Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

Nicci ignored the heated tone of the question. "Just the part about the sterile field. I realize now that it's much the same as what you explained about how I needed a link when I cast a spell at Six, but she denied me that place to anchor the spell. Orden must initiate magic in a similar manner. Like all magic, it, too, needs a connection. That connection is Kahlan. But it needs that target of the connection to be a blank slate."

"A blank slate?" Zedd tilted his head in toward her. "Nicci, need I remind you that the* person is a blank slate? The Chainfire spell erases everything from their past. It renders them blank, in a manner of speaking. Orden thus has what it needs."

Nicci shook her head insistently. "No. You have to consider it all together in the context of the Chainfire book, The Book of Life, and those obscure books you found for me on Ordenic theory. You have to look at it all, at the larger picture, to see it."

"See what?" Zedd roared in exasperation.

"The subject must be emotionally blank, or the whole thing is tainted."

"Emotionally blank?" Cara asked when Zedd fell to muttering to himself as he wiped a hand down his face. "What does that mean?"

"It means that knowledge of her previous emotional condition would contaminate the effort to restore what was within her. She has to remain emotionally blank for Orden to be able to do its job. The subject has to be kept blank. Care must be taken not to introduce emotional links."

"Nicci, you are a bright woman," Zedd said, trying to remain calm, "but this time you've driven the wagon off the bridge and into the river."

He started in pacing himself. "What you're saying doesn't make any sense. How can the subject be prevented from finding out anything at all about their past? The wizards who created the boxes of Orden must have realized that the chances were the subject would find out any number of things about their past before Orden could be brought to bear. They couldn't expect the person to be locked in a dark room until Orden could be employed."

"That's not what I mean. You're missing my point. Details don't matter-in fact details learned by anyone with lost memories only help because they are like guide pins on which to fit the template of the restoration process of Orden. But great emotional experiences within the subject of Chainfire do matter. Emotions are the sums created by details, whether those details are true or not."

Cara looked focused on trying to understand what Nicci was saying. "How can emotions be created by false details?"

"Take me, for example," Nicci said. "The things that I was taught by the Fellowship of Order caused me to hate anyone who resisted the teachings of the Order, hate anyone who accomplished anything. I believed as I was taught, that such people were selfish heathens who didn't care about their fellow man.

"I was taught to have an emotional response of hatred to all those who didn't believe as I did. I was taught to hate you and everything you did without actually knowing anything about you. I had a visceral, emotional hatred for the value of life itself. I would have killed Richard based on those emotional drives. My emotions were based on lies and indoctrination, not anything true."

Cara sighed. "I see what you mean. You and I were both taught similar things and made to feel similar emotions, and those emotions were completely mistaken."

"But emotions, when based on valid things, can be a faithful and consistent sum of truths."

"Valid things?" Cara asked.

"Of course," Nicci said. "Such as worthwhile values. Love-proper love, true love-is a response to those things we value in others. It's an emotional response to life-affirming values held by another person. We value the good nature of that other person. In those cases that emotion is a central, powerful part of our humanity."

Zedd, still pacing, came to an impatient halt. "What does this have to do with anything?"

Nicci spread her hands. "Keep in mind that Ordenic theory is just that, theory, so I can't say that I know for certain because even those who created it didn't know it for certain, either, but it all fits. While they were convinced they were correct, they had no actual experience of foreknowledge tainting magic in which to ground their theory, but I think they were right."

Zedd leaned in, peering at her with one eye. "Right about what, exactly?"

"Emotions interjected into the subject without the underlying cause will corrupt the countering of the Chainfire spell."

Cara frowned. "You lost me."