Terry Goodkind
The Omen Machine

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2011

Terry Goodkind asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

THE OMEN MACHINE. Copyright © 2011 by Terry Goodkind. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780007396757

Ebook Edition © JULY 2011 ISBN: 9780007444489

Version: 2017-10-23

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

There is darkness,” the boy said.

Chapter 2

A penny for your future, sir?”

Chapter 3

Following Rikka deep into the private, warmly paneled corridors of…

Chapter 4

Kharga Trace?” Benjamin asked.

Chapter 5

Kahlan watched Zedd pace across the gold and blue carpet…

Chapter 6

Well,” Zedd finally said into the hush, “at least you…

Chapter 7

As he made his way into the grand hall, Richard…

Chapter 8

Not long after Richard had sent the captain to collect…

Chapter 9

Richard stepped back to the waiting group of officials, mayors,…

Chapter 10

Time itself seemed to stop.

Chapter 11

How is she?” Zedd asked when Richard closed the door…

Chapter 12

Richard and Zedd followed Nathan into a narrow hallway lit…

Chapter 13

Kahlan sat up with a start.

Chapter 14

Richard stood when the door opened. Out of the corner…

Chapter 15

Out in the corridor, as Ludwig was leaving, Richard spotted…

Chapter 16

How’s your hand?” Richard asked.

Chapter 17

Kahlan woke to the distinctive sound of Richard’s sword coming…

Chapter 18

It was a long journey down to the dungeons, but…

Chapter 19

Richard held his tongue. He wasn’t in the mood to…

Chapter 20

Kahlan ingratiated herself with the representatives by first laying out…

Chapter 21

Everyone inched forward, eager to finally hear what none of…

Chapter 22

The room had fallen dead silent. No one dared blink.

Chapter 23

Richard closed the double doors behind him as he stepped…

Chapter 24

Richard was lost in kissing the soft, sensual curve of…

Chapter 25

Out of the corner of her eye Kahlan saw the…

Chapter 26

High up in the People’s Palace, Richard and Kahlan, with…

Chapter 27

As they ducked, trying to avoid being hit by the…

Chapter 28

Richard held the glowing sphere out ahead of him as…

Chapter 29

Kahlan looked from Richard’s troubled face to the glowing symbol…

Chapter 30

Outside of the Garden of Life hundreds of heavily armed…

Chapter 31

Kahlan’s throbbing hand lay in her lap as she sat…

Chapter 32

Zedd peered again at the metal strip when Nathan handed…

Chapter 33

Looking more concerned than either Zedd or Nathan, Nicci didn’t…

Chapter 34

Zedd waved a hand, insisting on being the first one…

Chapter 35

Richard turned his attention to Benjamin, standing back out of…

Chapter 36

Hannis Arc, working on the tapestry of lines linking constellations…

Chapter 37

Mohler did not look up to meet the steady gaze…

Chapter 38

Richard yawned. He looked up from the complexities of translating…

Chapter 39

As he ran down the service hallway, Richard could smell…

Chapter 40

As Richard passed between phalanxes of guards and through the…

Chapter 41

Richard couldn’t begin to imagine what it could all mean—…

Chapter 42

The door carefully opened a crack in response to his…

Chapter 43

Orneta straightened a little, pushing back with a hand braced…

Chapter 44

Kahlan woke with a start when she heard the howls.

Chapter 45

Kahlan followed close on Richard’s heels as they ran past…

Chapter 46

Kahlan tried to follow Richard into the room, but Cara,…

Chapter 47

His sword still gripped tightly in his hand, Richard circled…

Chapter 48

Richard stood alone, hands clasped behind his back, staring at…

Chapter 49

Henrik lifted his head from gulping water out of the…

Chapter 50

After a frightening race along the trail as it tunneled…

Chapter 51

As Henrik made his way along the causeway made of…

Chapter 52

Jit sat cross-legged in the middle of the room, nested…

Chapter 53

The man glanced down at the warm, wet place growing…

Chapter 54

Henrik feared to take a step toward the Hedge Maid.

Chapter 55

As the Hedge Maid started out toward a shadowy opening…

Chapter 56

Henrik thought that the winds must have stilled to make…

Chapter 57

Kahlan woke with a start, panting in terror. A blur…

Chapter 58

Still drifting back from that distant place that felt completely…

Chapter 59

What’s this about me and my gift?” Nathan asked as…

Chapter 60

With his foot, Richard flipped over the carpet. He didn’t…

Chapter 61

The situation calls for a choice, and I’ve made it,”…

Chapter 62

The group with Queen Orneta fell silent as the Mord-Sith…

Chapter 63

Before the woman could prod her with the weapon, Orneta…

Chapter 64

Ludwig was pouring himself a last glass of wine when…

Chapter 65

Richard was shocked and angry.

Chapter 66

Kahlan woke to the feel of warm breath on her…

Chapter 67

Kahlan slowly pulled in a deep breath, preparing herself.

Chapter 68

It was deep in the middle of the night by…

Chapter 69

When the violence of the wizard’s fire at last subsided,…

Chapter 70

Well isn’t that something,” Zedd said as he stepped out…

Chapter 71

Nicci stepped up beside Richard. “Darkness has found it?”

Chapter 72

When Richard had finished filling the bin with metal strips,…

Chapter 73

Kahlan woke, confused at feeling herself rocking. She winced as…

Chapter 74

Anything at all?” Richard asked Berdine in a quiet voice.

Chapter 75

In the distance, paths meandered through elaborate gardens, but the…

Chapter 76

Patrols that had spotted Richard ran up to see what…

Chapter 77

Kahlan woke with a start. She squinted out at the…

Chapter 78

As Kahlan guided her horse among immense pines, she frequently…

Chapter 79

Kahlan was confounded at the construction of the enclosed, candlelit…

Chapter 80

Kahlan ran the words through her mind again, not sure…

Chapter 81

Richard stood staring through the soft haze of drizzle at…

Chapter 82

Crouched low, Richard made his way along the top of…

Chapter 83

Richard dropped into a crouch as he landed. Glowing, hooded…

Chapter 84

It came to him.

Chapter 85

In a blink, before the Hedge Maid could have second…

Chapter 86

If he lives,” Cara said, “I’m going to kill him.”

About the Author

Other Books by Terry Goodkind

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

There is darkness,” the boy said.

Richard frowned, not sure that he had understood the whispered words. He glanced back over his shoulder at the concern on Kahlan’s face. She didn’t look to have understood the meaning any more than he had.

The boy lay on a tattered carpet placed on the bare ground just outside a tent covered with strings of colorful beads. The tightly packed market outside the palace had become a small city made up of thousands of tents, wagons, and stands. Throngs of people who had come from near and far for the grand wedding the day before flocked to the marketplace, buying everything from souvenirs and jewelry to fresh bread and cooked meats, to exotic drinks and potions, to colorful beads.

The boy’s chest rose a little with each shallow breath, but his eyes remained closed. Richard leaned down closer to the frail child. “Darkness?”

The boy nodded weakly. “There is darkness all around.”

There was, of course, no darkness. Streamers of morning sunlight played over the crowds of people coursing by the thousands through the haphazard streets between the tents and wagons. Richard didn’t think that the boy saw anything of the festive atmosphere all around.

The child’s words, on the surface so soft, carried some other meaning, something more, something grim, about another place entirely.

From the corner of his eye, Richard saw people slow as they passed, watching the Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor stopped to see an ill boy and his mother. The market out beyond was filled with lilting music, conversation, laughter, and animated bargaining. For most of the people passing nearby, seeing the Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor was a once-in-a-lifetime event, one of many over the last few days, that would be recounted back in their homelands for years to come.

Guards of the First File stood not far away, also watching attentively, but they mostly watched the nearby crowds shuffling through the market. The soldiers wanted to make sure that those crowds didn’t close in too tightly, even though there was no real reason to expect any sort of trouble.

Everyone was, after all, in a good mood. The years of war had ended. There was peace and growing prosperity. The wedding the day before seemed to mark a new beginning, a celebration of a world of possibilities never before imagined.

Set amid that sunlit exuberance, the boy’s words felt to Richard like a shadow that didn’t belong.

Kahlan squatted down beside him. Her satiny white dress, the iconic symbol of her standing as the Mother Confessor, seemed to glow under the early-spring sky, as if she were a good spirit come among them. Richard slipped his hand under the boy’s bony shoulders and sat him up a little as Kahlan lifted a waterskin up to the boy’s lips.

“Can you take just a sip?”

The boy didn’t seem to hear her. He ignored her offer and the waterskin. “I’m alone,” he said in a frail voice. “So alone.”

The words sounded so forlorn that they moved Kahlan to reach out in silent compassion and touch the boy’s knobby shoulder.

“You’re not alone,” Richard assured the boy in a voice meant to dispel the gloom of such words. “There are people here with you. Your mother is here.”

Behind closed eyelids, the boy’s eyes rolled and darted, as if looking for something in the darkness.

“Why have they all left me?”

Kahlan laid a hand gently on the boy’s heaving chest. “Left you?”

The boy, lost in some inner vision, moaned and whined. His head tossed from side to side. “Why have they left me alone in the cold and dark?”

“Who left you?” Richard asked, concentrating in an effort to be sure he could hear the boy’s soft words. “Where did they leave you?”

“I have had dreams,” the boy said, his voice a little brighter.

Richard frowned at the odd change of subject. “What kind of dreams?”

Disoriented confusion returned to haunt the boy’s words. “Why have I had dreams?”

The question sounded to Richard like it was directed inward and didn’t call for an answer. Kahlan tried anyway.

“We don’t—”

“Is the sky still blue?”

Kahlan shared a look with Richard. “Quite blue,” she assured the boy. He didn’t appear to hear that answer, either.

Richard didn’t think that there was any point in continuing to pester the boy for answers. He was obviously sick and didn’t know what he was saying. It was pointless to try to question the product of delirium.

The boy’s small hand suddenly grabbed Richard’s forearm.

Richard heard the sound of steel being drawn from scabbards. Without turning, he lifted his other hand in a silent command to the soldiers behind him to stand down.

“Why have they all left me?” the boy asked again.

Richard leaned in a little closer, hoping to calm him at least. “Where did they leave you?”

The boy’s eyes opened so abruptly that it startled both Richard and Kahlan. His gaze was fixed on Richard, as if trying to see into his soul. The grip of the thin fingers on Richard’s forearm was powerful beyond what Richard would have believed the boy capable of.

“There is darkness in the palace.”

A chill, fed by a cold breath of breeze, shivered across Richard’s flesh.

The boy’s eyelids slid closed as he sagged back.

Despite his intent to be gentle with the boy, Richard’s voice took on an edge.

“What are you talking about? What darkness in the palace?”

“Darkness … is seeking darkness,” he whispered as he drifted down into incoherent mumbling.

Richard’s brow drew tight as he tried to make some kind of sense of it. “What do you mean, darkness is seeking darkness?”

“He will find me, I know he will.”

The boy’s hand, as if too heavy to hold up, slipped off Richard’s arm. It was replaced by Kahlan’s as the two of them waited a moment to see if the boy would say any more. He seemed to finally have fallen silent for good.

They needed to get back to the palace. People would be waiting for them.

Besides, Richard didn’t think, even if the boy did say more, that it would be any more meaningful. He looked up at the boy’s mother, standing above him, dry-washing her hands.

The woman swallowed. “He scares me, he does, when he gets like this. I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, I didn’t mean to distract you from your business.” She looked to be a woman aged prematurely by worries.

“This is my business,” Richard said. “I came down here today to be among people who couldn’t make it up to the palace yesterday for the ceremony. Many of you have traveled a great distance. The Mother Confessor and I wanted to have a chance to show our appreciation to everyone who came for our friends’ wedding.

“I don’t like to see anyone in such obvious distress as you and your boy. We’ll see if we can get a healer to find out what’s wrong. Maybe they can give him something to help him.”

The woman was shaking her head. “I’ve tried healers. Healers can’t help him.”

“Are you sure?” Kahlan asked. “There are very talented people here who might be able to help.”

“I already took him to a woman of great powers, a Hedge Maid, all the way to Kharga Trace.”

Kahlan’s brow creased. “A Hedge Maid? What kind of healer is that?”

The woman hesitated, her gaze darting away. “Well, she’s a woman of remarkable abilities as I hear told. Hedge Maids … have talents, so I thought she might be able to help. But Jit— that’s her name, Jit— said that Henrik was special, not sick.”

“Does this happen with your son often, then?” Kahlan asked.

The woman worked some of the cloth of her simple dress into her fist. “Not often. But it happens. He sees things. Sees things through the eyes of others, I think.”

Kahlan pressed her hand to the boy’s forehead a moment and then ran her fingers back through his hair. “I think maybe it’s fevered dreams, that’s all,” she said. “He’s burning up.”

The woman was nodding knowingly. “He gets like that, all fevered and such, when he sees things through the eyes of others.” She met Richard’s gaze. “Some kind of telling, I think. I think that’s what he does when he gets like this. Some kind of foretelling.”

Richard, like Kahlan, didn’t think the boy saw anything more than fevered visions, but he didn’t say so. The woman already looked distressed enough.

Richard also didn’t hold much favor with prophecy. He liked prophecy even less than he liked riddles and he didn’t like riddles at all. He thought people made far more of prophecy than was justified.

“Doesn’t sound at all specific,” Richard said. “I don’t think it’s anything more than a childhood fever.”

The woman didn’t look to believe one word of it, but she also didn’t look inclined to contradict the Lord Rahl. It wasn’t all that long ago that the Lord Rahl was a greatly feared figure in the land of D’Hara, and with good reason.

Old fears, like old grudges, lived long lives.

“Maybe he ate something that was bad,” Kahlan suggested.

“No, nothing bad,” the woman insisted. “He eats the same things I eat.” She studied their faces for a moment before adding, “But the hounds have come around bothering him.”

Richard frowned up at the woman. “What do you mean, the hounds have come around bothering him?”

Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. “Well, hounds— wild hounds I think— came sniffing around here last night. I had just run out to get us a loaf of bread. Henrik was watching our bead wares. He was scared when the hounds showed up so he hid inside. When I got back they were sniffing and growling around the doorway of our tent, the hair on their backs standing up all stiff and such. I grabbed a stick and chased them off. This morning he was like this.”

Richard was about to say something when the boy abruptly twisted wildly. He lashed out with clawed fingers at both Richard and Kahlan as if he were a cornered animal.

Richard jumped up, pulling Kahlan back out of the boy’s reach as soldiers brought swords out.

Quick as a rabbit, the boy darted away toward the confusion of tents and crowds. Two soldiers immediately raced after him. The boy dove under a low wagon and popped up on the other side. The men were too big to follow and had to go around the wagon, giving the boy a head start of a dozen strides. Richard didn’t think his lead would last long.

In an instant the boy, with the soldiers hot on his heels, vanished among the wagons, tents, and people. It was a mistake to run from men of the First File.

Richard saw that the scratch on the back of Kahlan’s hand had drawn blood.

“It’s just a little scratch, Richard,” she assured him when she saw the look in his eyes. “I’m fine. It just startled me.”

Richard glanced down at the lines oozing blood on the back of his own hand and let out a sigh of frustration. “Me too.”

The captain of the guards, sword in hand, stepped forward. “We’ll find him, Lord Rahl. Out here on the Azrith Plain there’s no real place to hide. He won’t get far. We’ll find him.” The man didn’t look at all pleased that someone, even a boy, had drawn the Lord Rahl’s blood.

“Like the Mother Confessor said, it’s just a scratch. But I’d like you to find the boy.”

A dozen men of the guard detail clapped fists to their hearts.

“We’ll find him, Lord Rahl,” the captain said, “you can count on that.”

Richard nodded. “Good. When you do, see to it that he gets safely back here to his mother. There are healers among the people selling their wares and services. Bring one here when you find the boy and see if they can help him.”

As the captain detailed additional guards to search for the boy, Kahlan leaned closer to Richard. “We had better get back up to the palace. We have a lot of guests.”

Richard nodded. “I hope your boy is well soon,” he said to the woman before starting out toward the immense plateau atop which sat the People’s Palace, the place he had inherited when he had inherited the rule of D’Hara, a land that he had never even known existed as he’d grown up. In many ways D’Hara, the empire he ruled, was still a complete mystery to him.

CHAPTER 2

A penny for your future, sir?”

Richard paused to look down at the old woman sitting cross-legged out of the way at the side of one of the many grand halls of the People’s Palace. She leaned back against the wall beside the base of a marble arch that soared several stories overhead as she waited to see if she had won herself a new customer. A brown cloth bag with her belongings along with a thin cane lay close up against her hip. She was dressed in a simple but neat long gray woolen dress. A cream-colored shawl lay draped over her shoulders as protection against the occasional bite of departing winter. Spring had arrived, but so far it had proven to be more promise than substance.

The woman smoothed back stray strands of brown and gray hair at her temple, apparently wanting to look presentable for potential customers. By the milky film over her eyes, the way her head tilted up without facing anyone accurately, and her searching movements, Richard knew that the woman couldn’t see him or Kahlan. Only her hearing would be of any help in taking in the grandeur all around her.

Out beyond where the woman sat, one of the many bridges in the palace crossed the hall at a second-floor level. Clutches of people engaged in conversation strolled across the bridge while others stood at the marble balusters, gazing down on the vast passageway below, some watching Richard and Kahlan and their accompanying contingent of guards. Many in the thick crowds of people strolling the expansive corridors of the palace were visitors who had come for the festivities of the day before.

Though the People’s Palace was more or less under one roof, it was really a city tightly clustered atop a lone, immense plateau rising up out of the Azrith Plain. Since the palace was the ancestral home of the Lord Rahl, parts of it were off-limits to the public, but most of the expansive complex was home to thousands of others. There were living quarters for people of every sort, from officials to merchants, to craftsmen, to workers, with other areas set aside for visitors. The sprawling public corridors linked the city palace together and provided access to it all.

Not far from the woman sitting against the wall, a shop window displayed bolts of cloth. Throughout the palace there were shops of every sort. Down inside the plateau hundreds more rooms provided everything from quarters for soldiers to yet more shops for residents and visitors alike.

