dangerous for the box to be here another day, and I can’t get it out myself. You must get i
t away. Take it to your secret place, your wayward pine. You wait there for me, until I can cover our escape, and I will come get you.”

  “I guess I can. If you say it’s important, I’ll try.”

  Giller moved up and sat on the stool. He pulled her up with his hands around her waist, and set her on his knee.

  “Rachel, you listen to me. If you live to be a hundred years old, you will never again do anything as important as this. You must be brave, braver than you have ever been before. You must not trust anyone. You must not let anyone get the box. I will come get you in a few days, but if something goes wrong, and I don’t come, you must hide with the box until winter. Then everything will be all right. If I knew of anyone else to help you, I would get them to do it. But I don’t. You are the only one who can do this.”

  She watched him with big eyes. “I’m just little,” she said.

  “That is why you will be safe. Everybody thinks you are a nobody. But that isn’t true. You are the most important person in the world, but you can trick them because they don’t know. You must do this, Rachel. I need your help so much, and so does everyone else. I know you’re smart enough, and brave enough to do it.”

  She could see that his eyes were wet. “I’ll try, Giller. I’ll be brave and do it. You’re the bestest man in the whole world, and if you say to do it, I will.”

  He shook his head. “I have been a very foolish man, Rachel, I have been far from the bestest man in the world. If only I had been wiser before, and remembered the things I was taught, my true duty, the reason I became a wizard in the first place, maybe I wouldn’t have to ask you to do this. But just as this is the most important thing you will ever do, it is also the most important thing I will ever do. We must not fail, Rachel. You must not. No matter what happens, you must not let anyone stop you. Not anyone.”

  He put a finger on each side of her forehead and she felt a safe feeling in her head. She knew she would be able to do it and she would never have to do as the Princess said again. She would be free. Giller suddenly pulled his fingers away.

  “Someone comes,” he whispered. He kissed her head real quick. “Good spirits protect you, Rachel.”

  He stood up and put his back to the wall, behind the door. He slipped the loaf of bread into his robes, and put his finger over his lips. The door opened, and Rachel jumped to her feet. It was Princess Violet. Rachel curtsied. When she came back up, the Princess slapped her, then laughed. Rachel looked down at the ground, and while she rubbed her cheek, holding back the tears, she saw a piece of bread between Princess Violet’s feet. She took a quick glance at Giller, who stood pressed against the wall behind the door. His eyes went to the bread. Quieter than a cat, he bent down and snatched up the bread, put it in his mouth, then slipped out the door behind Princess Violet’s back without her ever seeing him.

  Kahlan held her arms out to him, hands made into fists, the insides of her wrists pressed together, waiting for him to bind them with the rope. Her unblinking eyes stared off at nothing. She had said she wasn’t tired, but Richard surely was—his head pounded so hard it made him feel sick—so she was going to take the first watch. What good her watch was, the way she stared blankly, he didn’t know.

  He held the rope taut between his shaking fists, his mind feeling the last of his hope finally abandoning him. Nothing was changing, nothing was getting any better, as he had hoped; it was one long endless battle with her—she wanting to die, he trying constantly to prevent it.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” he whispered, looking down at her wrists in the light of the small fire. “Kahlan, you may be the one who wishes to die, but it is me you are killing.”

  Her green eyes came up to his; the firelight flickered in them. “Then let me go, Richard. Please, if you care at all for me, then show it. Let me go.”

  He lowered the rope and let it drop. With trembling hands, he slowly pulled her knife from his belt, and looked at it for a minute in the palm of his hand. The glint of the blade was blurred in his vision. He clenched the handle tightly in his fist and jammed the knife in the sheath at her belt.

  “You win. Get out of here. Get out of my sight.”

  “Richard…”

  “I said get out of here!” He pointed back the way they had come. “Go back and let the gars do the job. You may botch it with that knife! I’d hate to think you slipped and didn’t finish it properly. I’d hate to think that after all this, you might not be dead.”

  He turned his back to her and sat on a windfall spruce that lay in front of the fire. She stood watching him in silence, then moved off a few paces.

  “Richard… after all we have been through together, I don’t want it to be finished like this.”

  “I don’t care what you want. You have forfeited that right.” He struggled to make the words come out. “Get out of my sight.”

  Kahlan nodded, and looked down at the ground. Richard leaned over, elbows on his knees, his face in his shaking hands. He thought he might throw up.

