“Once the power of Regula was sent to this world, imprisoned in that case buried in the People’s Palace, it compressed the future–what we know as prophecy because it hasn’t happened yet–into the now, our present, because to Regula there is no future, no past.
“Regula, being an underworld power, can’t differentiate between today and tomorrow, or today and a year from today. It only knows everything that will happen, the totality of events, but since it’s an underworld power it has no real concept of time, so it doesn’t know when those things will happen, or which one of them will happen for that matter, because everything is in a state of constant flux.
“So, to Regula, when it says the ceiling will fall in, that event has already happened. It’s not predicting, it’s reporting.”
Kahlan folded her arms, squinting, trying to reconcile it in her mind. “That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t understand.”
“Prophecy is a compression of the future into the present. Everything that takes place continually alters the totality of what Regula knows. It contains events without the quality of time. Without time there is no ‘future’ so it is all happening now.
“That’s the specific power that Regula controls: the eternal now.”
Kahlan gave him a look from under her brow. “And that is what the scrolls call it? The ‘eternal now’?”
“Yes. Here it gets more complex, so you need to let me get through this part and then you’ll see how it all fits together.”
Kahlan nodded for him to go on, making an earnest effort to listen with an open mind.
“The underworld is timeless, with everything there in the eternal now, right? But here in this world, where there is time, if you reveal the future, then there really is no future as such. You are pulling the future backward to right now. This is an aspect of the underworld, not the world of life. Prophecy compresses what will happen into what we know right now, into the eternal now. But that is an underworld quality and it doesn’t belong here.”
Richard could apparently see by the look on her face that she was lost, so he came at it a little differently. “In prophecy the future is revealed to us now, right? If we read a prophecy about an event in the future–say a queen having a child–then that future event is pulled backward from its rightful place of where it will happen in the future, back to today. See what I mean? So now, when you read the prophecy, you are reading what will happen, so that future has in a way become real right now. That’s why it’s called the eternal now.
“Without time in the underworld it’s all one long eternal now. Here, though, it’s a perversion of the nature of time in our world. It’s a corrupting element. An underworld element. Here, in this world, future events aren’t supposed to happen now. That is an underworld contamination leaking into our world.
“That’s why I’ve always instinctively hated prophecy–because prophecy is actually a component of the underworld. Prophecy is an element that in its natural state does not contain an element of time. It belongs in the world of the dead where it came from, where there is no time. It is part of death itself. I’ve always instinctively recognized prophecy as carrying death within it.
“The reason I instinctively recognized that, is because I’m the one.”
Kahlan tilted her head toward him. “The one. You mean, the pebble in the pond?”
“Yes. The balance to prophecy is free will. Now we can understand for the first time exactly why. Acting on free will preempts that eternal now by pulling the future away from the eternal now, pulling timelessness away from it by canceling the prediction with the use of free will–human choice.
“Free choice is the counter to prophecy. It’s a living aspect, the balance to the dead aspect of prophecy. Prophecy is an element of the world of the dead, while free will is an element of the world of life.
“The wrinkle in this spectral fold was created by events long ago, but in the underworld those thousands of years are in the eternal now. So, the spectral fold–the star shift–initiated by my igniting the power of Orden does not simply ripple through space with the spectral folds, it ripples through time.”
Kahlan gestured to the desk. “But all those things you did to trigger these events were predicted in prophecy and written in these scrolls.”
Richard gave her a cunning smile. “Of course they were. Sulachan sent the prophecy to this world, through prophets in this world, so that they would write it in the scrolls, so that Hannis Arc would read it and initiate it all by putting the boxes of Orden in play. It is all part of Sulachan’s grand plan. He began laying the groundwork for it when he was still alive.
“You see, at some point long past, before Sulachan ever came along, the good spirits in the underworld, knowing the danger, wanted to protect the power of Regula from being misused, so they sent the power to this world and hid it for safekeeping–or so they thought.
“But because Regula is part of the eternal now, and exists in that eternal now, there is no accurate way of telling exactly when Regula actually appeared here in this world. What those spirits didn’t know when they sent it here was that this power created a breach between worlds, allowing prophecy to cross over through it from that world. Without Regula being there in the underworld to contain it, prophecy continued to leak through the veil along the lines of the Grace.”
“So then,” she said, “those good spirits didn’t actually do the good thing they thought. By sending Regula here they created a terrible problem.”
Richard shrugged. “They exist in the eternal now, where all possible futures exist. Perhaps they saw a future gaining strength that was more terrible and more dangerous than we can imagine, so they hid Regula in this world to choke off that terrible future. For all we know, had they not done so, maybe the world of life would have ended thousands and thousands of years ago.
“Anyway, for whatever reasons those good spirits had at the time, Regula was sent here to this world. Because of it being part of the eternal now, it doesn’t behave the way we would expect something here to behave so there is no way of knowing precisely when it actually came into being in this world.
