Confessor

  “Oh, but it would.” Nicci paced a few steps and returned to stand before him. “Zedd, with all your power as First Wizard, why couldn’t you stop a mere witch?”

  “Because she turns your power back around on you.”

  “That’s the key,” Nicci said. “That’s the part I needed to add in, why I was finally able to put together everything I’ve been reading in those books. I was finally able to understand what the wizards who created Orden meant about the sterile field. The force of emotions will turn back the power applied to the person.

  “It’s something like the way that trying to convince those who believe in the teachings of the Order that they are wrong in their feelings only strengthens those feelings, makes them even more resistant to casting off those false beliefs. If you tell them that the Order is evil they will hate you all the more, not the Order. Their belief in the Imperial Order is steeled, rather than broken.”

  “So what?” Cara said. “It wouldn’t be contradictory for Kahlan, like in your example. If Lord Rahl were to tell Kahlan that she loves him, that would be what the magic of Orden would do anyway, so it’s not really a problem.”

  “Oh, but it is a problem,” Nicci said, waggling a finger. “A very big problem. The whole thing would be backwards. The effect would be there without the cause. Emotions are the end result, the sum, of things learned. Putting emotions in first would be like trying to construct a two-story building by starting at the roof and working your way down to the foundation. Or, like me trying to push a powerful spell at a witch woman.

  “The emotions that Orden would otherwise put back where they belong would be turned away by the emotions that were placed there by foreknowledge. Foreknowledge would interfere with the protocols.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Cara insisted. “Kahlan would already have been told that she loves Lord Rahl, so it couldn’t possibly matter.”

  “But it does. You see, that foreknowledge would be empty. The emotions revealed ahead of time have no meaning, no substance. They aren’t real. If she were to be told of her love for Richard, then Orden wouldn’t be able to restore her true emotions of love.”

  Cara looked like she was ready to pull her hair out in exasperation. “But Lord Rahl would already have told her, so it’s the same difference. She would know. She would already know that she loves him.”

  “No. One would be true, the other not. Don’t forget, right now she doesn’t love him. The real emotions Orden would be trying to build would already have been replaced by something that isn’t real—emotions without cause. Those emotions would be empty and untrue. The reasons she loves him would be missing, so while the foreknowledge of her love might be there it would be empty knowledge. It would be empty love, love based on nothing. Love without everything supporting it would be meaningless.”

  Cara lifted her arms and then let them flop back to her sides. “I just don’t get it.”

  Nicci halted her pacing and turned back to Cara. “Imagine that I bring a man you’ve never seen before into the room and I tell you that you love him. Would you love him because I told you that you did? No, because you can’t inject such emotions without something to support them.

  “That’s what Orden does; it builds support for the real emotions from the knowledge of past events that it restores. It establishes the causes. Putting the emotions there first—the end result of past events—taints that process. According to the wizards who created Orden, her foreknowledge of loving him would contaminate the field, taint her mind, so that the incarnation of the real events—the reasons behind why she loves him—couldn’t be engendered in her. They would be blocked, the way the witch woman blocked my spells. She would be left with nothing but the hollow information. She couldn’t retrieve her past. It would remain lost to her.”

  Zedd scratched his jaw. He looked up. “But, as you say, this is only theory.”

  “The wizards who dreamed up Ordenic theory in order to counter Chainfire, and from that theory created the boxes of Orden, came to believe they were right. I also believe that their conclusions are correct.”

  “What would happen if, if, I don’t know,” Cara said, “if Lord Rahl told Kahlan first—about her loving him and that she was his wife—and then later he was finally able to get the boxes of Orden, and get his power back, and learn what was necessary, and he finally opened the correct box, invoking the counter to the Chainfire event? Would the counter to Chainfire still work?”

  “Yes, the counter would still work.”

  Cara looked truly confused. “So, what’s the problem?”

  “It’s a constructed spell, so the protocols would run just the same. If the theory is sound, and I think it is, all the other components of Orden would still function. The Chainfire spell would be countered and everyone’s memories would be restored—with one exception. Orden would be unable to rebuild Kahlan’s past. That element of the spell would be blocked. The one at the center of the storm would be lost to it.

  “We would all be restored, our memories would be what they once were, we would all remember Kahlan, but Kahlan would forever be without her past. You might say she would be like a soldier injured in battle who, because of a head injury, no longer is who he once was. She would only be able to go on from her life after the Chainfire spell had taken her identity from her. She would only be aware of things from that point on. She would be a different person, a person who would have to build a new life for herself.

  “All the while she would have the knowledge that she was supposed to love this person, Richard, whom she doesn’t know and for whom she has no real feeling.”

  “So, then she would be the only casualty,” Cara said. “The rest of us would be restored.”

  Nicci sighed. “Well, that’s my belief from my understanding of the theory.”

  Zedd was looking suspicious again. “But there is an alternate possibility?”

