Verna gestured under the bench. “Show him, General.”
At her urging, the general lifted out a map roll. He pulled it wide in his callused hands and laid it on the ground at his feet. The map was turned around so Zedd could read it. General Reibisch tapped the mountains to the west of Hartland.
“Right here, Zedd.”
“Right there…what?”
“Richard and Kahlan,” Verna said.
Zedd gaped at her face and then down at the map. General Reibisch’s finger hovered over a wild range of peaks. Zedd knew those mountains. They were an inhospitable place.
“There? Dear spirits, why would Richard and Kahlan be all the way up there in such a forbidding place? What are they doing there?”
“Kahlan be hurt,” Adie said in a consoling tone.
“Hurt?”
“She was at the brink of passing into the spirit world. From what we be told, maybe she saw the world on the other side of the veil.” Adie pointed to the map. “Richard took her there to recover.”
“But…why would he do that?” With a hand, Zedd flattened his wavy white hair to the top of his head. His thoughts spun in a confusing jumble while he tried to take it all in at once. “She could be healed—”
“No. She be spelled. If magic be used to try to heal her, a vile hidden spell would be unleashed and she would die.”
Understanding washed over him. “Dear spirits… I’m thankful the boy knew it in time.” Before the horror of memories of the screams could come roaring to the fore of his thoughts, Zedd slammed a mental door on them. He swallowed with the pain of those that slipped through. “But still, why would he go there? He’s needed here.”
“He certainly is,” Verna snapped. By her tone, it was a sore subject.
“He can’t come here,” Warren said. When Zedd only stared at him, he explained further. “We don’t understand it all, but we believe Richard is following a prophecy of some sort.”
“Prophecy!” Zedd dismissed it with a wave. “Richard doesn’t take to riddles. He hates them and won’t pay heed to them. There are times when I wish he would, but he won’t.”
“Well, this one he’s paying heed to.” Warren pressed his lips tight for a moment. “It’s his own.”
“His own…what?”
Warren cleared his throat. “Prophecy.”
Zedd jumped to his feet. “What! Richard? Nonsense.”
“He’s a war wizard,” Verna said with quiet authority.
Zedd passed a scowl among all the suddenly circumspect expressions. He made a sour face and, with a flourish of his robes, returned to his seat beside Adie.
“What is this prophecy?”
Warren twisted a little knot of his violet robes. “He didn’t say, exactly.”
“Here.” General Reibisch pulled some folded papers from a pocket. “He wrote me letters. We’ve all read them.”
Zedd stood and snatched the letters from the general’s big fist. He went to the table and smoothed out the pages. As everyone else sat silently watching, Zedd leaned over the table and read Richard’s words lying before him.
With great authority, Richard paradoxically turned away from authority. He said that after much reflection, he had come to an understanding that arrived with the power of a vision, and he knew then, beyond doubt, that his help would only bring about certain catastrophe.
In letters that followed, Richard said he and Kahlan were safe and she was slowly recovering. Cara was with them. In response to letters General Reibisch and others had written, Richard remained steadfast in his stand. He warned them that the cause of freedom would be forever lost if he failed to remain on his true path. He said that whatever decisions General Reibisch and the rest of them made, he would not contradict or criticize. He told them that his heart was with them, but they were on their own for the foreseeable future. He said possibly forever.
His letters basically gave no real information, other than alluding to his understanding or vision, and making it clear that they could expect no guidance from him. Nonetheless, Zedd could read some of what the words didn’t say.
Zedd stared at the letters long after he had finished reading them. The flame of the lamp wavered slowly from side to side, occasionally fluttering and sending up a coiled thread of oily smoke. He could hear muffled voices outside the tent as soldiers on patrol quietly passed along information. Inside, everyone remained silent. They had all read the letters.
Verna’s expression was tight with anxiety. She could hold her tongue no longer. “Will you go to see him, Zedd? Convince him to return to the struggle?”
