Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

Ann sighed. "Perhaps I should have brought you in and tried to make you think more of yourself, but I always feared to be seen as too gentle lest through familiarity my authority come to be dismissed. I also feared that telling novices what I really thought of them might cause them to become full of themselves. You were not as transparent as you might think, though. I never realized the depth of your feelings. I thought that what I saw as your modesty would serve you well as you became a woman. I was mistaken about that as well."

"I never knew," Nicci said, her thoughts seemingly lost back in that distant time.

"Don't think it was only you, though. Others, because I thought so much of them, I treated worse. I trusted Verna perhaps more than anyone. I never told her that. Instead, I sent her on a blind chase for twenty years because she was the only person I dared trust in such a mission. All part of my involvement with various events in prophecy." Ann shook her head. "How she hated me for those twenty frustrating years."

"You're talking about her journey to find Richard?"

"Yes." Ann smiled to herself. "It was a journey in which she also found herself."

After being lost in memories for a moment, she smiled up at Nicci. "'Remember when Verna finally brought him in? Remember that first day, in the big hall, when all the Sisters were gathered to greet the new boy Verna had brought in and it was Richard, grown into a man?"

"I remember," Nicci said as she, too, smiled at the memory. "I doubt that you would believe all that was sparked on that day. When I saw him that first day I swore to myself that I would become one of his teachers."

She had become his teacher, and in the end Richard had become hers.

"Richard needs you now, Nicci. He needs someone to stand with him, now. In this battle he needs a partner. It is all too much of a burden for one man. He needs a woman who loves him. Kahlan is gone. If she is alive she is only a shell of who she once was. She doesn't remember Richard or love him; he is a stranger to her. The sad fact of the matter is that Richard has lost her to this war. He needs someone, now, to be his partner in life.

"Richard needs you, Nicci, to whisper in his ear at night those things he must hear. Whether he knows it or not, he needs you more than anything."

Nicci was on the verge of bursting into sobs. Finding herself arguing against the thing for which she would give her life was tearing her apart inside. There was nothing in life she could want more than Richard.

But because she loved him, she couldn't do as Ann wanted.

Nicci started down the stairwell, and changed the subject. "I need to see the tomb and then I need to talk with Verna and Adie. I don't have any time to waste. I have to get down to Tamarang to help Zedd get the witch woman's spell off Richard. Right now that's what Richard needs the most.

"To help me in that, I need to know everything about Six. You may not have known the woman, but you had a network of spies spread throughout the Old World."

"You knew about the spies?" Ann asked, following Nicci down the stairs.

"Suspected. A woman such as you does not hold on to power for as long as you held on to power without help. Under your rule the Palace of the Prophets was an island of stability and calm in a world of turmoil, a world falling under the spell of the Fellowship of Order. You had to have had your web spread far and wide to keep yourself aware of all that was happening in the outside world, to keep you aware of any potential threats. After all, you kept the palace safe and free to do its work for hundreds of years."

Ann lifted an eyebrow. "I was not so good at it as you think, my dear. Otherwise, the Sisters of the Dark would not have become established right under my nose."

"But you suspected, and you took precautions."

"Not enough, on either account, as it turns out."

"No one can be perfect, and no one is invincible. It remains true that you did a very good job for a very long time of keeping them at bay. You had a network of informants to help you stay abreast of what was happening in the outside world. I know that the Sisters of the Dark were always looking over their shoulders. They feared you.

"With the kind of web that only the Prelate can spin, you must have heard something about Six over the years."

"I don't know, Nicci. Over the years there were a great many important things going on. Rumors of a witch woman were not of much interest to me. There were more important problems. As far as Six, I didn't really hear anything of note."

"I'm not interested in getting you to betray confidences, Ann. I'm only interested in anything at all you might know about her. For some reason she took the box of Orden. I need to get it back for Richard. Any bit of information at all might help me to that end."