The narrow road rising along the side of the plateau that Richard and Kahlan had ridden up after visiting the market was the fastest way up to the People’s Palace, but it was narrow and in places treacherous, so the public was not allowed to use it. The main route for visitors, merchants, and workers of every sort was through the great inner doors and up the passageways inside the plateau. Many people never ventured all the way up to the palace at the top, but came to shop at the market that in peaceful times sprang up down on the plain, or to visit some of the hundreds of shops along the way up inside the plateau.

The sheer inaccessibility of the city palace, if the drawbridge on the road was raised and the great inner doors were closed, made assaults futile. Throughout history sieges of the palace withered out on the inhospitable Azrith Plain long before the strength of those in the palace began to wane. Many had tried, but there was no practical way to attack the People’s Palace.

The old woman would have had a hard time making the climb all the way up the inner passageways to the palace proper. Because she was blind, it must have been especially difficult for her. Although there were always people wanting to know what the future held, Richard supposed that she probably found more customers up top willing to pay for her simple fortunes, and that made the climb worth the effort.

Richard gazed out at the seemingly endless corridor filled with people and the ever-present whisper of footsteps and conversation. He supposed that the woman, being blind, would be attuned to all the sounds of the people in the corridors and by that judge the enormity of the place.

He felt a pang of sorrow for her, as he had when he had first spotted her sitting alone at the side of the hallway, but now because she could not see the splendor all around her, the soaring marble columns, stone benches, and elaborately patterned granite floors that glowed wherever they were touched by the streamers of sunlight coming in from the skylights high overhead. Other than his homeland of the Hartland woods where he had grown up, Richard thought that the palace was just about the most beautiful place he had ever seen. He never failed to be awed by the sheer overwhelming intellect and effort it must have taken to envision and construct such a place.

Many times throughout history, as when Richard had first been brought in as a prisoner, the palace had been the seat of power for evil men. Other times, as now, it was the center of peaceful prosperity, a beacon of strength that anchored the D’Haran Empire.

“A penny for my future?” Richard asked.

“And a worthy bargain it is,” the woman said without hesitation.

“I hope you aren’t saying that my future is worth no more than a penny.”

The old woman smiled a slow smile. Her clouded eyes stared without seeing. “It is if you don’t heed the omen tendered.”

She blindly held out her hand, a question waiting for his answer. Richard placed a penny on her upturned palm. He imagined that she had no other way to feed herself except by offering to tell people their future. Being blind, though, in a way gave her a certain marketable credibility. People probably expected that, being blind, she had access to some kind of inner vision, and that belief probably helped bring her business.

“Ah,” she said, nodding knowingly as she tested the weight of the coin he had given her, “silver, not copper. Clearly a man who values his future.”

“And what would lie in that future, then?” Richard asked. He didn’t really care what a fortune-teller might have to say, but he expected something in return for the penny.

She turned her face up toward his, even though she could not see his face. The smile ghosted away. She hesitated for just a moment before speaking.

“The roof is going to fall in.” She looked as if the words had come out differently than she had intended, as if they surprised her. She looked abruptly speechless.

Kahlan and some of the soldiers waiting not far away glanced up at the ceiling that had covered the palace for thousands of years. It hardly looked in danger of falling in.

A strange fortune, Richard thought, but the fortune had not been his real purpose. “And I predict that you will have a full belly when you sleep tonight. The shop not far back, to your left, sells warm meals. That penny will buy you one. Take good care of yourself, my lady, and enjoy your visit to the palace.”

The woman’s smile returned, but this time it reflected gratitude. “Thank you, sir.”

Rikka, one of the Mord-Sith, rushed up and came to a halt. She flicked her single, long blond braid back over her shoulder. He was so used to the Mord-Sith wearing their red leather outfits that he found it somewhat strange to see them now wearing brown leather, another sign that the long war was over. Notwithstanding the less intimidating outfit, there was suspicious displeasure in her blue eyes. That, coming from a Mord-Sith, he was more than used to.

A dark look had settled into Rikka’s flawless features. “I see that the word I received is true. You’re bleeding. What happened?”

Rikka’s tone reflected not simple concern, but a Mord-Sith’s rising anger that the Lord Rahl she was sworn on her life to protect appeared to have run into trouble. She was not simply curious, she was demanding answers.

“It’s nothing. And it’s not bleeding any longer. It’s just a scratch.”

Rikka cast a dissatisfied look at Kahlan’s hand. “Do you two have to do everything together? I knew we shouldn’t have let you go out without one of us to watch over you. Cara will be furious, and with good reason.”

Kahlan smiled, apparently to dispel Rikka’s concern. “Like Richard said, it’s just a scratch. And I don’t think that Cara has reason to be anything other than contented and happy today.”

Rikka let the claim go without objection and turned to other business. “Zedd wants to see you, Lord Rahl. He sent me to find you.”

“Lord Rahl!” The woman at his feet clutched at his pant leg. “Dear spirits, I didn’t realize … I’m sorry, Lord Rahl. Forgive me. I didn’t know who you were or I would not have—”

Richard touched his fingers to the woman’s shoulder to cut off her apology and let her know that it wasn’t necessary.

He turned to the Mord-Sith. “Did my grandfather say what he wants?”

“No, but by his tone it was clear to me that it was important to him. You know Zedd and how he gets.”

Kahlan smiled a bit. Richard knew all too well what Rikka meant. While Cara had for years been close to Richard and Kahlan, ever watchful and protective of them, Rikka had spent a great deal of time with Zedd at the Wizard’s Keep. She had become familiar with how Zedd frequently thought the simplest things were urgent. Richard thought that Rikka, in her own way, had taken a liking to Zedd and felt protective of him. He was, after all, still First Wizard as well as the grandfather to the Lord Rahl. Even more important, she knew how much Richard cared about him.

“All right, Rikka. Let’s go see what Zedd is all wound up about.”

He started to take a step, but the old woman sitting on the floor tugged his pant leg to stop him.

“Lord Rahl,” she said, trying to pull him closer, “I would not ask for payment from you, especially since I am but a humble guest in your home. Please, take your silver back with my appreciation for the gesture.”

“It was a bargain struck,” Richard said in a tone meant to reassure her. “You held up your part. I owe you payment for your words about the future.”

She let her hand slip from its grip of his pants. “Then heed the omen, Lord Rahl, for it is true.”

CHAPTER 3

Following Rikka deep into the private, warmly paneled corridors of the palace, Kahlan spotted Zedd standing with Cara and Benjamin at a window overlooking a small courtyard at the bottom of a deep pocket formed by the stone walls of the palace that rose up out of sight. A simple, unadorned door not far beyond the window provided access to an atrium where a small plum tree grew beside a wooden bench sitting on a stone pad surrounded by lush green ivy. As small as the room was, it still brought a welcome bit of the outdoors and daylight into the deep interior of the palace.

Kahlan was relieved to be away from the public corridors, away from the constant gazes that were always on them. She felt a profound sense of calm as Richard slipped his arm around her waist, pulling her close for a moment. He laid his head atop hers as she leaned in toward him. It was a moment of closeness that they didn’t generally feel comfortable allowing themselves when in public view.

Cara, wearing her white leather outfit, stood gazing out the window into the courtyard. Her single blond braid was perfectly done. Her red Agiel, the weapon carried by Mord-Sith that always hung at the ready by a fine chain on their wrists, stood out against the white leather like a bloodstain on a snow white tablecloth. An Agiel, looking like nothing more than a short leather rod, was just as lethal as the women who carried them.

Benjamin had on a crisp general’s uniform and wore a gleaming silver sword at his hip. The sword was no ceremonial accessory. Countless times Kahlan had seen how commanding he was in combat, seen his heart. She had been the one who had appointed him a general.

Kahlan had expected that Cara and Benjamin might be dressed casually. They were not. They both looked ready for the war that was over. She supposed that as far as both of them were concerned, there was never an excuse to relax their guard. Both their lives were devoted to the protection of Richard, the Lord Rahl.

Of course, the man they guarded was far more lethal than either of them. Dressed in his black and gold war-wizard outfit, Richard looked every bit the part of the Lord Rahl. But he was more than that. At his hip he wore the Sword of Truth, a singular weapon meant for a singular individual. Yet despite the weapon’s power, it was the individual behind it that was the true weapon. That was what really made him the Seeker, and what made the Seeker so formidable.

“Were they watching all night?” Zedd was asking as Kahlan and Richard came to a halt beside Richard’s grandfather.

Cara’s face turned nearly as red as her Agiel.

“I don’t know,” she growled, still glaring out the window. “It was my wedding night and I was otherwise occupied.”

Zedd smiled politely. “Of course.”

He glanced over at Richard and Kahlan to greet them with a brief smile. Kahlan thought that the smile looked a bit briefer than she would have expected.

Before his grandfather could say anything else, Richard interrupted. “Cara, what’s going on?”

She turned to him with a heated look. “Someone was watching us in our room.”

“Watching you,” he repeated in a flat tone. “You’re sure?”

Richard’s face didn’t reveal what he might be thinking about such a strange claim. Kahlan noted that he did not dismiss Cara’s assertion out of hand. Kahlan also noted that Cara hadn’t said that it felt like they were being watched. She said that they were being watched. Cara was hardly a woman given to skittish delusions.

“It was an eventful day yesterday, with a lot of people gathered for your wedding, with a lot of people all watching you and Benjamin.” Richard gestured toward Kahlan. “Even now, as much as I’ve gotten used to people watching Kahlan and me all the time, when we’re finally alone I sometimes can’t shake the feeling people are still staring at me.”

“People watch Mord-Sith all the time,” Cara said, clearly not liking the implication that she was only imagining it.

“Yes, but they watch out of the corner of their eye. People rarely look directly at a Mord-Sith.”

“So?”

“Yesterday it was different. You aren’t used to people looking directly at you. Yesterday everyone was looking at you and Benjamin— looking directly at you. Every eye was on you. It wasn’t what you’re used to. Could it simply be a feeling left over from being the center of so much focus and attention?”

Cara considered the question as if she hadn’t thought of it that way. Her brow finally drew tight with conviction. “No. Someone was watching me.”

“All right. When did you first have this feeling that someone was watching you?”

“Just before dawn,” she said without hesitation. “It was still dark. At first I thought there was someone in the room, but there wasn’t anyone in there other than the two of us.”

“Are you sure that it was you they were watching?” Zedd asked, the question sounding innocent enough. Kahlan knew better.

Silent up until then, Benjamin looked puzzled. “You mean you think they may have been watching me?”

Zedd directed a meaningful look at the tall, blond-headed D’Haran general. “What I mean, is that I’m wondering if they were actually watching the both of you.”

“We were the only ones in there,” Cara said, her growl back.

Zedd tilted his head toward her. “You were in one of the Lord Rahl’s bedchambers.”

Understanding suddenly flashed in Cara’s intense blue eyes. With the realization, her voice turned from annoyed to icy as she took on the demeanor of the interrogator, a role that fit Mord-Sith as well as their leather outfits. She narrowed her eyes at the wizard.

“Are you suggesting that someone was looking into that room to see if it was Lord Rahl in there?”

She had clearly caught Zedd’s meaning.

Zedd shrugged his bony shoulders. “Were there mirrors in the room?”

“Mirrors? Well, I guess…”

“There are two mirrors in that room,” Kahlan said. “There is a tall one off to the side, on a stand beside the bookcase, and a smaller one over the dressing table.”

The room was one of Richard and Kahlan’s gifts to Cara and Benjamin. The Lord Rahl, while in his palace, had the choice of a number of bedchambers— probably an ancient defensive ploy to thwart assassins. There were probably more private rooms belonging to Richard in the palace than he had visited or was even aware of. Richard and Kahlan had wanted Cara to have one of the lovely rooms as hers and Benjamin’s whenever they were at the People’s Palace. It only seemed right, seeing as how Benjamin was the head of the First File, the Lord Rahl’s guards when he was in the palace, and Cara was Richard and Kahlan’s closest bodyguard.

Richard, having grown up as a woods guide, had thought that one bedroom was more than adequate. Kahlan thought so as well. They also had rooms at the Confessors’ Palace, in Aydindril, as well as yet other quarters set aside for them in various other places.

Kahlan didn’t really care what rooms they had, or where, as long as she and Richard were together. In fact, some of her happiest memories were of living one summer in the small house Richard had built for them in the wilderness of Westland.

Cara had willingly accepted the room in the palace. No doubt in large part because it was close to Richard and Kahlan’s room.

“Why do you want to know if there were mirrors in the room?” Benjamin asked. His voice, too, had changed. He was now the general in charge of the Lord Rahl’s safety at the People’s Palace.

Zedd lifted an eyebrow and fixed the man in the meaningful gaze. “There are those, I hear tell, who have the ability to use dark forms of magic to gaze through mirrors into another place.”

“Are you certain of that,” Richard asked, “or is it just idle gossip?”

“Gossip,” Zedd admitted with a sigh. “But sometimes gossip turns out to be reliable.”

“And who can accomplish such a thing?” Richard’s voice, it seemed to Kahlan, was sounding very much like the Lord Rahl demanding answers. What ever was happening, it was making each of them edgy.

Zedd turned his palms up. “I don’t know, Richard. It’s not something I can do. I’m not familiar with the skill, or if it is even true. Like I said, it’s gossip I’ve heard, not personal experience.”

“Why would they be looking for Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor?” Cara asked. She was clearly now more upset over that than she had been when she had thought someone was looking in on her and Benjamin.

“Good question,” Zedd said. “Did you hear anything?”

Cara considered for only an instant. “No. I heard nothing and I saw nothing. But I could feel someone looking.”

Zedd twisted his mouth as he considered. “Well, I’ll put a shield on the room for you to keep prying eyes out.”

“And will a shield of magic be able to stop the product of gossip?” Richard asked.

Zedd’s smile finally returned. “Can’t say for sure. I don’t know if such an ability is real or not, and I don’t know if there really was someone looking in on that room.”

“There was,” Cara insisted.

Kahlan spread her hands. “Seems that the simplest thing to do would be to cover the mirrors.”

“No,” Richard said in a thoughtful tone as he gazed into the atrium, “I don’t think they should cover the mirrors, or put a shield on the room.”

Zedd planted his fists on his hips. “And why not?”

“If someone, somehow, was looking in on that room and we cover the mirrors or shield the place, then they can’t look in there again.”

“That’s the point,” Kahlan said.

“And then they would know that we were aware of them and we won’t know why they were looking in there.”

Zedd stuck one long bony finger into his disorderly thatch of wavy white hair and scratched his scalp. “You lost me, my boy.”

“Well, if whoever was looking in there was really looking for Kahlan and me, then they’ve already learned that it wasn’t us in that room. So, if we leave the room unshielded and the mirrors the way they are, and Cara doesn’t feel like she is being watched again tonight, then that would confirm that they weren’t actually interested in Cara and Benjamin. If they’re really looking for Kahlan and me, then they will have moved on to look elsewhere.”

Kahlan knew Richard well enough to know that there was some inner calculation going on in his head.

Cara fingered the chain holding her Agiel as she thought it over. “That makes sense. If they don’t come looking in again tonight then that means they’re probably looking for you and the Mother Confessor.”

Zedd gestured offhandedly. “Or it could mean that it wasn’t real and that you were only imagining it.”

“How do we find out who could be doing such a thing? Looking into a room like that?” Benjamin asked, before Cara had a chance to argue.

Zedd shrugged. “I’m not saying that such a thing is even possible. I’ve never heard of any specific magic that could do such a thing, only rumors of it. I think we’re all letting our imaginations get away from us. Tonight, let’s try to be a little more objective, shall we?”

After a moment of silent consideration, Cara nodded. “I’ll pay more attention tonight. But I wasn’t imagining it.”

Kahlan could tell by the way Richard was staring blankly into the atrium that he was already thinking about something else. The others sensed the same thing and waited in silence to see what was on his mind.

“Have any of you heard of Kharga Trace?” he finally asked into the quiet.

CHAPTER 4

Kharga Trace?” Benjamin asked.

He hooked a thumb behind his weapons belt and frowned down at the floor, trying to recall if he’d ever heard the name before. Zedd shook his head. Kahlan could see in Rikka’s eyes that she knew the name, but instead of answering herself, she glanced at Cara, deferring, as all the Mord-Sith did, to Cara’s implicit authority.

“Kharga Trace is in the Dark Lands,” Cara said.

Richard picked up on the subtle, but chilling, change in her voice. His gray eyes turned from the atrium to focus on her.

“Where?”

“The Dark Lands— an outlying region of D’Hara.” She aimed a thumb over her shoulder. “To the north and east of here.”

“Why is it called the Dark Lands?”

“Most of it is beyond the reach of civilization. It’s a place something like the Wilds— isolated, insular, inhospitable— but instead of being flat and open like the Wilds, it’s mostly a vast, trackless land of mountains and dark forests. That makes it too hard to reach the isolated tribes in the farther reaches, or to even find them. But if you go into those remote places they inhabit, you run the risk that they will find you.”

Cara’s words were all business, as formal as they would be for any report the Lord Rahl might have asked for, but her tone had an icy edge to it. “The weather there is overcast and gloomy most of the time. In the Dark Lands one rarely sees the sun. That might have been the origin of the name.”

By the way Cara had carefully framed the suggestion, Kahlan suspected that the name might have had other origins.

“But civilized people live there, call the place home,” Richard said. “After all, it’s part of D’Hara.”

Cara nodded. “In Fajin Province, besides the ruling city of Saavedra, there are small towns in valleys here and there, a scattering of mountain villages, that sort of thing, but beyond those outposts of civilization lies a dark and forbidding land. People don’t wander far from the towns and when they do they stay to the few roads. Not a lot is known about the region because there isn’t much trade there, in part because there isn’t much there worth trading for.”

“What’s the other part?” Richard asked.

Cara paused only momentarily before answering. “Many of those who go into the Dark Lands are never seen again. Most people avoid straying from settled parts. From time to time, even some of those who live there, and do stay to the roads and shut themselves in at night, are never seen again, either.”

