The pillars of creation

"When she came to me, I told her of a fork. I didn't know when she would reach it, but I knew that death waited down both paths. With the information I gave her, she would be able to know when the time was at hand. I had hoped that, somehow, she could find a way around what I saw. Sometimes there are shrouded forks that we are unaware of. I was hoping that was the case this time and she might find it, if it existed."

Friedrich was incredulous. "You could have done something! You might have prevented what happened!"

Nathan lifted a hand toward the grave. "This is the result of trying to change what will be. It does not work."

"But maybe if-"

Nathan's hawklike glare rose in warning. "For your own peace of mind, I will tell you this, but no more. Down the other path was a murder so torturous, so bloody, so painful, so violent, that when you discovered what was left of her, you would have ended your own life rather than continue to live with what you had seen. Be thankful that did not happen. It did not happen-not because she feared that death more, but in part because she loved you and didn't want you to suffer that." Nathan gestured to the grave again. "She chose this path."

"This was that fork you told her of, then?"

Nathan's glare softened. "Not exactly. The fork she took was that she would die. She chose how."

"You mean… she might have chosen another fork, a path in which she would live?"

Nathan nodded. "For a time. But had she chosen that path, we would all soon be in the Keeper's clutches. Because of those involved, I know only that down that path everything ended. The choice she made was that there would still be a chance."

"A chance? A chance for what?"

Nathan sighed. Friedrich suspected that the sigh reflected things more grave, more sweeping, than anything Althea had ever seen.

"Althea bought us all time that others might make the right choices when the time comes for them to act of their free will. This knot of forks in prophecy is obscured unlike any other, but most of the threads lead to nothing.»

"To nothing? I don't understand. What could that mean?"

"Existence is at stake." Nathan's eyebrow lifted. "Most of those prophecies end in a void, in the world of the dead-for everything."

"But you can see the way though?"

"The tangle ahead is a mystery to me. In this, I feel helpless. In this, I know what it feels like to be ungifted and blind. In this, I might as well be. I can't even see all of those who are making the critical choices."

"It must be Jennsen. Maybe if you found her… but Althea said the gifted are blind to the ungifted offspring of Darken Rahl."

"Of any Rahl. The gift is of no use in locating such truly ungifted offspring. There is no telling where they are. Unless you could gather all the people in the entire world and parade them before the gifted, there would be no practical way to detect them with the gift. Physical proximity is the only means for the gift to tell you who they are-because your eyes and your gift don't agree-like when I saw Jennsen by accident."

"You think, then, that Jennsen is somehow involved in this?"

Nathan threw his cape closed against the bitter wind. "As far as the prophecies are concerned, those like Jennsen don't even exist. I have no way of telling if there are others, and if there are, how many there might be. I have no idea what part any of them play in this. I know only that they somehow play a pivotal role.

"I know some of what is involved, and some of those who will stand at critical forks in prophecy. As I said, though many of those forks in prophecy are obscured."

"But you're a prophet-a true prophet, according to Althea; how could you not know what prophecy says if the prophecy exists?"

Nathan gauged him from behind intent azure eyes. "Try to understand what I will tell you. It's a concept that few people can grasp. Perhaps it can help you in your grief, for it is the point at which Althea found herself.»

Friedrich nodded. "Tell me, then."

"Prophecy and free will exist in tension. They exist in opposition. Yet, they interact. Prophecy is magic, and all magic needs balance. The balance to prophecy, the balance that allows prophecy to exist, is free will."

"That makes no sense. They would cancel each other."

"Ah, but they don't," the prophet said with a sly, knowing smile. "They are interdependent and yet they are antithetical. Just as Additive and Subtractive Magic are opposite forces, they both exist. They each serve to balance the other. Creation and destruction, life and death. Magic must have balance to function. Prophecy functions by the presence of its counter: free will."

"You're a prophet, and you're telling me that free will exists, making prophecy invalid?"

"Does death invalidate life? No, it defines it, and in so doing creates its value."