Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Kahlan wondered if this was confirmation that he was not in her mind, or if for some reason he was still carrying out a carefully crafted ruse. It didn't seem to her that at this point such reticence to reveal a presence in her mind, if there really was one, would serve any purpose. After all, the boxes, and the book, were the central reason for the entire deception of the Sisters. He had used his secret presence specifically to bring them here, to this book.

Jagang abruptly snatched Jillian by her hair. Jillian let out a surprised but brief, clipped cry. He was obviously hurting her. She did her best not to pull against the hand holding her hair, lest he rip her scalp off.

"I'm going to gouge out one of this girl's eyes," Jagang told Kahlan. "I will then ask again if the book is genuine or not. If I don't get an answer — for whatever reason — then I will gouge out her other eye. I will ask one last time, and if you again don't give me the answer, then I will gouge out her heart. What do you have to say about that?"

The Sisters stood mute as they watched, making no move to interfere. Jagang pulled a knife from a sheath at his belt. Jillian began panting in terror as he jerked her around, drawing his arm up tight across her throat, holding her against his chest to render her helpless and keep her still as he brought the point of a knife perilously close to her face.

"Let me see the book," Kahlan said, hoping to avert the irrevocable.

With a thumb and a free finger of the hand holding the knife, he picked up the book and handed it to her. Kahlan thumbed through the pages more carefully, making sure she wasn't missing any page that might say anything at all, but she still saw nothing. Every single page was blank. There was nothing to see, no way to tell if it was real or not.

She closed the cover and smoothed the flat of her hand over it. She didn't know what to do. She had no idea what to look for. She flipped the book over, checking the back cover. She looked at the deckle edges of the pages. She turned the book, looking down at the title embossed in gold letters on the spine.

Jillian let out a strangled cry as Jagang tightened his grip across her throat, lifting her feet clear of the ground. He brought the point of the knife right up to the girl's right eye. She blinked, unable to turn away from the threat, her lashes brushing the blade's point.

"Time to go blind," Jagang growled.

"It's fake," Kahlan said.

He looked up. "What?"

Kahlan held the book out to him. "This book is a false copy. It's fake."

Sister Ulicia took a step forward. "How can you possibly know that?" She looked clearly confused that Kahlan could pronounce the book a fraud without being able to read a single word in it.

Kahlan ignored her. Instead, she continued to look into the dream walker's nightmare eyes. Cloudy shapes shifted like angry thunderstorms on a midnight horizon. It took all of her willpower not to look away.

"Are you sure?" Jagang asked.

"Yes," she said with all the confidence she could muster. "It's a fake."

Now acutely focused on Kahlan, Jagang released Jillian. Once free, the girl fled around behind Kahlan, using her for cover.

Jagang watched Kahlan's eyes. "How do you know that it's not The Book of Counted Shadows'?"

Kahlan, still holding the book out to him, turned it so that he could see the spine. "You are all looking for The Book of Counted Shadows. This says The Book of Counted Shadow."

His glare heated. "What?"

"You asked how I know it's not genuine. That's how. It says 'Shadow, not 'Shadows. It's a fake."

Sister Cecilia wearily wiped a hand across her face. Sister Armina rolled her eyes.

Sister Ulicia, though, frowned at the book, reading the spine for herself. "She's right."

"So what?" Jagang threw up his hands. "So the word 'Shadow' is missing a letter. It's shadow, singular instead of plural. So what?"

"Simple," Kahlan said. "One is real, one is not."

"Simple?" he asked. "You think it's that simple?"

"How much more simple can it get?"

"It probably means nothing," Sister Cecilia said, eager to side with her ill-tempered master. "Singular, plural, what difference could it make? It's just the cover; it's what's inside that counts."

"It could just be a mistake," Jagang said. "Maybe the person who bound the copy made a mistake. The book itself would likely have been bound by someone else, so the book itself is no doubt fine."

"That's right," Sister Armina said, wanting to join in with the emperor as well. "The person who made the binding is the one who made the error, not the one who made the copy. It's highly unlikely they would be the same person. The binder was probably an incompetent oaf. The one writing the words in the book would have had to be gifted. Those words written inside the book are what matters. That's the information that must be true, not what it's wrapped in. There is no doubt that it's a simple error made by a binding artisan and it means nothing."