Richard folded his arms. “What would be the cause of these people vanishing?”

Cara shrugged. “I can’t say for sure, Lord Rahl. It’s a place of superstition, black arts, and tight lips. People don’t speak of things they fear lest those things come looking for them.”

Richard didn’t let it go at that. “Superstition doesn’t cause people to vanish.”

Cara, in turn, didn’t shy from his intent gaze. “Whispers say that scavengers of the underworld hunt the Dark Lands.”

Everyone collectively took a breath as they considered such a grim warning.

“There are places like that in the Midlands,” Zedd finally offered. “Some of it is superstition, as you say, but there are also places where talk of dangerous things is well founded.”

Kahlan certainly knew the truth of that. She was from the Midlands.

“I think that may be the case with the Dark Lands as well,” Cara agreed. “But the uncivilized regions are more vast, more remote, than such places in the Midlands. If something goes wrong in the Dark Lands there is not going to be anyone to come help you.”

“Why would anyone live there?” Kahlan asked.

Cara shrugged. “Despite how savage, or harsh, or destitute a place might be, it’s still home to those who were born there. Most people rarely stray far from home, from what they know, for fear of what they don’t know about other places.”

“Cara is right,” Richard said. “We also have to remember that it’s still a land with people who fought alongside us for our freedom, who stood with us. They also lost a great many people to the war.”

Cara conceded with a sigh. “True enough. I knew a few soldiers from Fajin Province, and they fought fiercely. None of them were from Kharga Trace, though. From what I’ve heard of it, Kharga Trace is even more inhospitable than the rest of the Dark Lands. Few people, if any, actually live in the Trace. Few would ever have reason to venture in there.”

“How do you know so much about these Dark Lands?” Kahlan asked.

“I don’t know a lot, actually. Darken Rahl used to have dealings in the Dark Lands so that’s the only reason I know anything at all. I remember him mentioning Kharga Trace once or twice.” Cara shook her head at the memory. “The Dark Lands rather fit his nature, as well as that of his father before him. They both used brutality and fear to maintain rule over the people who live there. He often said that it was the only way to keep the Dark Lands in line.

“Like his father before him, Darken Rahl also sometimes sent Mord-Sith to the Dark Lands to remind the people there of their loyalty to D’Hara.”

Richard frowned. “So you’ve been there, then?”

“No, he never sent me. As far as I know, none of the Mord-Sith who are still alive have been there.”

She gazed off at nothing in particular for a moment. “Many of those he sent never came back.”

Cara’s blue eyes finally turned back to Richard. “Darken Rahl used to send Constance.”

Richard met Cara’s meaningful gaze but he said nothing. He had known Constance when he had been a captive of Darken Rahl.

He had been the one who had killed her.

Since the war had ended Richard and Kahlan had learned a little more about D’Hara, though much of it was still a mystery to them. It was a vast land, with cities they had never known about before, much less visited. There were also districts in far-flung places like these Dark Lands that were so remote that they were more or less self-governing.

“Most of the city and district leaders are here now,” Benjamin said. “As far as I know, despite how distant and primitive some of those outlying lands might be, none dared to ignore an official invitation to our wedding from the Lord Rahl himself. With them all here we can inquire more about Kharga Trace, if you like.”

Richard nodded absently, his mind apparently already on to the next part of his inner equation.

“Richard,” Zedd said when the conversation stalled while they all watched Richard staring off into the distance, “I heard that you’re doing something with all the books in the palace.”

“We’re organizing them all,” Kahlan said when Richard failed to hear the question.

“Organizing them?”

“Yes,” Richard finally said, having heard the question after all. “With all the thousands of books here in the palace it’s virtually impossible to find information when we need it. I don’t even have a way of knowing if information I might need even exists in one of the libraries. There is no one who knows where everything is located or what’s there.

“So, I’m having the information organized. Since Berdine can read High D’Haran, and already knows a lot about the different libraries, I put her in charge. Nathan is helping as well.”

Zedd looked skeptical. “That’s an incredibly complex task, Richard. I’m not even sure that such a thing is possible, even with the prophet helping Berdine. I think I ought to see what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.”

Richard nodded. “Sure. Come on, I’ll take you down to one of the larger libraries where Berdine is working. I was going there anyway. There’s something I want to look into.”

Kahlan wondered what.

As they started out, Kahlan hung back, snagging Cara’s arm to hold her back as well. They both slowed, letting the others think that maybe they wanted to talk about the wedding and Cara now being married— something that as far as Kahlan knew had never happened before. Until Richard came along, who would ever have had the unthinkable thought of a Mord-Sith marrying?

“What is it?” Cara asked in a low voice.

Kahlan glanced toward Richard, Zedd, Benjamin, and Rikka out ahead, engaged in conversation. The rich carpets muted their words as well as their footsteps.

“Something is going on. I don’t know what, but I know Richard well enough to know when he has the bit in his teeth.”

“What would you like me to do?”

“I want a Mord-Sith to stick close to him at all times.”

“Mother Confessor, I had already made that decision when Zedd told us that whoever was looking in the room might have been looking because it was Lord Rahl’s room.”

Kahlan smiled and put a hand on Cara’s shoulder. “Glad to see that marriage hasn’t dulled your senses.”

“Yours either. What do you think is going on?”

Kahlan drew her lower lip through her teeth.

“Earlier today a boy with a fever told Richard that there is darkness in the palace. I think it was just the fever talking, but I know Richard and I know that those words stuck in his head.

“Just before we came down here, an old woman, a fortune-teller, stopped Richard and told him that ‘The roof is going to fall in.’ Then, when we come down to see you, we find out about this business with someone looking into your room.”

“What do you suppose Lord Rahl is thinking?”

Kahlan looked over to meet Cara’s intent blue-eyed gaze. “If I know Richard— and I do— he’s thinking that he has just met the third child of trouble.”

“I knew I should have put on my red leather this morning.”

“No need to get ahead of ourselves. I’m only being cautious. Just because Richard is thinking it, that doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“Mother Confessor, when Lord Rahl gets like this trouble usually follows.”

“There is that,” Kahlan agreed.

CHAPTER 5

Kahlan watched Zedd pace across the gold and blue carpet and back again toward the heavy mahogany table, his long robes swishing around his legs when he turned, as if they were having trouble keeping up. Windows up on the balcony level lit the long library with cold, flat light. Through those windows she could see that since they had been down in the market earlier in the day, iron gray clouds had moved in, bringing the threat of a spring storm.

Though there were windows along that far wall of the balcony, the lower floor of the library near ground level had none. Kahlan thought that the library must be somewhere near to being under the Garden of Life, located in massive parts of the palace above them. Because of the complex construction of the palace it was hard for her to tell for sure.

Off in a far corner, Nathan leaned against a fluted wood column broader than his broad shoulders. With a ruffled shirt, high boots, and green cape hooked to one shoulder, to say nothing of the sword he wore, he looked more like an adventurer than a prophet. But a prophet he was. Under the warm yellow light of a reflector lamp mounted on the column in the shadowy niche he looked totally engrossed in the study of a book.

Before Kahlan, books lay in orderly stacks and disorderly piles at random intervals all along the length of the table. Papers sat in batches among the books, along with lamps, ink bottles, pens, and empty mugs. Reflector lamps on the columns at either end of rows of shelves helped illuminate the more secluded areas of the library. With the overcast, and despite the lamps, gloom had settled over the still room.

Berdine, wearing a brown leather outfit, folded her arms and leaned against the table as she, along with the rest of them, watched Zedd pace. While her eyes were as blue as Cara’s, her wavy hair was brown rather than blond. She was shorter and curvier than most of the other Mord-Sith.

Unlike most of the other Mord-Sith, Berdine was fascinated by books and had many times proven to be a tremendous help to Richard in ferreting out useful information among the thousands of volumes. While Berdine usually went about her book work with bubbly enthusiasm, she was no less deadly than Cara or any of the other Mord-Sith.

Zedd finally came to an impatient halt. “I’m not convinced that it can work, Richard— or at least, work effectively. For one thing, there are many ways to classify books, as well as books that contain more than one subject. If a book is about a city located beside a river, and you place it in a section on cities, then later when you need information about rivers you won’t be aware that this book on cities might have something important to say about a river.”

He sighed as he glanced around the library. “I’ve been reading and studying these kinds of books my whole life and I can tell you from long experience that you can’t always pigeonhole a book in a category.”

“We’ve taken that into account,” Richard said with quiet patience.

Exasperated, Zedd turned to a disorderly pile of books on the table, and after taking a quick look at a book that lay open on the top, he picked it up. He waggled it before Richard. “And then there are books like this. How do you find a classification for things that don’t even make any sense?”

Berdine scratched the hollow of her cheek. “Which book is it? What’s it about?”

Zedd closed it briefly to read the title. “Regula,” he announced in annoyance. He scanned a few pages, then shook his head in surrender. “I don’t know what the title means and after looking at it I have even less of an idea what it’s about.”

As he handed the book to Berdine, Kahlan could see that after the title Regula on the spine, there was a strange circular symbol with a triangle in it embossed into the leather. Inside that circle with a triangle lay a curving, hooked symbol that she’d never seen before. It looked something like the number nine, but it was backward.

“Oh, this one,” Berdine said as she flipped over a few pages. “Some of it is in High D’Haran, but a lot of it isn’t. I suspect that it’s a wordbook.”

Zedd puzzled at her a moment. “What does that mean?”

“Well, I can understand bits of it, the parts that are in High D’Haran, but I’m not sure what all these weird squiggly lines and symbols mean.”

“If you’re not sure what it is,” Zedd fumed, “then how can you even classify it?”

Richard laid a hand on Zedd’s shoulder. “We’ll put it on the list with all the other books that make no sense to us. That is its classification for now: unknown.”

Zedd stared at him for a moment. “Well, I guess that makes some sense.”

“Oh, it’s not unknown, Lord Rahl,” Berdine said. “Like I was explaining, I think it’s a wordbook.”

“A wordbook?” Zedd waggled a finger over the open book Berdine was holding. “It’s full of all those peculiar symbols, not words.”

“Yes, I know.” Berdine brushed a stray lock of wavy brown hair back off her face. “I haven’t been able to study it much, but I suspect that the symbols are an ancient form of writing. I saw a place that referred to it as the language of Creation.”

Zedd harrumphed. “Sounds like you could classify it as ‘useless.’ I think this is going to be such a common problem that I’m not sure I see the point of all this work.”

“Look,” Richard said, “there have been times when we’ve gotten into a lot of trouble, or couldn’t prevent trouble, because we couldn’t find answers when we needed them.

“In the past there were scribes who kept track of the vast amount of information in each library. From what I know of it, they were responsible for particular books, or specific sections of a specific library. If there was need for books that might contain information on a particular subject, the scribes could be consulted and they could narrow the search to books where answers were most likely to lie.

“Without all those knowledgeable scribes who knew about and cared for the books, the vast information in the libraries is, for all practical purposes, inaccessible. We need a way to find books on any given subject in order to find answers.

“Since the last time you were here we’ve begun cataloging everything. We’re trying to create a system to include all the books in all the libraries so that if we need answers we have a way to find information on specific topics.”

Zedd gestured to the table. “That’s these stacks of papers?”

Richard nodded. “I don’t want to move the books around too much because I don’t know why they’re in a particular library, or for that matter why they’re on particular shelves. Other than dangerous books on magic that are placed in restricted libraries, I haven’t been able to figure out any logic to where books are kept, but it’s possible that there is a reason for them being where they are. Without knowing the reason, I don’t want to move them around and chance inadvertently creating a new problem.

“So, we’re making up a sheet for each book with its title, location, and some kind of description of what’s in the book. That way we can sort the pages into categories instead of having to sort the books themselves.

“In the example you mentioned, we would have a sheet for the book in with the cities category and we’d make a copy of that sheet to put in the rivers category. That way, we’re less likely to miss important secondary information.”

Zedd looked around at the row upon row of shelves. There were thousands of books in this library, and it was only one of many in the palace.

“That’s going to be a lot of work, my boy.”

Richard shrugged. “We have a wealth of information in the tens of thousands of books in various libraries throughout the palace, but no effective means to find specific information when we need it. Instead of fixating on that problem, I came up with a solution. If you have a better one, then I’d like to hear it.”

Zedd’s thin lips pressed tight for a moment as he considered the problem. “I guess not. I have to admit, what you say makes sense. I used to do something similar, but on a much, much smaller scale.”

“The First Wizard’s enclave, at the Wizard’s Keep,” Richard said as he nodded. “I remember the way books were stacked in piles all over the place.”

Zedd stared off into memories. “I put books about specific things I wanted to have at hand together in stacks. I had once meant to organize them on shelves. Never got around to it, though, and there were relatively few books there in that one place. Maybe now, with the war ended, when I get back to the Keep I can finally return to that long-forgotten work.”

“Lord Rahl had us start here, in this library, because for the most part it doesn’t seem to contain especially valuable or rare books,” Berdine said, drawing Zedd’s attention away from his memories. “Back when Darken Rahl was the Lord Rahl, he didn’t use this library that I saw. I think that means the books here are less important.”

“That you know of,” Zedd admonished. “You can’t depend on that to say that at least some of the books in here might not be rare … or dangerous.”

“True,” Berdine said. “But some of the other libraries have books that we know for a fact are filled with dangerous things.”

“We thought this would be a good place to start,” Richard said, “before we move on to the larger or more restricted libraries. And if there are important books in here we’ll now know they’re here because we will eventually merge all the sheets on all the books. That way we’ll know where any of the books on any given subject are located, no matter which library they’re in, no matter if they are scattered all over the palace.”

Zedd seemed to have calmed down. “That makes sense.”

“So,” Richard said as he gestured to the book on the table that Zedd and Berdine had looked at before, “when we do have a book like that one, we mark it unknown, or I guess maybe ‘wordbook,’ as Berdine suggested.”

“Well actually, Lord Rahl, that one happens to be unlike anything else I’ve run into. I was going to talk to you about how we should handle it. It’s not unknown, exactly, but it’s not exactly a wordbook, either.”

Richard folded his arms. “You said it was a wordbook.”

“Possibly, but I can’t classify it that way,” she said.

Richard frowned at her. “Why not?”

“Well, what I meant was that it was starting to look that way, but I can’t tell for sure.”

Richard scratched an eyebrow. “Berdine, you’re confusing me.”

Berdine leaned over and pulled the book back. She flipped it open on the table, looking up at Richard as if she were about to pass on some bit of juicy gossip.

“Look here. This book was rebound. This isn’t its original cover.”

Zedd, Kahlan, and even Cara leaned in a little to see the book.

Richard focused on it with renewed interest. “How do you know?”

Berdine ran her finger along the inside of the spine where it attached to the back cover. “You can see here where it was mended together, but it doesn’t match. The book itself isn’t complete. Most of it is missing. This binding was made specially to hold only what was left.”

Richard cocked his head to try to see the book better. “Are you sure that most of the book is missing?”

“I am.” Berdine turned the last page back over and tapped the words in High D’Haran at the end of the book. “Look here. Except for some of the book’s beginning, most of the pages were removed. They inserted this note as a last page to explain what they’d done.”

Richard took the book off the table and read to himself. As he silently worked out the translation, a little of the color left his face.

“What does it say?” Kahlan asked.

Richard’s troubled gaze rose to meet hers. “It says that the rest of the book was removed and taken to ‘Berglendursch ost Kymermosst’ for safekeeping. This remaining part, here, was left as a marker.”

Kahlan remembered that name. Berglendursch ost Kymermosst was High D’Haran for Mount Kymermosst. Mount Kymermosst was where the Temple of the Winds had originally been built.

Three thousand years ago the Temple of the Winds, because it contained so many dangerous things, had somehow been cast out of the world of life to where no one could get to it.

It had been hidden away, out of reach, in the underworld.

On occasion over the intervening thousands of years, there had been those who had traveled to the world of the dead to try to get into the Temple of the Winds. None had survived the attempt.

Until Richard.

He had gone alone to the underworld and had been the first in thousands of years to set foot in the temple.

When he had unlocked the power of the boxes of Orden to end the war, he had righted a number of wrongs, eliminating dangers and traps that had killed a great many innocent people.

He had also returned the Temple of the Winds to the world of life, to its rightful place atop Mount Kymermosst.

CHAPTER 6

Well,” Zedd finally said into the hush, “at least you know where the rest of this book is located.” His bushy brows drew down over his intent hazel eyes. “When you told me that you had returned the temple to this world, you said that no one but you can get into it. That is the case, isn’t it, Richard?”

It sounded to Kahlan more like a command than a question.

Despite the intensity in Zedd’s voice, the tension finally eased out of Richard’s posture. “Right. What ever the rest of the book contains, it’s safely locked away.”

Richard let out a sigh as he closed the strange book and placed it back on the table. “Well, Berdine, I guess that you should mark the sheet for Regula as unknown and put down its location as both here and in the Temple of the Winds.”

Zedd turned back to Berdine, as if wanting to save the topic of the Temple of the Winds for later, for a private conversation with Richard. “So, you are making up a page for each of the books in here?”

Berdine nodded as she scooped up a fat stack of papers. “Each of these pages is a book. In this case, all the books in this stack are books of prophecy. We put down the title and include some of what the book is about if we can.”

“That way,” Richard said, “by having a sheet of paper on each book, we’ll eventually have a virtual library of all the books in the palace. I don’t think prophecy can be of much help to us, but at least we’ll know where all those books are located and what subjects they revolve around.”

Kahlan thought that was a slim chance. Most books of prophecy contained random predictions, not subjects about which prophecy was written. Prophets, gifted people who were once not so extremely rare as they became over the centuries, wrote down any prophecy that came to them, whenever it came to them, about what ever came to them. As a result, many books of prophecy had no chronology much less common subject, making them notoriously difficult to categorize.

More than that, though, they were only really meant to be read by other prophets. A person without the gift could not properly interpret a prophecy’s meaning by the words alone. Prophecy, written or spoken, rarely turned out to mean anything like what you thought it meant. Rather, the vision it invoked in prophets contained the true meaning.

