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As the night wore on, the lines of the spell built around the box—in some ways like the Chainfire verification web, with lines that glowed green. But others were a pure white, while yet others were constructed of Subtractive elements and they were blacker than black, looking like nothing so much as voids in the world where the lines belonged, like slits looking into the underworld.
When Nicci completed the last incantation, she finally heard the whisper of Orden itself, confirmation that she had done everything properly. Yet it was not so much a voice as a force that formed the concept in her mind.
The power is open, it whispered through the darkness, in words that felt like ice cracking.
"I call upon this time, this place, this world to turn with this play of the boxes of Orden."
Name the player.
Nicci placed her hands on the dead black box before her.
"The player is Richard Rahl," she said. "Heed his will. Do his bidding if he proves worthy, kill him if he does not, destroy us all if he fails us."
It is done. From this moment forward the power of Orden is in play by Richard Rahl.
Prophecy said, "If fuer grissa ost drauka does not lead this final battle, then the world, already standing at the brink of darkness, will fall under that terrible shadow."
Nicci had come to realize that if Richard was to win, he must be the one leading them in this final battle. The only way to lead was for him to have the boxes in play. In that way, he truly would be the fulfillment of prophecy: fuer grissa ost drauka—the bringer of death.
Prophecy said that they had to follow Richard, but it was more than prophecy. Prophecy only expressed the formality of what Nicci knew, that Richard embodied the values that promoted life.
They weren't really following prophecy; prophecy was following Richard.
This was the ultimate following of Richard, following him in what he did with the boxes of Orden, in what he did with life and death itself. This was the ultimate test of who he was, who he would be, who he would become.
Richard himself had named the terms of the engagement when he spoke to the D'Haran troops, telling them how the war would be fought from now on: all or nothing.
This could be no different.
It now truly was all or nothing.
Ulicia and her Sisters of the Dark had likewise opened the gateway to the power of Orden. The struggle was now truly in balance. If Nicci was right about Richard, and she knew she was, then two forces now properly were engaged in the struggle that would decide it all.
If fuer grissa ost drauka does not lead this final battle, then the world, already standing at the brink of darkness, will fall under that terrible shadow.
They had to trust in Richard in that struggle. For that reason Nicci had to put the boxes of Orden into play in Richard's name. The Sisters of the Dark no longer were the exclusive arbiters of the power of Orden. In that sense, Nicci had just put Richard into play, giving him the ability to win this struggle.
Without what she had just done, he could not win, much less survive.
Nicci seemed to drift in a world apart. When she finally opened her eyes, the storm had ended.
The first rays of light were just touching the windows.
It was dawn, on the first day of winter.
Richard had one year to open the correct box.
Everyone's life was now in his hands.
Nicci trusted Richard with her life. She had just entrusted everyone's life to him.
If she couldn't trust Richard, then life wasn't worth living.
Be sure to look for the next and concluding book in the Sword of Truth series.