  “Richard,” she said in a soft voice, “when this is all ended, I hope you can think well of me, remember me more fondly than you do right now.”

  That was it. He came over the log with a boost of one boot on top. In a blink he had her shirt in his fists.

  “I will only remember you for what you are! A traitor! A traitor to all those who have died, all those who will die!” Her eyes were wide as she tried to back away from him, but he held her with a vengeance. “A traitor to all the wizards who have given their lives, to Shar, to Siddin and all the Mud People who were killed! A traitor to your sister!”

  “That’s not true….”

  “A traitor to all those and more! If I fail and Rahl wins, we will all have you to thank, and so will Darken Rahl. It is you who aids him!”

  “I do this to help you! You heard what Shota said!” She was getting angry now, too.

  “That won’t work. Not for me. Yes, I heard what Shota said. She said that both Zedd and you would turn against me somehow. She did not say you both would be wrong!”

  “What do you mean…”

  “This is not a quest for me! It’s to stop Rahl! How do you know that once we have the box it might not be me who would deliver it to him? What if it’s me who would betray us, and the only chance to keep the box from Rahl is for you and Zedd to stop me?”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Does it make any more sense that both you and Zedd would try to kill me? That would require two to be wrong, this would require only one. It’s just the stupid riddle of a witch woman! You’re letting yourself die for a stupid riddle! We can’t know how the future will come about. We can’t know the meaning of what she said, how it will be true! Or if. Not until it happens! Only then can we know what it means, and deal with it.”

  “I only know I cannot allow myself to live to carry out the prophecy. You are the thread that weaves this struggle together.”

  “And thread can’t get there without the needle! You’re my needle. Without you I wouldn’t have gotten this far. At every turn, I needed you. Today, at the inverted fork, I would have chosen wrong without you. You know the Queen, I don’t. Even if I manage to get the box without you, what then? Where will I go? I don’t know the Midlands. Where will I go, Kahlan, tell me? How will I know where it’s safe? I could walk right into Rahl’s hands, carry the box right to him.”

  “Shota said you are the only one with a chance. Without you all is lost. Not me. You. She said that if I live… Richard, I can’t allow that. I won’t.”

  “You are a traitor to us,” he whispered viciously.

  She shook her head slowly. “Despite what you think, Richard, I do this for you.”

  Richard screamed and threw her backward as hard as he could. She fell to the ground on her back. He came and stood above her, glaring down, dust rising around his boots.

  “Don’t you dare say that!” he yelled, both hands in fists. “You do this for yourself, because you haven’t got the stomach
for what victory entails! Don’t you dare to say you do this for me!”

  She came to her feet, keeping her eyes on him. “I would give almost anything, Richard, for you not to remember me in this way. But what I do, I do because I must. For you. For you to have a chance. I have sworn to protect the Seeker with my life. The payment has come due.” Tears ran down her face, through the dust on her cheeks.

  As he watched her turn and vanish into the darkness, Richard felt as if a plug inside him had been pulled and his whole self was draining away.

  He went to the fire, slid his back down the log until he sat on the ground. He pulled his knees up with his arms around them, put his face against them, and cried as he had never cried.

  33

  Rachel sat on her little chair behind the Princess, knocking her knees together, thinking about how she would get the Princess to put her out so she could take the box away with her and never come back. She kept thinking about the loaf of bread with the box in it, waiting for her in the garden. She was afraid, but excited, too. Excited that she was going to be helping all those people so they wouldn’t get their heads chopped off. It was the first time she had ever felt like an important person. She twisted the hem of her dress. She could hardly wait to get away.

  All the lords and ladies were drinking their special drink. They all seemed happy to be doing it. Giller was standing behind the Queen with her other advisors. He was talking quietly to the court artist. She didn’t like the artist, he scared her, he always smiled funny at her. And he only had one hand. She had heard the servants talking before, that they were afraid the artist would draw a picture of them.

  The people started getting scared looks on their faces. They were looking at the Queen. They started to stand up. Rachel looked over at the Queen and saw that the people weren’t looking at her, they were looking at something else, behind her. Her eyes got wide when she saw the two big men.

  They were the biggest men she had ever seen. Their shirts didn’t have sleeves but their arms had metal bands on them, with sharp things sticking out. The men had big muscles all over, and yellow hair. They looked like the meanest men she had ever seen, meaner even than any of the dungeon guards. The men looked around the room at the people, then went and stood on each side of the big archway behind the Queen and folded their arms. The Queen huffed and turned around in her chair to see what was happening.