Richard lifted out the amulet he wore, which had once belonged to Baraccus. He stared at the symbols making up the dance with death. There was just too much for it all to be coincidence.
He peered up at Shota. "Are you saying that Baraccus foresaw what would happen and put the book in a place of greater safety?"
Shota shrugged. "I'm sorry, Richard, I don't know. It may be that he was simply being cautious. Considering his reasons, and what is at stake, such caution certainly seems not only to have been warranted, but wise.
"I've told you everything I can. You know all the pieces of the puzzle, of the history, that I'm unaware of. That doesn't mean that this is all there is to it, but from other sources you also know additional parts of the history, so you now know more of the story than I do. For that matter, you probably now know more of it than any person alive since war wizard Baraccus was the First Wizard."
Out of all she had told him, nothing would do him any good unless he could find the book Baraccus had meant for him to have. Without that book, Richard's war wizard powers were a mystery to him and next to useless. Without that book, it seemed that there was no hope of defeating the army that had come up from the Old World. The Order would rule the world and magic would be eradicated from the world of life, just as Lothain had planned. Without the book, Baraccus's plan was a failure, and Jagang was going to win.
Richard gazed up at the glassed roof a hundred feet overhead, which let in some of the somber, late-day light to balance the glow of the lamps down in the heart of the room. He wondered when the lamps had been lit. He didn't recall it happening.
"Shota, there could be no greater need for such knowledge. How am I supposed to succeed in stopping the Order if I can't use my ability as a war wizard? Can't you give me anything, any idea at all, of how to find this book? If I don't find some answers, and soon, I'm dead. We all are."
She cupped his chin as she looked down into his eyes. "I hope you know, Richard, that if I knew how to get that book for you, I would do it. You know how much I want to stop the Imperial Order."
"Well, why do you get specific information. Where does it come from? Why is it that it comes to you at specific times, like now? Why not the first time I met you? Or when I was trying to get into the Temple of the Winds to stop the plague?"
"I suppose that it comes from the same place you get answers or inspiration when you mull over a problem. Why do you come up with answers to problems when you do? I think about a situation and sometimes the answers come to me. Fundamentally, it's no different, I suppose, than how anyone comes up with ideas. It's just that my ideas are unique to a witch woman's mind and they involve events in the flow of time. I suppose that it's much the same as how you suddenly came to know the truth about what Lothain had done. How did that come to you? I suppose that it works much the same for me.
"If I knew where the book Secrets of a War Wizard's Power was, or had any idea of how to find it, I wouldn't hesitate to tell you."
Richard heaved a sigh and stood. "I know, Shota. Thank you for all you've done. I'll try to find a way for what you've told me to be of help."
Shota squeezed his shoulder. "I must go. I have a witch woman to find. At least, thanks to Nicci, I now know her name."
A thought struck him. "I wonder why she's named Six?"
Shota's countenance darkened. "It's a derogatory name. A witch woman sees many things in the flow of time, especially those things having to do with any daughters she might bear. For a witch woman, the seventh child is special. To name a child Six is to say that she falls short, that she is less than perfect. It's an open insult, from birth, for what a witch woman foresees of her daughter's character. It's a pronouncement that her daughter is flawed.
"Naming her Six probably earned the mother her own murder at the hands of that daughter."
"Then why would the mother so openly declare such a thing? Why not name the daughter something else and avoid the probability of her own murder."
Shota regarded him with a sad smile. "Because there are witch women who are believers in the truth, because truth will help others avoid danger. To such women, a lie would be the bud of much larger trouble that would grow from it. To us, truth is the only hope for the future. To us, the future is life."
"Well, it sounds like the name fits the trouble this one is causing."
Shota's smile, sad though it had been, vanished. Her brow tightened with a dark look. She lifted a finger in warning. "Such a woman could easily conceal her name. This one, instead, reveals it the way a snake bares its fangs. You worry about everything else, and leave her to me. A witch woman is profoundly dangerous."
Richard smiled a little. "Like you?"
Shota didn't return the smile. "Like me."
Richard stood alone by the fountain as he watched Shota ascend the steps. Nicci, Cara, Zedd, Nathan, Ann, and Jebra were huddled off to the side, engaged in whispered conversation among themselves. They didn't pay any heed to Shota as she passed, like an unseen apparition.
Richard followed her up the steps. In the doorway, silhouetted by the light, Shota turned back, almost as if she had seen an apparition herself. She reached out and for a time rested a hand on the doorframe.
"One other thing, Richard." Shota studied his eyes for a moment. "When you were young, your mother died in a fire."
Richard nodded. "That's right. A man got in a fight with George Cypher, the man who raised me, the man I thought at the time was my father. This man who started the fight with my father knocked a lamp off the table, setting the house on fire. My brother and I were asleep in the back bedroom at the time. While the man dragged my father outside and was beating him, my mother raced in and pulled my brother and me from the burning house."
Richard cleared his throat with the pain that still haunted him. He remembered the quick smile of her relief that they were safe, and the last quick kiss she had given him on his forehead.
