Terry Goodkind - Phantom - Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

“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.

“There,” Nicci said, shaking a finger as she paced, barefoot, “there is the crack in the Order’s imposing tower of teachings. There is the fatal flaw at the center of all convictions contrived in the imagination of men. Such things in the end, even though they may be sincere, are nothing more solid than the elaborate product of whimsy and self-deception. In the end, without the rock of reality, an insane person who hears voices in their head is equally sincere and equally credible.

“That is why the Order vaunts the sanctity of faith and teaches that you must dismiss the wicked impulse to use your head, that you must instead abandon yourself to your feelings. Once you surrender your life to blind faith in their account of the afterlife, they claim that then, and only then, the doorway to eternity will magically open for you and you will know all.

“In other words, knowledge is to be gained only through rejection of everything that actually comprises knowledge.

“This is why the Order equates faith with holiness, and why its absence is deemed to be sinful. This is why even questioning faith is heretical.

“Without faith, you see, everything they teach unravels.

“And since faith is the indispensable glue that binds together their teetering tower of beliefs, faith eventually gives birth to brutality. Without brutality to enforce it, faith ends up being nothing more than a fanciful daydream, or a queen’s empty belief that no one will attack her throne, that no enemy will breach the borders, that no force can overthrow her defenders, if she merely forbids it.

“After all, I don’t need to threaten you to get you to see that the water in that fountain is wet or that the walls of this room are constructed from stone, but the Order must threaten people to make them believe that an eternity of being dead will be an eternal delight, but only if they do as they’re told in this life.”

As she glared into the still waters of the fountain, Richard thought that Nicci’s blue eyes might turn that water to ice. The cold rage in those eyes was born of things she had seen in her life that he could not begin to imagine. On the dark and quiet evenings alone with her, the things she had been willing to confide in him were terrible enough.

“It’s a lot easier to convince people to die for your cause if you first make them eager to die,” Nicci said in a bitter voice. “It’s a lot easier to get boys to bare their breasts to arrows and swords if they have faith that doing so is a selfless act that will make the Creator smile and welcome them into the eternal glory in the afterworld.

“Once the Order teaches people to be true believers, what they have really done is to forge monsters who will not only die for the cause, but kill for it as well. True believers are consumed by an implacable hatred for those who don’t believe. There is no more dangerous, no more vicious, no more brutal an individual than one who has been blinded by the Order’s beliefs. Such a believer is not shaped by reason so he is not bound by it. As a consequence, there is no mechanism of restraint on his hatred. These are killers who will only too happily kill for the cause, absolutely secure in the knowledge they are doing the right and the moral thing.”

Nicci’s knuckles stood out white and bloodless as her fists tightened. Though the room seemed to ring with the sudden, terrible silence, the power of her words still echoed through Richard’s mind. He thought that the strength of the aura crackling around her might provoke a sudden lightning storm within the anteroom.

“As I said, the premise is pretty simple.” Nicci shook her head in bitter resignation, the emotion draining from her bleak pronouncement. “For most of the people of the Old World, and now the people of the New World, there is no choice but to follow the Order’s teachings. If their faith wavers they are sternly reminded of the eternity of unimaginable suffering that awaits the faithless. If that fails to work, then faith will be driven into them by the point of a sword.”

“But there must be some way to redeem these people,” Jebra said at last. “Isn’t there a way to bring them to their senses and get them to cast off the teachings of the Order?”

Nicci looked away from Jebra to stare off into the distance. “I was brought up from birth under the Order’s teachings and I came to my senses.”

Still staring off into a dark storm of memories, she fell silent for a moment, as if she were reliving her seemingly endless struggle to grasp at life, to escape the haunting clutches of the Order.

“But you cannot imagine how profoundly difficult it was for me to emerge from that realm of dark beliefs. I doubt that anyone who has not been lost in the suffocating world of the Order’s teachings can begin to grasp what it’s like to believe that your life is worthless and of no value, or grasp the shadow of terror that falls over you every time you try to turn away from what you have been taught is your only means of salvation.”

Her watery gaze hesitantly drifted to Richard. He knew. He had been there. He knew what it was like.

“I was redeemed,” she whispered in a broken voice, “but it was far from easy.”

Jebra looked encouraged by what Richard knew was no real encouragement. “But it worked for you,” she said, “so maybe it will work for others.”

“She is different from most of those under the spell of the Order,” Richard said as he gazed into Nicci’s blue eyes, eyes that betrayed the naked emotion of how much he meant to her. “She was driven by a need to understand, to know, if what she had been taught to believe was true or if there was more to life, if there was something worth living for.

“Most of those taught by the Order have no such doubts. They block out those kinds of questions and instead tenaciously cling to their beliefs.”

“But what makes you think that they won’t change?” Jebra didn’t look ready to abandon the thread of hope. “If Nicci changed, then why can’t others?”

Still gazing into Nicci’s eyes, Richard said, “I think they’re able to block out any doubt in what they believe because they’ve internalized their indoctrination, no longer viewing it as specific ideas that have been drilled into them. They begin to experience the ideas they’ve been taught as feelings, which evolve into powerful emotional conviction. I think that’s the trick to the process. They are convinced within their own minds that they are experiencing original thought rather than those discrete ideas that have been taught to them as they grew up.”

Nicci cleared her throat as she looked away from Richard’s gaze and turned her attention once more to Jebra.

“I think Richard is right. I was aware of that very thing within my own thinking, aware of that inner conviction that was actually born of a carefully crafted manner of instruction.

“Some people who secretly value their lives will join in a revolt if they can see that there is a realistic chance to win—that’s what happened in Altur’Rang—but if there isn’t that chance then they know that they must repeat the words that the followers of the Order want to hear or risk losing their most valuable possession: life. Under the Order’s rule, you believe as they teach you, or you die. It’s as simple as that.

“There are people in the Old World working to join together those who will revolt, working to set the fires of freedom for those who want to seize an opportunity to control their own destiny. So there are those who truly want a chance at freedom and will act to gain it. Jagang, too, knows of such efforts and has sent troops to crush those revolts. But I also know only too well that most of the people of the Old World would never willingly cast off their beliefs; they see doing so as sinful. They will work to ruthlessly crush any uprising. If need be, they will cling to their faith right into their graves. The ones—”