Faith of the Fallen

Despite the cold, beads of sweat dotted Ann's brow. "What in the name of Creation are you talking about? Kahlan, you know me. I was at your wedding. I have always been on your side. I have only followed the prophecies to help people."

"You create the prophecies! Without your help they would not have come to pass! They only come about because you have fulfilled them! You pull the ring through Richard's nose!"

Ann presented a face of calm to the stone of Kahlan's rage.

"Kahlan, I can only imagine how you must feel, but now you are truly losing all sense of reason."

"Am I? Am I, Prelate? Why does Sister Nicci have my husband? Answer me.

Why! +

Ann's expression drew tight in a darkening glower. "Because she is evil."

"No." Kahlan's grip tightened on Alessandra's throat. "It's because of you. Had you not sent Verna into the New World in the first place, ordering her to take Richard back across the barrier into the Old World-"

"But the prophecies say the Order will rise up to take the world and extinguish magic if we fail to stop them! The prophecies say Richard is the only one to lead us! That Richard is the only one with a chance!"

"And you brought that dead prophecy to life. All by yourself. All because of your faith in bloodless words rather than your own reasoned choices. You're here today not to back the choices of your proclaimed leader, not to reason with him. but to enforce prophecy upon him-to give that ring a tug. Had you not sent Verna to recover Richard, what would have happened, Prelate?"

"Why, why, the Order-"

"The Order? The Order would still be trapped back in the Old World, behind the barrier. Wouldn't they! For three thousand years that wizard-created barrier has stood invincible against the pressure of the Order-or those like them-and their wish to swarm up here into the New World, bent on conquest.

"Because you had Richard captured, against his will, and ordered him brought back to the Old World, all in slavish homage to dead words in dusty old books, he was forced to destroy the barrier, and thus the Order now can flood into the New World, into the Midlands, my Midlands, slaughtering my people, taking my husband, all because of you and your meddling!

"Without you, none of this would be happening! No war, no mounds of butchered people in cities of the New World, no thousands of dead men, women, and children slaughtered at the hands of Imperial Order thugs-none of it!

"Because of you and your precious prophecies, the veil was breached and a plague was unleashed on the world. It would never have happened without your actions to 'save' us all from prophecy. I don't even dare to recall all the children I saw suffering and dying from the black death because of you.

Children who looked up into my eyes and asked if they would be all right, and I had to say yes when I knew they would not survive the night.

"No one will ever know the tally of the dead. No one is left to remember all the small places wiped out of existence by that plague. Without your meddling, those children would be alive, their mothers would be smiling to themselves as they watched them play, their fathers would be teaching them the ways of the world-a world denied them by you for the sake of your faith in prophecy!

"You say this is a battle for the very existence of magic in this world-yet your work to fulfill prophecy may have already doomed magic.

Without your intervention, the chimes would never have come to be loosed upon the world. Yes, Richard managed to banish them, but what irreversible harm was done? We may have our power back, bent during the time the chimes withdrew magic from this world, crea tures of magic, things dependent on magic for their very existence, surely died out. Magic requires balance to exist. The balance of magic in this world was disturbed. The irrevocable destruction of magic may have already begun. All because of your slavish service to prophecy.

"If not for you, Prelate, Jagang, the Imperial Order's army, and all your Sisters would be back there, behind the barrier, and we would be here, safe and at peace. You cast blame everywhere but where it belongs. If freedom, if magic, if the world itself is destroyed, it will all be by your hand, Prelate."

The low moan of the wind was the only sound and made the sudden silence all that much more agonizing. Ann stared with tear-filled eyes up at Kahlan.

Snow sparkled in the rays of a cold dawn.

"It isn't like that, Kahlan. It only seems that way to you in your pain."

"It is that way," Kahlan said with finality.

Ann's mouth worked, but this time no words came out.

Kahlan thrust out her hand, palm up.

"The journey book. If you think I would not destroy this woman's life, then you don't know the first thing about me. She's one of your Sisters, helping to destroy the world in the name of good, or else she is still one of the Keeper's Sisters, helping to destroy the world in the name of death.

Either way, if you don't give me the journey book, and right now, her life is forfeit."