Terry Goodkind - Phantom - Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

“With her determined commitment to a course of action, it finally fixed events, fixed our future and our fate. I think that for this reason I was at last beset with a powerful vision. It started not with the actual vision itself, but with a bloodcurdling sound that filled my mind. That terrible sound set me to trembling. With the frightening sound the visions came flooding forth, visions of the defenders being crushed and overrun, visions of the city falling, visions of Queen Cyrilla being given to the howling gangs of men to be . . . to be used as a whore and an object of amusement.”

One hand held across her abdomen, her elbows tight against her sides, Jebra wiped tears back off one cheek. She briefly smiled up at Richard, a self-conscious smile that could not hold back the horror he could so clearly see in her eyes. “Of course,” she said, “I’m not telling you all of the terrible things I saw in that vision. But I told her.”

“I don’t expect that it did any good,” Richard said.

“No, it didn’t.” Jebra fidgeted with a strand of her hair. “Cyrilla was enraged. She summoned her royal guard. When they all rushed in through those double, tall blue and gilt doors she thrust a finger at me and proclaimed me a traitor. She ordered me thrown into a dungeon. The queen screamed orders to the guards as they were seizing me that if I spoke even one word of my visions—my blasphemy, as she called it—then they were to cut out my tongue.”

A little laugh rattled out, a laugh incongruous with her trembling chin and wrinkled brow. Her words came out in a thin whine of apology. “I didn’t want my tongue cut out.”

Zedd, having made his way down the steps, laid a reassuring hand on the back of her shoulder. “Of course not, my dear, of course not. At that point it would have done you no good to have pressed the issue. No one would expect you to go beyond what you did; it would have served no purpose. You did your best; you showed her the truth. She made the conscious choice to be blind to it.”

Fussing with her fingers, Jebra nodded. “I guess that her insanity never really left her.”

“Those who are far from insane often act in an irrational manner. Don’t excuse such conscious and deliberate actions with so convenient an explanation as insanity.” When she gave him a puzzled look, Zedd opened his hands in a gesture of pained frustration at an old dilemma he had seen all too often. “All sorts of people who strongly want to believe in something are frequently unwilling to see the truth no matter how obvious it is. They make that choice.”

“I guess so,” Jebra said.

“Seems like, rather than heed the truth, she instead believed a lie that she wanted to believe,” Richard said, remembering part of the Wizard’s First Rule, the rule he had learned from his grandfather.

“That’s right.” Zedd swept an arm out in a grim parody of a wizard granting a wish. “She decided what she wished to happen and then assumed that reality would bend to her wishes.” His arm dropped. “Reality doesn’t indulge wishes.”

“So Queen Cyrilla was angry with Jebra for speaking the truth aloud, for bringing it out where it could not be so easily overlooked and ignored,” Cara said. “And then punished her for doing so.”

Zedd nodded as his fingertips gently rubbed Jebra’s shoulder. Her tired eyes had closed under his touch. “People who for whatever reason don’t want to see the truth can be acutely hostile to it and shrill in their denunciation of it. They frequently turn their venomous antagonism on whoever dares point out that truth.”

“That hardly makes the truth vanish,” Richard said.

Zedd shrugged with the straightforward simplicity he saw in it. “To those seeking the truth, it’s a matter of simple, rational self-interest to always keep reality in view. Truth is rooted in reality, after all, not the imagination.”

Richard rested the heel of his hand on the hickory handle of the knife at his belt. He missed the sword being at hand, but he had traded it for information that eventually led him to the Chainfire book and the truth of what had happened to Kahlan, so it had been worth it. Still, he sorely missed the sword and worried over what Samuel might be using it for.

Thinking of the Sword of Truth, wondering where it was, Richard stared off at nothing in particular. “Seems hard to fathom how people can turn away from seeing what is in their own best interest.”

“Doesn’t it, though.” Zedd’s voice had changed from a tone of casual conversation to that thin, reedy tone that told Richard there was something more on his mind. “Therein lies the heart of it.”

When Richard looked his way, Zedd’s gaze focused intently on him. “Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one’s self.”

Shota, arms folded, paused in her pacing to lean toward Zedd. “A wizard’s rule, wizard?”

Zedd arched an eyebrow. “The tenth, actually.”

Shota turned a meaningful look on Richard. “Wise advice.” After holding him in the grip of that iron gaze for an uncomfortably long time, she went back to her pacing.

Richard imagined that she thought he was ignoring the truth—the truth of the invading army of the Imperial Order. He wasn’t in the least bit ignoring the truth, he just didn’t know what more she expected he could do to stop them. If wishes worked he would already long ago have banished them back to the Old World. If he only knew what to do to stop them, he would do it, but he didn’t. It was bad enough to know the horror that approached and feel helpless to stop it, but it infuriated him that Shota seemed to think he was simply being obstinate in not doing something about it—as if the solution was within his grasp.

He glanced up the steps at the statuesque woman watching him. Even in a pink nightdress she looked noble and wise. While Richard had been raised by people who encouraged him to deal with things the way they really were, she had been indoctrinated by people who were driven by the beliefs taught by the Order. It took a remarkable individual, after a lifetime of authoritarian teachings, to be willing to see the truth.

He gazed into her blue eyes for a long moment, wondering if he would have had her courage . . . the courage to grasp the nature and magnitude of the terrible mistakes she had made, the courage to then embrace the truth and change. Very few people had that kind of courage.

Richard wondered if she, too, thought that he was neglecting the invasion of the Imperial Order for irrational and selfish reasons. He wondered if she, too, thought that he was not doing something vital that would save innocent people from horrific suffering. He dearly hoped not. There were times when Nicci’s support seemed like the only thing that gave him the strength to go on.

He wondered if she expected him to give up trying to find Kahlan in order to turn his full attention to trying to save a great many more lives than just that one, no matter how precious. Richard swallowed back the anguish; he knew that Kahlan herself would have made that demand. As much as she had loved him—back when she remembered who she was—Kahlan would not have wanted him to come after her if it meant that he would have to do so at the expense of trying to save so many more people who were in mortal danger.

The thought he had just had suddenly struck home: back when she knew who she was . . . who he was. Kahlan couldn’t love him anymore if she didn’t know who she was, if she didn’t know who he was. His knees went weak.

“That’s the way I saw it,” Jebra said, opening her eyes and seeming to come awake as Zedd withdrew his comforting touch, “that I had done my best to show her the truth. But I didn’t like being in that dungeon. Didn’t like it one bit.”