Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Richard didn't know what he could say to them all that would have any chance of making them understand that something profoundly serious was wrong in the world and Kahlan was only a piece of the puzzle-by far the most important piece, but still a part of something much larger. Ever since the morning when she had disappeared, he had argued himself sick about the urgent need to find her and it never seemed to do any good at convincing anyone that he knew what he was talking about. He had no interest in yet again wasting his energy on the same fruitless explanations.

"You what?" Ann said, her displeasure bubbling up to the surface like dross in a cauldron. At that moment, she was very much again the Prelate, a squat woman who somehow managed to seem towering.

"I have to find Kahlan," Richard repeated.

"I don't know what you're talking about. We simply don't have time for any of this nonsense." Ann had dismissed his wants, interests, and needs out of hand, to say nothing of what he believed were his rational and important reasons. "We have come to see to it that you get to the D'Haran army immediately. Everyone is waiting on you. Everyone is depending on you. The time has come when you must lead our forces in the final battle that is now rapidly descending upon us."

"I can't," Richard said in a quiet but firm voice.

"Prophecy demands it!" Ann shouted.

Richard realized that Ann had changed. Everyone had changed in little ways since Kahlan had disappeared, but Ann had changed in more overt ways. The last time she had come, with the very same purpose, to demand that Richard go with her to lead the war, Kahlan had thrown Ann's journey book in a fire, telling the former Prelate that prophecy was not driving events, but rather Ann was by trying to make people follow prophecy in an effort to make it come true, that she was acting as prophecy's enforcer. Kahlan had shown Ann how she herself, as the Prelate, by being prophecy's handmaiden, might very well have actually been the one who'd brought the world to the brink of cataclysm. Because of Kahlan's words, Ann had done some deep soul-searching that had eventually helped make her more rational, and more understanding of how Richard was the one who had to choose to do what was right.

Now, with the memory of Kahlan gone, everything that had happened with Kahlan was also wiped away. Ann, like everyone else, had reverted to the disposition she'd shown before Kahlan's influence. It made Richard's head hurt, sometimes, just trying to recall exactly what Kahlan had done with everyone that they wouldn't now remember so that he could take that into account when he dealt with them. With some people, like Shota, it had actually in some ways helped him. Shota, for instance, because of losing her memory of Kahlan, hadn't recalled that she told Richard that if he ever returned to Agaden Reach she would kill him. With other people, like Ann, it was proving to make matters much more difficult.

"Kahlan threw your journey book in a fire," he told her. "She was fed up with you trying to control my life, as am I."

Ann frowned. "I accidentally dropped my journey book in the fire myself."

Richard sighed. "I see." He didn't want to argue because he knew it would do no good. No one in the room believed him. Cara would do whatever he wanted her to do, but she didn't believe him. Nicci didn't believe him, but wanted him to act as he believed he must. Nicci was the one who had actually given him the most encouragement he had gotten since Kahlan had disappeared.

"Richard," Nathan said in a gentler, more benevolent voice, "this is not some simple little thing. You have been born to prophecy. The world stands at the brink of a great dark age. You hold the key to preventing a slide into that long, terrible night. You are the one prophecy says can save our cause-the cause you yourself believe in. You must do your duty. You can't let us down."

Richard was sick and tired of being driven by events. He was at his wits end with not understanding what was going on, with always feeling like he was one step behind the rest of the world and two steps behind whatever had happened to Kahlan. He was getting angry that everyone was telling him what to do and no one was interested in what was of paramount importance to him. They didn't even want to let him decide his own fate. They thought prophecy had already decided for him.

It had not.

He needed to find out the truth of what had happened to Kahlan. He needed to find Kahlan, period. He was fed up with wasting time on what prophecy, along with any number of people, thought he ought to be doing. Anyone who was not helping him was, in reality, holding him back from something vitally important.

"I have no responsibility to live up to what anyone else expects of me," he said to Ann as he picked up the small book Nathan had brought with him.

Ann and Nathan stared in surprise.