Phantom (14 page)

Shota’s gaze passed among those watching her. “But that is merely our personal tragedy, not the true scourge of the Order.

“If the course of events does not change, then the monstrous beliefs that the Order imposes will settle like a burial shroud over the entire world. There will be no safe place, no refuge. An iron mandate of conformity will be locked around the necks of all those left alive. For the delusion of the common welfare, in the form of lofty slogans and vacuous
notions that incite the feckless rabble into nothing more than a mindless lust for the unearned, everything good and noble will be sacrificed, deadening civilized man into little more than an organized mob of looters.

“But once everything of value is plundered, what will be left of their lives? By their contempt for the magnificent and disdain of all that is good, they embrace the petty and the crude. By their rabid hatred for any man who excels, the beliefs of the Order will doom all men to grubbing in the muck to survive.

“The unwavering view of mankind’s inherent wickedness will be the collective faith. That belief, enforced through ruthless brutality and unspeakable hardship, will be their enduring high-water mark. Their legacy will be mankind’s descent into a dark age of suffering and misery from which it may never again emerge. That is the terror of the Order—not death, but life under their beliefs.” Shota’s words cast a pall over the room. “The dead, after all, can’t feel, can’t suffer. Only the living can.”

Shota turned to the shadows, where Nathan stood. “And what say you, prophet? Does prophecy say it otherwise, or do I speak the truth?”

Nathan, tall and grim, answered quietly. “As far as the Imperial Order goes, I’m afraid that prophecy can offer no testimony to the contrary. You have aptly and succinctly described several thousand years of forewarning.”

“Such ancient works are not easily understood,” Ann cut in. “The written word can be quite ambiguous. Prophecy is not a subject for the inexperienced. To the untrained it can seem—”

“I sincerely hope that is a judgment based on a shallow opinion of my looks, Prelate, and not my talent.”

“I was only…” Ann began.

Shota dismissively flicked a hand as she turned away. Her gaze settled on Richard, as if he were the only one in the room. She spoke as if addressing him alone.

“Our lives may be the last lives lived free. This may very well be the end for all time of the best of what can be, of striving for values, of the potential for each of us to rise up and achieve something better. If the course of events does not change, then we are now witnessing the dawn of the worst of what can be, of an age where, lest anyone dare live better through their own effort and for their own ends, mankind will be reduced to living the Order’s idealized lives of ignorant savages.”

“We all know that,” Richard said, hands fisted at his sides. “Don’t you understand how hard we’ve been fighting to prevent that very thing? Don’t you have any idea of the struggle we’ve all endured? Just what do you think I’ve been fighting for?”

“I don’t know, Richard. You claim to be committed, and yet you have failed to change the course of events, failed to stem the tide of the Imperial Order. You say that you understand, yet still the invaders come, subjugating more and more people with every passing day.

“But even that is not what this is about. It is about the future. And in the future, you are failing us.”

Richard could hardly believe what he was hearing. He wasn’t just angry but appalled that Shota would say such a thing. It was as if everything he had done, every sacrifice he had made, every effort, was meaningless to her—not only now, but in the future.

“You have come to tell me your prophecy that I will fail?”

“No. I have come to tell you that the way it now stands, unless you change things, we will all fail in this fight.”

Shota turned from Richard and lifted an arm up toward Nicci. “You have shown him the dull, numb death that is all that can result from the beliefs held by the Order. You have shown him the bleak existence that is all there is under their dogma, that life’s only value is in how much of it you sacrifice, that your life’s only purpose is a means to an otherworldly end: a lifeless eternity in the next world.

“In that, you have done us all a great service and you have our gratitude. You have truly fulfilled your role as Richard’s teacher, even if it was not in the way you had expected. But that, too, is only a part of it.”

Richard didn’t see how his captivity—being made to live a harsh life down in the Old World—could be regarded as a service. He hadn’t needed to live through it to understand the hopeless futility of life under the rule of the Imperial Order. He didn’t dispute one word Shota had said about what would befall them if they didn’t prevail, but he was angered that she seemed to think that he needed to hear it again, as if he did not grasp what they were fighting for and as a result was failing to be fully committed to their cause.

Richard didn’t know how it happened, because he had not seen her move, but Shota was suddenly right before him, her face mere inches from his.

“And yet, you are still not cognizant of the totality of it, still not resolved in a way that is essential.”

Richard glared at her. “Not resolved? What are you talking about?”

“I needed to find a way to make you understand, Seeker, to make you see the reality of it. I needed to find a way to make you see what is in store for the people of not just the New World, but the Old World as well—what is in store for all of mankind.”