Everyone turned when Nathan walked up along the opposite side of the table. “And I’m here to look over all the books of prophecy to help with categories, if they apply. I’ve spent my life reading prophecy so I’m usually already familiar with each volume. Just listing them as prophecy is usually the most that can be done, but at least we’ll then have an inventory of all of them and know where each is to be found.”

“Nathan’s help is invaluable,” Berdine said. “I don’t even try to categorize books of prophecy.”

Richard folded his arms as he leaned a hip against the table. “Speaking of prophecy, Nathan, in the halls today I ran into an older woman who tells fortunes.”

Kahlan had been wondering how long it would take Richard to get around to the second child of trouble.

“Was she blind?”

“Yes.”

Nathan nodded. “Sabella. I’ve met her. She’s the real deal.”

“You mean that you think she really can tell people their fortunes?”

Nathan held his thumb and finger barely apart. “Little ones. She has only a very small amount of genuine ability. Most of what she says is pure embellishment, telling people what they want to hear so she can earn her way in life. A lot of what she does is to make the most likely future sound as if she had seen it in a vision. For instance, she might tell a young woman that she sees marriage in her future. Hardly divination, as most young women will marry.

“But she does have a smidgen of actual ability. If she didn’t, I would have brought her to your attention. I don’t think you would want a charlatan in the palace cheating people about prophecy any more than I would.”

Kahlan was well aware that Nathan, the only living prophet that she knew of, was rather protective of the reputation of prophecy. Richard didn’t place much belief or reliance in prophecy, but Nathan did. He viewed Richard’s avoidance of prophecy, his free will, as the balance that prophecy, like all magic, needed to exist.

“Is there anyone else here who, while obviously not gifted like you, at least has some genuine ability with prophecy?” Richard asked.

“There are several people in the palace who have a small amount of talent at predictions. Everyone has a spark of the gift. That’s how they interact with magic, including prophecy.”

Nathan gestured vaguely. “Everyone, from time to time, has had a sudden thought about a friend or loved one they haven’t seen for ages. They may be overcome with a need to see that person. When they do, they discover the person is sick or maybe just passed away. Most people have experienced a feeling that someone they haven’t thought about for ages is about to visit, and suddenly they knock on the door.

“Most people have had such little foreknowledge from time to time. These are all manifestations of prophecy. Because we all carry at least a small spark of the gift, this ability, even though very weak, will sometimes produce an omen.

“In some it’s a little stronger, and they regularly experience these minor prophetic events. While not true prophecy such as I have, this does give them the ability to see a shadow of the future. Some people are self-aware enough to pay attention to these little inner whispers.”

“And you know of people like that here at the palace?”

Nathan shrugged. “Certainly. One woman works on the official kitchen staff. She is visited by small premonitions. There is another, Lauretta, who works at a butcher shop in the palace. She, too, has a hint of ability. In fact, she has been pestering me to convince you to come see her. She claims to have something for you, some omen.”

“So why haven’t you?”

“Richard, there must be ten people a day who want me to use my influence with you to gain them some favor, to have you buy their wares, to get them an audience with you, even to invite you for tea so they might give you their advice about issues that are important to them. I don’t bother you with matters you don’t have time for. Lauretta is a good enough woman, but she is especially strange, so I haven’t brought her to your attention.”

Richard sighed. “I know what you mean. I’ve run into a number of those people on my own….”

Kahlan thought that Richard was often a little too patient with people. She thought that he let them take up too much of his time, divert him from more important matters, but that was just the way Richard was. He was simply, innocently, interested in everything, including people’s lives and concerns. In that, she could see some of Zedd in him. It was also part of what she loved about him, even if from time to time it tried her patience.

“So, what did Sabella, the blind woman, tell you?”

Richard gazed off into a distant corner of the library for a moment before looking back at the prophet. “That the roof is going to fall in.”

Nathan stared, unblinking, for an even longer moment. “That kind of foretelling is too specific. It’s beyond her ability.”

“Well, that’s what she said.” Richard appraised the ashen look on Nathan’s face. “Are you sure it’s beyond her ability?”

“Afraid so.”

“Do you know what the prophecy means?”

Kahlan thought that Nathan might not answer, but finally he did. “No, can’t say that I do.”

“If you don’t know what it means, then why do you have that look on your face and how do you know that it’s beyond Sabella’s ability? How do you even know that it’s a real omen and not simply an empty warning she made up in exchange for a coin?”

Nathan took the stack of papers from Berdine. “Most of the books in this library are rather common,” he said as he thumbed through the pages. “I’ve been reading books of prophecy my whole life. I’d venture to say I know just about every one that exists. Most of these books here, including the books of prophecy, are copies that can be found in libraries in any number of other places.”

Nathan finally found the sheet he was looking for and pulled it out. “Except this one. This one is a rather curious volume.”

“What’s so unusual about it?” Richard asked.

The tall prophet handed the sheet to Richard. “Not a lot until today. That’s why I haven’t studied it much.”

Richard scanned the page. “End Notes. Strange title. What does it mean?”

“No one is really sure. This is a particularly ancient work. Some think it’s merely a compilation of random bits of longer prophecies that have been lost over the ages. Others have believed that it means exactly what it implies, that it contains notes about the end.”

Richard frowned up at Nathan. “The end? The end of what?”

Nathan arched an eyebrow. “The end of time.”

“The end of time,” Richard repeated. “And what do you think?”

“That’s the odd thing about it,” the prophet said. “I don’t know what to think. Having the gift, as I read prophecy I often have visions of their true meaning. But this book is different. I’ve looked at it a number of times throughout my life. When I read it I have no visions.

“What’s more, I’m not the only one. Part of the reason that no one is sure of the meaning of the title is that other prophets have had the same difficulty with this book that I have. They, too, had no visions from the prophecies in it.”

“Doesn’t seem so hard to figure out why,” Cara said. “It sounds to me like that simply shows that what’s written in the book aren’t real prophecies. You’re a prophet. If they were real prophecies you would know it. You would have the visions.”

A sly smile overcame Nathan’s face. “For someone who knows nothing about magic, you have managed to arrive at the heart of the issue. That has been the contention of many who say they are random snippets and therefore too incomplete to be viable, or that the book is a fraud.” The smile ghosted away. “There is only one problem with that theory.”

“And what would that be?” Richard asked before Cara could.

“Let me show you.”

Nathan marched off down the center aisle with Richard, Kahlan, Zedd, Cara, Benjamin, and Berdine in tow. Rikka stayed back by the door to the library where she had been standing guard to make sure they weren’t disturbed. At the very end of the room Nathan started scanning the titles in the tall, ornately decorated bookcase against the wall. He finally bent and pulled a book from a lower shelf.

“Here it is,” he announced as he showed them the spine with the title End Notes. After searching for a moment, he handed the open book to Richard and tapped a place on the right-hand page.

Richard stared at the words as if he was having trouble believing what he was seeing.

“What does it say?” Kahlan finally had to ask.

Richard’s gray eyes turned up to her. “It says, ‘The roof is going to fall in.’”

“You mean just like that old woman said today?” Kahlan frowned. “What does the rest of it say?”

“Nothing. That’s the only thing on the whole page.”

Nathan glanced around at the small group surrounding him. “It’s a fragment prophecy.”

Richard stared at the writing in the book. Benjamin seemed puzzled. Zedd wore a stony expression that deepened the wrinkles on his angular face. Berdine looked decidedly worried.

Cara scrunched up her nose. “A fragment prophecy?”

Nathan nodded. “A prophecy so concise that it can appear to be nothing more than a fragment, a snippet. Prophecy is usually at least a little more complex than this and usually a great deal more involved.”

Richard glanced down again at the book. “Or it’s simply empty boasting.”

Nathan straightened. “Boasting?”

“Sure. Someone wanted to make themselves sound impressive so they came up with something that sounds specific but isn’t.”

As Nathan cocked his head, his long white hair brushed his shoulder. “I don’t follow.”

“Well, how long ago do you think this was written?”

“I can’t be sure, but the prophecy itself has to be several thousand years old, at least. Possibly much older than that.”

“And in all that time since then don’t you suppose that a roof or two has collapsed? It’s an impressive-sounding prophecy, saying a roof is going to fall in, but it’s really nothing more than like announcing on a sunny day that you predict that it will rain. Sooner or later it’s going to rain, so such a prediction is pretty safe to make. In the same way, over the years, sooner or later, a roof is going to fall in. When it does, that event makes the person who said it sound prophetic.”

“That makes sense to me,” Cara said, happy to have the magic of prophecy defanged.

“There’s only one problem with that,” Nathan said.

Richard handed back the book. “Like what?”

“Empty predictions are usually open-ended. Like you say, sooner or later it’s going to rain. But with real prophecy they repeat themselves. You might say that the omen resurfaces to remind people of it.”

Richard looked up at Nathan from under his lowered brow. “You mean to say that you think that because this woman today repeated this fragment prophecy that means it’s real? That the time for it has arrived?”

Nathan smiled the slightest bit. “That’s the way it works, Richard.”

Kahlan noticed someone arrive at the doorway. By the robes with gold trim she recognized the man as a palace official. Rikka spoke briefly with him, then hurried down the aisle.

“Lord Rahl, the reception is beginning. The new husband and wife should be there to greet people.”

Richard smiled as he put his arms around Benjamin’s and Cara’s shoulders and started them toward the door. “Let’s not keep people waiting for the guests of honor.”

CHAPTER 7

As he made his way into the grand hall, Richard scanned the crowd, looking for the man Cara had told him about. Kahlan slipped her arm through his and leaned closer as they followed Cara and her new husband.

“I know that you have a lot of things running through your head, Richard,” Kahlan whispered to him, “but let’s try to remember that this party is for Cara and Benjamin and we want it to be remembered fondly.”

Richard smiled. He knew what she meant. Beginning with the first party he had taken her to on the day he’d met her, they never seemed to do well at parties for one reason or another. On more than one occasion they had turned out to be disastrous. But that had always been during the long struggle to survive the war.

“Yes, we do.” He gave Kahlan a little nudge as he leaned close to her. “They do make a great couple, don’t they?”

“That’s the Richard I love,” she whispered with a smile.

The vast room was filled with the drone of people enjoying the banquet. Tables spread with food of every sort drew throngs while palace staff in sky-blue robes circulated through the gathering with platters of smaller finger foods.

The blue color of their robes had been Cara’s choice. Richard hadn’t asked the reason for her choice, but he suspected that it had been because it was not a color that Mord-Sith wore. He was just happy that she had picked something pretty.

“Go on,” he said to Cara. With a slight shove at the small of her back he urged her to go out among the people who had turned out for her and Benjamin’s reception. As Cara waded into the sea of people he was heartened to see her smile back over her shoulder at him. Would wonders never cease.

As he watched Cara and Benjamin graciously accept the warm wishes of all the people from lands near and far who started to flock in around them, he was only half listening to Kahlan and Zedd talking. Zedd was telling her about all the things that were new in Aydindril, about the repairs that had been completed at the Confessors’ Palace, where she had grown up, and about all the businesses that had returned.

“It’s so good to hear how vibrant Aydindril is once again,” Kahlan said. “Richard and I can’t wait to return for a visit.”

Although there were hundreds of women all dressed in their finest dresses, Richard didn’t think that any of them looked anywhere near as stunning as Kahlan. Her white Mother Confessor dress, cut square at the neck and elegant in its simplicity, caressed her perfect form. It made her long brown hair look all the more luxurious, and her green eyes even more bewitching.

While he thought that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, it was the intelligence Richard could see in those eyes that had captivated him from the first moment he had come face-to-face with her. In the years since he had come to know her, to love her, she had never once given him reason to doubt his first impression of what he had seen in her eyes. Waking every morning to look into those green eyes made him feel like he must be living a dream.

“It is wonderful to see the place so alive and thriving,” Zedd was saying, “but I tell you, Kahlan, the trade in prophecy is becoming exasperating.”

Richard abruptly looked over at his grandfather. “The trade in prophecy? What are you talking about?”

Zedd ran a finger along his angular jaw as he considered his answer. “Well, ever since the war ended and people moved back into Aydindril, prophets of every sort and stripe have also moved in. People are as eager to listen to prophecy as they are to gossip.

“Some people want to know if they will find love. Some want to know if they will be successful in their trade or business. Some believe that the future holds doom and gloom and they want to hear the forewarnings of terrible things to come. Some even want to hear the predictions about the end of the world, and so they listen with rapt attention to how all the signs are coming to pass.”

Richard was dumbfounded. “Signs? What signs?”

“Oh, you know, like the full moon came up and was triple-ringed one night. Or that spring is late this year. Or that it didn’t freeze on the last full moon. Silly things like that.”

“Oh,” Richard said, relieved to hear that it was only the typical end-times warnings that always cropped up around some event like an eclipse, or a change of season. Often it was merely ordinary events linked together into sure signs of the impending extinction of the world of life.

There seemed to be some inner need in many people to believe that the world would end in some cataclysmic event. Usually in the very near future.

Zedd clasped his hands behind himself. “Seems like everyone wants to know what fate holds for them. Prophecy, and the passing along of prophecy— or even the trade in it— seems to be a preoccupation of just about everyone of late.”

Kahlan’s green eyes flashed with concern. “I don’t recall such a prophecy trade in Aydindril. I’ve seen it on a small scale in any number of places, but I don’t recall it being as noteworthy in Aydindril as you say.”

“Well it is now. Seems like on every corner someone is offering prophecy, fortunes, and predictions. For everyone who wants to know the future, there seem to be any number of people who claim to be able to tell them what it will be.”

Richard eased closer to Kahlan. “Isn’t that the way it’s always been? People have always wanted to know the future.”

“Not like this. There is a growing business in prophecy, and a growing number of people who are willing to pay for it and then are eager to pass on any warnings they hear. The city has become a cauldron of prediction and foretelling, with it all becoming the grist for gossip. I have to tell you, Richard, it’s starting to have me concerned.”

When a server in blue robes approached and bowed, holding out a tray, Kahlan took a glass. She took a sip before turning her attention once more to Zedd’s story.

“With the war over, people don’t have that constant fear on their minds. They’re used to living in dread, so they’re probably turning to dire predictions of the future to fill that nagging ghost of worry now that the real worry is dead.”

Richard rested the palm of his left hand on the pommel of his sword, declining a drink when offered. He had not drawn the sword since the first day of the winter past. He would be happy if he never needed to draw it again.

“Kahlan is right. For years people lived in constant terror that they wouldn’t live to see another day. With the war finally ended they wake every day to realize that they do have a future— a real future. They want to know what that future holds. I’d rather they created their own future, built lives from their own dreams, but I suppose that many believe that fate holds secrets for them, and prophecy can reveal it.”

Zedd waved off the server before going on. “Could be.” He watched the crowd churning through the great hall for a time. “But it feels like more to me,” he added under his breath.

Kahlan smiled. “See? The war is over and even you can’t give up worrying. You’re doing the same thing that they’re doing. You should relax a little. The world is at peace.”

“Peace,” Zedd huffed. He turned to them both with a chilling look. “There is nothing as dangerous as peacetime.”

Richard hoped Zedd was wrong, that, as Kahlan said, he was simply so used to worrying that he was falling into old habits. He supposed that he knew how Zedd felt. Even though there was peace, he couldn’t help worrying, either.

Richard was worried about what Cara had said, that someone had been watching them. He was also concerned about the fact that the prophecy from the old woman, Sabella, had turned out to be the exact same prophecy that had been in the book End Notes. Prophecy had caused Kahlan and him no end of trouble.

Most of all, though, Richard was concerned about what the boy down in the marketplace had said, that there was darkness in the palace, and that darkness was seeking darkness. He had no tangible reason to worry about words that seemed to have been born of fever. Indeed, Zedd and Nathan hadn’t been worried about the boy’s words when he told them what had happened. They both thought Kahlan had it right, that it was nothing more than fevered illusions.

But Richard was worried about those words. Something about them seemed more than a simple fever. They touched something deep within him. Especially now, since people from all over were gathered at the palace.

Richard noticed Rikka watching the crowd. She looked like a hawk searching for a mouse. Cara, off a ways across the room, kept an eye on Richard and Kahlan even as she smiled and greeted people. He saw other Mord-Sith standing off to the sides, watching people. Several of them, closer to Richard and Kahlan, were wearing red leather. For some reason, he wasn’t altogether unhappy to see that. Even if it was peacetime, he was glad to see that they were remaining vigilant.

Richard leaned a bit toward his grandfather. “Zedd, do you think that what Nathan said was right?”

Zedd frowned. “About what?”

Richard smiled at passing guests before answering. “That real prophecies repeat themselves. That they resurface to reinforce the validity of the prophecy. That they repeat themselves to remind people of the prophecy, so to speak.”

Zedd gazed out at the crowd for a time before answering.

“I’m not a prophet. My gift does not manifest itself in that way. But I am still a wizard and as such I’ve studied prophecy, among other things, my whole life, so I know about prophecy. There is some truth in what Nathan told you.”

“I see,” Richard said as he noticed the captain of the guard that had escorted them down to the market that morning making his way across the room. For some reason the man’s jaw was set with grim urgency.

People saw the captain’s purposeful stride and made way for him, yet the celebration, the lilt of laughter, the drone of conversation throughout the room went on unabated. Benjamin saw the man as well and straightened, looking suddenly more like General Meiffert than husband Benjamin. Several Mord-Sith started to close in, apparently thinking, because of how serious the man looked, that they might need to keep him away from the Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor, who were there to enjoy themselves and didn’t need to be bothered with business. Cara gave them a slight gesture, though, and they let the man pass without intervening.

The captain came to a smart halt and clapped a fist to his heart. “I apologize for interrupting you, Lord Rahl.”

Richard bowed his head slightly in recognition of the salute. “It’s all right. Did you find the boy, Captain?”

“No, Lord Rahl. We’ve looked everywhere. The boy is gone.”

Richard thought that sounded a little too definite. “He has to be somewhere down there. He’s sick, he couldn’t have gone too far. Keep looking. I’m sure your men will find him.”

The captain cleared his throat. “Lord Rahl, two of my men, two of the men who went after the boy, were found dead just a short while ago.”

