“To help me in that, I need to know everything about Six. You may not have known the woman, but you had a network of spies spread throughout the Old World.”
“You knew about the spies?” Ann asked, following Nicci down the stairs.
“Suspected. A woman such as you does not hold on to power for as long as you held on to power without help. Under your rule the Palace of the Prophets was an island of stability and calm in a world of turmoil, a world falling under the spell of the Fellowship of Order. You had to have had your web spread far and wide to keep yourself aware of all that was happening in the outside world, to keep you aware of any potential threats. After all, you kept the palace safe and free to do its work for hundreds of years.”
Ann lifted an eyebrow. “I was not so good at it as you think, my dear. Otherwise, the Sisters of the Dark would not have become established right under my nose.”
“But you suspected, and you took precautions.”
“Not enough, on either account, as it turns out.”
“No one can be perfect, and no one is invincible. It remains true that you did a very good job for a very long time of keeping them at bay. You had a network of informants to help you stay abreast of what was happening in the outside world. I know that the Sisters of the Dark were always looking over their shoulders. They feared you.
“With the kind of web that only the Prelate can spin, you must have heard something about Six over the years.”
“I don’t know, Nicci. Over the years there were a great many important things going on. Rumors of a witch woman were not of much interest to me. There were more important problems. As far as Six, I didn’t really hear anything of note.”
“I’m not interested in getting you to betray confidences, Ann. I’m only interested in anything at all you might know about her. For some reason she took the box of Orden. I need to get it back for Richard. Any bit of information at all might help me to that end.”
“I simply never heard anything about her from my sources.” Ann finally nodded, almost as if to herself. “But I know about her in a general sense, and I also know that she can’t put Orden in play.”
“Then why would she take it?”
“While I don’t know any specifics about her, other than what Shota told us, I do know that the desire to destroy the good in life is what defines some people. The particular twisted beliefs they adopt are merely their internal justification for their overriding hatred of the good. That core drive gives them an affinity with others having the same goal of crushing anyone who lives free, who seeks to better themselves. It is the end—destroying anything good—that inflames and impassions them.
“Ultimately, it is life they hate. They feel inadequate at facing the challenges of life. They loathe the necessity of dealing with the world the way it really is, so they grasp at shortcuts to existence. Instead of working hard, they choose to destroy those who do. Instead of creating something worthwhile, they want to steal what someone else has created.”
“So,” Nicci suggested, “you’re saying that while you don’t know anything specific about Six, you think that because of her nature she will seek others driven by hatred.”
“That’s right,” Ann said. “And what does that mean?”
As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Nicci paused, resting a wrist over the newel post, tapping a fingernail on the white marble as she stared off in thought. “It means that, ultimately, she will seek an alliance with the ones who have the other two boxes: the Sisters of the Dark. They may believe very different things, but they are sisters in hate.”
Ann smiled to herself. “Very good, child.”
“She can’t use the box herself,” Nicci finally said, thinking out loud. “That means she had to have taken it as a bargaining tool. She wanted it in order to gain power for herself. When the great barrier came down she saw the New World as vulnerable. She schemed and eventually stole what Shota had created up here in the New World, but ultimately that isn’t enough for her. She intends to have power in exchange for the box she now has.”
Ann was nodding. “She is insuring that when Orden is unleashed she will be included. She is drawn to the potential for the massive destruction of all that is good. She may want power for herself, but I think her real passion is to be part of the dismantlement of values and order.”
“There is one thing about it, though, that doesn’t make sense.” Nicci shook her head as she stared off down the long passageway. “The Sisters of the Dark are not likely to want to deal with the witch woman. They fear her.”
“They fear the Keeper more. They must have the box if they are to unleash Orden. Don’t forget, now that they have put the boxes in play, their lives will be forfeit if they fail to open the correct box. They will be forced to deal with Six.”
“I suppose,” Nicci said.
Something seemed to be missing, she just couldn’t figure out what. It seemed that there had to be something more to it.
CHAPTER 19
Nicci’s hand slipped from the newel post and dropped to her side as they started away. The floors, walls, and ceiling of the quiet hallway stretching into the distance were made entirely of polished slabs of white marble. Soft tendrils of gray and gold veining meandered through the marble, giving the entire stone corridor a faintly wispy look.
Torches in iron brackets spaced evenly along the walls cast the solemn corridor in a flickering light. The dead air carried the heavy smell of pitch and a pale haze of acrid smoke. At varying places along the passageway were other halls leading off to tombs.
“It’s a dangerous time we are in,” Ann said, the sounds of their footsteps echoing off the stone. “We approach the most dangerous place in prophecy that I know of. We approach what holds the potential to be our end.”
Nicci glanced over at the old prelate. “That’s why I have to help Zedd and then find Richard. At the same time Six has to be stopped before she can unite all three boxes. She has already shown me how dangerous she is, but if we can find her Zedd might be able to help with handling the witch woman.