“How could you possibly think that I—”

“You are the one, Richard Rahl. You are the one who leads the last of the forces that resist the ideas that fuel the conflagration that is the Imperial Order. For whatever reasons, you are the one who leads us in this struggle. You may believe in what you fight for, but you are not doing what is necessary to change the course of the war or else what I see in the flow of events forward in time would not be as it is.

“As it now stands, we are doomed.

“You need to hear what is going to be the fate of your people, the fate of all people. So I went to Galea to find Jebra so that she could tell you what she has seen. So that a Seer can help you to see.”

Richard thought that maybe he should have been angry at the lecture, but he could no longer summon anger; it was slipping away. “I already know what will happen if we fail, Shota. I already know what the Imperial Order is like. I already know what awaits us if we lose in this struggle.”

Shota shook her head. “You know what it is like after. You know what it is like to see the dead. But the dead can no longer feel. The dead can’t scream. The dead can’t cry in terror. The dead can’t beg for mercy.

“You know what it is like to see the wreckage the morning after the storm. You need to hear from one who was there when the storm broke. You need to hear what it was like when the legions came. You need to hear the reality of what it will be like for everyone. You need to know what will happen to those alive if you fail to do what only you can do.”

Richard glanced up at Jebra. Zedd’s comforting arm encircled her shoulders. Tears ran down her ashen face. She trembled from head to toe.

“Dear spirits,” Richard whispered, “how can you be so cruel as to think for an instant that I don’t already know the truth of our fate should we lose?”

“I see the flow of the future in this,” Shota said in a quiet voice meant for him alone. “And what I see is that you have not done enough to change
what will be, or else it would not be as I see it. It is as simple as that. There is no cruelty involved, simply truth.”

“Just what is it you expect me to do, Shota?”

“I don’t know, Richard. But whatever it is, you are not doing it, now, are you? As we all slide into unimaginable horror, you are doing nothing to stop it. You are instead chasing phantoms.”

Richard wanted to tell Shota a thousand things. He wanted to tell her that the Imperial Order was hardly the only threat bearing down on them. He wanted to tell her that with the boxes of Orden in play, if not stopped, the Sisters of the Dark would unleash power that would destroy the world of life and give everyone over to the Keeper of the Dead. He wanted to tell her that if they didn’t find a way to reverse the Chainfire spell it could very well reap the destruction of everyone’s memories and minds, robbing them of their means of survival. He wanted to tell her that if they didn’t find a way to purge the world of the contamination left by the chimes, then all magic would be extinguished, and that contamination could very well have already engendered a cascade effect that, if not halted, had the potential, all by itself, to destroy all life.

He wanted to tell her that she didn’t know the first thing about the woman he loved, the woman so dear to him. He wanted to tell her how much Kahlan meant to him, how afraid he was for her, how much he missed her, how his dread of what was being done to her kept him from being able to sleep.

He wanted to tell her that right then the Imperial Order was only one of their dire problems. But, seeing Jebra standing there trembling under the comforting shelter of Zedd’s arm, he thought that there would be a better time to bring up all of those other matters.

Richard held out a hand, beckoning Jebra to come forward. Her sky blue eyes brimmed with tears. She finally, hesitantly, descended the steps toward him. He didn’t know the specifics of the frightening things she had been through, but the strain of them was written all too clearly on her gaunt face. The lines there bore silent testimony to the hardships she had endured.

When she took his hand he gently covered it with his other in a small gesture of reassurance. “You’ve traveled a great distance and we value your help in our efforts. Please tell us what you know.”

Her short sandy hair fell forward around her tear-stained face as she nodded. “I will do my best, Lord Rahl.”

Under Shota’s watchful eye, Richard led Jebra across the floor toward the fountain. He had her sit on the short marble wall containing the stilled water.

“You went with Queen Cyrilla back to her home,” he prompted. “You were taking care of her because she was sick—driven insane by her time in the pit with all those terrible men. You were to help her to recover if she could and advise her if she did.”

Jebra nodded.

“So…when she returned to her home did she begin to get better?” Richard asked, even though he knew that much of it from Kahlan.

“Yes. She was in a stupor for so long that we thought she would never get better, but after she was home for a while she finally did start to come round. At first she was only aware of those around her for brief periods. The more she recognized familiar surroundings, though, the longer those periods of clarity grew. Slowly, to everyone’s joy, she seemed to come back to life. She eventually emerged from her long lethargy—like an animal coming out of hibernation. She seemed to shake off her long sleep and return to normal. She was full of energy, full of excitement to be home again.”

“Queen Cyrilla was the queen of Galea,” Shota said to Richard. “She inherited the crown, rather than—”

“Prince Harold,” Richard finished as he looked up at the witch woman. “Cyrilla’s brother was Harold. Harold declined the crown, preferring to lead the Galean army.”