Richard’s heart sank at the thought that these brave men who had fought so long and suffered so much had died now that peace had finally arrived.

“Dead? How did they die?”

The man shifted his weight. “I don’t know, Lord Rahl. There were no wounds or anything like that. They had not drawn their weapons. Their faces showed no last indication of trouble. They were simply lying peacefully in a narrow passage behind rows of tents. They was no sign of any kind of struggle.”

Richard’s fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword. “And they had no wounds?”

“No, Lord Rahl. They were just plain dead.”

CHAPTER 8

Not long after Richard had sent the captain to collect a larger force of men to help find the boy, the delegations from various lands who had come for the grand wedding saw their opening and began gathering in around Richard and Kahlan. While many of them expressed their gratitude to the two of them for all they had done to end the threat of tyranny, some wanted to ask questions. Everyone was eager to hear what the Lord Rahl and Mother Confessor had to say in answer to those questions.

Richard had met some of the representatives, ambassadors, and emissaries over the past few days as they had arrived at the palace, but many of the gathered people he didn’t know. The smiles and the gratitude, as well as the questions, seemed genuine.

After dispensing with the formality of expressing their delight with being invited, with the warmth of their reception, and with the beauty of the palace, they all quickly fell into asking questions about trade policy and the establishment of uniform laws. They wanted assurances that what they had heard, that they would all have the chance to be involved in such things, was true.

With urgent matters of war and the need for supplies and men now a thing of the past, everyone was turning to considerations of how to use their resources and goods to the best advantage of their own homeland and people. It was clear that the unity they had all felt during the war had softened and each of them was concerned that their land might now somehow be placed at a disadvantage when it came to trade and matters of law.

Richard let Kahlan assure them that there would be no restrictions on trade, and that they needn’t fear special favors to some that would put others at a disadvantage. Many of the people were from the Midlands. She reminded them of her policies when she had ruled the Midlands as the Mother Confessor and assured them that now being part of the D’Haran Empire would not change those matters of fairness. Her calm manner and authoritative demeanor made them confident in the truth of what she said.

A number of the officials reminded her that in the Midlands most of the lands were formally represented in Aydindril, sometimes with rulers of the lands spending extended periods of time there, sometimes with emissaries and representatives, but there were always officials of some sort at hand so the different lands could always be involved in the decisions of the council or in matters of setting laws. Kahlan assured them that the People’s Palace was now the formal seat of power in the D’Haran Empire, so there would be similar arrangements made for them and their representatives to have permanent quarters from where they could participate in the shaping of their common future. Everyone seemed not merely relieved to hear this, but genuinely pleased.

Kahlan was used to being in command and carried her power with an easy grace. She had grown up mostly alone because, as a Confessor, she had grown up being feared. When Richard had first met her he saw people tremble in her presence. In the past people saw only the terrifying power she wielded, not the nature of the woman behind that power, but in the time she and Richard had fought on behalf of these people, she had come to be admired and respected. People had come to look up to her.

At the most inopportune moment, in the midst of Kahlan’s answers to questions, Nathan marched up behind Richard, took hold of his arm, and pulled him back a little. “I need to speak with you.”

Kahlan paused in her answer about an ancient boundary dispute. She had been telling people that there was nothing to dispute; they were all now part of the D’Haran Empire and it didn’t really matter where a meaningless line was drawn on a map. As she fell silent, every eye went to the tall prophet. They all knew who he was.

Richard noticed that Nathan had the book End Notes in hand, with one finger acting as a placeholder in the book.

“What is it?” Richard asked in a low voice as he took several steps back from the suddenly silent crowd watching him. Prophecy was apparently of more concern to them than matters of trade or arbitrary boundaries.

Nathan leaned in and spoke confidentially. “You told me that the boy you encountered down in the market today told you something about darkness in the palace.”

Richard straightened and turned back to look around at all the people watching him. “I’m sorry for the interruption. If you will excuse me it will only be a moment.”

He took Nathan by the arm and moved him back a few more steps toward the double doors all along the wall at the back of the room. Zedd came along, as did Kahlan. Cara and Benjamin, not far away, took the hint in the look Richard gave them and drew the attention of the delegates by asking about how the rebuilding was going in their homelands.

Once sure that no one was within earshot, Richard turned back to Nathan. “The boy said that there is darkness in the palace. He said that darkness is seeking darkness.”

Without a word, Nathan opened the book and handed it to Richard.

Richard immediately spotted the line all by itself: Darkness is seeking darkness.

“That’s the boy’s exact words,” Kahlan said, a tone of concern clearly evident in a low voice.

Richard almost said that it had to be coincidence, but he knew better. Instead he asked, “Anything else about this, this fragment prophecy anywhere else in the book?”

“I don’t know,” Nathan said with obvious frustration. “I have no way of knowing if anything in the book is connected to anything else. For all I know, everything else might be tied to this darkness prophecy, or none of it is. I don’t even know if the other one, the one about the ceiling falling in, is connected to this line about darkness seeking darkness.”

Richard knew it was.

He was more than skeptical that it could be a coincidence that the boy spoke a line from a book that contained another line in it that the old woman had spoken. He knew it couldn’t all be connected by chance. He remembered the surprised look on the woman’s face when she had told him his fortune, that the roof was going to fall in, as if that hadn’t been what she had meant to say.

Richard had learned that his gift often manifested itself in unique ways. Some texts called him the pebble in the pond, because he was at the center of ripples of events. Incidents that at first seemed like chance events were in fact often elements that were somehow drawn to him, or drew his attention, by his gift, by the ripples he created around him. Such events could appear to be coincidence until he dug deeper.

Or until the sky fell in on him.

He knew now for certain that he couldn’t let this lie and let events get out ahead of him. He needed to dig deeper.

He let out a deep breath. “All right. There’s nothing we can do about it at the moment. Let’s not get all these people worked up by letting them know that something is wrong.”

“We don’t know that there really is something wrong,” Zedd reminded him.

Richard didn’t want to argue that there was. “I hope you’re right.”

“The way prophecy works,” Nathan reminded Zedd, “it’s likely that this is all connected somehow.”

Zedd’s face twisted with a sour expression, but he didn’t challenge the point.

Richard tapped his thumb against the hilt of his sword as he ran all the events through his mind for a moment. He couldn’t see any connection between the three events. He couldn’t even imagine any.

That wasn’t true, he realized. Darkness seeking something could be connected to Cara’s feeling that someone was looking into her room in the night— in the dark.

He turned to Nathan. “You said that there’s a woman who works for the palace and that she is visited by small premonitions.”

“That’s right. She’s general kitchen help, usually doing preparation work like cutting up things for the palace cooks, but she helps out with other things when extra people are needed. As a matter of fact, I believe she’s one of the people in the blue robes helping serve tonight.” He glanced around without trying not to look obvious. “I don’t see her at the moment, though.”

“And you said that there was another woman, Lauretta, I think you said her name was, who has a hint of ability. You said that she wanted to see me because she has something for me, some kind of omen.”

Nathan nodded. “That’s right.”

“As soon as we can break away from here I want you to take me to see her.”

“Richard, I’d be happy to take you there, but it’s likely nothing. These kinds of things usually turn out to be a whole lot less than one thinks they are. People often believe that the most mundane and innocent things somehow have sinister implications. It’s likely nothing meaningful.”

“That would please me just fine,” Richard said as he checked on the people waiting for him. “Then I won’t have to worry about it.”

“I suppose so.” Nathan gestured toward the wall of doors behind them. “We’re near the kitchens. Lauretta works for a butcher who helps supply the palace for affairs like the wedding and this gathering here today. Her quarters aren’t far. When you feel like taking a stroll we can go see her.”

Richard nodded. “For now, let’s get back to our guests.”

CHAPTER 9

Richard stepped back to the waiting group of officials, mayors, regents, representatives and even a few kings and queens of some of the lands in what used to be the Midlands before they were all joined into the D’Haran Empire. When Zedd and Kahlan went with him, Nathan tucked the book under his arm, put on his widest smile, and came along.

Nathan, being the only living prophet as well as a Rahl, was well known to just about everyone at the palace. That, and his flamboyant nature, made him a celebrity of sorts. He dressed the part, with a ruffled shirt and a fashionable green cape. Elaborate engraving covered the gold scabbard and sword at his hip.

Richard thought that a wizard of Nathan’s abilities wearing a sword made about as much sense as a porcupine carrying a toothpick to defend himself. Nathan claimed that the sword made him look “dashing.” He enjoyed the looks he got, usually acknowledging them with a broad grin and, if the looks came from a woman, a deep bow. The more attractive the woman, the wider his smile tended to be. The women often blushed, but they almost always returned a smile.

Despite being somewhere near to a thousand years old, Nathan often approached life with the glee and wonder of a child. It was an infectious nature that attracted some people to him. Others, no matter Nathan’s often pleasant nature, considered him to be just about the most dangerous man alive.

A prophet could tell the future and in the future pain, suffering, and death often lay in wait. People believed that, if he chose to, he could reveal what fate awaited them. Nathan dealt with prophecy; he could neither invent it or make it happen. But some still believed he could. That was why many considered him dangerous.

Others considered him profoundly dangerous for an entirely different reason. They feared him because there had been times when prophecies he revealed had started wars.

There were those women who were drawn to that aura of danger about him.

When asked why he would bother to carry a sword, Nathan had reminded Richard that he was a wizard as well, and he carried a sword. Richard protested that he was also the Seeker, and the Sword of Truth was bonded to him. It was part of him, part of who he was. Nathan’s sword was more ornamental. Nathan didn’t need a sword to reduce someone to ash.

Nathan had reminded Richard that, Seeker or not, and no matter how he framed it, Richard was far more deadly than the sword he carried.

“Lord Rahl,” a stocky man in a red tunic asked as everyone gathered close, “may we know if there is some prophetic event lying ahead for us?”

Many in the crowd nodded, relieved that the question had finally been asked, and moved in a little closer. Richard was beginning to suspect that the answers to such questions were the only things they were really interested in hearing from him.

He looked around at all the eager faces watching him. “Prophetic event? What do you mean?”

“Well,” the man said, sweeping an arm expansively, “with so many gifted right here, First Wizard Zorander, the prophet himself, Nathan Rahl”— the man bowed his head toward Richard—“and not least of all you, Lord Rahl, who has more than proven to everyone what a remarkable gift you possess, surely you would have to be privy to the deepest secrets of prophecy. We are all hoping, since we are all gathered here, that you would be willing to share with us what such prophecy has revealed to you, what it holds in store for us.”

People in the gathered crowd voiced their agreement or nodded as they smiled hopefully.

“You want to hear prophecy?”

Heads bobbed and everyone inched in closer, as if they were about to be privy to a palace secret.

“Then heed what I say.” Richard gestured to the gloomy gray light coming from the windows at the far end of the room behind the crowd. Everyone glanced briefly over their shoulder, then turned back, lest they miss what Richard would say.

“There will be a spring storm the likes of which has not been seen for many years. Those of you who wish to return home sooner rather than later should plan to leave at once. Those who delay too long will shortly be stranded here for a number of days.”

A few people whispered among themselves as if Richard had just revealed the secrets of the dead. But most of those waiting for his word on the future seemed to be a great deal less impressed.

The heavyset man in a red tunic held a hand aloft. “Lord Rahl, while that is fascinating, and I am sure quite prophetic, and no doubt useful to some of us here, we were hoping to hear of things more … significant.”

“Like what?” Nathan said in a deep voice that rattled some in the crowd.

A woman in the front dressed with layered golds and greens forced a smile. “Well,” she said, “we were hoping to hear some true words of prophecy. Some of fate’s dark secrets.”

Richard was feeling more uneasy by the moment. “Why the sudden interest in prophecy?”

The woman seemed to shrink a little at his tone. She was trying to find words when a tall man farther back wove his way between people as he stepped forward. He wore a simple black coat with a turned-up, straight collar that went all the way around. The coat was buttoned to his neck so that it pulled the collar nearly closed at his throat. He wore a rimless four-sided hat of the same color.

It was the abbot Benjamin had told Richard about.

“Lord Rahl,” the abbot said as he bowed, “we have all heard warnings from people who have been endowed with an element of insight into the flow of events forward in time. Their dark warnings trouble us all greatly.”

Richard folded his arms. “What are you talking about? Who is coming up with these warnings?”

The abbot glanced about at his fellow guests. “Why, people back in all of our homelands. Since arriving at the palace, as we have talked among ourselves, we have discovered that we are all hearing dark warnings from soothsayers of every sort—”

“Soothsayers?”

“Yes, Lord Rahl. Diviners of the future. Though they live in different places, different lands, they are all speaking of dark visions of the future.”

Richard’s brow drew lower. “What do you mean by diviners of the future? They can’t be true prophets.” He gestured to his side. “Nathan here is the only living prophet. Who are these people you’re listening to?”

The abbot shrugged. “They may not be prophets, as such, but that does not mean they are bereft of abilities. Capnomancers have seen dire warnings in their readings of sacred smoke. Haruspices have found disturbing omens in animal entrails.” The man spread his hands innocently. “Those sorts of people, Lord Rahl. Like I say, diviners of the future.”

Richard hadn’t moved. “If these people are so talented and know the future and all, then why are you asking me about it?”

The man smiled apologetically. “They have talents, but not to compare with yours, Lord Rahl, or with those remarkably gifted people with whom you surround yourself. We would value hearing what you know of ominous warnings in prophecy so that we might take your word back to people in our homelands. From what they have been hearing, they are uneasy and hoping that we will return with word from those at the palace. A spring storm, while noteworthy, is not what concerns us most. It is the whispers and warnings we have all heard that worry us.”

Richard could not disguise his glare as stood before the silent crowd watching him. “Your people want to know what the Lord Rahl has to say on the subject?”

There were nods all around. Some people dared to inch forward again.

Richard let his arms down and stood taller. “I say that the future is what you make of it, not what someone says it will be. Your lives are not controlled by fate, or set down in some book, or revealed in smoke, or laid out in a twisted pile of pig intestine. You should tell people to stop worrying about prophecy and to put their minds to making their own future.”

Nathan cleared his throat as he took a quick step forward. “What Lord Rahl means to say is that prophecy is meant for prophets, for those with the gift. Only the gifted can understand the complexities tangled up in a genuine prophecy. Rest assured, we will worry about such things so that you don’t need to.”

Some in the crowd reluctantly seemed to think that made some sense. Others were not satisfied. A thin woman, a queen from one of the lands in the Midlands, spoke up.

“But prophecy is meant to help people. It is set down so that those words elicited by the gift will come forward through the dark tunnel of time to be of use to those of us who will be touched by those prophecies. What good is prophecy if the people aren’t informed of what it has to say about their fate? What use is the gift for prophecy if not to help people? What value is prophecy if it is kept secret?”

Nathan smiled. “Since you are not a prophet, Your Majesty, how can you know that there is a prophecy that is relevant, one that you would need to know about?”

She fingered a long jeweled necklace, the unseen end of which was located somewhere down in her cleavage. “Well, I suppose…”

Richard rested the palm of his left hand on his sword. “Prophecy causes more trouble than it ever helps.”

“We have encountered prophecy,” Kahlan said as she stepped up beside Richard, drawing everyone’s attention, “profoundly frightening core prophecy speaking specifically of Richard and of me. Had we followed the grim warnings in those prophecies, done what they said must be done to avert disaster, it would have actually ended up being not only our destruction but the destruction of all life.

“Had we done as you now wish to do, and heeded the words of those terrible prophecies, you would now all be dead at best, or worse, slaves in the hands of savage masters. In the end those prophecies turned out to be true, but not in the way that they sounded. Prophecy is profoundly dangerous in the wrong hands and not intended to be heeded in the way it sounds.”

“So, you are saying that we can’t be trusted with knowing our own future?” There was an edge to the queen’s voice.

Richard saw the flash of anger Kahlan’s green eyes and answered before she could. “We’re saying that the future is not fixed. You make your own future. If you believe you know the future, then that changes the way you behave, changes the decisions you make, changes how you live and how you plan for your future. Such unthinking choices could be ruinous. You need to act in your own rational best interest, not upon what you think prophecy says is in store for you.

“The future, at least for the most part, is not fixed in prophecy. Where prophecy may be valid it is not something that can be comprehended by just anyone.”

While that didn’t entirely satisfy people, it did take some of the wind out of their excitement to hear some juicy omens.

“Prophecy has meaning,” Nathan said, “but the true meaning can only be unraveled by those gifted in such things, and I can tell you that those things are not revealed in a pile of pig guts.”

When she saw the hesitancy in the crowd, Cara, in her white leather outfit, moved in to Richard’s left. “D’Harans have a saying: the Lord Rahl is the magic against magic; we are the steel against steel. He has more than proven himself to all of us. Leave the magic to him.”

Coming from a Mord-Sith, those words had a chilling finality.

The crowd seemed to realize that they were not merely pushing into areas where they didn’t belong, but overstepping bounds. Somewhat shamed, they spoke quietly among themselves, agreeing with one another that it made sense that maybe they should leave such matters to those who were best able to deal with them. Everyone seemed to relax a bit, as if having just pulled back from the brink.

Out of the corner of his eye to the right, Richard saw the blue robes of one of the serving women coming up on the far side of Kahlan.

The woman gently laid her left hand on Kahlan’s forearm as if wanting to speak to her confidentially.

That, more than anything, was what got Richard’s attention. People didn’t just come up and casually lay a hand on the Mother Confessor.

As she came around and turned in toward Kahlan, Richard saw the haunted look in the woman’s eyes and the blood down the front of her robes.

He was already moving when he saw the knife in her other hand sweeping around toward Kahlan’s chest.

CHAPTER 10

Time itself seemed to stop.

Richard recognized all too well the eternal emptiness between the heartbeats of time, that expectant void before the lightning ignition of power.

He was a step too far away to stop the woman in time, yet he also knew that he was too close for what was about to happen.

It was already out of his hands and there was nothing he could do about it.

Life and death hung in that instant of time. Kahlan could not afford to hesitate. His instinct to turn away tensed his muscles even though he was well aware that nothing he could do would be fast enough.

