Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

"Before the boundaries and barriers came down, the Mother Confessor oversaw the Midlands. Queens and kings bowed to her. Could we do such a thing? You ruled a palace. I am nothing but the Slave Queen. Kahlan is a real ruler, a ruler her people depended on, a ruler who fought for them, fought to keep them free. A woman who, according to Richard, crossed the boundary itself-crossed through the underworld-to get help for her people. While I had Richard down in the Old World she stood in for Richard. She fought with and directed the D'Haran forces, slowing Jagang's advance to buy time to try to find a way to stop him.

"Richard loves Kahlan. That says it all-it says everything."

Nicci could hardly believe what she was finding herself forced to argue.

"Yes, all you say may well be true. He may indeed love this woman, this Kahlan, but who knows if she's alive? You know far better than I the vile nature of the Sisters who have her. There is no telling if Richard will ever see her again."

"If I know Richard, he will."

Ann opened her hands. "And if he does, then what? What can there ever be of it?"

The fine hairs at the back of Nicci neck stiffened. "What do you mean?"

"I've read the Chainfire book. I know how the spell works. Face it: the woman who Kahlan was no longer exists. Chainfire obliterated all that.

Chainfire does not simply make people forget their past, it destroys those memories, destroys their past. For all practical purposes the Kahlan that was, is no more."

"But she-"

"You love Richard. Put him foremost in your mind. Think of his needs. Kahlan is gone-her mind, anyway. All you say about how much she meant to him, how wonderful she must have been, may very well be true, but that woman, that woman Richard loved, is no more. Even if Richard were to find her it would only be the body of the woman he loved, an empty shell. There is no longer anything there within her for him to love.

"The mind that made her Kahlan is gone. Is Richard the kind of man who would love her form alone, just want her for her body? Hardly. It is the mind that makes the person who they are, and it is the mind that Richard loved, but that mind is gone.

"Are you going to throw away your life the way I threw away mine? I lost out on a lifetime of what I could have had with Nathan, a man I loved, had I not been so devoted to a sense of duty. Don't throw your life away as well, Nicci. Don't allow any chance for Richard's happiness to slip away from him as well."

Nicci squeezed her trembling fingers tightly together. "Are you forgetting who you are talking to? Do you realize that you are trying to push a Sister of the Dark on Richard, the man you say is the hope for everyone's future?"

"Baa," Ann scoffed. "You are no Sister of the Dark. You are different than the other Sisters of the Dark. They were real Sisters of the Dark. You are not." She tapped Nicci's chest. "In here, you are not.

"They became Sisters of the Dark because they were greedy. They wanted what they could not earn. They wanted power and the fulfillment of dark promises.

"You were different. You became a Sister of the Dark not because you were greedy for power, but for the opposite reason. You thought that you were unworthy of your own life."

It was true. Nicci was the only Sister of the Dark who had not converted in order to gain power or promises of rewards for herself, but rather out of a sense that she was not worthy of anything good. She hated having to be selfless, having to sacrifice herself to everyone else's wants and needs, hated not having her own life to herself. She thought that those feelings made her selfish, made her an evil person. Unlike the other Sisters of the Dark, she didn't really think that she deserved anything but everlasting punishment.

That motivation of guilt, rather than greed, troubled the other Sisters of the Dark. They didn't trust Nicci. She was not really one of them.

"Dear spirits," Nicci whispered, hardly able to believe that this woman whom she hardly ever saw, for what seemed decades at a time while they lived at the Palace of the Prophets, could so clearly understand the way it had been.

"I didn't know that I had been so transparent."

"It was always a source of sadness for me," Ann said in a soft voice, "that a creature as beautiful, as talented, as you, would think so little of herself."

Nicci swallowed. "Why didn't you ever try to tell me that?"

"Would you have believed me?"

Nicci paused at the head of the stairs, resting a hand on the white marble newel post. "I guess not. It took Richard to make me see it."