"After my mother was sure that we were safe, she ran back inside to save something—we never knew what. Her screams brought the man to his senses and he and my father tried to save her, but they couldn't… it was too late. They were driven back by the heat of the flames and could do nothing for her. Filled with guilt and revulsion at what he had caused, the man ran off sobbing that he was sorry.
"It was a terrible tragedy, especially because there was no one else in the house and nothing worth saving, nothing worth her life. My mother died for nothing."
Shota, standing silhouetted in the doorway, one hand resting against the doorframe, stared at him for what seemed an eternity. Richard waited silently. There was some kind of terrible significance evident in her posture, in her almond eyes. She finally spoke in a soft voice.
"Your mother was not the only one to die in that fire."
Richard felt goose bumps race up his legs and arms. Everything he had known for nearly his whole life seemed to be vaporized in an instant by the lightning strike of those words.
"What are you talking about? What do you mean?"
Shota shook her head sadly. "I swear on my life, Richard, I don't know anything else."
He stepped closer and grasped her arm, being careful not to grip it as hard as he easily could have under the sudden power of his burning need to understand why she would say such a thing.
"What do you mean, you don't know anything else? How can you say something so inconceivable and then just say that you don't know anything else? How can you say something like that about the death of my mother—and then just not know any more. That doesn't make sense. You must know something more."
Shota cupped a hand to the side of his face. "You did something for me the last time you came to Agaden Reach. You turned down my offer and said that I was worth more than to have someone against their will. You said that I deserved to have someone who would value me for who I am.
"As angry as I was with you at that moment, it made me think. No one has ever turned me down before, and you did it for the right reasonsbecause you car
ed about me, cared that I have what will make my life worthwhile. You cared enough to risk my wrath.
"When I assumed the likeness of your mother, that gift in some way influenced the flow of information coming to me. Because of that, just now as I was about to leave, that single thought came into my awareness: Your mother was not the only one to die in that fire.
"Like all things that I glean from the flow of events in time, it came to me as a kind of intuitive vision. I don't know what it means, and I don't know any more about it. I swear, Richard, I don't.
"Under ordinary circumstances I would not have revealed that small bit of information because it is so charged with possibilities and questions, but these are hardly ordinary circumstances. I thought you should know what came to me. I thought you should know every scrap of everything I know. Not all of what I learn from the flow of time is useful—that's why I don't always reveal to people isolated things like this. In this instance, however, I thought you should know it in case it comes to mean something to you, in case it might come to help you somehow."
Richard felt numb and confused. He wasn't sure that he believed it really meant what it sounded like it meant.
"Could it mean that she wasn't the only one to die because a part of us died with her that day? That our hearts would never be the same? Could it mean that she was not the only one to die in that fire in that sense?"
"I don't know, Richard, I really don't, but it could be. It may in that way be insignificant as far as being something that would actually help you now. I don't always know everything about what the flow of time reveals or if it is meaningful. It could be as you say and nothing more.
"I can only be a help if I relay information accurately, and so that is what I did. That is the exact way it came to me and in that precise concept: Your mother was not the only one to die in that fire."
Richard felt a tear run down his cheek. "Shota, I feel so alone. You brought Jebra to tell me things that gave me nightmares. I don't know what to do next. I don't. So many people believe in me, depend on me. Isn't there something you can tell me that will at least point me in the right direction before we're all lost?"
With a finger, Shota lifted the tear from his cheek. That simple act somehow lifted his heart in a small way.
"I am sorry, Richard. I don't know the answers that would save you. If I did, please believe that I would give them eagerly. But I know the good in you. I believe in you. I do know that you have within you what you must to succeed. There will be times when you doubt yourself. Do not give up. Remember then that I believe in you, that I know you can accomplish what you must. You are a rare person, Richard. Believe in yourself.
"Know that I believe you are the one who can do it."
Outside, before starting down the granite steps, she turned back, a black shape against the fading light.
"If Kahlan was ever real or not no longer matters. The entire world of life, everyone's life, is now at stake. You must forget this one life, Richard, and think of all the rest."
"Prophecy, Shota?" Richard felt too heavyhearted to raise his voice. "Something from the flow of time?"
Shota shook her head. "Simply the advice of a witch woman." She started for the paddock to collect her horse. "Too much is at stake, Richard. You must stop chasing this phantom."
When Richard went back inside everyone was crowded around Jebra, engaged in hushed conversation filled with sympathy for her ordeal.
Zedd paused in the middle of what he was saying as Richard joined them. "Rather odd, don't you think, my boy?"
Richard glanced around at the perplexed expressions. "What's odd?"
Zedd spread his hands. "That somewhere in the middle of Jebra telling her story Shota simply up and vanished."
"Vanished," Richard repeated, cautiously.
Nicci nodded. "We thought she would stick around and have something to say after Jebra finished."
"Maybe she had to go find someone to intimidate," Cara said.
Ann sighed. "Maybe she wanted to be on her way after that other witch woman."