The sea of people stood wide-eyed, frozen in shock. Several Mord-Sith in red leather had already begun to leap a distance that Richard knew they could never make in time. He saw Cara’s red Agiel beginning to spin up into her hand, soldiers’ hands going for swords, and Zedd’s hand lifting to cast magic. Richard knew that not one of them had a chance to make it in time.

At the center of it all, Richard saw the woman holding Kahlan’s forearm down out of the way as the bloody knife in her other hand arced around toward Kahlan’s chest.

In that instant everyone had only begun to move.

Into that silent void in time, thunder without sound suddenly ignited.

Time crashed back in a headlong rush as the force of the concussion exploded through the confined space of the banquet hall.

The impact to the air raced outward in a circle.

People near the front cried out in pain as they tumbled backward to the ground. Those farther away in the rear were knocked back a few steps. In shock and fear they too late protectively covered their faces with an arm.

Food flew off tables and carts; glasses and plates shattered against the walls; wine bottles, cutlery, containers, small serving bowls, napkins, and fragments of glass were blown back by the shock wave sweeping across the room at lightning speed. When it hit the far end of the room the glass in all the windows blew out. The bottoms of curtains flapped out through the shattered windows. Knives, forks, food, drink, plates, and pieces of broken glass clattered across the floor.

Richard was by far the one closest to Kahlan as she had unleashed her Confessor power. Too close. Proximity to such power being loosed was dangerous. The pain of it seared through every joint in his body, dropping him to a knee. Zedd fell back, knocked from his feet. Nathan, a little farther away, staggered back, catching Cara’s arm to steady her.

When pieces of shattered glass finally stopped skipping across the floor, the tablecloths and curtains finally settled and stilled, and people sat up in stunned silence, the woman in bloody blue robes was kneeling at the Mother Confessor’s feet.

Kahlan stood tall at the center of the settling chaos.

People stared in shock. None of them had ever seen a Confessor unleash her power before. It was not something done before spectators. Richard doubted that any of them would ever forget it as long as they lived.

“Bags, that hurts,” Zedd muttered as he sat up rubbing his elbows and rolling his shoulders.

As Richard’s vision and mind cleared from the needle-sharp stab of pain that had instantly stitched its way through every joint in his body, he saw that the woman had left a bloody handprint on the sleeve of Kahlan’s white dress.

Kneeling there before the Mother Confessor, the woman didn’t look at all like an assassin. She was of average build with small features. Limp ringlets of dark hair just touched her shoulders. Richard knew that a person touched by a Confessor’s power didn’t feel the same pain as those nearby, but, more than that, things such as pain would be merely distant considerations to her. Once touched by a Confessor, the Confessor was all.

Whoever the woman had been, she was no more.

“Mistress,” the woman whispered, “command me.”

Kahlan’s voice came as cold as ice. “Tell me again what you have done, what you said to me before.”

“I’ve killed my children,” the woman said in a dispassionate voice. “I thought you should know.”

The words cut through the somber silence, running a shiver up many a spine, Richard was sure. Some people gasped.

“That’s why you came to me?”

The woman nodded. “Partly. I had to tell you what I had done.” A tear ran down her cheek. “And what I had to do.”

With her mind and who she had been now gone, Richard knew that her tears were not for killing her children, but for having intended to kill Kahlan. The Confessor who had touched her was now the only thing that mattered to her. The guilt of her intent now crushed her soul.

Richard bent and carefully took hold of the woman’s right wrist as he pulled the bloody knife from her grip. Disarming her was no longer necessary, but it still made him feel better. She didn’t seem to notice.

“Why would you do such a thing?” Kahlan asked in a commanding tone that stilled everyone’s breath for a moment.

The woman’s face turned up to Kahlan. “I had to. I didn’t want them to face the terror of it.”

“The terror of what?”

“Of being eaten alive, Mistress,” the woman said, as if it was obvious.

All around guards eased in closer. Several Mord-Sith who had tried to stop the woman, but hadn’t been able to make it in time, now slipped up behind the woman. Each of them had her Agiel in her fist.

Kahlan had no need of guards or Mord-Sith and had no fear of a mere knife from a single attacker. Once touched by her power, a person was helplessly devoted to the Confessor and incapable of disobeying her, much less harming her. Their only concern was to please her. That included confessing any crime they were guilty of if Kahlan asked.

“What are you talking about?”

The woman blinked. “I couldn’t let them suffer what’s to come. I did them a mercy, Mistress, and killed them swiftly.”

Nathan leaned close to Richard and whispered, “This is the woman I told you about, the one who works in the kitchens. She has a small amount of talent to see the future.”

Kahlan leaned down toward the woman, causing her to shrink back. “How could you know what they would suffer?”

“I had a vision, Mistress. I have visions sometimes. I had a vision and I saw what was going to happen if they lived. Don’t you see? I couldn’t let such a gruesome thing happen to my babies.”

“Are you telling me that you had a vision that told you to kill your own children?”

“No,” the woman said, shaking her head. “I had a vision of them being eaten alive, of fangs ripping and tearing at them as they screamed in terror and pain. The vision didn’t tell me to kill them, but after what I saw I knew what I had to do lest they suffer such a horrific fate. I was doing them a mercy, Mistress, I swear.”

“What are you talking about, eaten alive? Eaten alive by what?”

“Dark things, Mistress. Dark things come for my babies. Dark things, feral things, coming in the night.”

“So you had a vision and because of that you decided to kill them yourself.”

It was a charge, not a question. Nonetheless, the woman thought it was and nodded, eager to please her mistress.

“Yes. I slit their throats. They bled out and lost consciousness quickly as they faded gently into death. They did not have to suffer what fate would have had them suffer.”

“Faded gently?” Kahlan asked through gritted teeth and barely contained fury. “Are you trying to tell me that they didn’t suffer, didn’t struggle?”

Richard had seen people’s throats cut, and so had Kahlan. They did not go gently into death by any means. They fought for their lives in terrifying, mortal pain, and as they fought for the breath of life they choked and drowned on their own blood. It was a horrifically violent death.

The woman frowned a little as she tried to recall. “Yes, some, I guess. But not for long, Mistress. It was a brief struggle. Not as long as they would have struggled if they lived and the things in the night had come and gorged on their innards.”

When Kahlan’s eyes turned up at the sound of worried whispers being exchanged, the crowd fell silent.

“This is what happens when you think you can see into the future.” She clenched her jaw as she glared at the people watching. “This is the result— lives cut short.”

Kahlan turned that glare back down to the woman at her feet. “You intended to use your knife on me, didn’t you? You intended to kill me.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Tears sprang forth anew. “That’s why I had to tell you what I had done.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had to tell you why I had killed my children so that you would understand why I must kill you. I meant to spare you, Mistress.”

“Spare me? Spare me from what?”

“The same fate, Mistress.” Tears began to run down her cheeks. “Please, Mistress. I cannot bear the thought of such a death as I saw awaiting you. I can’t bear the thought of your body being ripped open as you scream, all alone, no one to help you. That’s why I have to kill you— to spare you that fate like I spared my children.”

Richard’s knees felt like they might again give out.

“And what is it that is supposed to be eating me in this illusion of yours?”

“The same thing as would have eaten my children, Mistress. Dark things. Dark things stalking you, running you down. You won’t be able to escape them.”

The woman extended pleading hands. “May I have my knife back? Please? I must spare you that fate. Please, Mistress, allow me to suffer the pain of such a murder to spare you the agony and horror you will otherwise face. Please, Mistress, allow me to kill you swiftly.”

Kahlan regarded her would-be murderer with a look devoid of all emotion.

“No.”

The woman’s bloody hands went to her chest, clutching her bloody blue robes. She gasped for breath that wouldn’t come. Her eyes opened wide as her face reddened. Her lips turned as blue as her robes. She slumped to her side where she convulsed once in death. What air she had left finally wheezed from her lungs.

Kahlan’s gaze rose to the stunned onlookers, a silent indictment of anyone thinking prophecy could help them.

Her green eyes, beginning to brim with tears, finally turned to Richard. It was a look that nearly broke his heart.

He slipped an arm around her waist. “Come on. You need to rest for a while.”

Kahlan nodded as she leaned into him just a little, welcoming his solace. Already Cara, Zedd, Nathan, and Benjamin were moving in protectively around her. Mord-Sith and men of the First File screened them from the gathered throng.

Kahlan gave Cara’s arm a squeeze. “I’m so sorry. I wanted this celebration to be perfect for you.”

“But it was, Mother Confessor. The woman failed to harm you, you’re alive and well, and a would-be assassin is dead. What could be more perfect than that? On top of that, I now get to lecture you on letting people get that close to you.”

Kahlan smiled as she started away with Richard helping to hold her up.

CHAPTER 11

How is she?” Zedd asked when Richard closed the door behind himself.

“She’s fine.” Richard flicked a hand to dismiss his grandfather’s concern. “She just needs to rest.”

Zedd nodded. As a wizard who’d once worked with Confessors, he probably understood better than anyone that a Confessor needed time to recover after unleashing her power, but none of them could recover as quickly as Kahlan. In the past, when the situation called for it, she had sometimes for-gone resting at all.

Kahlan was stronger than the others had been in a number of ways. For those reasons her sister Confessors had chosen her as their leader, the Mother Confessor. Now all those others were dead.

Still, using her power was exhausting, not only physically but emotionally. It was near to the equivalent of carrying out an execution.

Yet that wasn’t really the worst of it. The real core of her weariness this time was the knowledge that something sinister was going on and it had taken innocent lives. Kahlan didn’t believe, any more than Richard did, that this was one lone individual acting on a delusional vision she’d had. There was something more to all of it. That, on top of using her power, and it coming during such a joyful celebration in front of guests, was what had really left Kahlan drained.

Zedd looked up at Richard with one of those looks Richard knew all too well. “It’s rather peculiar that the woman dropped dead.”

Richard nodded. “That’s been bothering me, too.”

“A person touched by a Confessor’s power is concerned with nothing other than pleasing the Confessor who touched them.” Zedd arched an eyebrow. “They can’t very well please her if they’re dead. Unless, of course, she tells them that they can please her by dying, and Kahlan didn’t do that.”

Apparently, his grandfather had been thinking along the same lines as Richard. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he agreed. “People don’t just drop dead from a Confessor’s touch. Something else is going on.”

Zedd rubbed a bony finger back and forth along his jaw. “Could be that the woman understood how utterly repulsed Kahlan was by her killing her children and so she thought that Kahlan would want her dead.”

“I don’t know, Zedd. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. The whole purpose of a Confessor is to obtain confessions from killers, to find out the truth of what happened, of what terrible things they’ve done. They aren’t repulsed by confessing their crimes. On the contrary, they’re usually overjoyed that they can please a Confessor by telling her the truth when she asks for it. They want to live so that they can please her.”

Cara folded her arms. “Well, I’m not moving from this spot until the Mother Confessor is recovered and on her feet again.”

Richard laid a hand gently on Cara’s shoulder. “Thanks, Cara.”

Richard’s mind was already on to other things, on to putting the pieces together. When the woman with the knife had tried to kill Kahlan, as frightening as it must have looked to the people there, she’d actually had no real chance of success. No knife attack was fast enough to beat a Confessor releasing her power. Cara standing in the way could not have stopped the woman as effectively as Kahlan was capable of doing herself. No single attacker had a chance against a Confessor.

But she couldn’t use her power again until she recovered. Richard was more than happy to have Cara watch over Kahlan in the meantime.

He turned to Benjamin. “General, would you please post men at either end of the hall?”

Benjamin gestured up the corridor. “Already done, Lord Rahl.”

Richard saw then the contingent of the First File off in the distance. It was enough men to fight a war. “Why don’t you stay here with Cara. Keep her company. Kahlan needs to rest for a couple hours.”

“Of course, Lord Rahl.” Benjamin cleared his throat. “While you were in there with the Mother Confessor, we found the woman’s two children. Their throats had been cut, just as she said.”

Richard nodded. He hadn’t doubted the woman. Someone touched by a Confessor couldn’t lie. Still, the news left him feeling sick at heart.

“Please do something else for me, General. Send someone to find Nicci. I haven’t seen her since yesterday at your wedding. Tell her I need to see her.”

Benjamin lightly tapped his right fist to his heart in salute. “I’ll send someone right away, Lord Rahl.”

Richard turned to the prophet. “Nathan, I’d like you to take me to see the woman you spoke about. The one you said could see things. The one who claims to have a message for me.”

Nathan nodded. “Lauretta.”

Zedd and Richard both followed behind Nathan. A group of guards stayed with them but at a distance. Rikka, in her red leather, took the lead in front of them.

Nathan took a slightly longer route through the private corridors, rather than the public passageways, to get to the area where staff and other workers lived. Richard was glad to avoid the public areas. People would undoubtedly want to stop him to talk with him. He didn’t feel like talking about trade issues or petty matters of squabbles over authority to set rules. Or prophecy. Richard had more important things on his mind.

At the top of the list was what the dead woman had said about her vision. She had called the threat “dark things.” She had said that those dark things were stalking Kahlan.

The boy down in the market earlier that morning had said that there was darkness in the palace.

Richard wondered if he was putting things together too easily, things that didn’t really belong together and only sounded like they did because they shared the word “dark.” He wondered if he was letting his imagination get the best of him.

As he marched along beside Zedd, with Nathan leading the way, he glanced down at the book Nathan was holding and remembered the lines in the book that matched what he’d heard that day about there being darkness in the palace, and decided that he wasn’t overreacting.

The corridor they passed through was paneled with mahogany that had mellowed with age to a dark, rich tone. Small paintings of country scenes hung in each of the raised panels along the hall. The limestone floor was covered with carpet runners of deep blue and gold.

Before long they made their way into the connecting service passageways that provided workers with access to the Lord Rahl’s private areas within the palace. The halls were simpler, with plastered, whitewashed walls. In places the hall ran along the outside wall of the palace to their left. Those outside walls were made of tightly fit granite blocks. At regular intervals deep-set windows in the stone wall provided light. They also let in a little of the frigid air each time a gust rattled the panes.

Out those windows Richard saw heavy, dark clouds scudding across the sky, brushing towers in the distance. The greenish gray clouds told him that he was right about the coming storm.

Snowflakes danced and darted in the gusty wind. He was sure that it wouldn’t be long before the Azrith Plain was in the grip of a spring blizzard. They were going to have guests at the palace for a while.

“Down this way,” Nathan said as he gestured through a double set of doors to the right. They led out of the private areas and into the service passageways used by workers and those who lived at the palace.

People in the halls, workers of every sort, moved to the side as they encountered the procession. Everyone, it seemed, gave Richard and the two wizards with him worried looks. No doubt the word of the trouble had already been to every corner of the vast palace and back three times over. Everyone would know about it.

By the looks on the somber faces he saw, people were no longer in a celebratory mood. Someone had tried to kill the Mother Confessor, Lord Rahl’s wife. Everyone loved Kahlan.

Well, he thought, not everyone.

But most people sincerely cared about her. They would be horrified by what had happened.

Now that peace had returned, people had come to feel an expectant joy about what the future might hold. There was a growing sense of optimism. It seemed like everything was possible and that better days were ahead.

This new fixation on prophecy threatened to destroy all that. It had already ended the lives of two children.

Richard recalled Zedd’s words that there was nothing as dangerous as peacetime. He hoped his grandfather was wrong.

CHAPTER 12

Richard and Zedd followed Nathan into a narrow hallway lit by a window at the end. It led them through a section of quarters where many of the palace staff lived. With its whitewashed, plastered walls and a wood plank floor that had been worn down from a millennium of traffic, the passageway was simpler than even the service hallways. Most doors, though, were decorated with painted flowers, or country scenes, or colorful designs, giving each place an individual, homey feel.

“Here,” Nathan said as he touched a door with a stylized sun painted on it. When Richard nodded, Nathan knocked.

No answer came in response. Nathan knocked harder. When that, too, received no answer he banged the side of his fist against the door.

“Lauretta, it’s Nathan. Please open the door?” He banged his fist on the door again. “I told Lord Rahl what you said, that you have a message for him. I brought him along. He wants to see you.”

The door opened a crack, just wide enough for one eye to peer out into the hallway. When she saw the three of them waiting she immediately opened the door all the way.

“Lord Rahl! You came!” She grinned as she licked her tongue out between missing front teeth.

Layers of clothes covered her short, heavyset form. From what Richard could see, she was wearing at least three sweaters over her dark blue dress. The buttons on the dingy, off-white sweater on the bottom strained to cover her girth. Over that sweater she had on a faded red sweater and a checkered flannel shirt with sleeves that were too long for her.

She pulled up a sleeve and then pushed stringy strands of sandy-colored hair back off her face. “Please, won’t you all come in?”

She waddled back into the dark depths of her home, grinning— giddy, apparently— to have company come to visit.

As strange as Lauretta was, it was her home that was strangest of all. In order to enter, since he was taller than she was, Richard had to hold aside yarn objects hanging just inside the door. Each of the dozens of yarn contraptions was different, but all of them had been constructed in roughly the same manner. Yarn of various colors had been wound around crossed sticks into designs that resembled spiderwebs. He couldn’t imagine what they were for. By no stretch of the imagination could they be considered attractive, so he didn’t think they were intended to be decorative.

When Zedd saw him frowning at them he leaned close to speak confidentially. “Meant to keep evil spirits from her door.”

Richard didn’t comment on the likelihood of evil spirits who had managed to make it this far on a journey from the dark depths of the underworld being stopped cold by sticks and yarn.

To each side of the entrance, papers, books, and boxes were stacked nearly to the ceiling. There was a tunnel of sorts going back through the mess into the interior of her home. Lauretta just fit down the narrow aisle. It reminded him of a mole trundling down into its burrow. The rest of them followed in single file to reach a hollowed-out area in the main room where there was space for a small table and two chairs. A window not far away, visible through a narrow gap in the teetering piles, provided gloomy light.

A counter behind the table was stacked high with papers. The whole place looked like nothing so much as a lair carved into a midden heap. It smelled nearly as bad.

“Tea?” Lauretta asked back over her shoulder.

