Phantom (25 page)

“If I knew where the book
Secrets of a War Wizard’s Power
was, or had any idea of how to find it, I wouldn’t hesitate to tell you.”

Richard heaved a sigh and stood. “I know, Shota. Thank you for all you’ve done. I’ll try to find a way for what you’ve told me to be of help.”

Shota squeezed his shoulder. “I must go. I have a witch woman to find. At least, thanks to Nicci, I now know her name.”

A thought struck him. “I wonder why she’s named Six?”

Shota’s countenance darkened. “It’s a derogatory name. A witch woman sees many things in the flow of time, especially those things having to do with any daughters she might bear. For a witch woman, the seventh child is special. To name a child Six is to say that she falls short, that she is less than perfect. It’s an open insult, from birth, for what a witch woman foresees of her daughter’s character. It’s a pronouncement that her daughter is flawed.

“Naming her Six probably earned the mother her own murder at the hands of that daughter.”

“Then why would the mother so openly declare such a thing? Why not name the daughter something else and avoid the probability of her own murder.”

Shota regarded him with a sad smile. “Because there are witch women who are believers in the truth, because truth will help others avoid danger.
To such women, a lie would be the bud of much larger trouble that would grow from it. To us, truth is the only hope for the future. To us, the future is life.”

“Well, it sounds like the name fits the trouble this one is causing.”

Shota’s smile, sad though it had been, vanished. Her brow tightened with a dark look. She lifted a finger in warning. “Such a woman could easily conceal her name. This one, instead, reveals it the way a snake bares its fangs. You worry about everything else, and leave her to me. A witch woman is profoundly dangerous.”

Richard smiled a little. “Like you?”

Shota didn’t return the smile. “Like me.”

Richard stood alone by the fountain as he watched Shota ascend the steps. Nicci, Cara, Zedd, Nathan, Ann, and Jebra were huddled off to the side, engaged in whispered conversation among themselves. They didn’t pay any heed to Shota as she passed, like an unseen apparition.

Richard followed her up the steps. In the doorway, silhouetted by the light, Shota turned back, almost as if she had seen an apparition herself. She reached out and for a time rested a hand on the doorframe.

“One other thing, Richard.” Shota studied his eyes for a moment. “When you were young, your mother died in a fire.”

Richard nodded. “That’s right. A man got in a fight with George Cypher, the man who raised me, the man I thought at the time was my father. This man who started the fight with my father knocked a lamp off the table, setting the house on fire. My brother and I were asleep in the back bedroom at the time. While the man dragged my father outside and was beating him, my mother raced in and pulled my brother and me from the burning house.”

Richard cleared his throat with the pain that still haunted him. He remembered the quick smile of her relief that they were safe, and the last quick kiss she had given him on his forehead.

“After my mother was sure that we were safe, she ran back inside to save something—we never knew what. Her screams brought the man to his senses and he and my father tried to save her, but they couldn’t…it was too late. They were driven back by the heat of the flames and could do nothing for her. Filled with guilt and revulsion at what he had caused, the man ran off sobbing that he was sorry.

“It was a terrible tragedy, especially because there was no one else in
the house and nothing worth saving, nothing worth her life. My mother died for nothing.”

Shota, standing silhouetted in the doorway, one hand resting against the doorframe, stared at him for what seemed an eternity. Richard waited silently. There was some kind of terrible significance evident in her posture, in her almond eyes. She finally spoke in a soft voice.

“Your mother was not the only one to die in that fire.”

Richard felt goose bumps race up his legs and arms. Everything he had known for nearly his whole life seemed to be vaporized in an instant by the lightning strike of those words.

“What are you talking about? What do you mean?”

Shota shook her head sadly. “I swear on my life, Richard, I don’t know anything else.”

He stepped closer and grasped her arm, being careful not to grip it as hard as he easily could have under the sudden power of his burning need to understand why she would say such a thing.

“What do you mean, you don’t know anything else? How can you say something so inconceivable and then just say that you don’t know anything else? How can you say something like that about the death of my mother—and then just not know any more. That doesn’t make sense. You must know something more.”

Shota cupped a hand to the side of his face. “You did something for me the last time you came to Agaden Reach. You turned down my offer and said that I was worth more than to have someone against their will. You said that I deserved to have someone who would value me for who I am.