“What is known, though, is that sometime later, after it was already rooted here in this world, Sulachan found out about it and he sparked its power, using it to ignite a firestorm of prophecy flooding into this world. All the thousands of books of prophecy written since the great war that we’ve found in libraries are the flames of that conflagration, a hidden, smoldering part of Sulachan’s plan. This is how he brought the House of Rahl and then Hannis Arc into his web to help him in his struggle.
“Wizards came along–prophets–who tapped into this stream of prophecy flowing along the lines of the Grace and, thinking they were doing good, channeled these predictions which unbeknownst to them were flooding through the veil from the underworld. Without knowing it, they were tapping into the eternal now and poisoning our world with underworld power.
“As long as Regula is in this world, as long as it lives, it will continue to poison this world with prophecy.”
CHAPTER
30
Kahlan rubbed her arms against the chill of beginning to grasp the enormity of what Richard had discovered. It was all so overwhelming that it was making her feel very small and insignificant, as if she were but a speck of dust in the vast universe. She supposed that was all she really was.
“I almost hate to say it, Richard, but it’s starting to make sense. It touches on vague doubts I’ve always had–things that just never seemed right. For the first time in my life, all of these doubts and questions are starting to make sense.”
“Good, I’m relieved that you get this much of it because there is more, and understanding this foundation will help with the rest.” Richard took a breath before going on. “The underworld is not touched by Creation, so it is not created. Rather, it is chaos in free form. You might say, since it is death, it is the opposite of Creation. It is anti-Creation. It is neither good nor bad. It has no integral nature
to define it. It has no inherent order. It is merely a timeless void that is, in a way, shaped by the souls that exist there.
“Prophecy, being a power partly involving certain elements of the Grace, is expressed by the souls in the underworld existing in the eternal now. Touched by the Grace from the moment they came into being, they continue to be connected to it even as they cross over through the veil. That’s how the spirits, the souls of the dead, who exist in a world where prophecy is all part of their eternal now, channel it back through prophets in the world of life. It follows those lines of the Grace that cross worlds separated by the veil.
“Some of those souls are good, some evil, some brilliant, some fools–just as they were in life. Our souls, you see, are the sum total of who we are–good, evil, brilliant, or fools. That means prophecy is the product of both brilliant and ignorant souls, good and bad souls, choosing those things in the homogeneous soup of the eternal now which fit their inherent nature. They gravitate toward those outcomes which their soul embraces. It all mixes together into the prophecy that becomes the power of Regula.
“That collective intellect pooled–the web of life and the spirits–creates what the celestial scrolls call the time wave of prophecy. All of the predictions are true, but all can’t be.”
Kahlan wiped a hand back across her face. “If it can’t all be true, then how is it resolved?”
“It isn’t. That’s the point. In the eternal now of the underworld it doesn’t matter–it’s all part of the homogeneous soup of the eternal now–but here it all spins out of control and collapses. It’s one of the powers that doesn’t belong in this world–it’s incongruous–but it is leaking through the veil because the veil is weakened by the spectral fold.
“What’s called the Twilight Count measures this degradation of the veil.”
Kahlan cocked her head. “The Twilight Count? That measures how much the veil is weakening?”
“Yes, that’s right. The Twilight Count was begun, like turning over an hourglass, by the initiation of the star shift of the spectral fold. You could say that the Twilight Count is the sand in that grand celestial hourglass counting down our existence.
“The death of this world through the spectral fold degrading the veil will devour the world of existence and thus our souls. Prophecy is the leper’s bell betraying that open gap between the worlds. The very existence of prophecy is a dire warning that the sands of the Twilight Count are running out. Prophecy is contaminating the nature of time in our world, and that contamination is measured by the Twilight Count.”
Kahlan blinked in alarm. “How much time do we have?”
“To answer that question we would need some kind of zenith formulas called breach calculations from the star shift.”
“You mean to say there was previously one of these star shifts?” she asked. “It’s happened before?”
“Apparently. The scrolls are vague about the previous events, but they mention needing, among other things, templates for occulted celestial charts called seventh-level rift formulas if you are to work out these worldly timelines for this star shift. I haven’t the faintest idea what any of that means, where to find these things, or how to work them if I did.”
Kahlan looked over at the sleeping sorceress draped in the overstuffed chair. “What about Nicci? Would she know, do you think?”
Richard sighed as he shook his head. “She was just as mystified about that part as I was. Except she did say that by the nature of such things she could tell that it would require the use of my gift to work any such calculations. So even if I had the components, I couldn’t make them work. But it really doesn’t make a lot of difference anymore because we know from everything else, such as Sulachan being back in this world and the barrier to the third kingdom being down, that we are rapidly running out of time. What is happening now is an end phase.
