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"For me? Are you sure that they were really meant for me, specifically?"
"Why do you think that there as so many prophecies that speak of you, that wait for you, that name you—'the one born true,' 'the pebble in the pond,' 'the bringer of death,' 'the Caharin'? Why do you think those prophecies that revolve around you came about? Why do you think that you have been able to understand some of them when no one else for centuries, for millennia, has been able to decipher them? Why do you think that you have fulfilled others?"
"But that doesn't mean that it was explicitly meant to be me."
With an indifferent gesture, his mother declined to either support or deny his assertion. "Who is to say what came first, the Subtractive side finally finding a child to be born in, or it finally finding the specific child it was meant to be born in. Prophecy needs a kernel to spark its growth. Something must be there to engender what will be, even if it is merely the color of your eyes that has been passed down to you. Something must make it come about. In this case, is it chance or intent?"
"I would like to think a chance series of events."
"If it pleases you. But at this point, Richard, does it really matter? You are the one born with the ability that Baraccus released from its confinement in another world. You are the one he intended to be born, either by chance or specific intent. In the end, the only thing that matters is what is: you are the one born with that ability."
Richard supposed that she was right; exactly how it came to be didn't change what was.
His mother sighed as she went on with the story. "Anyway, it was only then, after he had made his preparations for what he had insured would come about, that Baraccus emerged from his enclave and leaped to his death. Those who wrote the accounts did not know that he had already been back long enough to send his wife on an urgent covert mission. She returned to discover that he was dead."
Richard's head spun. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. He felt dizzy from the unexpected account of ancient events. He knew, though, from having been to the Temple of the Winds, that such things were possible. He had given up the knowledge that he had gained there as the price of returning to the world of life. Even though he'd lost that knowledge, he was left with a sense of how profound it had been. The one who had demanded the price of leaving behind what he had learned in exchange for his return to Kahlan had been the spirit of Darken Rahl, his real father.
"In her grief, Magda Searus volunteered herself to be the subject of a dangerous experiment that Merritt had come up with, volunteered to become a Confessor. She knew there was a good chance that she would not live through the unknown hazards of that conjuring, but in her grief, with her beloved husband, the First Wizard, dead, her world had ended. She didn't think that there was anything for her to live for, other than finding out who was responsible for the fateful events that had resulted in her husband's death, so she volunteered for what everyone expected might very well be a fatal experiment.
"Yet she survived. It was only much later that she began to fall in love with Merritt, and he with her. Her world came back to life with him. The accounts of that time are in spots blurred, with pieces missing or misplaced in the chronology of events, but the truth is that Merritt was her second husband."
Richard had to sit down on the marble bench. It was almost too much to take in. The implications were staggering. He had trouble reconciling the coincidences: that he had been the first in thousands of years to be born with Subtractive Magic, that Baraccus had been the last one to go to the Temple of the Winds until Richard himself, that Baraccus had been married to a woman who became the first Confessor, that Richard had fallen in love with and married a Confessor—the Mother Confessor herself, Kahlan.
"When Magda Searus used her newborn Confessor power on Lothain, they discovered what he had done at the Temple of the Winds, what only Baraccus had known."
Richard looked up. "What did he do?"
His mother gazed into his eyes as if she were looking into his soul. "Lothain betrayed them when he was at the Temple by seeing to it that a very specific magic that had been locked away there would at some future point be released into the world of life. Emperor Jagang was born with the power that Lothain allowed to seep out of the safety of its confinement in another world. That magic was the power of a dream walker."
"But why would Lothain, the head prosecutor, do such a thing? After all, he had seen to it that the Temple team was executed for the damage they had done."
"Lothain had probably come to believe, as did the enemy in the Old World, that magic should be eliminated from the race of man. I guess his zealotry found a new fixation: he imagined himself as savior of mankind. To that end he insured the return of a dream walker to the world of life, to purge the world of magic.
"For some reason, Baraccus was unable to seal the breach created by Lothain, unable to undo the treason. He did the next best thing. He saw to it that there would be a balance, a counter, to the damage done, someone to fight against those forces bent on destroying those with the gift, someone with the required ability.
"That would be you, Richard. Baraccus saw to it that you would be born to counter what had been done by Lothain. That is why you, Richard Rahl, are the only one who can stop the Order."
Richard thought he might be sick. It all made him feel as if he were but a cosmic pawn being used for a hidden purposes, a dupe doing nothing more than playing out the plan for his life contrived by others, performing his predetermined part in a battle across the sweep of millennia.
As if reading his mind, Shota, still looking and sounding for all the world like his mother, laid a compassionate hand on his shoulder. "Baraccus saw to it that there was a balance to counter this damage. He did not preordain how that balance would function or how it would act. He did not take your free will out of the equation, Richard."
"You think not? It seems to me that I'm merely the final piece of this game being put into play at long last. I don't see my free will, my own life, my choice, in any of it. It would seem others have determined my path."
"I don't think that is true, Richard. You might say that what they have done is not unlike training a soldier to fight. That training creates the possibility of accomplishing the goal of winning the battle should a battle come to pass. It doesn't mean that when the battle does comes the soldier won't run away, that he will instead stand and fight, or even that if he does fight to the best of his ability and training that he will win. Baraccus saw to it that you have the potential, Richard, the armor, the weapons, the ability, to fight for your own life and your own world should the need arise, nothing more. He was just giving you a helping hand."
A helping hand sent across the gulf of time. Richard felt drained and confused. He almost felt as if he no longer knew himself, knew who he really was, or how much of his own life was of his own making.
It felt to him as if Baraccus had suddenly materialized out of the dust of ancient bones, a phantom come to haunt Richard's life.
* * *
CHAPTER 20
There was one thing that still nagged at him, one other bit that still didn't make sense. How could the head prosecutor, Lothain, turn on his beliefs, turn on everyone in the New World? It struck Richard as too convenient an explanation that he fell under the power, the allure, of the beliefs of the Old World.
And then it came to him—realization welling up through him in a rush with the power of floodwaters. The substance of it nearly took his breath. Something about the ancient accounts had always bothered him. Shota had stirred his memory of the things that had happened and in so doing all the existing pieces suddenly fell into place. Now he understood what was wrong with the story, what had always bothered him about it. Once he understood, he didn't know why he hadn't realized it long before.
"Lothain was a zealous prosecutor," Richard said, half to himself. It all came out in a rush as he spoke, his eyes wide and unblinking. "He didn't find a new fixation for his zealotry. He didn't turn on them.
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"He wasn't a traitor. He was a spy.
"He had always been a spy. He was like a mole, tunneling ever closer to his objective. Over a long period of time he worked himself into a position of power. He also had accomplices covertly working under him.
"Lothain was a wizard who had become not just widely respected but powerful. With his political power he had access to the highest places. When the opportunity finally presented itself, an opportunity that he had helped engineer, he acted. He saw to it that his co-conspirators were assigned to the Temple team. Just like the Order today, Lothain and his men had a strong faith in their cause. They were the ones who corrupted the mission. It wasn't a change of heart, a misguided act of conscience. It had been planned all along. It was deliberate.
"They were all willing to sacrifice themselves, to die for what they believed was a higher cause. I don't know how many of the team were actually spies, or if all of them were, but the fact is that enough were that they accomplished their goal. It could even be that they convinced the others to go along with them out of a confused sense of moral obligation.
