Confessor (Sword of Truth 11)

“But you had mistakenly taken a wrong turn—you ended up on a barren branch of prophecy and you didn’t realize it. You were preparing him for the wrong battle. You thought that you were helping him, but you got it all wrong and in the end your misjudgment only ended up causing Richard to bring down the great barrier that allowed Jagang to become the threat that the prophecies had warned of in the first place. Because of you, the Sisters of the Dark were at last able to get their hands on the boxes of Orden. Because of you, the Keeper of the underworld has them to do his bidding. Without what you did, none of that would have been possible.”

Nicci blinked at the former prelate as the magnitude of what they had done sank in. The realization gave her goose bumps.

“You inadvertently caused all of this. You tried to use prophecy to avert a disaster and instead you only served to fulfill prophecy. Your decision to interfere is what made the disaster possible.”

Ann’s face twisted with a sour expression. “While it would seem that we—”

“All that work, all that planning, all that waiting for centuries, and you messed it up.” Nicci pulled wind-whipped hair back from her face. “Turns out I was the one prophecy needed—because of what you would do.”

Nathan cleared his throat. “Well, that’s a pretty big—and somewhat misleading—oversimplification, but I must admit that it’s not entirely untrue.”

Nicci suddenly saw the Prelate, a woman she had always thought of as next to infallible, a woman always ready to point out the tiniest mistakes made by others, in a new light. “You made a mistake. You got it all wrong.

“While you worked to insure that Richard could play his part as the linchpin who might be able to save us, you ended up being the pivotal element that brought the potential for destruction upon us all.”

“If we hadn’t—”

“Yes, we made some mistakes,” Nathan said, cutting Ann off before she could even begin. “But it seems to me that we all make mistakes. After all, here you stand, a woman who fought your whole life for the beliefs of the Order, only to give yourself over to becoming a Sister of the Dark. Shall I invalidate everything you now say and do because you’ve made mistakes in the past? Do you wish to invalidate everything we’ve learned and have been able to accomplish on the grounds that there have been times when we’ve made mistakes?

“It could even be that our mistakes were not really mistakes, but rather a tool of prophecy, a part of a larger design, because all along you were the one meant to be close enough to Richard to help him. Perhaps the things we did are what allowed you to get close enough to him to play such a vital role, a role that only you would be able to play.”

“Free will is a variable in prophecy,” Ann said. “Without it, without all that happened because of the events that Richard tumbled into place, where would you be? What would you be had we never acted when we did? Where would you be had you never met Richard?”

Nicci didn’t want to consider such a possibility.

“How many more, like you, in the end might be saved because events turned out this way,” the Prelate added, “rather than if none of this had ever happened?”

“It could very well be,” Nathan said, “that, had we not done the things we did, for reasons right or wrong, prophecy would simply have found another way to accomplish the very same results. It’s likely, by the way these roots intertwine, that what is happening right now, one way or another, had to happen.”

“Like water finding a route to lower ground?” Cara asked.

“Precisely,” Nathan said, smiling proudly at her power of observation. “Prophecy is to a degree self-healing. We may think we understand the details, but in fact we may be unable to see the totality of events on a grander scale, so that when we take it upon ourselves to interfere prophecy must find other roots to nourish the tree, lest it die.

“In some ways, since prophecy can be self-healing, any attempt to influence events is ultimately futile. And yet, at the same time, prophecy is intended to be used, intended to spur action, otherwise what would be its purpose? Any intervention in events, though, is a dangerous thing to do. The trick is knowing when and where to act. It’s an imprecise discipline, even for a prophet.”

“Perhaps because we are so painfully aware of our own well-intentioned mistakes,” Ann said, “you can see why we would be so distraught that you would take it upon yourself to make such a choice for Richard—a central figure in prophecy—as to name him a player for the power of Orden. We know the magnitude of harm that can result by interfering with even relatively minor issues in prophecy. The boxes of Orden are a determinative node, just about as far from a minor element within prophecy as one can get.”

Nicci hadn’t meant it the way it had come out. She never thought of herself as free of fault—quite the opposite. Her whole life she had felt inferior, if not outright evil. Her mother, Brother Narev, and later Emperor Jagang had always told her as much, constantly driving into her how inadequate she was. It was just that it had been surprising to learn that the Prelate could be so…human.

Nicci’s gaze fell away. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I just never thought you made mistakes.”