“As angry as I was with you at that moment, it made me think. No one has ever turned me down before, and you did it for the right reasons—because you cared about me, cared that I have what will make my life worthwhile. You cared enough to risk my wrath.

“When I assumed the likeness of your mother, that gift in some way influenced the flow of information coming to me. Because of that, just now as I was about to leave, that single thought came into my awareness: Your mother was not the only one to die in that fire.

“Like all things that I glean from the flow of events in time, it came to me as a kind of intuitive vision. I don’t know what it means, and I don’t know any more about it. I swear, Richard, I don’t.

“Under ordinary circumstances I would not have revealed that small bit
of information because it is so charged with possibilities and questions, but these are hardly ordinary circumstances. I thought you should know what came to me. I thought you should know every scrap of everything I know. Not all of what I learn from the flow of time is useful—that’s why I don’t always reveal to people isolated things like this. In this instance, however, I thought you should know it in case it comes to mean something to you, in case it might come to help you somehow.”

Richard felt numb and confused. He wasn’t sure that he believed it really meant what it sounded like it meant.

“Could it mean that she wasn’t the only one to die because a part of us died with her that day? That our hearts would never be the same? Could it mean that she was not the only one to die in that fire in that sense?”

“I don’t know, Richard, I really don’t, but it could be. It may in that way be insignificant as far as being something that would actually help you now. I don’t always know everything about what the flow of time reveals or if it is meaningful. It could be as you say and nothing more.

“I can only be a help if I relay information accurately, and so that is what I did. That is the exact way it came to me and in that precise concept: Your mother was not the only one to die in that fire.”

Richard felt a tear run down his cheek. “Shota, I feel so alone. You brought Jebra to tell me things that gave me nightmares. I don’t know what to do next. I don’t. So many people believe in me, depend on me. Isn’t there something you can tell me that will at least point me in the right direction before we’re all lost?”

With a finger, Shota lifted the tear from his cheek. That simple act somehow lifted his heart in a small way.

“I am sorry, Richard. I don’t know the answers that would save you. If I did, please believe that I would give them eagerly. But I know the good in you. I believe in you. I do know that you have within you what you must to succeed. There will be times when you doubt yourself. Do not give up. Remember then that I believe in you, that I know you can accomplish what you must. You are a rare person, Richard. Believe in yourself.

“Know that I believe you are the one who can do it.”

Outside, before starting down the granite steps, she turned back, a black shape against the fading light.

“If Kahlan was ever real or not no longer matters. The entire world of
life, everyone’s life, is now at stake. You must forget this one life, Richard, and think of all the rest.”

“Prophecy, Shota?” Richard felt too heavyhearted to raise his voice. “Something from the flow of time?”

Shota shook her head. “Simply the advice of a witch woman.” She started for the paddock to collect her horse. “Too much is at stake, Richard. You must stop chasing this phantom.”

When Richard went back inside everyone was crowded around Jebra, engaged in hushed conversation filled with sympathy for her ordeal.

Zedd paused in the middle of what he was saying as Richard joined them. “Rather odd, don’t you think, my boy?”

Richard glanced around at the perplexed expressions. “What’s odd?”

Zedd spread his hands. “That somewhere in the middle of Jebra telling her story Shota simply up and vanished.”

“Vanished,” Richard repeated, cautiously.

Nicci nodded. “We thought she would stick around and have something to say after Jebra finished.”

“Maybe she had to go find someone to intimidate,” Cara said.

Ann sighed. “Maybe she wanted to be on her way after that other witch woman.”

“Maybe, being a witch woman, she isn’t much for good-byes,” Nathan suggested.

Richard didn’t say anything. He had seen Shota do this before, like when she had shown up at his and Kahlan’s wedding and given Kahlan the necklace. No one had heard her then, either, when she had spoken to Richard and Kahlan. No one had seen her leave.

Everyone went back to their conversation, except for his grandfather. Zedd looked distant and distracted.

“What is it?” Richard asked.

Zedd shook his head as he laid his arm around Richard’s shoulders, leaning closer as he spoke intimately. “For some reason, I find my mind wandering to thoughts of your mother.”

“My mother.”

Zedd nodded. “I really miss her.”

“Me too,” Richard said. “Now that you mention it, I guess I’ve had her on my mind as well.”

