Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

"And how do you suppose a man like Richard is going to feel when he finally realizes that Kahlan is lost to him-when the finality of it really and truly sinks in? Will he think that life is worth living? Do you think he will feel the same connection to us-feel the same sense of the importance of life-if he is lost, alone, despairing, despondent. . . hopeless? If he thinks he can never have any happiness, do you think he will care as much what happens to him? You know what that feels like, child. You tell me."

Goose bumps tingled up Nicci's arms. She feared to answer the question.

Ann waggled a finger. "If he has no one, no love, do you think he will care so much if he lives or dies?"

Nicci swallowed, forcing herself to face the truth. "I suppose it's possible that he might not."

"And if he has no hope for himself, will he make the right choices for us? Or will he simply give up?"

"I don't think Richard would give up."

"You don't think he would." Ann leaned closer. "Are you eager to put that to the test? Put our lives, our world, existence itself, to such a test?"

The intensity of Ann's expression seemed to have frozen Nicci in place. "Child, if we lose Richard, then we are all lost."

She went on in a soft voice, making Nicci feel as if the trap were finally closing around her. "You yourself know his central importance-that is why you put the boxes of Orden in play in his name. You know that he is the only one who can lead us in this battle. You know that without him the Sisters of the Dark will unleash the Keeper of the underworld. Without Richard to stop them they will unleash death upon life itself. They will end the world of life. They will take us into the Great Void.

"Without Richard we are all lost," she said again, as if hammering the final nail into a coffin.

Nicci swallowed back the lump in her throat. "Richard wouldn't ever abandon us."

"Maybe not intentionally. But if he goes into this battle alone, having lost love and hope, he may make the kind of decisions that he wouldn't make if he held in his care the heart of a woman he loved. That love could be the stitch that holds the whole thing together, holds him together.

"That kind of love can be the single thing, the only thing, that keeps a man from giving up when he has no strength to go on."

"That all may be true, but it still does not give you the right to decide his heart."

"Nicci, I don't think-"

"What are we fighting for, if not the sanctity of life?"

"I am fighting for the sanctity of life."

"Are you? Are you really? Your whole life has been devoted to molding others to what you wanted, not to what they wanted. While it might not be out of a hatred for the good, it certainly has been out of your notion of how others ought to live, and what they should live for. You molded novices into Sisters so that they could serve in the duty you assigned them. You used Sisters to shape young men into wizards who would likewise follow what you believe the Creator wants.

"Everyone you've had control over has been forced to your vision of how they ought to live their lives and what beliefs they must follow. You rarely let people make reasoned choices for themselves. You often didn't allow them to learn about life; you instead told them what aspects of it mattered and how they would live it. The only partial exception that I know of is Verna, when you sent her away for twenty years.

"You have been planning Richard's life for hundreds of years before he was even born. You laid out plans for how he must live out his existence- his only life. You, Annalina Aldurren, based on your own interpretation of what you read into prophecy, decided how Richard would spend his existence in the world of life. Now you are planning his emotions for him. You've probably even planned his place in the spirit world.

"You imprisoned Nathan nearly his whole life, even though he spent centuries helping you to your ends. Even though you came to love him, you condemned him to a life of imprisonment for the crime of what you feared he might possibly do.

"Ann, what are we fighting for, if it is not the ability to live our own lives? You simply can't decide what others will do or not do. You can't set yourself up as the good version of Jagang, the flip side of the same coin."

Ann blinked in sincere surprise. "Is that what you think I'm doing?"

"Aren't you? You're deciding Richard's life for him now the same as you did before he was even born. It's his life. He loves Kahlan. What good is his life to him if he can't have sovereignty over his own heart, if he must do as you say? Who are you to decide that he must abandon what he wants most and instead love me?

"How could I be the kind of woman he really could love if I were to manipulate him in the way you want? If I did what you ask I would automatically invalidate any emotions I created in him, make a sham of any such feelings."

Ann looked disheartened. "But I don't want you to love him against your will. I only want what is best for you as well."