  Nicci nodded. “Not one I’d like to contemplate. One of the lines of reasoning in the books of Ordenic theory postulates that absent the anchor it needs in a sterile field, the counter would be unable to run its protocols and collapse in on itself. That line of reasoning suggests that in such a circumstance the counter would fail and the Chainfire event would burn on out of control. Life as we know it would be lost. Our ability to reason would crumble as the inferno of Chainfire continued to burn, until our minds would be unable to support our own existence. Savagery would sustain some people for a short time, but the inevitable outcome would be the extinction of mankind.

  “I think you can see why the wizards who created Orden were so concerned about preserving the sterile field.”

  Zedd frowned in thought. “But the predominant theory is that if something were to go wrong, and she were to gain such foreknowledge before Orden could be brought to play, she would forever remain a casualty of Chainfire but that wouldn’t really interfere with Chainfire in everyone else being countered.”

  “That’s right. In a way, as much as Kahlan means to Richard, I’m afraid that in this she has become secondary to the Chainfire event. It may have started with her, but now everyone is infected. If that event is not stopped, everything is lost. Countering Chainfire has become more important than Richard and Kahlan’s love for each other. It would be wonderful if her love for him could be restored, but it isn’t necessary in order to counter the Chainfire event.

  “Regardless of what it means for this one person, for Kahlan, or what it means for Richard, personally, the power of Orden must be invoked to counter Chainfire in order to purge the infection from everyone else.

  “There’s one other alternate theory, besides the one about the whole thing not working if the field is tainted. A few wizards believed that Ordenic theory might indicate that pouring so much power into the subject of the Chainfire event in anything but a sterile field—one contaminated with foreknowledge—would kill the person.”

  “What about everyone else in such a mishap?” Zedd asked.

  “By the time she hit
s the floor dead, the trigger for the constructed portion of Orden would already have been initiated and the rest of the spell would run through its protocols. Orden would ripple outward from the core and do its job.

  “If that happens, if Kahlan is lost in the effort, it will be a terrible personal loss for Richard, but it will mean nothing more than that for the rest of us. The introduction of Orden would destroy the Chainfire contamination and restore everyone else.”

  Zedd gave her a hard look. “We may not remember Kahlan, but there is no doubt in any of us what she means to Richard. He has already shown us that he would be willing to go to the underworld if he thought doing so could save her life. If he knew that opening one of the boxes and releasing the power of Orden would kill her…”

  Nicci didn’t shy from his look, or the implication. “Richard must open the correct box of Orden and initiate the constructed spell that will counter Chainfire…even if it means that it will kill Kahlan. It’s as simple as that.”

  The room was silent for a moment.

  Zedd rubbed a finger back and forth on his chin as he gazed off into the shadows. “It would seem wise, in view of such dangers—whether real or not—to see to it that if Kahlan is found she be kept in the dark about her former feelings for Richard. Best to let Orden restore her emotions.”

  “That makes the most sense to me, too,” Nicci said. “When we get Richard back we have to convince him that should he find her, he must not reveal the truth to her.”

  Zedd clasped his hands behind his back as he shook his head. “Considering everything at stake, I agree that such a thing is wise, and that it should be our plan, but I don’t know that I really believe such a thing as simple foreknowledge could cause such a personal tragedy. I don’t know if I can believe that such a simple thing as foreknowledge can cause such great harm.”

  “If it’s any consolation to you, there were wizards involved in the creation of the boxes of Orden who held the same view. But then it seemed impossible to me that using power against a witch woman would bring me to harm.”

  Zedd stared off, absently, as he considered. “You have a point. Great harm can sometimes result from the best of intentions.

  “When we find the boy we can tell him all this. But we’re an awfully long way from any of this ever happening. We no longer have even one of the boxes of Orden.”

  Nicci sighed. “True enough. What worries me the most, though, is convincing Richard of this.” Nicci cleared her throat. “When we find him, I think it best if such a thing came from you, Zedd. He might take it better coming from you. He might be more open to listening.”

  Zedd glanced her way before resuming his pacing. “I understand.” He halted and turned to Nicci. “But I’m still not sure I buy the whole theory about emotional foreknowledge being able to taint…”

  In midsentence, Zedd’s mouth snapped closed with a startled expression.

  “What?” Nicci asked. “Did you think of something?”

  Zedd sank down to sit on the edge of the bed. “Yes, I most certainly did.”

  The power, the fire, had gone out of him.

  “Dear spirits,” he whispered, sounding as if the weight of his years had just settled on his slumped shoulders.

  Nicci leaned down and touched his arm. “Zedd, what’s wrong?”

  He looked up at her with haunted eyes. “Foreknowledge can affect how magic works. It’s not a theory. It’s true.”

  “Are you sure? How do you know?”

  “I don’t remember Kahlan, or anything about her. When Richard was here, though, he told me about her. He filled me in on my missing memories of how he came to love her, and she him.

  “Kahlan is a Confessor. A Confessor’s gift destroys the mind of the person she touches with her power. Confessors release their restraint on their power to unleash it. The rest of the time they must keep it under their tight control.”

  “I know, I’ve heard about their ability,” Nicci said. “But what does that have to do with their love?”

