Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

"Are you serious?" Verna was bottled rage. "You want me to tell him that we surrender?"

"Yes."

"What!" Kahlan said, seizing a fistful of his shirtsleeve to pull him around toward her. "You can't surrender to him."

"I have to. It's the only way I have to keep all those people down there from being tortured and killed. If I surrender the palace he will allow them to live."

"And you're going to take Jagang's word for that?" Kahlan demanded.

"I have no choice. This is the only way."

"You brought me back here to turn me over to that monster?" Kahlan's green eyes brimmed with tears born of anger and hurt. "Is that why you wanted to find me?"

Richard looked away. He would have given just about anything to tell her how much he really loved her. If he was to go to his death, he at least would want her to know his true feelings and not think that he had married her out of a duty to an arrangement and was now using her as treasure to be turned over in a surrender. It was crushing his heart that she thought that.

But he had no choice. If he corrupted the sterile field then the Kahlan that he knew would be forever lost-if it hadn't already been corrupted by Samuel, if she wasn't already lost to him.

Richard turned his attention elsewhere. "Where's Nicci?" he asked Nathan.

"Locked up like you told me to do until Jagang can collect her."

Kahlan rounded on him. "And now you're also giving the woman you love over to-"

Richard lifted a hand, commanding silence.

He unclenched his jaw as he turned to Verna. "Do as I say." His tone of voice made it clear that it was an order not to be discussed, much less defied.

As everyone stood in stunned silence, Richard started away. "I will be in the Garden of Life, waiting."

He needed to think.

Only Kahlan followed him.

Ever-waning daylight slanted in through the leaded glass overhead. This would be the night of the new moon-the darkest night of the month. Richard had heard it said that such darkness brought the world of life closer to the underworld.

In the hours waiting for Jagang to make it up the plateau and to the Garden of Life, Richard had paced the whole time, deep in thought, thinking about those two worlds-the world of life and the world of the dead.

There was something about the whole thing that didn't make sense to him. He went through The Book of Counted Shadows that he had memorized, knowing that there was probably some flaw in it that would make it impossible to use it to open the power of Orden, but also knowing that the elements would still be largely true, if out of order. It would take nothing more than changing a single detail to have made it a false copy. He knew that there was a flaw in the copy he had memorized, but he didn't know how to identify the specific deviation from the original.

Jagang had the original. He wouldn't have to worry about there being errors in his book. Sister Ulicia, with Jagang in her mind the whole time, would be reading the original directly, so they would be using the actual, true version of the book. Therefore, they wouldn't need a Confessor.

He came to a halt before Kahlan. "Copies of The Book of Counted Shadows have to be verified through the use of a Confessor. If you had the text to The Book of Counted Shadows, if I recited it for you, do you think you would be able to verify the true parts?"

Kahlan, deep in her own thoughts, looked up. "I've asked myself that same question countless times. I'm sorry, Richard, but I just don't know how.

"It's too bad that the first Confessor, Magda Searus, didn't leave me a book on how to use my powers, like her first husband left for you."

A lot of good that book was doing him. Richard let out a despondent sigh and went back to pacing.

He turned his thoughts back to the book that Baraccus had so desperately wanted him to have: Secrets of a War Wizard's Power. Baraccus had thought that it was vital that Richard have that book with the rule unwritten. The whole thing was so bizarre that Richard was left stunned and not knowing what to think. It had been a monumental effort to recover that book. It had to have also been a great effort on the part of Baraccus to see to it that only Richard would eventually be able to find it.

Why leave him a book that said nothing?

Unless it actually said everything.

Richard glanced to his silent grandfather sitting on the short, vine-covered wall nearby. Zedd met his gaze but his sadness at not being able to help Richard was evident.

"I'm sorry," Kahlan said.

Richard glanced over. "What?"

"I'm sorry. It had to be a terrible decision. I know that you are only trying to keep Jagang's brutes from slaughtering all the people here. I wish I could touch Jagang with my Confessor power."

Confessor power. First brought into existence in Magda Searus. The woman who had been married to Baraccus. But she had been married to Baraccus back during the great war, long before she became a Confessor....

"Dear spirits," Richard whispered to himself, icy realization flashing through his veins.