“I think it might be more important for me to get my hands on Sisters Ulicia and Armina. They have the other two boxes. If they unite all three boxes of Orden, I don’t think that the Sisters of the Dark intend to let Richard have until the first day of winter next year to try to open one of the boxes of Orden. They will certainly try to open them as soon as they have all three. I have this uneasy feeling that we may be running out of time.”
“I agree,” Ann said as they passed a hissing torch. “That is why it’s so important for you to be there for Richard—so important for you to help him.”
“I intend to help him.”
Ann glanced up at Nicci. “A man needs a woman to temper his choices, especially when those choices can change the course of life itself.”
Nicci watched their shadows rotate around them as they passed another torch. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”
“Only a woman who loves him, who stands at his side, who is trusted implicitly, can be the kind of woman who can be a positive influence.”
“I do love him and I will stand at his side.”
“You need to do more than stand at his side, Nicci, to be the woman who can have the influence needed.”
Nicci glanced over out of the corner of her eye. “And what influence is it, exactly, that you think is needed?”
“A child needs the strength of a father as well as the nurturing of a mother.” She held up her first two fingers pressed tightly together. “Male and female working together shape us, define us, guide us. In this it is no different. A man needs the feminine element in his life if he is to be a proper ruler to guide the growth of mankind.
“A powerful general without a woman can fight battles and win wars. Jagang can crush those in his way, but he can do nothing more than that—nothing worthwhile, anyway.
“Our side, our cause, is different. It takes more not only to win such a war as we face,
but the future that we hope to be the result. Richard doesn’t simply need someone who loves him, but someone he can love. Living by the sword alone is not enough. He needs that investment of his own emotion. He needs to give love as well as receive it.”
Nicci didn’t want to go down this line of argument again. “I am not that woman.”
“You can be,” Ann pressed in a soft voice.
“I’m sure that Kahlan is a woman who deserves Richard’s love. I am not. I have done terrible things, things which I can never undo. I’ve walked a very dark path. All that I can do is to fight to stop the evil ideas for which I once fought. If I can do that, then I can earn redemption in my own heart. But I could never deserve Richard’s love. Kahlan is that kind of woman. I am not.”
“Nicci, Kahlan is not an option for us. It is pointless to frame it as a choice between you and Kahlan being there for him; she can no longer fill that role. Chainfire took that woman. Only you can fill the role, now. You must marry Richard and be that woman for him.”
“Marry him!” Nicci let out a brief, bitter laugh as she shook her head. “Richard doesn’t love me. He would have no reason to want to marry me.”
“Did you learn nothing at the Palace of the Prophets?” Ann clicked her tongue impatiently. “How did you ever get to be a Sister?”
Nicci threw up her hands. “Now what are you talking about?”
“Men have needs.” Ann shook a finger at Nicci. “Attend to them with all your talent as a woman—as the beautiful woman the Creator made you—and he will want more. He will marry you to get it.”
Nicci wanted to slap the woman. Instead, she said, “Richard isn’t like that. He understands that love is what makes passion between a man and a woman meaningful.”
“In the end that is what he will have. You would merely be helping that meaningful passion come to be. A man’s heart will follow his needs. Are you so backward as to think that all couples marry for love? The wisdom of elders often creates a better match. In the absence of Kahlan, that is what we must do.
“It is your job to urge him into your bed and show him what you can do for him, what he is missing, what he needs. If you tend to his passions, his heart will be yours and he will, in the end, have that meaningful passion.”
Nicci could feel her face going scarlet. She couldn’t believe they were having this conversation. She had to change the subject but she couldn’t seem to find her voice.
Nicci knew that she had Richard’s friendship and trust. To do as Ann suggested would violate that friendship and void that trust. Richard was safe in her friendship. The sincerity and shelter of Nicci’s friendship in some ways qualified her for his love, but to do as Ann suggested would breach the trust of his friendship and in so doing disqualify her from ever really being worthy of it.
“You must not allow this chance to pass you by, child, to pass us by.”
Nicci seized Ann’s arm and pulled her to a halt. “Pass us by?”
Ann nodded. “You are our link to Richard.”
Nicci narrowed her eyes. “What link?”
Ann’s face tightened, looking more and more like the prelate Nicci remembered. “The link those of us who teach young wizards need to have with such men.”
“Richard is our leader—not by birth, but by his own ability and force of will to see this through. He may not have set out to become the Lord Rahl, to become the one to lead us in this war, but along the way he grew into that role. He decided that life meant enough to him that he had to fight for his right to live it as he saw fit. He has inspired others who feel the same. It is only because of that that we have made it this far.
“He is not a boy at the Palace of the Prophets with a Rada’Han around his neck. He is his own man.”
“Is he? Step back, child, and look at the larger picture. Yes, Richard is our leader—and I am sincere in saying that—but he is also a man who has the gift and knows nothing about it. More than that, he is a wizard with both sides of the gift. Lightning is bottled up in that man. What is the purpose of a Sister of the Light if not to teach such men how to control their ability and to—”
“I am not a Sister of the Light.”
