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“Are you out of your mind?” he asked, the heat rising in his voice as his legs stiffened.
“Zedd…” She took a step closer. “I had to.”
He couldn’t even make himself blink. “You had to? You had to?”
“Yes. I had to. It’s the only way.”
“The only way for what! The only way to end the world? The only way to destroy life itself?”
“No. The only way to give us a chance to survive. You know what the world is coming to. You know what the Imperial Order is going to do—what they are on the verge of doing. The world is at the brink. Mankind is staring into a thousand years of darkness at best. At worst, mankind may never again emerge into the light.
“You know that we are approaching paths in prophecy beyond which everything goes dark. Nathan has told you of those branches leading to a great void beyond which there is nothing. We stand staring into that void.”
“And have you ever thought that what you have just done very well might be the cause of it—the very thing that takes mankind, all life, into that void of extinction?”
“Sister Ulicia has already put the boxes of Orden in play. Do you think she and her Sisters of the Dark care about life? They work to unleash the Keeper of the underworld. If she succeeds, the world of life is doomed. You know what the boxes are, you know their power, you know what will happen if she is the one to rule the power of Orden.”
“But that doesn’t mean—”
“We have no choice.” Her gaze didn’t waver. “I had to.”
“And do you have any idea how to invoke Orden? How to command the boxes? How to know the correct box?”
“No, not yet,” she admitted.
“You don’t even have the other two!”
“We have a year to get them,” she said with calm determination. “We have a year from the first day of winter. A year from today.”
Zedd lifted his hands in fury and frustration. “Even if we could find them, you think that you would somehow be able to command the power of Orden? You think you can wield the power of Orden?”
“Not me,” she said in a near whisper.
Zedd cocked his head, unsure he had actually heard what he thought he’d heard. His suspicion flared into hot dread.
“What do you mean, not you? You just said that you put the boxes in play.”
Nicci stepped closer. She laid a hand gently on his forearm.
“When I opened the gateway I was asked to name the player. I named Richard. I put the boxes of Orden in play on behalf of Richard.”
Zedd stood thunderstruck.
He wanted to strike her dead.
He wanted to strangle her. He wanted to rip her limb from limb.
“You named Richard?”
She nodded. “It was the only way.”
Zedd ran the fingers of both hands back into his unruly thatch of wavy white hair, holding his head for fear it might come apart.
“The only way? Bags, woman! Are you out of your mind?”
“Zedd, calm down. I know it’s a surprise, but this is hardly a whim. I’ve thought it through. Believe me, I’ve thought it all through. If we are to survive, if those who care about life are to survive, if there is to be a chance for life, if there is to be a chance for a future, then this is the only way.”
Zedd dropped heavily into one of the chairs at the table. Before he did something beyond retrieval, before he reacted out of blind rage, he told himself that he must keep his head. He tried to touch on all he knew about the boxes and what was happening, tried to remind himself of all the desperate things he’d had to do in his life. He tried to see it from her perspective.
He couldn’t.
“Nicci, Richard doesn’t know how to use his gift.”
“He will have to find a way.”
“He doesn’t know anything about the boxes of Orden!”
“We will have to teach him.”
“We don’t know enough about the boxes of Orden. We don’t know for sure which is the correct Book of Counted Shadows. Only the correct book works as the key to the boxes!”
“We will have to sort that out.”
“Dear spirits, Nicci, we don’t even know where Richard is!”
“We know that the witch woman tried to capture him in the sliph and failed. We know from what Rachel told us that Six apparently cut Richard off from his gift by drawing spells in the sacred caves in Tamarang. Rachel says that Six lost him when he was captured by the Imperial Order. For all we know, by now he may have escaped them as well and be on his way here. If not, we will have to find him.”
Zedd couldn’t seem to find a way to make her see and understand all that stood in their way. “What you’re suggesting is impossible!”
She smiled then, a sad smile. “A wizard I know and respect, a wizard who taught Richard to be the man he is, also taught him to think of the solution, not the problem. Such advice has always served him well.”
Zedd was having none of it. He shot to his feet. “You had no right to do such a thing, Nicci. You have no right to decide this for his life. You had no right to name Richard to this!”
Her smile vanished to reveal the iron beneath. “I know Richard. I know how he fights for life. I know what it means to him. I know that there is nothing he would not do to preserve the value of life. I know that if he knew all the things I know, he would have wa
nted me to do as I have done.”
“Nicci, you don’t—”
“Zedd,” she said in a commanding tone of voice that cut him off, “I asked you if you trusted Richard with your life, with all life. You said that you did. Those words have meaning. You did not hem and haw, qualifying the bounds of your trust. Trusting someone with your life is as unequivocal as trust can be.
“Richard is the only one who can lead us in the final battle. While Jagang and the Order might be part of it, the battle over the power of Orden is the final battle. The Sisters of the Dark who command those boxes will make it so. One way or another, they will make sure of it. The only way Richard can lead us is for him to have the boxes in play. In that way, he truly is the fulfillment of prophecy: fuer grissa ost drauka—the bringer of death.
“But this is more than prophecy. Prophecy only expresses what we already know, that Richard is the one who has been leading us in defending the values we hold dear, the values that promote life.
“Richard himself named the terms of the engagement when he spoke to the D’Haran troops. As the Lord Rahl, the leader of the D’Haran Empire, he told those men how the war would be fought from now on: All or nothing.
“This can be no different. Richard is true to the core and would not expect everyone else to do what he himself would not do. He is the heart of all we believe. He would not betray us.
“We are now in it all the way. It now truly is all or nothing.”
Zedd threw his arms up. “But naming Richard the player is not the only way he can lead this battle, not the only way for him to succeed—but it very well might instead be the cause of him failing. What you have done could lead us all to ruin.”
Nicci’s blue eyes filled with the kind of conviction, resolve, and rage that told him she might reduce him to ash if he stood in the way of what she believed was necessary. For the first time he was seeing Death’s Mistress as those who stood in her way, stood before her full fury, saw her.
