Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Nicci dreaded that unequivocal juncture of delusion and truth. Despite wanting Richard to get better, to get over the false memories he had been suffering, she dreaded the pain she knew it would bring him when he eventually came face-to-face with the unambiguous truth. Even more, she dreaded what would happen to him if he couldn't see the truth, or refused to see it, if he sank forever deeper into a world of illusion.

"Not here," he muttered. "Something about not being here. And something about my heart."

Zedd pushed his cheek out with his tongue, apparently in an effort to keep still while he watched his grandson pacing back and forth and at the same time probably tried to imagine what could be happening to him.

"No," Richard said abruptly as he halted. "No, not my heart. That's not what it said. It's a big monument. I remember now. It said, 'Kahlan Amnell. Mother Confessor. She is not here, but in the hearts of those who love her.

"It was a message for me not to give up hope because she wasn't really dead-she wasn't really there, in that grave."

"Richard," Zedd said in soft consolation, "it's a common enough thing to say on a grave marker, that someone isn't dead but rather lives on in the hearts of those who love her. Gravediggers probably have stacks of grave markers made up with that sentiment, carved with those very words."

"But she wasn't buried there! She wasn't! It says that-'she is not here'-for a reason."

"Then who is buried in her grave?" Zedd asked.

Richard went still for a moment.

"No one," he finally said, his gaze wandering off as he thought. "Mistress Sanderholt-the cook at the palace-she was fooled by your death spell like everyone else. When I finally got here she told me that you stood there on the platform while Kahlan was beheaded-she was in mourning over it and terribly upset-but I realized that you wouldn't do such a thing and so it had to be one of your tricks. You told me that-remember? Sometimes the best magic is just a trick."

Zedd nodded. "That part is true enough."

"Mistress Sanderholt told me that Kahlan's body had been burned in a funeral pyre, the whole thing supervised by the First Wizard himself. She said that Kahlan's ashes were then buried before that immense stone marker. Mistress Sanderholt even took me out to the secluded courtyard beside the palace where Confessors are buried. She showed me the grave. I was horrified. I thought it was her, that she was dead, until I figured out the message carved in the stone-the message the two of you left for me to find."

Richard gripped his grandfather's shoulders again. "Do you see? It was just a trick to throw our enemies off her trail. She wasn't really dead. She wasn't really buried there. Nothing is buried there, except maybe some ashes."

Nicci thought that it was rather convenient that Richard imagined her being cremated in his story of the death-spell bluff so that all that remained were ashes that couldn't be identified. He always came up with something that to his mind logically explained the lack of evidence. Nicci didn't know if Confessors really were cremated, but if they were, that would only provide him with another useful pretext to prop up his story so that he could continue to deny that it was her. They would again have no way to prove otherwise.

Unless, of course, he was dreaming up the funeral pyre part of his story and Confessors weren't ordinarily cremated.

"And so you say that you went there?" Zedd asked. "Down to where the gravestone stands?"

"Yes, and then Denna came.»

"Denna was dead," Cara said, interrupting for the first time. "You killed her in order to escape from her at the People's Palace. She couldn't have been there — unless of course she appeared as a spirit."

"Yes, that's right," Richard said, turning to Cara. "She did. She came as a spirit and took me to a place between worlds so that I could be with Kahlan there."

Cara's eyes briefly turned to the wizard. Her incredulity was impossible for her to mask so she looked away from Richard and occupied herself with scratching the back of her neck.

Nicci wanted to scream. His story grew more insanely convoluted by the moment. She remembered the Prelate once teaching Nicci as a novice how the seed of lies, once planted, only grew more tangled and out of control over time.

Zedd came up from behind and gently grasped Richard's shoulders.

"Come on, my boy. I think you need to get some rest and then afterwards we can.»

"No!" Richard cried out as he twisted away. "I'm not imagining it! I'm not making it up!"

Nicci knew he was doing just that. In a certain sense, it was remarkable the way he was able, on the spot, to weave new events, based on his original delusion, to continually manage to escape the trap of the truth.