Shota arched an eyebrow. “You seem to know a lot about the monarchy of Galea.”

“Their father was King Wyborn,” Richard said. “King Wyborn was also Kahlan’s father. Kahlan is half sister to Cyrilla. That is the reason I know so much about the monarchy of Galea.”

If Shota was surprised to hear it, or if she didn’t believe him because Kahlan was involved, she didn’t betray either. She finally broke eye contact with him and went back to her pacing, allowing Jebra to continue her story.

“Cyrilla resumed her place on the thrown as if she had never left. The city seemed exhilarated to have her back. Galea had been struggling in
its recovery from the horrifying time that the advance army of the Imperial Order had sacked the crown city. That attack had been a massive tragedy with tremendous loss of life.

“But with those invaders long gone the repairs of the destruction had been under way for quite some time. Even the burned buildings were being rebuilt. Businesses had started up again. Commerce had returned. People once again came to the city from all over Galea to make a better life for themselves. Families had begun to grow and knit together again. With hard work, prosperity had begun to return. With the queen back, it seemed to invigorate the spirit of the city all the more, and make the world seem right again.

“People said that lessons had been learned and such a tragedy would never happen again. To that end, new defenses were built, along with a much larger army. Cyrilla, like many of the people of Galea, put that appalling time behind her and was eager to be about the business of her land. She accepted audiences and kept her hand in many of the matters of state. She kept herself immersed in every sort of activity, from mediating trade disputes to attending formal balls where she danced with dignitaries.

“Prince Harold, being the head of the Galean army, kept her informed of the latest news about the invasion of the New World, so she was fully aware that the horde was pouring into the southern reaches of the Midlands. I always knew when she had received the latest reports; I would find her twisting her handkerchief, mumbling to herself, as she paced in a dark room without windows. It almost seemed to me that she was seeking the dark hiding place in her mind—the stupor she had been in before—but she couldn’t find it, couldn’t get back into it.”

Jebra gestured briefly up the steps to the old man watching her speak. “Zedd told me to watch over her, to give her what advice I could. Even though she may have outwardly appeared to be her old self, and she didn’t lapse back into the wooden daze, I could tell that she remained on the edge of insanity. My visions were unclear, probably because of that, because while she may have seemed normal again, she was still inwardly haunted by terrible fears. It was much like the land of Galea; things appeared normal but, with the Imperial Order in the New World, things were hardly normal. There was always a dark, underlying tension.

“When we heard from the scouts that the Order was moving up the
Callisidrin Valley, coming up the center of the Midlands intent on dividing the New World, I advised the queen that she must support the D’Haran army, that she must send the Galean army to fight with the rest of the forces of all the lands that had been joined together with the D’Haran Empire. I tried to tell her, as did Prince Harold, that our only chance at a real defense was in unity with the forces resisting the Order.

“She would not hear of it. She said that it was her duty as the queen of Galea to protect Galea alone, not other peoples or other lands. I tried to make her see that if Galea stood alone then it stood no chance. Cyrilla, though, had heard stories of other places that had been invaded, stories of the Order’s ruthless brutality. She was terrified of the men of the Order. I told her that she would be safe only if we helped stop the invaders before they ever reached Galea.

“We received desperate requests for troops. Ignoring those requests, Cyrilla instead commanded Prince Harold to gather all the men he could into arms and that he use the army to protect Galea. She said that his duty, that the duty of the Galean army, was to Galea alone. She commanded that the invaders not be allowed to cross the borders, not be allowed to set foot on Galean soil.

“Prince Harold, who at first had tried to advise her of the wisest course of action, abandoned his own advice and in an act of pointless loyalty acceded to her wishes. She commanded that the defenses be set up to protect Galea at all costs. Prince Harold went to see to her instructions. She didn’t care if the rest of the Midlands, or the entire New World for that matter, fell to the Order, as long as the Galean army—”

“Yes, yes.” Shota impatiently rolled a hand as she paced before the woman. “We all know that Queen Cyrilla was loony. I didn’t bring you all this way to describe life under a batty queen.”

“Sorry.” Ill at ease, Jebra cleared her throat and went on. “Well, Cyrilla grew impatient with me, with my insistent advice. She told me that her decision was final.

“With her determined commitment to a course of action, it finally fixed events, fixed our future and our fate. I think that for this reason I was at last beset with a powerful vision. It started not with the actual vision itself, but with a bloodcurdling sound that filled my mind. That terrible sound set me to trembling. With the frightening sound the visions came flooding forth, visions of the defenders being crushed and overrun, visions of the
city falling, visions of Queen Cyrilla being given to the howling gangs of men to be…to be used as a whore and an object of amusement.”