Zedd lightly trailed his fingers over the words on paper. “I can’t. This is one time I can be of no help to him.”
“But he’s our leader in this struggle.” The soft lamplight illuminated the feminine grace of her slender fingers as she pressed them to her brow in vain solace. Her hand fell back to her lap. “Without him…”
Zedd didn’t answer her. He could not imagine what Ann’s reaction to such a development would be. For centuries she had combed through prophecies in anticipation of the war wizard who would be born to lead them in this battle for the very existence of magic. Richard was that war wizard, born to the battle he had suddenly abandoned.
“What do you think be the problem?” Adie asked in her quiet, raspy voice.
Zedd looked back to the letters one last time. He pulled his gaze from the words and straightened. All eyes around the dimly lit tent were on him as if hoping he could somehow rescue them from a fate they couldn’t comprehend, but instinctively dreaded.
“This is a time of trial to the depth of Richard’s soul.” Zedd slipped his hands up opposite sleeves until the silver brocade at the cuffs met. “A passage, of sorts—thrust upon him because of his comprehension of something only he sees.”
Warren cleared his throat. “What sort of trial, Zedd? Can you tell us?”
Zedd gestured vaguely as memories of terrible times flashed through his mind. “A struggle…a reconciliation…”
“What sort of reconciliation?” Warren pressed.
Zedd gazed into the young man’s blue eyes, wishing he wouldn’t ask so many questions. “What is the purpose of your gift?”
“Its purpose? Well, I…guess to…well, it just is. The gift is simply an ability.”
“It is to help others,” Verna stated flatly. She clutched her light blue cloak more tightly around her shoulders as if it were armor to defend her from whatever Zedd might throw at her in answer.
“Ah. Then what are you doing here?”
The question caught her by surprise. “Here?”
“Yes.” Zedd waved his arm, indicating a vague, distant place. “If the gift is to help others, then why are you not out there doing it? There are sick needing to be healed, ignorant needing to be taught, and the hungry needing to be fed. Why are you just sitting there, healthy, smart, and well fed?”
Verna rearranged her cloak as she squared her shoulders into a posture of firm resolve. “In battle, if you abandon the gates to help a fallen comrade, you have given in to a weakness: your inability to steel yourself to an immediate suffering in order to prevent suffering on a much greater scale. If I run off to help the few people I could in that manner, I must leave my post here, with this army, as they try to keep the enemy from storming the gateway into the New World.”
Zedd’s estimation of the woman rose a little. She had come tantalizingly close to expressing the essence of a vital truth. He offered her a small smile of respect as he nodded. She looked more surprised by that than she had by his question.
“I can certainly see why the Sisters of the Light are widely regarded as proper servants of need.” Zedd stroked his chin. “So then, it is your conviction that we with the ability—the gift—are born into the world to be slaves to those with needs?”
“Well, no…but if there is a great need—”
“Then we are more tightly bound in the chains of slavery to those with every greater need,” Ze
dd finished for her. “Thus, anyone with a need, by right—to your mind—becomes our master? Indentured servant to one cause, or to any greater cause that might come along, but chattel all the same. Yes?”
This time, Verna chose not to dance with him over what she apparently regarded as a patch of quicksand. It didn’t prevent her from glaring at him, though.
Zedd held that there could be only one philosophically valid answer to the question; if Verna knew it, she didn’t offer it.
“Richard has apparently come to a place where he must critically examine his alternatives and determine the proper course of his life,” Zedd explained. “Perhaps circumstances have caused him to question the proper use of his abilities, and, in view of his values, his true purpose.”
Verna opened her hands in a helpless gesture. “I don’t see how he could have any higher purpose than to be here, helping the army against the threat to the New World—the threat to the lives of free people.”
Zedd sank back down onto the bench. “You do not see, and I do not see, but Richard sees something.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s right,” Warren said.
Zedd studied the young man’s face for a moment. Warren had fresh features, but also a knowing look in his eyes that betrayed something beyond mere youth. Zedd wondered how old Warren was.
