Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

"You were tracing the wrong root in prophecy," Nicci said, even as parts of the puzzle were still falling into place in her own mind. "You were aware of the importance of the boxes of Orden, but your chronology was jumbled and as a result you ended up tracing a false fork. You mistakenly thought that it was Darken Rahl who, by using the boxes of Orden, created the terminal node. You thought it was Darken Rahl who would lead us into the Great Void."

Understanding the gravity of the mistake, Nicci turned to stare at the former prelate. "You thought that you had to prepare Richard to deal with that threat, thinking it was this fork of prophecy-the one we find ourselves on right now-so you stole The Book of Counted Shadows and gave it to George Cypher, meaning it for Richard when he got older. You :hought Darken Rahl was the final battle, the terminal node in prophecy. You wanted Richard to fight Darken Rahl. You thought you were giving him the tools he needed to fight the final battle.

"But you had mistakenly taken a wrong turn-you ended up on a barren branch of prophecy and you didn't realize it. You were preparing him for the wrong battle. You thought that you were helping him, but you got it all wrong and in the end your misjudgment only ended up causing Richard to bring down the great barrier that allowed Jagang to become the threat that the prophecies had warned of in the first place. Because of you, the Sisters of the Dark were at last able to get their hands on the boxes of Orden. Because of you, the Keeper of the underworld has them to do his bidding. Without what you did, none of that would have been possible."

Nicci blinked at the former prelate as the magnitude of what they had done sank in. The realization gave her goose bumps.

"You inadvertently caused all of this. You tried to use prophecy to avert a disaster and instead you only served to fulfill prophecy. Your decision to interfere is what made the disaster possible."

Ann's face twisted with a sour expression. "While it would seem that we-"

"All that work, all that planning, all that waiting for centuries, and you messed it up." Nicci pulled wind-whipped hair back from her face. "Turns out I was the one prophecy needed-because of what you would do."

Nathan cleared his throat. "Well, that's a pretty big-and somewhat misleading-oversimplification, but I must admit that it's not entirely untrue."

Nicci suddenly saw the Prelate, a woman she had always thought of as next to infallible, a woman always ready to point out the tiniest mistakes made by others, in a new light. "You made a mistake. You got it all wrong.

"While you worked to insure that Richard could play his part as the linchpin who might be able to save us, you ended up being the pivotal element that brought the potential for destruction upon us all."

"If we hadn't-"

"Yes, we made some mistakes," Nathan said, cutting Ann off before she could even begin. "But it seems to me that we all make mistakes. After all, here you stand, a woman who fought your whole life for the beliefs of the Order, only to give yourself over to becoming a Sister of the Dark. Shall I invalidate everything you now say and do because you've made mistakes in the past? Do you wish to invalidate everything we've learned and have been able to accomplish on the grounds that there have been times when we've made mistakes?

"It could even be that our mistakes were not really mistakes, but rather a tool of prophecy, a part of a larger design, because all along you were the one meant to be close enough to Richard to help him. Perhaps the things we did are what allowed you to get close enough to him to play such a vital role, a role that only you would be able to play."

"Free will is a variable in prophecy," Ann said. "Without it, without all that happened because of the events that Richard tumbled into place, where would you be? What would you be had we never acted when we did? Where would you be had you never met Richard?"

Nicci didn't want to consider such a possibility.

"How many more, like you, in the end might be saved because events turned out this way," the Prelate added, "rather than if none of this had ever happened?"

"It could very well be," Nathan said, "that, had we not done the things we did, for reasons right or wrong, prophecy would simply have found another way to accomplish the very same results. It's likely, by the way these roots intertwine, that what is happening right now, one way or another, had to happen."

"Like water finding a route to lower ground?" Cara asked.

"Precisely," Nathan said, smiling proudly at her power of observation. "Prophecy is to a degree self-healing. We may think we understand the details, but in fact we may be unable to see the totality of events on a grander scale, so that when we take it upon ourselves to interfere prophecy must find other roots to nourish the tree, lest it die.