Confessor (Sword of Truth 11)

“Richard,” Zedd said in a rising tone of warning, “what do you think you’re doing?”

Richard ignored his grandfather. He instead gazed into Kahlan’s eyes.

“Are you with me, Kahlan?”

She stepped to within a few paces of him.

“I have always been with you, Richard. I love you, and I know you love me.”

Richard’s eyes closed for a moment.

He had no choice.

He turned to the boxes of Orden and closed his eyes as he lifted the blade to touch his forehead.

“Blade,” he whispered, “be true this day.”

He brought the Sword of Truth down and drew it across the inside of his arm, letting blood run down until it dripped off the tip.

He placed the blade on top of the box on the right, the one that Sister Ulicia had opened.

The blade turned as black as the box itself.

He withdrew the blade and it returned to its shiny state.

He placed the sword on the box on the left. Again, it turned as black as the underworld itself.

He withdrew it, letting it return to its normal state.

Richard took a deep breath, and then laid the flat of the blade on the center box. He thought about all the innocent people who simply wanted to live their lives. He thought about all those like Cara and the other Mord-Sith who had been driven mad until they would serve a tyrant. He thought about Nicci, indoctrinated her whole life with hate, driven to a miserable life of sacrificing herself to twisted beliefs. He thought about Bruce, his left wing man, who, when he saw strength without hate, was drawn to it.

He thought about Denna.

When he opened his eyes, the blade had turned white. The box beneath it was just as white.

Gripping the hilt in both hands, Richard lifted the point of the Sword of Truth high over the white box…and with the killing thrust from the dance with death, drove it down, pinning the box to the altar.

The Garden of Life went white. The entire world of life went white. Time stopped.

In that moment, Richard stood in the center of a white world with nothing around him. He looked around, but there was no one there, and at the same time everyone was there with him—every individual in the world of life was there with him.

He understood. This was in many ways the opposite of the last journey he had taken in this room when he went into the world of darkness and in a way every soul there had been with him.

In this place, in this state, he had the conscious awareness of every living person. In this moment, in this place, they all waited for what the man who commanded the power of Orden would say, and what he would do. This was Orden, the power of life itself.

“Every person makes choices as to how they will live,” Richard began.

“Evil does not exist independent of man. Men do evil by choice. Choice involves the requirement to think, even if ineffectually. The most basic choice you can make is to think or not to think, to let others do the thinking and tell you what to do, even if they tell you to do evil.

“Wise choices require more, they require rational thinking. Refusal to think rationally affords one the ability to maintain the illusion of knowledge, wisdom, even sanctity while committing evil. If you follow the teaching of others who do your thinking for you and who have you do evil, the innocent victims are harmed just the same as if you choose to harm them yourself.

“Dead is dead. Their life is over.

“Teachings that defy reason defy reality; what defies reality defies life. Defying life is embracing death.

“Celebrating faith over reason is merely a way of denying what is, in favor of embracing any whim that strikes your fancy.

“The followers of the Fellowship of Order have decided how they wish to live their lives. If it stopped there, none of us who value our individual liberty would care how they choose to live, but they have made the choice—made a conscious choice—that they will not allow others to live their own lives as they wish.

“It is that choice, made of their own free will, which we cannot abide. We will not allow them to impose their evil choice on us. It ends here, now.

“I give them their wish for a world in which they can live as they have chosen. I grant them the thing they want most in life—the life they choose.

“I could condemn them to no worse fate.

“From this moment on there are now two worlds, twins in most ways. This world will remain as it is.

“The power of Orden has just duplicated, in many ways, this world, giving them a world of their own. Their world will be theirs.

“They may not ever come to realize the foolishness of their choice, but they will certainly suffer for it. They will have the lives of misery they so fervently cling to. They will have the lives of suffering they piously embrace. They will have the lives of hopeless dread and fear they have chosen to impose on themselves by refusing to use their own minds to think rationally.

“They have chosen to throw their lives into the caldron of all-consuming hatred. I grant them their wish. It is the last time wishing will ever bring them anything. They will live out their existence wishing and hoping, endlessly lost in the darkness they have imposed on their own minds—in their own self-loathing. But they will never be able to harm us again.

“They believe that those who are free cause all of their hardship. They blame us for their woes. They attack us, saying we are the root of evil because we exist, because we are prosperous, because we are happy. They wish to destroy us so that they may have the world be the way they wish it.”

Richard turned his attention to the followers of the Order already in that other world, already at the other end of the gateway that was open. Those in his world could hear as well.

“I grant you your wish.

“You now have what you always claimed to want, a world in which your beliefs rule. A world without magic, without free men and free minds. You can believe as you wish, live as you wish.

“But you will not have us as the excuse for the misery you create for yourselves. You will not have us as an excuse to fuel your hate.

“You will be without any enemy but your miserable selves. Your world will be yours to rule as you see fit, to crumble around you as you wallow in your own hate.

“Your children, witness to the senseless cruelty of your willfully ignorant beliefs, will in time hopefully change your world for the better, will make their own adult lives worthwhile and joyful. But that will be entirely up to them. They will have to choose for themselves to use reason rather than force to deal with each other. Like anyone else, they will have to make choices as to how they will live their only life.

“This world will be ours.

“This will be a world without the teachings of the Imperial Order. Without those who wish to use force to impose those beliefs on us. Without those who would murder us for wanting to choose how to live our own lives.

“This world will be a world with all the imperfections and uncertainty of life, with all the consequences of poor choices, with all the hardships and failures that life presents, but it will be a world in which we have a chance to make what we will of our lives, a world in which our lives are our own and our achievements are our own, a world in which man can learn, create, accomplish, and keep the products of his mind and labors. This will be a world of liberty, a world in which people have the right to live their life as they wish, to believe as they wish, as long as they follow reasoned laws and do not use force to impose their will on others.

“Not everyone in this world will succeed, or be happy, or even understand how to make a moral life for themselves. For now, though, for those of us who are living, it will be a world without the followers of the Order.

“This is a world of life. Life is what we make of it. We may fail. But for the time being, we will have the freedom to succeed or to fail. How we honor that freedom will be up to each of us.

“Perhaps our children will throw all this away, wanting to s