One hand held across her abdomen, her elbows tight against her sides, Jebra wiped tears back off one cheek. She briefly smiled up at Richard, a self-conscious smile that could not hold back the horror he could so clearly see in her eyes. “Of course,” she said, “I’m not telling you all of the terrible things I saw in that vision. But I told her.”

“I don’t expect that it did any good,” Richard said.

“No, it didn’t.” Jebra fidgeted with a strand of her hair. “Cyrilla was enraged. She summoned her royal guard. When they all rushed in through those double, tall blue and gilt doors she thrust a finger at me and proclaimed me a traitor. She ordered me thrown into a dungeon. The queen screamed orders to the guards as they were seizing me that if I spoke even one word of my visions—my blasphemy, as she called it—then they were to cut out my tongue.”

A little laugh rattled out, a laugh incongruous with her trembling chin and wrinkled brow. Her words came out in a thin whine of apology. “I didn’t want my tongue cut out.”

Zedd, having made his way down the steps, laid a reassuring hand on the back of her shoulder. “Of course not, my dear, of course not. At that point it would have done you no good to have pressed the issue. No one would expect you to go beyond what you did; it would have served no purpose. You did your best; you showed her the truth. She made the conscious choice to be blind to it.”

Fussing with her fingers, Jebra nodded. “I guess that her insanity never really left her.”

“Those who are far from insane often act in an irrational manner. Don’t excuse such conscious and deliberate actions with so convenient an explanation as insanity.” When she gave him a puzzled look, Zedd opened his hands in a gesture of pained frustration at an old dilemma he had seen all too often. “All sorts of people who strongly want to believe in something are frequently unwilling to see the truth no matter how obvious it is. They make that choice.”

“I guess so,” Jebra said.

“Seems like, rather than heed the truth, she instead believed a lie that she wanted to believe,” Richard said, remembering part of the Wizard’s First Rule, the rule he had learned from his grandfather.

“That’s right.” Zedd swept an arm out in a grim parody of a wizard granting a wish. “She decided what she wished to happen and then assumed that reality would bend to her wishes.” His arm dropped. “Reality doesn’t indulge wishes.”

“So Queen Cyrilla was angry with Jebra for speaking the truth aloud, for bringing it out where it could not be so easily overlooked and ignored,” Cara said. “And then punished her for doing so.”

Zedd nodded as his fingertips gently rubbed Jebra’s shoulder. Her tired eyes had closed under his touch. “People who for whatever reason don’t want to see the truth can be acutely hostile to it and shrill in their denunciation of it. They frequently turn their venomous antagonism on whoever dares point out that truth.”

“That hardly makes the truth vanish,” Richard said.

Zedd shrugged with the straightforward simplicity he saw in it. “To those seeking the truth, it’s a matter of simple, rational self-interest to always keep reality in view. Truth is rooted in reality, after all, not the imagination.”

Richard rested the heel of his hand on the hickory handle of the knife at his belt. He missed the sword being at hand, but he had traded it for information that eventually led him to the Chainfire book and the truth of what had happened to Kahlan, so it had been worth it. Still, he sorely missed the sword and worried over what Samuel might be using it for.

Thinking of the Sword of Truth, wondering where it was, Richard stared off at nothing in particular. “Seems hard to fathom how people can turn away from seeing what is in their own best interest.”

“Doesn’t it, though.” Zedd’s voice had changed from a tone of casual conversation to that thin, reedy tone that told Richard there was something more on his mind. “Therein lies the heart of it.”

When Richard looked his way, Zedd’s gaze focused intently on him. “Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one’s self.”

Shota, arms folded, paused in her pacing to lean toward Zedd. “A wizard’s rule, wizard?”

Zedd arched an eyebrow. “The tenth, actually.”

Shota turned a meaningful look on Richard. “Wise advice.” After holding him in the grip of that iron gaze for an uncomfortably long time, she went back to her pacing.

Richard imagined that she thought he was ignoring the truth—the truth
of the invading army of the Imperial Order. He wasn’t in the least bit ignoring the truth, he just didn’t know what more she expected he could do to stop them. If wishes worked he would already long ago have banished them back to the Old World. If he only knew what to do to stop them, he would do it, but he didn’t. It was bad enough to know the horror that approached and feel helpless to stop it, but it infuriated him that Shota seemed to think he was simply being obstinate in not doing something about it—as if the solution was within his grasp.

He glanced up the steps at the statuesque woman watching him. Even in a pink nightdress she looked noble and wise. While Richard had been raised by people who encouraged him to deal with things the way they really were, she had been indoctrinated by people who were driven by the beliefs taught by the Order. It took a remarkable individual, after a lifetime of authoritarian teachings, to be willing to see the truth.