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Berdine looked skeptical. “What reasons?”
Verna shrugged. “Sometimes books with incomplete prophecy, such as these here, have blank places left in them to provide room for future prophets to finish the prophecy.”
Berdine planted her fists on her hips. “Fine, but answer me one question. When I look through this book I recall the things I’m reading. I may not understand most of it, but I remember it in a general sense, remember reading these passages. So why is it that I can’t remember a single thing about the sections that are missing from the book?”
“The simple explanation is that you don’t recall anything of the blank sections because they are simply that, blank places, as I said, that were left in the book by the person who made the copy.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I mean, I recall the general nature of the prophecies—the length of them. As a gifted person you would be more attuned to what you’re reading. I wouldn’t. Since I never really understood these prophecies, I instead remember more of the way they looked. I remember how long they were. These are no longer complete. I didn’t understand them, and I remember how long they seemed and how hard it was to make sense of such long prophecies.”
“When something is hard to understand it always seems longer than it really is.”
“No.” Berdine screwed up her face with conviction. “That’s not it.” She turned to the last prophecy and tapped the page. “This one here is only a page long followed by a number of blank pages. I can’t say that I remember the others so well, but for some reason I paid more attention to the last one. I’m telling you, I remember that this one for sure was a lot longer. I can’t swear to how long the others were, or how long this one is supposed to be, but I do know for certain that this last one, at least, was more than a page. It wasn’t incomplete, as this one here is, now. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to remember how long it was, or what it said, but I know that it was more than a single page.”
That was the confirmation Verna had been waiting for.
“While most of it makes little sense to me,” Berdine went on, “I do remember this part, this beginning having to do with all the talk about a forked source and the confusing business about going back to a mantic root, and then the ‘splitting the horde that vaunts the Creator’s cause’—that part at least sounds like the Imperial Order—but I can’t recall the rest of it that’s blank after ‘a leader’s lost trust.’
“I’m not imagining it, Verna, I’m not. I can’t say why I’m so sure that the rest of it is missing, but I am. And therein lies what has me so bothered—why is the part that’s missing from the book missing from my memory?”
Verna leaned close and lifted an eyebrow. “Now, that, my dear, is the question that I find troubling.”
Berdine looked startled. “You mean, you know what I’m talking about? You believe me?”
Verna nodded. “I’m afraid so. I didn’t want to plant the seed of suggestion in your mind. I wanted you to confirm my own suspicions.”
“Then this is what Ann was concerned about, what she wanted us to check?”
“It is.” Verna shuffled through the disorderly jumble of books on the sturdy table, finally pulling out the one she wanted. “Look here at this book. This is the one that is perhaps the most troubling to me. Collected Origins is an exceedingly rare prophecy in that it was written entirely in story form. I studied this book before I left the Palace of the Prophets to search for Richard. I practically knew the story by heart.” Verna fanned through the pages. “The book is now entirely blank and I can’t remember a single thing about it except that it had something to do with Richard—exactly what, I have no idea.”
Berdine studied Verna’s eyes the way only a Mord-Sith could study someone’s eyes. “So this is some kind of trouble, and that trouble is a threat to Lord Rahl.”
Verna let out a deep breath. The flames of several of the closer candles fluttered as she did so.
“I’d be lying if I said otherwise, Berdine. While the missing text doesn’t all have to do with Richard, it all pertains to a time after his birth. I don’t have a clue as to the nature of the problem, but I admit that it has me greatly concerned.”
Berdine’s demeanor changed. Usually the woman was the most good-natured of any of the Mord-Sith that Verna knew. Berdine had a kind of simple, childlike glee about the world around her. At times she could be heartwarmingly curious. Despite hardships that had others complaining, Berdine usually wore an unaffected smile.
But at the impression of some kind of threat to Richard, she changed in a flash to all business. And now she had turned as suspicious and coldly menacing as any Mord-Sith ever was.
“What could be the cause of this?” Berdine demanded. “What does it mean?”
Verna closed the book full of blank pages. “I don’t know, Berdine, I really don’t. Ann and Nathan are as puzzled as we are—and Nathan is a prophet.”
“What does that part about people losing trust in their leader mean?”
For an ungifted person, Berdine had managed to single out the most crucial part of a very oblique prophecy.
“Well,” Verna said, cautiously framing her answer, “it could mean a number of things. It’s hard to tell.”
“Maybe hard for me, but not hard for you.”
Verna cleared her throat. “I’m not an expert in prophecy, you understand, but I think it has something to do with Richard.”
