Page 124 of Phantom (Sword of Truth 10)

Seeing the look in his gray eyes, Kahlan realized that she had to know who she was. Whatever the consequences, whatever the cost, she had to know the truth. She had to have her life back. The truth was the only way.

Jagang's threats of what he would do to her might be a very real consequence, but she suddenly knew that the real danger was that he was intimidating her into abdicating her life, her will, her existence… into giving herself over to his control. By his threats of what he would do to her once she again knew who she was, he was dictating her life, enslaving her. If she went along with his will, then it was only because she surrendered hers.

She couldn't allow herself to think that way. Her life meant more than that. She may be his captive, but she was not his slave. A slave was a state of mind. She was not a slave.

She would not surrender her will to him. She would have her life back.

Her life was hers alone and she would have it back. Nothing Jagang could do, nothing he could threaten her with, could take that away from her.

Kahlan felt a tear of joy roll down her cheek.

That man she didn't even remember had just given her the will to take her life back, the fire to live. It felt like the first real breath she had taken since she had lost her memory.

She only wished she could thank him.

* * *

CHAPTER 58

Nicci marched through the vast hall of the People's Palace trailing Cara, Nathan, and a gaggle of guards. Every time someone called Nathan "Lord Rahl," it set her nerves on edge. She knew it was necessary, but in her heart the only Lord Rahl was Richard.

She would have given just about anything to see his gray eyes again. Being in the palace made it seem she could almost feel his presence all around her. It was the spell the palace was built around, she supposed. The palace was built in the form of a spell for the Lord Rahl. Richard was the Lord Rahl. At least in her mind.

To be fair, she knew there were others—Cara, for one—who felt the same. When she was alone with Cara, which was often, the two of them seemed to share understanding without words being needed. Both shared the same anguish. Both of them wanted Richard back.

Cara stepped forward, leading them through a network of small service hallways to an iron stairway up a dark well. Reaching the top, she threw open the door. They were greeted with cold light as they stepped out onto the observation deck. Being right out at the edge of the outer wall, at the edge of the plateau, felt like standing on the edge of the world.

Down below, spread like a black taint almost to the distant horizon, was the army of the Imperial Order.

"See what I mean?" Nathan said as he stepped up beside her, pointing out the construction in the distance. It was hard to see at first, but it quickly began to make sense.

"You're right," she said. "It does look like a ramp. Do you think they can actually build a ramp all the way up here?"

Nathan gazed out at the site, studying it for a moment. "I don't know, but I would have to say that if Jagang is going to all the trouble of doing such a thing, it can only be because he has reason to believe that he can accomplish it."

"If they make it up here with a ramp that broad," Cara said, "we're in trouble."

"More like 'dead,' " Nathan said.

Nicci studied what the men of the Order were doing, and the distance to the site of the work. "Nathan, you're a Rahl. This place amplifies your power. You ought to be able to send some wizard's fire down there and blow that thing apart."

"My thought, too," he said. "I suspect that they have Sisters down there with shields to prevent anyone up here from doing just that. I've not probed for such defenses, and I've not tried anything yet. I want to wait until they've been at it for quite a while longer—to make them feel complacent. Then, when they have some more done, and they're closer, and when I finally do hit them, I'll have a better chance of doing some real damage. If I'm able to destroy it now, they won't have lost much. Better to wait until they've already put a great deal more time and work into it."

Nicci frowned up at the tall prophet. "Nathan, you are a very devious man."

He smiled a Rahl smile. "I prefer to think of myself as ingenious."

Nicci went back to surveying the camp out beyond the site of the construction. It was just far enough away to provide their gifted with plenty of time to react to an attack. Nicci had spent enough time with Jagang's army to know a great deal about the way they thought. She knew the layers of defenses that Jagang's officers and gifted would place around the army. And some of those gifted were Sisters of the Dark.

"Look at that," she said, pointing. "It looks like a supply train is just arriving."