“No, it does not mean Richard is right. He may be making a heroic mistake that destroys our chance to survive.”
“Kahlan thinks maybe it be a mistake,” Adie finally put in, as if regretting having to tell him. “She wrote a note to me—I believe without Richard’s knowledge, seeing as Cara wrote down Kahlan’s words for her—and gave it to the messenger. Kahlan says that she fears Richard be doing this in part because of what happened to her. The Mother Confessor also confided that she be afraid Richard has lost his faith in people, and, because of his rejection by the people of Anderith, Richard may view himself as a fallen leader.”
“Bah.” Zedd waved his hand dismissively. “A leader cannot follow behind people, tail between his legs, sniffing for their momentary whims and wishes, whining to follow them this way and that as they ramble through life. Those kind of people are not looking for a leader—they are looking for a master, and one will find them.
“A true leader forges a clear path through a moral wilderness so that people might see the way. Richard was a woods guide because such is his nature. Perhaps he is lost in that dark wood. If he is, he must find his way out, and it must be a correctly reasoned course, if he is to be the true leader of a free people.”
Everyone silently considered the implications. The general was a man who followed the Lord Rahl, and simply awaited his orders. The Sisters had their own ideas. Zedd and Adie knew the way ahead was not what it might seem to some.
“That’s what Richard did for me,” Warren said in a soft voice, staring off into memories of his own. “He showed me the way—made me want to follow him up out of the vaults. I had become comfortable down there, content with my books and my fate, but I was a prisoner of that darkness, living my life through the struggles and accomplishments of others. I never could understand precisely how he inspired me to want to follow him up and out.” Warren looked up into Zedd’s eyes. “Maybe he needs that same kind of help, himself. Can you help him, Zedd?”
“He has entered a dark time for any man, and especially for a wizard. He must come out the other side of this on his own. If I take him by the hand and lead him through, so to speak, I might take him a way he would not have selected on his own, and then he would forever be crippled by what I had chosen for him.
“…But worse yet, what if he’s right? If I unwittingly forced him to another course, it could doom us all and result in a world enslaved by the Imperial Order.” Zedd shook his head. “No. This much I know: Richard must be left alone to do as he must. If he truly is the one to lead us in this battle for the future of magic and of mankind, then this can only be part of his journey as it must be traveled.”
Almost everyone nodded, if reluctantly, at Zedd’s words.
Warren didn’t nod. He picked at the fabric of his violet robes. “There’s one thing we haven’t considered.” As everyone waited, his blue eyes turned up to meet Zedd’s gaze. In those eyes, Zedd saw an uncommon wisdom that told him that this was a young man who could gaze into the depths of things when most people saw only the sparkles on the surface.
“It could be,” Warren said in a quiet but unflinching voice, “that Richard, being gifted, and being a war wizard, has been visited by a legitimate prophecy. War wizards are different from the rest of us. Their ability is not narrowly specific, but broad. Prophecy is, at least theoretically, within his purview. Moreover, Richard has Subtractive Magic as well as Additive. No wizard born in the last three thousand years has had both sides. While we can perhaps imagine, we could not possibly begin to understand his potential, though the prophecies have alluded to it.
“It could very well be that Richard has had a valid prophecy that he clearly understands. If so, then he may be doing precisely what must be done. It could even be that he clearly understands the prophecy and it is so gruesome he is doing us the only kindness he can—by not telling us.”
Verna covered his hand with hers. “You don’t really believe that, do you, Warren?” Zedd noticed that Verna put a lot of stock in what Warren said.
Ann had told Zedd that Warren was only beginning to exhibit his gift of prophecy. Such wizards—prophets—were so rare that they came along only once or twice a millennium. The potential importance of such a wizard was incalculable. Zedd didn’t know how far along that path Warren really was, yet. Warren probably didn’t, either.
