Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

A thick red overcast hung above the distant plain black with the invading army. They spread all the way to the horizon in every direction. Nicci rubbed her shoulders with the chill she felt from within. While from this distance it was hard to see much detail, she knew what it was like to be among such men. She knew all too well what they were like. She knew all too well what their officers were like. She knew all too well what their leader was like.

It made Nicci's skin crawl to think of being down among those men.

When she had served with that army she had not given a great deal of thought to how not only physically filthy but spiritually squalid it was. As the Slave Queen she had been willfully blind to it. She had believed that brutes like Jagang and his men were necessary in order to impose higher ideals on mankind. Benevolence enforced through brutality. Looking back on such a thought, she could hardly believe how contradictory those convictions really were, and that she had accepted them without question. Not just accepted them, but helped enforce them. She had been so effective at enforcing the Order's will that she had become known as Death's Mistress.

She could hardly believe that Richard had put up with her. Of course, she had given him no choice in the matter.

She felt tears sting at her eyes at the memory of all the times she had tried to force Richard to join her in service to their vile cause and how, instead, he had shown her something noble. She swallowed back a sob at how much she missed him, missed the light in his eyes.

The sight below made the silence up on the platform seem all the more bleak. These men, these millions of men spread out across the plain, were all there for one purpose: to kill everyone in the People's Palace, anyone who opposed the rule of the Order. This was their last obstacle to imposing their beliefs on all of mankind.

Nicci stared out at the ramp rising up in the distance. It was larger than the last time she'd seen it. Beyond the ramp she could just make out scars in the ground where the material for the ramp was being dug. The top slope of the ramp aimed in a straight line right for the top of the plateau. Even though it was getting dark, there were snaking lines of men carrying dirt and rock to the construction site.

If anyone described such an undertaking to her she doubted that she would believe it was possible, but seeing it was different. Seeing it filled her with dread. It was only a matter of time until that ramp was completed and the dark sea of the Imperial Order flooded up it to assault the palace.

Standing at the edge of the platform, hugging her shoulders tightly, she knew that she was looking out onto more than a dark army. Nicci knew that she was looking out on a thousand years of darkness.

Having been a Sister of the Dark, and having been raised under the teachings of the Fellowship of Order, she knew, perhaps better than anyone, just how real the threat was. She knew how vehemently the followers of the Order believed in their cause. Their faith defined them. They were more than willing to die for it. After all, death was their goal; they had been promised glory in the afterlife. They believed that this life was only a test, a means to gain entry into everlasting life. If the Order required them to die, then they would die. If the Order required that they kill those who did not believe, then they would make the world a sea of blood.

Nicci understood precisely what it would mean for everyone if the Order won this war. It was not the army that would bring those thousand years of darkness, but the ideas that had spawned that army. Those ideas would cast the world into a living nightmare.

"Nicci, there is something you need to know about," Nathan said, breaking the uneasy silence.

Nicci folded her arms and glanced over at the prophet. "What's that, Nathan?"

"We've been studying books of prophecy here at the People's Palace. Just like all the books of prophecy everywhere else, the Chainfire spell has caused sections of these books, sections that apparently touch on Kahlan, to vanish. But there is still useful information as of yet untouched by Chainfire. Some of those books are new to me. They've helped me to connect things I've read about in the past. They've helped me to see the larger picture."

With the Chainfire spell having erased so much of their memories, she didn't know how he could know if he really was seeing the larger picture-or how she could know if she was. Instead of saying so, Nicci waited silently, the cold wind ruffling her hair, watching Nathan look away to gaze out at the forces spread out across the Azrith Plain below.

"There is a place in the prophecies, a cardinal root, that leads to a determinative fork," he said at last. "Beyond that fork, down one of its two branches, is a place the prophecies call the Great Void. "

Nicci frowned into her recollections. There had always been a great deal of speculation surrounding that portion of prophecy.