Nicci threw off the covers and stood in a rush, no longer feeling that she belonged in bed. She looked down and saw that she was in a pink nightdress. She hated pink. Why did they always end up putting her in a pink nightdress? She imagined that it must have been all they had at hand.

She ignited a razor-thin flow of Subtractive Magic almost without a thought and directed it downward through the fabric of the nightdress. With that power she scavenged through the fabric itself, allowing the Sub-tractive flow to seek only the elements of the dye, and eliminate it. The color in the nightdress, starting at the neckline, faded away in a wave that went through the entire garment. Eliminating the pink color left behind a simple, off-white color to the cloth.

Incredulous, Zedd stared at the nightdress. "Did you just use Subtractive Magic, the power of the underworld, the power of death itself, to take the color out of that thing?"

"Yes. Much better, don't you think?" She wasn't really paying much attention to the question as her mind was already on other things.

Zedd lifted a hand in protest. "Well, I don't think it's a good idea to-"

"What is the purpose of it all?" Nicci asked, cutting off the objection she hadn't really heard and cared even less about.

Zedd's hand paused. He was starting to look exasperated. "That is the purpose. To counter Chainfire."

"No, no. I mean what is the specific function of the counter to the spell?"

His impatience with things that seemed only too obvious was curdling into annoyance. "To make us all remember the object of the spell." His eyes flashed with that agitation. "In this case, that would be Kahlan."

"Yes, in a sense, but that is an oversimplification of the process, an expression of the terminal objective." Nicci lifted a finger, now the teacher instead of the student. "In order to do as you just said it has to restore what was destroyed in us. It has to re-create our memories.

"It's not a matter of the power of Orden making us remember things we've forgotten but, rather, of needing to reconstruct what is no longer there.

"Those lost memories are gone. It isn't that we've forgotten things and we can't recall the people and events. There is nothing there in our minds for us to recall because those memories are nonexistent, not merely forgotten. They have been eroded and destroyed by the Chainfire event. It's not that we just aren't able to remember things. The reality is that those parts of our minds-of our memories-have been destroyed.

"In actual fact, tliere is nothing there for us to remember.

"Re-creating from scratch what is gone is altogether different from helping us to remember things. It's the difference between someone who is asleep, and someone who is dead. On the surface both may look much the same, but having their eyes closed is about the only thing they have in common.

"The end objective may be the same in both instances, but both the problem and the means to solve it have nothing in common. In order for Orden to counter Chainfire and restore us to the way we were before, it needs to incarnate in our minds knowledge, awareness, of what has happened in the past. It needs to create new memories to replace those that were destroyed. It needs to bring our memories back to life."

As he considered her words, tension had settled in Zedd's brow, replacing the impatience that had been there. His gaze tracked her as she paced. "Well, yes, there somehow has to be a reestablishment to real events from the past." He scratched his temple as he viewed her askance. "Are you saying that you think that you now understand how such a thing could work?"

Nicci's bare feet padded across the carpets as she paced. "From what I've pieced together from what I've read, those who created the boxes of Orden, even though they intended them to be a counter to Chainfire, weren't themselves convinced that such a thing could actually be done."

Nicci halted to look at him. "Can you even imagine how monumentally complex such a thing would have to be? How complicated it would be to rebuild and restore memories in everyone? How convoluted?

"I mean, those wizards back then must have driven themselves crazy trying to sort out how such a thing could rebuild what no longer has a template. How is Orden to know what you are supposed to remember? Or Cara? Or me? What's worse, people believe all the time that they correctly recall things but their recollections are in error. How will Orden rebuild memories that once were but no longer are, when those memories themselves, when we had them, weren't always true, or accurate?

"From what I read in the books on Ordenic theory, even the wizards who created Orden weren't certain that it would work."

She started pacing again as she went on. "Don't forget, they couldn't test it against an actual Chainfire event. Chainfire itself was never tested, either-no one dared to-so, while they had confidence in their syllogism, they still couldn't be completely certain of how Orden would work in the real world. Because they couldn't observe an actual Chainfire event play out, they couldn't be positive that their counter would work as they intended it to, even if all the complicated elements functioned perfectly and according to plan-and there was even cause for doubt in that part of it as well.

"All that said, there is an even more important aspect to the protocols they established and that is the need to counter the Chainfire spell in the subject-in this case, Kahlan. The subject is the vortex of the whole thing, the center of the entire Chainfire event. She is the center of an enormously complex equation.

"Therefore, the counter to the entire event must anchor itself there, in her. The element of constructed magic in the elaborate system of Orden must ignite in her."

"She is the foundational link. . ." Zedd said, half to himself, as he stared off, following along with Nicci's reasoning.

"That's right." Nicci said. "And for Orden to do such a thing, for it to repair the damage done starting from the center of that storm, it requires that such a foundational link be a sterile field."

"A sterile field?" Zedd asked, still frowning as he listened intently. "You mentioned that before."

Nicci nodded. "It's a shadowy element that the wizards wrestled with throughout the work on the creation of the Ordenic counter to Chainfire. I didn't understand the importance of it before, didn't grasp the significance of the issue they were grappling with, didn't see why they were so concerned about it, but what you've explained about a witch woman's ability finally allowed me to comprehend the concept at the center of Ordenic theory."

Zedd planted his fists on his bony hips. "You didn't understand part of Ordenic theory? And yet you put it in play-in Richard's name? Even when you didn't understand it?"

Nicci ignored the heated tone of the question. "Just the part about the sterile field. I realize now that it's much the same as what you explained about how I needed a link when I cast a spell at Six, but she denied me that place to anchor the spell. Orden must initiate magic in a similar manner. Like all magic, it, too, needs a connection. That connection is Kahlan. But it needs that target of the connection to be a blank slate."

"A blank slate?" Zedd tilted his head in toward her. "Nicci, need I remind you that the* person is a blank slate? The Chainfire spell erases everything from their past. It renders them blank, in a manner of speaking. Orden thus has what it needs."

Nicci shook her head insistently. "No. You have to consider it all together in the context of the Chainfire book, The Book of Life, and those obscure books you found for me on Ordenic theory. You have to look at it all, at the larger picture, to see it."

"See what?" Zedd roared in exasperation.