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Richard turned to see her standing there before him. Her green eyes sparkled. She wore her special smile that she wore for no other.
Richard stood frozen, one hand still gripping the sword so hard that he could feel the word TRUTH pressing into his hand.
Kahlan stepped close, slipping an arm around his neck. “Richard, I love you.”
Richard circled an arm around her waist, his feelings overwhelming him.
“I don’t understand. It wouldn’t work if the sterile field was breached with foreknowledge.”
“I was protected,” she said with a crooked smile.
Richard frowned. “Protected? How?”
“I had already fallen in love with you all over again. I didn’t need a sterile field. I think that from the first moment I saw you in that cage as it rolled into the Order’s camp I started falling in love with you. In everything you did, you revealed just what kind of man you are—the man I fell in love with so long ago, the man I married in the Mud People’s village.
“When you gave me that carving of Spirit, it confirmed everything I had come to know all over again.
“Art reveals the artist’s inner self. Art reveals a man’s ideals, what he values. Anyone with that much reverence, that much passion for the nobility of the human spirit, could only be a man who shares my passion for life.”
Richard smiled as he felt a tear roll down his cheek. “I went to the underworld to get the memories taken by the Subtractive Magic of Chainfire. There, I learned that the core of those memories could only be restored if you accepted them of your own free will. I put them into that carving.
“When you accepted it, you accepted everyone’s memories. You broke the Chainfire spell that had taken so much from so many. By being so willing to embrace all that is good, to value the beauty of life and hold it to your heart, you gave everyone back their memories.”
She gazed into his eyes for the longest moment.
And then he kissed his wife, the woman he loved, the woman who meant everything to him. The woman who loved him.
The woman he had gone to the underworld and back for.
As he lost himself in that kiss, as her arms tightened around him, he pulled the Sword of Truth from the box of Orden, closing the gateway for all time.
When Richard finally opened his eyes, the world had returned. Zedd was standing nearby, watching them, grinning.
“Zedd,” Richard said, blinking at all the others also there.
“No need to apologize, my boy.”
“I wasn’t apologizing.”
Zedd gestured for them to continue. “Well, you have a right to kiss your wife after all this time. I always knew that you two belonged together for all time.
“I just wish it hadn’t taken you so long to figure all this out.”
Richard scowled at his grandfather. “Sorry to have inconvenienced you. Maybe you should have taught me a little better in the beginning and it wouldn’t have taken me so long.”
Zedd shrugged. “I must have been a good teacher—you got it all right.”
“Richard,” Nathan said as he stepped forward. “Do you realize what you have just done?”
Richard glanced around. “Well, I believe so.”
“You just fulfilled prophecy!”
Richard skeptically cocked his head at the prophet. “What prophecy?”
“The prophecy about the great void!”
Richard made a face. “But I just saved us from the great void you warned us was the threat in prophecy.”
Nathan threw his arms up in excitement. “No, no, don’t you see? You just created a world where magic doesn’t exist. That’s why prophecy sees that other world as a void—because prophecy can’t see into a world without magic! Prophecy was actually predicting what you would do. When you split the worlds, that was the fork in prophecy. The great void is prophecy’s prediction of that other world.”
Richard sighed. “If you say so, Nathan.”
“I don’t understand something,” Zedd said. “How did you know that the Sword of Truth was the key to opening the boxes of Orden? I mean, you knew that The Book of Counted Shadows couldn’t be the real key because Orden predated the existence of the Confessors. But Orden also predated the Sword of Truth. How could it be the key?”
“The sword protected my mind from the Chainfire spell because the boxes of Orden are the counter to the Chainfire spell, and the Sword of Truth—or, more correctly, the magic invested in it—is the key to the boxes, so it’s part of Orden. That was the spark of insight that made me realize that the sword is the key—because I was holding it when the Sisters ignited the spell, it protected my memories of Kahlan, and the sword interrupted the ongoing effects of the spell for those who touched it.”
Zedd planted his hands on his hips. “But the sword was created after Orden.”
“That was a trick.”
“A trick!”
“What better way to protect something of such profound power than with a trick, rather than a complex, extravagant construction of magic, like everyone thought of The Book of Counted Shadows.
“After all, a trick, if properly done, is magic.” Richard smiled. “You taught me that, remember? That’s what the wizards back then did. The whole thing with The Book of Counted Shadows was a trick to disguise the real key: the Sword of Truth. The sword was invested with the magic to unlock Orden; the book was a ruse, a trick, to send everyone off track.
“The true key—the sword—has elements of magic that complete the constructed magic of Orden. The sword contains those necessary elements—magic invested in it by hundreds of wizards. The sword may have been created later, but the magic invested in it was the magic created by the same wizards who created Orden. It was right under everyone’s nose all the time.
“That was the reason that the Sword of Truth has always been the responsibility of the First Wizard. It was beyond priceless.
“You, Zedd, were a proper caretaker for the sword. You found the right person for it, the right person to be the true Seeker of Truth.
“The reason it was so important to find the right person to be the Seeker is because only that kind of person, with the love of life and empathy for others, would be able to turn the blade white. Only that person, when touching it to the correct box, could have turned the blade white.
“Only a true Seeker of Truth can use the Sword of Truth and thus the power of Orden.
“It’s tied in to the admonition at the beginning of The Book of Life that says ‘Those who have come here to hate should leave now, for they only betray themselves.’ The Sword of Truth requires compassion to work. Hate will not turn the blade white—only compassion will. That is the final fail-safe for Orden. At the same time, it works this way in order to be the key to the boxes of Orden.
“You can’t use hate to make Orden work. Hate is not a part of the solution. The Book of Life warns of that very thing. Once you grasp the concept, it’s all pretty simple.”
“Yes, I can see how simple it is,” Zedd muttered to himself as he poked a finger through his thatch of unruly white hair to scratch his scalp.
Nathan snapped his fingers as he turned to Zedd. “Now I also understand that other prophecy.”
Zedd looked up. “Which one?”
Nathan leaned close. “You remember: ‘Someday, someone born not of this world will have to save it.’ Now it makes more sense.”
Zedd frowned. “Not to me.”
Nathan flicked a hand. “Well, we’ll have to work out the details later.”
Zedd turned an intent look on Richard. “There are a lot of questions remaining, a lot to understand. As First Wizard I need to know everything so I can tell if you got all the particulars correct. What if you made some sort of miscalculation in some aspect of it? We need to know if—”
“There was no time,” Richard said, cutting him off. “Sometimes one has only an instant to do something, and in such circumstances every eventuality can’t be considered or addressed. In that cusp of opportuni
ty not every circumstance can be recognized, much less planned for or dealt with.
“Sometimes it’s more important to seize the chance and do what you can, even knowing that it won’t likely account for everything, every problem, than it is to do nothing.
“Only later can one go over the what-ifs and should-haves.