"Maybe, being a witch woman, she isn't much for good-byes," Nathan suggested.
Richard didn't say anything. He had seen Shota do this before, like when she had shown up at his and Kahlan's wedding and given Kahlan the necklace. No one had heard her then, either, when she had spoken to Richard and Kahlan. No one had seen her leave.
Everyone went back to their conversation, except for his grandfather. Zedd looked distant and distracted.
"What is it?" Richard asked.
Zedd shook his head as he laid his arm around Richard's shoulders, leaning closer as he spoke intimately. "For some reason, I find my mind wandering to thoughts of your mother."
"My mother."
Zedd nodded. "I really miss her."
"Me too," Richard said. "Now that you mention it, I guess I've had her on my mind as well."
Zedd stared off into the distance. "Part of me died with her that day."
It took Richard a moment to find his voice. "Do you have any idea why she went back into the burning house? Do you think there was anything important in there? Maybe someone we didn't know about?"
Zedd shook his head insistently. "I felt sure that there had to have been some good reason, but I went through the ashes myself." His eyes welled up with tears. "There was nothing in there but her bones."
Richard glanced out the door and saw the spectral shadow of Shota atop her horse start down the road without looking back.
* * *
CHAPTER 21
Rachel hesitated deep within the dark entrance. It was becoming difficult to see. She wished she couldn't make out what was drawn on the walls, but the fact was she could. All the way into the cave she had tried not to look too closely at the strange scenes covering the stone walls all around her. Some of the images made goose bumps rise on her arms. She could not imagine why anyone would want to draw such horrible, cruel things, but she certainly could understand why they would put them down in the cave, why they would want to hide such dark thoughts from the light of day.
The man unexpectedly shoved her. Rachel stumbled forward and fell flat on her face. She gasped a breath to regain the wind that had been so abruptly knocked out of her. She spit out dirt as she pushed herself up on her arms. She was too angry to cry.
When she peeked back over her shoulder she saw that, instead of watching her, he was gazing ahead into the darkness with those unsettling golden eyes of his, as if his mind had wandered and he'd forgotten all about her. Rachel glanced back toward the light, wondering if she could make it past his long legs. She reasoned that she could feign going one way and then dodge the other. That might work. But he was a lot bigger than she was and could no doubt run faster even if her legs hadn't been all wobbly from having been tied for so long. If only he hadn't taken her knives away from her. Still, if she was quick, she thought she might possibly be able to get enough of a start to make it.
Before she had a chance to try, the man noticed her again. He seized her by the collar and hoisted her to her feet, then shoved her on ahead, deeper into the black maw of the cave. Rachel struggled to find her footing over rock outcroppings and to jump fissures. Seeing some kind of movement ahead, she paused.
"Well, well…" came a razor-thin voice from back in the darkness. "Visitors."
The last word had been drawn out so that it almost sounded like the hiss of a snake.
Rachel's skin went icy cold as she stared, wide-eyed, into the darkness, fearing who could be the owner of such a voice.
Out of that darkness, as if from out of the underworld itself, a shadow materialized, gliding forward into the dim light.
Shadows didn't smile, though, Rachel realized. This was a woman, a tall woman in long black robes. Her long, wiry hair, too, was black. In contrast, her skin was so pale that it made her face almost appear to be floating all by itself in the darkness. It reminded Rachel of the skin of an albino salamander that hid under leaves on the forest floor during
the day, never touched by the sunlight. All of her, from the coarse black cloth of her dress to her parched flesh stretched tightly over her knuckles to her stiff hair, seemed as dry as a sunbaked carcass.
She wore the kind of smile that Rachel imagined a wolf wore when dinner dropped in unexpectedly.
Although her eyes were blue, it was a blue that was as blanched as her skin, so that it almost seemed that she might be blind. But the way those eyes deliberately took Rachel in left no doubt that this was a woman who could not only see just fine in the light, but probably in pitch darkness as well.
"This had better be worth it," the man behind Rachel said. "The little brat stabbed me in my leg."
Rachel glared back over her shoulder. She didn't know the man's name. He had never bothered to tell her. Ever since capturing her he'd spoken very little, in fact, as if she were not someone but something—an inanimate object—that he had merely collected. The way he'd treated her made her feel like she was nothing more than a sack of grain thrown over the back of his saddle. But, at that moment, the grief, fear, thirst, and hunger during the long journey were only dim annoyances in the back of her mind.
"You killed Chase," she said. "You deserve more than I did."
The woman frowned. "Who?"
"The man with her."
"Ah, him," the woman in black said. "And you killed him?" She sounded only mildly curious. "Are you certain? Did you bury him?"
He shrugged. "I guess he's dead—men don't recover from such wounds. The spell concealed me well enough, just as you promised it would, so he never even noticed I was there. I didn't take the time to stop and bury him, though, since I knew you wanted me back as soon as possible."
Her thin smile widened. Coming ever closer, she finally reached out and ran her long, bony fingers back through his thick hair. Her ghostly blue eyes studied him intently.