Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Berdine drew her hand down her long braid of glossy brown hair. "It would appear so."

Richard was still lost in the words. "Cast the shadow of the key among the bones…" He looked up at Berdine. "Hid them in the central sites. Buried them with the bones."

Berdine smiled. "It's so good to have you back, Lord Rahl. You and I think just alike. I've missed you so much. There have been so many things like this I've wanted to go over with you."

Richard laid an arm gently around her shoulders, revealing a similar sentiment without using the words.

Berdine turned over more pages in the book, finally stopping at a place that was blank. "A number of the books seem to have text missing, like this place, here."

"Prophecy," Nicci said. "It's part of the Chainfire spell that the Sisters of the Dark used on Richard's wife. The spell also eliminated prophecy related to her existence."

Berdine considered Nicci's words. "That certainly is going to make it all more difficult. It takes away a lot of information that might be useful. Verna had mentioned that there was copy missing from the books of prophecy, but she didn't know the reason."

Nicci glanced around at the shelves. "Show me all the books you know of with text missing."

Richard wondered why Nicci looked so suspicious.

Berdine opened several of the glass doors and pulled out volumes, handing them each in turn to Nicci. Nicci scanned them briefly, then dismissively set them on the table. "Prophecy," she pronounced yet again as she tossed the last one Berdine handed her on the pile.

"What are you getting at?" Richard asked.

Instead of answering him, she looked at Berdine. "Any more with missing text?"

Berdine nodded. "There is one more."

She glanced briefly at Richard, then pushed a row of books out of her way. At the back of a shelf she drew a panel aside. A small section of the wall opened to reveal a gilded niche with a small book sitting on a dark green velvet pillow with a golden fringe. The leather cover looked to once have been red, but was now so faded and worn that the bits of faint color only hinted at its past glory. It was a delicately beautiful book, intriguing partly because of its small size, and partly because of the ornate decorative leatherwork.

"I used to help Lord Rahl — I mean Darken Rahl — work on translations of books in High D'Haran," Berdine explained. "This room was one of the places he would study his private books — that's how I knew where to find the key and about this secret compartment in the back of the bookcase. I really thought it might be something useful."

"And was it?" Richard asked.

"I thought it would be, but I'm afraid not. It, too, is missing text. Except, unlike those other books, this one isn't just missing some of the text here and there, or missing whole sections. Instead, this book is missing every single word. It's completely empty."

"It's missing every word?" Nicci asked suspiciously. "Let me see it."

Berdine handed the little book over to Nicci. "It's completely blank, I'm telling you. See for yourself. It's useless."

Nicci opened the ancient, worn leather cover and scanned the first page. Her finger followed along as if she were reading. She flipped the page and studied the next, then did the same thing yet again.

"Dear spirits," she whispered as she appeared to read.

"What is it?" Richard asked.

Berdine stretched up on her tiptoes and peeked over the top of the book. "It can't be anything. See — it's blank."

"No, it's not," Nicci murmured as she read. "This is a book of magic." She looked up. "It only appears blank to those without the gift. And, in the case of this particular work, even they must possess the gift in sufficient strength to be able to read this. This is a profoundly important volume."

Berdine wrinkled her nose. "What?"

"Books of magic are dangerous, some exceedingly dangerous. Some, such as this one, are beyond even that." Nicci waggled the book at the Mord-Sith. "This one is far more than profoundly dangerous.

"As a form of protection such books are usually shielded in some way. If they are considered dangerous enough, then they are protected with spells that make the text vanish from a person's mind so quickly that they don't recall seeing it. It makes them think the pages are blank. A person without the gift simply can't hold the words of a book of magic in their mind. You actually do see the words in this book, but you forget seeing them so fast that you aren't cognizant that there was anything on the pages — the words vanish from your mind before you actually perceive them.

"That particular spell is, in part, the basis for the concept of the Chainfire spell. The wizards in ancient times — who often used such spells to protect dangerous books they wrote — began to wonder if such a thing could be done with a person, in effect making them vanish, just as the words in some books of magic can seem to vanish."