“I know that much. Why would this prophecy talk about people losing trust in him?”
“Berdine, prophecy is rarely as straightforward as it seems.” Verna wished the woman would stop staring at her. “What it seems to say usually has nothing at all to do with the actual event involved in the body of the prophecy.”
“Prelate, this prophecy seems to me to suggest that questions of soundness of mind are going to be the cause of ‘a leader’s lost trust.’ Since this prophecy names the leader as the one opposed to the horde that vaunts the Creator’s cause—that would be the Imperial Order—that means it has to be talking about Lord Rahl. It then follows that Lord Rahl is the leader in whom people will lose trust. It comes after the part about the splitting of the horde, which the Order has now done. That makes the threat imminent.”
Verna felt sorry for anyone who ever made the unfortunate mistake of underestimating Berdine.
“It is my experience that prophecy sometimes tends to fret over Richard like a doting grandparent.”
“This sounds to me like a specific threat.”
Verna folded her hands before herself. “Berdine, you are a very smart woman, so I hope you can understand why it would be a grave mistake for me to argue or even discuss this prophecy with you. Prophecy is beyond the mind of the ungifted. It has little to do with how smart a person is. Prophecy is a creation of the gifted and meant only for those who are gifted in the same way. They are not even intended for other types of wizards.
“Even us Sisters, talented sorceresses though we may be, had to train for years before we were allowed to even look at prophecy, much less work with it. It is exceedingly dangerous for the untrained to hazard guesses at the meaning of prophecy. You may recognize the words, but you do not recognize the meaning of those words.”
“That’s silly. Words are words. They have meaning. That is how we can understand the world around us. Why would prophecy take words that mean something and use them for some other unknown meaning?”
Verna felt as if she were stepping gingerly through a field of bear traps. “That isn’t exactly what I meant by what I said. Words can be used to make people understand, to explain, to veil, and to interpret the world, but they can also be used to explain things that are only speculation. If I foretell that dark times will come into your life, those words may be true, but it could mean that you will suffer a loss that will sadden you, or it could mean that you will be murdered. Though the words might be true, their exact meaning is not yet known. It would be a grave injustice to use those words as a reason to st
art killing everyone around you because the words made you fear you would be murdered.
“Wars have started over such misunderstandings about prophecy. People have died as the result of the untrained hearing what they think are the simple words of prophecy. That is why the books of prophecy were kept in secure vaults below the Palace of the Prophets.”
“These books of prophecy are not kept in vaults.”
Verna’s brow drew down as she leaned toward the Mord-Sith. “Perhaps they should be.”
“Are you saying that I’m wrong in what I believe this prophecy says?”
Verna heaved another sigh. “Right or wrong is impossible to discern in this instance. We can’t even begin to intelligently dissect this prophecy because it’s incomplete. We have here only the beginning of it and then a number of blank pages.”
“So?”
“So, it could be just as you say, that it’s about Richard and people will question his judgment and lose faith in him, but maybe the missing text says that the issue will be resolved the next day by some other event of consequence and they will think more of him than they ever had before. Not only can prophecy be forked, meaning that it may be an either-or kind of statement, but the same prophecy could mean opposite things.”
“I don’t see how it can mean opposite things. And how could something happen in the missing text of this prophecy to change people’s minds?”
Verna shrugged as she gazed around the vast, dimly lit library, trying to think of an example. “Well, say that they thought his battle plan was crazy. Maybe the army officers think it ill advised. That could be something that would result in this prophecy, in people losing faith in him. Then, say that, despite the advice of officers, Richard insists and so, despite their doubts and lack of faith, the soldiers follow his plan as ordered and achieve a victory that they never thought they could win. Their faith in Richard as their leader would be restored and they would probably have even more respect for his judgment than they ever did before.
“But if the prophecy were to be acted upon without understanding its true meaning, those actions very well could countermand the rest of the event as it would have taken place naturally and give the illusion that the prophecy had been fulfilled, but in fact the real and truly prophesied events had been bypassed by foolishly invoking a misinterpretation of the actual prophecy.”
Berdine, watching Verna the whole time, drew her single brown braid through a loose fist. “I guess that could make sense.”
“You see, Berdine, why prophecy is so confusing, even for those of us trained in it? But to make matters worse, without the whole prophecy we dare not even begin to try understand them or to assign any significance to them. The complete text is indispensable if one is to even begin to try to understand prophecy. Without all the text it’s as if prophecy has gone blind. That’s one reason why this is so disturbing.”
“One reason?” Berdine looked up again, still running her braid through her fist. “What is the other reason?”