  “A Confessor always chooses her mate from among those they don’t really care about because if she were to be intimate with a man she loved she would unintentionally lose control of that power. So released, her power would take the man. He would stand no chance. He would no longer be who he was. He would be lost, his mind destroyed. He would be a hollow shell, left with a blind, mindless devotion to the Confessor. She would have him, have his love and devotion, but it would be meaningless, empty love.

  “For this reason Confessors always choose a man they don’t care about, and then take him with their power. They choose a mate for what kind of father he would be, for the daughter he could produce, but they never choose a man they love. Men fear an unmarried Confessor in search of a mate, fear being chosen, fear losing who they are to her power.”

  “But there obviously must be a way for it to work,” Nicci said. “How did Richard accomplish it?”

  Zedd looked up. “There is only one way. I can’t tell you what it was. I couldn’t tell Richard, either. I couldn’t even tell him that a way existed.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Because the foreknowledge would have tainted him and her magic, when first she unleashed it on him without intending to, would have taken him. He had to be totally unaware of the solution to it, or that a solution even existed, or that solution would not have worked.”

  Zedd stared at the floor. “It is no theory. Foreknowledge can taint a sterile field, as you put it. Richard himself proved the central question of Ordenic theory: foreknowledge can affect the function of magic.”

  Nicci padded barefoot across the carpet to stand before him. She frowned down at the old wizard. “You knew of this beforehand, before Richard and Kahlan were married? You knew that the foreknowledge of the solution would cause it to fail in Richard?”

  “I did. But I dared not tell him that a solution existed that would enable him to be with his love. Even that much foreknowledge, even the knowledge that there might be a solution, would ruin his chance of it working.”

  “How did you know about this?”

  Zedd lifted a hand and then let it fall back to his lap. “The very same thing happened to the first Confessor, Magda Searus, and the man who loved her, Merritt. They, too, ended up in love and married. Since that time, Richard was the first to ever again solve the problem. Since Magda Searus was the first Confessor, no one knew that there was a solution; therefore, there was not yet any foreknowledge to taint him. Without such foreknowledge he was able to solve the paradox of loving a Confessor without her power destroying him.”

  Nicci pulled at a strand of blond hair as she considered. “Then the reality of foreknowledge alone being able to taint magic is true.” She frowned down at Zedd. “But the wizards who created Orden knew of no example of foreknowledge tainting a spell. It was only a theory for them.”

  Zedd shrugged. “That probably means that Confessors were created after Orden. First Wizard Merritt proved the concept, so maybe it happened after Orden had already been created.”

  Nicci sighed at it all. “I suppose that might be the answer.”

  She gestured vaguely as she went on to other business. “Cara said something, before, about there being a problem. A problem with the Keep.”

  Zedd finally looked up from his private thoughts and stood. The creases in his face drew into a grave expression.

  “Yes, there is trouble.”

  “What sort of trouble?” Nicci asked.

  He started for the door. “Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Zedd led Nicci and Cara toward an area of the Keep that Nicci knew to be a labyrinth of halls and passageways heavily guarded by layers of shields. Glass spheres in iron brackets brightened in turn as they approached each one, then faded back into darkness as they passed. The Keep felt like a great, silent, gloomy place to Nicci. It was not only immense, but immensely complex, and she couldn’t imagine what could be the trouble with it that s
o concerned Zedd.

  Before they had gone far, Rikka; Tom, the big blond-headed D’Haran from Lord Rahl’s elite guard; and Friedrich the old gilder emerged from a reading room to join in the quiet procession. Nicci guessed that they had all been waiting there for her to awake from her encounter with Six. That Zedd had probably asked them to stand by and wait for Nicci to wake only heightened her growing sense of concern.

  “You look a lot better than you did last night,” Rikka said as they started through a cozy room hung with hundreds of paintings of every size. The paintings, each in a rich gold-leaf frame, covered every bit of the walls.

  “Thanks. I’m fine now.”

  Nicci noticed that the paintings hung throughout the room were all portraits, though the styles varied greatly. The subjects in some, dressed in ceremonial robes, sat in formal poses while in others the people stood casually in beautiful gardens, met in conversation among grand columns, or relaxed on benches in courtyards.

  She saw that in many of the portraits the Keep, or parts of it, were visible in the background. It was a somewhat startling and sad thought to realize that all of these people had probably once lived in the Keep, a place that had been alive with life. It made the place now seem all the more deserted and empty.

  Rikka cast a sidelong glance down the length of Nicci. “That nightdress was pink, before.”

  “I hate pink,” Nicci said.

  Rikka looked disappointed. “Really? When Cara and I put you in it I thought that it made you look even prettier.”

  At first startled by such a statement coming from a Mord-Sith, Nicci suddenly grasped the whole pink nightgown thing. This was a woman trying to find her way out of the dark wasteland of madness. She was trying to throw off the shackles of emotions that had been drilled into her since she had been a girl. Everything in her life, her world, had been ugly and violent. The pink nightdress represented something innocent and lovely—the kind of thing forbidden to the likes of a Mord-Sith. By appreciating such a simple thing on Nicci, she was testing the possibility of enjoying something attractive and harmless—testing dreams. It was much the same as a young girl making a pretty dress for a doll. It was a considered examination of aesthetics and, more than that, it was practice at aspirations.