Zedd stared off into the distance. “Part of me died with her that day.”

It took Richard a moment to find his voice. “Do you have any idea why she went back into the burning house? Do you think there was anything important in there? Maybe someone we didn’t know about?”

Zedd shook his head insistently. “I felt sure that there had to have been some good reason, but I went through the ashes myself.” His eyes welled up with tears. “There was nothing in there but her bones.”

Richard glanced out the door and saw the spectral shadow of Shota atop her horse start down the road without looking back.

Rachel hesitated deep within the dark entrance. It was becoming difficult to see. She wished she couldn’t make out what was drawn on the walls, but the fact was she could. All the way into the cave she had tried not to look too closely at the strange scenes covering the stone walls all around her. Some of the images made goose bumps rise on her arms. She could not imagine why anyone would want to draw such horrible, cruel things, but she certainly could understand why they would put them down in the cave, why they would want to hide such dark thoughts from the light of day.

The man unexpectedly shoved her. Rachel stumbled forward and fell flat on her face. She gasped a breath to regain the wind that had been so abruptly knocked out of her. She spit out dirt as she pushed herself up on her arms. She was too angry to cry.

When she peeked back over her shoulder she saw that, instead of watching her, he was gazing ahead into the darkness with those unsettling golden eyes of his, as if his mind had wandered and he’d forgotten all about her. Rachel glanced back toward the light, wondering if she could make it past his long legs. She reasoned that she could feign going one way and then dodge the other. That might work. But he was a lot bigger than she was and could no doubt run faster even if her legs hadn’t been all wobbly from having been tied for so long. If only he hadn’t taken her knives away from her. Still, if she was quick, she thought she might possibly be able to get enough of a start to make it.

Before she had a chance to try, the man noticed her again. He seized her by the collar and hoisted her to her feet, then shoved her on ahead, deeper into the black maw of the cave. Rachel struggled to find her footing over rock outcroppings and to jump fissures. Seeing some kind of movement ahead, she paused.

“Well, well…” came a razor-thin voice from back in the darkness. “Visitors.”

The last word had been drawn out so that it almost sounded like the hiss of a snake.

Rachel’s skin went icy cold as she stared, wide-eyed, into the darkness, fearing who could be the owner of such a voice.

Out of that darkness, as if from out of the underworld itself, a shadow materialized, gliding forward into the dim light.

Shadows didn’t smile, though, Rachel realized. This was a woman, a tall woman in long black robes. Her long, wiry hair, too, was black. In contrast, her skin was so pale that it made her face almost appear to be floating all by itself in the darkness. It reminded Rachel of the skin of an albino salamander that hid under leaves on the forest floor during the day, never touched by the sunlight. All of her, from the coarse black cloth of her dress to her parched flesh stretched tightly over her knuckles to her stiff hair, seemed as dry as a sunbaked carcass.

She wore the kind of smile that Rachel imagined a wolf wore when dinner dropped in unexpectedly.

Although her eyes were blue, it was a blue that was as blanched as her skin, so that it almost seemed that she might be blind. But the way those eyes deliberately took Rachel in left no doubt that this was a woman who could not only see just fine in the light, but probably in pitch darkness as well.

“This had better be worth it,” the man behind Rachel said. “The little brat stabbed me in my leg.”

Rachel glared back over her shoulder. She didn’t know the man’s name. He had never bothered to tell her. Ever since capturing her he’d spoken very little, in fact, as if she were not someone but something—an inanimate object—that he had merely collected. The way he’d treated her made her feel like she was nothing more than a sack of grain thrown over the back of his saddle. But, at that moment, the grief, fear, thirst, and hunger during the long journey were only dim annoyances in the back of her mind.

“You killed Chase,” she said. “You deserve more than I did.”

The woman frowned. “Who?”

“The man with her.”

“Ah, him,” the woman in black said. “And you killed him?” She sounded only mildly curious. “Are you certain? Did you bury him?”

He shrugged. “I guess he’s dead—men don’t recover from such wounds. The spell concealed me well enough, just as you promised it would, so he
never even noticed I was there. I didn’t take the time to stop and bury him, though, since I knew you wanted me back as soon as possible.”

Her thin smile widened. Coming ever closer, she finally reached out and ran her long, bony fingers back through his thick hair. Her ghostly blue eyes studied him intently.

