Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Nicci leaned down toward Jebra and lowered her voice to a sinister hiss. "Much the same as killing nonbelievers is a virtue. Yes?"

Nicci straightened. "Followers of the Order develop an intense hatred for those who do not believe as they do. After all, the Order teaches that wicked sinners who refuse to repent are no less than Keeper's disciples. Death is no more than such enemies of the righteous deserve."

Nicci spread her arms in a forbidding gesture. "There can be no doubt about any of this since the Order's teachings are, after all, merely the wishes of the Creator Himself, and thus divinely elicited truth."

Jebra was now clearly too cowed to offer an argument.

Cara, on the other had, was clearly not cowed. "Oh, really?" she said in an even, but contrary, tone. "I'm afraid that there's one fly in the ointment. How do they know all this? I mean, how do they know that the afterlife is really anything at all like they portray it?"

She clasped her hands behind her back as she shrugged. "As far as I know, they haven't visited the world of the dead and then returned. How would they know what it's like beyond the veil?

"Our world is the world of life, so life is what's important in this world. How dare they demean it by making our only life the price for something unknowable? How can they begin to claim that they know anything at all about the nature of other worlds? I mean, for all anyone really knows, the spirit world could be a mere transitory state as we slip into the nonexistence of death.

"For that matter, how would the Fellowship of Order know that these are the Creator's wishes — or that He has any wishes at all?" Cara's brow drew down. "How do they even know that Creation was brought about by a conscious mind in the form of some divine breed of king?"

Jebra looked relieved that someone else had finally objected.

Nicci smiled in a curious manner and raised an eyebrow. "There's the trick of it."

Without looking over, she lifted her arm back toward Ann, standing across the room in the shadows. "It's the same method by which the Prelate and her Sisters of the Light know their version of the same gruel to be true. Prophecy, or the high priests, or some humble but deeply devout person has heard the intimate whispers of the divine, or has seen into a sacred vision He has sent them, or has been visited in dreams. There are even ancient texts that profess to have infallible knowledge of what is beyond the veil. Such lore is mostly a collection of the same kind of whispers and visions and dreams that in the distant past were set down as fact and have become 'irrefutable' simply because it is old.

"And how are we to verify the veracity of this testimony?" Nicci swept her arm out in a grand gesture. "Why, to question such things is the greatest sin of all: lack of faith!

"The very fact that the unknowable is unknowable is what they claim gives faith its virtue and makes it sacrosanct. After all, what would be the virtue in faith if that in which we have faith could be known? A person who can maintain absolute faith without any proof whatsoever must possess profound virtue. As a consequence, only those who take the leap of faith off the bedrock of the tangible into the emptiness of the imperceptible are righteous and worthy of an eternal reward.

"It's as if you are told to leap from a cliff and have faith that you can fly, but you must not flap your arms because that would only betray a fundamental lack of faith and any lack of faith would infallibly insure that you would plummet to the ground, thus proving that a failure of faith is a personal flaw, and fatal."

Nicci ran her fingers back into her blond hair, lifting it off her shoulders, and then, with a sigh, she let her arms drop. "The more difficult the teachings are to believe, the greater the required level of faith. Along with the commitment to a higher level of unquestioning faith comes a tighter bond to those who share that same faith, a greater sense of inclusion in the special group of the enlightened. Believers, because their beliefs are so manifestly mystic, become ever more estranged from the 'unenlightened, from those who are suspect because they will not embrace faith. The term 'nonbeliever' becomes a commonly accepted form of condemnation, demonizing anyone who chooses"—Nicci tapped a finger to her temple — "to stick to the use of reason.

"Faith itself, you see, is the key — the magic wand that they wave over the bubbling brew they have concocted to render it 'self-evident. "

Ann, despite the glare of contempt for a Sister of the Light-turned-traitor-to-the-cause, offered no argument. Richard thought it a rare choice on her part, and one that at that moment was particularly wise.