“While it seems that prophecy has been here forever, in the stretch of cosmic existence, prophecy has been coming into this world for only a brief twinkling of time. Now that it has, the timeless nature of the underworld is stealing time away from us. Stealing existence from us. Prophecy is the open link that is draining away our free will, our lives, our existence.”
Kahlan snapped her fingers. “That’s what it means when it says you can only save us all by ending prophecy.”
Richard smiled that she saw it. “Exactly. It really means that I need to end prophecy in this world by closing the bridge between worlds that has been opened up.”
“Opened by you.”
“Yes,” Richard conceded. “When I used the power of Orden, that was the initiating phase of everything that was long ago set into motion when Sulachan sent the prophecy out from the world of the dead. The entire thing is tightly woven together with thousands of different threads.” Richard drew a deep breath. “And all of those threads are linked to me.”
Kahlan swept some of her hair back off of her face. “So if you end prophecy, you are really sealing the spectral fold and completing the star shift.”
He nodded again. “Thus letting life begin a new era. That page needs to be turned–life reset. The open conduit of prophecy must be closed. Only in that way can the star shift be complete. When that happens, life will be reset in a new phase. Life will then be able to go on.”
“And without that happening?”
Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. “If I can’t end prophecy then the veil will continue to erode away, which is what Sulachan has been working toward, and everything will be consumed by the chaos of the underworld. Because he has understood all of this and has been able to direct so much of it, Sulachan believes himself to be the master of the underworld, I guess you could say. He thinks this will unite it all into one world–life and death existing together–and he will rule over this new world of souls.
“But what he doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care about, is that when the veil finally fails completely and the worlds come together, everything–even the eternity of the underworld itself–will end. It will be a form of death for everything, except the underworld can’t die, as such, since it’s already dead. So what happens is that everything–the world of life and the world of souls–will simply wink out of existence.”
“How can eternity end?” Kahlan asked. “It’s eternal.”
“Think of it this way: A shadow exists because of something casting it. If the thing that casts the shadow ceases to exist, then the shadow ceases to exist.”
Richard shook his head. “Only so long as everything is in balance, as long as life and death–these two opposing forces–are separated by the veil. On its own, without the world of life, the eternity of the world of the dead is a contradiction–like a shadow with nothing casting it–and contradictions can’t exist.
“In other words, how can something be dead if there is no such thing as life? The world of the dead is defined by the world of life, so, once the world of life ends, the underworld ceases to exist. No world of life, therefore no world of the dead.”
“How can it end,” she asked, “if there is no such thing as the concept of an end in the underworld?”
“It wouldn’t exactly end–because, technically, there is no existence in the underworld to end–it will all simply cease to exist. It will be as if it never existed, like a shadow vanishes without an object to cast it. No trace would be left behind. The eternal now will wink out as if nothing ever existed.”
He leaned back in his chair, drumming his fingers on the desk. “Unless, of course, I can stop it from happening.”
Kahlan nested her hands in her lap, feeling overwhelmed. “You’re dying, Richard. You have the poison of death in you. How are you going to do anything to help us if you die?”
Richard considered his answer for a time. When he spoke, he spoke in a quiet, but forceful, tone.
“I’m inextricably woven into the fabric of this, in a number of ways, from using prophecy, to using free will, to using the power of Orden to stop what would have ha
ppened had I not. I couldn’t not have used the power of Orden.
“Prophecy grows old and corrupt over time, becoming infected with branches that never took place or false prophecy or evil prophecy. Such defective prophecy infects life with that underworld power that is pulling the world of existence apart. Wizards–gifted individuals–have become rare where once they were common. The gift itself is fading away from mankind. Subtractive Magic has virtually vanished from those few who do have the gift. The world has been dying for thousands of years, and we never realized it–or at least never realized why. Prophecy is the talisman that marks everything being taken into oblivion.
“I’m the only one who can stop it. I must stop it.”
Kahlan wiped a hand back over her face. She was beginning to see more of the links the more she thought about it, the way everything was inextricably connected, but he still hadn’t answered her question of how he would be able to stop any of it if he was dead.
“How are you connected with Sulachan?” she asked.
He looked up from under his raptor brow. “I’m the living bridge that enabled Sulachan to cross over, in much the same way that Cara was the living bridge that allowed me to cross back through the veil. My blood, the blood of the bringer of death, brought the dead man back.”
“And Hannis Arc? How is he linked into this?”
“He is basically taking advantage of it all for himself, but in so doing he enables it to happen. For all I know, the end of the Twilight Count may take a lifetime, or ten lifetimes, before it runs out. He wants to rule the world of life in the interim.”
“And why would Sulachan help him?”
Richard leveled a look at her. “I’m the living bridge, but Sulachan needed someone on this side to initiate the elements necessary to bring him back. He needed someone on this side of the veil to move the pieces on the chessboard, so to speak. Hannis Arc has the occult powers and the detailed knowledge that were required to accomplish such an extraordinary task.”