Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

Finding his way back was no longer what concerned him. That option was already lost to him. His connection to the entry point was gone, broken away by the beast as it tore apart the fabric of the protective spells. There was no way back to the Garden of Life, no way to find something in the middle of nothing.

Now escape was all that mattered.

The beast was a thing created of Subtractive Magic and it was in a Sub-tractive world. Richard was caught in its lair.

In this place there was no help to be had. Denna could do nothing against a conjured creature of this sort, a creature in its own element.

There was no way he could even make it back to the Hall of Sky, where the ceiling of stone was like a window showing the sky across its surface. Even that now seemed forever ago, forever distant across the eternity of nothing. His connection to it was lost somewhere in the blackness.

As he felt the tormenting claws of death itself tearing to get at him he only wanted out.

His mind held those essential elements he had come for in a death grip. The beast was trying to strip them away from him. Even if it cost him his life, he could not let those things go. If he lost those ephemeral aspects, there would be no point in going back to the world of life.

"I have to do it," he cried through the stunning pain of what was ripping at his very soul.

Denna's arms tightened protectively, desperately, around him, but there was no protection to be had in that embrace. Despite how much she wanted to help him, this was a thing she could not fight. She was his protector in this world, but only in the sense of being his guide to help him find what he needed while keeping him from straying into dangers that would suck him forever downward into darker places yet. She was not his guardian from what might come out of that darkness, and she had no ability to stop a conjured creature that did not exist.

"I have to!" he cried out, knowing that there was nothing else to try.

Shimmering tears traced their way down Denna's beautiful, glowing face. "If you do this, I can't protect you."

"If I don't, what do you suppose will happen to me?"

She smiled sadly. "You will die here."

"Then what choice do I have?"

She began floating away, only her hand holding his.

"None," her silken voice said in his mind. "But I can't be with you if you do this."

Twisting in pain as the beast tightened around him, Richard managed to nod. "I know, Denna. Thank you for all you have done. It was a true gift."

Her sad smile widened as she drifted farther away. "For me, too, Richard. I love you."

Richard felt her fingers still touching his. He nodded as best he could. "One way or another, you will always be in my heart."

He felt her kiss on his cheek. "Thank you, Richard, for that above all else."

And then she was gone.

When she vanished, and Richard was suddenly alone, enveloped in incomparable solitude and darkness, in the absence of everything, he released Additive Magic into the beast in a world where it could not exist.

In that instant, as the concussion of the Additive came into being in the heart of nowhere, the beast, unable to endure such an irreconcilable clash between what was and what was not, between the world of life and the world of the dead, between suddenly containing without any protective buffers an element of Additive in a world of Subtractive, disintegrated out of existence in both worlds.

At the same time, Richard felt a stunning blow from every direction at once.

There was suddenly ground under his feet.

Unable to stand, he collapsed among skulls.

Naked men, painted in wild designs, sat in a circle all around him.

Shaking with pain and shock, he felt comforting, calming hands on him. From all around he heard words he didn't understand.

But then he began to see faces he recognized. He saw his friend Savidlin. At the head of the circle he saw the Bird Man.

"Welcome back to the world of life, Richard with the Temper," a familiar voice said. It was Chandalen.

Still catching his breath, Richard blinked at the grim faces watching him. They were all painted in wild designs with black and white mud. He realized that he understood the symbols. When he had first come to these people and asked for a gathering, he had thought the black and white mud was simply random patterns. He knew now that it wasn't. It had meaning.

"Where am I?"

"You are in the spirit house," Chandalen said in his deep, grim-sounding voice.

The men all around him speaking in the strange language were the Mud People elders. It was a gathering.

Richard looked around at the spirit house. This was the village where he and Kahlan had been married. This was the place where they had spent their first night as husband and wife.

The men helped Richard stand.

"But what am I doing here?" he asked Chandalen, still not sure if he was dreaming ... or dead.

The man turned to the Bird Man. They exchanged brief words. Chandalen turned back to Richard.