“While I do not agree with your characterization of events that have spanned five centuries and countless years of toil and effort,” Ann said, “I’m afraid that we all make mistakes. One of the things that defines our character is how we handle our mistakes. If we lie about having made a mistake, then it can’t be corrected and it festers. On the other hand, if we give up just because we made a mistake, even a big mistake, none of us would get far in life.

“As to your version of our interaction with prophecy, there are many factors you’ve not taken into account, to say nothing of those elements of which you are ignorant. You are connecting events in ways that are simplistic, if not entirely inaccurate. The assumptions made on the basis of those connections take great leaps over intervening circumstances.”

When Nathan cleared his throat, Ann went on. “That is not to say, however, that we haven’t at times misjudged things. We have made mistakes. Some of our errors involve events you have just pointed out. We are trying to correct them.”

“So,” Cara asked, somewhat impatiently, “what about this prophecy of no prophecy, the Great Void? You claim that we need to insure that Lord Rahl fights the final battle because prophecy says he must, and yet at the same time part of the prophecy says that prophecy itself is blank? That makes no sense—by prophecy’s own admission, part of the prophecy in question is missing.”

Ann pursed her lips. “Now even Mord-Sith have become experts on prophecy?”

Nathan looked back over his shoulder at Cara. “It’s not so easy to understand the context of events as they relate to prophecy. Prophecy and free will, you see, exist in tension, in opposition. Yet, they interact. Prophecy is magic and all magic needs balance. The balance to prophecy, the balance that allows prophecy to exist, is free will.”

“Oh, that makes a lot of sense,” Cara sniped from the doorway. “If what you’re saying is true, that would mean that they cancel each other out.”

The prophet held up a finger. “Ah, but they don’t. They are interdependent and yet they are antithetical. Just as Additive and Subtractive Magic are opposite forces, they both exist. They each serve to balance the other. Creation and destruction, life and death. Magic must have balance to function. So must the magic of prophecy. Prophecy functions by the presence of its counter: free will. That’s one of the major difficulties we’ve had in the whole matter—understanding the interplay between prophecy and free will.”

Cara’s nose wrinkled. “You’re a prophet, and you believe in free will? Now, that makes no sense.”

“Does death invalidate life? No, it defines it, and in so doing creates its value.”

Cara didn’t look at all convinced. “I don’t see how free will can even manage to exist within prophecy.”

Nathan shrugged. “Richard is a perfect example. He ignor

es prophecy and balances it at the same time.”

“He ignores me, too, and when he does he always gets in trouble.”

“We have something in common,” Ann said.

Cara let out a sigh. “Well anyway, Nicci got it right. And I don’t think it was prophecy, but her free will that brought her to do the reasoned thing. That’s why Lord Rahl trusts her.”

“I don’t disagree,” Nathan said with a shrug. “As nervous as it makes me, we sometimes must let Richard do as he thinks best. Perhaps that is ultimately what Nicci has done—given him the tools to have the freedom to truly exercise his free will.”

Nicci wasn’t really listening anymore. Her mind was elsewhere. She abruptly turned to Nathan.

“I need to see Panis Rahl’s tomb. I think I know why it’s melting.”

From in the distance, a rumbling roar rolled up through the gathering gloom, drawing their attention.

Cara stretched her neck out to see. “What’s going on?”

Nicci looked out over the sea of men. “They’re cheering for a Ja’La game. Jagang uses Ja’La dh Jin as a distraction, both for the people in the Old World and for his army. The rules used in the army games are quite a bit more brutal, though. It satisfies the blood lust of his soldiers.”

Nicci remembered Jagang’s devotion to Ja’La. He was a man who understood how to control and direct the emotions of his people. He distracted them from the daily misery of their lives by continually blaming every common trouble they faced on those who refused to put their faith in the Order, the latest of those being the heathens to the north. That distraction kept the people from questioning the teachings of the Order, since all their troubles were blamed on those who questioned.

Nicci knew, because she did that very thing herself as Death’s Mistress. Any suffering was blamed on those who were selfish. Anyone who questioned was attacked as selfish.

Jagang won widespread passion for war by building hatred for an imagined oppressor that was condemned for causing every problem the people lived with daily. Personal responsibility was abandoned to the disease of assigning fault for all hardships, and every hardship was blamed on the greedy who failed to do their part. In that way, their daily problems were a constant reminder of the enemy who they believed caused those problems.