“Very good, Samuel,” she cooed. “Very good.”

Samuel looked like a hound that was getting scratched behind the ears. “Thank you, Mistress.”

“And you brought the rest of it?”

He nodded eagerly. A smile warmed his face. Rachel had thought him a cold-looking man, maybe because of his strange, golden eyes, but when he smiled it seemed to mask his nature. With that smile he was a better-looking man than most, although to Rachel he was, and always would be, a monster. A warm smile wasn’t going to change what he had done.

Samuel seemed suddenly in a good mood. Rachel hadn’t ever seen him this happy. Although much of the time she’d been in a sack, tied over the back of his horse, so she supposed that she didn’t really know if he’d been in a good mood or not. She didn’t really care.

She just wanted him dead. He had killed Chase, the best thing that had ever happened in Rachel’s entire life. Chase was the best man who had ever lived. Chase had taken her in after she’d escaped from Queen Milena, the castle at Tamarang, and that terrible Princess Violet. Chase had loved her and had taken care of her. He taught her things about taking care of herself. He had a family he loved and who loved and needed him.

But now they had all lost him.

Chase was so big and so good with his weapons that Rachel hadn’t thought that anyone could ever defeat him, especially not a man by himself. But Samuel had appeared like a ghost and run Chase through while he slept, run him through with that beautiful sword that Rachel just knew couldn’t belong to him. She hated to think of how he had gotten that sword and who else he’d hurt with it.

Samuel stood looking like an idiot, his arms hanging, his shoulders slumped, as the woman ran her fingers back through his hair, whispering comforting, fawning words. It seemed completely unlike him. Up until then Samuel had always seemed confident and sure of himself. He always made it clear to Rachel that he was in charge. He always knew exactly what he wanted. In the presence of this woman, though, he was
different. Rachel half expected his tongue to hang out and for him to start drooling.

“You said you brought the rest of it, Samuel,” she said in her hissy voice.

“Yes.” He lifted an arm back toward the light. “It’s on the horse.”

“Well, don’t leave it out there,” the woman said, her voice taking on an impatient edge. “Go and get it.”

“Yes…yes, right away.” He seemed only too eager to do her bidding and scurried off.

Rachel watched him rushing back through the cave, making his way over rocks that lay in his path, sometimes using his hands on the ground for balance, hurrying past the creepy gallery of drawings and toward the cave entrance. She noticed then light flickering on the dark walls. When she heard the sputtering sizzle she realized that it was light from a torch. She turned back around to see someone else, carrying a torch, appearing out of the darkness.

Rachel’s jaw dropped.

It was Princess Violet.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the orphan Rachel come back to us,” Violet said as she stuck the torch in a bracket on the rock wall before taking up a place beside the woman in black.

Rachel’s eyes felt like they might pop out of her head. She couldn’t seem to make her mouth close. Her voice had fled down into the pit of her stomach.

“Why, Violet, dear, I do believe you’ve scared the little thing witless. Lose your tongue, little one?”

Princess Violet was the one who had lost her tongue. But now it was back. Somehow, as impossible as it seemed, it was back.

“Princess Violet…”

Violet’s back stiffened as she straightened her broad shoulders. She seemed to be half again as big as the last time Rachel had seen her. She was meatier-looking. Older-looking.

“Queen Violet, now.”

Rachel blinked in astonishment. “Queen…?”

Violet smiled in a way that could have frozen a bonfire.

“Yes, that’s right. Queen. My mother, you see, was murdered when that man, Richard, escaped. It was his doing. He is responsible for my mother’s
death, for the death of our beloved former queen. He brought us all nothing but grief and terrible times.” She heaved a sigh. “Things have changed. I am queen now.”

Rachel couldn’t make it work in her head. Queen. It all seemed impossible. Mostly, though, it was dumbfounding that Violet could again speak after having lost her tongue.

A humorless smile spread on Violet’s lips as her brow drew down. “Kneel before your queen.”

Rachel couldn’t seem to make sense of the words.

Violet’s hand came out of nowhere, striking Rachel so hard that it knocked her sprawling.

“Kneel before your queen!”

Violet’s shriek echoed back and forth in blackness.

Gasping in pain and shock, Rachel held one hand to the side of her face as she struggled to her knees. She felt warm blood running down her chin. Violet was a lot stronger than before.