“No thank you,” Richard said. “I heard that you wanted to speak with me about something.”

Zedd held up a hand. “I wouldn’t mind some tea.”

“And some sweet crackers to go with it?” she asked, hopefully.

Zedd returned the grin in kind. “That would be nice.”

Nathan rolled his eyes. Richard shot his grandfather a look. Lauretta rooted behind a sloppy pile of papers.

While Zedd sat at the table, waiting to be served, Lauretta retrieved a pot from an iron stand on a counter to the side. The pot was kept warm by a candle beneath the iron stand. The stand was surrounded by disorderly stacks of papers. Richard was alarmed to see fire being used.

“Lauretta,” he said, trying to sound helpful. “It’s dangerous to have fire in here.”

She looked up from pouring Zedd’s tea. “Yes, I know. I’m very careful.”

“I’m sure you are, but it’s still very—”

“I have to be careful with my predictions.”

Richard looked around at the mountains of paper. Much of it was piled in loose stacks, but there were also wooden crates full of papers, and bindings overstuffed with yet more in among the paper towers.

Zedd waggled a finger at the rugged paper cliff to the side of him. “These are all your predictions, then? All of them?”

“Oh yes,” she said, sounding eager to tell them all about it. “You see, I’ve had foretellings come to me my whole life. My mother told me that one of the first things I said was a prediction. I said the word ‘fire.’ And don’t you know, that very day a flaming log rolled out of the hearth and set her skirt on fire. No great harm done, but it scared her something awful. From then on she would write down the things I said.”

Richard glanced around. “I suppose you still have all the things she wrote down.”

“Oh yes, of course.” Lauretta replaced the tea on the stand after she finished pouring herself some. She set a chipped white plate with sweet crackers on the table. “When I was old enough I started writing down my predictions myself.”

“Mmmm,” Zedd moaned in ecstasy, waving a sweet cracker, “cinnamon, my favorite. These are quite good.”

Lauretta flashed him a toothless grin. “Made them myself.”

Richard wondered where and how. “So,” he said, “why do you keep all of the things you write down?”

She turned a puzzled look on him. “Well, they’re my predictions.”

“Yes, you told us that,” Richard said, “but what is the purpose of keeping them?”

“To record them. I have so many predictions that I can’t remember them if I don’t write them down. But more importantly, they need to be kept, to be documented.”

Richard frowned, trying not to look exasperated. “What for?”

“Well,” she said, confounded by the question, as if it was almost too obvious to need an answer, “all prophets write down their prophecy.”

“Ah, well, yes, I suppose that—”

“And aren’t those prophecies kept? The ones prophets write down?”

Richard straightened. “You mean, like the books of prophecy?”

“That’s right,” she said patiently. “Those are prophecy written down, just like I write mine down, are they not? Then, because prophecy is important, they are all kept, aren’t they? Of course those are kept in libraries all over the palace. But I have no other place to store all of mine, so I must keep them all in here.” She swept an arm around. “This is my library.”

Zedd glanced around at Lauretta’s library as he munched on his sweet cracker.

“So you see, I’m very careful with fire because these are prophecy written down, and prophecy is important. I must protect them from harm.”

Richard was seeing prophecy in a new light— a less flattering light.

“That all makes sense,” Zedd said, seemingly disinterested in continuing the line of conversation. “And your sweet crackers really are some of the best I’ve ever had.”

She gave him another toothless grin. “Come back any time for more.”

“I may do that, kind lady.” Zedd picked up another and gestured with it. “Now, what of the prophecy you say you have for Lord Rahl?”

“Oh yes.” She put a finger to her lower lip as she looked around. “Now, where did I put them?”

“Them?” Richard asked. “You have more than one?”

“Oh yes. Several actually.”

Lauretta went to a wall of papers and randomly pulled out one of them. She peered at it briefly. “No, this isn’t it.” She stuck the paper back where she’d found it. She reached to the side, pulling out others, only to end up replacing them as well. She kept plucking papers from different places among the thousands and then replaced each after reading it.

Richard shared a look with Nathan.

“Maybe you could just tell Lord Rahl what your prediction was,” Zedd offered.

“Oh dear me no, I’m afraid that I couldn’t do that. I have too many predictions to remember them all. That’s why I have to write them down. If I write them down, then I always have them and they can’t be forgotten. Isn’t that the purpose of writing down prophecy? So that we will always have them? Prophecy is important, so it must be written down and kept.”

“Very true,” Nathan said, apparently eager not to upset her. “Maybe we could help you look? Where would you have put your recent prophecies?”

She blinked at him. “Why, where they belong.”

Nathan looked around. “How do you know where they belong?”

“By what they say.”

Nathan stared a moment. “Then, how do you find them? I mean, if you don’t remember what they say, then how do you know where they would have belonged in the first place and where you would have put them? How do you know where to look?”

She squinted as she gave serious consideration to the question. “You know, that very thing has always been the problem.” She took a deep breath. The buttons on her sweaters looked like they might burst before she let it out. “I can’t seem to come up with an answer to that quandary.”

From the confusion they had always had with the location of books in the libraries, seemingly placed there in no order, Richard thought that it appeared to be a common problem with written prophecy on what ever scale.

Zedd pulled a piece of paper from a stack and peered at it. He waved it in the air.

“This one only says ‘rain.’”

Lauretta looked up from the papers she had in her hand. “Yes, I wrote that down one day when I had a premonition that it was going to rain.”

“This is a waste of time,” Richard said in a confidential voice to Nathan.

“I cautioned you that it was likely nothing worthwhile.”

Richard sighed. “So you did.”

He turned to Lauretta. She had moved, pulling out another paper in another place near the bottom of a mountain of papers, boxes, and binders. Before he could say that they were leaving, she gasped.

“Here it is. I’ve found it. Right where it belonged.”

“So what does it say, then?” Richard asked.

She shuffled over to him, paper in hand. She tapped it with a finger as she gazed up at him. “It says, ‘People will die.’”

Richard studied her eager face a moment. “That happens all the time, Lauretta. Everyone dies, eventually.”

“Yes, so true,” she said with a chuckle as she returned to a teetering mound of paper to start her search anew.

Richard didn’t see any more use for her prophecy than he saw in most prophecy. “Well, thank you for—”

“Here’s another,” she said as she read a paper hanging out from a stack. She pulled it free. “It says, ‘The sky is going to fall in.’”

Richard frowned. “The sky?”

“Yes, that’s right, the sky.”

“Are you sure you didn’t mean that the roof was going to fall in?”

Lauretta consulted the paper in her hands. “No, it quite clearly says ‘sky.’ I have very neat handwriting.”

“And what could that mean?” Richard asked. “How can the sky fall in?”

“Oh dear me, I have no idea,” she said, snorting a chuckle. “I am only the channel. The prophecy comes to me and I write it down. Then I save it, the way you’re supposed to save prophecy.”

Nathan gestured at the papers all around. “You have no visions about these things, these prophecies that come to you?”

“No. They come, I write them down.”

“So then you don’t necessarily know what they mean.”

She considered a moment. “Well, if the prophecy is for rain, I admit I have no vision to go with that, but it seems pretty clear, don’t you think?” When Nathan nodded, she went on. “But when it says the sky is going to fall, I can’t begin to imagine what that could mean. The sky can’t very well fall in, now can it?”

“No, it can’t,” Nathan agreed.

“So,” she said, holding up a finger thoughtfully, “it has to have some hidden meaning.”

“So it would seem,” Nathan agreed. “And how does a prediction like that one come to you, if not in a vision?”

She frowned as she looked up while she tried to recollect. “Well, it comes to me as words, I guess. I don’t see a picture in my mind of a sky falling in or anything. It just comes to me that way, that the sky is going to fall in, like a voice in my head saying it, so I write it down just the way it comes.”

“And then you store it in here?”

Lauretta glanced around at all of her precious predictions. “I suppose that future generations of prophets will have to study all of this in order to make sense of it.”

Richard could hardly contain himself. He struggled to keep his mouth shut. The woman was harmless enough. She wasn’t trying to drive them crazy. She was the way she was and he wasn’t going to argue her out of her nature, or her lifelong obsession. It would be pointless and cruel to say something that would only end up making her feel bad.

“Oh,” she said, turning suddenly to shuffle to the back of the room, “I almost forgot. I have another that came to me just yesterday. Came to me quite unexpectedly. It was the last of the prophecies that came to me for you, Lord Rahl.”

Lauretta pulled at papers, reading them quickly and then shoving them back where she’d found them. Finally, she came across what she was looking for. Richard found the fact that she could find a single piece of paper she was looking for among all the thousands and thousands stacked everywhere to be more remarkable than anything she was writing down.

She hurried back, holding the paper out for Richard. He took it and read it aloud.

“‘Queen takes pawn.’” He looked up with a frown. “What does that mean?”

Lauretta shrugged. “I have no idea. My calling is to hear them and to write them down, not to interpret them. As I said, future prophets will have to do that work.”

Richard glanced over at Nathan and his grandfather. “Any clue what this means?”

Zedd made a face. “Sorry, it doesn’t mean anything to me.”

Nathan shook his head. “Me neither.”

Richard took yet another deep breath. “Thank you for passing these along, Lauretta. ‘People are going to die,’ ‘The sky is going to fall in,’ and”— he glanced down at the paper again to read the words—“‘Queen takes pawn.’ That’s it, then? Do you have any others you want me to see?”

“No, Lord Rahl, that’s all of them. When they came to me I didn’t know their meaning, but I did know for certain that they were meant for you.”

“Do you usually know who the prophecy is meant for?”

Her brow creased as she considered the question. “No, as a matter of fact, I don’t recall ever knowing who my prophecies are meant for, or about.” She looked up at him. “But you are said to be a very unusual man, a wizard of great power, so I suppose that had something to do with it.”

Richard glanced at the teapot with the candle under it. “You know, Lauretta, in appreciation for bringing your prophecy to my attention, maybe I can do something for you in return.”

She cocked her head. “For me?”

“Yes. I think that all of these prophecies should be in their proper place.”

Her brow creased. “Proper place?”

“That’s right. They don’t belong here, hidden away. They belong in a library with other prophecy. They should take their rightful place in a library.”

“A library…” Lauretta gasped. “Really, Lord Rahl?”

“Of course. These are prophecies. That’s what the libraries are for. We have a number of such libraries here at the palace. What would you say to us sending men by to collect all of these prophecies and placing them in a proper library?”

She looked around, hesitating. “I don’t know…”

“There is a large library not far from here. There’s plenty of room there. We could put your predictions there all together on shelves where someday prophets can study them. You could come visit them anytime you wished. And whenever you have new prophecies and write them down, they can be added to your special section in the library.”

Her eyes widened. “Special section? For my prophecies?”

“That’s right, a special section,” Zedd said, joining in, apparently catching on to Richard’s purpose. “There they could be properly looked after and protected.”

She put a finger to her lip, thinking.

“And I could go there anytime?”

“Anytime you wish,” Richard assured her. “And you can go there to add new ones when they come to you. You can even use the library tables to write down your new predictions.”

She brightened and then took Richard’s hand, holding it as if a king had just granted her part of his kingdom. “Lord Rahl, you are the kindest Lord Rahl we have ever had. Thank you. I accept your generous offer to protect my prophecies.”

Richard felt a twinge of guilt over his ruse, but the place was a fire waiting to happen. He didn’t want her to be hurt or die just because of prophecy. There was ample room in the library, along with all the other prophecy, to keep hers. Besides, he didn’t know that her prophecies were any less valuable than all the others.

“Thank you again Lord Rahl,” she said as she let them out.

Once they were on their way down the hall, Zedd said, “That was very kind of you, Richard.”

“Not as kind as it may seem. I was trying to prevent a needless fire.”

“You could have simply told her that you were sending people to take all that paper away so she wouldn’t start a fire.”

Richard frowned over at his grandfather. “She’s spent her whole life devoted to those pieces of paper. It would be cruel to confiscate them when there’s plenty of room in the library. I thought it made more sense to make her feel good about giving them up— make her part of the solution.”

“That’s what I mean, the trick worked like magic and it was a kind way to do it.”

Richard smiled. “Like you always said, sometimes a trick is magic.”

Nathan caught Richard’s sleeve.

“Yes, yes, very nice indeed. But you know the last prophecy she gave you, the one about a queen?”

Richard glanced back at the prophet. “Yes, ‘Queen takes pawn.’ I don’t know what it means, though.”

“Neither do I,” Nathan said as he waggled the book he still had with him, “but it’s in here. Just like she wrote it, word for word. ‘Queen takes pawn.’”

CHAPTER 13

Kahlan sat up with a start.

Somewhere in the dead-still room someone was watching her.

She had been lying down with her eyes closed, but she had only been resting. She hadn’t been asleep. At least, she was pretty sure she hadn’t been asleep.

She had been trying to put everything from her mind. She hadn’t wanted to think about the woman who had killed her children. She hadn’t wanted to think about the children and how they had died. All for fear of a prophecy.

She didn’t want to think about the woman’s deluded visions.

She had tried very hard to put it all from her mind.

The heavy drapes were drawn. There was only one lamp lit in the room and it was turned down low. Sitting on the table before the mirror on the dressing table, the lamp was too weak to chase the darkness from the farthest reaches of the room. Darkness occluded those far corners where the faint shadowy shapes of hulking wardrobes lurked.

It couldn’t be Richard she sensed. He would have let her know it was him when she sat up. Cara would have as well. Whoever she sensed in the room wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t moving.

But she felt them watching her.

At least she thought she did. She knew how easy it was for anyone’s imagination, even hers, to get out of hand. Trying to be honest and coldly logical, she couldn’t say for sure that it wasn’t her imagination, especially after Cara had planted the notion in her mind earlier in the day.

But her heart raced as she stared into the dark recesses of the room, watching for any movement.

She realized that her fist had tightened around her knife.

She pulled the bed throw off and pushed it aside. She was lying on top of the bedspread. Her bare thighs prickled at the touch of chilly air.

Carefully, quietly, she slipped her legs over the side of the bed. Without making a sound she stood. She waited, listening, her whole body tense and ready.

Kahlan stared so hard into the dark corner at the far end of the room that it made her eyes hurt.

It felt like someone was staring back.

She tried to tell where it felt like they could be hiding, but she couldn’t come up with a direction. If she could sense someone watching, but wasn’t able to sense where they were, then it had to be her imagination.

“Enough of this,” she said under her breath.

With deliberate strides she walked to the dressing table. The heel-strikes of the laced boots she hadn’t felt like taking off echoed softly back from the dark end of the room.

Standing at the dressing table, watching, she turned up the wick on the lamp. It threw mellow light into the darkness. There was no one there. In the mirror she saw only herself standing half naked with a knife gripped in her fist.

Just to be sure, she walked resolutely to the end of the room. She found no one there. She looked to the far side of the drapes and glanced behind the big pieces of furniture. There was no one there, either. How could there be? Richard had checked the room before he had taken her in. She had watched as he had looked everywhere while trying not to look like he was looking. Cara and soldiers stood guard as Kahlan had rested. No one could have entered.

She turned to the tall, elaborately carved wardrobe and pulled open the heavy doors. Without hesitation she lifted out a clean dress and pulled it on.

She didn’t know if the other one, the one she had taken off, would ever be clean again. It was hard to get the blood of children off a white dress. At the Confessors’ Palace, back in Aydindril, there were people on the staff who knew how to care for the white dresses of the Mother Confessor. She supposed that there would be people at the ancestral home of the Lord Rahl who knew all about cleaning up blood.

The thought of where that blood had come from made her angry, made her glad the woman was dead.

Kahlan paused to consider again why the woman would have died so abruptly. Kahlan hadn’t commanded it. She had intended to have the woman locked up. There were a lot more questions Kahlan had wanted to ask, but not in public. If there was one thing Kahlan was good at, it was questioning those she had touched with her power.

The thought occurred to her that it was awfully convenient that the woman confessed what she had done, revealed what her prophecy said would happen to Kahlan, and then managed to die before she could be questioned.

When all else was said and done, that was the single thing that convinced Kahlan that Richard was right, that there was something more going on. And if he was right, then the woman had likely only been a puppet being moved by a hidden hand.

At the thought of Richard, she smiled. Thinking of him always lifted her heart.

When she pulled open the bedroom door, Cara, with her arms folded, was leaning back against the doorframe. Nyda, one of the other Mord-Sith, was with her. Cara looked back over her shoulder at Kahlan.

“How do you feel?”

Kahlan forced a smile. “I’m fine.”

Cara’s arms came unfolded as she turned. “Lord Rahl wanted me to bring you to him after you were rested. He’s going to see that abbot.”

Kahlan let out a weary breath. She didn’t feel like seeing people, but she wanted to be with Richard and she, too, wanted to hear what the man might know.

Cara’s eyes narrowed. “Why is your face so pale?”

“Just still a bit tired, I guess.” Kahlan studied Cara’s blue eyes for a moment. “Would you do something for me, please, Cara?”

Cara leaned in and gently took hold of Kahlan’s arm. “Of course, Mother Confessor. What is it?”

“Would you please see to having our things moved?”

Cara’s squint was back. “Moved?”

Kahlan nodded. “To another room. I don’t want to sleep here tonight.”

Cara studied her face for a moment. “Why?”

“Because you planted strange thoughts in my head.”

“You mean you think someone was watching you in there?”

“I don’t know. I was tired and probably imagined it.”

Cara marched past Kahlan and went into the room, Agiel in hand. Nyda, a statuesque blonde with the same single braid as all the Mord-Sith, was right on her heels. Cara pulled the drapes aside and looked behind furniture while Nyda looked in the wardrobes and under the bed. Neither of them found anything. Kahlan had known they wouldn’t, but she also knew that it was a waste of effort trying to convince a Mord-Sith that she didn’t need to be suspicious.

“Did you find anyone in your room?” Kahlan asked when Cara planted her fists on her hips and glared around at the room.

“I guess not,” Cara admitted.

“I’ll see to moving your things, Mother Confessor,” Nyda said. “Cara can go with you.”

“All right.”

“Any particular bedchamber you prefer?” Nyda asked.

