Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

It was well after nightfall when they were finally forced to stop. Richard would have kept going but the terrain, thickly wooded, rocky, and becoming uneven as ridgelines rose up around them, was simply too treacherous to negotiate in the dark. The nearly new moon would have come up at sunset but the narrow crescent didn't provide enough illumination to brighten the inky cloud cover in the least. Even the light that would have been provided by meager starlight was hidden by the thick clouds. The darkness was so complete that it was simply impossible to go on.

Kahlan was tired, but as Richard started a fire in the fluff of cattails he'd broken open for tinder, she could see that he was in far worse condition. She wondered if he'd slept in recent days. After he had a fire going, he set fishing lines and then started to collect enough firewood to last them through the cold night. Up against a rocky rise they at least had some protection from the biting wind.

Kahlan did her best to care for the horses, fetching them water in a canvas bucket among the supplies Richard had with him. When he'd finished collecting firewood he found that they had some brook trout on his lines. As she watched him cleaning the fish, throwing the innards on the fire so they wouldn't attract animals, she decided not to ask any more questions about the two of them. She couldn't endure the pain of the answers. Besides, he had already told her what she had asked: she was simply the right person for him to marry.

She wondered if he'd even met her before he agreed to marry her. She realized that it must have been heartbreaking for Nicci to see the man she loved marry someone else for unromantic, practical reasons.

Kahlan forced her mind away from that whole line of thought.

"Why are we going to Tamarang?" she asked.

Richard glanced up from his work at cleaning the fish. "Well, a long time ago, back in the great war three thousand years ago, the people back then were fighting this same war we're fighting now, a war to defend ourselves against those who want to eliminate magic and all other forms of freedom.

"The people defending against such aggression took a number of extremely valuable things of magic-things they had created over many centuries-and put those things in a place called the Temple of the Winds. Then, to protect it all from falling into the hands of the enemy, they sent the temple into the underworld."

"They sent it into the world of the dead?"

Richard nodded as he laid out some big leaves. "During the war, wizards on both sides had conjured terrible weapons-constructed spells and such. But some of those weapons were made out of people. That's how the dreamwalkers came to be. They were created out of people captured in Caska-Jillian's ancestors."

"And that was when they created the Chainfire event?" she asked. "During that great war.

"That's right," he said as he spread a layer of mud on the leaves. "Other wizards were constantly working to counter the things that had been created from magic. The boxes of Orden, for example, were created during that great war in order to counter the Chainfire spell."

"I remember the Sisters talking to Jagang about that."

"Well, the whole thing is quite complicated but, basically, a traitorn amed Lothain went to the Temple of the Winds where it was hidden away in the underworld. He secretly did things to one day aid the basic cause of the Order when it eventually rekindled."

"They thought the war would reignite?"

"There have always been, and always will be, those who are driven by hate and want to blame those who are happy, creative, and productive for their misery."

"What sort of things did this Lothain do?"

Richard looked up. "Among other things, he made sure that a dream-walker would one day again be born into the world of life. Jagang is that dreamwalker."

Richard finished wrapping the fish in leaves and mud and set the little bundles in the glowing coals at the edge of the fire.

"After that, the people on our side sent the First Wizard to the Temple of the Winds. His name was Baraccus. He was a war wizard. He made sure that another war wizard would be born to try to stop the forces trying to take mankind into a dark age."

Kahlan pulled her knees up and drew her blanket around herself to keep warm as she listened to the story. "You mean that there haven't been any war wizards since that time?"

Richard shook his head. "I'm the first one in nearly three thousand years. Baraccus, though, did something at the temple to insure that another would one day be born to carry on the struggle. I'm the one born because of what he did back then.

"Realizing that such a person wouldn't know anything about his ability, Baraccus came back and wrote a book called Secrets of a War Wizard's Power. He had his wife, Magda Searus, who he loved very much, take that book away and hide it for me. He was very careful to make sure that no one but me would get ahold of the book.