“Prophecy can be a terrible burden.” Warren smoothed his robes along his thigh. “Perhaps Richard’s prophecy told him that if he is to ever have a chance to oversee victory, he must not die with the rest of us in our struggle against the army of the Imperial Order.”
General Reibisch, silent about such wizardly doings, had nevertheless been listening and watching intently. Sister Philippa’s thumb twiddled a button on her dress. Even with Verna’s comforting hand on his, Warren, at that moment, looked nothing but forlorn.
“Warren”—Zedd waited until their eyes met—”we all at times envision the most fearful turn of events, simply because it’s the most frightening thing we can imagine. Don’t invest your thoughts primarily in that which is not the most likely reason for Richard’s actions, simply because it is the reason you fear the most. I believe Richard is struggling to understand his place in all this. Remember, he grew up as a woods guide. He has to come to terms not only with his ability, but with the weight of rule.”
“Yes, but—”
Zedd lifted a finger for emphasis. “The truth of a situation most often turns out to be that one with the simplest explanation.”
The gloom on Warren’s face finally melted away under the dawning radiance of a luminous smile. “I’d forgotten that ancient bit of wisdom. Thank you, Zedd.”
General Reibisch, combing his curly beard with his fingers, pulled the hand free and made a fist. “Besides, D’Harans will not be so easily bested. We have more forces to call upon, and we have allies here in the Midlands who will come to aid in the fight. We have all heard the reports of the size of the Order, but they are just men, not evil spirits. They have gifted, but so do we. They have yet to come face-to-face with the might of D’Haran soldiers.”
Warren picked up a small rock, not quite the size of his fist, and held it in his palm as he spoke. “I mean no disrespect, General, and I do not mean to dissuade you from our just cause, but the subject of the Order has been a pastime of mine. I’ve studied them for years. I’m also from the Old World.”
“Fair enough. So what is it you have to tell us?”
“Well, say that the tabletop is the Old World—the area from which Jagang draws his troops. Now, there are places, to be sure, where there are few people spread over vast areas. But there are many places with great populations, too.?
??
“It’s much the same in the New World,” the general said. “D’Hara has populous places, and desolate areas.”
Warren shook his head. He passed his hand over the tabletop. “Say this is the Old World—the whole of this table.” He held up the rock to show the general and then placed it on the edge of the tabletop. “This is the New World. This is its size—this rock—compared to the Old World.”
“But, but, that doesn’t include D’Hara,” General Reibisch sputtered. “Surely…with D’Hara—”
“D’Hara is included in the rock.”
“I’m afraid Warren is right,” Verna said.
Sister Philippa, too, nodded grim acknowledgment. “Perhaps…” she said, looking down at her hands folded in her lap, “perhaps Warren is right, and Richard has seen a vision of our defeat, and knows he must remain out of it, or be lost with all the rest of us.”
“I don’t think that’s it at all,” Zedd offered in a gentle voice. “I know Richard. If Richard thought we would lose, he would say so in order to give people a chance to weigh that in their decisions.”
The general cleared his throat. “Well, actually, one of the letters is missing from that stack. It was the first—where Lord Rahl told me about his vision. In it, Lord Rahl did say that we had no chance to win.”
Zedd felt the blood drain down into his legs. He tried to keep his manner unconcerned. “Oh? Where is the letter?”
The general gave Verna a sidelong glance.
“Well, actually,” Verna said, “when I read it, I was angered and…”
“And she balled it up and threw it in the fire,” Warren finished for her.
Verna’s face turned red, but she offered no defense. Zedd could understand the sentiment, but he would have liked to have read it with his own eyes. He forced a smile.
“Were those his actual words—that we had no chance to win?” Zedd asked, trying not to sound alarmed. He could feel sweat running down the back of his neck.
“No…” General Reibisch said as he shifted his shoulders inside his uniform while giving the question careful thought. “No, Lord Rahl’s words were that we must not commit our forces to an attack directly against the army of the Imperial Order, or our side will be destroyed and any chance for winning in the future will be forever lost.”