“No. Just don’t tell me which one it is until you take us there tonight.”

“So someone was watching you,” Cara said.

Kahlan took Cara’s elbow and turned her toward the door. “Let’s go see Richard.”

CHAPTER 14

Richard stood when the door opened. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kahlan rise beside him when she saw that Benjamin had the abbot with him. She had only arrived with Cara a moment before. Richard had barely had the chance to ask how she felt. Kahlan had smiled and said she was fine.

He saw a distracted aspect in her eyes that told him otherwise. He supposed that she had reason enough to look anything but cheerful.

Richard saw, too, the way Cara stayed a half step closer than usual to Kahlan.

Kahlan had on a pristine white Mother Confessor’s dress.

Cara was wearing red leather.

General Meiffert led the man wearing the straight black coat into the comfortable meeting room. Benjamin noticed his wife’s change of outfit, but made no comment.

The abbot removed his black, rimless hat to reveal tousled blond hair that was cut short at the sides. He put on a warm smile. Richard thought it looked forced.

“Lord Rahl,” Benjamin said, holding out a hand in introduction, “this is Abbot Ludwig Dreier, from Fajin Province.”

Rather than extending a hand, Richard nodded his greeting. “Welcome, Abbot Dreier.”

The man’s hesitant gaze took in those before him. “Thank you for taking the time to see me, Lord Rahl.”

Richard thought that was an odd way to put it. The man hadn’t asked for an audience. He had been summoned.

Zedd, wearing simple robes, stood to the far side of Kahlan. A wall of windows beyond Zedd, to Richard’s right, cast the walnut-paneled walls and niches lined with bookcases framed by fluted walnut columns in fading, cold light. A few lamps were taking over with their warm illumination.

Nathan had gone back to see how Berdine was doing in the library. Richard had asked the men of the First File to stand guard out in the corridor, rather than in the room. He hadn’t wanted the abbot to feel uncomfortable. This was, after all, a representative from one of the areas Richard ruled, not a hostile land. Still, a Mord-Sith in red leather standing at arm’s length to his side couldn’t put anyone at ease.

More than that, though, the man had been insistent about prophecy earlier in the day. When the woman had tried to kill Kahlan she had given her vision of the future as her excuse for murder. Richard and Kahlan were not exactly indulgent of people who let prophecy direct their lives, or who used it as license for the harm they caused. From the events at the reception, the abbot would be aware of their feelings, and that he was at the wrong end of them.

Richard gestured to one of the comfortable chairs on the other side of a low, square table covered with a slab of black marble cut through with whorls of white quartz. “Won’t you have a seat, Abbot?”

The man sat on the forward edge of the chair, his back straight, his hands folded on his knees, his hat hooked on his thumbs. “Please, Lord Rahl, call me Ludwig. Most everyone does.”

“All right, Ludwig. I’m embarrassed to admit that I know far too little about your homeland. When the war was raging it was all any of us could do to stay alive another day. There was no time to learn more about those who fought so valiantly with us. With the threat of tyranny ended, the Mother Confessor and I hope to soon visit all the lands of the D’Haran Empire.

“So, since we know so little about Fajin Province, we would appreciate it if you could tell us a bit about the land you rule.”

Abbot Dreier’s face went red. “Lord Rahl, you have been misinformed. I am not the authority in my homeland.”

“You aren’t the ruler of Fajin Province?”

“Dear Creator, no.”

Fajin Province, in the Dark Lands, was one of the small, outlying districts of D’Hara. Richard wondered why whoever was in charge hadn’t come. It would have been a chance for them to take a place beside those who ruled much larger lands and have a say in the future of the D’Haran Empire.

Leaders of the lands near and far had come to the grand wedding. Although Cara and Benjamin’s wedding was the central event, that highlight served as a chance for representatives from all the lands to come together and meet. None wanted to miss such a remarkable and unprecedented event. Richard had spent time with a number of the representatives. Only a few leaders had not been in good enough health to make the journey and had been forced to send emissaries. A number of the rulers had large escorts of ambassadors, officials, and advisors.

“You serve in some capacity of authority, though?” Richard asked.

“I am but a humble man who has the good fortune to have been called upon to work with people more gifted than I.”

“More gifted? In what way?”

“Why, prophecy, Lord Rahl.”

Richard shared a surreptitious look with Kahlan.

He leaned forward. “Are you saying that you have prophets, real prophets— wizards with the gift of prophecy— in your homeland?”

The man cleared his throat. “Not exactly, Lord Rahl, at least not like the tall prophet you have here that I’ve heard so much about. We are not anywhere near that fortunate. I apologize for giving such a misleading impression. We are but a small and insignificant land. Compared to the prophet you have with you here at the palace, those we have are of minor ability. Still, we do what we can with what we have.”

“Then who governs in Fajin Province?”

“Bishop Hannis Arc is the ruler of our people.”

“Hannis Arc.” Richard leaned back in his plush chair and crossed his legs. “And why didn’t he come?”

Ludwig blinked. “I wouldn’t know, Lord Rahl. I rarely meet with the bishop. He rules from the city of Saavedra, while I live and work in a small abbey in the mountains some distance away. With my helpers at the abbey we collect information from those who are talented enough to be visited by forewarnings. We regularly provide those bits of prophecy to the bishop in order to help him in the decisions he must make in his capacity as the ruler of our land. Of course, if we uncover especially significant omens we immediately inform the bishop. Those are the only times I actually see him.”

Zedd rolled his hand, impatient to get to the heart of the matter. “So this bishop…”

“Hannis Arc.”

“Yes, Hannis Arc. He is a religious man, then? He rules as a leader of a theological sect?”

Ludwig shook his head as if fearing he had yet again given the wrong impression. “The title ‘bishop’ is purely ceremonial.”

“So then this is not a religious rule devoted to the Creator?” Zedd asked.

Ludwig looked from face to face. “We do not worship the Creator. It is not possible to worship the Creator directly. We respect the Creator, appreciate the life He has given us, but we do not worship Him. That would be rather presumptuous on our part. He is everything, we are nothing. He does not communicate with the world of life in so simplistic a fashion as to speak directly to us, or to hear our pleas.

“Hannis Arc is the inspirational leader of Fajin Province. He is our guiding light, you might say, not a religious leader. His word is law in Saavedra and other cities as well as the rest of our province.”

“If his word is law,” Kahlan asked, “then what need has he of predictions from your abbey? I mean, if he depends on the utterances of people who are possessed by a vision, then he doesn’t really rule, now does he?”

“Mother Confessor?”

“If he looks to people who provide visions, then he is not really the leader of Fajin Province; those who provide the visions are the ones whose word is really law. They direct him with the visions.” Kahlan arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t that right?”

Ludwig twiddled with the hat on his thumbs. “Well, I don’t—”

“That would make you the ruler of Fajin Province,” she said.

Ludwig vigorously shook his head. “No, Mother Confessor, that is not the way it works.”

“Then how does it work?” she asked.

“The Creator does not speak to us in the world of life directly. We are not worthy of such common communication. The only people who hear the voice of the Creator are those who are deluded.

“But from time to time He does give us guidance through prophecy. The Creator is all-knowing. He knows everything that has ever happened; He knows everything that will ever happen. Prophecy is how He speaks to us, how He helps us. Since He already knows everything that will happen, He reveals some of those future events through omens.”

Kahlan’s expression had gone blank, a Confessor’s face, a visage Richard knew well.

“So,” she said, “the Creator gives people these visions so that they will cut their children’s throats?”

Ludwig looked from Kahlan, to Richard, and back to Kahlan. “Perhaps He wanted to spare them a worse end. Perhaps He was doing them a kindness.”

“If He is everything, and we are nothing, then why didn’t He simply intervene and prevent that grisly end from visiting the children?”

“Because we are nothing. We are beneath Him. We cannot expect Him to intervene on our behalf.”

“But He intervenes to give prophecy.”

“That’s right.”

“Then He is intervening on our behalf.”

Ludwig nodded reluctantly. “But it is in a more general sense. That is why we all must heed prophecy.”

“Ah, I see.” Kahlan said. She leaned in, tapping a finger on the marble table. “So you would have been pleased had that woman today murdered me, because of prophecy that you believe is the divine revelation of the Creator. You are therefore sorry that I am alive.”

The man’s face lost its color. “I am simply a humble servant, Mother Confessor, gathering what I can for the bishop.”

“So that he can use what you provide to intervene on behalf of the Creator?” Kahlan asked. “Much like that woman today used prophecy as an excuse to slit the throats of her children.”

Ludwig’s eyes darted between Richard, Kahlan, and the floor. “He only uses the omens we give him to guide him. They are only a tool. For example, we had people who predicted that this joyous gathering would be marred by tragedy. I believe Hannis Arc did not want to see the palace, after such a victory as we all had, visited by a tragedy, so he chose not to come. We only provided him with our best information. He is the one who chooses what he will do with that information.”

“So he sent you,” Richard said.

Ludwig swallowed before answering. “I hoped that if I came to the palace I would learn from those experts here more about prophecy, about what our future holds. The bishop thought it would be valuable for me to come for this reason, to learn what prophecy reveals for us all.”

Kahlan had the man fixed in a green-eyed glare. “Maybe while you’re here you can visit the graves of those two children who were not allowed the chance to live life, to see what the future actually held for them. Their lives were cut short by a woman who relied on visions of the future to make her decisions for her.”

Ludwig broke her gaze and looked down. “Yes, Mother Confessor.”

The man clearly didn’t agree, but he was not going to argue. He had been full of bluster at the reception when he thought that others were with him in his belief about the overriding importance of prophecy, and that the palace itself supported that belief, but now, in the presence of those who would question his beliefs, his courage was failing him.

“What can you tell me about a woman named Jit?” Richard asked.

Ludwig looked up at the change in subject. “Jit?”

Richard could see in the man’s eyes that he knew the name. “Yes, Jit. The Hedge Maid.”

Ludwig stared at Richard for a moment without blinking. “Well, not much I’m afraid,” he finally said in a weak voice.

“Where does she live?”

“I can’t recall.” Ludwig ran his fingers over his upturned collar. “I’m not sure.”

“I was told that she lives in Kharga Trace. Kharga Trace is in Fajin Province, isn’t it?”

“Kharga Trace? Yes, yes it is.” His tongue darted out to wet his lips. “Now that you mention it, I believe that I do recall that she lives in Kharga Trace.”

Richard watched Ludwig’s gaze wander off. “Tell me about her. About this woman, Jit.”

The abbot looked back at Richard. “I don’t know much about her, Lord Rahl.”

“Does she provide predictions for you?”

Ludwig shook his head, eager to discourage the notion. “No, no she doesn’t do that sort of thing.”

“Then what sort of things does she do?”

The man gestured with his hat. “Well, she lives in a very inhospitable place. She provides cures to some of the people in the more remote areas. Simple things, I believe. Potions and concoctions, I think. But not many people live in Kharga Trace. Like I said, it’s a harsh and forbidding place.”

“But people travel there from other places in the Dark Lands to see her for these cures?” Richard asked.

Ludwig worked his hat around and around in his fingers. “I wouldn’t really know, Lord Rahl. I don’t have any dealings with her. I can’t say for certain. But people are superstitious. I guess that some believe in the things she offers.”

“But she doesn’t offer prophecy.”

“No, not prophecy. At least, not that I know of, anyway. Like I say, I don’t know much about her.” He gestured to the windows. “Not like you, Lord Rahl. Your prediction proved true. That’s quite a blizzard coming up on us. As you predicted, I don’t think anyone will be venturing out across the Azrith Plain for a few days at least.”

Richard glanced to the windows. They shook as gales of wind rattled snow and sleet against the glass. It was going to be a cold, black night.

He looked back at the abbot. “You leave prophecy to those of us here at the palace. Do you understand?”

The man paused a moment to consider his words. “Lord Rahl, I am not visited by predictions of the future. I have no ability. I only report what I hear from those who do. I suppose that you could silence me if you wished to do so, but that will not silence visions of the future. The future will be upon us whether we are willing or not.

“There will always be omens of future events. Those who have visions of it will reveal those visions whether we want to hear them or not.”

Richard let out a deep breath. “I guess you’re right about that, Abbot Dreier.”

CHAPTER 15

Out in the corridor, as Ludwig was leaving, Richard spotted Nicci coming their way. With her black dress and long blond hair flowing out behind her she looked like nothing so much as a vengeful spirit come among them to vent her wrath. She glanced at the abbot as he hurried past her. Ludwig deliberately didn’t look at the sorceress on his way by, as if fearing that if he did she might bring lightning down on him. Such a thing wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Richard thought that there were few things as dangerous-looking as a stunningly beautiful woman who was angry, and Nicci looked very angry. He wondered why.

“What’s the matter?” he asked as she came to a halt.

She clenched her jaw a moment before she spoke.

“I’ve been dealing with fools.”

“What do you mean?” Kahlan asked.

Nicci aimed a thumb back the way she had come. “All they want to hear about is prophecy. They want know what the future holds, what prophecy says. They think we’re privy to the secrets of the future and we’re withholding those secrets from them.”

Kahlan glanced over at Richard as she asked, “Who, exactly, are you talking about?”

Nicci pulled thick locks of blond hair back over her shoulder. “Those people.” She flicked a hand back the way she’d come. “You know, the representatives from the different lands. After the reception nearly all of them sought me out wanting to know what I knew about prophecy and what it had to say about their future. They wanted to know about the omen that caused the woman to kill her children.

“They think we know all about the prophecy behind the vision the woman had and that we’re keeping that information from them. They want to know what other dire omens we’re withholding from them.”

Kahlan nodded. “I know what you mean. They were all of a mind to hear prophecy from us as well.”

Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. “As much as I don’t like it, and as angry as it makes me, I guess that it’s to be expected from people who have just heard that a woman killed her children to spare them what she says she saw in a vision.”

Zedd pushed his hands up the opposite sleeves of his robes. “People can’t help fearing such grim warnings. They fear to believe that they’re true, fear what it will mean in their lives, and so, in the grip of that fear, they believe such things. We can try to reason with people— Richard and Kahlan both did so— but overcoming fear is hard to do, especially after hearing of a vision so fearsome that it would cause a woman to murder her children because of it.”

“I suppose,” Nicci said. Her blue eyes flashed anger again. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. All because of what a crazy woman says.”

“I didn’t see you at the reception,” Richard said. “Where did you hear about her killing her children?”

Nicci frowned up at him. “Hear about it? I was there.”

“There? What do you mean you were there?”

Nicci folded her arms and stared at him as if he were the one who was crazy. “I was there. I was down in the market helping to get people organized and hurrying them along to move into the passages in the plateau and out of what is shaping up to be a monstrous storm. They need to move into shelter. Those tents aren’t going to protect them.”

“That’s true enough.”

Nicci sighed as she shook her head. “So, I was down there in the market when the first one hit.”

The creases in Richard’s brow deepened. “What do you mean, when the first one hit? First what?”

“Richard, aren’t you listening? I was there when the first child hit the ground.”

Richard’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“It was a girl, not ten years old. She came down on a log wagon, on one of the upright stake poles. That pole was bigger than my leg. She came down face-first, shrieking all the way. It went right through her chest. People were screaming and running around in confusion and panic.”

Richard blinked, trying to makes sense of what he was hearing. “What girl are you talking about?”

Nicci looked at all the faces watching her. “The girl that the woman threw off the palace wall, over the edge of the plateau, after she had her vision.”

Richard turned to Benjamin. “I thought you said you found the children.”

“I did. We found both of them.”

“Both?” Nicci’s brow drew tight. “There were four of them. All four of her children hit within seconds of one another. The first, the girl, was the oldest. When the woman threw them off the top of the plateau they all landed right there near me. Like I said, I was there. It was a horrifying scene.”

Kahlan seized a fistful of Nicci’s dress at her shoulder. “She killed four more?”

Nicci didn’t try to remove Kahlan’s hand. “Four more? What are you talking about? She killed her four children.”

Kahlan pulled Nicci closer. “She had two children.”

“Kahlan, she had four.”

Kahlan’s hand slipped from Nicci’s dress. “Are you sure?”

Nicci shrugged. “Yes. She told me so herself when I questioned her. She even told me their names. If you don’t believe me you can ask her yourself. I have her locked up in a cell down in the dungeon.”

Zedd leaned in closer. “Locked up…?”

“Wait a minute,” Richard said. “You’re telling me that this woman killed her four children by throwing them off the side of the plateau? And you locked her up?”

“Of course. Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve said?” Nicci frowned around at everyone. “I thought you said that you knew all about it. Her husband found out what had happened and was going to kill her. He was screaming for her blood. I was afraid that the guards who grabbed the woman were going to let him have her. I sympathize with his feelings, but I couldn’t allow it for now. I had her locked up, instead, because I thought you or Kahlan would want to question her.”

Richard was incredulous. “Why did she do it? What did she say?”

Nicci appraised them all as if they had collectively gone mad. “She said that she had a vision and couldn’t stand the thought of her children having to face the terror to come, so she killed them swiftly instead. You said that you knew about it.”

“We knew about the other one,” Richard said.

“Other one?” Nicci looked from face to face, finally settling on Richard. “What other one?”

“The one who cut her two children’s throats and then came to the reception and tried to kill Kahlan.”

Nicci’s concerned gaze darted to Kahlan. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I took her with my power and had her confess. She told us what she had done and what she intended to do.”

Nicci pressed her fingers to her forehead. “Wait, you’re saying that there was a second woman who also had a vision and killed her children?”

Kahlan and Richard both nodded.

“That would help explain why people are so unnerved and want to know what prophecy has to say about it,” Richard said.

“What’s going on?” Nicci asked.

“I don’t know, yet.” Richard rested the palm of his left hand on his sword. “We saw a sick boy down in the market this morning who said that there is darkness in the palace, and then a blind woman who said that the roof is going to fall in.”

Nicci reflexively glanced up. “The roof?”

Richard nodded. “Yes, and some other things that make just as little sense.”

Nicci’s troubled blue eyes turned to Richard. “When I asked the woman what her vision had been, she said that she couldn’t let her children live to face what will happen after the roof falls in.”

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