Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

"Berdine, prophecy is rarely as straightforward as it seems." Verna wished the woman would stop staring at her. "What it seems to say usually has nothing at all to do with the actual event involved in the body of the prophecy."

"Prelate, this prophecy seems to me to suggest that questions of soundness of mind are going to be the cause of 'a leader's lost trust. Since this prophecy names the leader as the one opposed to the horde that vaunts the Creator's cause-that would be the Imperial Order-that means it has to be talking about Lord Rahl. It then follows that Lord Rahl is the leader in whom people will lose trust. It comes after the part about the splitting of the horde, which the Order has now done. That makes the threat imminent."

Verna felt sorry for anyone who ever made the unfortunate mistake of underestimating Berdine.

"It is my experience that prophecy sometimes tends to fret over Richard like a doting grandparent."

"This sounds to me like a specific threat."

Verna folded her hands before herself. "Berdine, you are a very smart woman, so I hope you can understand why it would be a grave mistake for me to argue or even discuss this prophecy with you. Prophecy is beyond the mind of the ungifted. It has little to do with how smart a person is. Prophecy is a creation of the gifted and meant only for those who are gifted in the same way. They are not even intended for other types of wizards.

"Even us Sisters, talented sorceresses though we may be, had to train for years before we were allowed to even look at prophecy, much less work with it. It is exceedingly dangerous for the untrained to hazard guesses at the meaning of prophecy. You may recognize the words, but you do not recognize the meaning of those words."

"That's silly. Words are words. They have meaning. That is how we can understand the world around us. Why would prophecy take words that mean something and use them for some other unknown meaning?"

Verna felt as if she were stepping gingerly through a field of bear traps. "That isn't exactly what I meant by what I said. Words can be used to make people understand, to explain, to veil, and to interpret the world, but they can also be used to explain things that are only speculation. If I foretell that dark times will come into your life, those words may be true, but it could mean that you will suffer a loss that will sadden you, or it could mean that you will be murdered. Though the words might be true, their exact meaning is not yet known. It would be a grave injustice to use those words as a reason to start killing everyone around you because the words made you fear you would be murdered.

"Wars have started over such misunderstandings about prophecy. People have died as the result of the untrained hearing what they think are the simple words of prophecy. That is why the books of prophecy were kept in secure vaults below the Palace of the Prophets."

"These books of prophecy are not kept in vaults."

Verna's brow drew down as she leaned toward the Mord-Sith. "Perhaps they should be."

"Are you saying that I'm wrong in what I believe this prophecy says?"

Verna heaved another sigh. "Right or wrong is impossible to discern in this instance. We can't even begin to intelligently dissect this prophecy because it's incomplete. We have here only the beginning of it and then a number of blank pages."

"So?"

"So, it could be just as you say, that it's about Richard and people will question his judgment and lose faith in him, but maybe the missing text says that the issue will be resolved the next day by some other event of consequence and they will think more of him than they ever had before. Not only can prophecy be forked, meaning that it may be an either-or kind of statement, but the same prophecy could mean opposite things."

"I don't see how it can mean opposite things. And how could something happen in the missing text of this prophecy to change people's minds?"

Verna shrugged as she gazed around the vast, dimly lit library, trying to think of an example. "Well, say that they thought his battle plan was crazy. Maybe the army officers think it ill advised. That could be something that would result in this prophecy, in people losing faith in him. Then, say that, despite the advice of officers, Richard insists and so, despite their doubts and lack of faith, the soldiers follow his plan as ordered and achieve a victory that they never thought they could win. Their faith in Richard as their leader would be restored and they would probably have even more respect for his judgment than they ever did before.

"But if the prophecy were to be acted upon without understanding its true meaning, those actions very well could countermand the rest of the event as it would have taken place naturally and give the illusion that the prophecy had been fulfilled, but in fact the real and truly prophesied events had been bypassed by foolishly invoking a misinterpretation of the actual prophecy."