Nathan nodded. "Winter will be here shortly. The army looks like they're not going anywhere, so they will need a lot of supplies to keep all those men alive over the winter."

Nicci considered what could be done, finally deciding that, from where they stood, very little. "Well, Richard sent the army south to the Old World to attack their supply trains, among other things. Let's hope they're effective and can accomplish the task. If all those men starve to death that would solve our problem. In the meantime, I'll devote some thought to what we might be able to do to help them die."

She turned away from the depressing view of the encampment, and the supply train bringing all those men what they needed to stay and lay siege to the palace.

"Come on," she said to Nathan. "I need to get back, but why don't you show me before I leave."

Nathan took them down through the palace by the smaller, staff areas, rather than the vast halls. It was a quick descent through the stone interior of the palace, taking them ever lower into the dark, inner regions beneath the palace that were what most people never saw. There were elegant if simple stone halls even in these unseen places. Without elaborate decoration, they were made of polished stone in places, and rich woods in others. These were the private corridors used by the Lord Rahl and his staff.

Nicci had come to the People's Palace to pay a visit to the Garden of Life. After that, she had checked to see how Berdine was doing in her search for information, and how Nathan was getting on. They had wanted to tell her details of their difficulties; she hadn't really wanted to take the time but she made herself listen patiently.

After having again seen the place where the boxes of Orden had been, she had been too distracted to be able to really focus on what they were telling her. This time she saw the deserted Garden of Life differently, getting a feel for where Darken Rahl had opened the boxes, for where they had sat. She had studied the position of the room, the amount of light, the angles to various known star charts in addition to how the sun and moon transverse the place, and the area where the spells had been invoked.

Since translating The Book of Life, Nicci viewed the Garden of Life in a different way. She saw it through the context of the magic of Orden and how the room had been used. It had given her a valuable insight into the last place the boxes had been used. Such practical reference had answered some questions she'd had, and confirmed some of the conclusions she'd come to.

At last Nathan reached a set of double doors with guards standing before them. He gestured and the men opened the pair of white doors. Beyond was a wall of white stone that looked as if it had partly melted.

"Have you been in there?" she asked the prophet.

"No," he admitted. "At my age I try to stay out of tombs as much as I can."

Nicci stepped over the low ledge at the same time as she ducked through the low opening. "Wait here," she said to Cara, who had been about to follow her in.

"Are you sure?"

"This involves magic."

Cara wrinkled her nose as if she had gotten a whiff of sour milk, and waited outside along with the prophet.

Nicci sent a spark of Han into a torch to the side. After all this time it still lit. She saw then that the huge vaulted room was constructed of pink granite. The floor was white marble. On the walls all around were dozens and dozens of gold vases,

each set in the wall beneath a torch. Nicci absently counted them. Fifty-seven. It appeared to her to be a number that had meaning. Probably the vases and torches represented the age of the man in the coffin in the center of the room.

The place was troubling, and not just because it was a crypt. She trailed her fingers along the symbols cut into the granite walls just beneath the vases. The words that ran around the entire room and around the golden coffin were High D'Haran. The inscriptions were instructions from a father to a son on the process of going to the underworld and returning. Quite the legacy.

Such spells contained Subtractive Magic. That was what was causing the walls to melt. Containing them by walling the place over with special stone had slowed the process greatly, but had not halted it entirely.

"Well?" Nathan asked, poking his head in through the melted hole. "Any ideas?"

Nicci stepped out, brushing off her hands. "I don't know. I don't think there's any imminent danger, but this involves dark things so there's a chance I'm wrong. I think it would be best to shield it behind an invocation of threes."

Nathan nodded in thought. "You want to do it? Lace it with Subtractive?"

"It would be best if you did it. You're a Rahl. That would be more effective. Even if I used Subtractive, this in here already has both mixed in, and it was created by a Rahl. Such power could breach any invocation I could create in here under the limitations of the protective spell of the palace."

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