Ann flicked a hand dismissively. “Semantics. Wordplay. Denying it will not change it.”
“I am not—”
“You are.” Ann jabbed an insistent finger against the center of Nicci’s chest. “In there, you are. You are a person who, by what ever course, has embraced life. That is the Creator’s calling. Call yourself what you will, Sister of the Light, or simply Nicci. It matters not; it changes nothing. You fight for our cause—the Creator’s cause of life itself. You are a Sister, a sorceress, who can guide a man in what he needs to do.”
“I am not a whore, not for you, not for anyone.”
Ann rolled her eyes. “Did I ask you to bed a man you don’t love? No. Did I ask you to trick him out of anything? No. I asked you to go to a man you love, give him love, and be the woman he so desperately needs, be the woman who can receive his love. That is what he needs—a woman to be the link for his need to love. That is the completing link to his humanity.”
Nicci glared. “A minder from the Palace of the Prophets, that’s what you really want me to be.”
Ann muttered a prayer for strength toward the ceiling. “Child,” she said, her gaze finally coming down to fix on Nicci, “I am only asking you not to waste any more of your life. You don’t fully grasp what it is you are not seeing. You may think that this is about love, but you don’t really know love, now do you? You know only its beginning: longing.
“The circumstances may not be what you would ask for in a perfect world, but this is the chance the Creator has given you, your chance to have the greatest joy possible to us in this life—love. Complete love. Your love right now is one sided, incomplete, deficient. It is merely sweet longing and imagined bliss. You can’t know what love really is unless those feelings within your heart are returned in kind and set free. Only then is it real love, complete love. Only then can the heart truly soar. You don’t yet know the joy of that most human of emotions.”
Nicci had been kissed by rutting brutes. There was no joy in such things. Ann was right: Nicci didn’t think that she could truly understand what it would be like to be kissed by a man she loved, truly loved, a man who loved her in return and held her above all else in his heart. She could only imagine such bliss. What a pity for those who didn’t know the difference.
Ann opened a hand in a gesture of appeal. “If in that joy of complete love—for both of you—you can help guide the man you love to make choices that are nothing more than the right choices, what is wrong with that?”
She let the hand drop. “I’m not asking you to cause him to do wrong, but to do right, to do what he himself would want. I’m only asking you to save him from the kind of pain that risks him making a mistake, a mistake that will take us all down with him.”
Nicci again felt the fine hair on the back of her neck stiffen.
“What are you talking about?”
“Nicci, when you were with the Order—when you were known as Death’s Mistress—what did you feel like?”
“Feel like?” Nicci cast about in her mind for an answer to the unexpected question. “I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean. I guess I hated myself, hated life.”
“And in your hatred of yourself did you care if Jagang killed you?”
“Not really.”
“Would you act the same today? Act out of disinterest for yourself, for the future?”
“Of course not. Back then I didn’t care what happened to me. What future could there be? I didn’t think that I deserved any happiness—I didn’t think that I could ever have any happiness—so nothing really mattered to me, not even my own life. I just didn’t think that anything mattered.”
“Didn’t think that anything mattered,” Ann repeated. She tsked concern to herself before continuing her theatrical dismay at what Nicci had said. “You didn’t think you could have
any happiness, and so you didn’t think anything mattered.” She held up a finger for a point of clarity. “You didn’t make the same kinds of decisions back then that you would make today because you didn’t care about yourself. Am I right?”
Nicci suspected that she was nearing the unseen jaws of a trap. “That’s right.”
“And how do you suppose a man like Richard is going to feel when he finally realizes that Kahlan is lost to him—when the finality of it really and truly sinks in? Will he think that life is worth living? Do you think he will feel the same connection to us—feel the same sense of the importance of life—if he is lost, alone, despairing, despondent…hopeless? If he thinks he can never have any happiness, do you think he will care as much what happens to him? You know what that feels like, child. You tell me.”
Goose bumps tingled up Nicci’s arms. She feared to answer the question.
Ann waggled a finger. “If he has no one, no love, do you think he will care so much if he lives or dies?”
Nicci swallowed, forcing herself to face the truth. “I suppose it’s possible that he might not.”
“And if he has no hope for himself, will he make the right choices for us? Or will he simply give up?”
“I don’t think Richard would give up.”
“You don’t think he would.” Ann leaned closer. “Are you eager to put that to the test? Put our lives, our world, existence itself, to such a test?”
The intensity of Ann’s expression seemed to have frozen Nicci in place. “Child, if we lose Richard, then we are all lost.”
She went on in a soft voice, making Nicci feel as if the trap were finally closing around her. “You yourself know his central importance—that is why you put the boxes of Orden in play in his name. You know that he is the only one who can lead us in this battle. You know that without him the Sisters of the Dark will unleash the Keeper of the underworld. Without Richard to stop them they will unleash death upon life itself. They will end the world of life. They will take us into the Great Void.