Ann blinked in astonishment. “Why, that’s nonsense.”
“Is it?”
“Of course it is. The boy was named in prophecy centuries ago. I’ve been waiting hundreds of years for him to be born in order for him to lead us in this struggle.”
“Really. Then who are you to try to countermand Richard’s decision—if you are so set on following him? He has come to his decision. If he is the leader you want, then you must abide by his lead, and therefore his decision.”
“But this is not what prophecy demands!”
“Richard doesn’t believe in prophecy. He believes we make our own destiny. I’m coming to see the grounds of his assertion that the belief in prophecy artificially alters events. It is the misplaced faith in prophecy itself—in some mystical outcome—that harms people’s lives.”
Ann’s eyes grew round with dismay, and then narrowed. “Richard is the one named in prophecy to lead us against the Imperial Order. This is a struggle for the very existence of magic in this world—don’t you understand that! Richard was born to fight this fight. We have to get him back!”
“This is all your fault,” Kahlan whispered.
“What?” Ann’s frown changed to a tolerant smile. “Kahlan, what are you talking about?” Her voice backslid to genial. “You know me, you know our struggle for the survival of freedom of magic. If Richard does not lead us, we have no chance.”
Kahlan threw her arm out and seized a startled Sister Alessandra by the throat. The woman’s eyes went wide.
“Don’t move,” Kahlan said through gritted teeth, “or I will unleash my Confessor’s power.”
Ann held her hands up, imploring. “Kahlan, have you lost your mind? Let her be. Calm down.”
With her other hand, Kahlan pointed down at the fire. “The journey book. Throw it in the fire.”
“What? I’m not going to do any such thing!”
“Now,” Kahlan said through her clenched teeth. “Or Sister Alessandra will be mine. When I finish with her, Cara will see to it you throw that journey book in the fire, if you have to do so with broken fingers.”
Ann glanced at the Mord-Sith towering over her shoulder.
“Kahlan, I know you’re upset, and I completely understand, but we’re on the same side in this. We love Richard, too. We, too, wish to stop the Imperial Order from taking the whole world. We—”
“We? If it wasn’t for you and your Sisters, none of this would be happening. This is all your fault. Not Jagang’s fault, not the Imperial Order’s fault, but yours.”
“Have you lost your—”
“You alone bear responsibility for what is befalling the world. Just as Jagang has his ring through the lip of his slaves, you’ve had yours through the nose of yours—Richard! You alone bear responsibility for the lives already lost, and those yet to be lost in bloody slaughters that will sweep across the land. You, not Jagang, are the one who has brought it!”
Despite the cold, beads of sweat dotted Ann’s brow. “What in the name of Creation are you talking about? Kahlan, you know me. I was at your wedding. I have always been on your side. I have only followed the prophecies to help people.”
“You create the prophecies! Without your help they would not have come to pass! They only come about because you have fulfilled them! You pull the ring through Richard’s nose!”
Ann presented a face of calm to the storm of Kahlan’s rage.
“Kahlan, I can only imagine how you must feel, but now you are truly losing all sense of reason.”
“Am I? Am I, Prelate? Why does Sister Nicci have my husband? Answer me. Why!”
Ann’s expression drew tight in a darkening glower. “Because she is evil.”
“No.” Kahlan’s grip tightened on Alessandra’s throat. “It’s because of you. Had you not sent Verna into the New World in the first place, ordering her to take Richard back across the barrier into the Old World—”
“But the prophecies say the Order will rise up to take the world and extinguish magic if we fail to stop them! The prophecies say Richard is the only one to lead us! That Richard is the only one with a chance!”
“And you brought that dead prophecy to life. All by yourself. All because of your faith in bloodless words rather than your own reasoned choices. You’re here today not to back the choices of your proclaimed leader, not to reason with him, but to enforce prophecy upon him—to give that ring a tug. Had you not sent Verna to recover Richard, what would have happened, Prelate?”
