Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

"What do you mean?" Richard asked as he started reading the High D'Haran words cut into the granite walls.

"Verna told me that when I came to the palace, just before I was captured, I had been on my way down here with Ann. Verna said that I told her that I knew why the walls down here were melting."

Richard looked back over his shoulder at her. "And so why are they melting?"

Nicci looked strangely confused and worried. "I don't know. I don't remember."

"Don't remember . . . what?"

"Why I was coming down here, or why the walls were melting. I asked Verna if she remembered anything I might have said, but she said that she didn't."

Richard lightly dragged a finger along his grandfather's casket. "Chain-fire."

Nicci looked up, even more concerned. "Do you really think that's the reason?"

"You don't remember any of it?"

She shook her head. "No. I don't remember ever telling Verna that I knew the cause of the problem, but what's worse is that I don't remember ever knowing why the walls were melting. How could I forget something important like that?"

Richard stared into her troubled blue eyes for a moment. "I don't think you could, if things were normal."

"That can only mean that the damage from Chainfire is spreading beyond the original target of the spell."

"It's the contamination," Richard said in a quiet voice.

"If that's true, then that means that whatever is going on in here is connected to what we must do to reverse Chainfire. The contamination in the chimes is erasing memory to protect itself."

Such a frightening concept gave Richard pause. He knew, though, that it made sense. Now he had to worry not only about how Jagang might be one step ahead of him, but about how the contamination with Chainfire might also be acting to defend itself from extermination.

It didn't need to be sentient to react to preserve itself and continue its purpose. To the chimes, eliminating magic was a value, and the contamination they left in their wake was their method of accomplishing that value, so such self-defensive measures were probably integral, much as thorns were sometimes a bush or tree's means of self-defense. Having thorns didn't mean the tree was able to think of how to hurt anyone who came near; it was merely its integral means of protecting itself so that it could continue to exist.

"We have to reverse Chainfire or it's only going to continue to grow worse," Richard finally said to Nicci. "It won't be long before we even forget why we have to reverse it. I must invoke the power of Orden to counter the spell before it's too late."

"We need the boxes of Orden to do that," she reminded him.

"Well, Jagang has two, and the witch woman took the third. Somehow we need to get them back."

"Since Six is doing Jagang's bidding by attacking our troops down in the Old World, I think we must assume that she intends to give him the third box."

Richard traced a finger along some of the lettering on Panis Rahl's casket. "I think you're right. It's only a matter of time before Jagang has all three boxes, if he doesn't already."

"We have something they need, though," Nicci said.

"We do? What?"

"The Garden of Life. Since translating The Book of Life I've come to see the Garden of Life in a different way. The book confirmed some of the conclusions I had previously come to, after the last time I saw the garden.

"I now understand the Garden of Life through the context of the magic of Orden. I've studied the position of the room, the amount of light, the angles in relation to various star charts and how the sun and moon traverse the place. I've also analyzed the area within the room where the spells relating to Orden had been invoked-their specific placement in relation to the other elements."

Richard was intrigued. "You mean to say that you really think that the Garden of Life is necessary to open one of the boxes?"

"Yes. The Garden of Life was constructed specifically to provide the controlled conditions necessary to open one of the boxes of Orden."

Richard had to run that through his mind a second time before he was sure that he'd heard her right. "You mean to say that Jagang must get into that room in order to open the correct box?"

Nicci shrugged. "Unless he wants to construct his own room just like it. That certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility, but the elements all brought together in that room are very exacting. Re-creating it would be a complex undertaking."

"But it would be possible for him to do such a thing?"

"He would need the original references from which the plans for the Garden of Life were derived. He would also need the aid not only of sorceresses, but wizards. Lacking everything necessary to do it on his own, he would have to study the Garden of Life itself in order to know how to construct a new one. The only practical solution would be to duplicate what was already built here, since all that preliminary work has already been successfully carried out."

"Well, if he could get into here to do that, he might as well use this one."