Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Ordinarily, Richard would have launched into a ready explanation, but now he looked too dejected to want to bother to explain yet again, to be greeted with incredulity and disbelieving questions.

"Kahlan." Zedd's brow drew down in cautious query. "Kahlan Amnell? Is that the Kahlan you're talking about?"

Nicci froze.

Richard looked up, his eyes wide. "What did you say?" he whispered.

"Kahlan Amnell? That Kahlan?"

Nicci's heart skipped a beat. Cara's jaw had dropped.

In a blink, Richard had the front of Zedd's robes in his fists and had lifted the old man clear of the floor. Richard's sweat-slicked muscles glistened in the lamplight.

"You said her whole name, Kahlan Amnell. I didn't tell you her whole name. You said it on your own."

Zedd was looking more confused by the moment. "But, that's because the only Kahlan I know of is Kahlan Amnell."

"You know Kahlan-you know who I'm talking about?"

"The Mother Confessor?"

"Yes, the Mother Confessor!"

"Well, of course. Most people know her, I expect. Richard, what's gotten into you? Let me down."

Nicci felt dizzy. She couldn't believe her own ears. How was such a thing possible? It wasn't. It was so overwhelmingly, inconceivably impossible that she thought she might faint.

His hands trembling, Richard set his grandfather down. "What do you mean, everyone knows her?"

Zedd pulled on each sleeve in turn, pulling them back down his skinny arms. He rearranged his disheveled robes at his hips, all the time watching his grandson. He looked truly bewildered by Richard's behavior.

"Richard, what's the matter with you? How could they not know her? She's the Mother Confessor, for crying out loud."

Richard swallowed. "Where is she?"

Zedd shot a brief, confused glance at Cara and then Nicci before looking back at Richard.

"Why, down at the Confessors' Palace."

Richard let out a cry of joy and threw his arms around his grandfather.

CHAPTER 47

Gripping his grandfather's skinny shoulders, Richard shook the old man. "She's here? Kahlan is at the Confessors' Palace?"

Worry spreading across Zedd's wrinkled face, he cautiously nodded.

With the back of his hand, Richard wiped away the tears running down his cheek. "She's here," he said, turning to Cara. He gripped her shoulders and gave her a firm shake. "She's in Aydindril. Did you hear? I wasn't imagining it. Zedd remembers her. He knows the truth."

Cara looked as if she were doing her best to come to grips with her astonishment without letting it be mistaken for unhappiness at the startling news.

"Lord Rahl — I'm — happy for you-really I am-but I don't see how.»

Richard, not seeming to notice the Mord-Sith's halting uncertainty, turned back to the wizard. "What's she doing down there?" he asked, his voice bubbling over with excitement.

Zedd, looking gravely troubled, again glanced to both Cara and Nicci before tenderly laying a hand on Richard's shoulder.

"Richard, that's where she's buried."

The world seemed to stop.

In a flash of understanding, Nicci realized the truth.

Suddenly, it all became clear. Zedd's behavior now made sense. The woman Zedd was talking about was not the Kahlan, the Mother Confessor, from Richard's imagination, the woman he imagined loved him and had married him.

It was the real Mother Confessor.

Nicci had warned Richard that in his dream he had done a dangerous thing by imagining a woman as his bride who was not simply some anonymous imaginary woman, but, instead, was a woman he had heard of before-a woman who, it so happened, was well known in the Midlands. This was the real Kahlan Amnell, the real Mother Confessor, who was buried down at the Confessors' Palace, not the one Richard had dreamed up to be his love. It had been this very reality that Nicci had feared would eventually come to shatter Richard's world.

She had warned him that this was bound to happen. She had warned him that he would one day come face-to-face with the truth. This was the moment, this was the very thing she had been trying to prevent.

Still, Nicci felt no joy at all in being right. She felt only crushing sadness at what Richard must be feeling. She couldn't even begin to imagine how confusing, how disorienting, it had to be for him. For someone as firmly grounded in reality as Richard always had been, this entire ordeal had to be devastating.

Richard could only stare.

"Richard," Zedd finally said, giving him a gentle squeeze on his arms, "are you all right? What's going on?"

Richard slowly blinked. He looked in a state of shock.

"What do you mean she's buried down at the Confessors' Palace?" he asked in a shaky voice. "When did it happen?"

Zedd guardedly licked his lips. "I don't know when she died. When I was down there-when Jagang's army was marching on Aydindril-I saw the grave marker. I didn't know her. I just saw her grave, that's all. It's a pretty big marker. It would be hard to miss. The Confessors were all killed by the quads that Darken Rahl sent. She must have died back then.