“Why, why, the Order—”
“The Order? The Order would still be trapped back in the Old World, behind the barrier. Wouldn’t they! For three thousand years that wizard-created barrier has stood invincible against the pressure of the Order—or those like them—and their wish to swarm up here into the New World, bent on conquest.
“Because you had Richard captured, against his will, and ordered him brought back to the Old World, all in slavish homage to dead words in dusty old books, he was forced to destroy the barrier, and thus the Order now can flood into the New World, into the Midlands, my Midlands, slaughtering my people, taking my husband, all because of you and your meddling!
“Without you, none of this would be happening! No war, no mounds of butchered people in cities of the New World, no thousands of dead men, women, and children slaughtered at the hands of Imperial Order thugs—none of it!
“Because of you and your precious prophecies, the veil was breached and a plague was unleashed on the world. It would never have happened without your actions to ‘save’ us all from prophecy. I don’t even dare to recall all the children I saw suffering and dying from the black death because of you. Children who looked up into my eyes and asked if they would be all right, and I had to say yes when I knew they would not survive the night.
“No one will ever know the tally of the dead. No one is left to remember all the small places wiped out of existence by that plague. Without your meddling, those children would be alive, their mothers would be smiling to themselves as they watched them play, their fathers would be teaching them the ways of the world—a world denied them by you for the sake of your faith in prophecy!
“You say this is a battle for the very existence of magic in this world—yet your work to fulfill prophecy may have already doomed magic. Without your intervention, the chimes would never have come to be loosed upon the world. Yes, Richard managed to banish them, but what irreversible harm was done? We may have our power back, but during the time the chimes withdrew magic from this world, creatures of magic, things dependent on magic for their very existence, surely died out. Magic requires balance to exist. The balance of magic in this world was disturbed. The irrevocable destruction of magic may have already begun. All because of your slavish service to prophecy.
“If not for you, Prelate, Jagang, the Imperial Order’s army, and all your Sisters would be back there, behind the barrier, and we would be here, safe and at peace. You cast blame everywhere but where it belongs. If freedom, if magic, if the world itself is destroyed, it will all be by your hand, Prelate.”
The low moan of the wind was the only sound and made the sudden silence all that much more agonizing. Ann stared with tear-filled eyes up at Kahlan. Snow sparkled in the rays of a cold dawn.
“It isn’t like that, Kahlan. It only seems that way to you in your pain.”
“It is that way,” Kahlan said with finality.
Ann’s mouth worked, but this time no words came out.
Kahlan thrust out her hand, palm up.
“The journey book. If you think I would not destroy this woman’s life, then you don’t know the first thing about me. She’s one of your Sisters, helping to destroy the world in the name of good, or else she is still one of the Keeper’s Sisters, helping to destroy the world in the name of death. Either way, if you don’t give me the journey book, and right now, her life is forfeit.”
“What do you think this will accomplish?” Ann whispered in despair.
“It will be a s
tart at halting your meddling in the lives of the people of the Midlands, and the rest of the New World—in my life, in Richard’s life. It’s the only beginning I can think to make, short of killing you both; you would not like to know how close I am to that alternative. Now, give me the journey book.”
Ann stared down at Kahlan’s hand open before her. She blinked at her tears. Finally, she pulled off a woolen mitten and worked the little book out from behind her belt. She paused a moment, reverently gazing at it, but in the end laid it on Kahlan’s palm.
“Dear Creator,” Ann whispered, “forgive this poor hurting child of yours for what she is about to do.”
Kahlan tossed the book in the fire.
With ashen faces, Ann and Sister Alessandra stood staring at the book in the hissing flames.
Kahlan snatched up Richard’s sword. “Cara, let’s get going.”
“The horses are ready. I was saddling them when these two showed up.”
Kahlan dumped the hot water to the side while Cara started quickly collecting their belongings. They both stuffed items in the saddlebags. Other gear they slung over their shoulders and carried to the horses to be strapped back on the saddles.
Without looking back at Ann or Alessandra, Kahlan swung up into her cold saddle. With a grim Cara at her side, she turned her mount and cantered off into the swirling snow.
Chapter 28