The painful slap was like her past slamming right back down on her, as if everything had been a dream and she was waking again to the nightmare of her former life. She was all alone again, with no Giller, no Richard, no Chase to help her. She was again helpless before Violet without a friend in the world.

Violet’s smile had vanished. As she stared down at Rachel kneeling before her, her eyes narrowed in a way that made Rachel have to swallow.

“He attacked me, you know. Back when he was Seeker, Richard attacked me, hurt me, for no reason.” She planted her fists on her hips. “He hurt me bad. Attacked and hurt a child! My jaw was broken. My teeth were shattered. My tongue was severed, just as he had once promised to do. I was left mute.”

Her voice lowered into a growl that chilled Rachel to the bone. “But that was the least of my suffering.”

Violet took a breath to calm herself. With the palms of her hands she smoothed down her pink satin dress at the hips.

“None of my mother’s advisors were any help. They were bumbling fools when it came down to doing anything worthwhile. They offered endless potions and poultices and aromas and incantations. They said prayers and made offerings to the good spirits. They applied leeches and hot jars.
None of it worked. My mother was buried without me there. I was unconscious at the time.

“Not even the stars had anything to say about my condition or chances. The advisors mostly stood around wringing their hands—and probably plotting who would steal the crown when I finally died. I suspect that if it wasn’t soon then one of them would have helped me along into the afterlife with my mother. I heard their worried whispers about me becoming queen.”

Violet took another calming breath. “In the middle of my nightmare of pain and suffering, of anguish and grief, of my growing concern about being murdered, Six arrived and helped me.” She gestured up at the woman standing beside her. “Just when I needed it most, Six came along and helped save me, helped save the crown and Tamarang itself, when no one else could or would.”

“But, but,” Rachel stammered, “you’re not old enough to be a queen.”

She knew it was a mistake the instant the words had left her tongue, before her better judgment had time to stop them. Violet’s other hand whipped around, slapping Rachel across the other cheek. Violet seized her by the hair and roughly pulled her back up onto her knees. Rachel cupped a hand to the new throbbing ache and with the other hand wiped blood from her mouth.

Violet shrugged, indifferent to the pain and blood she had caused. “Anyway, I grew up in the last few years. I’m no longer the child I was back then, the child you still think of me being, back when you lived here, enjoying our kindness and generosity.”

Rachel didn’t think that Violet had grown up enough to be a queen, but she knew better than to say so again. She also knew better than to think of enslavement as “kindness.”

“Six helped me as I recovered. She saved me.”

Rachel stared up at the pale, smiling face. “I offered my services. Violet welcomed me into the castle. Her mother’s advisors certainly weren’t doing her any good.

“Six used her power to heal my broken and grossly infected jaw. I had grown weak from only being able to sip a thin broth. With Six’s help I was at last able to begin to eat again and recover my strength. New teeth even came in. I don’t suppose that anyone ever grew a third set of teeth before, yet I did.

“But still I could not speak, so when I was well enough, strong enough, Six used her remarkable powers to grow me a new tongue.” Her fists tightened at her sides. “The tongue that I lost because of the Seeker.”

“The former Seeker,” Six corrected, under her breath.

“The former Seeker,” Violet acknowledged, considerably calmer.

A smug smile returned to Violet’s plump face. It was a smile that Rachel knew all too well. “And now you have been brought back.” Her tone expressed a threat that her words hadn’t named.

“What about all the others?” Rachel asked, trying to buy time to think. “All the queen’s advisors?”

“I am the queen!” It seemed that, along with the rest of her, Violet’s temper had gotten bigger as well.

A gentle touch on the back from Six brought a brief glance up and a smile to Violet’s face. She again took a calming breath, almost as if she had been reminded to watch her manners.

She finally answered Rachel’s question. “I have no need for my mother’s advisors. They were, after all, worthless. Six fills that role now, and does so much better than any of those fools.

“After all, none of them could grow me a new tongue, now could they?”

Rachel glanced up at Six. The wolf’s grin was back. The ghostly blue eyes seemed to be staring right into Rachel’s naked soul.

“Such a thing was far beyond their abilities,” the woman said in a quiet voice, but one that carried the undertone of profound power. “However, it was well within mine.”